At the name of the elite finishing school that Mama had forced Libby to attend for a year, Mrs. Wight looked up from her book with bright eyes. “Oh, of course! How do you do, Lady Elizabeth?”
“Very well, thank you. How do you do?”
Before her mother could answer, Lottie had started up again. “Mother and I were just talking about the dinner party we’ve been planning for ages—it’s a week from tomorrow. You must come. Mustn’t she, Mother? She can be Lord Willsworth’s partner. Mother was terribly worried that we hadn’t anyone to pair with him, but this solves everything!”
Her head was starting to spin. A dinner party? No, no, no. This was not what she’d come to the Isles of Scilly for. The very opposite. “Oh, I—”
“Sinclair, did you say?” Mrs. Wight straightened in her chair and narrowed her eyes. “Lady Telford’s daughter, correct? Why, I had a wire from your mother just this morning, dear, saying we ought to find you, that you were holidaying here as well. She heard that we were here from a mutual friend, it seems.”
Libby sighed. Leave it to Mama to discover that even before Libby could, from hundreds of miles away.
Lottie was still grinning. “Where are you staying, Libby? I’ll walk back with you so we can plot and plan. Is that all right, Mother?”
Mrs. Wight was already looking back at her book. “Of course, dear. And you know well she may come to absolutely anything we host—I insist upon it, as a matter of fact.”
“Perfect. Come.” Their elbows still locked together, Lottie spun them around and started them back the way from which Libby had come. “This direction, I assume?”
“Yes.” She didn’t really want to tell Charlotte Wight where she was staying. She’d learned the mistake of that when she’d shown Lottie her room at the Château. Once Lottie knew where to find her, there was never any guarantee of peace within the walls. But what help was there for it? Mama would no doubt wire Mrs. Wight the information if Libby didn’t supply it herself. “One of the cottages along the garrison wall.”
“They’re sweet, aren’t they? I’ve walked this way and was admiring them. We rented those three there. I must say, I’m highly enjoying the whole island—or what we’ve seen of it. We’ve been here only a week. We’d been in London since the new year, but Mother was tiring of it, and Father said there was as much to be accomplished here as there.” She giggled, bumping their arms together. “He meant Mr. Bryant. We’d been introduced in late February, but he’d already been planning to summer here. Quite an avid sailor, you see, but he doesn’t much like the motorized versions his set has taken to racing.”
Libby was tempted to pray for an escape, though she wasn’t quite sure the Lord would respect such a prayer. Why, oh why, hadn’t Lottie already found another friend whose ear she could chatter numb?
“Do you know Lady Emily Scofield?”
Suspecting she’d missed whatever sentence or two connected the current question to the talk of sailing, Libby shook her head. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she was fairly certain she hadn’t made her acquaintance.
“Oh, I suppose you didn’t meet her at the Château, since you only stayed a year. She came in the next year, and our paths have crossed a few times in London since then. Great patrons of the British Museum, the Scofields—and she’s very pretty, and of course well dowried, so I expect she’ll land whomever she fancies. But at any rate, she has another friend from a finishing school she attended before she came to Switzerland who’s actually from here. Well, not here, St. Mary’s. But here, the Scillies. She told me I ought to make her acquaintance, but I’ve had quite a time of it. Miss Beth Tremayne.”
Though Libby’s attention had wandered a bit through the initial talk, Beth’s name drew her back with a jolt.
Which Lottie clearly noted, given that she hushed for half a second and turned her frank blue eyes on her. “Do you know her?”
“I’ve . . . met her brother.” Twice, she nearly said.
“No! Which one?”
Libby’s brows knotted. Had Mr. Tremayne mentioned a brother Wednesday night? Yes, that was right. One named Morgan, who had played pirate prince and princess with him and Beth. “Mr. Oliver Tremayne. The clergyman.” The Botanist. The one who could pull her deepest heart to the surface with one well-aimed question and then look straight to her very soul.
Lottie nodded. “The younger. Well, now the only one. The older one passed away a few years ago, I’m told, but I didn’t know when you may have met him. Quite a curious family.”
She oughtn’t to encourage the gossip. She could hear Mabena in her head even now, scowling over the audacity of a stranger thinking she knew anything about an islander she’d never even met. And it took only a syllable to get Lottie really going. But curiosity burned like the sun on the sand, making an “Oh?” emerge before she could stop it.
Lottie leaned closer. “They’ve an estate in Cornwall, you know—not very large, but well enough situated that the Tremaynes have always been somewhat accepted in society, when they choose to enter it. But they haven’t often, not for generations. They’ve been here instead. From what Emily said that Beth told her, once upon a time they had a connection with the Lord Proprietor himself. Or was it the Duke of Cornwall? At any rate, their family was granted a permanent lease of a plot of land near the Tresco abbey, and ever since then, they’ve been here more than on their actual estate on the mainland.”
While Lottie paused for breath, Libby said, “What’s so odd about that?” She certainly couldn’t blame them for staying on these beautiful islands.
Her friend gave her a look of complete shock. “They’ve scarcely been to London in decades! The current Mr. Tremayne’s father, you see, didn’t marry a gentleman’s daughter—he married an islander. Which was frowned upon by fashionable society.”
Lottie walked as fast as she talked, and already Libby could see the familiar lines of the garrison wall. “I don’t see why that’s all that curious either. Such things happen.”
“Not outside the pages of one of Mother’s novels—not very often, anyway. But regardless, he married this local girl, and they had three children. Morgan was the eldest son, then the one you met, Oliver. And Beth was the youngest. Then, a few years ago, the parents were killed when a storm came up suddenly and caught them out at sea. Their boat went down.”
The wind snatched the breath right from Libby’s lungs. “No!” So that’s what Mrs. Pepper had meant when she mentioned how Beth wasn’t like their parents. And now she was missing, after last being seen climbing into her boat? Oh, Mr. Tremayne must be an absolute wreck of worry, though he’d done an admirable job holding himself together.
Lottie nodded. “The older brother is a bit of a mystery, Emily said. Beth would never talk much of him, and he never once stepped foot on their estate in Cornwall, despite being the heir. He always sent the younger in his place.” She gave an exaggerated shiver though the sun was warm and the story far from spooky. “I asked around a bit, and there’s talk of him having been deformed. Like Quasimodo, perhaps. His family was clearly ashamed of him.”