16

Libby averted her face so she could dash the tear away, praying he hadn’t seen it. She’d never been the sort of girl to cry over every snubbing or hurt feeling. She couldn’t be, otherwise she’d have spent her entire adolescence in tears, crying over each little barb Edith or one of her friends sent her way. The year at finishing school would have been a veritable ocean of waterworks. No, she wasn’t the sort for tears, and she didn’t want Oliver Tremayne to think she was.

But she’d been so dashedly close to them for the past two days, every time she looked at Mabena and realized everything she’d thought she knew about the woman was a lie. And to hear it put so truly, in a voice so very sincere in its request that she open her heart—even if he hadn’t been gripping her elbow, her emotions would have surged up.

Broken. The perfect word to describe things. “She isn’t my friend.” It came out a murmur, one that she prayed the wind wouldn’t take to where Mabena strode ahead of them. “I suppose I never should have thought she was. Perhaps Mama was right. Perhaps there can never be true friendship between employer and employee.”

Mama had actually expanded it to “between people of different stations,” but Libby couldn’t go quite that far.

And she felt Oliver’s fingers stiffen on her arm. “You can’t believe that.”

“Not for the reasons Mama said. Not because there’s any natural superiority. But because there’s something about the nature of the relationship that must make it too hard to trust.” She sighed, trying to watch Mabena on the path ahead of them, even though it was hard to see her through the night. “Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe she just can’t trust me.”

“You can’t believe that either.”

“I must believe it. What other reason is there?” She might have banished that first renegade tear, but now more stung her eyes, and she had to blink furiously to keep them where they belonged. “I suppose I’ve never been anything to her but an employer. An unusual one, which is probably why she’s lasted this long with me when it’s clearly not what she ever meant to do for any length of time. But still. In her eyes, I’ve never been anything but the reason for her position. An outsider when it came to anything that mattered to her. A—what is it you call tourists? In-something?”

“Incomers.” She could hear the smile in his voice, and the sorrow, without looking at him. “What makes you think she thinks of you that way, my . . .”

My lady, he was going to say, as he always did. The familiarity forgotten already. Two words to prove again that she wasn’t one of them, didn’t belong here, where the only gentry or nobility were tourists, or else a Dorrien-Smith.

“. . . Libby?”

A balm. A bandage. And even something that made her lips want to smile. My Libby. If only. But that could never be either. She shook her head. “She told me, the other night. After Beth came. She told me the truth. That she’s your cousin. That she knew all along something was wrong and that’s why she convinced me to come here. After Beth’s letters stopped.”

She’d assumed he’d known it all, since obviously he knew they were cousins. But his hiss of breath said otherwise and brought her gaze around, danger of tears be hanged. “You didn’t know?”

“Suspected.” Even in the moonlight she could see his eyes snapping. “But she swore to me it was only that you needed to get away.”

And so she had spilled Libby’s secrets rather than her own. Strange how it chafed in one direction and yet soothed in another. At least Libby wasn’t the only one she’d lied to.

“As for the relationship.” He pulled her to a halt and turned to face her, angling them both so they could see each other’s faces in the silver light. His gaze sought hers and held it as gently as his fingers did her elbow. “I didn’t know why she wanted it kept secret. Not from you. But I didn’t think it mine to tell. I’m sorry for that, if it’s hurt you in the slightest. That’s the last thing I meant to do.”

She could appreciate that, even as she doubted it. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her more than he wanted to hurt anyone, but facts were still facts. “You’ve known me only three weeks, Oliver. She’s your cousin. Your loyalty belongs first to her.”

“Does it?” His expression, as he cast a glance toward where Mabena had disappeared, was so very normal in its frustration that she felt a bubble of mirth rise. It popped before it could emerge as smile or laugh, but even so. It was good to know he wasn’t as perfectly empathetic and bighearted as he seemed. “Funny, just now I’d rather toss her in the drink and side with you.”

“Oliver.” It was nearly the same tone she took with Lottie, though far more amused.

“Oh, it would be all right. She can swim. But if I may return to your other point.” Did he truly step closer? Lean in? Or did it just seem that way when he returned his gaze to her face? “We’ve known each other two years, not three weeks.”

