Chapter 17 #2
On the third morning, she was returning to the cottage when she came upon Tamsyn Tregian, her pace unhurried, her pale gray mantle a match to the gray sky.
“Minerva, you are an early riser,” Tamsyn said as she approached, her tone warm and gracious. “I walk this way often. I am surprised we have not met before now.”
“I find the morning walk enjoyable,” Minerva said.
Tamsyn fell into step beside her. “Walking calms my thoughts when they are restless. Do you suffer from them? Restless thoughts?”
“I suspect everyone does at times,” Minerva said.
Tamsyn linked their arms. “It is a good habit, walking.” She fell silent for a moment. “Catherine walked the cliff often.”
“It is easy to understand what drew her. The view is worth the walk.”
Minerva’s fingers strayed to the pendant and only as she touched it did she realize it had grown warm.
Not the fierce burning of the cellar or the urgent heat of the cliff path attack.
It felt as if the pendant had taken note of something and wished her to take note of it as well.
She scanned the path in both directions but could find nothing to name as cause.
Still, she could not quite calm the unease that trickled through her.
Tamsyn paused and turned to face her. “Do you think that is what drew her? The view?”
“I cannot answer that question for her and sadly, my cousin is not here to answer it herself.”
“Poor woman,” Tamsyn said, her expression turning sad.
When they reached Cliff Cottage, Tamsyn said her goodbyes and walked on. Minerva stood with her hand on the gate, watching her go. The pendant was cool now against her skin.
The next morning, Kitty announced at breakfast that she intended to walk with Thom, who appeared at the gate at half past nine with a wide grin and a basket that contained a picnic.
"I shan't be back before late afternoon," Kitty said, her tone conveying information rather than asking permission.
"You shan't," Minerva agreed with a laugh.
Kitty's smile was angelic. The door closed behind her.
Nessa was already gone, off to the farm a mile and a half up the hill road for eggs and butter. Minerva had counted out exact coins the night before, enough for both, and left them on the kitchen shelf.
Cliff Cottage settled into silence, the wind soft today, just a whisper in the eaves, the waves softer still, lacking their usual fury. Minerva washed the breakfast things, set them to dry, and then stood for a moment, looking at nothing. The cottage was hers. There was no one else about.
She opened the back door, wedging it in place with a smooth, round rock and then went to the front door, opening it as well. A light breeze found its way through, carrying with it the smell of warm stone and grass, freshening the rooms that had been closed against the wind all week.
The morning light fell across the floor in long, warm slants as Minerva walked along the passage. She went to the parlor and crossed to the piano. There, she sat, resting her hands on the keys, the ivory cool beneath her fingers, the sensation achingly familiar.
Three years. It had been three years since she had last played in the drawing room of the house that had been sold to pay her father's debts, the afternoon before the solicitor came with the terrible news and the creditors' notes, making her world collapse.
She had played that afternoon without knowing it was the last time, played as she always had because she had not yet learned that things you loved could be taken without warning.
She pressed a single key. The note rose, fell, faded.
Her fingers found the shape of Schubert’s Impromptu in G-flat major, Op. 90, No. 3. She had played it so many times in that other life. Her fingers remembered, moving through the opening bars, and then she was simply playing, not thinking about it, just following the music where it went.
It went somewhere dark and lovely, somewhere that felt like grief and longing, like the ache of standing at a window looking out at a life she thought she would have.
It went somewhere she had not allowed herself to go since her parents died, since she had learned that feeling things fully was a luxury she could not afford, learned that she had to press the darkness down and hold it there or it would consume her.
She let it go now. Just for this. Just in the privacy of the empty cottage with the breeze coming through the open doors and the sea soft and distant below the cliff.
So lost was she in the music that she did not register his arrival. She only became aware of him slowly, Dashiell Penrose, standing in the open doorway of the parlor. If he had knocked, she had not heard it. If his footsteps had made a sound, it had not reached her.
He watched her, his expression stripped of its usual facade, absent the controlled, neutral mask she had come to expect of him.
What remained was raw and unguarded, as though she had reached inside him without asking and left him bound to her with helpless attention, summoned by the movement of her fingers and the outpouring of her soul.
She had the sudden, vertiginous understanding that he had been standing there for some time.