18
Mamm-wynn?”
“Mrs. Tremayne? Where are you, dearover?”
Libby blinked awake, staring for a long moment at the unfamiliar wall across from her before the words combined with the image and reminded her of where she was—the Tremayne house, and given the angle of light coming through the window, she hadn’t been sleeping in this borrowed bed for more than four or five hours.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Still gritty. They’d spent an hour last night talking to the constable. The man from the cave hadn’t been spotted anywhere, but they’d determined that no threats lurked in the nearby houses, at least. Then they’d spent another hour waiting for Casek to bring Mabena, talking over why Beth would be trying to scare anyone with ghost stories—and deciding it must be to keep them away from wherever she was, or where she suspected a treasure was buried. Wondering what had been delivered to her before she left the cottage, what she knew that they didn’t. What she might have already found. When finally Casek had delivered Mabena to them, it had been with a few short words, saying the doctor had stitched up a sizable gash on her head, given her some aspirin for the pain, and that sleep would prove the best healer.
They’d tucked her into Beth’s room, and then Libby had been shown here, to a guest chamber. It was charming and pretty in blues and whites that whispered of the ocean. And its lovely walls didn’t reveal anything now about the whereabouts of the Tremayne matriarch, who had wandered off again.
Libby pushed herself out of bed and quickly changed into the fresh clothes waiting for her, trying to grasp the wisps of a dream as she did so. Something about trees . . . curling bark . . . strange plants . . . with fairies darting among them. The images were too elusive for her to pull back into her mind though. Best to focus on Mamm-wynn.
From what Oliver had told her, his grandmother had taken to escaping Mrs. Dawe several times a week, but she usually only went out to watch the ocean or to the Abbey Gardens. If they were calling for her with that note of panic, it could well mean they’d already checked those places and come up empty.
Not really caring that her braid was frazzled from sleep, she opened the door, charged into the hallway, and barreled straight into Oliver.
He caught her with hands on her arms and a worried, distracted smile. “Sorry. We woke you.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He looked as tired as she still felt, with circles under his eyes and hair as wild as her own. And he had on only shirtsleeves and trousers, no waistcoat or jacket. Unusual for him. “Has she slipped out again?”
“I was about to take another turn through the Abbey Gardens. I already did so once, but perhaps too quickly. I could have missed her somewhere.”
“I’ll come with you.” She turned back into her room to grab her purple shawl, not giving him the chance to refuse her company.
He didn’t try anyway, just stood there waiting for her, hands on his hips and gaze unfocused. “She doesn’t usually slip out so early, other than on Wednesdays lately, to see the races.”
“Could she think it’s Wednesday? Perhaps she’s confused by Mabena and me being here.” She swung the shawl into place and flipped her braid outside it.
“It’s possible. We’ll check the beach too.” He took her hand—not placing it on his forearm as he’d done before but weaving their fingers together. Like last night.
They hadn’t spoken of the kiss. There’d been too much else to fret over. But it had been thoughts of that, not the gunman or pirate treasure or poor Mabena’s injury or the feud with Casek Wearne, that had lulled her to sleep a few short hours ago. She’d half expected morning to bring with it a return to My lady and proper distance between them.
This was promising though.
He led her out a rear door, into his garden, which she’d yet to properly explore. And now certainly wasn’t the time, other than for a careful check of all the corners and hidden nooks to make sure they were empty of grandmothers. From there, they hurried to the Abbey Gardens and the side entrance that was unlocked.
He said nothing. Didn’t shout for Mamm-wynn. Perhaps because he was keenly aware of the sleepy silence of the rest of Tresco, as she was. Perhaps because the cool, misty morning air seemed to forbid any loud noises. Perhaps because he knew the moment he shouted for her outside, all his neighbors would join in the hunt, and he wanted to reserve that for if and when it became imperative.
Libby’s heart squeezed a bit more with each step, each glance that didn’t reveal Mamm-wynn. It had seemed harmless enough the other times she’d found the lady away from where she should be. But this early there was no one to keep a watchful eye on her and steer her back toward home. What if her steps faltered and she slipped? Fell? Injured herself?
Her fingers tightened around Oliver’s. And she nearly laughed in relief when the sound of something shuffling against the garden path reached her ears. They both took off in the direction of the sound, coming up short when they saw a crouched figure.
