Seacliff

by Andrews, Felicia

  Once through the gate, then, she swerved and walked along the grassy verge until she came to a break in the wall that ran parallel to the road. There she stopped, hands at her waist, her face composed while she waited for the vicar.

  Ellis Lynne was a scrawny man, blinkingly myopic, with flyaway brown hair he was forever spitting back into place. His frock coat was too long, his breeches too loose, his white cotton stockings bunched at knees and ankles. Though his demeanor was properly solemn on virtually every occasion, he had a habit of making a sound distressingly like a chuckle whenever he asked a question. To those who were used to it, it passed by unnoticed; to others it made him appear the perfect fool. Caitlin, however, knew the latter was distressingly far from the truth.

  “My dear, I am truly sorry for your loss,” he said as he came to the gate, his voice a high-pitched monotone. His hands felt clammy as he grasped hers and wrung them in sympathy. “Truly, truly sorry.”

  She lowered her eyes, accepting the condolence, and as quickly as she dared she retrieved her hands.

  “But,” the vicar said, clapping his hands once, “we shall never forget him, will we?” He prattled on for several minutes, Caitlin wondering if they were mourning the same man—so effusive was his praise. “However,” he said with a ferret-like smile, “it’s a new life to which you’re accustomed, is it not, Lady Morgan? I do believe the valley is in good hands.”

  “We will do our best, sir,” she said politely. “At least for the time being.”

  Lynne frowned, his spiked eyebrows meeting in a tangle over the top of his nose. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, m’lady.”

  “Well,” she said airily, “what I meant was—”

  “You mean, you have no intention of remaining at Seacliff?”

  “Why, of course I’ll be here, vicar,” she said, puzzled at the sharp intensity of the question. He relaxed visibly.

  “For the better part of the year.”

  He lifted his pointed chin and stared around the churchyard. “I see.”

  “Well, no, not really, you don’t,” she said, increasingly sorry she’d stopped to see him at all. “Sir Oliver, as you well know, does have his family estate back in England, and he certainly cannot leave it forever. Quite naturally, we’ll be traveling back and forth to see both places.” She forced a laugh she hoped sounded rueful. “I have a feeling I shall be run ragged in a year’s time, don’t you think?” He said nothing for a moment, simply clearing his throat. Then: “So you will not, as I’ve been given to understand, stay the year round.”

  “For heaven’s sake, who told you that?”

  “I thought it was common knowledge.”

  She glanced up and down the road, then nodded slightly to Davy, hoping he would see her and ride the trap up.

  “A pity,” Lynne said absently. “A pity.”

  “Well, I won’t be gone as long as before,” she told him, checking her tone so it sounded natural. “And we do have Mr. Flint.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, smiling. “Mr. Flint, indeed. He has kept the machinery oiled, as the new phrase has it. There’s no doubt about that.”

  She lifted her hands with a smile just as Davy pulled up behind her. “Then there’s no problem, is there?”

  The vicar plunged a hand into his rumpled waistcoat and pulled out a dull gold watch, thumbed over the plain cover and held the face close to his eyes before squinting hard at the sun. “Ah,” he said with an apologetic smile, “I have an appointment with Master Randall in his shop.”

  “And I must be getting home.”

  “A pleasure, Lady Morgan,” he said as she climbed into the back of the tiny cart and adjusted herself on the seat. “Do keep yourself from becoming a stranger.”

  “I’ll do that,” she promised, and grabbed the sides as Davy clucked the pony into motion. She waved and turned away from the vicar, expelling a deep breath and rolling her eyes heavenward. The man was a human rat rooting for gossip, and she’d no doubt her plans would be all over the village before mid-afternoon. She didn’t mind, since the news would have come from the household anyway sooner or later, but she wished she had been more politic in her pronouncement. She had a terrible sinking feeling that Lynne would make it appear as if she couldn’t wait to leave. And there was her father, not yet cold in his grave.