“Do you really think an hour’s conversation two years ago counts?” She hoped it did, given the many times she’d thought of him since. Wondered who he was. None of her conjecture had done him justice though. Because she hadn’t known to imagine him here, but the islands were such a part of who he was. She hadn’t been able to see him clearly without the Scillies as a backdrop.

“When it was a more meaningful conversation than any to be had in a drawing room or on a dance floor, I absolutely do.” He stepped to her side again, urging her onward. Making her heart sag again. “It was a seed of friendship, well planted. It needed only a bit of water and sun to sprout and grow, flourish and thrive. The seed may be the plant only in potential, but without it, there would be no plant at all. Ergo, it is without question the beginning of said plant, as you can clearly see.”

“Clearly.” Though she had to wonder, and chide herself for wondering, if a seed of friendship could grow into something . . . more. She was a fool for even wondering it, she knew. And yet—no, and yet nothing. That’s what would come of it.

They walked in silence for a few minutes more, her thoughts as restless as the waves that rolled onto the shore a few feet away. The entrance to Piper’s Hole loomed ahead of them, blacker than night and far more menacing, given their purpose there.

It had once been a mine, Mabena had said. Hundreds of years ago. Then just a favorite haunt of the locals—a place to explore. In the last several decades, as more tourists came to the islands, it had become a regular place for visitors as well. A boat was always kept at the little pool, and sometimes locals even lit it all up with candles, making a grotto that was quite romantic.

There were no lights tonight. No romance. Just now, all locals thought of when the cave was mentioned was Johnnie Rosedew’s tragic death, and they’d even told the tourists it was off-limits.

“They proved that with Johnnie.”

She could still hear Beth’s panicked voice, the timbre unfamiliar but that note in it undeniable. Beth thought that Johnnie’s death was no accident. That it was caused by the very people who were now demanding silver from Libby.

She’d brought some with her tonight—some of what Mama had sent. Just pounds sterling, coins. Nothing special, not all that much. It wasn’t what they’d meant—she knew that very well. But it may lure the fellow into spelling out what it was he did mean. That was what they needed.

“Libby.” Oliver halted her again before they reached the entrance to the cave, into which Mabena had disappeared. He turned to face her again. “Much as we’ve tried to mitigate the danger to you tonight, there is still some. And I don’t want you to step into such a situation with this burden on your shoulders. Please. Tell me what’s weighing you so.”

She’d said enough that he could no doubt piece it together if he wanted. There was no need to bare her soul to him.

And yet there was no one in the world she’d rather bare it to. She let her eyes slide shut, let her chin dip down. Let all the aches of the last two days—no, of all her life—swim to the surface. “I’ve never had the sort of friends you have here—Enyon and the others. It was just me and Edith at home, a few neighbors and cousins, but . . . but they never understood me. I never fit with them. I thought when Mabena came . . . I thought I finally had a friend. A true one.”

But it had all been a lie, built on nothing but Mabena’s desperation to escape her real home, her real friends, her real family. A whole world she’d never breathed a word of. A love gone wrong that Libby couldn’t have guessed at. A personality, wild and free, that she’d kept so reined in that the Mabena she’d shown Libby wasn’t really Mabena at all.

“I grow so weary of being alone.” The whisper, pitiful even to her own ears, scalded the night like the tears did her eyes.

His hand left her elbow, and for one eternal second she felt so incredibly bereft that she thought she might splinter, fracture, fall to pieces. But then, then his warm hand was cupping her cheek, and those fissures closed. “My sweet Libby. You’re not alone. You’re never alone. Even if your family were gone, even if we here who would be proud to be counted as your true friends were never to see you again—even then, you wouldn’t be alone.”

She knew well that he meant God. It was the vicar in him; he couldn’t help but say such things. And she admired him for saying them, for being able to believe them. Still, she had to shake her head. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to have that sort of faith, Oliver. I wish I did.” Even if she granted that He was necessary, He was still so very distant. She could see Him in the order of things, as Oliver had pointed out weeks ago. God not of the so-called mysteries that weren’t mysterious, but of order. But that was just a creator. Not a friend.

