by Sarah Abbot
He, along with the rest of the populace, had been shocked to find out exactly who Abrielle Lancaster of Write Away fame was—though many were the claims that they would have recognized the daughter of Celeste Rutherford anywhere.
Before Johnny Mackenzie, brewmaster and womanizer extraordinaire, had informed him of Abrielle Lancaster’s parentage, he had actually thought the woman a knockout when he’d occasionally caught her on TV. Anyone would be hard-pressed to get him to admit it, now.
Well, she wasn’t welcome here, any more than her mother before her.
Ryan Brannigan swore by the sea; swore by the fish that gave rise to the town he loved, by the salt, the sand, and every sacred oath known to fishermen and their sons that Abrielle Lancaster would regret her choice to come here.
She might have come, but if he had anything to say about it, she wouldn’t stay.
Chapter Three
Abby hauled her luggage down the length of the verandah. A quick rummage in her purse produced the key she had sought—incongruously flimsy in comparison to the thick, weathered door that stood before her.
She swiped a tangle of windswept hair from her eyes and entered the main room of the cottage.
It was beyond charming, with low-beamed ceilings, slipcovered furniture, and souvenir plates hanging on the wall. Chintz and gingham winked at her through the dimly lit room, and a bank of glowing embers crackled in protest of the brisk draft that entered at her back. She closed the door quickly, enveloping herself in the faint, musty aroma of the unoccupied cottage.
She walked through the kitchen and into the living area, ran her hand over the thick, oak mantle that crested the fieldstone fireplace, wondered if her mother had touched it, wondered if she had stood just here, warming herself by the flames.
To her left, a huge window occupied much of the wall and looked out over the heaving Atlantic Ocean.
Smiling, she started tugging her bags up the little stairway. The upper landing opened to another room—the bedroom—which featured a waist-high bed piled with quilts, a washstand and a gorgeous antique dresser.
Her mother had been happy here—she could just feel it.
She wanted to settle right in, unpack, have a shower, and find a bite to eat. After that, she intended to make a list of questions regarding her mother. When she encountered people who had known her, she wanted to be prepared.
First order of business, however, was a shower.
She headed downstairs. Now, where was the washroom?
A sudden, sinking feeling swept through her chest. Where was the washroom?
“Oh, no.” Abby raced back up the stairs of the tiny cottage for the second time. This time, she didn’t waste a moment admiring the charming little place or wondering if her mother had touched this or that. This time, she was on a mission.
She yanked open the one other door she could find on the second floor. A closet. “Oh, no!”
Back downstairs.
She yanked open the odd little door that was tucked beneath the stairs, eyes searching frantically.
All she saw in the awkward space was a few shelves and a large, metal tub.
“Oh…no.” Cautiously, she walked to the back wall and lifted a lace curtain at the window. Her heart plummeted. There, tucked beneath a stately oak, was a small wooden building, maybe four feet wide and seven feet tall. The turquoise paint was peeling from the walls, and the yellow door—which featured a crescent moon cutout— was hanging on what appeared to be one, rusty hinge.
And wouldn’t you know it? She had to go.
“Horrid cottage,” she muttered, stomping through the dewy grass. “Stinking outhouse!” She swatted a low-hanging branch from her face, breathing through her mouth in an ill-conceived attempt at avoiding the stench of the outhouse…only now she swore she could taste it.
An outhouse! And she’d used it! And what was that metal tub she’d seen in the closet? Was that what she was meant to bathe in? And was she supposed to fill it with water by hand?
This was going from bad to worse.
Abby emerged from the clump of trees that surrounded the outhouse and walked between the trunks of two pristinely white birch trees to the beach below. Abby felt the scowl melt from her face, felt a tingling surge wash through her being.
There—about two hundred feet away—standing on the deck of a lobster boat, stood a man. Not just any man. Abby felt washed in a tide of unmistakable familiarity. She knew this man.
She inhaled sharply, her skin prickling. But that’s not possible!
