And why are you still here?
“Our family’s holdings included a house here in Lizard Bay. It was a place we’d never visited, and where no one knew us. I’d originally considered it as a home where Josephine could come and raise her child. But she didn’t want to leave London.” He smiled grimly. “So I left instead. I was afraid that if I stayed, I would want to see her, and that might give her away. By coming here . . . and by staying here, at least I can protect her now.”
The echo of pain in his voice told her far more than his words did. He had loved his sister. He loved her still.
Lucy leaned forward and placed a hand against his cheek. “Thomas,” she whispered. “No matter what you’ve been telling yourself these past three years, you did protect her. In some ways, you protected her better than if you had stood firm and insisted she follow a more expected path. You respected her choice, even at your own expense.” She lifted her other hand to the opposite cheek, framing his face, hoping he could see the truth reflected in her eyes. “I can see why my aunt felt you were worth saving.”
THOMAS WANTED TO anchor himself in her gaze, to the promise he saw there and the hope he heard in her voice. He felt as though he was drowning, his lungs exhausted from the hard slog of trying to keep his head above water for three long years.
“I failed her,” he said, shaking his head. He pulled Lucy’s hands away, feeling undeserving of such a gentle touch. “You didn’t know me then. I was no one my sister could depend on, even though she’d come to me, asking for help.”
He could still remember how shamefully he’d reacted to Josephine’s tearful confession, demanding to know who had done it to her, threatening to kill the man. He’d been drunk when she arrived on his doorstep, but could one ever really be drunk enough in those circumstances? She poured out her heart to him, and he’d only been capable of pouring himself another glass.
“She never told me who was responsible, only that she was an equally culpable party. I tried to convince her to marry someone expedient, a second son desperate enough to overlook her circumstances. Anyone I could find, I didn’t care who it was. But I was wrong to suggest that of her.” He could see that now. He hadn’t counted on his sister’s quiet strength.
Or the lengths to which she was willing to go to protect her child.
A quiet touch came on his arm. “Thomas, she will forgive you.”
He looked down at this woman, who somehow, despite all good logic, trusted him. “How could she? You didn’t know me then, how hard and callous I could be when I was drinking.” The thought of all that the whisky had taken from him over the years made him feel quite sick to his stomach. Christ, was he even the same person now?
“You’ve changed, then, for the better,” Lucy said. “You are strong enough to stay away from something that hurts you and those you love. Surely it is time for you to go back and visit your sister now,” she added, squeezing his arm. “Three years is a long time to stay away from family.” She hesitated. “And there is more than enough room for you to come with us in the coach today.”
He could see what she was trying to do, could see the way her eyes shone at the thought of orchestrating this heart-felt, tear-stained reunion. She was trying—wanting—to fix this, but she really didn’t understand. He wasn’t ready.
Wasn’t anywhere close to ready.
He shook his head. “I am the brother who failed her. She’ll not want to see me.”
“My own brother tried to poison me, and I would want to see him.”
In spite of the gravity of their conversation, Thomas’s lips tipped up. He had a feeling her brother was going to pay dearly in that eventual exchange. “I appreciate your ideas Lucy, truly I do. But this isn’t some grand cause that can be fixed so easily. The truth is . . . I did try to see her, last week in London. I had my cab drive by her town house and I caught a glimpse of her through a window.” He looked up at the sky. “She looked . . . content. It appears she has finally found happiness.” His gaze lowered again to meet hers. “I don’t want to risk knocking on her door and destroying that.”
“Shouldn’t that decision be hers to make?”
He exhaled slowly. “I can’t see a way to do it safely. What if someone recognized me? What if, by association, someone recognized her?”
“Well, I don’t recommend you charge in waving a flag or holding a sign. You could wear a disguise, or pretend to be a family friend.” She smiled, but he could see it was strained, not the full, open smile he was used to. “Perhaps you could try to buy her house. You have some practice in that, after all.”
He pondered it. Christ above, he actually considered it. Could he go to London, knock on that door, and actually tell Josephine he was sorry? Could he look at his sister and small niece without feeling as though he had failed them?
She reached out and took up his hands, holding them in her own. “I can see this is a decision you must make in your own time, Thomas. But know this. You are presuming your niece would be happier growing up without knowing you. I am not sure that is true. Maybe now is not the right time, but someday, won’t she deserve to know who she is, where she came from? Won’t she deserve to know the truth of her grandparents, and her wonderful, stupid uncle?”
He frowned. “How can I be wonderful and stupid?”
“The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive qualities.” She sighed. “The point is, I understand this is a decision you are wrestling with. My aunt stayed away from London, presumably to protect me, but oh, how I wish she’d made a different choice. All I have of her now is her diary.” Her hand drifted to the serpentine pendant about her neck. “A bit of jewelry, a pair of glass horses. Far too few memories. I can’t help but wish she’d have let me make the choice whether or not to know her, because now I’ll never know how brilliant she actually was, beyond what the townspeople of Lizard Bay tell me.”
Thomas swallowed. “I can’t go to London, Lucy. Not right now.”
“Then I am going to miss you,” she said sadly, stepping forward and pressing a quick, sweet kiss to his lips.
