Anxiety feasted on her insides again, forcing her to her feet. Enough dillydallying. She wasn’t back for her own sake—she was back for Beth’s. Setting Mrs. Tremayne’s handiwork on the chair she vacated, she snatched up her straw hat and pinned it in place, wishing its brim were a bit wider so she could dip her head and hide beneath it whenever someone too familiar came into view.
And that was an inevitability, even here on St. Mary’s. She didn’t know everyone here as well as she did those on Tresco, but she knew them still. With only two thousand or so residents on all the isles combined, the only strangers she’d ever see here were the tourists.
The moment she stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind her and locking it, Mabena dragged glorious salt air into her lungs. She may not have missed the nosy neighbors while on the mainland, but she had, without a doubt, missed the isles themselves. The perpetual symphony of water lapping shore. The cry of countless birds. The scents of sea and plants and . . . yes, the Polmers’ bakery, which was tantalizingly close to this seaside cottage. Perhaps she’d just slip in and . . .
No. She knew the Polmers too well. And he had always gone there every time his feet touched the soil of St. Mary’s. She’d avoid such places, at least for now.
She’d avoid Hugh Town altogether. Instead of the road into the village, she chose the sandy track that wound its way through the high grasses, hugging the shoreline. It would deliver her to the quay, where any locals with boats would be, ready to charge tourists a modest fee for a little tour or ferrying to another island, or come over for their own purposes. It wouldn’t be difficult, either way, to find someone to take her the rest of the way home.
Maybe Enyon would be here—it was Wednesday, after all. He could well have come over with a fresh supply of painted knickknacks and framed photographs for the tourist shop. Yes, Enyon was likely, and she wouldn’t object to riding home with him. Or with Matty, if it came down to it. Matty went between the islands nearly every day in the summer. Or there’d be a lad or two—too old for school and home already from their morning of fishing—come to get the latest supplies from the ferry. That could be her best option, as the adolescents who clamored for those tasks might not look closely enough to realize they knew her.
She reached the quay, her gaze drifting over her options. Any of the ones she’d named would do, so long as they could take her over now and not make her wait hours on end. She’d just find someone ready to shove off, like whoever was in the little blue sloop far to the right. She picked her way over the smooth rocks and sand, trying to identify the bloke merely by the backside he was presenting her as he leaned over, into his boat, to stow something.
Her lips turned up. A game she and Beth had played a time or two when they were but giggling girls themselves. Though from this distance, all she could tell was that whoever-he-was was a man full-grown, not a slip of a lad yet to come into his breadth. He wore rather standard island garb, though neat enough to make her think he wasn’t a fisherman. Trousers in brown, a crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled up past the elbow—revealing well-muscled forearms, at that—a knitted waistcoat in tan, and a flat cap on his head that wouldn’t be stolen by the first stout breeze. Could be any number of men.
But it wasn’t, she saw as he straightened and turned, once she was too near to find a hiding place. It was, blast her luck, a Wearne.
There was nowhere to hide, unless she wanted to dive into the surf and take shelter behind a boat. Her only option was to pivot on her heel, which she promptly did. Running would only gain his attention—so she would just act like any other half-lost tourist and meander about for a few minutes, until he was on his way. He’d never know her from behind, not with her hair combed flat, pinned neatly, and covered with the hat. Not with this prim gown of dark grey encasing every inch of her. Not with—
“Benna?” A laugh and pounding feet over the rocks and sand. “Mabena Moon!”
Drat and blast. She came to a halt—she’d never outrun him, not in a thousand tides—her hands curling into fists at her sides. For one moment, she allowed herself the indulgence of eyes squeezed shut. But then she dragged in a breath and spun again to face him.
Only Casek, at least. Not Cador. Small blessings. Though they looked enough alike that she couldn’t make herself smile over the difference. “Caz.”
Her greeting, hard as the granite stones of Giant’s Castle, did nothing to wipe the grin from his lips. Ollie had always hated that grin—a smirk, he called it, and he seemed to think Casek only ever donned it to taunt him.
He may have a point, in general. But as Caz strode her way, gaze sweeping over her as if she were half-apparition, she knew the look had nothing to do with Oliver Tremayne. “Mabena Moon,” he said again, this time with disbelief in his tone. “Didn’t expect ever to see you back here.”
She lifted her chin. And fought the sudden urge to pull off her hat and toss it to the waves so she could feel the bolstering strength of the wind in her hair. But she’d just have to settle for righteous anger. “And why, I wonder, is that?”
Casek halted a few feet away, hands raised in truce but that grin still playing at the corners of his mouth. “You can’t blame me for what Cador’s done, can you?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t see why not. You Wearnes were always the all-for-one sort.”
He snorted a laugh. “As if your own family’s any different?”
A lift of her brows was the only answer she’d give him to that one.
He didn’t seem to require any other. Just chuckled, and it sounded like his always had, a deep rumble of surf on stones. “What are you doing home, Benna?”
She debated half a dozen answers before deciding on the one that would seem to have the least to do with her. With a hand waved in the general direction of the cottages, she said, “My employer’s holidaying here. She’s given me the day to see my family, so I thought I’d find someone to take me to Tresco.”
That steady look of his didn’t shift any, though his eyes danced like the light on the waves. “If you think for a moment I’ll believe that you just let your . . . employer decide to come here without exerting any opinion on the matter, then you don’t give me near enough credit. Mabena Moon lets no one else decide something for her.”
She hoped her blink, long and slow, was as disdainful as she meant it to be. “I’m a lady’s maid, Casek Wearne. I’ve no right to exert my opinion.”
Why did anger dance through the light in his eyes? He shook his head. “Why’ve you gone and done such a fool thing, anyway? You’re better than that.”
“Am I?” Perhaps her words came out with every ounce of bitterness she felt—and she let them. “Your brother would disagree.”
“My brother’s a blamed idiot, as everyone well knows.” Casek’s brows could hike upward with every bit as much disdain as hers could. “But as I’m not, I won’t for a moment believe your employer dragged you here against your will. You’d sooner resign whatever position you found than return. ‘Not until the sun falls into the sea’—isn’t that what you said when you stormed off?”
“Might have been.” And she’d meant it at the time. Still would have, if not for that last letter from Beth—and then the cessation of all letters from Beth. Some things were more important than her own mangled heart. “But as I certainly didn’t come home to discuss my business with a Wearne, I’ll just find another way over to Tresco, thank you, and—”