The man was young, tall, lean, and moved with the grace of a born athlete. He looked at the ocean, and as he did so an extraordinary expression came over his face.
Abby felt it mirrored on her own face—felt as if everything but this moment was draining away from her consciousness.
The man seemed as though he had absorbed some of the primitive mystique of the island; some of its gold and its light, some of its secret darkness. She watched his bronze skin, saw the rhythmic surge of smooth, corded muscle beneath; envisioned the strong bone that kept him balanced on the deck—as silent and deadly as a predator, as beautiful as its prey.
There was something purely magnetic about the man— something feral and charged that she felt instantly. The feeling intensified as he moved toward the wheel, grew in thrumming presence, until he turned that icy stare directly upon her.
Abby gasped—more at the instinctive internal recoil of her inner being than at the unhidden hatred in his eyes.
Her cheeks pricked with heat. As impossible as it seemed, it was as if he knew she’d be standing just there, as if he had summoned the darkest memories of his life and visually spewed them at her.
She turned quickly, wanting nothing more than to be far, far away from that person. She definitely did not know him!
The ground was uneven, and Abby cried out as she tripped and tumbled to the grass. She glanced over her shoulder and glared at the massive swell of tree root over which she had tripped in her haste to escape the man’s threatening gaze. She heard the thrum of a motor as the lobster boat departed.
She let her head fall back on the green, sheltered grass, which was soft and cool and mercifully upwind from the dreaded outhouse.
Who was that man? Why on earth had he seemed familiar? Abby squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he wasn’t a close neighbor. If it turned out that he was, he might just replace the outhouse as reason number one why she was moving out of this cottage ASAP.
Every ounce of surety that she had felt about coming here evaporated. “What a disaster,” she said, thinking that perhaps she hadn’t been led to the painting for some great, cosmic reason. Thinking that perhaps it was a bad sign that she was talking to herself so much.
I blame the outhouse, she said silently, deciding it wasn’t so bad to talk to herself as long as she did it in her head.
If she were lucky, she’d be able to find her way back in to town. If she were even luckier, there would be a nice little apartment, complete with a fully functioning bathroom, ready for immediate occupancy.
“Hello? Anyone home?”
Abby almost swallowed her tongue at the unexpected voice. It had come from the other side of a neglected-looking boathouse. She scrambled to her feet. “Hello,” she called back, dusting bits of grass and twigs from her behind. “I’m over here.”
A woman—scarcely larger than a child—emerged from around the corner, chin resting on the neatly folded stack of linen she carried. She looked at Abby and stopped dead in her tracks, her face turning pale. Just as quickly, she recovered. “I brought you some towels,” she said with an unmistakable tremor in her voice. She extended a hand in greeting. Abby shook it, yet couldn’t help feeling that she had startled the woman, even frightened her by her presence.
“I noticed the other day that the ones I had in the linen cupboard were looking a bit threadbare,” she said with contrived brightness—or had Abby imagined that? “You must be Miss Lancaster. I’ll be Cora Brannigan. I
thought I’d come by and meet you. So sorry I couldn’t be here to greet you proper. Did my best to ready the place for you though—it having been empty for nigh on a year—and it’s a good thing I did! A fine mess, it was, but that’s what I get for renting to bachelors—three tenants running, no less.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Brannigan. How kind of you.”
“Mrs. Brannigan’s me mum, dear,” she said, the tremor nearly gone. She tilted her head to better see into Abby’s eyes, and the strange expression was there again. Abby couldn’t quite decipher what it meant. “We don’t bother much with the Mr. and Mrs. bit ’round here—unless of course it’s a fine lady like yourself.”
“Oh, please,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Call me Abby. I love your accent. Do you mind me asking where you’re from?”
Cora chuckled. “I’m from right here, deary! Saint Cecelia Island was settled by Irish, Scottish, French—and anyone else who happened to wash up on our shores. We’re isolated, see, so the accents mingled and stuck. You should hear the folks on the north side of the island— they’ve got the French up there, aye? You can’t understand a blessed word they say!” Everything about the woman gave the impression of movement—from her hurried yet graceful stride to the large blue eyes that seemed to take in everything around her at a single glance. Abby felt thoroughly sized-up—albeit benevolently.
