by Kelly Powell
There are worse things I can do.
I pull the cloth from my violin and realize all four strings have been cut. I put a hand on the table to steady myself, rage coiling at the back of my throat. The last time I’d left my violin unattended was when Jude was attacked, when I’d left it behind at the lighthouse as alarm bells rang from the harbor.
I know the killer is watching us. My jaw tightens as I imagine them opening my case, bringing a knife to my violin strings. I keep additional strings alongside my rosin should any break; I take my time about replacing the ruined ones, intent on the familiar task, rather than the memories unfolding in my mind’s eye. I thread a string through the peg hole, trying to escape the thought of Nell lying dead on the beach. Winding the string onto the peg, I do my best not to dwell on how her blood glinted in the lantern light.
I leave the flyer and carry my violin and bow back into the drawing room. I sit on the sofa, and my mind is eased somewhat as I begin to tune up. Irving continues knitting, unaware, and asks, “What are you going to play, then?”
“What would you like?”
“Oh.” He looks up. The firelight shadows his face, darkening his eyes. His needles, for a moment, lie still in his lap. “I think something slow, Miss Alexander. Something with a bit of sorrow, if you would.”
“Yes.” I raise my violin, angle my bow over the strings. “I was thinking just the same.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE NEXT DAY DAWNS gray and chilly, a swathe of mist carpeting the moors. I’m awoken by the sound of Irving on the cottage roof, hammering shingles back into place. I walk down the hall to check on Jude, but he sleeps through the noise, curled up under the quilt.
Downstairs, I wash up and pull my hair into a bun. I open the kitchen window, hearing voices outside. Irving is talking to someone. I tug on my coat and make my way around the side of the cottage.
Benjamin Carrick is there, in his oilskin and cap. He stands next to the ladder leaning up against the siding, his eyes on the roof.
“Good morning,” I say.
He looks around. “Morning, Miss Alexander.” He doffs his cap. “I was just asking after our Wick.”
“He’s faring well enough.” This is said by Malcolm Irving. Both Carrick and I glance up as he appears at the edge of the roof. He starts down the ladder and adds, “He has a stubborn way about him—he’ll pull through.” Reaching the ground, he regards me. “Are you off home now, Miss Alexander?”
“No. I’ll be back. I’d like to visit Miss Bracken, is all.”
Our one remaining lead. I dare to hope, though I realize I shouldn’t. I try to cast the feeling aside, but it clings to me like water. Imogen has the information we need. She must know who was courting Nell, who had offered to take her to the dance.
Apprehension curls in my veins, sickly and ominous.
“That would be kind of you.” Irving wipes his face with his handkerchief. He turns his gaze on the stone cottage over the moors, and I see his mouth thin. “You know, if we count our Jude, that’s three islanders attacked within the year, within the month. I haven’t seen the likes of that since… well, since the Osrics, I suppose, God be good to them.”
I swallow. “Jude wasn’t wearing iron, Mr. Irving.”
He grimaces. “More’s the pity.” Stowing his handkerchief in the pocket of his overalls, he scrubs a hand through his hair. “You go on, then, Miss Alexander. Carrick, you coming in for tea?”
I set off a little ways and turn back to watch the two men disappear inside the keeper’s cottage. Taking a breath, I pull myself together. I leave the lighthouse behind, carrying all my worries with me.
* * *
The Brackens’ garden is littered with dying petals, dried and browning at the edges. I walk over to where Imogen is crouched among them, aiming a pair of shears at the surrounding rosebushes. She hasn’t done up her hair; it tumbles past her shoulders in thick black waves. Her gloveless hands are marked with thin scratches from the thorns, her cheeks pink from sun and exhaustion.
“Miss Alexander,” she says in greeting. The unspoken message is immediately apparent: I am not wanted in her garden.
“Morning, Miss Bracken. I hope you’re well.” I clasp my hands in front of me. “I was… I was very sorry to hear of Nell’s passing.” Though even as I say the words, they feel worthless, the heart of them worn down by repetition.
