27

 

 

“WHAT ON EARTH was he thinking?” Mr. Simms demanded. “The paper would have been worthless. No witnesses to your signature? What was he thinking?”

The rocking chair in the corner, in which Giles sat, creaked gently on the tile floor. Beside him, Star lay still, but alert. “Oh, the paper’s secondary, you know. Men like Paul Stokes—it’s all about the threat, all about the intimidation.” He eyed Gwynn over his unlit pipe. “Hit him with a rock, then, did you, our Gwynneth? I’d say the intimidation didn’t quite work as planned.”

Bel Trevelyan probed the bruising gently with a capable hand, shaking her head, and Gwynn winced. “Not a man, that one. Roughing up a woman.” She pressed her lips together.

Gwynn took the proffered ice pack and held it gingerly against her arm and the ugly bruising, already going to blue-black. “I just don’t understand. Why does he want the cottage that badly? Why does he hate me over a house?”

“He hates over everything,” Giles said. “He hates everyone. Surprised to see him here tonight at all.”

“You didn’t see him, old man,” Bel reminded him tartly.

“All the same,” he retorted mildly. He was frowning. “That he was here at all—he’s never come up to the farm for Bonfire Night as long as I can remember. Too many people, and all of them he doesn’t like.”

“He’s in the wrong profession, then, as a publican,” Gwynn observed bitterly.

“Only thing he knows. Left the business by his old dad, he was.” Giles patted his pockets down in the familiar gesture. Finding no matches, he plucked the pipe from his mouth and glared at it as though the lack were the pipe’s fault.

“But me,” Gwynn protested again. “Why me?”

“It would have been whomever your great-aunt left the property to,” Mr. Simms said. “It’s nothing personal.”

Giles’ laughter was a sharp bark. “I’m sure, James, that that’s a real comfort.”

“Not really,” Gwynn said darkly.

“Meanwhile,” Colin cut in, shifting slightly on his chair at the table, “there’s Gwynn’s real question: what’s going on with Paul Stokes that he wants the house so badly?”

“Everyone tells me he had little to do with our great-aunt, so it can’t be some kind of emotional attachment—as in he wants it because it reminds him of her.” For her part, Gwynn had little attachment to the cottage emotionally either—she hadn’t even known the house existed before receiving the legal notice of something to her great benefit; she grimaced at the irony of the situation. Now, it was the mare’s nest of whys that plagued her. Why had Gwynn Chelton chosen her to inherit the house? She thought she was beginning to understand that, at least. But why did Paul Stokes want it so badly?

That led down a rabbit hole of new thought. Had Stokes come at things from a different angle—had he suggested, for example, a buy-out of half the property value—would she have been so resistant to his claim? Had it been his immediate attack on her right to inherit that had made her dig her heels in so stubbornly? Probably. But now her desire to stay had evolved into something deeper. She had to stay until she found out why Gwynn Chelton had chosen her. She had to find out what Gwynn wanted of her.

“Follow the money is what I always say,” Giles said, his tone deliberate as he scowled into the bowl of his unlit pipe. “Follow the money. That’s a trail that always stinks.”

Mr. Simms made a noise.

“Am I wrong?”

Despite the hay tangled in his thin hair, Mr. Simms managed to look a bit prissy and secretive as he pursed his lips. “I’m not at liberty to say what I know.”

“Oh, Jamie,” Bel said, as though to a foolish and recalcitrant child.

“So I’m not wrong,” Giles crowed. He turned to Gwynn and Colin, his black-currant eyes sharp and squinting. “That’s where you look to find out what’s up with Stokes. Find out what you can about his finances. I bet you find he owes a bit here and there. Probably more than a bit.”

Gwynn nodded—the old farmer seemed to expect it—and felt her head throbbing; she knew that when the sun rose she’d have one hell of a hangover. Try as she might to accept his reasoning, she resisted Giles’ thoughts.

Giles was watching her with interest, and a bit of disappointment. “This is a waterfront village, my girl. In case you hadn’t noticed. That cottage of yours, for better or worse, is a veritable gold mine. The owner—you, in this case—could sell out, or even just let out to folks from off, and come away from it with a hefty profit.”

“And if Paul Stokes needs money—” Gwynn looked at Mr. Simms, his lips still pursed. He was, so obviously, not at liberty to say. “You’re not representing him, Mr. Simms. You’re representing the interests of my great-aunt, and by corollary, my interests.”

