Isabelle
“I am most grateful, Sir.” Thomas nodded and followed him into the cabin.
“I grow weary of being alone. Drinking alone. What are your aspirations?” Reynolds poured Thomas a glass and handed it to him.
“I plan to work the seas until I have enough purse to buy some land somewhere,” Thomas replied. “Maybe become a farmer, or pick up a trade.”
Reynolds sat across from him, “Why not real estate? If you are in need of lessons I can teach you. You befriend the city planners, find out what properties will be on major thoroughfares, and buy them for pennies before construction ever begins.” Reynolds stopped dead cold and glanced again at Thomas’ face. “Though that may be a bit hard to wine and dine them with that mangled face. How was it disfigured?”
Thomas cleared his throat, “That is perhaps a story for another time. I could amuse you with some tale of a jilted lover, or a stricken youth. You would be none the wiser, for either could be equally true. But I will not.”
Reynolds filled the glasses all night, til around the early morning hours and the two slept it off for the next 2 days.
After a month or so Reynolds once again we in need of a drinking companion and sought out Thomas. This time Reynolds spoke of his family, His Mother mostly and his childhood.
“And what of your childhood?” Reynolds inquired.
Thomas took a deep drink, “I never knew my mother or father. The only life I knew was of poverty and hunger in the Fairdale orphanage. I resided there until I became of age to work as a cobblers apprentice, but I was not skilled in making boots. I adapted to living off the streets and doing what I had to survive.”
“At what age were you put out?”
“Fourteen.” Thomas finished his glass and set it on the desk.
“You never put thought into marriage?”
Thomas looked at Reynolds, “Marriage is for your kind. The kind of people who need to procure a lineage and maintain the family blood line. You men who build fortunes and empires to pass on to the next generation to rule. I have no such options or means to acquire them.”
Reynolds filled the glasses, “I thought my luck of procuring a lineage was lost til word of my niece arrived. Tragic the happenings in her youth, to be orphaned so young. Moved into unfamiliar surroundings and raised with no family comfort.” Reynolds lamented what he had done. “I have no instinct for children, I have no parental inclinations of any kind. I hired the best tutors and nannies in the countryside, but the child was not skilled. Her face was quite plain to look at. She was most unremarkable in every kind of way. The season of courting came and passed and nary a suitor.”
Thomas felt the heat beginning to rise on the back of his neck at the words. Slowly a rage inside of him was beginning to build as the Lord spoke of Isabelle so cruelly. A slow fire that raged into a tempest, a tempest his must diffuse. Thomas took in a deep breath to steady his emotions.
Reynolds glanced at his companion. “I have no faith nor hope she shall ever conceive a child, much less marry. I will make sure she is care for til her dying day, but my legacy dies with me.”
Reynolds raised his glass, “To the Reynolds dynasty. It rose and fell with a single man.”
Thomas raised his glass and drank, but he did not share his companion’s sentiment.