Chapter 7
All night long, the gale had flung itself at the Admiral’s cottage as though intent on peeling it from the cliff and dashing it into the Sound below. Edmund had slept scarcely an hour. He had not dared once the storm began.
The first sharp crack—so like the report of a musket—that made the old man start awake in his chair had been followed by a deeper, more ominous sound: the long, splintering groan of roots torn from earth, of a trunk giving way.
“Down!” Edmund had barked, without ceremony hauling the Admiral bodily from his seat.
The crash that followed shook the cottage to its bones. Tiles shattered; dust rained from the ceiling. Somewhere in the back rooms, crockery smashed. Mrs. Grealey screamed.
By the time the noise subsided, the cottage was half-choked with dust and the air tasted of old plaster.
“Dear God,” the Admiral wheezed, clinging to Edmund’s arm. “Is that Bonaparte at the door?”
“I suspect a tree, sir,” Edmund replied, though his heart still pounded. “Stay here.”
He had left the Admiral seated near the hearth and gone to look.
The sight would remain with him a long while: the heavy bulk of the oak lay across the rear portion of the roof, its trunk sunk deep into shattered beams above the kitchen, its branches clawing at the sky like hands still reaching for help.
The next hours had passed in a steady, relentless round of labour.
He had dragged what he could from beneath the damaged section, moved Mrs. Grealey and the Admiral into the front room, built up the fire, checked the walls, and wedged a length of timber where the ceiling bowed most threateningly.
He had not thought, only acted—on training, on habit, on that stubborn refusal to leave another human being to chance when he might stand between them and disaster.
When the worst of the wind had howled itself to a lower pitch, he had sat down opposite the fire and watched the Admiral doze in his chair, blankets heaped to his chin. The old man had woken at intervals to mutter of past storms, of gales in the Atlantic, of battles and sunken ships.
“Ha! We have weathered greater tempests than this, Leigh. The house will stand.”
He had not the heart to tell the man how bad the western half of his house was.
Yet when dawn came, the sky was clear and the wind as calm as it ever was on the coast.
He pushed another log onto the embers, then went to survey the damage from the outside.
Mrs. Grealey was weeping in what remained of the kitchen, fretting over what was to be done about the master’s tea.
It was Edmund’s place to worry about ciphers and ledgers and the possibility that Captain Larkin’s quiet, composed widow might know far more of both than she let show, but that would have to wait for now.
He could hardly abandon his host in his time of need, and it was unlikely he would gather much intelligence at a time like this.
The weather would have inhibited any clandestine activities as well.
He had only half finished the thought when there came a rap on the damaged door and Mrs. Grealey’s startled exclamation in the passage.
“Mrs. Larkin! Miss Archer!”
And then she appeared in the doorway, cloak damp at the hem, curls escaping beneath her bonnet and her eyes wide with apprehension, telling him she had scarcely slept either.
He watched that apprehension alter, shifting from fear to relief to something quieter when she saw the Admiral upright by the fire.
Now, an hour later, he was carrying the Admiral over another fallen tree that blocked the path.
“Careful, sir,” he murmured, one arm braced beneath the Admiral’s knees, the other firm around his shoulders as he picked his way along the fallen trunk.
The Admiral, to his credit, submitted with only a few protests. “This is devilish undignified, Leigh—oh, mind that branch, man, I have but one sound knee left, you know—”
“I have you,” Edmund said calmly.
The path from the cottage to the school had been reduced to a hunting field of obstacles devised by an enemy with a sense of humour.
“Shall I go back and see what I may find upon which we might bear him?” Mrs. Larkin asked.
Edmund had looked at the cottage sagging under its new arboreal burden and said, “There may not be time, ma’am. The walls shifted twice after you arrived. The next tremor may bring the chimney with it.”
He had seen her swallow and nod. “Do what you must.”
So here he was, walking along a wet, resin-slicked trunk in a high wind with a retired admiral in his arms, while Mrs Larkin and Miss Archer moved ahead and behind, steadying what they could.
If Baines could see him now, he would never hear the end of it.
Manners would murmur, “Lost in Devon, crushed beneath patriotic timber.”
He tightened his hold on his burden and stepped down from the trunk onto firmer ground with a care that made his teeth clench.
“There,” he said. “We are past the worst of it, sir.”
The Admiral gave a faint wheeze that might have been a laugh. “You say that now. I have been saying ‘past the worst of it’ since the Nile.”
