Chapter Twenty-Four
The storm had passed, but the sea moved heavily under its memory.
A gray swell rolled in from the horizon, throwing brine into the wind and shoving the small fishing boats against their moorings.
The air carried the remnants of thunder, salt and iron, restless and alive.
The path to Lammer Cove dipped steeply toward the water, lined with scrub grass and gorse that rattled dry seed pods in each gust. Sea spray beaded on Leticia’s lashes while the tang of it clung to her tongue.
Below, gulls wheeled low over the tideline, their cries sharp against the steady boom of surf.
Leticia kept her skirts clear of the damp ground, one gloved hand on Lady Eastbury’s arm.
Gabriel walked slightly ahead, his coat collar turned up, the set of his shoulders sharp against the pale sky.
He moved with that quiet readiness she had come to recognize—the tension of a man who expected danger but refused to name it.
Every few steps, he glanced over his shoulder, whether to check the footing for the ladies or to see if anyone followed, she could not say.
The habit steadied her. He noticed things. He always had.
“This is a ridiculous place to arrange a meeting,” Lady Eastbury said. Her hat was pinned against the wind but still tilted. “One would think your Mr. Pierce might choose somewhere indoors. A tearoom, perhaps. With scones.”
“Pierce does not take tea,” Gabriel said without turning. “He’s more comfortable in places where no one listens closely.”
“Which is exactly why we brought Lady Eastbury,” Leticia said, giving her aunt a quick smile. “You can talk loud enough for all of Sommer-by-the-Sea to listen.”
Her aunt’s sniff was drowned by the crash of a wave.
They rounded a rock outcrop, and the cove came into view. The tide had drawn back, leaving slick ribbons of kelp along the sand. A single man stood near the waterline, cap low over his brow, coat flapping open in the wind. He looked worn into the shore, weather-worn, all angles and salt.
A crabber with a creel slung over one shoulder came stumping up the shingle.
His boots left dark ovals where the water licked in and withdrew.
He tipped his cap at Lady Eastbury, eyes flicking to Gabriel and back.
“Storm’s thrown odd things ashore this week,” he said, as if to no one.
“Odd folk, too. Strangers askin’ after paths that aren’t their business.
Best keep to the upper track when the sea’s got its temper. ”
“Sound advice,” Lady Eastbury said crisply. “We brought our tempers with us, but we shall try not to let them meet.”
The crabber’s mouth curved, almost in a smile, as he trudged on. Leticia watched him go, a stitch of dark wool against the pale seam of shore. She had the distinct sense that the land itself was listening, holding its breath between gusts. A prickle lifted along her neck that wasn’t from the wind.
Pierce turned as they approached. His eyes flicked to Gabriel first, narrowing, to Leticia and Lady Eastbury. “You brought company.”
“They insisted,” Gabriel said. “This is Lady Eastbury and her niece, Lady Salisbury.”
Pierce gave a stiff nod. “I remember your father,” he said to Leticia. “He could handle a boat.”
“Do you remember my mother, too?” Leticia asked, searching his weathered face for recognition. “She loved the cove.”
A brief pause. “Aye,” he said at last.
The single word was like a stone dropped in deep water.
“I remember,” he added.
“Reckless to bring a lady here in weather like this,” Pierce muttered, as if speaking to himself.
The wind whipped her skirt, tugging at her shawl. She caught Gabriel watching her before he turned back to Pierce. “You’ve been in and out of town these past weeks,” Gabriel said. “You’ve heard things.”
Pierce hesitated. His gaze drifted toward the far end of the cove where black rock teeth bit into the sea. “Depends on who’s asking.”
Gabriel stepped closer. “The sort of man who doesn’t have time for games.”
Lady Eastbury clucked her tongue. “And the sort of lady who is cold enough to turn back if someone doesn’t start talking.”
Pierce’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “There’s been movement. A man came through two nights ago. Stayed at the Fishman’s Rest. Not his own name. Heavy coat though the evening was warm. Kept one hand covered. Carried something small. Valuable. Never took it out where anyone could see.”
