“I didn’t. And I don’t rightly know. Just some chap who asked if I was Elizabeth, recited the first line of that poem there, and then handed it to me after I said the second line.”
“How very odd.” He reached over and rubbed a hand over the pocked surface, then pulled it closer to the side of the table. “We see a lot of old ordnance around here. But not often examples that show water damage. I wonder if it could be from a wreck.”
“A shipwreck?” She leaned closer to examine it, though surely she’d already done so. She seemed utterly oblivious, however, to how close that put her to him. Something of which most society ladies would be keenly aware at all times.
Oliver’s lips twitched a bit in the corners, despite the situation. It was no wonder he hadn’t guessed upon their first meeting that she was the new earl’s sister. He went somber again. “I cannot think why Beth would have been receiving something like this—but that’s your conclusion, I presume? This fellow mistook you for her?”
Another honest, artless shrug. “I don’t know what else to think. They certainly aren’t intended for me, but these men were looking for an Elizabeth.”
“Men—plural?”
She lifted up an envelope and handed it to him. It was a standard size, nothing special about the paper. The only thing of note was the name scrawled across the front. Elizabeth. But that in itself was odd, wasn’t it? “None of her friends call her Elizabeth, only Beth. And any strangers ought to be calling her Miss Tremayne. So why her given name?” He flipped it over. “You didn’t open it?”
“Of course not. It clearly wasn’t intended for me.” She darted a glance toward the brown paper underneath the cannonball. “That one wasn’t marked, and I really had no idea . . . and then it was so heavy.”
His chuckle scratched his throat as if it were made of pebbles. “I don’t blame you, my lady. I would have opened it too.”
Her smile took him back two years to that afternoon garden. It was filled with a dose of sunshine, the wonder of creation, the joy of questions still needing answers—but squeezed around the edges with the creeping vines of sorrow. Once he’d eventually realized with whom he’d had a conversation, he’d assumed the sorrow had been over her father’s recent death. And perhaps it had been.
But if so, she hadn’t yet managed to banish it, because those vines were still there. And while he loved a nice ivy-covered wall as much as the next person, far too often vines were parasitic. Damaging. And sorrow was the same—it could sneak into the cracks of a person’s spirit and make them widen. Steal the nutrients needed. Compromise the foundation. Choke the very life out of a person.
And if there was anything worse than seeing a beautiful, healthy specimen killed by something that should have been removed by a careful gardener, he didn’t know what it would be.
Seemingly of its own volition, his hand lifted, as it would have done had she been any other islander instead of an earl’s sister. It landed on her shoulder, slid the length of her upper arm, and cupped her elbow. Something he’d done countless times with countless parishioners, all of whom had long ago learned not to be startled by the touch.
She clearly didn’t know it. Her eyes widened, her gaze sprang to his. But even then, when colored with surprise, the sorrow was there, twined around her.
“Why are you sad?” The words emerged as a murmur as his fingers found their places around her elbow. One could tell much about a person by their elbow. Whether it was plump or bony, tight or loose, how much tension they carried there. Hers spoke of youth and strength without pretention. Pointed, the muscles leading to and from firm. Covered with simple cotton.
She sucked in a long breath. Sometimes—rarely—people would look away when he asked such questions. Evade the answers they didn’t want to face. Sometimes—rarely—they would laugh away the basic human yearning to share, to be understood. He didn’t think Lady Elizabeth Sinclair would be the type to do either of those things.
And he was right. Her chin sank down a few degrees, but she didn’t break his gaze. “Because . . . I was planted in a garden in which I don’t belong. And I don’t know how to flourish there anymore.”
He shook his head, his fingers tightening around her joint. “You are exactly where you need to be. The only place able to nourish your spirit.”
Her gaze wandered away then, but she wasn’t so much looking from him as looking to something else. Something not in this room at all. Seeing, perhaps, the family that clearly indulged her. The home in which she’d passed so many happy years, discovering new joys even after all this time. Even her presence here, so far from her family, spoke of their love for her—otherwise they never would have let her come and explore.
She let out the breath she’d drawn in, just as slowly. “Maybe. But I can’t stay there forever. Expectations, you know.”
He did. Oh, how he did. They were their own set of vines, left all too often to squeeze and constrict and kill. But they too could be controlled. Trained into safe places. Used to climb instead of pull one down. “I have found that when a transplant is necessary, finding a new place for the plant ought indeed to be undertaken with great care. Sometimes the shock is too great for it, and it won’t survive. But other times . . . other times it will flourish in its new environs far more than it ever did in its old.”
She blinked, her gaze falling to the floor. “How do you ever find such a place though? And how can you be sure you’re not consigning the plant to destruction?”
“There are never such certainties in life.” One never knew when a boat would overturn in a storm and steal one’s parents. When disease would eat away at one’s brother. When madness would steal one’s grandmother’s mind.
When the promise of else would lure one’s sister away.
He gave her elbow a gentle squeeze. “This is why we don’t transplant anything until it’s necessary. But sometimes it is. And so, we learn what we can and make the best decision possible, do the work to the best of our ability, tend it with care. And we pray, trusting that the Master Gardener will bless our efforts.”
She looked at him again, her brows lifted, and, finally, a shaft of welcome amusement bloomed in her eyes and on her lips. “You pray for your plants?”
“Each and every one of them.” Both human and botanical.
She clearly understood the duality, given the sparkle in her eye. “Where exactly is your church, Mr. Tremayne?”
“I like to say all the islands are my cathedral, all the people my parishioners.” He gave her a grin. “I always sense God the best outside in His creation. But if one is being specific, I’m the vicar at St. Nicholas’s in Old Grimsby, on Tresco.” His uncle still lived in the parish house next to it. There’d been no need for him to move, not since Oliver was happy enough to stay at home. And now . . . now home, and its perpetual lease, were his anyway.
Her smile was as sweet as nectar, though the vines hadn’t gone away. “Perhaps one Sunday this summer Moon and I will find ourselves on Tresco in time for services.”
“You are always welcome.” He let his gaze fall back to the envelope he still held. “She’ll box my ears if I go opening her post.”