3 Elle To Lie #2
“Where are my manners?” The man laughs self-consciously.
Another gust rustles my dress. Like the wind itself wants him inside.
“Hugh Croxton, miss. I’m a representative of the Society for Harbour Safety.
We are the group responsible for petitioning the lieutenant governor for this lighthouse ten years ago.
Made of mariners, tradesmen, merchants, and the like. ”
“That’s true,” the lighthouse keeper says. Are we allies now? Forced on the same side for Liney’s sake.
I don’t budge. I need a reason the keeper’s away. The man’s eyes travel over me, attempting to be subtle. Not lecherous but lingering too long.
“Thank you, and the society, for your efforts,” I say. “But I’d like proof. You understand.”
Mr. Croxton digs into his coat, producing a small stack of papers. The edges flutter. “Of course. If I may ask, were you at the dock?”
I take his papers, the top sporting some blooming raindrops. Lists and letters about the local lighthouses, port regulations, and supply manifests. Each hosts the seal of the society.
“This lighthouse hasn’t requested repairs in over a year when nearly every other did after the last hurricane hit,” Mr. Croxton continues. “And with the wages not collected, we feared there may be a problem.”
I freeze my features as a deer would when eye to eye with a hunter. I’ve managed with the money I stole before our escape, no thought to the meager wages of a lighthouse keeper waiting on the mainland. I should’ve found a way to collect them, to appear as though all were normal.
“Tell him I’ve gone on a trip,” the lighthouse keeper says. There’s no room for condescension anymore. It’s refreshing and unsettling in equal measure. “I won’t be back for a fortnight, at least.”
My society instinct, once essential and now a nuisance, hates this idea.
In any other circumstances it’d be madness to tell a strange man that I’m alone here and will remain so.
I’m too far from the knife for my liking.
But we are not in a town alley or ballroom.
Mr. Croxton has much more to fear from me than I from him.
I hand him back his papers and step into the lighthouse, allowing both him in and myself access to my knife again.
“My father is away.” I smile as I say it despite the acid in the back of my throat at making a compromise with the ghost. Should I have said brother instead? I have no ring, so husband is out of the picture. “I’m finishing preparations for supper. I rushed back in case it was he coming back early.”
“Where did he go?” the man asks as he crosses the threshold. His gaze flits around the room. Casual or calculated? I can’t appear too intent on him.
“Girl,” warns the lighthouse keeper.
“Buying supplies.” I say it lightly. An uncomplicated daughter. I return to the kitchen counter, knife again close.
“And your name, miss?”
An easy question but an impossible answer.
The relative silence presses into my ears.
The lighthouse keeper stands beside Mr. Croxton, head drawn up to the heaven that never accepted him.
A thin trickle of blood falls from the edge of his beard down the hollow of his neck.
It rests, threatening to soak into the collar of his shirt.
He must concede the one part of him that he’s never given up.
It’s barely a whisper. “James Douglas.”
“Jane.” I pick the first name that comes to mind. Should I have picked a more popular name? No—my own name, Mary, was shared by half my class. None of us went by it, only our middle names. “Jane Douglas.”
The man roots through his papers, searching. It’s taking too long. I avoid Douglas’s glare. My fingers itch for the knife, inches away.
“I won’t appear on that list, sir,” I admit. I pinch my own cheeks painfully to produce a blush before he looks up. “I was born out of wedlock, and my mother died in childbirth. My father wishes I remain here to assist him. He didn’t register me with the city.”
“You could lie to the Devil himself and he’d believe you,” Douglas spits at me, but he’s as relieved as I am when Mr. Croxton looks up with upturned brows and a shaking head.
“I apologize. One more question, if I may. What is your father acquiring, and where?”
The window I’d watched frost collect on rattles in its framing. Mr. Croxton can’t stay here for long, or he’ll be stuck until the storm passes. Hasn’t he noticed the signs?
“Do you mind if I finish preparing supper?” My knife calls to me like a beacon in the kitchen. Noting his cracked lips, I add, “And can I offer you some tea?”
“Certainly, thank you.” Mr. Croxton’s tone is cheery.
He continues to read over his packet of papers as he saunters toward the fireplace.
“When the society heard I was heading all the way to Devils Island, it became my only visit for the day. Quite the trek if you don’t have a good sail and the wind’s mercy. ”
I grab the knife while he settles into my armchair. I can down Mr. Croxton so long as I have surprise. Just like I did to Douglas. I sneak a glance at the ghost. He’s following the man like a hound.