“What happened to him?” Gabriel asked.
Pierce shifted his weight. “Met with another man before dawn. Left by the cliff path. Didn’t take the main road. Went north.”
Leticia tucked that away. North, toward the Morton lands and the old auction house that kept appearing in her notes. The information brushed cold fingers down her spine. The shape of a pattern brushed her mind, then slipped away, gone, leaving a chill.
Pierce squinted at her. “You’re not just here to listen.”
“I’m here because this concerns my family,” she said evenly. “Pieces of what you’ve said fit with what we already know.”
He didn’t ask how. “Careful with that sort of talk, Lady Salisbury. You’ll find yourself with more trouble than you want.”
Gabriel’s voice was quiet but firm. “She already has.”
For a moment, only wind and the hiss of the waves filled the space between them.
Pierce looked past Gabriel to the curve of the bay.
“If you’re looking for where the man went after he left here, ask after a place called Dunmere Cross.
Not much more than a marker stone and an old smuggler’s shed. The right sort knows it.”
“Why tell us?” Leticia asked.
Pierce’s eyes hardened. “Because the men you’re chasing don’t belong here. They think they can use our coast for their dealings. They’re wrong.”
Lady Eastbury drew her shawl tighter. “Well. We’ve been suitably chilled by both the wind and our company. Perhaps we might take our leave?”
“Wait.” Pierce tipped his head toward the bluff. “Guard on the upper path these days. Not a constable. Someone else. If you must climb, keep your heads down on the turn.”
Gabriel’s attention sharpened. “You saw him?”
“I saw enough.” Pierce tipped his cap, already turning away. “Be careful on the climb back. Rocks are slick.”
Gabriel waited until they’d walked out of earshot. “He gave us more than I expected.”
“He gave us Dunmere Cross,” Leticia said. “And a smuggler’s shed.”
“And a direction,” Gabriel added.
They began the ascent toward the path. The sea boomed behind them, filling the silence.
Halfway up, Leticia paused to look back.
Pierce was gone, swallowed by the curve of the cove.
She could feel the cliff’s shoulder to her left, the drop to the rocks below on her right.
Gabriel shifted to walk on the outside edge, always between the ladies and catastrophe.
His presence there, wordless and deliberate, felt something like a vow.
Lady Eastbury puffed slightly from the climb.
“If I’d known we were going to be trudging over rocks and through wind for a few scraps of gossip, I’d have sent a footman.”
“It’s not gossip,” Leticia said. “It’s a trail.”
Gabriel met her gaze over his aunt’s shoulder. “One we’ll follow in Sommer-by-the-Sea.”
They reached the turn where the path narrowed and stopped for a breath.
Leticia tasted the odd, metallic quiet that comes when a bird of prey passes overhead, and everything goes still.
The stillness stretched so thin she could feel her pulse inside it.
A gull shrieked, and the world resumed. Gabriel’s shift to the outside edge without comment set something steady and low inside her, an answer to a question she had not dared put into words.
*
Back at the inn, the warmth of the fire made the salt-stiff air sharper in her lungs.
Smoke curled lazily above the hearth, the scent of peat and ale settling around them like a shawl.
Leticia loosened her shawl and sat near the hearth.
Gabriel stood by the window, looking out at the lane as if the man from Pierce’s story might walk past. The low murmur of voices from the bar blended with the pop of peat in the grate.
“Dunmere Cross,” she said, trying the name aloud. “It sounds like something out of a smuggler’s tale.”
“It is,” Gabriel said. “Old stories say it was where smugglers met to divide cargo. That shed’s been empty for years, but if Pierce says someone’s using it again, we’ll find out who.”
Lady Eastbury, unpinning her hat, glanced between them. “You’ll do no such thing without me.”
“We’ll be going back to Sommer-by-the-Sea,” Gabriel said. “The next step is there.”