He tilted her face up, and she let her gaze follow, expecting to see disappointment in his face. Or even rebuke. After all, what kind of man of the cloth would let someone speak so of the Lord? But for some reason, the moonlight touched on a smile on his lips. “I’ve heard many people say they wish they had more faith. People who have been broken by life, by disappointments, who can’t fathom a God who is good in the face of a world filled with evil. But trying to answer that question isn’t the way to make Him known to you, is it?”

“I don’t know how He could be made known to me. That’s the problem.” She wanted to believe. But no one’s explanations had ever made sense. And maybe . . . maybe she wanted it more so she wouldn’t disappoint her mother than because she thought she needed that belief for her own sake.

“Is it enough, perhaps, to believe that He knows you?”

She blinked, refocused on his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He gave her that beautiful smile of his, full of caring and knowing and something a bit more she was afraid to name. “You are a student of nature. You study it and catalogue it. You take the utmost care to put the proper name with each specimen. Why?”

She smiled a bit, simply because it echoed the conversation she’d first had with his grandmother, before she knew she was his grandmother. “Because it’s by naming a thing, knowing a thing, that you come to understand it. Only when you see its unique traits can you truly appreciate what it is, and what it isn’t.”

He nodded. Ducked his head a few inches so their eyes were level. “The islands know your name, Libby—I know they do. You’re a part of us here. We will always be your people. Do you believe that?”

Her heart swelled in her chest so that she could only nod.

His smile deepened. “Don’t you see, then? It’s like that with God, but more. He knows your name. Not Libby, not Elizabeth Sinclair. Your true name, the one at the heart of you that has never been spoken. He knows you, and He calls you by it. You, in all your uniqueness. You, in everything that differentiates you from others. You, in all you have in common with them. He knows you, and He calls you by name. He knows how you fit into this world.”

“Does He?” Her breath wouldn’t come, stuck somewhere between her lungs and her throat. It was a thought that demanded more attention than she could really give it right now, with a dangerous man due to arrive within the hour. A thought that, if she emerged on the other side of this night in one piece, she’d no doubt lie awake contemplating. “Would that He would tell me, then.”

“He has.” Oliver’s thumb stroked gently over her cheekbone. “Perhaps you weren’t perfectly adapted to the environs into which you were born, Libby. But that doesn’t mean He made a mistake in where He put you. It means only that He set you on a journey, like any other migratory creature who needs different settings for different seasons. He led you here.”

She’d thought it Mabena who had led her here, not God. But Mabena had come back for her own purposes. Libby hadn’t been anything more than an excuse to her. Yet coming here—he was right, in the words he didn’t say. She belonged here more than she ever had elsewhere. And while instinct hadn’t led her on this journey like a bird knowing just where to fly . . . perhaps Someone had. Someone who knew her name. Knew her needs.

“Do you think so? The Lord led me here?”

His nod was solemn. His eyes somehow more intense at midnight than they ever were midday. “To us. To . . . me.” The last word was but a whisper.

A whisper that sent a thrill up her spine. He was definitely leaning closer now, and tilting her face up with his hand, and her breath was still caught somewhere in her chest, but she didn’t need it anyway. She needed only the feel of his palm pressed to her cheek. His other arm resting gently around her waist. The sensation of his hair, too long for fashion or Mrs. Gillis’s tastes, brushing against her a moment before the unbelievable happened.

His lips touched hers. She would have dreamed of this moment, if she’d known how. Would have tried to guess at how it would feel, to hypothesize the effect it would have on her, to understand what she’d done to attract the attention so she could repeat it. But such facts, if they existed, didn’t matter in that moment any more than air did. All that mattered was that she felt, for the first time in her life, as if she were exactly where she was meant to be.

She half expected him to retreat after that first light kiss—and to immediately apologize or express regret for it. But instead, he pulled her a little closer, caressed her lips with his again. Smiled against her mouth. “Are you cataloging? Taking measurements? Classifying?”

A silent laugh slipped from her smile to his. “I’d like to. But I’ll need a longer example to study.”

His fingers moved from her cheek to her hair. “Well. Anything for science.”

She’d always wondered what drew a bee to a flower, what allure nectar had that would bring them flying in from miles away for just a taste. Now she knew. She’d fly miles too, if she had the wings for it, for this moment. This taste of melding lips and racing hearts and the certainty that eternity could spin out here and now and she’d never miss the normal tick of time, never need the rest of the world. Her limbs felt like tidewater, flowing and ebbing. Her brain was nothing but fog.

