15

28 JUNE 1906

Mabena had lain awake for hours already, her mind twisting and turning like waves in a gale. She tried to calm her thoughts through reason, through willpower, even through prayer. But nothing helped.

And how could it? They had only three days left before Libby was expected to meet that blighter in the caves, and they still hadn’t a clue what silver he wanted them to deliver—or how they were supposed to find it. They couldn’t even be entirely certain that “the large cave” meant Piper’s Hole on Tresco, though it was their best guess, as it was the largest one to be found in the Scillies. They didn’t know what he might do if she didn’t show up in the right place with the correct silver. They didn’t know if Beth actually had the correct silver. They’d spent the last two weeks scouring the islands and the books she’d left here, but both searches had been frustratingly futile.

People had been looking for Mucknell’s treasure for generations. How could she and Oliver and Libby just snap their fingers and find it? And if Beth had, if she knew where it was, she obviously still had information they lacked.

That was what kept Mabena tossing from side to side, sleep as elusive as a rainbow. With a growl, she gave up and swung out of bed, snatching Beth’s shawl from the chair and wrapping it around her shoulders.

She probably should have sent it home with Oliver, as she had everything else. But she hadn’t. And though he’d seen her wearing it last Thursday when he’d come by to see if there’d been a new Wednesday delivery, he hadn’t said anything.

Leaning into the window frame, she rested her head against the painted wood and let her eyes slide shut. She’d left the window open so she could hear the shushing of the waves, as familiar as a mother’s heartbeat. The wind whispered in, kissed her brow. The moon sang a lullaby.

But her heart wept and her mind wouldn’t still. They had a collection of clues stored safely on Tresco with Oliver. The letters, the manifests that had continued to show up each Wednesday, the hundred pounds with the mysterious note about it being for an artifact.

What artifact could possibly have been worth so much?

She wrapped one of the corners of the shawl around her hand. Mabena had followed the last few deliverymen too. All different blokes. All simply went straight to the ferry. She’d approached one and tried to talk to him, acting like a concerned friend of the girl in the cottage, but he hadn’t said anything useful. Just that he’d been asked to deliver something, so he did. When she asked who’d hired him—because she had no doubt money was involved—he’d just shrugged and said, “Some bloke.”

Narrowed it right down.

The ocean’s serenade unknit a few of the knots in her shoulders, anyway. She’d missed that sound. More than she’d known.

More than she’d admitted.

A creak snapped her eyelids open again. Maybe it was just something outside, swaying in the wind . . . but the wind was only a breeze. And she wasn’t hearing it through her open window. She was hearing it from her bedroom door.

Her breath caught even as her heart pounded. Another creak from the short little hallway connecting the bedrooms to the rest of the cottage. Probably just Libby, needing a cup of water.

But she knew Libby’s step. Even Libby’s quiet, trying-not-to-wake-her step. This wasn’t it. She eased a bit closer to her door, cracked open from habit, in case she had to slip out for water. There—a shuffle, like shoes on the wood floor. Libby certainly wouldn’t be wearing shoes at this time of night.

Her eyes well used to the dark after hours of staring into it, Mabena skirted her bed and hastened to the entrance, silent as a fish. She wrapped her fingers around the door’s slab, pulled it open all at once, as she’d learned that kept it from squeaking. Stepped into the hall.

A figure was silhouetted in the dark, barely more than a shadow. But enough to see that it was no taller than Mabena. Slight build. And reaching for Libby’s door.

There was no time for thinking—just for doing. She launched herself toward the figure with a guttural cry, tackling it to the ground. Given the size, it must be a lad. No, given the squeal, it must be a girl.

Whoever it was kicked her, pushed at her, but she held on, flipping them both toward the main room and away from Libby’s. She dodged a hand to her face and shoved at the intruder’s head. Her hand caught on something knit.

“Meow.” The little monster pounced, batted at something. What was he doing out of Libby’s room?

The knit thing pulled away, and Mabena saw in the scant moonlight that it must have been a cap, because hair came spilling out. Fair golden hair that she’d know anywhere, any time of day.

Mabena pinned the girl’s arms. “Elizabeth Tremayne! What in blazes are you about?”

Beth went still—then pushed her off, eyes wide. “Mabena? What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? Quite a question from the amazing vanishing girl!”

Beth scrambled to her feet, full panic in her face. The kind Mabena hadn’t seen from her in a decade, since the time they were nearly caught while swimming at night in only their knickers in the Abbey Gardens pond. Her gaze skidded from Mabena to Libby’s door.