“However, I might have dealings with other parties involved,” Mr. Simms said primly.

“Oh, Jamie,” Bel said again. She handed him a cup of tea, plucked a bit of twig from the hair above his ear.

“I’ll have a cup of that, my dear,” Giles said to Bel, waving a hand in the direction of the teapot on the table. He looked out the window into the farmyard, where the gray light of the pre-dawn shadowed everything. “Since there’s no point in toddling off to bed now.” He took the cup from Bel with a broad wink. After the first sip, he wiped his beard, and cocked his head. “It might be worth it to find out just how deep the money troubles go, if there are in fact money troubles behind this story. How far into the past they reach. Just in case our Paul Stokes had been biding his time waiting for the old woman to die.”

Bel turned to him, her hands on her wide aproned hips. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Giles Trevelyan. Just terrible.”

He looked up at her with his beady black eyes. “People are terrible, Isobel. You know that for a truth.”

Bel turned away, disgusted; she bent over the refrigerator and shuffled foodstuffs before bringing forth a pair of white-paper-wrapped packages. “We’ll have breakfast, then.” She drew a bowl of eggs toward her on the countertop.

Gwynn’s stomach roiled. “None for me, thanks, Mrs. Trevelyan.”

“None for me, either,” Colin said. “I’ve got to be getting back down into the village. I’ve got a few jobs to tend to this morning, and unlike Giles, I’ll need my beauty sleep.” He stood slowly, holding out a hand to Gwynn.

They said their good-byes, but Giles stood to see them out to the truck in the farmyard.

“Just watch out for your cousin, our Gwynneth,” Giles warned, jamming his cold pipe once again between his teeth and leaning heavily on his stick. He looked up into her face, his dark eyes hard. “Just you watch out for him. Because if he’s in the trouble we think he might be, he might not have been simply waiting for your great-aunt to die.”

“Giles, what are you saying?” Colin demanded sharply.

But Giles had turned away, waving a hand over his head in farewell.

 

“YOU WERE VERY quiet in Bel’s kitchen,” Gwynn said as they drove back onto Eyewell Lane and toward the village.

“Listening,” Colin said.

She glanced at him. There was a crease between his brows, and he seemed to be gripping the steering wheel as though he wanted to strangle it.

“What conclusions has your listening brought you to?”

His lips twisted. “Not good ones.” He slowed the truck as they neared the cottage. In the gray of early morning, the blue door seemed to float above the terrace. Colin, however, was looking at the shuttered front of The Stolen Child, and his frown seemed to harden. He shifted the truck into park and pulled on the handbrake before turning to her, and his gray eyes were dark, troubled. “Between all the things we know and all we don’t, I can’t see how you can stay in this cottage.”

Gwynn snorted. “You’re not going to tell me you think I should leave.”

Colin didn’t answer.

“Besides, what does that even mean? ‘Between all the things we know and all the things we don’t’? What does that even mean?

He skewed her a look. “I just don’t think it’s safe.”

“I know how to lock a door, thank you very much.”

“Some of the things here can’t be locked out, can they? They’re already inside.”

“Stop it,” she said, shoving open the door of the truck roughly. “Just stop it.”

Colin too got out, and crossed to her side. “Listen, I don’t necessarily want you to leave the cottage,” he said quietly, looking up at the house with a certain intensity. “I just want you to be careful.”

“I can handle myself,” she retorted. “I’ve been doing it for years.”

Colin reached out a hand to touch her lightly on the upper arm, then dropped it just as quickly. Still, she felt it, and winced.

“I know. I know you can.” He sighed, and met her eyes. “I just don’t want you to have to swing any more rocks, all right?”

She forced a smile. “All right.”

Still, that feeling of foreboding stayed with her as she let herself into the house. She greeted Mary—who looked as though she had forsworn Bonfire Night parties for years, if not forever, and refused the cup of coffee Mary offered.

“I need sleep, more than anything,” Gwynn said.

Mary only tipped her head laconically.

On the way up the stairs to the bedroom, though, Gwynn caught herself looking into the sitting room at the wing-backed chair, the one in which her great-aunt had died. She heard again Giles Trevelyan’s warning: he might not have been simply waiting for your great-aunt to die.