The Glass Ocean

by Beatriz Williams

  “Trust me,” said Mr. Langford flatly. “My head has nothing to do with it.”

  And wasn’t that the truth. It wasn’t her head that was doing Tess’s thinking either, a fact that spelled danger. “Did you book passage because you knew she was going to be here?”

  Mr. Langford swiveled to face her, swaying slightly on his feet. “Are you mad? If I’d known she and her husband would be here I would never have—” He broke off, a dark lock of hair tumbling down over his brow, giving him a boyish, vulnerable look. “Whatever you think of me, I’m not such a glutton for punishment as that.”

  “Ten years, Mr. Langford,” said Tess, and then, because she had work to do, even if she didn’t seem capable of keeping her mind on it, she gave him a little push. Just a little one, hardly a touch. Because if she touched him again, she wasn’t quite sure what might happen. Not for you, Tess, my girl, she reminded herself. “Don’t you need to dress for dinner? Go make yourself presentable and make those debutantes swoon.”

  Because one of those girls, untried and unmarred, would be the one for him. Damn whisky, making her maudlin. Just like Pa.

  Tess turned on her heel, the effect only slightly ruined by having to clutch at the railing for balance. Over her shoulder, she called, “Up and at ’em, Mr. Langford.”

  Behind her, his voice was very quiet, dangerously so. “Don’t you think, after that, you should call me Robert?”

  There was something in the way he said it that made her tingle straight down to her toes. It took all her willpower to keep going, flapping a hand in parting. “Don’t flatter yourself . . . Robert. Now go and sober up!”

  And she should do the same. Only it wasn’t whisky messing with her head. It was Mr. Langford. Robert. His smile. His scowl. His accent, clipped and drawling by turns, teasing, exasperating, elusive, honest. He threw her more off balance than Pa’s strongest moonshine, and, Tess reminded herself, was like to leave even more of a headache in the morning. Ginny might be driving her distracted at the moment, but her sister was right about one thing: Robert Langford wasn’t for the likes of her.

  Not even for Tessa Fairweather, newly minted Englishwoman.

  Tess could have wept, but what was the point of weeping? She’d cried for her mother as a child, cried for her father’s attention, but no amount of tears could bring either back. And no amount of tears would magically lift that manuscript from the Hochstetters’ safe.

  There was a ladies’ lounge right off the dome. Tess ducked inside, just in case Mr. Langford had any inclination to follow her. Not that she thought he did, not really. In the mirror, her face was flushed, her hair escaping in dark blond wisps around her forehead. If Mrs. Hochstetter was an orchid, elegant and rare, she, thought Tess, was a common garden daisy. Or maybe a tiger lily, bold and blowsy.

  Tess splashed some cool water against her face, letting the salt tang bring her to herself again.

  No more whisky. And no more Mr. Langford. If she saw him in passing, she would hightail it the other way.

  With that resolved, she set out for the Hochstetters’ suite, conveniently located on the same deck as the dome. The passageways were, as Ginny had promised, deserted: everyone, master and servant alike, was at supper. Tess took the same path she’d taken last time, past the lifts, into the cul-de-sac, to the door that opened onto the Hochstetters’ sitting room. She waited a moment, wraith-still beside the door, listening for noises within or without, half-expecting Robert to appear behind her, or that red-haired steward to pop up out of nowhere. But there was nothing, only the scrape of her own breathing, in and out, in and out.

  Go in through the servant’s entrance in the back, Ginny had said. Mrs. Hochstetter’s bedroom door will be left open. Tess wasn’t quite sure she believed her, but, sure enough, when Tess put her gloved hand on the door handle, it opened. Just like that.

  Maybe, when you owned the earth, you didn’t bother to lock doors. Or maybe, thought Tess wryly, they thought that no one would be so foolish as to attempt to rob them when there was no place to run.

  The room smelled faintly of perfume and something else, the smell that Tess equated with the house with all the nice ladies where they had briefly stayed when she was six. Very nice ladies. A dress that cost more than Tess’s ticket had been left crumpled on the floor, the matching shoes kicked in opposite directions across the room. Someone had dragged the sheets back up on the bed, but not smoothed them. The ripples and dents told their own, unmistakable story.