“And listen to me, babbling away while your poor self stands looking so lost!” Cora looked in dismay at Abby’s disheveled clothing. “Had a tumble, did you?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” She loped up behind Cora, who was already making her way down the verandah. Abby didn’t take her eyes off the planks she walked upon. The verandah was suspended over the heaving Atlantic on the most precarious-looking stilts she’d ever seen, and if those stilts had any intention of giving way, she wanted to be the first to know about it.
She rounded the corner, which offered her a view of the rocky coast. The lobster boat was no longer there. Abby shivered as she recalled its captain.
“Cora, just before you arrived I saw a fisherman.” She pointed to where the boat had been. “Just out there. I’d guess he was in his thirties, he was tall and…” Abby paused, realizing she had no vocabulary to describe him, realizing that her reaction had been so immediate and so visceral that she could barely recall his physical features. “I was just wondering if you know who he might be.”
Cora turned to face her, looked up the coast as if to discern by the air currents that stirred in his wake the identity of the stranger on the boat.
“I only ask because he seemed incredibly angry.”
Cora’s expression was guarded, but her voice was cheerful. Too cheerful, perhaps. “Oh, well it could have been most anyone, I s’pose. Now, let’s get you settled.”
“Uh, there’s another thing,” Abby said, plunging forward before the unsettled feeling she was getting from Cora distracted her. “About the outhouse…I didn’t realize there was no plumbing at the cottage. I’ve been thinking that I really ought to reconsider our lease agreement.”
“No plumbing?” Cora said, looking at her askance. “There’s running water in the kitchen.”
“Well, yes, but there’s no actual bathroom, Cora. A bathroom’s a pretty vital part of plumbing, at least where I come from.”
Cora chuckled. “Why, you’re lucky to have electricity. We only ran it up to Artist’s Cottage last spring.”
Abby looked at her expectantly…surely she was joking? “Well, be that as it may—”
“And besides the outhouse, there’s a chamber pot for cold nights. I thought sure I’d mentioned it to you.”
“I—I’m certain I’d have remembered.”
Cora Brannigan was chuckling again as she led a stammering Abby into the low-ceilinged main room of the cottage. “Ah, you’ll get used to it. It’s a small price to pay for life in paradise, says I.” She rattled the embers in the grate. “I must remember to thank Simon Gorham for startin’ this fire for you. It’ll get a mite chilly come evening if there’s been no fire through the day. Now the least I can do is help get you settled after your difficult day. I feel sorry, Abby, if I forgot to mention the, uh, rustic nature of the place—but it is a cottage, aye? I must have gotten distracted when I learned who you were and why you wanted to rent it in the first place.” There was an unmistakable undercurrent in her voice, as if each word—no matter how cheerfully spoken—was tethered to something bottomless and immovable within her. “Imagine, after all these years, Celeste’s daughter, come to Artist’s Cottage!” When she stood and faced Abby, her smile seemed genuine, albeit sad.
She knew my mother. It was all Abby could do to fight the urge to pepper Cora with questions. Something about the woman’s demeanor told her to resist…for now.
Abby smiled tremulously in return. She felt as if she’d stepped into very deep water. As if she had been swept into a societal riptide that was hopelessly beyond her ability to understand, much less extricate herself from. She couldn’t help believing it had something to do with her mother’s past here on this island.
“When I found out that my mother had stayed here, it seemed the obvious choice.”
“Of course,” Cora said, gathering her stack of linen and making her way to the stairs.
Abby followed her up, where Cora placed the towels in the small linen cupboard.
“I heard the sad news of your mother, rest her soul. And your father, rest him, too. Poor lamb that you are! You’ve come to a nice place for healing a weary heart, though.” She caught her breath as though realizing she’d revealed too much, as if she understood all too well about weary hearts. She turned back to the towels, straightening them industriously.
