Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Catherine’s letter lay on the washstand where Minerva had placed it the previous night. She reread it then tucked it into her reticule and went downstairs to find Kitty already at the table with her tea.
She looked up as Minerva came in.
“You look as though you slept well,” she said.
Minerva paused and realized that Kitty was right. She had slept well.
“So things are settled with Mr. Todd?”
“They are,” Minerva said, and told her about the letter.
Kitty nodded. “Do you think he is gone?”
“I do. But we will know for certain he is not if we hear the floor creaking.”
“I think he is gone,” Kitty said. “He stayed because he loved her. All those years he stayed to be close to her and after she died, he stayed to make certain you found her letter.” She propped her chin on her hand. “It is romantic.”
“I—” Minerva broke off. She had been about to say that being separated by death was not romantic, but she thought about William Todd walking that floor for twenty-odd years, staying close to the woman he loved, and decided perhaps there was some accuracy to Kitty’s observation.
“Speaking of romantic…how are things with Thom?”
“He has asked me to walk with him again on Sunday.” She straightened and pushed her teacup to one side, her expression pensive.
“And?”
“I believe he intends to ask me something on this walk.”
“Oh, Kitty!” Minerva slid onto the bench beside Kitty, taking her hand. “What will you answer?”
“I have not decided,” Kitty said and dropped her head forward, so her forehead rested on Minerva’s shoulder.
“What is it, my darling?” Minerva asked.
Kitty straightened and looked at her, the words leaving her in a rush. “He lives with his parents. I do not think I wish to do that. And I do not know for certain, but I do not think he is in a position to create a separate household. And I do not think I can leave you here all alone. And—”
“Thom is a good man,” Minerva said, cutting her off. “Steady and loyal and kind.”
“He is,” Kitty said, her face lighting up. “And he is handsome and funny. We laugh so much. And he is gentle.” She glanced away then back. “And his kisses are wonderful.”
Minerva laughed. “I am glad to hear it.” She squeezed Kitty’s hand.
“As for leaving me alone, you need not worry on that. You will be close enough to visit every day if you wish and Nessa is here with me.” She smiled and cupped Kitty’s cheek.
“Go on your walk on Sunday. If he asks the question you expect him to ask, answer as your heart tells you. The rest will arrange itself.”
She tamped down the pang in her heart, the one that acknowledged how very much she would miss Kitty. But larger than that pang was the genuine joy she felt at the possibility of her beloved friend finding her happiness.
They hugged again, longer, tighter.
“I am going to Carrek,” Minerva said as she rose from the table.
“One moment,” Kitty said.
Minerva turned back to her.
“Eat breakfast first.”
Minerva ate breakfast first.
The morning was clear, the sea below the cliff flat and blue, the wind mild. Minerva walked at a good pace, the letter in her reticule, her heart eager. In her previous life, walking to a man’s home unchaperoned and uninvited would have been forbidden. In her present life, she didn’t care.
Dashiell was in the yard when she arrived, though he could not have known she was coming.
“Have I caught you on your way out?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “On my way to see you.”
She laughed. “Well, then we are of like mind.”
“Come inside.” He led her toward the study. “Rowe has spoken to me about retiring,” he said as they walked. “He is past sixty. He served my father before me.” He paused. “I mean to offer the position to Thom Gloyn.”
“Thom?” she said, thinking of Kitty’s worries and concerns. Dashiell’s plan made most of them evaporate like dew. “I think him a fine choice.”
“The position comes with a large stone cottage on the east edge of the property. Still close enough that he can visit his parents in the village.”
Minerva cut Dashiell a sidelong glance, wondering if he knew of Thom’s plans regarding Kitty, if he knew how wonderful this news would be for her.
Dashiell turned to her as they reached the study, his gaze roaming her face.
He closed his fingers around her upper arms and pulled her against him, his expression gone hard and hungry.
Her pulse kicked up a notch, pounding in anticipation, her mouth going dry as he stared at her lips a moment. And then he kissed her.
As always, his kiss lit a fire in her blood, but now it burned hotter, brighter, because she understood where these kisses could lead. Such a wonderful thing, attraction.
He walked her backward until she met the wall and he held her pinned there, the hard length of him pressed against her, thigh to thigh, belly to belly. She let her hands roam his shoulders, his back. With a groan he pulled back, cupping her chin, dragging the pad of his thumb over her lower lip.
Breathless, panting, she nipped the pad of his thumb.
He made a low laugh and pushed his thumb past her lips and teeth, into her mouth.
Instinctively, she sucked on him. He groaned and shifted his hips flush against her, and she had the thought that she would like to suck him there.
The idea was foreign and heady and wild.
Hunger roared through her. Winding her hands around his neck she pulled his mouth to hers, kissing him, nipping his lower lip, sucking on his tongue.
“I have been wanting to kiss you since you came through the gate,” he said against her mouth, his voice low and rough.
“You could have done it at the gate,” she said, breathless.
“Pascoe was watching.”
He rested his forehead against hers, both of them breathing a little too hard.
“You came here for a reason,” he said.
“This is a good reason,” she said, wriggling against him.
“It is. But it is not the reason.”
She laughed and stepped back. Smoothing her hair, she went to a chair by the window and sat. He took the seat adjacent, his expression settling into its usual controlled lines, but a flush of color stained his cheeks, and she found she liked that. She liked knowing she could do that to him.
Taking the letter from her reticule, she studied it for a moment then offered it to him. “Catherine left this in her writing desk.”
He took it from her and read. A faint line appeared between his brows, and she pushed down the urge to reach over and smooth it away. She did not want to distract him.
When he finished, he returned the letter to her, and she tucked it away once more.