“They’ll know he went missing here,” Douglas warns, eyeing my grip. He reads over the man’s shoulder. “These are manifests of supplies available at a keeper’s depot in town. You must tell him I went farther for something unique.”
I set the knife down on the counter before Mr. Croxton can notice it. The hand that held it clenches in protest. It didn’t want to let go. A sign of darker forces waking? “I’ll have a cup ready in a moment.”
I place the fish back in the sink basin and prepare a kettle. The silence stretches as the water warms and I pick out our cheapest tea.
“Why did you douse the fire?” Mr. Croxton asks. “The embers are barely glowing.”
I can nearly hear Douglas’s teeth grind. How odd to have a name for him now. He shakes his head at me, and yet I sense it’s not me he’s agitated with. Perhaps we’re thinking the same thing: Your questions will be the death of you, Mr. Croxton.
“I believe I’m owed a couple of questions in exchange for what you’ve posed to me,” I tease. It’s the best trick against young men. They must engage, lest their egos be bruised. “Do you know my father?”
“Not well, or directly,” he admits. “It is a failing of mine to be so offhand with the keepers. Most are quick to send word when problems arise. I’ve always assumed those more isolated don’t want my company.”
Yet he’s here.
“We are quite self-sufficient,” I assure him, laughing like it’s a joke. He chuckles in a reflex of civility. “You asked where my father went. I admit it’s an unnecessary trip, but my father dotes on me.”
Douglas stifles a laugh, and I nearly break my carefully crafted mask. What would he do if he knew the truth, that if I got caught and killed, he’d be free?
“How so, Miss Douglas?”
The kettle screams, making us both jump.
I fetch a mitt and bring it to the kitchen.
I’m straining out the leaf dregs and pouring two cups when a pang of infernal hunger hits me deep in the belly.
I grip the counter and swallow it down. The monstrous power Mr. Pratterman gifted me with—our contract—remains.
I swallow my disappointment with a gulp of scalding tea after handing the interloper his own.
Mr. Croxton is in far worse danger than I am. I flick my gaze to Douglas as though considering the question, biting my lip to signal and flicking my eyes down. It’s happening again.
“It is my birthday tomorrow. Twenty,” I lie. I take slow breaths between my teeth to center myself. “He’s fetching gifts from relatives.”
I should’ve said I’m older. I don’t look twenty. Not before we left and certainly not after a year on the island has covered me in muscle and weather lines. Will he connect me to the missing twenty-four- and eighteen-year-olds on the posters in town?
“Congratulations! What date will that be?” Mr. Croxton asks, smiling. “A Monday, but I can’t recall the number offhand.”
No one forgets their birthday. A test or good-natured conversation? His hand drums on his pantleg like tapping against my own skull, and he smacks his lips unpleasantly every time he sips his tea.
Heightened senses. The deep mechanisms of the island’s spiral heart are connecting to me after months at rest. The first small, oily tendrils wriggle up between the floorboards and twist around my legs.
I itch for the knife again or to sharpen my nails and disembowel the man who’s asked the most innocuous question I can imagine.
“He wishes to be murdered!” Douglas exclaims, throwing his hands up. “Fool! Damn fool! And you bear my name as you do it, you miserable fiend of a woman.”
“October twenty-first,” I say, confident. The anniversary of my parents’ death, our escape, and my replacement of James Douglas as lighthouse keeper to Devils Island? I’ll never forget.
I take another sip, and the heat is much less noticeable compared to my warming skin. “Is the society your primary employment?”
Mr. Croxton picks up his cup again. Its dark surface ripples. Is it the gathering storm? A tremble to his hands? Or the island’s stirring? “Not at present. The society doesn’t have the means to employ more than a handful of staff.”
He takes a sip. I could’ve poisoned it. There are countless substances one can add to tea without detection.
Mr. Croxton may suspect something is afoot, but I’ve succeeded at playing young, simple Miss Douglas enough not to be an immediate threat.
If all he suspects is my “father,” no one will die tonight.
The island’s disappointment plunges my stomach into cramps.
They’re nearly enough to loosen my unsteady hold on my humanity.
“What else do you do, Mr. Croxton? If you don’t mind me asking.” I smile broadly, as though I were the sort of girl who likes to smile at young men. Does he notice my flared nostrils, the only physical marker of pain that slips through?
“You must send him out,” Douglas interjects. “It won’t be long now.”