The Mysteries of Pendowar Hall (The Audacious Sisterhood of Smoke & Fire #1)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

C aptain Fallbrook dropped anchor and dove off the boat. Moments later, he emerged from the churning sea, clambered up the rocky crag, and knelt before Diana, who was still too exhausted to move.

His blue eyes were wild as he blinked back the driving rain. “Thank God I found you.”

“How did you know where to look?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“Ivy tried to kill me. She killed your uncle, and Lady Fallbrook and Master Robert.”

“I was beginning to suspect as much. Where is she?”

Diana told him.

“I must get you home.” He reached for her.

“Wait.” Her heart pounded. There was so much she wanted to say, so much guilt she carried. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For suspecting you. I was out of my mind with fear. All the clues pointed to you. I didn’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Diana.” It was the first time he had called her by her Christian name. His tone, and the expression in his eyes, made her heart swell with hope.

“I know I hurt you. And I feel so awful because… I love you.”

He swept Diana up into his arms and cradled her to his chest. “We’ll talk about that later as well.”

Diana wrapped her arms around the captain’s chest and sighed with relief. Although she was drenched to the bone, freezing cold, and on an islet in the middle of the roiling sea, she had never in her life felt so warm or safe.

*

“Are you sure you’re all right?” the captain asked.

“I am.” Diana, wrapped in a blanket, sat on the sofa beside Captain Fallbrook in the blue parlor before a roaring fire. She had defied the doctor’s orders and refused to spend another day in bed.

Yesterday, after Captain Fallbrook had brought her back to the house, Diana had told him everything she’d learned about Ivy. That morning, Ivy’s body had washed up on the shore. Mrs. Gwynn had gone to pieces and was still sequestered in her room.

Miss Fallbrook, upon learning what had really happened to her father, stepmother, and brother, had been similarly besieged by grief. Later, however, relieved to know that her father had not been driven to take his own life, she had calmed down and thanked Diana for uncovering the truth.

“When I think what might have happened,” the captain said, “if I had not gone looking for you…”

“You promised to tell me how that came about,” Diana reminded him. “How did you know to look for me at sea?”

“It started, I suppose, when I went to see Mr. Wainwright yesterday afternoon. I was distraught by your accusation and needed a friendly ear.”

Diana winced. “I’m so sorry,” she began, but he pressed a silencing finger to her lips.

“We need not speak of it again. Wainwright helped me see things from your point of view.”

Tears welled in Diana’s eyes. She dashed them away. “I must thank him the next time I see him.”

“He’s a good man. I told him about Latimer, the scoundrel, how I had discounted your theory about the footsteps, but you had been right all along. I began to wonder what else you may have been right about. When I got home, Mrs. Gwynn came to me and confessed that Ivy was her daughter by my uncle. She said you had pulled it out of her—the fact that she and Sir Thomas had had a child together, even if she hadn’t mentioned Ivy by name—and she didn’t want me to hear about it from anyone else.”

“Were you shocked?”

“About Ivy, yes. Not about the affair. That, I already knew.”

“How?”

“I’ve been reading my uncle’s journals. It is all in there. It’s been going on for decades.”

“Mrs. Gwynn loved him.”

“Yet he recorded the affair matter-of-factly, not a word about love. He took terrible advantage of her.” He sighed. “Anyway, at that point, I went looking for you and learned you were missing. The hall boy told me he’d brought you a note from Ivy. I found the note in your room. After discovering that Emma had not written it—she insisted that she’d taken your words about Mr. Latimer to heart and would never have considered such a thing—I grew suspicious. I immediately went down to Smuggler’s Cave, where I found a lantern on the embankment.”

“That was mine. I must have dropped it.”

“Beside it lay a heavy fire poker that was wet with blood.”

“Oh!”

“I presume that is the implement Ivy used to knock you out. I didn’t know it then—but I feared something terrible had happened to you. The cave was flooded. I know how strong the tide can be. Something told me you had been carried out to sea, and I had to fetch you.” There was a haunted look in his eyes. Diana wondered if he was thinking about his aunt and cousin, whom he hadn’t been able to save. “I rigged the boat and set sail. When the storm blew up, I pressed on… and I spotted you on the islet.”

“You risked your life to save mine,” Diana responded with gratitude, for what must have been the dozenth time.

“I have sailed in plenty a gale,” was his no-nonsense reply.

But Diana knew it had been dangerous.

“And I did not save your life,” he pointed out. “ You did that. You fought the sea and saved yourself. For a woman who cannot swim, you performed an amazing feat. How on Earth did you do it?”

