Chapter Twenty-Seven
The carriage crested a rise where the road narrowed into gravel and coarse grass, the sea opening beneath them like a forgotten map left out to the weather.
Dunmere Cross sprawled below. It was not a village, not even a proper ruin.
Just the bones of an old chapel, the faint line of a crumbled cloister, and farther off, a gray slant-roofed shed crouched near the cliffs, as if bracing against the wind.
Leticia leaned forward as Gabriel exchanged quiet words with the driver. Barrington stood down first, scanning the path toward the edge.
Beside her, Lady Margaret peered out. “That must be the smuggler’s shed,” she said lightly, fanning herself with one gloved hand. “Charming. If it collapses on us, I shall haunt you all with particularly inconvenient timing.”
Gabriel turned to offer Leticia his hand. “There’s an upper track,” he said, his voice low enough to belong to the wind. “We’ll walk the ridge, circle down. Fewer chances of being seen.”
Leticia took his hand and felt the warmth through her glove as she stepped down. The steadiness of his grasp anchored her more than she wished to admit.
They weren’t here for sightseeing.
She could feel it in Gabriel’s stillness, in the way Barrington checked the angle of the sun. Even her aunt’s carried purpose, sharp, deflecting, designed to fill silence before questions could.
As they moved down the track, Lady Margaret called out to a man by the marker stone. He was broad-shouldered, wore a cap pulled low, and leaned on a walking stick. “Tell me, is that where the monks used to stand? Or is it just a dramatic fencepost?”
The man chuckled and launched into a story about smugglers and false blessings. Leticia smiled faintly but kept walking, her eyes forward.
Gabriel and Barrington broke off, heading toward the shed. The wind pressed against them, lifting strands of Leticia’s hair beneath her hat. She kept to the narrow path, the stones shifting slightly beneath her boots.
A raven called once from the rocks below, a sound so clean and sudden it emptied the air, followed by silence.
Leticia paused near the remains of the cloister wall. Half-covered in moss, a flat stone jutted out like an old book left open. She might’ve passed it, except the sunlight hit it at just the right angle.
She stepped closer.
A carving. Rough but deliberate.
A diamond, uneven, and inside it, a single mark: a bird with outstretched wings.
Not a rose. Not a harp.
A raven.
Her breath caught. The chill that slid down her arm—recognition rather than surprise. She didn’t call out to Gabriel. Not yet.
Instead, she let her gaze shift toward the shed.
The door hung slightly ajar. Gabriel stood just inside. Barrington knelt at the threshold, examining something on the ground.
Leticia drew a slow breath, turned her back to the stone, and brushed her gloves together as though she’d only brushed away dust.
She walked down the incline toward the others, wind tugging at her skirts like a warning she pretended not to hear.
No one stopped her.
The shed wasn’t locked. It didn’t need to be. The sea had already claimed its toll: rusted hinges, half-sunken roof, salt-swollen boards that sighed with every gust.
Gabriel pushed the door open with his gloved hand and let it swing wide.
Inside, the shadows held still for a moment. Then, the scent reached him, damp rope, cold ash, and something fainter, oil, maybe, or wax.
Barrington followed, ducking slightly beneath the warped lintel.
Gabriel didn’t speak. His eyes moved through the gloom, cataloguing absence, crates, coils of rope, old nets, ordinary until proven otherwise.
But the floor told a different story.
He crouched, brushing his fingers lightly over the dirt. Near the door, dust lay thick and undisturbed. Six feet in, the pattern broke, one sharp scuff, a heel turned too quickly. Someone had turned suddenly, unplanned.
The mark ended near a dark stain on the wall. Soot. A lantern had burned here. Recently.
Barrington crouched beside him. “He waited.”
Gabriel nodded. “Or met someone. But not for long.”
Barrington gestured toward the entrance. “And if someone was watching from the path?”
“They’d see a ruin.” Gabriel rose, brushing off his hands. “But they’d hear voices. Footsteps. If the tide was low, maybe nothing at all.”