  A few yards from the church stood Lynne’s thatched cottage, and a hundred yards from that, toward Seacliff, was a thick grove of tall oaks whose foliage was confined by weather and growth to the top branches. She was trying to force her mind onto more pressing matters than Reverend Lynne’s sensibilities when, out of the comer of her eye, she caught a shadow that did not belong.

  “Davy, stop a moment,” she said.

  The trap rattled to a halt, and she shaded her eyes to see into the grove more clearly. And when she did she gasped. “My God, Davy!” Davy turned quickly, saw where she was looking and peered after her. Setting his whip suddenly on the seat beside him, he vaulted to the ground.

  “Davy, no!”

  He ignored her. The wall here had long since crumbled into small stones and dust, and he hurried across the grass to the first gray bole, where he leaned and stared. From a smaller, gnarled tree protruded a thick branch that held no leaves, no buds, not a hint of twigs. A thick rope had been tied around its thick arm, and from the end of the rope dangled the body of a man. His clothes were in rags, his face blackened, his hands swollen, but his disfigurement in death was not sufficiently severe to prevent Davy from recognizing him.

  With a gasp he turned around and lurched back to the cart, leaned hard against the pony and shuddered as he breathed as deeply as he could. Caitlin instantly climbed out and, deliberately avoiding a glance into the grove, put her arm around his shoulders.

  “You know him, Davy?” she asked, whispering.

  He nodded shakily and gulped several times before he could find his voice. “Lam,” he said, and-swallowed again. “Lam Johns. He were the lad what worked for the vicar after you and the major went to England the first time. He…” Davy suddenly whirled around, forcing Caitlin back. He reached under the seat and grabbed a long knife. “I got to cut him down, mistress,” he said loudly, and raced off into the grove.

  Caitlin, weak with shock and horror, struggled back into the cart. By the time she’d sat down, Davy was back, sweating profusely and trembling.

  “Not by his own hand?” she asked as the trap jumped into motion.

  Davy shook his head. “He was hauled up, mistress. He was hanged.”

  A hanging. Not since her grandfather’s time had anyone in the valley been sentenced to hang. The most severe punishment her father had ever doled out was ostracism, which inevitably led to self-banishment. Either the villagers had taken justice into their own hands for whatever offense Lam Johns had committed, or…

  Impatiently she waited until the trap pulled to a stop in front of the house. Then she jumped to the ground, shoved her way through the unlatched door, and marched down the central corridor until she reached the glass-paned doors at the back. Oliver was sitting at a white wrought-iron table on the lawn, glass in hand, port by his side. She pushed through the door and strode toward him, not bothering to return his smile when he glanced over his shoulder.

  “My dear,” he said, rising, “I—Caitlin, is something wrong?” She stood behind the chair opposite him, and grabbed the back until her knuckles whitened.

  “Wrong? What could be wrong? I paid my respects to my father, spoke with the vicar, and saw a dead man in the grove. What could possibly be wrong?”

  “Oh,” he said, and resumed his seat. “Oh.”

  “Oh,” she said, bitterly mocking him. “Oh. And is that something else you’ve decided to take care of without consulting me, Oliver?”

  He met her enraged stare evenly. “That is not something to concern a woman, Caitlin.”

  “If it concerns Seacliff, it concerns me. My people—”

  “Well,” he interrupted, “one of your people,
my dear, viciously attacked a king’s soldier several months ago. He escaped into the hills and was captured only a day or two before we returned. There was, in this case, no alternative.”

  She paused for a few seconds, fighting for calm. “And who gave the order of execution? Who carried it out? How was it—”

  “I gave the order,” he said stiffly. “I issued instructions, and Mr. Flint carried them out. As to the person who informed us, I have asked Mr. Flint to keep the name to himself. The others would not, to put it mildly, take it kindly if they knew one of their own—”

  “All right,” she said sharply. “I’ve heard enough.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  She spun on him suddenly, startling him into leaning away from her glare.

  “You suspected as much? Oliver, you push me too far.”