Miss Archer, scrambling down after them, shook dust from her skirts. “Let us not invite the Almighty to test that theory,” she said lightly. “We have seen enough of His object lessons for one night.”
He then assisted Mrs. Grealey over with a considerable amount of complaining.
Mrs. Larkin came down last, landing with a small thud.
Edmund had offered her a hand when she began her descent; she had taken it only briefly, the tips of her fingers light upon his, using the trunk itself for the greater support.
Her self-sufficiency ought to have relieved him.
That it left his palm feeling oddly bereft was a foolishness he ignored.
The way to the school from that point was still difficult—branches strewn, mud slicked—but passable. The house loomed above them, its pale stone streaked with wet, its windows intact, its chimneys straight.
Girls’ faces appeared at some of the upper panes as the party approached the front steps. Small hands pressed against the glass. A flock of them appeared in the entry hall when the door opened—eyes wide, plaits and ribbons askew, all trying to see and none brave enough to crowd too close.
“Oh, Admiral!” cried one of the older girls. “You are safe!”
“Of course I am safe, Miss Fairchild,” he declared, straightening from Edmund’s arm. “I had a Hercules to lift me and a brace of angels to worry over me.”
Edmund felt his ears grow warm.
“Girls,” Mrs. Larkin said, her tone firm but kind, “prepare two guest chambers at once. Miss Archer, would you be so good as to see to Mrs. Grealey?”
Mrs. Grealey, trudging in behind them, made a faint noise of offended dignity and clutched her shawl tighter. “I will see to the Admiral, ma’am.”
“There are spare blankets in the linen closet and a fire laid in the small parlour. We will put the Admiral in there for the present until the bed is prepared.”
Edmund did not need telling twice. He led the old man where he was directed, settling him down with as much gentleness as he could contrive. The Admiral grasped his hand for a moment, squeezed it, and said in a very low voice, “You have done more than your duty, Leigh.”
“It is no more than any soldier would have done,” Edmund said, attempting lightness.
“Then I will commend the army… this time.”
Edmund laughed despite himself. When he straightened, he found Mrs. Larkin regarding him with an expression he could not quite read. It held gratitude, certainly, with something more testing beneath it.
“You have a wound, Mr. Leigh,” she said.
He lifted a hand to his brow and felt the sticky drag of drying blood just at the hairline. “It is nothing more than a scratch, ma’am. I was caught by a tile when the tree came through the roof.”
“Nothing can become something in a very short space of time,” she replied, “particularly when roofs and falling masonry are concerned. Sit down.”
He hesitated. “I assure you—”
“Sit,” she repeated, and in the word there was the unmistakable note of a woman long accustomed to being obeyed when she assumed command of a sickroom.
He obeyed.
She moved briskly then, calling for water, for clean linen, for the small box of salves and bandages she kept for the girls’ more dramatic tumbles. The room filled briefly with purposeful motion—girls darting in and out, Jane issuing directions, Mrs. Grealey trying to assert herself.
Edmund sat on a low chair near the hearth and watched Mrs. Larkin as she returned with a basin and cloth.
Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow now; a tendril of hair had escaped entirely and curled damply against her throat.
She set the basin down, dipped the cloth in the fluid it contained, wrung it out with deft fingers, and stepped closer.
“If you will permit me, sir?” she asked.
He inclined his head.
The cool, clean touch of the damp cloth against his brow was both startling and oddly… peaceful. She worked with an expertise that told him she had tended more than schoolroom scrapes. Her fingers were gentle but sure, pressing here, dabbing there, testing the edges of the cut.
“It is shallow,” she pronounced, “but you have lost some skin.”
“I have some to spare,” he said, attempting a smile.
Her lips twitched despite herself. “One always thinks so until he finds half of it missing.”
“Would that be experience speaking, ma’am?”
She met his gaze then. For a heartbeat, neither of them looked away.
He saw, far beneath the composed exterior, the shadow of nights spent waiting for letters that did not come, the memory of uniforms brought home without their owners.
“I have known enough men to come back with scars—and some who did not come back at all.”
Larkin.
He wanted to say something that might lift that shadow, however briefly. Instead, he sat silently while she smoothed a strip of linen over the wound and tied it with a neat, firm knot just above his temple.
“There,” she said, stepping back. “You should do very well now.”