But masculine instead of feminine. Mr. Menna. He looked up at their quick steps, brows furrowed. “Mr. Tremayne! And Lady Elizabeth. What brings you—”
“It’s Mamm-wynn. She’s slipped off again.” Oliver shoved his free hand through his hair. “You haven’t seen her, I assume?”
Mr. Menna stood, shaking his head. “No, but I’ll check the Gardens, if you wanted to look somewhere else.”
For a split second, Oliver hesitated. Debating, she assumed, whether to accept the help or insist they could do it alone. But concern must have won out over pride. He nodded. “Thank you. We’re going to check the beach, in case she thinks it Wednesday, since Libby and Benna are here.”
Mr. Menna stowed his small shovel in the wheelbarrow parked a few feet away and brushed the soil from his hands. “Good idea. You two go ahead. I know all her favorite spots here.”
They passed by the Tremayne house again on their way to the beach from which the racers always launched, and Libby pulled Oliver to a halt when a splash of brightest pink caught her eye. Cultivated daisies—Mesembryanthemum, a variety she’d never seen outside a hothouse before coming here—lying in the street rather than growing where they ought to be beside the Tremayne front door. She bent to pick them up, frowning at the neat slice on the stalks. “They’ve been cut, but obviously not long ago or they’d show some wilting. Perhaps she came out to gather some flowers?”
“Seems likely.” He accepted the blooms when she handed them to him, a brief smile flitting over his lips before retreating. “Beth’s favorite. Let’s hope Mamm-wynn left a trail of them, like bread crumbs, for us.”
She kept her eyes sharp for any other patches of color along the road, but they weren’t so lucky—or Mrs. Tremayne hadn’t come this way. Certainly when they arrived at the beach they saw no evidence of a pixie of a woman watching for racers that weren’t on the water.
Well, someone was, or was about to be. But he was stepping into a one-man gig. And he spotted them before he launched, which brought his feet back onto the sand. “Ollie!”
“Enyon.” Oliver hurried over to his friend.
As soon as they were close enough to see each other clearly, Enyon’s welcoming, teasing smile—and the gaze that he’d arrowed onto their joined hands—gave way to a worried frown. “Something’s wrong?”
Enyon lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun painting fire over the water. “Early for her.”
“I know.” Oliver sighed and scanned the beach. “Mr. Menna’s checking the Abbey Gardens. And Mrs. Dawe is checking the house and grounds again.”
“I’ll hug the coast, see if I spot her anywhere. She’s probably just out for a morning stroll. It’s a beautiful day.”
Though Oliver nodded, Libby could see the tension in his lips. The fight to hold back the words, the worry.
To keep himself from saying that the beauty of a day didn’t insulate it from horror. Last night had been just as beautiful, but his cousin was sleeping off a head injury even now, the same sort that had killed Johnnie Rosedew.
To keep from voicing the worry that the constable’s men had been wrong and there had been a threat lurking in a neighboring house, and it had found her.
Sour fear burned Libby’s throat.
“You two walk the south path. I’ll start going north. We’ll have found her in a few minutes.”
Oliver made no attempt at conversation as he moved to obey, and she could hardly blame him. Once you named a thing, after all, it became a bit more real.
She instead let her gaze dart every which way as they walked the coastal path southward, though she saw nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.
Oliver halted her, though, when they reached the turn that gave them a view of Samson. She wasn’t certain why, what had knit his brows together, until he pointed out to the water. Or more particularly, to the small sailboat upon it. Its sails were down, and it looked to be drifting. “That’s Tas-gwyn’s boat.”
Her stomach flopped. She was no boatwoman like Mabena, but it didn’t look right to her. She didn’t see an anchor line, nor could she make out anyone in the boat keeping it where it should be. Which was probably why it was just drifting there, halfway between the islands.
“Come on.” Oliver had apparently thought much the same thing, because he took off at a run back for the beach where they’d seen Enyon, dropping her fingers after they turned.
She tried not to focus on how cool and lonely they felt without his around them. Better instead to focus on keeping up with him, which was trial enough.
Perhaps she needed to spend more of her days moving and fewer sitting around studying slides under her microscope. But she was determined not to slow him down, not when his grandparents were his reason for hurrying. Grateful that she was at least in reasonable clothes that allowed for movement and not the restrictive sort of dress Mama always tried to make her wear, she ran as fast as she could on the path. And fought for breath enough to call out, “Does Tas-gwyn . . . usually go out . . . so early?”
