Clarissa gave another horrible retch. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open.
“Better get Kittery,” someone called. “And Reverend Norris,” added another voice.
“No. Oh, please, no,” Sarah pleaded, although she was not sure with whom. “I want to take her home.”
The brawny forearms of Mr. Beals came into view as he bent to lift her, but then another shadow fell across the sand. “I’ll do it,” St. John pronounced. “Give her to me.”
Primrose Cottage was just a stone’s throw away, but from this end of the beach it meant climbing a steep set of rickety stairs. Sarah followed St. John as he hurried up them, apparently without effort—and without his boots, she realized, as his wet, stocking-clad legs rose above her. Half of Haverhythe was on their heels, but she was aware of only what lay ahead.
Although she had come the long way around, Mrs. Potts had the start of them and was there first, standing in the open doorway like some wrathful guardian angel, allowing only St. John, Sarah, and Clarissa to pass. “Make yourselves useful,” she charged, waving off everyone who had followed. Dimly, Sarah remembered that Mrs. Potts knew well what it felt like to be under the watchful eye of the village when a loved one had been drawn into the arms of the sea.
Once inside the house, Sarah snatched at her daughter. “Is she—is she—?”
Clarissa gave another listless, waterlogged cough, and Sarah felt tears of relief spring to her eyes.
“She’s fighting, Sarah,” St. John said, impatience edging his voice. “But she’s not out of the woods. Mrs. Potts, fetch some towels. Get her out of this dress, now,” he ordered as he carried Clarissa into the sitting room and knelt to lay her on the floor by the hearth. Sarah sank beside her daughter and began fumbling with the buttons of Clarissa’s dress, her fingers numb with shock.
As soon as the fireplace had flickered to life, St. John turned back to Sarah. “Have you any smelling salts?”
She raised bewildered eyes. “Any—? No, I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head before suddenly remembering something from the life she had shut up and put away so long ago. “Wait!” She scrambled to her feet and raced up the stairs to her room, her wet hems slapping against the treads. Fishing the chain and key from her bodice, she opened her trunk, rummaged through its contents, and unearthed a long-forgotten reticule, and inside it, a small vial of hartshorn.
She hurried back to the sitting room and found St. John running practiced fingers down Clarissa’s limbs. “I don’t think any bones are broken, and I don’t feel any lumps on her head. But she’s bound to have some bruises after a fall like that. Now, let’s see if we can’t wake her up a bit more.”
As soon as Sarah waved the smelling salts beneath her nose, Clarissa began to cough and sputter with renewed vigor. Her eyelids fluttered again, but this time they forced their way open a bit and her bloodshot eyes latched first onto St. John.
“’Rissa splash,” she managed to croak before her eyes drooped closed again.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw Mrs. Potts sink into the rocking chair, heedless of the pile of linen that fell from her arms to the floor. “Thank the Lord,” the woman breathed.
“Dry her off, gently,” St. John instructed, standing. “Then wrap her up well and I’ll carry her to bed. Kittery should be on his way.”
Sarah looked up at him. Had it really been just three days since she had first seen him standing there, dripping onto her hearth, and wished him at the devil?
“Thank you,” she whispered. But the words were not enough. They never could be. “Thank you.”
* * *
When the apothecary arrived, St. John stepped from Clarissa’s cramped room under the eaves and onto the narrow landing, thankful once again to be standing upright. He had wanted to hear the other man’s verdict, for he knew that despite the child’s improving appearance, she might still have sustained significant and as yet unseen injuries from such a fall. But he also knew that compared to the comfort supplied by Sarah and Mrs. Potts, his own presence was quite inconsequential.
After a moment, the door opened again and Mrs. Potts joined him, relief easing the creases of her face. “He says she’s not bad hurt. It’s a miracle.”