And then she turned toward town.
From the Diary of Edith Lucille Westmore
August 15, 1852
Regrets are a hard fact of life.
My life has been long and ostensibly full. I’ve friends and grand causes to keep me busy. A set of diaries to chronicle my adventures, and a lovely—albeit distant—family back in London. But I have not been as brave as I should have been.
And that is what I regret most of all.
Lately, as my body grows weaker and my mind sifts through forty years of decisions, I find myself questioning too many of them. Did I make the right choice for my family, isolating myself in Cornwall to protect their reputation? I do not know. I only know I regularly scan the London Times, eager for any whiff of news, however small and unimportant.
And on the matter of spinsterhood . . . did I make the right choice for me? This, too, I do not know. I only know that my life, since moving to town, has seemed fuller. Richer. I see Reverend Wellsbury nearly every day now, and it makes me wonder if that, too, is a loss I will always regret. But a lady never admits she is wrong.
She holds her head up and pretends it is all as she planned.
Chapter 26
As Lucy slipped into the front door of Mrs. Wilkins’s boardinghouse, she heard her father’s voice, shouting in the parlor.
“What do you mean you don’t know where she is? I left her here with the express understanding you would be watching her closely, Mrs. Wilkins. She’s a young woman whose reputation is already hanging by a thread. She needs to be chaperoned!”
Wincing, Lucy glanced down her grass-stained night rail. Her father had come early. Or else she had returned too late. Thomas had been right, it seemed.
Already, she missed him. Already, she wanted to run back to him, loop her arms about his neck and pull him down for another bone-melting kiss. Already, she wanted to tell him that yes, please, she would marry him, and they should
hurry up and post the bans this Sunday in the little church on top of the hill.
But it was too late. He’d said he couldn’t come to London, and she knew, in spite of all that had happened, that she needed to spend at least part of her life in the city. Lydia was in London. Her sister Clare and her growing brood. Nieces and nephews and family. Thomas had said his good-byes, and she had said her piece.
There was naught to do but wait for him to come to his senses.
And try not to anger her father any further.
“I am on a very tight schedule,” came a man’s voice she didn’t recognize. “The Marston Mining Corporation receives many inquiries, and I don’t like having my time wasted.”
“Let us give her ten more minutes,” came her father’s strained voice. “I can show you the property without her, if it comes down to it.”
Lucy gasped out loud. Oh, God. Oh, bugger it all.
She’d forgotten about the inspector from the Marston Mining Corporation.
She slipped past the parlor, dread making her feet fly up the stairs and over more cats than she could count. In her room, she yanked off her nightdress and pulled on her one remaining gown, her fingers skating across the mother-of-pearl buttons. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed the worst: there were twigs and grass in her hair, and her nose was a helpless sort of pink. Well, it scarcely mattered what she looked like. Her future was hanging in the balance.
She could brush her hair later.
As she turned toward the door, the toe of her boot kicked something hard. It rolled away, off the carpet, rattling onto the hardwood floor. Bending down, she picked it up, turning it over in her hand. It was the lizardite rock from Thomas’s satchel, apparently dropped in her haste this morning. She looked further, to the papers that had fallen out and were now scattered across the floor. His proposal for the Linnean Society of London. So much hope, so much work in those pages. But she couldn’t take the time to clean it up now. Perhaps later . . .
Only, later, she was going to London.
She swallowed against the surge of panic that wanted to wash over her, and dashed back down the stairs, her fingers closing over the stone in her hand. She burst into the parlor just as her father was stepping toward the door.
“Wait!”
“Lucy, there you are! Are you all right?” her father exclaimed, striding toward her. Mrs. Wilkins stood to one side, wringing her hands with worry. Farther afield, a bearded gentleman stood by the fireplace, consulting a pocket watch.
“Oh, thank goodness you are back.” Mrs. Wilkins clucked, placing a gnarled hand across her chest. “I’d thought perhaps the haints had taken you.”
Beads of sweat had popped up on her father’s forehead, and he mopped them with a handkerchief. “God’s teeth, child, I was worried sick when we arrived this morning and Mrs. Wilkins said she had no idea where you had gone.” He frowned and reached out a hand, plucking a piece of grass from her hair. “What is this?”
Lucy’s cheeks heated. “It’s just a bit of grass from the moors. I went out to inspect the property one last time.” She glanced toward the man from the Marston Mining Corporation. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to inconvenience anyone.” Her hand tightened around the stone, wishing for some of its resiliency. “But now that I am here, why don’t we all sit down and discuss matters?”
“Young lady,” the bearded gentleman said, snapping his watch shut and placing it in his coat pocket. “We are nearly an hour behind schedule as it is. Let us be on our way to see the property.”
Lucy glared at the man. The embarrassment of her dishabille paled against the distaste she felt in his appearance. The man’s suit was worsted wool, and his pocket watch was etched silver. He was clearly well-paid, and likely quite good at his job. She thought of the unspoiled beauty Thomas had shown her this morning, and how the Marston Mining Corporation would happily destroy all of it without a second thought.
The inspector seemed unconcerned by the enormity of the choice in her hands.
