8

The wind whispered in his ear, luring his feet toward the shore. Oliver would have obeyed it even if he hadn’t been on the path already, his gaze set on Enyon’s familiar form down at the water. “Ahoy!” he called when close enough that there was a prayer his friend would hear him.

Enyon straightened, turned, and lifted a hand in greeting. At his feet rested the little one-man gig he always used for a bit of pleasure rowing, which meant he hadn’t been running all the way to another island, just about Tresco, or perhaps over to Bryher to visit his sister. Given the fine mist that had been falling all day, Oliver was a bit surprised he’d been out at all. Enyon had always preferred a sunny day for his errands, when one was to be had.

“And what brings the good vicar down here twelve hours before his next sermon?” Enyon grinned at him, wiping a hand over his face to rid it of the mist.

Oliver lifted his brows. “I’ll have you know I’ve finished my sermon. Mostly.”

His friend chuckled, then nodded toward his gig. “Help me carry it up?”

Rather than waste words on an answer, Oliver grabbed an end. The larger craft were kept anchored in the quay, but the locals tended to store their smaller boats well above the waterline overnight.

At Enyon’s grunt, they lifted it in tandem. “What does bring you here though? You’re usually not to be peeled away from your desk on a Saturday evening.”

Sermons were not his favorite part of his job and required by far the most effort, perhaps because he spent far more time visiting parishioners and contemplating what truths he might work into a sermon someday than crafting one for that week. But after the last few days, he wasn’t all that concerned with whether he bored the congregation to tears. “I’ve been trying to catch you up since Wednesday.”

“Ah. Sorry. You knew I had to make that overnight trip to the mainland on Thursday, didn’t you?”

Oliver blinked against the mist and moved for the boathouse used by half a dozen families. “I’d forgot, honestly. I’ve been a bit distracted, worrying over Beth.” He wouldn’t confess it to just anyone. But this was Enyon.

They slid the gig into its spot in the boathouse. When Oliver turned, he found his friend’s face lined with a concern to match his own. “About what? Is she still plotting how to go to London for the Season?”

“No, nothing like that.” He’d already decided when he sought Enyon out that he’d tell him everything he knew. But even so, he couldn’t quite put into words what he felt in his heart. “Did you hear Benna’s back?”

“Aye, Mam mentioned that she saw her at her parents’ the other day, trussed up like a Christmas goose—her words, not mine. Does that have something to do with Beth?”

Though he shrugged, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it did, despite the fact that Mabena hadn’t admitted as much. Why else, though, would she appear out of the blue? “She says that her employer just wanted a holiday. But . . .” He dragged in a deep breath, trying to keep thoughts of Benna and Lady Elizabeth from crowding out what really needed to be said. “But Beth . . . she’s not on St. Mary’s, En. Mrs. Pepper said she thought she’d come home. But obviously she hasn’t. She’s just gone. Has been for over two weeks now.”

“What?” Enyon took his hat off and ran a hand over his hair in one practiced motion, putting the cap back on with the next. “What do you mean, gone?”

Oliver made a poof motion with his fingers. “Gone. Vanished. No one’s seen her, nor the Naiad.” And though he could well imagine her hiding herself for weeks on end, how and where was she hiding her sloop?

“And you’re not banging on the constable’s door? Organizing a search?”

He’d considered it. But . . . “She left me a letter, indicating she was vanishing on purpose. Told me not to worry.”

“Likely.”

“Right?” He shook his head and buried his hands in his trouser pockets to keep them from mirroring Enyon’s hat-swipe motion. “I don’t know what I’m to do. She’s my baby sister. She isn’t supposed to do this sort of thing.”

Enyon’s snort at least had a bit of amusement in it this time. He motioned Oliver to follow him, though surprisingly, he didn’t head for the cozy, dry cottage he’d let for himself last year, after his second sister and her brood moved back into their parents’ house when her husband took a job on the mainland. He turned instead toward the beach.