He expelled the breath he had not known he was holding. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
The words seemed to draw her full attention to him for the first time. “Mercy, Lieutenant Fairfax,” she gasped, using the rank he seemed recently to have acquired, a detail no doubt added to his tale by some well-meaning member of the village who had once heard Mrs. Fairfax’s dead husband described as an officer. “You’ll catch your death.”
He doubted that. With the addition of a roaring fire to the warm autumn day, the small house was almost stifling. But he was beginning to be cognizant of certain discomforts.
“I’ll fetch the towels,” she insisted and shuffled down the steps.
In a moment she was back and thrust into his arms the pile of linen that had lain discarded in a heap by the hearth, still damp from Clarissa’s hair and skin. “Here,” she said, opening the other door on the landing and gesturing him inside. “You take off them wet things, and I’ll see if there ain’t somethin’ o’ my man’s left that’ll serve while yours dry.”
He found himself in another slant-ceilinged room, not much larger than the other and even more crowded by the presence of a bed, a washstand, a small table, and a trunk, the contents of which were spilling onto the floor. Everything else was neat as a pin.
It could only be Sarah’s room.
Stripping gratefully out of his sodden clothes, he hesitated for a moment over his drawers before adding them to the pile. He rubbed himself briskly head to toe with the rough towels before choosing the largest of them to wrap around his waist and looking about the room for a comb. Seeing nothing on the washstand, he turned to the table beside the bed, whose square top held just a lamp and two small volumes: a Book of Common Prayer and another, thinner book with tooled green leather bindings.
He picked up the latter and thumbed through it absently. It was a miscellany, not old but obviously well-loved, and since he had seen no other book in the house, he could imagine it received more than its share of attention. A handful of extracts, some poems, an engraving or two—nothing especially fine, but an expensive book, nonetheless. On the flyleaf someone had written “For my dearest love” and signed the inscription with the initials E.N.
E.N.? An unwelcome prickle of jealousy traveled along his spine before he realized that the book likely belonged to Sarah’s friend, Mrs. Norris.
Sarah had been forced to borrow even the most innocent of pleasures, it seemed.
“Oh!”
He let the cover of the book fall back into its place and turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway. Her eyes darted about the room as if looking for a safe place to rest, and the rosiness that stained her cheeks was creeping toward her hairline.
“My apologies,” he said. “I was—”
“I do beg your pardon, my lord,” she spoke over him, ducking her head.
“What did Mr. Kittery say?” he asked, trying—as much as was possible for an almost-naked man standing in the bedchamber of his estranged wife—to restore some semblance of normalcy to the situation.
“He believes she will make a full recovery. Her breathing is much stronger, and she’s resting comfortably now. But,” she said, busying herself with straightening a towel on the washstand, “he said she’ll be sore all over, so he gave me some liniment to apply night and morning.”
He might have guessed as much. Even now, its sharp scent on her hands overpowered the soft floral fragrance he had come over the last few days to associate with Sarah.
“She’s likely to have some bruising, too. But even if she’s uncomfortable, do not give her laudanum. It slows the breathing, and her lungs need to work, to expel the water they took in.”
“All right,” Sarah agreed in a small voice. “Let me thank you again for saving her,”
she said after another awkward moment had passed, chancing a glance in his direction before dropping her eyes to the floor at her feet.
“I believe I did what any man—any human being—would have done, who was able.”
“But how many would be able? Where did you learn to swim like that?”
“Lynscombe is surrounded by water. It backs up to the Channel, and in the park, there is a wonderful lake, deep and still.” St. John smiled at the memory. “You shall—” Abruptly, he stopped himself. Had he just been about to speak as if she would see his childhood home someday?
It did not seem to matter if he had been so rash, for Sarah still looked as if she were not really listening. Her eyes had fallen on the trunk and its disheveled contents. Abruptly, she dropped to her knees, tucked the scattered items back inside it, and closed the lid, twisting the small key in its lock. Then she stood again, rubbing the key between her fingers like a sort of talisman.
Almost as if she had something to hide.
