Chapter 6 #2
A soft rap sounded at her door. “Elise?” came Jane’s voice, muffled by the storm.
Elise opened it. Jane slipped inside, her cheeks flushed from wind and exertion. “The shutters are holding. Cook has moved the kitchen girls into the pantry because the chimney is sounding as though it means to fly away entirely.”
Elise managed a faint smile. “Thank you. Is all of downstairs secured?”
“Yes…” Jane hesitated. “… but I came up because—you ought to see this.”
Elise followed her to the corridor window.
At first she saw nothing but darkness, rain, and wind-tortured branches.
Then lightning ripped open the sky. For an instant—as brief as a heartbeat—she saw the entire slope toward the Admiral’s cottage.
The garden wall was half gone, and a tree lay across the path leading to the cottage’s front door, also blocking the path down to the town.
Jane caught her arm. “Hopefully it was only that tree.”
Elise’s breath caught. The Admiral. He was half lost to memory even on the best of days.
“What if his fire has gone out?” Elise whispered. “What if the chimney is blocked? What if the cottage—”
“He has weathered worse storms than this,” Jane said gently.
Yet Elise saw the worry in her friend’s eyes.
A violent gust shook the entire hall. Something outside cracked—loudly.
Elise flinched. “If the tree has destroyed the roof—or worse—”
“We cannot help him tonight,” Jane reminded her. “Nor can anyone. No man could stand steady on that cliff road now. Not even a sailor.”
Elise forced herself to nod, but her heart would not let go of the fear.
“We have to hope Mr. Leigh—” she began, then stopped.
Jane looked pointedly at her. “Yes, we have to hope Mr. Leigh is able help our dear Admiral.”
Morning felt impossibly far away. Elise tried to sleep, but the storm made a mockery of the attempt. Rain lashed the windows like handfuls of thrown gravel. The house groaned in its beams. At times, the wind shrieked down the chimney with such force the candle guttered sideways.
She rose and paced up and down. She sat on the edge of her bed. She pressed her palms to her eyes. Thoughts circled her mind—too many, too painful. The possibility that the smuggling ring had not died with Singleton. The coincidence—if it was one—of Mr. Leigh’s sudden appearance.
Meanwhile, above it all… the question no thunder could drown: Who was using the cipher?
At last, exhaustion tugged at her. She slipped beneath the quilts fully clothed, letting the storm’s fury thrash unseen beyond the glass. Her last conscious thought was one of dread—not for herself, but for the quiet cottage on the cliff.
“What if the Admiral… what if Mr. Leigh…” She did not finish the thought.
She woke to a silence almost worse than the storm had been.
The air felt heavy, sodden, still dripping with the remnants of the night’s violence. Her room was cold. She rose at once, hurried into the corridor, and found Jane already awake, her cloak wrapped tightly around her.
“Elise,” Jane said breathlessly. “The south garden—it is half destroyed. But the roof held.”
“We must look to the Admiral.”
They did not wait for breakfast, nor for full light. They donned cloaks, lit lanterns, and stepped into the ruined garden.
The storm had torn down branches thicker than Elise’s wrist. Debris littered the path in wild disarray. The southern gate was gone entirely—ripped from its hinges. The yew hedges lay flattened. Wind had driven seawater across the lawn, leaving patches of glistening sand.
The path toward the Admiral’s cottage was almost impassable.
“This is the worst storm I have seen here.”
Elise lifted her skirts and pressed forward, the hem of her cloak whipping against her legs as the breeze off the sea still hissed through the broken hedges.
Where the path should have wound neatly between bushes and the stone wall, the storm had gouged a hole straight through it. A great limb—no, nearly half a tree—lay sprawled across the track, its roots torn from the earth like the limbs of some toppled giant.
“We shall have to climb over,” Jane said softly, eyeing the tangle of branches.
Elise tied up her skirts and began to pull herself upward, treading carefully on wet bark and slick moss.
Jane steadied her from behind. From the crest they could see the cliff path stretching ahead, battered but passable—until the next bend, where the Admiral’s roof came into view…
or what remained of it. Elise’s breath shortened. “Jane… look.”
The whitewashed wall that once had enclosed the Admiral’s modest kitchen garden was shattered, stones scattered like dice. And beyond it—Elise clutched Jane’s arm.
A tree—an entire towering oak—had fallen directly across the cottage roof.
Its trunk lay diagonally over the western rooms, its heavy boughs drooping like broken wings. The roof beneath it sagged under the weight. Tiles had shattered. Part of the western chimney had collapsed.
“Oh, merciful heavens,” Jane whispered.
Elise forced her legs to move. “Come. Quickly.”
They scrambled down the broken wall and waded through the debris-strewn garden. Branches snapped underfoot. Water pooled where soil had washed away. The cottage door hung crookedly, the hinges pulled loose.
Elise knocked anyway. “Admiral? Admiral!”
A muffled voice answered. “In here!”
Relief nearly unmanned her legs. She shoved the door open.
The sight that greeted her made her halt.
The Admiral sat swaddled in blankets to the chin, a plaster on his cheek, his boots before the hearth—where a brave little fire still burned despite the havoc outside.
Beside him—sleeves rolled to the elbow, hair disordered and shirt open at the throat from exertion—stood Mr. Leigh.
Elise stared.
He looked nothing like the composed, quiet gentleman she had met over tea. This man bore the unmistakable marks of a battle fought through the night—sooty hands, wet boots, a cut at his brow, and a steadiness of posture that betrayed how long he had remained on his feet.
He bowed when he saw her, though his eyes held fatigue.
“Mrs. Larkin. Miss Archer.”
Elise swallowed. “We feared the worst.”
“Understandable,” he said. “The tree came down before midnight. The roof above the kitchen is unsafe. I moved the Admiral to this room and kept the fire going. Mrs. Grealey is resting in the pantry—she insisted she was quite well, but she fainted at one point.”
Elise’s throat tightened. “You have been up all night?”
He did not answer with pride, only with simple truth. “There was no one else.”
The Admiral perked up. “He saved my life, my dear. Hauled me out from under flying tiles like Neptune himself.”
Mr. Leigh’s ears coloured slightly. “Sir exaggerates.”
“I think not,” Elise said softly.
Her gaze drifted upward to the fractured ceiling. The tree had punched through tiles and beams above the kitchen; daylight filtered through a jagged, splintered wound in the roof.
“This house is no longer safe,” Elise murmured.
“No,” Leigh agreed. “The next strong wind may bring the rest of the roof down.”
Jane touched Elise’s sleeve. “You cannot remain here.”
“No, of course not.” Elise steadied herself. “Admiral, you and Mrs. Grealey must come to Belair House. The girls will be delighted to have guests.”
“Guests?” The Admiral brightened. “Ah! A change of quarters.”
He attempted to stand but wavered. Leigh moved instantly to support him, one hand at the Admiral’s elbow, the other steadying his back.
Elise’s heart pinched at the sight. A man who could move so lightly to help another… a man who stayed awake through a storm to guard those in his care… these things conflicted acutely with her fears of the night before.
Outside, another branch cracked and fell, startling all of them.
Elise lifted her chin. “There is no time to lose. Jane, will you gather together the Admiral’s things? Mr. Leigh—are you able to assist the Admiral while I fetch Mrs. Grealey?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
As she turned towards the door, she heard the Admiral speak fondly:
“My dear, if you ask me, Providence has sent us a very capable guardian.”
Elise hoped that was all he was, but as she saw the storm-torn ruin of the cottage, she knew one thing with certainty: Whatever Mr. Leigh was, the storm had forced him directly into her world, and she did not yet know whether to thank the heavens… or fear them.