Chapter Fourteen
Isabel soon mastered the trick of reading the scrolls’ dense, crowded lettering and the sometimes curious phrasing and syntax the scribe had used. She and her aunt took to spending some part of their mornings together in the parlour, poring over a scroll each and conferring as to the contents. Isabel valued these hours, for they drew her ever closer to her aunt. Theirs had always been an amiable relationship, but Isabel felt that a real friendship was being forged through their shared endeavour.
Further, Mrs. Grey’s enthusiasm — or Eliza’s, as she began to insist upon being called — was contagious. Isabel had come to view her promise as rash and naive; how could she hope to discover something so small as a single name, long lost to time, and of a different world to her o
