Libby tamped down a grin of her own. The salt air seemed to have made Mabena more sarcastic. Perhaps she shouldn’t have found it so entertaining.
“Anything I can help you with?” Oliver asked.
Mabena gave him a withering look. “Only if you happen to have a pearl necklace in your pocket.”
His face went blank for a moment, then a strange look flitted over it. “Actually . . .” He reached for his satchel, opened it, and fished around in the interior pouch.
Coming up with, of all things, a pearl-and-gold necklace.
Mabena just stared at it. “And you’re carrying your grandmother’s necklace around with you because . . . ?”
“She forced it on me before I left. Said—well, frankly, she said, ‘Libby needs it.’”
“How could she have known that?” The oddity made it far more intriguing than it would have been otherwise. Libby stepped closer to get a better look.
It was prettier than hers, honestly. Rather than a simple string of pearls, this one was a double strand, choker length. In the middle, there was a cameo—only, instead of the expected woman’s profile, an eight-petaled flower had been carved. Perhaps a Dryas octopetala.
But she couldn’t accept. All Mama’s lessons in etiquette had at least taught her that much. “It’s lovely—and lovelier still of Mamm-wynn. But I can’t—”
“Of course you can. It will make her happy to know you did so.” Rather than hand it to Mabena, Oliver turned to her himself, moving behind her and draping the necklace into place in one swift move. “For Mamm-wynn, my lady.”
She touched a finger to the cameo while he fastened it in place, afraid to move any more than that lest . . . lest . . . well, lest she do something wrong somehow. “All right. Anything for Mamm-wynn.” Mama never even needed to know.
His fingers were warm as they grazed her skin, probably making her neck and cheeks flush again. His hand moved from her neck to her satin-encased elbow as he stepped around her again. “Would you like me to walk you to the Wights’ cottage?”
Yes! She nearly shouted it. Anything to keep his hand on her elbow a little longer, to be at his side a bit more, to . . . “No, thank you. Though I thank you.” She was such a dunce. A dunce who needed to clear her head of this lovely, silly haze he filled it with before she stepped foot in the Wights’ cottage and was introduced to the viscount and his cousin. She certainly didn’t want to arrive all moon-eyed and have them think it was over them.
Though given the shadow that flashed in his eyes, he probably thought her quick refusal was because she didn’t want to be seen with him in said company.
She ought to say something to make it clear that wasn’t at all the case. But she had no idea how to say as much without making more a ninny of herself than she already had.
“Here.” Mabena broke the tension by coming toward her with Mamm-wynn’s shawl in hand and placing it around her. “A perfect complement.”
The shawl was a heather purple, light and misty, the dress a deeper, royal hue. Even Libby’s eye, untrained in fashion, found the contrast pleasing. She smiled. “Are you certain I can’t just stay at home and pretend I forgot it was Saturday?”
“Go.” Mabena gave her a helpful push toward the door. “That way you can write to your mother tomorrow telling her you did so, and she’ll be pleased enough that perhaps she’ll not insist on other engagements.”
That was an optimistic thought. “All right. Solve a few mysteries while I’m out.”
She stole one last glance at Oliver—for fortification, that was all—and then let herself out into the warm, fragrant evening. It felt odd to be walking to a dinner party in this getup, and no doubt it would be a terrible idea to take her usual path through the sand, on the beach. So, she stuck to the main road, telling herself her lazy pace was for the sake of her shoes and not because she didn’t really care when she arrived.
Halfway there, a sweet, exotic scent caught her nose, bringing her to a halt. Jasmine? They had a potted variety in the arboretum at home, but with the Scillies’ subtropical climate, it was possible—yes! She spotted the distinctive white flowers growing along the backside of a garden fence, their long-throated trumpets releasing their perfume over the entire area.
Libby scurried over to them, breathing deeply as she went. She adored the Cestrum nocturnum. It was one of the strongest-scented plants to be found, and she’d always admired it for withholding its fragrance during the day and releasing it only at night. It seemed so secretive, so reserved. Only for those who truly loved it, not just for the casual, daytime passerby.
She reached for her pocket, for the pencil and miniature notebook she always carried, before realizing she was in an evening gown. “Dash it.” And she’d almost kneeled down there in the road to better inspect the blooms too.
Where was Bram to shout at her when she needed him? She relied on her brother to remind her of what she was wearing on such occasions. Her lips quirked up at the thought.
“You’re late, Elizabeth.”
She jumped, spun, and collided with a solid figure. A solid figure who shoved her unceremoniously back around to face the jasmine, holding her in place with iron grips on both her upper arms.
“Don’t be a fool. You know the rules. Eyes forward.”
To keep from seeing him? A shiver coursed through her, her eyes darting every which way in search of help. She could scream. There were undoubtedly people around within earshot.
But at the moment, he presented no threat. Unless one counted the way his fingers dug painfully into her arm.
“I’m not Elizabeth Tremayne.”
Mabena would probably kick her for saying so. But she didn’t know whatever rules this man thought she did, and she had a bad feeling she could pay for that ignorance.
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’t know, 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.”