Until a scream shattered it all. Piercing—and then, worse. Silent.

Mabena plunged down deeper, hands battling against the water, head an explosion of black pain and white distortion and the sudden certainty that this would be her end. She could feel the pull of the very island itself. The heart of its earth dragging her down. The pulse of its waters covering her. The cut of rock. The weight of time. Lungs burning, rebelling against the brine she’d sucked in.

Hands. Hands shoving. Holding. Smashing her head into that rock. It was them she fought, not just the water, but they were only a flash in her awareness before they were gone or she was gone or the world itself was gone.

Forgive me. She screamed it to God, because she knew He was listening. Meant it too for her family, for Beth, for Oliver, for Libby. Perhaps He’d let them know—Oliver had a line directly to Him, it seemed. Surely the Lord could whisper her apology to him for them all. Forgive me for all I’ve done. All I didn’t do. All I . . .

Black pain. White distortion.

Hands. Hands grabbing her, and she hadn’t any fight left, couldn’t make her arms swing or her feet kick. Tas had always said she had salt water in her veins. She had it now in her throat, in her nose, in her belly. If it had always been a part of her, why did it burn like fire?

The water around her lightened, turned to air, but still it was black as tar and held her limbs no less captive. She couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t draw breath. Couldn’t hear anything but the rushing in her ears.

Pressure on her chest. Heavy, too heavy. Forceful. It shoved down to her very soul. Past her heart and the island rock and all the way to the salt water beneath. It came surging up, bringing her surging with it. Coughing, spluttering, gasping.

Still dark as midnight, but she could blink against it now. Grab at the hands that grabbed at her head.

“Benna! Benna, speak to me. Are you all right, my love?” Those hands probed straight into the heart of pain, making the black flash to white again.

She screamed, or tried to, though it came out as a scratch in her throat more than sound. Tried to turn away from the hands. Casek’s hands.

Casek’s hands?

It took her a moment to piece together why that was wrong and what would have been right. What had come before the rock and the water and the black and the white and the certainty that it was her last minute to beg forgiveness from the Almighty.

The cave—she’d stalked into Piper’s Hole well ahead of Oliver and Libby and lowered herself down to the rocks and the pool, ready to get on with the night. Hoping to battle someone, truth be told, so she could expend some of this frustration that had built up inside like steam in a boiler. She’d been moving toward her prearranged position, had fished the electric torch from her pocket to aid her in the tricky maneuvering.

Then the hands, fast and hard. Grabbing, shoving, crashing. Water, swallowing her up. She coughed again now for good measure and tried to convince her eyes to see an outline of Casek instead of her own pain. “Caz?”

Her torch was still on, somewhere. Its light ricocheted off the cave’s walls until it found them, though he was still more silhouette against it than features. He was kneeling beside her, a great hulk of worry.

Then she was part of that hulk, as his arms closed around her and dragged her against his chest, still heaving from his dive into the water after her. Or maybe his fear of losing her?

“Mabena.” His one hand stroked her hair, avoiding now the place where pain lived, and the other held her pinned against him.

She saw no reason to argue about that, given how solid and warm and secure he felt after the salt water’s deceptive embrace. In fact, his shoulder, as she let her forehead rest against it, was her new favorite thing in the world. “I’m . . . all right.” Probably.

“Mabena!” This cry came from farther away and carried with it pounding feet and a new beam from another torch that made her wince when it flashed over her face. “Casek! Get away from her!”

She didn’t know how it looked to Ollie, exactly. Though she could imagine, when viewed through his eyes, that bad was at the top of his perception. She’d screamed, and he came in to find his lifelong enemy crushing her against him. Still, it took a surprising amount of energy to hold up a hand to halt his assumption. “It’s not—” More coughing interrupted her, though only briefly. “Wasn’t him. He saved me.”

Saved her. She squeezed her eyes shut against that awful reality. She, Mabena Moon, had needed saving.