  Slowly he unfolded himself from his chair and rose, his face florid, his lips taut and bloodless. For a moment she feared he would strike her. The rage passed, however, and he took careful hold of her arms, shaking his head in shared sorrow. “Caitlin, Caitlin,” he whispered, “can you ever forgive me?”

  She eyed him warily. “For what?”

  “For forgetting my place.” He stepped to her side and kept hold of one elbow, guiding her toward the wall just off the cliffs.

  “I am only trying to spare you until you’re able to shoulder your share of the responsibilities. And in this case, my dear, I do know the law. If this man had been freed— which you must admit you might have been moved to do yourself—a dangerous precedent would have been set. You do see that, don’t you?”

  She nodded her agreement, but not before he caught a flurry of doubt in her eyes. He stepped away and bowed rigidly before turning and heading for the house. She wanted to follow, yet she couldn’t think of anything to say. She shivered when she recalled the offhand way he had spoken of the execution, and worse—he had said that someone in the village had actually taken the English side and played the traitor.

  She leaned over the wall to stare at the water below. The breakers tumbled furiously over boulders laid bare by the tide. Oliver was right: she never would have ordered a hanging in this instance. Some weeks in a cell, hard labor in the fields… but never a death just for striking a soldier.

  She stumbled along the wall blindly, not looking up until she realized she’d reached the twisted bare pine that marked the wall’s comer. She stopped. It was here her father had come for peace, and it was here that he had died. Before she could stop herself, she peered down the sheer face of the cliff. The stony beach below was flooded, the place where her father had been discovered was now tumultuous surf. She sighed and turned around, and the wind tangled her hair in front of her eyes, so she couldn’t see.

  She brushed it away, and suddenly something became clear in her mind.

  The wind. That was what she’d been trying to recall—the wind! Oliver had said her father was out here in a squall, and in his weakened condition had toppled over the wall. But how could he have? The wind would have been blowing in the wrong direction.

  No. She shook her head feverishly, rejecting the horror that crept into her mind. “No,” she said aloud, “no!” And a hand took her shoulder. She spun around, heart leaping into her throat, her palms clasping her chest. James Flint snatched back his hand as if he’d been burned.

  “My lady,” he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You didn’t,” she snapped. “No, you did. But I wasn’t talking to you. I was…” She sputtered to an awkward halt.

  “I do apologize, Caitlin,” he said more softly. “But Oliver has been noting the approach of a storm, and he did not wish you to be caught out here.” He looked pointedly at the tree and the wall.

  “Especially…”

  She nodded curtly, but she realized he didn’t understand her mood. Rather than explain, she allowed him to take her arm and start leading her away.

  A fierce gust of wind suddenly slapped debris against her back, and she turned to face it, her eyes narrowed. The pine was straining under the gale, disappearing into the darkened shadows and taking on the unpleasant appearance of some desolate grave marker. She shuddered once, violently, and commanded herself to stop thinking. It was the argument with Oliver; it was visiting her father’s resting place; it was Lynne’s perfunctory sympathies; it was all of these things…

  And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling. The wind had been blowing in the wrong direction.

  13

  Later that evening, after hours that seemed years long, Caitlin stood before an oak-framed, full-length mirror and examined herself from all angles as she drew a brush thoughtfully through her hair. Downstairs in the front parlor, Reverend Lynne was talking to Oliver—his official greeting to the master of the house. The rest of the village would soon follow, taking up much of her time and energy. And though she did not wish to dwell overly long on her father’s demise, she was grateful for the opportunity to sense the village’s reaction to her, and to keep her mind on the proprieties of grief and away from the terrifying images that had been assaulting her since morning.

  Several times in the last hour she had drifted out to the balcony and stared down at the pine tree in the wall’s far comer. And several times she found herself recreating the elder Evans’s struggle against the squall. Finally, when the wind grew too strong and drove her back inside, she realized the accident could indeed have happened the way she’d been told. The wind took many directions once it reached the shore—barreling inland like howling banshees, or swirling around the ground in violent eddies that broke through the crevices in the cliff and wall. It could very well have happened. It could have. And when she had almost blurted out her suspicions to Gwen, she also realized how incredibly farfetched they sounded, like the ravings of a woman who’d lost her senses to grief.