Talk about a true friend. Oliver breathed in the damp air, relishing the mist on his face and the shift of sand and pebbles under his feet. It soothed him as nothing else could.

“Sisters,” Enyon drawled after a long moment, “apparently think they’re supposed to do whatever will cause us the most disquiet. If you ask me, the Lord ought to have made us humans to be capable of only producing one gender of offspring each. Boys could have brothers, girls could have sisters. Nice and tidy.”

Laughter stole its way from Oliver’s throat. “I suppose He didn’t mean for our lives to be so tidy. Even so, a bit tidier just now wouldn’t go awry. I can’t . . .” Lose her. But he couldn’t say it. Putting words to the fear lent it credence. Gave it weight.

He wouldn’t give that fear any more weight than he already had, just by thinking of it.

Enyon didn’t ask him to finish his sentence. “Do you think she took the ferry? There’s a world of possibilities as to where she is if she did.”

He couldn’t discount the possibility. She could have sailed toward Tresco just to make sure no one was watching, stowed the boat somewhere, and then secreted her way back to Hugh Town. “I spoke with the captain, and he didn’t remember seeing her. But you know Beth. When she doesn’t want to be noticed, she isn’t.”

Enyon chuckled. “Oh yes, I’m well aware.”

Oliver let the tug of a smile have its way with his lips. “Do you remember the time we all decided we’d brave a night in King Charles’s Castle? And she—”

“Aye, I remember.” Enyon gave his shoulder a shove. “And I don’t need you imitating yet again my shriek when she jumped out at me, thank you very much.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Though his lips nearly pulled back to disobey his claim. He settled for another laugh instead, and then a few paces of quiet.

Over and again he’d taken this band about his chest to the Lord. Begged Him to watch over Beth as Oliver couldn’t do. Begged Him to touch Mamm-wynn and keep her healthy. Begged Him to somehow put to rights whatever had gone wrong.

He closed his eyes for a moment, just to be. Here. Now. With his best friend at one side and the ocean at the other. The beach beneath his feet. Home stretching up above him. To feel the rhythms that hadn’t changed, despite all that had.

Oliver. He could imagine his name in the breeze—and he always heard it in Mamm-wynn’s voice, in that way she’d whispered it when he was just a boy, standing on the bluff overlooking the shore. He’d gone out in a huff, angry that his parents hadn’t taken him with them to the mainland when they went to check on Truro Hall. And his grandmother had come out to soothe him.

“You don’t belong there,” she’d murmured, taking his slight shoulders in her still-strong hands and meeting his gaze, holding it. “It’s here you belong, Oliver Tremayne, as surely as your father and his father and his before him. Listen—listen to the wind. Do you hear that? It knows you, lad. The islands know your name, as they know all of us who love them. Be content.”

He had been. Him and Morgan both. It had been enough for them, to know the islands and be known in turn. But Beth . . .

Maybe Mamm-wynn hadn’t ever had that talk with her. Maybe she hadn’t taught her how to hear her name on the wind.

“So . . . Benna, eh? Did she look as tight-laced as Mam said?”

Oliver opened his eyes again. Pushed thoughts of Beth aside in favor of the picture of Mabena that surfaced. “I scarcely knew her. You’d have laughed for a century. Her hair, Enyon—it was tidy. Straight as a pin, sleek, all tucked in properly.”

Enyon laughed now at the mere imagining. “Blast, but I’m sorry I missed it. I’ll be sure and catch her soon, before the isles get back into her. It’s a sight I need to see before it vanishes. And the lady she’s serving now? She’s here too?”

A nod did little to sum up that surprise. “Lady Elizabeth.”

“What’s she like? Pretty?”

Oliver rolled his eyes. “Always your first question.”

“Come on, Ollie.” A sharp elbow found his ribs. “Help a chap out.”