  If Robert could see this . . .

  No. Tess averted her eyes and tiptoed through to the door that opened onto the sitting room. None of her no-nevermind. Besides, Robert already knew. Teaser stallion, indeed.

  And what a tease. Tess’s lips still burned from that kiss a moment ago. If he’d kissed Caroline Hochstetter like that . . .

  Mind on your work, girl. The safe was exactly where Ginny had said, belatedly installed and barely hidden, relying on the large lock rather than secrecy to ward off thieves. But Tess was no stranger to locks. They didn’t come easy to her, the way copying a page with her pen had, but she’d had years to learn their intricacies, to get to know the feel of a mechanism, the sound of the wards moving.

  There was something soothing about the feel of the pick in her hand, the steady, calming work of fiddling a little this way, a little that, all her concentration on the infinitesimal sounds from within. The lock was an expensive one, but hardly unique. It took less than five minutes for it to fall open.

  Twenty minutes left. Tess hastily opened the metal door. And there it was. The music manuscript in lonely splendor in the center of the safe. No jewels, no other papers, just the manuscript.

  What was it that made this one manuscript so darn special?

  Collectors, Ginny had said. Maybe if she were musical, she would understand better. As it was, Tess found all this security for a sheet of music rather baffling. All right, time to get on with it. She drew out the pages, assessing the job with an experienced eye. Usually, she’d be calculating matches: finding the right sort of paper, the right sort of ink to make an exact match. But that didn’t matter for these collectors, Ginny had claimed. They just wanted the substance of it, copied precisely, down to the last jot and tittle. And they were willing to pay handsomely.

  Ten pages, closely written with musical notes on long, lined staffs, cryptic words scribbled in the margins. Words and numbers. As Tess lifted the manuscript, a sheet fell out. It looked the same, all filled with notes, but there was something odd about it, something that looked wrong to Tess’s trained eye, as though it had been written in another hand and inserted later. There was more marginalia here, more scribbled notes in German, more numbers—almost like an equation of some kind. Or a code.

  Three Germans in the brig. Ginny’s watchful eyes and tense shoulders.

  You don’t know the people we’re dealing with, Ginny had said. Ginny, who spoke German still. Ginny, who had never explained, really, why a collector would be willing to pay such a sum for a mere copy.

  Unless it wasn’t the music they were after, but something else. A code. Plans.

  Chapter 13

  Sarah

  Devon, England

  May 2013

  “Plan,” I said aloud, just at the instant I woke up. I needed a plan.

  I opened my eyes to a painful cascade of white sunshine and Princess Leia in a metal bikini. For a moment I thought I’d been kidnapped by an Ewok. Then I saw that Leia wasn’t moving—that she was, in fact, a poster fixed on a wall papered in navy blue stars—and I remembered where I was.

  Not Ewoks. Langfords. John Langford.

  I reached for my phone on the bedside table and stared in disbelief at the screen. A quarter to nine? I hadn’t slept that late in years. My head fell back on the pillow. Several app alerts lurked invitingly below the slender numbers 8:46, but I couldn’t summon the slightest interest in them. I felt heavy, drugged, slow, the way you do after a thoroughly deep sleep. Plan, I thought again, alt
hough this time I didn’t actually say it. I needed a plan. If only I could bring myself to move.

  Last night, when Mrs. Finch had led me upstairs to John’s room, the hallways were dark and I was too exhausted to pay any attention to my surroundings. I’d allowed the flow of the housekeeper’s chatter to carry me along—snatches of that monologue returned to me now, and none of it made any sense—until she’d closed the door at last. I’d rummaged in my carry-on, discovered my toothbrush and face cream, and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom, and all I noticed before crashing into John’s freshly made bed was the R2-D2 clock lamp on the bedside table, and that only because I had to hunt for the off switch for a minute or two before finding it inside R2’s shiny Cyclops eye. At the time, I figured the lamp was an ironic decorating touch. Or I was simply hallucinating.