  The outer door opened, then, and Gwen entered with a damp cloth. Despite the storm’s approach it was stifling inside, and the cloth was for wiping the perspiration from Caitlin’s cheeks.

  “The vicar’ll end up staying for dinner,” Gwen said sourly. Caitlin grinned. “You object to a cleric in the house?”

  “To a toad sitting on chairs I have to clean, yes. I swear, that Mary’s less than useless around here. Like a weasel she is.” Caitlin laughed and adjusted her neckline, smoothed her skirt. “You could always swoon, y’know,” Gwen suggested as they headed for the door. “That’s proper, ain’t it?”

  “It wouldn’t stop them from coming back,” she said. “And the sooner I get it over with, the sooner I can get to work.”

  “Cat!”

  Caitlin frowned. “I didn’t mean it badly, Gwen.”

  “I know, but you’d best not say that to them. They don’t know you as well as I.”

  She remembered the unfortunate conversation with the vicar, and sighed. Sympathies she knew she could handle, but sensibilities were another matter entirely. Patience, she knew, was not her strongest virtue.

  Patience that shortened as July passed near to August, and the summer’s heat began taking its yearly toll on the land. The villagers came and were polite enough, but she was aware from the outset of a distinct reserve that made her uncomfortable. Neither did Oliver assist her through the ordeal. His patience vanished entirely, and he muttered that the villagers seemed ready to turn her father into a damned local saint.

  “Were it not for you,” he said one morning, “I’d be back to England in a trice.”

  She said nothing. She’d known it would be difficult for him to take her father’s place, but he also had a duty he was leaving all to her. And that bewildered her. One day he was telling her to mind her place and her tongue, the next he seemed ready to leave it all and flee to Eton. As a result she had no idea where she stood, and she felt emotionally drained in face of his temper swings.

  Griff Radnor helped her not at all.

  Each day, during her riding, he was there, in the distance.

  Shadowing her, watching
her, staying in the distance.

  And then there was James Flint.

  For the most part he managed to keep to himself. He’d been granted apartments in the north tower, and he was seldom seen out of them. Once or twice a week he came to dinner, but he held his silence save for polite responses to direct questions, and gave her no signs of encouragement she could catch. Yet she had to talk with him. Still convinced he hadn’t used her, convinced he was keeping his distance to avoid Oliver’s jealousy, she found herself haunting the corridor by the tower until, one afternoon, he appeared, dusty and hot, red in the face from exertion.

  “James, please, just a minute,” she said, a hand on his arm to detain him.

  He stopped and took a long moment before turning. “My lady?” She smiled coyly. “What happened to Caitlin?”

  “I have been trying to remember my station here.”

  “I see.”

  His expression hinted he didn’t think she did. “I told you once he was a hard man.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “To me as well.”

  Suddenly he truly smiled, and relief flooded her; she hadn’t been wrong. James Flint cared.

  Then: “Caitlin, I would talk if I could, but Sir Oliver is waiting and I must change. But perhaps,” he added more quietly, “you might enjoy a stroll after dinner this evening. The air is wonderfully cool. It would clear your head for sleeping.”

  She watched his departure with a heart wildly beating. But once dinner had been cleared away, and Bradford had taken the brandy into the sitting room, she excused herself and fetched a shawl from her room. Once outside she was lost in the calming influence of the night’s cool air; the moon’s silver carpet across the gently rolling water; the call of the night birds in the groves.

  She walked slowly, her eyes half closed; she did not see him until they’d nearly collided. Then she was taken into the shadow of her father’s pine.

  “James—”

  The rest was smothered by a long, ardent kiss, his hands pressing her close. When he finally broke away, she sighed and took several deep breaths.