“I’m still making funeral arrangements, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“No. No, it’s not that. I just have some questions.”
Imogen pauses in her work to point the shears in my direction. “What questions?”
Staring at the fallen roses around us, I blurt out, “Why cut down your roses?”
“Wouldn’t think you came to ask about my gardening.”
“No, miss, I—”
“They were Nell’s roses,” Imogen says abruptly, “and now that she’s no longer—” She stops, shaking her head. “Never mind me. What is it you want to know?”
I hesitate. Without Jude by my side, uncertainty threatens to swallow me whole.
“Last weekend’s dance,” I start, “Jude mentioned Nell was planning to come with a suitor.”
“Yes,” says Imogen, digging her long shears into the thicket. “She told me to go on ahead without her. He was to meet her here, but she must’ve wandered off to the beach. I don’t understand why… There was no reason for her to be down there.”
My pulse flutters with adrenaline. “Who was the gentleman? Do you know him?”
Her eyes meet mine. She says, “Detective Thackery,” and numbness creeps over my skin. “He came by the same morning you did, remember?”
I think of Nell’s smile as she bade goodbye to Thackery, of how calmly he’d spoken on the beach, standing over her body.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I remember.”
Eve Maddox’s voice circles back to me, soft as a whisper. Connor said he knew something. Said he had to meet someone after helping his da at the harbor.
Said it was secret.
Did Connor plan to meet up with the detective?
Someone had taken my flyer from the schoolhouse, likely the same person who put that note in Jude’s mail slot, the knife in his garden. Had Thackery followed us from the pub? Had he doubled back the night of Nell’s death to observe us at the harbor?
Imogen heaves a sigh. Looking me over, she says, “Why are you asking about this, Miss Alexander? What are you getting out of it?”
I bite my lip. “Nothing, miss. I—I’m only trying to understand what happened.”
“Think it might be better if you minded your own.”
A flush rises in my cheeks. She doesn’t give me a chance to reply, as she continues. “Hear you’ve been caring for Wick.”
“That’s right.”
“How is he?”
I feel a flicker of irritation at her question—at the irony of Imogen telling me to mind my business only to prod her nose into mine. Then I realize it’s Jude she’s asking after, and his business is his own. The realization is an uncomfortable one, and my voice comes out stiff as I say, “He’s been resting.”
“Best get back to him, shouldn’t you?”
“Yes.” I nod. “Sorry to have kept you.”
Her expression softens. “Take care, Miss Alexander.”
I smile in return—the best I can under the circumstances—before starting back toward the lighthouse. I concentrate on the whistling of the wind, the rush of waves below the crag. Distantly, I feel the press of the investigation, the urge to visit the police station, as if I’ll see Thackery’s guilt writ upon his face.
To do that, though, I need Jude Osric.
With Jude bedridden, I am split in two, wedged between looking after him and protecting the sirens, worrying over his health and trying to find a killer.
In the evening, I travel up to his bedroom. The floor creaks beneath me, and Jude mumbles in his sleep. I pull the quilt up where it’s slipped from h
is shoulders. Bringing the back of my hand to his forehead, I find his temperature much improved. I sit in the chair by his bedside and tell him about my morning with Imogen, about Thackery being Nell’s suitor.
His hand rests on the pillow. I take it in mine, allowing myself this. I look at his closed eyes and imagine them blinking open.
But he sleeps, and then I do too, falling into dreams alongside him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
WHEN I SIT DOWN to breakfast the next day, Irving puts aside the morning paper, leveling his gaze on me. “Did you know,” he says, “that Jude has a telephone?”
I reach for a bread roll. “Oh, he made me well aware of it.”
The telephone—installed just last week—sits next to his telegraph machine in the watch room. Jude had spent a good hour admiring the device when it first arrived.
“Well, his uncle rang,” says Irving. “Told me he’ll be here by evening.”
I pause, butter knife in hand. “Jude will not be pleased about that,” I say flatly.
