13. Chapter 13
Annabelle pasted a banal expression on her face as she and Lord Randall made their way down the dusty walk toward the telegraph office. Inside, however, she danced a jig of jubilation. She’d done it. She’d convinced him to allow her to stay.
Fate had presented her a second chance, though as of yet, she hadn’t devised a precise plan to proceed. She could forget convincing him to return to London with her. He’d made his obstinance on that point perfectly clear.
Instead, she would have to whittle a confession out of him concerning what really transpired that night—and the clock was ticking.
Her mother did not want to hear the first thing about Gaston’s death being something beyond an awful accident. No, indeed, she had grown accustomed to wallowing in her own grief and guilt. She who had no patience for anyone else’s woes.
How many times had Annabelle overheard her lamenting to their father that Gaston’s death was “all her fault.” Too many to count.
Meanwhile, she’d told Annabelle—repeatedly—to leave it alone. To leave Gaston’s memory in peace, and stop stirring up trouble, as if by searching for the real cause of his death she was somehow to blame for her mother’s continued agony.
Couldn’t her parents see that if justice was served, she would be able to let go of her unmerited guilt? No. No they could not.
Which was why when her father announced his intention to take her mother on an extended holiday to “get her mind off of things,” Annabelle had mentally begun making her plans. She’d set off as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She had until her parents’ return to put things right.
“Here we are,” Lord Randall said, stopping before a glass-paned door on which were painted the words Telegraph Office.
“Do whatever it is you need to do. I’ll be back in a moment to settle up, Lady Woodville,” he finished dryly.
She hesitated before entering the dingy office, a small part of her suddenly worried he meant to leave her after all. She’d had such tricks played on her. “Where are you going?”
He glanced across the street, his gaze locking on a marquee.
“Biggom’s Beer Room?” Her tone, she hoped, left him in no doubt of what she thought of him frequenting a drinking establishment in the middle of the afternoon.
His sardonic grin told her he’d noted her censure and didn’t much care. “You know how we rustics like our ale.”
With a huff, she entered the office, then turned, intending to ask him how long he’d be, only to find the door closing very firmly in her face.
Odious man. She sniffed, inhaling an unpleasant mélange of dust and hot metal. On the verge of sneezing, she shifted ‘round to face the office’s narrow interior.
A long, high counter took up a large portion of the space. It stood unmanned at the present, though a bell atop the wooden surface indicated a means to summon the clerk.
Perfect. She needed a moment to reflect. She had important decisions to make, and very little time to do so.
She hurried to the sloping writing shelf on which sat a wooden tray, filled with message forms, several inkwells, and stumpy pens. Plucking up one of the pens, she tapped her chin with it, and contemplated what to write—and to whom.
Her Aunt Josephine had been tasked with staying with her during her parents’ absence.
The woman had departed recently for the country where she’d been invited for a weekend sojourn with friends.
Her aunt had, of course, intended for Annabelle to join her, but Annabelle had begged off, implying a previous engagement that had something to do with an impending courtship.
In actuality, Aunt Josephine’s exodus from the city had been the opportunity for which Annabelle had been waiting.
She’d anticipated her adventure taking two days at the most, putting her back in London well before her aunt’s return.
Thanks to the weather, the robbers, Lucy’s disappearance, and Lord Randall’s resistance, that timeline had come and gone.
What message ought she send Aunt Josephine that would appease her and, more importantly, not arouse suspicion? Above all, she mustn’t risk her alerting Annabelle’s parents to bring them home early.
As it stood now, she had less than a month’s time remaining to achieve her end. Where could she claim to have gone, and with whom?
Abruptly, the answer came to her—and solved the conundrum of who might be called upon to chaperone her when the time came to leave, as well. For her plan to work, she’d need to send two telegrams but that wouldn’t be an issue.
Grinning at her genius, she dipped the nib in the inkwell and penned her succinct messages.
After re-reading both, she approached the counter and rang the bell. A moment later, a sleepy looking clerk appeared from behind a curtain that, evidently, functioned as a partition to a back-office where he had slipped off for an afternoon nap.
She sent the man her most brilliant smile.
His expression turned gratifyingly dazed. She wouldn’t have minded Lord Randall seeing that.
“My good man, my name is Lady Woodville, and I wish to send two telegrams. One today, the second in, say, one week’s time?”