“Never,” Oliver answered over his shoulder. “Aside from the Wednesday races, he won’t even leave the house before nine these days. Says such hours are for youngsters and fishermen.”
Bram would get along with him well, then. Though it was hardly time for thoughts of her brother. “So both . . . of them?” She’d meant to say more than that, but they were back to the descent to the beach, and she opted for paying attention to her feet’s purchase in the sand instead.
Oliver offered her a hand, and then held on to it again. His dark eyes were troubled. “I do wonder if it’s related. Tas-gwyn Gibson is the only one Mamm-wynn trusts to take her on the water these days, other than Beth and me and maybe Mabena. They joke that he is the little brother she didn’t know she had until their children married.”
But surely Mr. Gibson wouldn’t take Mrs. Tremayne out on the water before dawn without telling Oliver. Would he?
He must have been wondering the same. His face moved to the sea again, and he tugged her toward the boathouse. “We’ll take a gig to it. I daresay it will be quicker, given how low the wind is right now, even with only one at the oars.”
“I’ll help row.” The words were out before she could stop them, though she wasn’t exactly surprised when Oliver shook his head.
“Not necessary, my lady.”
And they were back to that. “I know how. There’s a small lake at Telford Hall, and we went out on it frequently with rowboats. Nothing so grand as to allow for sails, but Bram always made me pull my own weight.” Unlike Edith, who swore such sport was unladylike—though Bram had always teased that it was just her excuse for not wanting to exert herself. “Let’s strike a bargain, shall we? Test me for a minute, and if I make the going slower, I’ll stop. But it seems to me that speed is of the utmost interest just now, so if I can help us along, I should. Don’t you agree?”
Though it was fleeting, he sent her a smile. “Your logic is unassailable.”
And more importantly, he wasted no more time arguing about it but simply slid a small gig out of its rack and grabbed two sets of oars. Within a few minutes he was pushing them into the water, leaping in without even wetting his shoes.
She’d never thought herself the sort to admire a man’s musculature and physical prowess. But she had to admit, watching him move, that his able form ignited a purely animal response inside her. Not surprising from a biological standpoint, of course. It was the attraction to the fittest that allowed them to survive, by Darwin’s theory. They were the ones to attract a mate, to reproduce, to pass their superior traits along to the next generation.
Her cheeks warmed. She’d examined such theories aplenty, but never with the thought that she was the mate to be attracted. It made it entirely different.
And entirely irrelevant just now. She was being every bit as silly as Lottie, thinking of a man’s handsomeness when she should be worrying over his grandparents. She gripped her oars firmly and, the moment he dipped his, matched him.
Only the slip of wood through water spoke now, and the cry of birds overhead, out for their breakfast. It would have been a serenade if not for the circumstances. Determined to prove herself to him, she matched him stroke for stroke, stridently ignoring the burn that soon scorched her shoulders. A bit of aching later would be worth it if they could find Mr. Gibson and Mrs. Tremayne.
Soon they were knocking against the hull of Tas-gwyn’s boat—built, no doubt, by his son-in-law. Oliver stowed his oars and leapt gracefully to the larger craft, a rope in hand to lash them together. “Stay here for a moment, Libby, if you would.”
If he kept calling her Libby, she’d obey most any dictate. “All right.”
A moment later, he was shaking his head. “He’s not on here. Perhaps that’s good. If he were, but the boat were drifting, it wouldn’t be a good thing. Given the current, I’m guessing it drifted from Samson for some reason. Let’s sail it back over there and see if there’s any sign of them. We’ll tow the gig.”
She wasn’t exactly eager to make the same climb from one boat to the other, but he was there, hand held out to help her, so what was she to do but agree? And though even with his help she was far less graceful than he’d been, she didn’t make an utter fool of herself. Her feet were soon planted on the elegant wood planking of the small sailboat, which freed Oliver to tend to the sails and get them moving in the direction he wanted.
She’d yet to go to Samson, though Mabena had told her a bit about it. It was currently the largest uninhabited island in the Scillies, though as little as fifty years ago that hadn’t been the case. There were cottages there, abandoned farms that hadn’t been productive enough to support the inhabitants. In the 1850s, the Lord Proprietor had moved the last of them, half-starved as they were, to Tresco after too many of their able-bodied men had drowned trying to save people from a shipwreck. Such a tragic, noble loss. He’d tried to turn the island into a deer park after that, but the attempt failed. Now it was simply a place people visited for a few hours to walk or observe the flora and fauna.