“She’s . . .” He sighed. She wasn’t the sort of pretty people expected of a young lady. That was for certain. No carefully styled hair or dress or posture. No colors chosen to bring out eyes or lips or complexion. She didn’t have the bold bone structure of Enyon’s oldest sister or the wild allure that had made half the lads on Tresco fall for Mabena. Her features weren’t unpleasant, but they also weren’t the sort to draw the eye. Yet she had the sweetest smile he’d ever seen, and her eyes had been as boundless as the sea. One couldn’t discount that. “I’ll let you be the judge when you meet her. I liked her too well to think of such things.”

Enyon barked another laugh, gave him another shove. “Only you, Ollie.”

He wasn’t sure if it was a compliment he should thank him for or an indictment he should defend against. So he shrugged and narrowed his eyes. “Do you see that? On Samson?”

They both paused, Enyon lifting a hand to add an extra shield to his eyes as he gazed toward the uninhabited island. “I see something. Not sure what. Movement though. A bird?”

“Looks too big.” Squint as he might, Oliver couldn’t bring it into any better focus. “A deer?”

“It’s white.”

“Could be an albino.”

“None of those over there that I’ve ever heard of,” Enyon said.

“Anomalies could be born at any time.” But there weren’t that many deer left on Samson. The Lord Proprietor had tried to build a park there for them after he moved the last of the residents off it fifty years before, but even the deer hadn’t wanted to live on the inhospitable scrap of land. They’d tried to wade to Tresco during low tide, and some of them had succeeded.

Enyon pursed his lips. “Definitely doesn’t move like a bird. Or a deer.”

“No. It doesn’t.” But it wasn’t moving like a person, either, to be a tourist or a local strolling about—not to mention that dusk was falling and no one would be over there at this time of day. Probably. “I saw a scrap of something white fluttering in nearly the same spot the other day. Rubbish, I assumed. Could be that, tangled on driftwood.”

“I’d have thought someone would have cleaned it up by now.” Enyon shifted, darted a glance at him. “You know what it looks like. . . .”

A ghost—something Enyon had claimed countless times over the years when they spotted something on a distant island shore that they couldn’t identify. And countless times over the years, the other lads had teased him about his rich imagination.

This time, Oliver just hummed and kept watching the slip of white. As he’d visited his parishioners over the last two days, more than one of the old-timers had been muttering about “Gibson’s tales coming to life.” And the tales his mother’s father favored were always the ones with specters. Or pirates. Or, better still, both.

Oliver braced one elbow on the opposite hand and tapped a finger to his cheek. “What did you say kept you awake Tuesday night?”

“Ah.” Enyon cleared his throat. “Noises. Coming from the direction of Piper’s Hole—not that I went to investigate. Didn’t sound like voices, nor like an animal, and it wasn’t a windy night. I know it was probably just youngsters causing a ruckus, but . . . but, well, it was enough to keep me awake. Especially worrying if it was youngsters, after . . .”

After Johnnie. “Have you heard them again?”

His friend shook his head. “But I was gone Thursday night, and last night I was dead to the world after getting home. Why?”

“I don’t know. Noises in the caves, something odd on Samson . . . Just makes me wonder if—”

“If all the old tales are true and it’s a lady in white over there? Singing a haunted lullaby to her lost babe in the caves?”

Oliver laughed again. “I was going to say that someone was up to something. Maybe someone decided to revive our long history of smuggling.”

“Hmph.” Enyon made a face. “You’re always so boring.”

“My apologies. I meant to say that it’s likely some beleaguered ghost, trapped on the shores by her love for a sailor who dropped her there in 1624 and promised to come back for her but never did.”

“Better.” Though he cocked his head to the side. “Who’s that, do you think?”

“My fictitious sailor and his abandoned love? How am I to know? I just made them up.”

“No, idiot.” Enyon slapped his arm and then pointed at something just coming into view around the point of land, aimed at Samson. A boat, obviously, moving at a good clip.

A familiar boat, as most of them were. It took him only a moment to place it. “Casek.” He spat the name.