Leticia caught the faintest emphasis on we. “And what will you do with what Pierce gave us?”
“Start pulling the threads,” Gabriel said. “See where they lead.”
She thought of the man in the heavy coat, the hidden hand, the dawn departure. The image sat uneasily beside her mother’s brooch, locked away in her drawer. Every thread she touched seemed to hum with the same dangerous promise: pull, and something will come undone.
The inn door opened with a slap of wind.
Two fishermen stamped in, knocking mud from their boots.
The landlord called a greeting, leaned on the counter as Gabriel approached.
From the corner, Leticia watched the conversation in the ale mirror.
The mirror warped their reflections, bending Gabriel’s tall form into something caught between shadow and light.
His calm mouth moved, the landlord’s brows rose, and a thumb swung toward the coast. The landlord drew a mark on the wood with a damp finger, two lines crossing with a dot to one side, wiped it away with his cuff.
Meanwhile, Lady Eastbury had already gathered a small court near the hearth. She sat with a woman in a faded blue shawl and another with red hands and a laugh like a cart on gravel. “Prices have gone up dreadfully,” her ladyship declared. “Tea, lace, even gossip. In my day, gossip was free.”
“Still is if you buy a round,” the blue shawl said.
Lady Eastbury produced a coin with a magician’s air and placed it on the table. “Let us be extravagant. Tell me, what sort of people ask about sheds?”
“Quiet sort,” the red hands said. “And always askin’ the tide times twice.”
“Twice?” Lady Eastbury tilted her head.
“So they can pretend they forgot,” blue shawl said. “But they never forget. They just want to hear it from different mouths.”
From the fishermen’s corner came the low rumble of a conversation meant to stay private.
“…shed down by the Cross…”
“…wouldn’t go near it after dark…”
“…man with the glove, asking after the tide times…”
Leticia let her gaze rest idly on the tabletop, her ears tilting toward their words.
The glove. The tide. A meeting place shunned by locals.
Each detail slid neatly into place beside Pierce’s account.
Together, they fit like fingers closing around the same small object.
She did not yet know its shape, only that it fit the palm too well.
Gabriel returned, settling opposite her. “Nothing certain,” he said softly, “but the name is known here. More than I’d like.”
“Pierce was right,” she said.
“Pierce was right about more than he said aloud.”
The landlord brought out a plate of oatcakes, and Lady Eastbury promptly declared them the best she’d ever had, though she admitted she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten any.
“The secret is lard,” she confided to Leticia in a whisper that carried across the room. “All good things are scandalous.”
When the driver came in to tell them the tide had dropped enough to cross, they rose, settling cloaks and gloves before stepping back into the wind.
*
As the carriage rolled toward Sommer-by-the-Sea, the landscape shifted from ragged shore to gentler fields.
Leticia leaned her shoulder against the window frame, watching sheep dot the hillsides, their wool bright against the green.
The air inside was warmer now, heavy with the faint scent of peat and salt clinging to their clothes.
The man with the glove returned to her thoughts, the whispered warnings about the shed, the crabber’s caution, and Gabriel’s watchfulness at the inn.
The threads were drawing together her mother’s brooch, the Order’s shadow, and now this coastal meeting place.
It all moved toward something she could sense, the feeling of a door half open in the dark.
Tug the wrong one, and everything might come loose.
Wait too long, and someone else might tug it for her.
She glanced at Gabriel and found him already looking at her. No challenge in it, only the steady question he carried for her alone. Are you with me? The answering warmth surprised her, quiet, certain, like a harbor found in hard weather.
“Sommer-by-the-Sea,” he said quietly, as though promising both an answer and a reckoning.
“And seedcake,” Lady Eastbury added, rousing from her corner with a decisive rustle. “I cannot be expected to face villains on an empty stomach.”
Gabriel’s mouth tugged. Leticia let her cheek rest against the cool glass and watched the road unspool ahead. For the first time since leaving the cove, she let herself believe the storm might be steering them toward the truth.