A Noble Cause

XXVII - Farewell

Twenty-seven: Farewell

The day after the countess' visit was when Isaac and Egbert's "escapade" came to an end, and they both returned to Bright Manor. Although Jason was blissfully unaware of anything that had happened, Olivia was not and demanded all the details as soon as Isaac stepped into the house. She took him by the arm and practically dragged him to the kitchen, where they would talk over a cup of tea while Egbert returned to his duties in the garden.

Isaac laughed at her curiosity, finding it genuinely amusing that she behaved towards him as a friend would; surely, she was a friend, but he was also out in the country with another man and, even though he knew she did not mind, something inside of him would always tell him otherwise. This would keep him alive in the years to come at the expense of his ability to trust people.

Olivia had barely put the kettle on when Samuel summoned Isaac. He looked at her, whose shoulders dropped.

"I will be back in a moment," he said, turning around and leaving.

The rudeness of his summoning made him wonder whether anything had happened in his absence. The story Samuel told his mother was not the entire truth. Although he had, indeed, granted Isaac three days off, he had not done so because Isaac had asked him, but because he insisted on it. He knew what lack of privacy and support could cause to a relationship and insisted that Isaac and Egbert take a few days off. Where to, he did not know and could not overstep as far as to suggest, but he felt he owed it to Isaac for everything he had done for him the right to some time away with his lover.

Isaac, naturally, objected to it, and constantly brought up Samuel's emotional state and the "appalling news" to justify his position, but Samuel would not hear of it and, after, quite exaggeratedly, telling him that he would feel worse if Isaac did not go, he managed to make his will prevail. Truth be told: Samuel also wanted a few moments of privacy. Though nothing would ever put him in the same state as Abigail's death had, he still believed in the power of retracting into oneself to find, if nothing else, conformity for the situation that happened. The less people he had around the house, the better.

"Ah, there you are," Samuel said upon Isaac's entrance. "I must say love is a good look on you."

For the lack of a mirror, Isaac had not noticed any physical changes that might have occurred to him, but, given that he felt better, it was only natural that it should reflect on the outside somehow.

"If it be so, that is more Egbert's doing than mine."

Samuel raised an eyebrow and the ambiguity of Isaac's statement, already so dangerously close to obscenity, doubled in size, only then becoming visible to its speaker, who grew red.

"Dear me, I did not mean that, naturally."

Samuel laughed it off.

"I sort of hope you had! It's all very natural, my friend; well, much more so than what I'm about to tell you, anyhow. Do sit."

Isaac had had his fair share of unnatural things coming from Samuel and he wondered what possibly could have happened this time. Though one day is more than enough time for the most absurd things to happen in the O'Cain family, as he had come to realise, he could not help but hope, as he left for the three days, that nothing would have happened in the interim. Sweet mistake.

Samuel reached for the pocket of his vest, took the paper he kept inside of it and gave it to Isaac, who read it.

"I don't understand," he said. "How did this come to be?"

"The bastard decided to leave it to me. I don't know the details of the estate, because I had never even heard of it before mama told me the news yesterday. All I know is it's a house in Sussex near Hastings. And I want you to have it."