  Now, in the brilliant glow of a Devonshire morning, I realized Mrs. Finch had actually led me aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer.

  A dozen Star Wars action figures were locked in combat atop the bookshelf opposite the bed. The Millennium Falcon dangled from the ceiling, pursued by an X-wing fighter. And was that a lightsaber resting in the lap of the giant stuffed Chewbacca in the corner, or was he just wishing me the top of the morning?

  I turned my gaze down to the soft, worn sheets, which were chillingly festooned with Darth Vader masks, and flung myself upright.

  Good Lord. No wonder his wife had left him.

  I crawled out of bed and shook my hair. Opened my suitcase and dragged myself across the hall to shower behind plastic stormtrooper curtains. By the time I found my way downstairs to the kitchen, I half-expected to see a Tupperware cylinder of blue milk waiting for me inside the fridge. Instead, I encountered half a block of butter, a pitcher of curdled cream, and a head of iceberg lettuce, nicely browned.

  I closed the door and turned to stare at the teakettle atop the Aga.

  “I guess it’s up to you, mate,” I said.

  * * *

  “So I think we need a plan,” I said to John as I handed him a mug of tea. The sunlight filtered in between the heavy curtains of Robert Langford’s folly, obscuring the clutter, and the air smelled of dust and wood and human sleep. I pretended I didn’t notice the foot and a half of bare chest curving above the edge of the white sheets, played it cool like I woke up every morning to the male form au naturel, but I don’t think I would have convinced a keen observer. Luckily, John was wincing into his tea mug instead of looking at me.

  “You call this tea?” he said.

  “Gosh, you’re welcome. The way you emptied that bottle of brandy last night, I would have thought you’d appreciate any form of liquid sustenance,” I said. “And don’t try to deny it. I saw the bottle in the kitchen trash.”

  “For your information, that bottle had about three ounces of brandy left inside to begin with. I was doing the poor thing a favor.” He took another delicate sip of tea. Winced again. “Well, maybe six ounces. But it was excellent brandy.”

  I folded my arms and attempted a stern expression. “So what’s with the Star Wars fixation?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your room. I can’t believe your wife let you keep Chewbacca in the corner. With the lightsaber? That’s just creepy.”

  “Christ. Mrs. F put you in that room?”

  “Apparently, yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I told her . . .” He rubbed his hair. “I told her to put you in my room. I suppose she thought—well, she must have thought I meant my old room. From when I was a kid. Before I got married.”

  “Thank God for that. Princess Leia had me pretty worried, there. I’m not going to lie.”

  John set the mug on the worn Oriental rug and flopped back on the pillow. “I apologize. I guess she thought—well, the master suite—she probably thought you’d feel awkward, staying there. And everything else upstairs is closed up, filled with old furniture and moldy carpet. I’d hoped to make it a home again, one day, but Callie never—well, anyway. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Was it awful? I hope you managed to sleep, at least.”

  His eyes were closed. He’d made up a bed on the chaise longue in Robert’s study, which was just wide enough to fit his shoulders, although his legs stuck out well past the end. A blanket of striped wool covered the southern end of him. The northern end, as I said, was bare, and I thought it was strange, out of character, that he didn’t seem embarrassed. Was he a secret exhibitionist, perhaps? Or still drunk?

  “I slept all right,” I said. “Better than you, probably. That doesn’t look very comfortable. Why didn’t you use the daybed in the bedroom? Guarding the premises or something?”

  “No, I wasn’t guarding the premises. I just didn’t want to sleep in there, that’s all.” He reached down and groped for the mug on the floor. “You’re right. We do need a plan. But I think we should discuss said plan over some sort of breakfast, don’t you think?”

  “I looked for some eggs in the fridge, but you’re all out.”

  “Eggs would be in the larder, Sarah.”

  “The larder? Are you kidding me? Don’t you refrigerate your eggs?”

  “Of course not. Do you?” He found the mug at last and set it on his chest. At the instant of contact, he startled upward, spilling tea over chest, sheet, and blanket. “My God! Where’s my shirt?”

  “Um, you’re not wearing one? So I don’t know where it is.”

