Page 13 of The Nature of a Lady
He’d come. Somehow all her wishing had made him appear. The Botanist. Here, at her door.
But no. Well, yes. The Botanist, to be sure—she’d recognize him anywhere. But obviously it wasn’t her wishing that had conjured him. She gripped the door and gathered together all the facts as they’d been presented to her. They created a picture with many holes, but a few indisputable facts. “Is your sister by chance called Elizabeth?”
5
Oliver couldn’t breathe, try as he might to suck island air into lungs well accustomed to gulping it in after a jog or a row or a quick climb from sea level. But air wouldn’t come, and it had nothing to do with the run from the quay. And everything to do with the fact that the young woman standing in Beth’s doorway wasn’t Beth.
His fingers curled into his palm as he tried to make sense of it. But there was no sense to find. He’d gone about his morning as planned. Visited the Floyds. Puttered in the Abbey Gardens with Mr. Menna. Tried and failed to track down Enyon. Finally made his way home for tea with Mamm-wynn, ready to put everything aside and enjoy a rest.
But his grandmother wouldn’t eat or drink. She just kept worrying the edge of her shawl. And when she looked at him and said, “Beth’s not where she’s supposed to be, Ollie. She’s gone,” the strangest feeling had come over him.
He’d crumbled his biscuit instead of eating it and just stared at her.Mad. That’s what he heard in his ears, in Casek Wearne’s voice. His grandmother was mad.
But he couldn’t quite believe it. Not with those unwritten letters haunting him when they should have been sitting on his desk. Notwith his own uneasiness nipping at him. He’d set his teacup down and forced a smile for Mamm-wynn. “I’ll just check on her, shall I?”
Her eyes hadn’t brightened though. If anything, the clouds in them had flashed lightning. “You won’t find her, lad. But go anyway. See what you can learn.”
He’d jumped into his sloop, the rigging melding with his hands. Straight here to St. Mary’s, to the cottage along the garrison wall that he knew should have housed his sister. His fist upon the door. A hundred excuses ready to crowd their way to his tongue when Beth scowled at him and demanded to know why he’d interrupted her summer after he promised her independence.
But it wasn’t Beth.It wasn’t Beth. It was another young lady of a similar age, with similar golden hair in a similar braid, wearing a similar white blouse and a similar grey skirt. Similar—but not Beth.
“Is your sister by chance called Elizabeth?”The question echoed in his brain long after she finished asking it, too many thoughts knocking about with it for him to make sense of the words.
He knew her, this girl who wasn’t Beth. Sort of. Had met her before, anyway, though in that first second of shock his muddled mind couldn’t think where. All he knew was she wasn’t one of his sister’s friends—if he’d met her in Beth’s company, he would have made a comment on how they looked at once alike but different. But that wasn’t the image elbowing its way to the surface of his mind. No, it was ... a garden.
He shook it off and focused on the here and now. “She’s Elizabeth, yes—though we call her Beth. Are you ... visiting her?” But that made no sense. If she was a friend of Beth’s after all, she wouldn’t have to ask him what her name was.
The girl stepped back from the door and waved him inside. “I think perhaps you’d better come in.”
He hesitated a moment. As a vicar, he visited people all the time when otherwise a proper gentleman shouldn’t; he served as a chaperone more than he needed one. But she probably didn’t know that, so shouldn’t she be unwilling to let a veritable stranger inside?
There was no duplicity in her eyes though, simply concern. For whatever reason, she must not be considering questions of reputation. And so long as he only stayed a few moments, no locals would question his presence here. Hewasa vicar, and one concerned for his sister to boot.
With a nod, he crossed the threshold and looked around, his gaze searching for any hints of Beth. “Forgive me for intruding. And thank you for granting me time to sort through this.” He could feel his brows knitting into what Beth and Morgan had always jokingly referred to as his scholar’s frown—the one he tended to wear when puzzling through a text, trying to solve a tricky problem in arithmetic, or striving to understand the mysteries of God. But try as he might to smooth it out now, it was no good. “My sister...”
“Isn’t here, I’m afraid. Mrs. Pepper made mention of her leaving without a word, so she relet the place. To me. And my maid.”
“What?” Though he’d been trying to catch a glimpse of anything that was Beth’s scattered about, he spun now on his heel to stare at his makeshift hostess. “What do you mean, leaving without a word?”
Wheredid he know her from? It was right there, just behind his worry. If she was traveling with a maid and renting a holiday cottage, she must be a gentleman’s daughter of some sort. But who? Was she the younger sister of one of his friends from school? Or perhaps of the society he very occasionally rubbed elbows with in Cornwall, when duty demanded it?
She closed the door with an artless shrug. Not the sort he often saw gentlewomen give, designed to draw attention, saturated with guile, studied. No, this was simply a shrug. Refreshingly honest. “I really don’t know. But she left her things here. Moon gathered them up—I’m not certain what she did with them, but they’re probably in her room.”
Moon—Mabena. Recognition slammed him hard. The girl from the gardens of Telford Hall, whom he’d met when Mabena’s parents had begged him to go and see if she was all right in her new position—and more accurately, see if he could talk her into coming home.
He hadn’t known, when he stumbled across the girl sprawled in the dirt, that she was the daughter of the house. But he’d pieced it together in the time since, given the subtle information in Mabena’s letters home.
Now he sucked in a breath and executed a quick bow. “Forgive me, Lady Elizabeth. My shock has eclipsed my manners. I didn’t realize you and Moon”—it took every ounce of self-possession to remember to call her that rather than Mabena—“were holidaying here this summer.”
Was that disappointment that sagged her shoulders? Why? She even let out a little breath that rang of frustration as she tucked back a tendril of hair that had slipped free of her braid. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage, sir. You know my name, but I don’t recall ever learning yours.”
No, their hour-long walk through the gardens at Telford Hall hadn’t been cluttered with such unnecessary things. For all he’d known at the time, she could have been a governess, a maid enjoying her half day, or even a daughter of one of the many visiting families. He hadn’t known, when he’d let himself be prodded to Somerset, that he’d be stumbling upon a funeral, and certainly not that he’d find the bereaved daughter covered in garden dirt. Thoughhadhe known at the start, he would have simply assured the Moons that Mabena would get on well enough with her.
He inclined his head. “Forgive me again. Mr. Oliver Tremayne, of Tresco.”
“Tresco?” Her spine snapped straighter, and she darted a look toward the window. And presumably the islands beyond it. “But ... then you’re not one of Bram’s friends. He knows no one here.”
Bram? It was logic more than knowledge that told him she must mean her brother. He shook his head. “No, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Lord Telford, aside from the few minutes he granted me when I arrived at your home at so unfortunate a time.” He, too, motioned, but toward her door. “I’d merely come to make certain Mabena Moon was well. Her parents asked me to make sure she was all right.”