“Did you know my mother?” Abby asked, deciding against informing Cora that both of her parents had died some time ago. And how had Cora heard of their deaths in the first place? She felt at a definite disadvantage, as if she had arrived on an island peopled by folk who knew all about her, while she knew nothing about them. “Did you have the chance to meet her?”
A dangling silence slithered into the small landing, swayed between them before dropping to the floor and coiling, snakelike, upon the woven rug. “I did meet her, yes,” she said at last. “But I didn’t know her as well as did some. Now then,” she said, her voice clipped and bright again, “let’s unpack this pile of luggage.”
Cora appeared dismayed at the jumble of bags around the room. She grabbed a handle and started heaving. “Oh, what ’ave you got in here, deary? Stones?” She plunked the largest of the bags on the waist-high bed.
Abby rushed over, slapping a hand down on the suitcase. “I can unpack myself, really, Cora. What I mean to say is that I won’t be staying, anyway.”
Her landlady frowned. “Why ever not?”
“Well—” How best to phrase it? How best to tell your landlady that though you had just met her and genuinely liked her, you knew there was something strange going on between the two of you? And that you really didn’t want to encounter that man on the boat again? And that there was no way you were going to use that nightmare of an outhouse or set foot onto a verandah that gave way to a churning, hungry sea? “It’s just not what I expected, Cora.”
“I thought you wanted to be here because your mother had lived here.”
“I did, I mean, I do.” She was feeling guilty already.
“There, there,” soothed Cora, patting her arm. “These things always seem clearer on a good night’s sleep. Let’s unpack just what you need, and if you still decide that you’d like to leave by tomorrow morning, I’ll help you repack and rent you an apartment in town.”
Abby’s shoulders fell. Cora might be small, but this woman’s will had the momentum of a fast-moving freight train. “I’ll stay on for the night,” she agreed at last. “But I can guarantee I’ll be moving come morning.”
“Well,” Cora said, opening a suitcase, “at least you’ll be able to say you spent one night at Artist’s Cottage with our f
amous White Lady!”
“What famous White Lady?”
“Our resident ghost,” she said, flicking the light switch experimentally and nodding as the bulb flooded the room with light, then just as quickly bathed the room in darkness. Cora frowned, then flicked the switch a few more times until light returned.
“Your…your ghost?” Abby stammered. “Here, in this cottage?”
“Oh, aye. She’s quite helpful, too. She pops up now and then. A sighting of the lady is supposed to warn of coming danger.” Cora drew the last word out until it gained a life of its own, sent a wave of apprehension crashing down over Abby. Unzipping Abby’s luggage, Cora handed her a neatly folded stack of shirts from within. “Why, not three months ago Winnie Small saw the White Lady glide across the road, right in front of her car, no less! She knew from talk ’round the village that a sighting of the Lady means you ought to be on your guard. Had she not been driving very slowly, heeding the omen of the White Lady, she would have driven clear off Cragan Cliff Road— which, unbeknownst to her, had been washed out in a nor’easter just the night before! She’d have gone headlong into the Atlantic, she would have. Headlong!”
Abby grasped the handful of shirts Cora passed her, staring disbelievingly at her new landlady. Ominous strangers? An outhouse? Ghosts? The cottage had officially lost all vestiges of charm. The image of the man appeared before her mind’s eye. Impossibly, this man whom she had seen only once and for only seconds was infinitely more unsettling than the other problems combined. Why could she not shake the chill she was feeling? The chill that had everything to do with that man?
“There’s a dresser behind you, luv,” Cora said, eyeing her peculiarly. “Just go on and put them in.”
“Oh, yes, thank you.” Abby opened the drawer and shoved in the shirts. “You know, I really can unpack myself.”
Cora narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Mmm. Well, perhaps I should stay anyway. You’ve just put your clothes into the chamber pot, deary.”
“I what?” Abby looked behind her. Sure enough…“And you’re certain this White Lady lives here?” she asked, removing her shirts from the porcelain oddity that indeed occupied much of the top drawer, and placing them in the drawer beneath.