“I felt it in the cellar,” she said. “The pendant pulling rather than pushing, but I didn’t have the words to name it. And the ring… In the cellar, the two stones responded to the Occupant together.”
“Together,” he said. “As though they recognized each other.”
“As though together they are one,” she said, watching him carefully.
He smiled a little. “I suspect you are speaking not only of the stones.”
“Your suspicion is correct.” She chewed her lower lip. “I think the pendant and ring together somehow draw the Occupant toward the stone. I think we are to somehow trap the Occupant in the pendant and then bury it in the north corner.”
“And the anchor? What does that mean precisely?”
“I have been pondering that since I read the letter last night. I think it means precisely what is sounds like. When I open the stone, open myself, and invite the Occupant in, which is, I think, the most dangerous thing I will ever do, certainly the most terrifying, you are what will keep me tethered to myself.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his expression ruthlessly neutral. “And if I am not sufficient anchor?”
She heard in that simple question, spoken in a flat, neutral tone, everything he could not, would not say. The fear that he would lose her. The horror of what they must do.
She rose and went to him and knelt before him, resting her cheek on his thigh.
“You will be,” she said. “You will be.”
“We can simply choose not to do this,” he said. “You can leave Cliff Cottage.”
She rocked back on her heels and looked up at him. “I—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “Hear me out. I know all your arguments. That you will forfeit your inheritance. That you will have nowhere to live. That Kitty depends on you, for without you, her income is forfeit. And Nessa depends on you as well.” He shook his head.
“You have never asked, but I will tell you. I can match your inheritance five times over and never notice the lack in my coffers. I can buy you another house. I can buy a house for Kitty and Nessa as well. I can—”
“No,” she said. “We must do this. Not for the inheritance or the money but because Catherine entrusted this to us, a chance to end something dark and evil that has plagued this place for hundreds of years. We can end this. We must end this.”
His copper eyes caught the light from the window, making them bright, as though lit from within. A muscle in his jaw tensed. His fists clenched then relaxed.
And then he sighed. “Then we end it,” he said.
He drew her up from the floor and pulled her into his lap, his arms coming around.
“There is another piece to this puzzle,” he said. “Jago Tregian came to see me.”
She twisted on his lap so she could look at his face.
“I see from your expression that this surprises you as it did me.”
“It does,” she said. “I had thought the Tregians hated you.”
“Tamsyn does. Jago…well, I cannot say for certain.” Then he told her of his conversation with Jago.
Tamsyn going out in the morning the day Jory died.
Jago awakening a second time upon her return.
His claim that she had returned different, her face her own but not.
“I cannot know with any certainty if he was on the cliff that day,” he finished.
“He may have told me all of this to deflect suspicion.” He exhaled in a quick huff.
“Or he may have been entirely honest, undeserving of suspicion.”
“A man with nothing to hide,” Minerva said.
“Precisely.”
She was quiet, something nagging at her, something she could not quite resolve. She rose and paced to the window, standing looking out, but seeing nothing, her gaze turned inward.
“What is it?” Dashiell asked.
Her fingers strayed to the pendant, cool and inert. It was always cool unless it lit in warning…
“Tamsyn,” she said, turning back to face him.
“I don’t recall the pendant’s state the first time I met her on the quay stones.
But each time I saw her after that, either at Cliff Cottage or on the path, the pendant grew warm.
” She shook her head. “I never imagined she might be the cause. I always thought it was something in the cottage or the brothers nearby. But now, I think… I think the pendant was recognizing her.”
Dashiell frowned. “But Tamsyn is no specter, no spirit. She is a woman of flesh and blood.”
“She is,” Minerva said, turning over every possibility in her thoughts.
“But what if the Occupant has inhabited something inside her. We know it can. It did it to me in the cellar, forcing grief that was other than my own. What if it has some hold on Tamsyn. The concerns Jago expressed to you align with that possibility.”
Dashiell rose and strode to her side. “I will meet with her.”
“We will meet with her,” Minerva said. “I shall send her a note asking her to meet me on the path. Where the brothers are tethered. Where Jory died.”
“Why there? Why not Cliff Cottage?”
She noticed he did not suggest Carrek. Wisely so. She doubted Tamsyn would agree to come here.
“I want to keep her separate from the Occupant,” she said. “I want to give it no warning that we intend to come for it. The cellar is where it dwells and where we will seal it, bury it. Let us keep the Occupant and Tamsyn separate.”
“We meet Tamsyn on the headland then. And Jago,” Dashiell said. “He should be there as well. If the outcome of this meeting is less than pleasant, I will not have him accuse me of harming a second of his siblings.”
A silence settled between them. Dashiell came to stand at her back, wrapping his arms around her waist. She leaned into him, absorbing his warmth, the solidity of him.
“If the headland gives us the worst answer,” he said, his voice rough, as though the words pained him. “If it turns out I am what the village has always believed…” He paused. “What then? For us.”
“I know who you are, Dashiell Penrose. I know what sort of man you are,” she said as she turned to face him, her voice soft.
“I have known since you told me about your father, about the boy in the stairwell. About the jackdaw you left behind but never forgot. I have known since Teague.” She paused, swallowed.
“Whatever we discover on that headland, I will be standing beside you when we discover it. That is what I am telling you.”
She laced her fingers through his as the morning light moved across the floor.
His expression eased for a moment, then turned fierce, his emotions unguarded.
She ran her fingertip along the scar at his temple, down the straight line of his nose, to the fullness of his lips.
Then she came up on her toes and kissed him, gentle, soft.
His arms came around her, his mouth slanting on her, his kiss hard and hungry.
Then he swept her in his arms and carried her from the study toward the stairs.
She buried her face in his neck and inhaled the luscious scent of his skin, then licked up the line of muscle to the underside of his jaw. She did not ask where they were going. She already knew.