Chapter 2 #2
“You have seen him,” Jane declared later that morning, when Elise returned to the parlour. She had abandoned the stockings for the household ledger and was frowning over a list of candles. “You have that look.”
“What look?” Elise asked, taking up another column of figures.
“The look you had the day the Admiralty wrote to say Captain Larkin’s effects would be sent on,” Jane said quietly. “As if something or someone had opened a door in your mind you had no desire to see unlatched.”
Elise’s hand stilled on the paper. “You talk too much like a poet for a housekeeper,” she said, but there was no heat in it. “And you should not speak of that day as if it were a matter of ordinary remark.”
Jane’s expression softened. “Forgive me. You know I would not hurt you. But you have seen him.”
“Yes,” Elise admitted. “From the chapel window. He walks like a man who has worn a uniform.”
Jane’s brows rose. “You think him a military man? Betsy will never survive it if he proves to be a colonel.”
“Betsy may console herself with her pots and pans,” Elise said. “I am more concerned with why a soldier should be masquerading as a writer here. It is not an obvious destination for either.”
Jane leaned back in her chair and considered this. “There are not many reasons a gentleman comes to a place like ours and takes rooms at the George. A former soldier must do something… have purpose. He is perhaps using writing to chase away his demons, though why he would linger here… or—”
“Or he might have business with the harbour,” Elise finished, thinking of her own twice-weekly journeys down to the quay. No one took much notice of a woman walking alone with a basket on her arm. No one, she hoped, except perhaps the Almighty.
Jane’s eyes met hers. They had long since ceased needing to speak certain things aloud.
“You think he is from the Admiralty?” Jane asked.
“Or the War Office,” Elise said. “Or something allied to the two. Though it would be odd if they sent a gentleman whose boots Mrs. Prowse can admire and whose jaw Betsy will compose sonnets about. One would think a spy should be less noticeable.”
“Perhaps they thought to distract us,” Jane said dryly, “with boots and jaw and writer’s notebooks. It is a very underhand method of inspection. However, I think you are merely suspicious.”
Before Elise could reply, there was another tap at the door. This time it was Charlotte Fairchild, one of the elder girls, fifteen and very nearly elegant, with dark hair that would be pretty when she ceased tormenting it with pins. She held a folded paper in her hand.
“Mrs. Larkin, might I—oh, I beg your pardon, I did not mean to interrupt.”
“You seldom do when you intend to,” Elise said, softening the rebuke with a smile. “What is it, Charlotte?”
“It is Papa, ma’am,” Charlotte said, twisting the paper.
“I had a letter this morning. His ship is to sail again next month. He says—I mean, he wishes me to continue here until he returns, and I am glad of it, truly I am, but—” Her voice wavered.
“Could I write back to him today? I know it is not the usual day for letters, but if the packet sails soon, it might reach him in time…”
Elise rose at once and took the letter gently from her hands.
She knew that cramped, hurried script; Captain Fairchild had been one of her earliest correspondents in the network of men and women who wrote to her of girls needing placements and sailors in need of care.
That was how her work had begun. He had been kind after Larkin’s death.
She would scan the missive for any hidden correspondence, then return it to Charlotte.
“Of course you may write,” she said. “You shall have the small parlour to yourself, and we will post it today. Your father shall have a letter fit to carry in his breast-pocket.”
Charlotte’s eyes shone. “Thank you, ma’am. I did not like to ask, only—” She faltered. “He says the sea is calm just now. That it makes him uneasy.”
Elise felt the echo of that.
“The sea is a fickle creature,” she said quietly. “It smiles when it means to bite. But your father is an excellent officer. He knows her tricks. Now go and tell Miss Archer you shall be absent from French. I shall answer to her if she complains.”
Charlotte curtsied and withdrew, her cares visibly lighter.
Jane watched her go, then looked back at Elise.
“You are going into town this afternoon?”
“Yes. The post must go, and we are very nearly out of sugar.”
“I will come with you,” Jane said at once.
“Mrs. Grey owes me the receipt for her currant buns, and I intend to tear it from her by any means short of violence. Besides—” A glimmer of mischief appeared in her face.
“Someone must stand between you and this mysterious soldier-writer if he contrives to throw himself in your path.”
“Do not be absurd,” Elise said, but she did not refuse the company.
They set out after luncheon, the house behind them settling into the gentle chaos of needlework, pianoforte playing, and reading.
The air on the cliff path was brisk and clean, tasting of salt and cold stone.
Elise drew her shawl closer about her shoulders; Jane, who never minded the weather, tilted her face into the breeze as if it were a challenge.
It might have been any other afternoon in winter—ordinary, predictable and safely dull.
“I think a storm is coming,” Jane said, then quickly changed the subject. “If Mrs. Grey thinks to fob me off with stale gossip again instead of a receipt, I shall take it as a declaration of war.”