And this was not the way she’d planned on seeing it, on a hunt for missing grandparents. But Oliver was soon sailing them to a little quay and helping her out onto the damp sand.
The moment she landed, an unusual break in the colors of the grasses caught her eye. “There!” She pointed.
Oliver wheeled around, clearly spotting the legs and shoes too—masculine ones. They both took off at a run.
“Tas-gwyn!” Perhaps Oliver recognized the feet, or perhaps it was just a hopeful cry. Either way, he was soon proven correct as more of Mr. Gibson came into view as they neared. And the legs moved, which was surely a good sign. By the time they reached him, the old gent was pushing himself up with a moan, a hand clutching his head.
“Tas-gwyn.” Oliver fell to his knees at his grandfather’s side and put an arm behind his back to help him the last few inches to sitting. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“Beth.”
Oliver frowned. “What about Beth? Is she here?”
“I don’t . . .” Mr. Gibson winced and shaded his eyes from the climbing sun. “She thought so. Said we should go and find her.”
“She—Mamm-wynn?” Urgency threaded its way through Oliver’s tone. “Is she here too? Where?”
Mr. Gibson looked around him, clearly disoriented. “I don’t know. We were together. It was still dark but beginning to lighten. She said something about taking the path to the cottages, and then . . . I don’t remember.”
Oliver’s gaze flicked to Libby. “Will you stay with him?”
Someone had to, and he’d be the better choice for scouring the island. “Yes. Go!” She took his place by Mr. Gibson’s side, keeping him from standing with a firm hand on his shoulder. “You stay put, sir. Oliver will find her.”
He must have been in quite a bit of pain to relent as easily as he did. She felt his shoulders sag under her hand. “Poor Adelle. I didn’t mean to leave her unprotected.”
Oliver didn’t rush off as she expected him to. He stood there, eyes focused on his grandfather and yet not. Hands clenched into fists that looked as though they were meant to moor him to some invisible line.
Mr. Gibson looked up at him. “Sorry, my boy. We only wanted to find Beth. I shouldn’t have . . .”
Oliver crouched down again and rested a hand on the shoulder Libby wasn’t already anchoring. “I think, before I go tearing off in search of Mamm-wynn, we had better pray.”
Pray? Now? When it was so imperative that he find his grandmother as quickly as possible? Libby opened her mouth to tell him that was a foolish idea, but no words escaped her lips.
And she was glad of it, when she heard the words coming from his.
“Father God, here we are before you. On our knees quite literally. Begging you, our Father and our Lord, to walk before us. Lead us. Show us where to find Mamm-wynn and even Beth. We know that you love them both even more than we do. You have numbered the hairs on their heads. You know their innermost thoughts. You call them by name.”
Libby drew in a slow breath, silently, so as not to interrupt him. This wasn’t the sort of prayer she was used to, with recited words and memorized phrases. This . . . well, this was the sort one took the time to say. Not an anonymous petition to a King or Creator, as she would have made, but an earnest supplication to a Father.
This was a sort of prayer that at once bemused and intrigued her.
“We ask that you guide my steps now to them. That you keep your hand on them, protecting them. We ask for your healing touch upon Mabena and Tas-gwyn.”
Oliver went quiet, but Libby’s heart added a plea. I ask that you show yourself to me, God. If you are there, if you are the loving Father Oliver claims . . . please show me. Show me by showing us Mamm-wynn. If anything happens to her . . .
She wasn’t entirely sure it was the right sort of petition to make. Was it testing God? Wasn’t there a Scripture that warned not to do that? But Gideon had asked for proof—she remembered that story well enough. Twice he’d asked. And twice he’d been given what he asked for, to know that it was truly God instructing him.
Well, the Lord hadn’t called her to lead an army, so He wouldn’t answer her as He had Gideon. But if He knew her name, if He loved her, if He really did number the hairs on her head, perhaps He would do this now. Not just to show himself to her, but for Mamm-wynn’s sake. For Oliver’s. For every Scillonian who loved her.
“Amen.” Oliver whispered the word, opened his eyes, squeezed his grandfather’s shoulder. Met her gaze.
She had the strangest sensation that he knew exactly what she’d prayed for. That he’d waited for her to finish her wordless petition before he breathed that last word. She dredged up a small smile to offer him.
In her mind, God had always been distant, abstract. But now, here, with these people, she couldn’t help but think that He’d come near. Or that she had.
With a nod, Oliver stood again. And ran.