No. To Libby, who stood there with chest heaving and her dressing table stool held up like a weapon.

Beth backed away, hands out. “You weren’t to get involved in this, any of you. The cottage was supposed to be empty. I was—no one should be here. But you are, which means you’ve interfered, as you always do. Where are they?”

Mabena tried not to bristle at the accusation, given that it had a bit of truth to it. “Where are what?”

“The deliveries. If I wasn’t here to receive them, they were to drop them for me at—but nothing was there. I need them, Benna, and Treasure Island too. Where are they?”

At the thump-scrape from her left, Mabena looked over, saw that Libby had put the stool down and sat upon it. And that her ridiculous cat was even now jumping into her lap, the black cap Beth had been wearing between his teeth like a prize.

She turned to Beth again, seeing no reason to give her anything but the truth. “Ollie has it all.” He’d insisted on taking it all home and putting it in his safe, and it had seemed the wisest plan. Let her sneak in there if she wanted them back.

“No.” Beth squeezed her eyes shut, pain flashing over her face like lightning. Then her eyes sprang open again. “You have to leave. All of you. And Mamm-wynn and Tas-gwyn and—everyone. Get them, get them out of here. Quickly. Go anywhere—just make sure it’s random.”

“Why? What in the world—”

“Can’t you just trust me? These people . . . they’ll stop at nothing. They proved that with Johnnie.” Her voice cracked.

So did Mabena’s patience. She lurched forward. “What does any of this have to do with Johnnie?”

Beth jumped away before Mabena could grab her. “Just go. Please. I’ll take care of this, I’ll—”

“We’re not leaving you to handle it alone! We’re family!”

Beth shook her head and ran toward the front door, still half-open from where she must have slipped in. Mabena wondered fleetingly how she’d gotten past the lock but just as quickly realized she must still have a key.

All of which served only to distract her long enough that she didn’t see the kitchen chair Beth tipped down behind her as she ran. It tripped Mabena up, tangled with her arms and legs and shouts. And probably inflicted a few bruises in the process.

Beth, blast her, was already gone by the time she looked up and out the door.

Hands landed on her arms, helping her up, but they weren’t Beth’s, as they should have been. Libby. “Should I go after her?”

“There’s no point.” Wincing at the pain in her shin and rubbing at the one in her ribs, she scowled at the door. “She’s faster than either of us, and she knows the island inside and out. No one hides like Beth Tremayne. When she doesn’t want to be found, you don’t find her.”

Libby’s hands fell away. “You said . . . you said you were family.”

She could have claimed she’d meant it metaphorically, as she would have done three weeks ago. But what did it matter now? She sighed. “Cousins. Our mothers were sisters. My family’s the one that’s dragged the Tremayne name down.”

Libby sank to a graceless seat on the floor in a puddle of moonlight from the still-open door. Darling pounced on her again—sans the hat this time—but she didn’t even stroke his fur. Just stared up at her as if her name were Judas Iscariot. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you—you let me think you . . . You knew before we came, didn’t you? You knew something was wrong.”

“Her letters stopped.” It wasn’t how she’d meant to tell her. No, that wasn’t even it. She’d never meant to tell her. She righted the chair, knowing she couldn’t right this misstep so easily.

“So you . . . manipulated me. Into coming here. It was never about me and Sheridan and Bram, it was . . .”

The hurt was so heavy in her voice that Mabena had to brace herself against it. Squeeze her eyes shut, even as she pushed shut the door. Maybe the swinging darkness would blind her to the truth she didn’t want to see on Libby’s face. “Can’t it have been both?”

“No. If it had been both, you would have told me. You would have . . . and you should have. Don’t you think I would have sent you, or come with you if you wanted? Did you trust me so little that you thought lying was the only way to come and help her?”

Mabena turned, slowly. Too slowly. By the time she was facing her again, Libby was on her feet, speeding toward her bedroom. When the door slammed a moment later, Mabena’s new bruises throbbed. “My lady!” She didn’t know what she meant to say, and part of her insisted she shouldn’t say anything. She should just go to her own room and let it rest. Address it in the morning.

But that was the coward’s way. So she limped to Libby’s door instead of her own. She didn’t knock—it would just give her an excuse to tell her to leave. She didn’t try the knob—it was probably locked. She just rested her forehead on the wood. “When I answered your advert—Cador had just left me for some London girl who promised him connections. He said . . . he said I wasn’t good enough. Not for the life he wanted. That I wasn’t fit to be the wife he needed, only a maid to serve her.”