***
Sitting at a scarred table in the darkened corner of Biggom’s Beer Room, Sterling sipped the foam-topped tankard he’d ordered and surreptitiously studied the barroom’s occupants.
An irritating voice inside him asked on repeat what the devil he thought he was doing here, and once again, he insisted he was here on an information gathering mission.
He had a responsibility to the people who lived and worked on the island.
Learning all that he could about potential threats, which included conniving robbers lurking at the juncture of the mainland and the flats, was his duty as the area’s primary landowner.
It was only natural he would want to question the guide who’d agreed to aid Annabelle, then abandoned her in the middle of a bloody squall.
To that end, he was almost positive he’d spotted his quarry. The man seated at the bar with the short-cropped hair matched the basic description the innkeeper’s wife had provided him.
When the man’s compatriot departed after making a general announcement he was “off to the bog,” Sterling tested his theory. He sidled up to the bar, pint in hand. “Good afternoon. Might you be Jack Blackwell?"
The man slanted him a glance. By his glassy-eyed appearance, Sterling guessed he was not finishing his first pint of the day.
“I might be. Depends on who’s asking,” he answered, tossing a grin at the barman who flicked a glance up from the glass he dried but otherwise ignored him.
“That’d be me,” Sterling replied, some split-second impulse stopping him from offering his name. "I asked after a guide at the Pilgrim’s Rest. They sent me here and said to ask for Jack.”
He sat a little straighter on his stool and swiveled to face Sterling. “In that case, a pleasure to meet you, fine sir. I take it you seek a knowledgeable guide to lead you safely across the tidal flats?”
“Not exactly, Jack. As I understand it, several nights ago, you agreed to lead my late cousin’s widow to the island and then see her safely back.”
“Let me think…” He broke off, frowning as if searching his mind. “Mayhap I did. I can’t rightly recall. Sorry.” With that, he tossed back the remainder of his ale, dropped a few shillings atop the bar, and started to rise. “Well, then, I’d best be—”
Sterling clapped Jack on the shoulder and urged him back onto his stool. Firmly. “Think again. Blond haired, blue eyed, rather…determined?”
Jack squinted, as if trying to recall.
As if any man alive would forget Annabelle.
“Oh, yes. Now that you describe her, I did encounter such a client.” His expression hardened and turned defensive. “I tried to talk her out of the endeavor, mind you, a’cause of the foul weather. But your…er…cousin’s widow wouldn’a hear of delaying her journey.”
Sterling could easily imagine. “Be that as it may, I understand you ran into some difficulty.”
Jack nodded. “That we did, sir. A ruffian—”
“Two ruffians.”
“If you say so, sir. I did not wait around to see.”
“Lady Woodville was quite clear on the number.”
He sniffed. “As I said, I saw what looked to be a robber coming toward us and wasted no time turning my mount. I urged—no, begged—both ladies to follow me, for their safety. One of them listened, and the two of us made a run for it.”
“Did Lady Woodville listen, Jack? Did she follow you?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice as his stomach fisted into an angry knot, picturing the scene anew.
Annabelle facing down two gun-toting villains alone, while the man tasked with protecting her, and the chaperone responsible to guard her reputation, fled.
“As to that, she most certainly did not. Her chaperone had more sense. Your cousin’s widow, sir, she was right foo…er…brave, I meant to say. Brave and rather foolhardy, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Sterling agreed with the man, wholeheartedly, but that was not the point. “And yet you left her in your dust.”
He gave Sterling a gravely offended look. “Now see here, Lord Randall—”
“Ah.” He sent the guide a cold smile. “So you do remember a few things?”
“I beg yer pardon?” It was clear Jack had lost the thread of the conversation.
“You first claimed you barely remembered your client and her companion, and yet now you recall the name of the man to whom you were meant to deliver the ladies.”
The guide said nothing, just frowned down at his empty stein.
“I digress,” Sterling continued, his tone magnanimous. Inside he seethed. Fighting the urge to grasp the man by his throat and shake him ’til his teeth rattled out, he ordered himself to focus. “Following your abandonment of my cousin’s widow, I assume you at least escorted her companion, Miss…er…”
“Dunn.”
“That’s right. Miss Dunn. I assume you escorted her back to the inn?”
He nodded, his expression a bit too exuberant. “I did, indeed. And I urged her not to return to London, though she bid me deliver ‘er to Berwick the followin’ day and I did so.”