It was beyond churlish to press her now. But he knew he would regret it if he hesitated. She might remove whatever it was the trunk held that she so obviously did not want him to see, and he would always wonder whether he had missed the chance to recover some piece of the evidence he had come all this way to find, the evidence that would set him free from his father’s mistakes at last.
What could he possibly have to lose?
Taking a step closer to her, St. John reached out and covered her hands with his own. The fragile gold chain on which she wore the key dangled between their clasped hands. “Tell me, Sarah—what secrets are you guarding with that little key?”
At last, she looked up and met his eyes. “No secrets. Just—”
The door swung inward, admitting Mrs. Potts, who carried an armful of well-worn clothes. “Best I could find,” she announced, moving to deposit them on the bed. “Young Colin brought your boots up from the quay. They’re standin’ inside the front door.”
St. John and Sarah sprang apart, and Mrs. Potts started, as if she had not realized Sarah was in the room. “Ooh, beggin’ your pardon, mum. I’ll just check on the wee one, shall I?” she asked even as she was backing out the door.
Sarah whirled, about to follow hard on her heels, then hesitated. “Here,” she said to him, stretching out the hand that held the key. “I have nothing to hide.”
He raised a hand to take it from her, and key and chain spilled from her fingers onto his open palm. After a searching look, Sarah turned and walked out the door, closing it behind her without saying a word.
Reluctantly, he closed his fingers around the key, feeling the metal warmed by her hand.
Perhaps he had something to lose, after all.
He busied himself with dressing first, a part of him hoping that she would return and demand the key back before he had a chance to open the trunk. But no such reprieve was granted him. Clad in the shirt and breeches of the late Mr. Potts—a man half a head shorter and a stone or two heavier, judging by the fit of the clothes—St. John dropped to one knee in front of the trunk, inserted the key in the lock, and opened it.
At first glance it contained nothing but a scant few items of clothing—a nightgown, a spare shift, and two vaguely familiar items far too fine for Haverhythe: a blue-green gown, and a heavy silk shawl woven with a pattern of peacock feathers. Surely Sarah had not fled London with so little to her name. What had become of the rest of her things? And why had these particular items been spared?
Digging deeper, he found a beaded reticule, now empty, which had no doubt contained the vial of smelling salts she had gone to fetch and was the reason for the trunk being open and in disarray when he had entered the room.
At the very bottom lay a thin bundle of letters tied together with ribbon. His hand hovered over them for a moment. She had told him she had cut herself off from family, so who had been writing to her? Were they love letters from Brice?
He slid one from the bundle and unfolded it just far enough to read the salutation. But what he saw defied his every expectation.
Enclosed find £5, per our understanding. A.S.
Amelia Sutliffe. His stepmother’s hand. He turned the note over and looked at the direction: “S.P.,” to be claimed at the post office in Upper Haverhythe, several miles away. His father had even franked it—ignorant of its contents, St. John did not doubt.
He thumbed through them all, glancing at the amounts. A few pounds here, a few more there. Once as much as twenty, in a note whose date suggested it had been sent shortly after Sarah’s supposed death. And then he counted them. Seven such notes. His stepmother had been a poor correspondent.
And that was it. All the trunk contained. No sapphire necklace. No pile of banknotes. No clandestine correspondence between his wife and her lover.
Just a handful of grudging gift notes that totaled a mere fraction of the sum recorded on the memorandum he had found in his stepmother’s escritoire. Although he could think of no reason for the discrepancy, he was beginning to suspect which was true and which false.
If extortion had been Sarah’s game, she had played it very poorly.
He supposed he ought to feel disappointment, but what he felt foremost was disgust—with his stepmother, certainly, but mostly with himself. He began to replace the items in the trunk when he spied something small and dark lying on the bottom. A miniature case, he realized when he brought it into the open. Hesitantly, he flicked open the catch.
His own face looked up at him, unscarred and considerably younger, but full of self-assurance and pride. Good God, he hoped what he had seen in the years since it was painted had wiped at least some of that supercilious smirk off his face.