“Ah. He must have spotted whatever it is and decided to see to it.”

“At this time of day?”

Enyon lifted a brow. “Since when does Casek Wearne care if it’s the wisest time to do something?”

Because he had a point, Oliver relented. And started walking again. “Did you investigate the caves later? See if there was any sign of people having been there that night?”

“There are always people in the caves. What would I have hoped to see? Besides.” He kicked at a shell, eyes on the ground ahead of them. “I haven’t had the heart to go in there. Not after I helped them haul Johnnie out.”

He’d forgotten that Enyon, living so near, was the one Johnnie’s friends had fetched to help them. He clasped Enyon’s shoulder. It should have been someone else—anyone other than softhearted Enyon—to do such a task. “I can’t blame you for that. And maybe that explains it. Maybe it was his mam down there, crying. Or young Harriet—she was sweet on him.”

One of the clouds cleared from Enyon’s face, at least. He nodded. “You could be right. Or even his friends, paying their respects at the place where he fell. The wind could have just been distorting their voices.”

“I daresay. That answers that question, anyway.”

“And Casek will clean up the beach on Samson. That only leaves finding Beth. And how I’m to get a glimpse of Mabena all prim and a look at this lady she’s serving.”

“The islands aren’t that big. I’m sure you’ll see them.” As they’d see Beth, if she were here. When she wanted them to.

They walked onward, until Oliver’s house came into view. “Come up?”

“Thanks—not today. Still have a few things to do at home. Luncheon after church tomorrow though? Unless you’ve already been spoken for.”

“Only by Mamm-wynn. You’re certainly welcome to join us.”

As he did at least one Sunday a month. “Sounds good. Talk to you tomorrow, Ollie.”

“Good night.” He lifted a hand in farewell as he climbed the path up his hill and Enyon turned back the way they’d come.

Every step upward, though, made his heart weigh a little heavier. When he got inside, Mamm-wynn would no doubt ask him, as she had every other time he came home since Wednesday, if he’d found Beth yet. And, like every other time, he’d have to tell her no. He’d tried explaining that Beth was where she wanted to be—without sharing the worry his sister’s exact words had buried deep within him—but Mamm-wynn didn’t even seem to hear those assurances.

He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t believe them himself.

A few minutes later he was passing through the familiar doors of home, listening for an indication of where his grandmother was to be found. When he heard the strains of the piano, he followed the music with a smile. She didn’t play much these days. Her hands were too arthritic, and her eyes had trouble reading music. But once in a while she would sit and play one of her old favorites that both fingers and mind had memorized long ago.

He slid as quietly as possible into the drawing room and sat in his favorite chair, just listening. The song wasn’t exactly as smooth sounding as it had once been, but it still brought a smile to his lips. And when she finished, he applauded, as he’d always done.

She spun daintily on her bench, fluttering a bow and smiling. Not at all surprised, it seemed, to find him there. “That one was for you, Ollie. And for her, of course.”

His smile flickered. “Who? Mrs. Dawe? I didn’t think she cared for Bizet.”

Mamm-wynn laughed. “No, not Mrs. Dawe. You silly thing. As if you don’t know very well of whom I’m speaking.”

Did he? Should he? She couldn’t mean Beth. His sister had never enjoyed opera at all, even just the instrumental parts. It had always been a bit of a joke in the family. “I’m afraid I’m at a loss.”

Still chuckling, she stood. “I won’t tell her you said so, darling. Don’t worry. Though really, a man ought to know his wife’s taste in music.”

His . . . wife? A stone took over where his stomach had been earlier. Not knowing what to say, he just watched her hum her way from the room.

Maybe she’d thought him his father. Though that scarcely brought any comfort. Whether she thought him someone else or thought he had a wife, the truth of it was the same: confusion had clouded her mind again.

He buried his hand in his hair and leaned on the arm of the chair.

He wished she’d just asked about Beth again.