How could it taste so bitter on her tongue, even two years later? “So I . . . decided that if that was all he thought I was, that was what I’d be. I saw the advert in a paper a tourist left behind, and I answered it. Beth wrote my recommendation. My family begged me not to go, but I needed to get away.”

The only sound from within was the squeak of the bed’s springs. She could imagine Libby lying on it, her back to the door, a pillow over her head to try to block out Mabena’s pathetic story.

“When I realized that Beth had found some sort of trouble . . . she’s my cousin. My best friend. I couldn’t just do nothing, my lady, and you had a problem of your own, so . . . It seemed a handy solution. I never meant you to be hurt by it, and I certainly never meant you to get mixed up in whatever she’s mixed up in.”

There. It was the closest thing to an apology she knew how to give, and it was true, every word.

But silence pounded from the other side of the door. And every pulse of it screamed that it wasn’t enough. That she wasn’t forgiven. That she didn’t deserve to be. That it didn’t matter what had chased her from Tresco two years ago. It didn’t matter what had brought her back now. She’d played it all wrong, and while her family here could overlook it, Lady Elizabeth Sinclair could not.

She sighed and tapped a finger once against the door. Then pushed away. Maybe it wasn’t enough. But it was all that she had.

Without another word, she slid back into her own room like a shadow and curled up on the floor under the window. The ocean’s heartbeat melded with her own.

Having lived most of his life on an island that was all of a square mile in size, Oliver was no stranger to tension among his neighbors. Sometimes through a stormy winter there was little to do but argue with whomever crossed your path. But he never liked sensing that angry rod between two people, holding them six feet apart even if they were standing shoulder to shoulder. The mirror erected between them that kept them from seeing each other and showed them only their own frustrations, their own pains.

After the note that came from Mabena, saying she’d seen Beth, he’d expected her and Lady Elizabeth to arrive on Tresco Saturday evening bursting with whatever story they had to tell. Eager—if anxious—to put the finishing touches on their plan for tonight’s visit to Piper’s Hole. Instead, they’d stepped out of Mabena’s boat with a curtain of silence draping them. The kind that wasn’t stiff enough to speak of an argument only minutes past, but whose very heaviness said it had persisted far too long already.

He’d shot Mabena a silent question, but she’d pretended not to see it. As she always did when she didn’t want to address something. No, she’d just shouldered the overnight bags they’d both brought and said with false cheer that she’d better go and see her parents straightaway. He’d taken Lady Elizabeth’s arm and walked with her, but her silence only grew deeper, if that were possible.

Perhaps it was insight that told him she, then, had been the injured party, rather than the injuring one. Perhaps it was bias—he tended to assume that when someone had that windblown, storm-struck look in their eyes, the tempest named Mabena was to blame. Either way, he didn’t know whether to assure the lady that it would blow over, leave it alone entirely, or try to wheedle more information out of her.

Twenty-four hours later, he still wasn’t sure. He’d gotten to know her fairly well over the last three weeks, he’d thought. They’d gone to the other islands together, searching for Beth. He’d visited them on St. Mary’s each Thursday to see what new novelty had been delivered the day before. They’d come to Tresco each Tuesday noon, and he’d met their boat, walked them into town. She’d been at the races each Wednesday morning, cheering him on, offering the same teasing consolation as any islander would when his team lost. Handing out Mrs. Gillis’s tea and no doubt the one who tucked pound notes into her jar—no one ever saw her do it, but who else could it have been? And the fact that she did it, but on the sly, that she dressed like the rest of them, that she helped wherever needed, had resulted in his neighbors’ all coming to call her “our lady.”

It made him smile. She wouldn’t know it, but they used the same tone they did when talking about the Dorrien-Smiths—“our Lord Proprietor.” They had a way of looking at him—and now at her—as if he belonged to them and not the other way round. Which, really, was as it should be.

He couldn’t tell her that, though, when she was cocooned in that silence. Its wall was too thick. Even after church this morning, when such a non-fuss had been made over her that she ought to have been thrilled at feeling so included. Even after an afternoon spent running their plan past the constable, who looked dubious but had agreed to it and hadn’t even chided him—much—for not telling him straightaway that Beth was missing.

Even now, as they made their way to the cave. She ought to be nervous. Or excited. Or fearful. She ought to be something other than numb. And the fact that she wasn’t . . . It was concerning. Yes, if all went well, they’d end this night with the man who’d accosted her two weeks ago in custody. But if it didn’t go well . . .