She, at least, was wrestling with the decision.
Thomas had truly made her feel as though the decision was hers, and she felt no pressure beyond her own conscience for the direction she ought to go. Seven thousand pounds was a tremendous sum of money to forego. It was far more than she needed to ensure her independence. More than she needed to secure a future, on her own terms.
But greed had never been a part of who she was.
She lifted her chin. “I am very sorry to have you come all this way,” she told the inspector, “but I won’t be showing you the property today.”
The inspector’s face darkened. He looked pointedly at her father. “I am afraid I don’t understand, Lord Cardwell. You said I might see a sample of the rock.”
“Now Lucy,” her father coaxed. “There is no harm in at least letting him inspect it. We’ll need to know the property’s value if we are going to make an educated decision.”
Lucy exhaled slowly. “Not we, Father. Me. It is my opinion. My decision. My property.”
Her father blinked. “I . . . that is to say . . . I did not mean . . .”
“You once said I had a good head on my shoulders. You need to trust me to use it now,” Lucy warned softly. She turned to face the inspector. Although she was still confused on the matter of what to do with the property, she knew she couldn’t stomach the idea of selling Heathmore to the Marston Mining Corporation, not even for seventy thousand pounds. Her aunt may not have made her wishes known in the pages of her diary, but it was clear she had loved Lizard Bay and sought every chance to fix the little town.
Every chance, that was, except the one thing that would likely destroy it instead.
Lucy held out her hand, the green rock resting against her open palm. “There’s no need to visit Heathmore today, because I’ve brought a sample of the rock in question back with me.”
The inspector plucked the stone from her hand. “What is this?” He frowned. “It’s nothing but a bit of lizardite.”
“Oh?” said Lucy innocently. “Do you mean to say it isn’t tin after all?” She placed a hand against her chest. “But I thought it must be tin. There’s so much of it on the property. I simply presumed—”
“Do you mean to say you dragged me all the way here for this?” The inspector scowled in her father’s direction. “This rock is useless. Worse than useless.”
Her father frowned but miraculously held his tongue.
Lucy retrieved the rock from the inspector’s hand, her fingers curling protectively around its rough edges. It wasn’t useless. Not to her. And keeping Heathmore’s secrets out of the hands of the Marston Mining Corporation was a cause that came closer to priceless, in her estimation. “Oh, dear.” She sighed dramatically. “I feel so silly to have wasted your time.”
“As well you should,” the inspector snapped, already heading for the door.
Lucy waited until the man’s mutterings about wasted time and featherbrained chits faded away, until, even, she heard the front door slam. Then, unable to face the questions she saw in her father’s eyes, she gave a curt nod. “I will just go upstairs and pack, then.”
She climbed the stairs, fighting back tears as she stepped into her rented room. She shoved her grass-stained nightdress into her bag, then laid the small rock and her aunt’s diaries carefully on top. Then, sinking to her knees, she started to shuffle the papers that had fallen out of Thomas’s satchel into a neat pile.
Touching them reminded her, too much, of touching him.
The tears that had begun on the stairs fell harder then, threatening to soak the pages. She wiped a sleeve across her eyes, not wanting to damage the delicate paper. They were painstakingly written, his neat handwriting outlining his findings, the language stilted and formal. She thought of his hopes for the area, of his plans to use Heathmore Cottage as a naturalist’s retreat. It was a fine idea, but she couldn’t imagine it would be enough to save an entire dying town. Because Lizard Bay was dying.
It was
in every bit as much danger as the Cornish chough.
And while she may have just saved Heathmore’s natural beauty from an unscrupulous mining operation, she hadn’t exactly come up with a way to save the town yet. It needed something more tenable. Sustainable. After all, nature was fickle. It was not something to hang an entire town’s future upon.
A knock came at the door. “Lucy?”
She wiped her eyes more thoroughly. “Come in, Father.”
The door opened and her father stepped in, his hat in his hands. She studied him from where she was kneeling on the floor. He looked nervous, though she couldn’t sort out why. She was the one who didn’t know how to explain herself here. How did one justify giving up such a fortune? The thought that her father might consider her mad for making such a decision gave her pause. She’d come here, after all, because she feared he might be considering such a dire thing.
But that fear didn’t come close to changing her mind.
“I see you are packing.” He nodded, as though trying to convince himself of her sanity. “The coach I hired in Marston is waiting just outside. No sense delaying our return to London now that the inspector has gone.” He reached out and picked up her valise, holding it in front of him like a shield. “Your mother and Lydia miss you terribly.”
Lucy stood up, clutching the papers in front of her as though they might provide a bit of defense. Why did she always feel as though she was at odds with her father? She’d once wanted nothing more than his approval, but as the years rolled on, that approval had become so much harder to win. Or perhaps it was that she had become more fiercely determined to be herself, rather than what he expected?
She pondered that a moment. It had taken Thomas’s unquestioning acceptance of who she was—grand causes and all—to understand that she was not some misfit, needing to change.
Thomas liked her—loved her—just the way she was.
And . . . oh, God. She could see it then, what this terrible, gaping hole in her chest was. Why it hurt so much to consider getting on that coach without him. She loved him, too.
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