  The mug went bang down to the floor. John snatched the sheets up to his neck.

  “I’ve got a terrific idea, Sarah,” he said to the ceiling.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t you step outside for a moment, and I’ll have a quick wash and get dressed. Then we’ll head down the pub for a proper full English, hmm?”

  “A full English? Is that like a full monty? Because between you and Chewbacca, I think I’ve already got that covered for one morning.”

  He grabbed the pillow from behind his head and threw it at me.

  “Out,” he said. “And take your damned lousy tea with you.”

  * * *

  “Down the pub” turned out to be the Ship Inn, a ramshackle old pile about a mile along the lane from the Dower House. In typical English fashion, John insisted we walk, as if I didn’t have enough appetite worked up already. The sun shone on our backs, but the air was brisk. By the time a waitress dropped a cup of coffee in front of me, I was ready to start nibbling the pink packets of sugar substitute.

  John, on the other hand. He looked like he was ready to start nibbling the waitress’s bosom, of which there was plenty to spare, exposed above the deep V of a snug white T-shirt bearing the faded image of a seventy-four-gun ship of the line. “Julie!” he exclaimed, face all aglow.

  Julie set down his tea and flung her arms around his neck. “Johnnie-boy! I was waiting for you to recognize me.”

  John rose to return her embrace more thoroughly. You know, like the gentleman he was. She was much shorter than John—like, who wasn’t?—and he had to bend his neck and most of his long torso to land the kiss where it belonged, on her cheek. They disentangled slowly, or maybe it was my imagination. “I didn’t know you were working at the Ship,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m all right, I’m all right.” She brushed back a few strands of hair, dark brunette streaked with startling violet. Her eyes were bright and round and faintly bruised underneath, like she’d had a rough night and needed comforting. “Davey took me on last summer when the hotel gave me the sack. How’s yourself? Are you back at the house?”

  “For a bit.” He detached himself at last and settled back into his seat. Julie’s bosom settled into the space next to his face. “It’s good to see you. Can you spare us some breakfast?”

  “I guess so.” She glanced at me—not impressed, not impressed at all—and back again to John. “Full English for you?”

  “Everything you’ve got. I’m famished.”

  “Bit of the worse for wear, are y
ou?” She ruffled his hair. “I’ll sort you out, never fear. Haven’t I always?”

  “You’re an angel, Jules.”

  “Go on,” she said, kissing the top of his head, and without sparing me another glance she swung away, headed for the kitchen. John smiled at her departing figure. The ties of her navy-striped service apron dangled across the pockets of her jeans, which fit her bottom like she’d painted them on just that morning. On the other hand, I couldn’t blame her. If I had a rear like that, I’d want the world to take note.

  “Old friend?” My voice came out a little high.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. Very old friend. We used to play together as children.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He raised his teacup and lifted an eyebrow. “Sarah, for God’s sake. She’s Mrs. Finch’s granddaughter. We were practically raised together. She and Davey—he’s the publican—she and Davey and I used to spend all summer running wild over the grounds.”

  “Let me guess. She was Leia? You and Davey were Luke and Han?”

  “See here.”

  “Ha! I’m right, aren’t I? The question is, were you Luke or were you Han? I mean, that’s the key to everything, right there.”

  “The key to—” John began, but a short, beefy man walked up behind him and cut him off with a backslap that pitched him forward into his teacup. I could have warned him in advance, of course, but I chose not to.

  “Johnnie-boy!” the man shouted. “What the bloody hell are you after, walking into my pub and fixing yourself on the shape of my sister’s arse?”

  “Davey bloody Finch. I’m committing suicide by breakfast, isn’t it obvious?”

  “Happy to oblige you, mate. Who’s the bird?” Davey jerked his head in my direction.

  I stuck out my hand. “My name is Sarah Blake, Mr. Finch, and I’m—”

  “What, an American? Has it come to this, old bloke?”

  There was something about the way he said that word. American. And my stomach was still empty, and my hair was still wet, and last night’s wine hadn’t done me any favors. I heard a faint cracking noise, the way a straw sounds when it strikes a camel’s back.