He recognized the picture as one that had been commissioned years ago; how it had come into Sarah’s possession he could only guess. He supposed his stepmother had given it to her as some sentimental gesture of womanly affection, a feeling he had had every reason to believe Sarah did not share.
But even if she had had it thrust upon her, obviously it had not been sitting untouched at the bottom of her trunk for three years. The leather case was worn in places, the clasp loose with repeated opening and closing.
Restoring the contents of the trunk as neatly as he could, he closed the lid, left the key in the latch, and then made his way out of the house as quietly as a creaking staircase and squeaking hinges would allow. It was just dusk, but the strand and the streets of Haverhythe were deserted as he made his way back to the Blue Herring.
As he walked he tried to imagine his stepmother lavishing such attention on a picture, but it seemed unlikely, when she could have looked at the original almost any time she desired.
But he had no difficulty picturing Sarah’s slender hands gripping the small circle of leather as tightly as they had held the key. What he couldn’t understand was why.
What had she been thinking as she had done so?
Chapter 10
Sarah leaned back into the pillow, the silken sheets cool against her bare skin. A pair of candles on the bedside table cast a flickering light across St. John’s broad, bronzed shoulders. As he loomed above her, his eyes, heavy-lidded with desire, met her own.
“There will be a little pain at first, my darling,” he murmured, his lips brushing against her ear as the weight of one muscled thigh pressed between her legs, urging her to open to him. “But it will give way to pleasure.”
He snagged both her wrists in one of his hands and drew her arms over her head, rendering her helpless to resist the torture of languorous kisses that spread their heat ever further down her body. As he moved against her, her heart began to race. Soon her breath was coming in sharp little pants and she began to feel slightly light-headed.
Suddenly, she could not breathe at all. Breaking from St. John’s seductive gaze, she glanced down and saw the heavy collar of sapphires at her neck. St. John’s long, tanned fingers were tangled in the necklace, drawing it tighter and tighter against her throat. Bright beads of blood appeared as
the gold filigree pierced her pale skin.
She was choking, sputtering, struggling fruitlessly against him as he strangled her, an unholy gleam in his pale eyes . . .
“Mama!”
Sarah jerked herself awake. Clarissa stirred fretfully in her narrow bed and then gave a feeble cough and rasped out, “Hungry.”
Rising stiffly from her chair, Sarah bent over her daughter and swept her hand across the child’s brow, finding it considerably cooler than her own. “Of course, dear one. I shan’t be a moment.”
Hunger was a good sign, she told herself as she gathered up the woolen shawl that lay puddled on the floor. The candle had long since guttered, but she could make her way across the room by the gray light that crept in through the rain-spattered window. Nearly dawn.
She opened the door only to find Mrs. Potts on the other side of it, bearing a tray.
“Your timing is impeccable.” Sarah smiled. “Clarissa is awake, and she says she’s hungry.”
“Lord bless us, of course she is, poor thing!” Mrs. Potts declared, sweeping into the room and depositing the tray beside Clarissa’s bed. “Here’s broth, and a bit of bread and milk, and even a spoonful of yesterday’s pudding to tempt you,” she cooed as she perched beside the child. “And tea for you, mum,” she added, without taking her eyes from her charge.
Sarah rolled her head, trying to ease the kink in her neck caused by falling asleep in the old rocking chair. “Tha-a-ank you,” she said, ineffectually stifling a yawn.
“Why don’t you go and have a lie-down? I’ll sit with the wee one for a spell.”
She glanced at Clarissa, who was happily eating spoonful after spoonful of bread and milk, just as fast as Mrs. Potts could offer it. It seemed impossible to believe that just a few hours past, the girl had been hauled from the water, near death. But Mr. Kittery had assured her that children often made quick recoveries, even from the most horrific accidents. Even so, Sarah did not think she could drag herself away from the child’s bedside.
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