His valet slipped to his side even now, face somber. “My lord, I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were sitting with Miss Tremayne. But if you have a moment, you’ll be interested in what my cousin wanted.”
Sheridan could hear Mamm-wynn’s silver bells of laughter coming from the drawing room where Beth was, so he knew he wouldn’t be missed for another minute or two. He nodded. Ainsley briefed him quickly on the conversation from the Gardens and what he’d said.
Sheridan’s lips twitched up. “Lying. Tsk-tsk. What would Ainsley say?”
Ainsley slanted him an unamused look. “Feeding someone false information in order to prevent a crime is hardly lying.”
He had to chuckle. “Stroke of genius, really. Send them off every which way chasing false leads while Beth recovers—not that we knew that part at the time. That she’d have to recover. But God did, clearly. Quite amazing how He’s working all this out.”
That Ainsley granted with an inclined head. “Perhaps this evening we can work out the details we’d like them to chase.” He glanced over his shoulder at the front door, behind which clattering footsteps could be heard approaching. Tremayne and Telly coming back, no doubt.
Sheridan nodded. “I’ll be thinking on it.”
Ainsley nodded, too, and then opened the door, rain and wind and fellows blowing inside with the dusk. Sheridan grinned. “Weather’s still lovely, I see.”
Tremayne greeted him with a fleeting smile. “I think I saw the clouds breaking up on the horizon.”
Telford snorted. “I think he saw his own wishful thinking. But his uncle’s big toe predicted an end to the storms, so I’m not permitted to argue.” Despite his gruff tone, Telly looked genuinely amused. “We had some success, though.” He nodded a thanks to Ainsley, who closed the door behind them again. Who knew he’d make such a fine butler?
“Excellent. You can update us all at once. Mamm-wynn is sitting with Beth.” Sheridan had to assume the success wasn’t having apprehended and arrested Scofield the Snake or they both would have been far more excited, but even so. He turned toward the drawing room.
And had to rub damp palms over his trouser legs. The doctor hadn’t given Beth any mind-and-heart altering medications, had he? To account for her letting him kiss her? He’d still been too foggy-brained to consider that question when he’d rejoined her after their kiss for tea, but now . . . well, she’d had at least fifteen minutes out of his company to come to regret her apology. And she had food in her stomach now. If she’d just been under the influence of opiates and hunger, she might get those visual daggers back out and slice him to ribbons.
But when he stepped into the room, she greeted him with a smile. Not exactly a bright one, but its warmth made up for its tightness. And while it was possible he was imagining things, he was quite sure the light in her eyes shifted, lost a bit of that glow, when she looked from him to her brother and Telford, who came in behind him.
“Did you find the Naiad?”
He could hardly blame her for asking about her sloop first and foremost. He’d been sick at the thought of it being stolen from her, even as he also recognized that it would give them an actual crime to pin on Scofield. Boat thieving was an arrestable offense, even for an earl’s son.
Oliver nodded. “In the quay at St. Mary’s. No harm done to it. I left it for now, but Jacob and Pat said they’d bring it over on their way out in the morning.”
Sheridan didn’t know who Jacob and Pat were, but Beth didn’t seem to mind the thought of them sailing her sloop. “That’s kind of them,” she said.
Mamm-wynn laughed. “You know no one ever refuses Ollie a favor.”
Very true, so far as he had seen. And it brought another tight smile to Beth’s lips. “I do indeed. What of Scofield, then? He didn’t go to Emily’s flat, did he?”
They both shook their head as they chose chairs. Oliver let out a long sigh. “His first stop was the authorities, where he reported that you’d been in an accident . . . on Annet.”
Beth scowled. “Annet?”
“Well, ‘that little island to the west of St. Agnes’ is what he told them. Gugh, as you know, being to the east. A mistake, they called it, when I told them where you really were.”
“And he was ‘clearly distressed,’” Telford added in a decent imitation of a Cornish accent.
Oliver looked about as convinced of that as Telly had sounded, and as Sheridan felt. “Right. So distressed that he went immediately to the ferry and was gone before we even would have had you home.”
Beth gusted out a painful-sounding sigh. “So, it’s my word against his when it comes to his intentions. The water in the pit will have washed away the evidence Sheridan saw of obvious digging around the slab—or they’d chalk it up to normal excavation. And he neither stole my boat nor, in the eyes of the authorities, left me for dead. And being so clearly distressed, they’ll overlook the fact that he had a jack a few feet away and didn’t see fit to get it to help me.”
“And no one seems to think anything of the fact that he hired a few chaps to tear down his tent and stow all those supplies either.” Telford’s nostrils flared in obvious disapproval. “Had the presence of mind for that, but no one batted an eye.”
“But the joke’s on him, isn’t it? We found you.” Oliver moved his smile from Beth to Mamm-wynn to Sheridan. “And I deem that a testament to God’s mercy and providence. He kept you from serious harm, whispered in Mamm-wynn’s ear before logic would have had any of us worrying, and then inspired Sheridan to know where to go.”
Had He?
Well, of course He had. It certainly wasn’t his own brilliance that had made him decide Gugh was the most likely destination. Which made new warmth spread all through Sheridan’s chest. So far as he could recall, God had never used him in such a way before. But then, he’d never sought Him as earnestly as he had that morning.
Quite a feeling, this. No wonder Ainsley was so devout. Drawing closer to the Lord, being directed by Him, used by Him to help someone else . . . that was quite a feeling. Heady and humbling all at once. To think that they served a God who could and would do such things—and use them to accomplish it.
To think that he could have so easily waved away the impressions and thoughts as foolish.
To think that God had trusted him to listen. To act. To help save this beautiful young woman who had captured his heart so completely.
Yes. Definitely heady and humbling.
“So then. What now?” Beth shifted down a few inches on the sofa, gritting her teeth as she did so.
Which was clearly not lost on her brother. “Now you heal. You take it easy. And . . . we wait. Seeds have been planted, this garden plotted out. We wait to see what grows.”
Beth somehow managed to make closing her eyes look like a scowl. “Waiting. Not what I was hoping for.”
“Waiting like a gardener,” her brother corrected. “That doesn’t mean we’re idle. It means we’re patient. And that we’re clearing weeds and checking soil acidity and guarding against pestilence as we wait. We can’t make the plants shoot up faster, but we can certainly prepare the garden for when they do.”