“That’s true enough.” Irving lifts the teapot, pouring tea into my waiting cup. “I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but I reckon Dylan must’ve done something awful for our Jude to turn away from him.”
My stomach churns as I wrap my hands around my teacup. Dylan Osric tortured a siren in Jude’s absence, leaving Jude to try to care for her. I’m not sure what he’ll do when he realizes we’ve returned her to the sea.
I glance toward the hall. “I ought to check on him.”
Quite unexpectedly, Irving tells me, “He’s awake.” When I snap my attention to him, he amends, “Or rather, he was. He found me in the watch room earlier. I sent him straight back to bed, though. He oughtn’t be climbing all those stairs.”
“How was he? That is, was he…?”
“He’s doing better, I’d say.”
I push away from the table, smooth a hand over my dress. “I’ll go up and see him.”
“Here, wait”—Irving pours out another cup of tea, adding milk and sugar to it—“take this up to him, eh?”
I carry the tea upstairs. In the hall, I hear nothing but silence from Jude’s bedroom. I ease open the door, and for a moment I see him as he was before I walked in. Sitting up in bed, he holds an old keeper’s manual, his head bent over it, one hand pressed flat against the page as he reads. His hair is damp and curling from the ewer, and he wears a wool dressing gown, hiding his bandages from view.
When he looks over, his eyes light up. It’s not the hectic burn of fever, but a glow that’s dark and warm and steady. He smiles just as bright. “Good morning, Moira.”
Stepping into the room, I close the door behind me. He sounds incredibly normal, worlds apart from the last few days. I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my grin in check. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a wrung-out cloth,” he replies, sheepish. “But other than that…”
“It takes time. The song had you rattled for quite a while.” I put the tea on his nightstand, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
Jude turns away to set his manual beside the teacup. His left arm remains stiff at his side. I remember the slash marks as they looked at the harbor, deep and red. It must be agonizing.
He says, “It’s what I deserve, isn’t it? I kept that siren from the sea. She was suffering, and I didn’t… I could’ve…” His fingers work restlessly at the cuff of his dressing gown. I cover them with one hand, bringing the motion to a stop.
“This was an accident, a fluke. You’ve done nothing to warrant it.”
Untangling his hand from mine, he presses his thumb between my eyebrows, smoothing the crease I know is there. “I don’t mean to worry you, Moira.”
“And yet you do such a fine job of it.”
His mouth quirks.
“Mr. Irving made you tea,” I tell him. “You ought to drink it.”
He picks it up off the nightstand. His hand trembles a little as he does, and I study the shadows beneath his eyes, the slight flush across his cheeks.
“What was it like?” I say, the words taking shape in my mouth. “The song?”
Jude looks down into his teacup. “It was as if the world were slipping under me.”
“You were charmed?”
“I guess so.” His voice is quiet, strained, but he continues. “Nothing seemed to matter except getting back to them. It was like I wasn’t myself anymore. Like I didn’t know who I was.”
An uncomfortable heat burns in my chest. I don’t know what to say to Jude—I’m not even sure his response was the one I wanted—but his words hollow out a place deep inside me, and I know I need to answer.
“Of everyone on this island,” I say, “you deserved that least of all.”
“I don’t think I’d wish it on anyone, Moira.”
I can think of a few I’d wish it on. Dylan Osric, for one. Whoever helped him catch that siren. Whoever killed Connor and Nell in cold blood. I wish the sirens would steal them all into the cold blackness beneath the waves.
Casting my eyes to the floor, I ask, “What were you hoping to find on the beach?”
Jude leans back against the headboard. “I thought it strange how the police never made any arrests apart from me,” he says. “I—I thought… perhaps if I checked around where Nell died, I might find something.”
“I questioned Imogen—Detective Thackery was Nell’s suitor.”
Jude’s eyebrows go up. “Thackery?”
I swallow. “We need to find out what Connor knew. It could be evidence.”