His own chest had been tight all day, considering that if. If it didn’t go well, Lady Elizabeth’s life could be in danger. If it didn’t go well, Beth’s life could be in danger. If it didn’t go well, any one of them could be hurt or worse.

But she was the one bearing the brunt of the risk. She would be taking on the blame for his sister. She’d offered it, when they first devised this trap, saying it was the only way, since she was the one he’d be looking for. She’d simply offered herself up as bait and then gone on to hum the overture of The Magic Flute while she made a tidy list of everything they ought to do to prepare for it.

He’d met a lot of people over the years. Here on the islands, on the mainland, at university. Friends, neighbors, strangers. None of them—not a one—was like Lady Elizabeth Sinclair.

Mabena was already walking a few steps ahead of them, never one to stroll along when she could stride instead. Oliver held Lady Elizabeth back a bit more with a hand on her elbow. “My lady . . .” But that didn’t sound right, not now. Not when she was risking her very life for his family. “Libby.”

It was a liberty he oughtn’t to take without her permission. But if things went wrong tonight, that was the least of his concerns.

She looked up at him, her face traced only by moonlight and his gaze. She looked tired, but it was less because of the shadows under her eyes than the ones in them. He sighed. “You needn’t do this.” It wasn’t what he meant to say.

The corners of her lips tilted up, then drifted back down. “We’ve been through this . . . Oliver.” Oliver. Even better than simple permission to use her given name. “Whether I come to the cave tonight or not, the risk to me is the same. I’m the one they think is Beth. I’m the one they’ll be looking for, whether they’re looking here or at my cottage.”

“You could stay here with the Moons and not go back there. Or—” He choked on the obvious suggestion and had to clear his throat. “Or you could simply return to the mainland.” She had to at some point. It would be logical to do so now.

But he’d spent a few too many hours tossing and turning these past two weeks, praying she wouldn’t. If she left now, when would he see her again? He couldn’t exactly come to call at Telford Hall or their home in London—her brother wouldn’t allow it. He knew that. She might not be engaged to Lord Sheridan, but she’d marry him or someone like him. Like that viscount who had “stumbled across” them twice already while Oliver was there—and probably many times when he wasn’t. A man with a title. Or an estate large and impressive enough that no one minded the lack of said title. Not an island vicar whose holdings on the mainland were as modest as Truro Hall, whose resources had largely been spent on ineffectual doctors for his brother.

And blast it all, but never in his life had he felt the least desire for anything more than what he had. Never the least bit of shame or regret.

But then, never in his life had he wondered if treasure hunting with a lady could be termed courting. And if so, what her family would say about it.

Libby shook her head, and it took him a moment to realize she was responding to his suggestion that she leave the Scillies, not to his silent question about whether this thing between them was a courtship. “I’m not leaving.” Flint sparked against the iron in her tone.

She wasn’t just saying it to him, he knew, about tonight. She was saying it to the invisible specter of her brother, whom she’d been half expecting to show up and demand she return home ever since the Wights’ dinner party. Perhaps Lord Scofield had forgotten to mention her to Lord Telford after all.

They could hope.

“Good. I don’t want you to leave.” A truth that warmed the back of his neck. Perhaps Enyon had been teasing him incessantly about flirting with her, but the truth was that he was a novice at such things, and while the words came naturally with her, he was also keenly aware of his own awkwardness.

He didn’t know how to court a lady. Frankly, he didn’t want to court a lady. He just wanted to get to know her better, from the inside out. He wanted the right to slide his fingers down her arm and weave them with hers. He wanted her here, at his side, indefinitely.

Heaven help him. This was all Mamm-wynn’s fault, putting ideas in his head.

No. It was Libby’s fault for being so incredibly and beautifully different from all the other girls in England.

That smile joined the moonlight again, too fleeting. She shifted a bit closer to him with one step, then back to their usual space with the next. “What time is it?”

He didn’t have to pull out his pocket watch to know it wasn’t yet eleven—he knew when they’d set out from home, after all, and how long it took to walk to Piper’s Hole. “We’ll have an hour to get into our places.” And they’d been down there earlier too, deciding where each of them would be hidden, where she should wait, what she should say to lure the chap into revealing something incriminating so that Constable Wendle had a reason to block the cave entrance and detain him.

Plenty of time. “Won’t you tell me, Libby?”

“Tell you what?” But she knew. She had to, and he could hear in her voice that she did.

Still, he’d humor her. “What’s broken between you and Benna?”

He nearly regretted the question when he saw the moonlit pearl of a tear drop onto her cheek.