“You are welcome to declare war,” Elise replied, “so long as you do not declare it in my kitchen. Cook will retaliate with salt beef, and then we shall all suffer.”
They had just reached the point where the path from the school met the lane rising from the harbour when Elise saw him.
He bore that same measured stride she had noted from the chapel window.
His coat was of serge, plain but well-made, his hat pushed back a fraction, his notebook tucked beneath his arm in a manner that suggested he was as much armed by it as any man by a sword.
The wind had brought colour to his cheeks, and a scar at his temple was visible at this distance, a pale line against sun-browned skin.
He saw them almost at once and, instead of blundering into their way like most men, stepped aside neatly, removing his hat with an ease that spoke of long practice in drawing-rooms more polished than this stony lane.
His hair was a little longer than was fashionable, and was most definitely chestnut. His eyes were a shade lighter.
“Good afternoon, ladies.” His voice was low, civil, unmistakably that of a gentleman.
“Good afternoon,” Elise returned, inclining her head with the degree of politeness owed to a stranger on one’s own land.
Jane executed a small, graceful curtsy, her eyes bright with curiosity. “You must be the gentleman stranger,” she said, because Jane never believed in leaving any question unspoken. “Mrs. Grey says you are a writer.”
A flicker—almost a smile—touched his mouth. “Mrs. Grey is remarkably well-informed,” he said. “Yes, ma’am. I am attempting to be a writer. Edward Leigh, at your service.”
His gaze moved, briefly but unmistakably, to Elise. “I hope I have not trespassed, ma’am. I was told this path runs over ground belonging to Mrs. Larkin’s school. I seek her permission to wander.”
Elise’s fingers gripped imperceptibly on the handle of her basket.
There was nothing in the words themselves to alarm—only courtesy, deference even—but something in the way he spoke them made the back of her neck prickle.
He knew the name of her house, and had gone to the trouble to learn that the land was hers.
“Mrs. Larkin is before you,” she said evenly. “The path is open to locals and visitors, provided they do not chase my pupils over the edge.”
He bowed over his hat. “Then I am doubly obliged to you, ma’am. I have no intention of chasing anyone anywhere. I am only endeavouring to understand the lie of the land. The cliffs, the view.” His hand shifted on the notebook. “Local colour.”
“Local colour is mostly grey,” Elise said. “Rock, sky, temper.”
Jane made a muffled sound that might have been a laugh.
“Grey can be most instructive,” Mr. Leigh replied. “London has rather too much of the lurid about it, in my experience.”
“You are from London, then?” Jane asked.
“For my sins,” he said. “I have been sent down—” He checked himself so quickly Elise might have missed it had she not been watching him. “That is, I have come down to see whether the coast might furnish materials for a small volume.”
“A volume about Stonehouse,” Jane said. “We will never recover from the shock.”
He looked genuinely amused. “I shall treat it with all due reverence, I assure you.” His eyes returned to Elise, steady, assessing without being overt.
“I was acquainted with a Larkin, years ago. When I heard there was a Mrs. Larkin here, I wondered if there might be a connexion. Forgive me if the question is impertinent.”
Elise’s heart gave one hard, painful thump.
“My late husband was Captain Larkin,” she said, keeping her voice calm by force of habit. Practice had taught her how to speak of him without flinching. “He served in the Navy.”
“Then it must be the same man.” Something softer entered his gaze—memories, perhaps, of a boy in a blue coat, ink-stained and full of plans. “I knew him at school. There was a Singleton one year ahead who also kept company with him. We were all of an age.”
The name slid between them like a knife. Elise did not let it show. Singleton. She had seen it on reports, on dispatches, on the folded, official letters that had brought such wreckage in their wake.
“I was most sorry to hear of his passing. My deepest condolences.”
It was a correct thing to say, and he said it correctly. Yet Elise felt again that queer stirring of distrust. Men who were what they proclaimed themselves to be seldom chose their words with such care.
“You are kind,” she said. “Now, if you will excuse us, Mr. Leigh, we must attend to the post. The Admiralty will not wait upon my convenience, however much I might wish it.”
His eyes flickered, just once, at that word, Admiralty.
If she had not been watching, she might have missed it.
“Of course,” he said. “Pray, do not let me detain you. I shall only walk a little further and try not to butcher the scenery in my notebook. Good afternoon, Mrs. Larkin. Miss…”
“Archer,” Jane offered and bobbed a curtsy with a charming smile. No caution or wariness about her. “Good day to you, sir.”
He stepped back, giving them the path.
As they walked on, Jane waited until they were out of earshot before saying, very softly, “You are right. He does walk like a soldier… and he looks at you as if you are a piece in a mystery he cannot quite place.”
Elise kept her eyes on the ruts in the lane. “Then I hope he finds the mystery too dull to pursue.”
“Do you?” Jane asked shrewdly.
Elise did not answer. Behind her breastbone something small, wary and long-sleeping had woken.
A writer, she thought—or something that wore the shape of one.