“When you told me”—Jude hesitates, squeezing his eyes shut—“when you said Connor knew something, I thought of the siren my uncle caught. I thought he found out somehow, and that’s why he wanted to talk with me. Perhaps he wanted to report it.”
I frown at the unlikeliness of this. “Jude, how could he? You told me he hadn’t been to the lighthouse, right?”
“Not recently.” He sets his teacup down and scrapes a hand over his face. “Last month Mr. Sheahan brought him up after he got a fishhook stuck in his thumb. I treated it. He might’ve heard something or… I don’t know. I’m certain that door was locked.”
If Connor truly knew of the siren, I find it hard to reconcile the fact that he hadn’t confided in me before going to the police. I was his tutor. He never made mention of any such thing during our lessons.
Jude looks out the window with a sigh. His profile is sunlit and familiar, and every time I consider how I almost lost him my heart breaks anew. He mumbles, “I shouldn’t have gone to the beach without you.”
A lump rises in my throat. “No,” I say thickly. “You shouldn’t have.”
He glances back at me, and I put my arms around him, drawing him close. I rest my cheek against his uninjured shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric of his dressing gown. “I was so afraid,” I whisper, “when Terry told me. I saw you there on the dock and I was terrified, Jude.” My voice catches, but still the words tumble out. “Because if you… If they had taken you, Jude Osric—” I can’t finish the sentence. My throat feels pinhole thin, and I concentrate instead on the sound of his quiet breaths, each one promising that he is alive and safe and here.
Softly, he asks, “Did you manage to retrieve your violin?”
“Yes.” A smile tugs at the edge of my mouth. “I have it here.”
“In my dreams I heard you playing. I knew it was you even without seeing you. It was your music that led me out of the dark.”
I pull back so I can see his expression. He raises a tentative hand to the side of my neck, to the small bruise left by my violin. Meeting my gaze, he bites his lip. “Moira,” he says, “I’ve been wondering… That is, I’ve been meaning to ask…”
I bring my hand to his cheek. He leans in to the touch, closing his eyes.
And I kiss him.
I feel Jude go still, but then he presses close, his hand moving to circle the back of my neck. It isn’t how I ever imagined we might kiss: Jude’s blood stai
ning the sheets, his arm lacerated by a siren’s claws. He tastes like tea and sugar. He smells like the lighthouse and the sea. He says my name again, whispers it, and slides his hand into my hair. I draw away, looking at him. His cheeks are pink, his brown eyes warm as honey.
He smiles. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for quite some time, Moira Alexander.”
I laugh, a little breathless. I should’ve kissed him ages ago.
And I want to fold this moment up for safekeeping. A single point when Jude is happy, when the sirens are protected, when an unknowing islander is not left to bleed out on the sands below.
I place a hand on his chest, just over his heart. I lean in to kiss him again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
WE SHARE A FEW MORE kisses before making our way downstairs. Irving is still in the kitchen, tidying up, but upon hearing our footsteps, he turns to study Jude.
“On the mend, are you?” He puts the tea towel he holds on the counter, motioning Jude forward. “Let me have a look at you.”
I slip past to stand at the kitchen table as Irving sets his hands on Jude’s shoulders. Jude is an inch or so taller; Irving peers up into his face, eyes narrowed. Then, taking Jude by the collar, he shakes him none too gently. “Being out there without iron. What were you thinking? You had me scared half to death—and worrying Miss Alexander, too.”
Jude ducks his head. “I did not think.” He looks over at me. “I’m sorry.”
When Irving speaks again, his voice comes out raw and uneven sounding. “Dear God,” he says, and pulls Jude to him, embracing him tightly. “You must grow up to be an old man, Jude Osric. Promise me.”
At this Jude glances my way over Irving’s shoulder. His expression is amused. “I’ll do my best,” he replies.
Irving claps him on the shoulder before stepping back. “Well, I ought to head off. Your uncle is coming by later, and Drummond will be needing me at the offshore light.”
Like a slate wiped clean, Jude’s countenance goes blank. “Dylan is coming here?”