He stepped to the far corner. A broken crate leaned against the wall, its slats loose. Gabriel nudged it aside and froze.
A scrap of gray cloth lay caught against the earth. Small. Torn clean.
He lifted it.
“Glove?” Barrington asked.
“Wrist lining,” Gabriel said. “Wool. Torn, not cut. Caught on the edge when he moved too fast.”
“You think he was nervous?”
“I think he was interrupted.”
Outside, the wind shifted. A gull shrieked right before he heard the soft scrape of boots on gravel.
Gabriel looked toward the door and saw Leticia.
She walked carefully, as though not to disturb anything. Her eyes met his once. She didn’t speak.
He didn’t ask why she was alone.
Leticia stepped through the door, pausing just inside while her eyes adjusted. Light from the sea rimmed her in pale gold. Gabriel straightened, the scrap of cloth disappearing into his pocket.
She paused just inside the doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light. Gabriel straightened from the corner, the bit of cloth still in his hand. He let it slip into his coat pocket as she approached.
She glanced toward Barrington, who offered a brief nod and turned his attention to the lintel with exaggerated courtesy.
Gabriel watched her carefully. “You came alone.”
“There was too much breeze near the cloisters,” she said. “And my aunt had questions for the guide.”
His mouth tugged faintly. “And you decided the shed was the more pleasant company?”
A flicker of dry amusement touched her lips. “For the moment.”
A pause stretched, deliberate, not awkward. He didn’t press.
Leticia took a step forward, trailing her fingers along the edge of a splintered crate. The wood was damp beneath her glove. She withdrew her hand, flexing her fingers as if shaking off the cold.
“There’s nothing much here,” she said.
“Not anymore,” Gabriel replied.
He watched her, but gently. Not as an investigator might a suspect, but as a man reads a map drawn in invisible ink.
She turned toward the open door again, letting the light brush across her shoulder.
“Someone used this place,” she said. “Recently.”
It wasn’t a question.
Gabriel nodded. “A quick stop. A handoff, maybe. Or a signal that wasn’t answered.”
Leticia stayed where she was, back to him, eyes fixed on the ridge.
“There’s a stone by the cloisters,” she said at last. “Covered in moss. A bird, inside a diamond.”
He stepped closer, slow and sure.
“Did you show anyone?”
“No.” Her voice was soft. “Not yet.”
He stood behind her now, not touching, but near. Close enough for her to feel steadiness where her own certainly trembled.
“You did the right thing,” he said.
“I didn’t say I was hiding it.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Leticia turned then, facing him.
“There’s something at work here,” she said. “And I don’t know if it’s following us, or if we’re chasing it.”
Gabriel looked at her for a long moment. “Maybe both.”
He didn’t speak right away.
Would he ask her what it looked like? How certain was she? But he only said, “Show me.”
She led him back up the ridge, her steps careful on the uneven stones. Barrington lingered behind, half in the doorway of the shed, watching the sea with polite disinterest.
The cloister wall curved into the slope like a jawbone left by time. Leticia stepped to the flat stone near its base and brushed the moss aside with the back of her glove.
The carving was still there, simple, shallow, but unmistakable.
A diamond.
And inside it, a raven.
Gabriel crouched beside her. He didn’t touch it, only studied the way light caught in the grooves, the precision that ruled out accident. His gaze swept left, right, cataloguing what was missing, marking everything else that wasn’t there.
When he stood, his voice was quiet. “It’s deliberate.”
Leticia nodded.
“You don’t have to tell anyone,” he said quietly. “But don’t ignore what you saw.”
She looked up at him, breath caught in her throat, words hovering and unsaid.
Behind them, a gull wheeled overhead, calling once before vanishing into the wind.
She turned from the stone. “Let’s go before Aunt Margaret buys the guide’s coat out from under him.”
Gabriel’s tone went dry. “He would be a poorer man for the bargain.”
Leticia glanced up, her lips curving. “And she would still think it a victory.”