Diana thought back to that moment when the ocean had almost claimed her. “I had help.”

“Help?”

“Yesterday, when I was about to drown, I heard your voice.”

He turned to her sharply. “What did I say?”

“You said: ‘No. You cannot drown. Not today. Fight. Fight!’”

His eyes widened in astonishment. “I uttered those very words.”

“When?”

“When I set out in the boat. I kept seeing you in my mind, struggling in the sea. Terror gripped me. I cried out to you aloud.” He shook his head. “I was grateful no one was on board, or they would have thought me mad. And yet you heard me?”

“I did. And I answered.”

“How? You were beneath the waves.”

“I replied in thought.”

“What was your reply?”

She told him.

“Now you will think me mad,” he answered, “for I heard your reply.”

Diana gazed at him in wordless wonder.

Gently, he brushed a tendril of hair from her forehead. “‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…’”

Diana finished the quote from Hamlet with him. “‘…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” They shared a smile.

After a moment, the captain said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For your courage, spirit, and dedication to a cause that I tried so many times to squelch. For insisting, despite my bull-headed opposition, to learn the truth about what happened to my family.”

“I hope it has eased your burden?”

“It has. And there is something else.” He paused. “One of my uncle’s early diaries, from the year my parents died, was revealing. He wrote that sending his twelve-year-old nephew off to the Navy was the most difficult thing he had ever done, but he felt it necessary. Should he ever marry again and have a son, he said, I would not inherit Pendowar and would need a profession.”

“You see, he did love you.”

“It means a great deal to know that.”

“If only there were some passage we could show to Miss Fallbrook so she would know the same.”

The captain went quiet. “Actually, there is one. In the volume he kept a couple of years ago, my uncle mentioned an afternoon in the white garden, where he had come upon Emma sketching. He remarked in a positive way upon her artistic talent, and—uncharacteristically—he did so with affection and pride.”

“I’m so glad.” Joyful tears pricked at the backs of Diana’s eyes. “Perhaps we can find a way to show just that page to her.”

“We will.” Taking Diana’s hands in his, the captain urged her to her feet. The blanket slid from her shoulders as he gazed down at her with affection. “Diana, I cannot thank you enough for all that you have done since you came to Pendowar Hall. You have made an enormous difference in Emma’s life. And mine. But that is not why I love you.”

A sense of radiant lightness pervaded Diana’s entire being. He loves me. She felt as if she were floating, weightless. “It isn’t?”

“I love you because you are the best person I know. The most thoughtful, most intelligent, bravest, kindest, and most caring individual I have ever met. I cannot imagine my life without you.”

“Nor I without you.” She loved him for all the same reasons. She told him so.

“Do you remember I said I was unmarried because I hadn’t met the right woman?”

Diana nodded.

“I have met her now.”

“Have you?” Diana asked breathlessly. She couldn’t help adding: “What about… all those other women I’ve heard of? One in every port?”

He smiled into her eyes. “Reports on that score have been greatly exaggerated. Only one woman holds the key to my heart. And I am looking at her.” Holding her hands, Captain Fallbrook went down on one knee and gazed up at her. “Diana, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

“Yes! Yes, Captain. I will.”

He stood again, drew her close, and kissed her long and lovingly. “There will be no more ‘Captain.’” He growled, briefly breaking the kiss. “From this moment on, call me ‘William.’”

“Aye aye, Captain,” was Diana’s teasing reply.

They were kissing again when Diana heard someone discreetly clearing her throat.

Miss Fallbrook stood a few yards distant, her lips pressed with censure. “What does this mean? Please do not tell me that you two are in love?”

The captain and Diana exchanged a smile. He released Diana from his embrace. “We are, indeed. And you are the first to know: Miss Taylor… Diana… has just agreed to marry me.”

“No! What are you thinking?” Miss Fallbrook cried. “Have you forgotten the Mermaid’s Curse? Miss Taylor has nearly drowned twice. You cannot be together!”

“The curse—if there ever was one—is broken,” insisted he.

Diana looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“All three criteria of the legend have been met. I pledged my love to you, ‘a maid who comes from the sea,’ which surely happened yesterday when you pulled yourself from the ocean. During the gale, I saw a series of huge waves rise to the very top of the cliffs. And… look at the beach.”

He beckoned Diana and his cousin to the window. Diana gasped in awe.

The coastline that curved away in both directions was thickly covered in heaps of seaweed.

As per the legend… the beach had turned green.