Page 9 of The Nature of a Lady
“Ghost stories?” She wasn’t sure whether to be curious or simply amused. “I thought he’d outgrown such tales.”
“Apparently not. He was going on this morning about hearing something in Piper’s Hole and seeing lights from his window.” He shook his head, but then he glanced over his shoulder, back toward Hugh Town. “There were rumblings in the village about something, too, though. Shadows on the shore. Dogs barking at all hours. Mr. Gibson, as you’d expect, was quick to launch into tales of pirates and smugglers.”
He would. It softened her. She’d have to make certain she was at his house at teatime so he could tell her a few tales too.
Her feet bumped against a box, and as she looked down at it, she finally thought to wonderwhythe headmaster of Tresco’s school was over on St. Mary’s of a Wednesday afternoon. “Third term isn’t over yet. What are you doing here?”
“Had to pick up the new slates we’d ordered.” His eyes lit in a way she still had a hard time reconciling, even after knowing him from the very day she was born. She never would have taken him for the sort to get excited about academia. And likely he wouldn’t have developed said excitement for it either had he not been in perpetual competition with Oliver. Through their childhood, they’d always been locked in a struggle for the highest marks, the top spot in the class.
Mabena shook her head. “Headmaster.” Not at all what she’d expected of him. Of course, the role she’d imagined for him waspirate, and there weren’t too many of those positions available thesedays. Though if his job brought him to St. Mary’s regularly to fetch items for the school... She tried to keep her tone casual as she asked, “Are you over here often, then?”
“Once or twice a week. Why?”Histone went taunting. “Hoping to see me while you’re here?”
“Right. That’s it.”
He made an exaggerated wince. “Cut to the quick by the lady’s sarcasm, as always. Some things haven’t changed, at least, I see.”
But how to address the things that had without rousing more curiosity than she wanted from him? She went for a chuckle and cast a look back at St. Mary’s. “I thought to run into Beth by now. She’s summering on St. Mary’s, isn’t she?”
His hum wove through the wind, tangled with the sounds of water against hull. “Much to Tremayne’s annoyance.” He smiled as he pronounced that. “Went over sometime in April, I think, so she could have her pick of cottages before the incomers started pouring in.”
The part she knew. What she didn’t was where she wasnow. “She mentioned it in a letter. Said Ollie had promised to let her have her privacy and not so much as step foot on the big island unless it was absolutely necessary.” It was the sort of promise the whole of Tresco must be chuckling over.
Casek certainly did. “That’s right. When last I saw Beth, she seemed properly pleased with that—which I assured her I understood completely. I’d want to escape him at the first opportunity too.”
Mabena snorted a laugh. “And she no doubt was quick to retort.”
“Sheisa Tremayne.”
That she was. “When did you last see her? Do you know which cottage she’d let?” Better to make it sound like she was simply looking for a friend.
His heavy brows drew together. “Must have been ... what, a fortnight ago? Perhaps three weeks. Walking along with a few tourists—wouldn’t even acknowledge me, though that’s no great surprise. She’s taken one of the cottages along the garrison wall, I think.”
She kept her own hum even, relaxed. Cast her gaze out to sea andtried to identify the flash of wings gliding toward Samson. “I’ll have to introduce her to my employer. She’ll enjoy making friends with an earl’s sister, I daresay.”
This time his snort sounded far too derisive. “Just like a Tremayne. Always has thought herself too good for the likes of us normal Scillonians, hasn’t she?”
Mabena shot him another granite look. “No. Only you Wearnes. Because she has sense.”
The familiar barb served to bring his smile back to his lips anyway.
They sailed in silence for a few minutes, her mind whirling with all her questions. Nothing too terrible could have happened to Beth, surely. If it had, everyone would know it and they’d all be talking. And Casek Wearne would be the first to spout off about any failing of a Tremayne. No, her vanishing must have been quiet. But how? Why?
And why hadn’t Mrs. Pepper gone to Oliver for the next rent payment rather than simply reletting the room? That made precious little sense either.
“I’m in too deep, Benna. The watersare closing over my head.”
Her pulse skittered as the words from Beth’s last letter flitted through her head again. Mabena and Beth had gotten themselves trapped in one of the caves once as the tide came in. They’d been tagging along with the older boys, though they oughtn’t to have been. They’d been trying to stay out of sight and ended up too far into a crevice when the tide turned. They’d screamed and cried as the waters rushed into the crevice, certain they’d drown. Would have, had Oliver and Enyon and Cador not rescued them.
It wasn’t an image Beth would use lightly.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
She started at Casek’s voice, blinked to refocus her gaze on him. “Ask what?”
The look he sent her probably did wonders for keeping squirming adolescent boys in line. “About Cador.”
The mere sound of his name in her ears—one that hadn’t filled them for over two years—brought her chin up and made her fingersdig into the splintering wood of her bench. “What could I possibly want to know abouthim?”