“You expect me to believe that? That he didn’t—”

A crack sounded so loud as it ricocheted with the light that Mabena thought for a moment her skull had given up and split in two. Her ears rang, shouts rang, everything rang. Then water again, though her head didn’t go under this time, just under the cover of the rock ledge. It took her a moment, through the muddle of her own head and the chaos of it all, to realize the crack had been a gunshot, and that Casek had dragged her to the safety of the water again, his arms never letting go of her.

And he fairly vibrated with rage. “Did you just shoot at me, Tremayne?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Wearne!” Ollie’s shout sounded even farther away now. He must have retreated back to the entrance of the cave, presumably with Libby. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” The new voice made Mabena go still with its very wrongness. It had a clipped London accent instead of rolling Cornish vowels—but not educated London, like Libby had said her attacker had used. And it was punctuated with another crack, followed frighteningly by the ping of bullet off rock and the hiss of it reflecting into the water. Too close. And how close had its rock target been to where Oliver and Libby must be hiding? She shivered and wrapped herself more tightly around Casek, closer to the protective shelf of rock.

“You islanders just won’t learn, will you? I didn’t think it needed to be said again to come alone. Do I have to teach you the same lesson I taught your young friend? I will not be crossed!”

Your young friend. Johnnie.

“I didn’t bring them!” Libby’s voice trembled its way into the cave too. “The cave isn’t exactly a private location, you know. I don’t see how—”

“So these others are just random neighbors?” A cruel laugh echoed through the cavern, skipping over the water to Mabena like a stone. “Don’t bother lying to me, Elizabeth. I’ve seen you with her. And really, I don’t care that you have someone helping you. As long as you have the silver.”

Something struck rock. Clinking like coins, softened by a pouch. Libby must have tossed the purse she’d brought with her down to the rocks. “There’s your precious silver. Come and get it.”

“Do I look like a fool? You’re going to pick it up, my pretty one, and bring it here to me. By yourself. While the giant in the water and his dripping spitfire join your brother outside the cave.”

Mabena wished a sliver of light could reach them here so that she could see Casek’s face. See what he thought of this, what he intended. As it was, all she could do was hear the rumble of his words in her ear. “We’re going to do what he says, Benna. He’s shifted a bit—he could shoot us here, if he wanted to.”

She nodded, wishing she could keep the trembling from her body. What if he thought it fear rather than the shock of the injury, the cold of the water? The idea of Casek thinking her afraid . . .

He rested his forehead on hers for a moment, sucked in a breath, and tucked her to his side. Even with only one arm, his strokes through the water were sure. She helped him as much as she could, but her limbs were still weak and shaking.

If ever she met that stranger when he didn’t have a gun in his hand, she’d delight in cracking him on the head.

A moment later they were near to where the boat always waited to row tourists through the pool, and Oliver was there on the rocks, reaching to help them out of the water. Libby too, a few steps away.

Panic clawed at her chest. This wasn’t the plan, wasn’t the plan at all. He and Mabena were supposed to be hidden in the cave before the stranger arrived, along with the constable’s men. But had they even gotten here yet?

This bloke must have had the same idea and positioned himself inside first.

Libby, who’d never even stepped foot in the cave before today, wasn’t supposed to be going alone into its darkness. But there she went, one hand on the ever-damp wall, the other now clutching the change purse. The only light within was from the torch Mabena had dropped.

She gripped Oliver’s arm. “She shouldn’t be in there alone.”

“You think I don’t know that?” His voice was agony wrapped in fury. “He has a gun. What am I to do, exactly?”

“The two of you should have run.”

“So he could shoot the two of you?” Apparently satisfied that her footing was firm, Oliver pulled his arm from her grasp. “Don’t be an idiot. She was inside and dropping down to the rocks before he finished speaking. You’re her friend, Benna, whether you realize it or not.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

Casek pulled himself out of the water behind her. “Could you two save the bickering until later? Who is that in there? What’s this about? He thinks she’s Beth?”

“We don’t know who it is.” Oliver clambered up the ledge and reached a hand to Mabena. But his eyes were on Libby, and he looked as though he might rush to her side with just a breath of wind to nudge him. “But yes.”

Casek snorted and reached for a bag he must have stowed in the shadows. “Leave it to the Tremaynes to bring a mad gunman to our shores.”