Page 51 of The Nature of a Lady
He snorted an unamused laugh, and he was standing so close that the gust of his breath collided with her hair.
He was tall, then. She stood at five-six without shoes, and if one factored in the heels of her slippers and the height of the curls Mabena had fashioned with too much care, for his nose to be right there, he had to be at least six foot. Perhaps closer to six-two.
“Nice try,” he muttered into her hair. “But I’ve seen no other pretty blondes walking from the garrison cottage to the Wights’ this evening at the precise time we were to meet.Elizabeth.”
Think, Libby. Think. Her stomach felt so sick she’d have liked to curl into a ball. Why would Beth Tremayne have arranged a meeting with whomever this was? She didn’t know,couldn’tknow, and didn’t have enough information to pretend she did. But he obviously wasn’t going to believe her claim of ignorance. “What do you want, exactly?”
“What game are you playing, girl?” His fingers bit harder. “Whatever it is, drop it before it gets someone else killed.”
Killed?Her breath tangled with itself in her throat, nearly choking her. The moon, newly risen even though the sun’s last light hadn’t yet been claimed by the sea, winked at her in the pane of the window of the jasmine’s building.
A reflection. The little house was dark inside, nothing to hinder that glint. She shifted a bit, saw her own wavering form, almost. Barely. She needed to shift them a little more if she meant to get any kind of glimpse of the man. “Sorry,” she whispered, for lack of anything more insightful. Then a bolt of inspiration struck. “The last delivery didn’t come. It was pouring with rain on Wednesday. I was only trying to make sure that wasn’t what you needed just now.”
The man growled into her ear and tugged her arms a bit toward her back, straining both her shoulders and her gown’s beading. “I don’t know or care about any deliveries. You said you could find it—the silver. Will they have to send their own people in?”
The way he said it—their own people—brought to mind images of ruffians and lowlifes and criminals to rival any of the buccaneers in Mr. Gibson’s stories. And who werethey? Libby told her throat to let her swallow, told her heart to calm, told her stomach to ease.
They didn’t listen. “No,” she croaked out, wishing she knew what he was talking about. At least if she knew, she could fight it. Argue. Do something other than stand here, wondering if Beth’s secrets were going to get her hurt or killed. “But I don’thavethe silver. Not yet.” That much was certainly true. She didn’t have it, and unless whatever silver he wanted had been among the things Beth had taken with her when she vanished, she didn’t either.
The manifests—the letter that had been with them. That had said something about silver—pirate treasure. Was that what this was about?
He jerked her arms harder, making her squeak a protest before she could stop herself, making a stitch snap somewhere in her shoulder, making her head go light with the scent of jasmine.
“Are you trying to cross them?”
“No! I wouldn’t. I just don’t—I don’thaveit!”
“Thengetit. One week.”
A week? How in the world were they to put all this together in a week when the last three days had netted them nothing but questions without answers? “I need more than that. A month.” It surely wasn’t unreasonable. Beth had been planning on spending the whole summer here. Perhaps that was how long she anticipated whatever-this-was taking.
The added pressure against her arms said otherwise. “Two weeks, and no more. Bring it to the large cave at midnight that Sunday. Am I clear?”
He pressed still harder, leaving her little choice but to eke out a pain-ridden “Yes!” She tried to jerk away, needing relief, and managed only to pivot them both a few degrees.
A few helpful degrees. Her gaze flew to the windowpane, and now she could see herself in partial profile—and at least a bit of the man behind her.
Tall, yes. Thin. He wore the garb of a typical tourist—pullover cardigan, white collar beneath it, straw boater in a light shade. Hair dark enough that it blended with the night-heavy glass, and features too much in shadow to be discernible, other than a long, patrician nose.
Enough, perhaps, that she would recognize him if she saw him again.
He shoved her into the fence and its heady bouquet. “Count to thirty before you so much asthinkabout turning around.”
He was gone, the release of her arms and the pounding of his steps tripping over each other in her awareness. She indulged in a whimper into the white trumpets, rotating her aching shoulders until convinced he’d not done permanent damage.
She didn’t count. But she did wait until the last of his footfalls had faded from her hearing before she pushed herself away from the fence. Her shoes were probably dirty now, for which Mabena would scold her. Worse, her hands were shaking.
She stepped back onto the road and turned toward her cottage. Never mind the dinner party and Lottie Wight and viscounts and—wait.
“I’ve seen no other pretty blondes walking from the garrison cottage to the Wights’ this evening.”
HadBethbeen planning to go to the Wights’? How, when Lottie said she’d never met her? Or was she lying—was she somehow involved in this too?
That couldn’t be, could it?
She spun to her original path. None of this made any sense. But if she meant to answer that question, she couldn’t do it from home, with Mabena and Oliver and comfort. She had to go where that man knew she was going. Where he thought Beth was going. And try to determine why.
Music spilled out into the night long before she neared the cluster of cottages the Wights had let. They must have a gramophone playing as loudly as it would go. Or not, she saw as she drew near enough to see the paper lanterns strung between the cottages and the area set up between. They’d hired a quartet, either from somewhere on the islands or brought over on the ferry.
