But she hadn’t. The danger had still found them. Tas-gwyn and Mabena had both been clubbed over the head. Mamm-wynn had suffered an episode that had left her unconscious. Oliver had been shot—though only grazed, praise God.
“Oof,” Emily grunted, walking into Beth’s back while she stood there in a daze of forgiveness.
“Sorry!” Beth took a large step forward to catch her balance and hurried to the table to get out of the way. Not soon enough, though, as evidenced by thuds of books and notebooks hitting the floor. She winced, hoping both that Emily was all right and that nothing she’d dropped was damaged or their order lost.
But the books looked fine, and none of the loose sheets had been in Emily’s charge. Libby and Oliver were already helping to pick it all up, and Telford strode that direction too. Beth decided she could best serve the cause by staying out of the way and laying what remained in her arms out on the table. She moved to its far side to do so, leaving the nearer one open to her friends.
Sheridan had already spread out the things he’d liberated from her and was poring over them. “Ships’ manifests, yes?”
“Mm.” As if he couldn’t tell that easily enough.
He ran a finger down one of the columns. “From the ships . . . must be what Mucknell took, then?”
Was it even a question? “Clearly.”
“All East Indiamen.”
“Hence the mark of the Company in the corner of each sheet.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Was he really talking to her, or just to himself?
He flipped through the stack of manifests, brows hiking upward. “Quite a career he made of it, didn’t he? I say. All these in—well now. How long was he prowling these waters? Must have been . . .” He looked upward, lips moving as he presumably performed some sort of calculation.
Beth rolled her eyes and turned back to the others. He didn’t need her input. And if she were being honest with herself, she didn’t much like watching anyone else thumb through the documents she’d paid such a high price for.
But it wasn’t just her—she had to keep reminding herself of that. They’d all paid a high price.
Well, most of them. So far as she could tell, Lord Sheridan had gotten off quite easily thus far. Come out ahead, in fact.
Oliver moved to her side, sliding his stack onto the table but also leaning closer to her. His hair, as dark a brown as his eyes, brushed his collar. Always in need of a trim.
He looked so much like Mother. The dark Cornish hair, the deep Cornish eyes. Sometimes it hurt to look at him. But the good kind of hurt that made her never want to look away.
He glanced over the table as the others put down their pieces. He’d be noting what she already knew. That it was so much to go through. So much to have gathered. So much of her time spent on this when she’d lied to him and said she was after a holiday. She turned her back on it all and rested against one of the chairs.
He bumped his shoulder into hers. “I know how hard it is for you. To let us all see it.”
Her breath eased out in a whoosh, and she let herself lean into him. The others were all facing the table now, but she stayed facing away, toward the window. “I suppose you’ll say I should have invited you in from the start.”
His laugh was quiet. Just theirs. “Part of me wants to. But if you had, then Benna wouldn’t have brought Libby here. So, all in all, I wouldn’t change your choices.”
For a moment—just one—she let her head rest on his shoulder. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”
“I know.” A beat of silence and then, “That’s a lot of adventure on that table, isn’t it? And to think it was all from right here on our own little islands.”
Her shoulders went tense again. Not at what he said, but at what he didn’t. What he’d be thinking, what he had said so many times before. In his mind, the Scillies held everything anyone could ever need. And here was the proof, gathered by her own hands, that even the adventure she craved could be found here. That she had no reason to look anywhere else for it. No reason ever to stretch her wings. To leave the islands.
Oliver sighed. “Beth . . . for what it’s worth, I don’t believe Sheridan ever meant anyone to get hurt either. Go a little easier on him, will you? He’s our guest.”
“He’s your guest. I—” She cut herself off when a figure passed by the open window. “Senara!”
5
Mrs. Dawe had said she’d arrived home this morning, but Beth had scarcely believed it.
Still didn’t, even when Senara paused at the greeting and walked back to the window with a smile. “Little Beth, still hanging out of windows when she ought to be studying.”
She hadn’t been hanging out of it—but she did so now, with a laugh. “Silly Senara, always after me to mind my manners when she ought to be having fun.” Oh, how good it was to see her. When she was little, she’d always wanted to be just like Senara. So pretty, with that Cornish dark hair Beth had wished she had inherited from Mother instead of Mamm-wynn’s fair coloring. So smart, so beloved by everyone. And older, which was what Beth had wanted most at the age of ten.
The really interesting things in the stories only ever seemed to happen to older girls.
She’d been convinced when Senara left to be a governess that she’d come home married to her employer, like any proper Jane Eyre would do. Except that her employer was quite married already, and his wife was no madwoman locked in an attic and soon to die. And, Senara being as she was, she’d been far too focused on raising the Clifford children all these years to pause to find a likely hero elsewhere.
Beth smiled. “I can’t believe you’re home! How long? A week? Don’t rush off again before we have the chance to spend some time together.” Which could be tricky to find, given the collection of people behind her who she wasn’t about to allow to take over her treasure hunt.
Senara’s glance moved past her into the room, then settled on Beth again. Her eyes were a strange sort of quiet, absent the dancing spark of light usually in them. “I won’t be rushing off.”
No? That was rather odd.
“Ah!”
Beth’s head swiveled back around to see what Sheridan was exclaiming over now. He had a packet of letters in his hand, that was all. She turned back to the out of doors.
Senara gave her a tight smile. “Methinks the lady had better attend her guests for now. But we’ll catch up, Beth. I’ll tell you all about how I lost my position.”
“You what?” But that was unfathomable. There was no better governess to be found in all the world, and Senara loved the Clifford girls like her own. How could she possibly have been sacked?
Senara’s glance darted into the room again. “Later. If not tonight, then tomorrow. I promise.”
Beth frowned, but she could do little else than mutter, “All right.” Something was clearly amiss with her old friend. But now was clearly not the time to discover what.
Senara gave her another tight smile, lifted a hand, and strode away. Beth turned slowly back to the room again.
Oliver was taking charge, as Oliver always did, in that quiet way that tricked you into thinking he was serving you, not commanding you. Assigning each of them something to read, making it sound like a suggestion based on each’s preference. And the others accepted their assignments with smiles and enthusiasm.