She thought of the man in the heavy coat, the hidden hand, the dawn departure. The image sat uneasily beside her mother’s brooch,locked away in her drawer. Every thread she touched seemed to hum with the same dangerous promise: pull, and something will come undone.
The inn door opened with a slap of wind. Two fishermen stamped in, knocking mud from their boots. The landlord called a greeting, leaned on the counter as Gabriel approached. From the corner, Leticia watched the conversation in the ale mirror. The mirror warped their reflections, bending Gabriel’s tall form into something caught between shadow and light. His calm mouth moved, the landlord’s brows rose, and a thumb swung toward the coast. The landlord drew a mark on the wood with a damp finger, two lines crossing with a dot to one side, wiped it away with his cuff.
Meanwhile, Lady Eastbury had already gathered a small court near the hearth. She sat with a woman in a faded blue shawl and another with red hands and a laugh like a cart on gravel. “Prices have gone up dreadfully,” her ladyship declared. “Tea, lace, even gossip. In my day, gossip was free.”
“Still is if you buy a round,” the blue shawl said.
Lady Eastbury produced a coin with a magician’s air and placed it on the table. “Let us be extravagant. Tell me, what sort of people ask about sheds?”
“Quiet sort,” the red hands said. “And always askin’ the tide times twice.”
“Twice?” Lady Eastbury tilted her head.
“So they can pretend they forgot,” blue shawl said. “But they never forget. They just want to hear it from different mouths.”
From the fishermen’s corner came the low rumble of a conversation meant to stay private.
“…shed down by the Cross…”
“…wouldn’t go near it after dark…”
“…man with the glove, asking after the tide times…”
Leticia let her gaze rest idly on the tabletop, her ears tilting towardtheir words. The glove. The tide. A meeting place shunned by locals. Each detail slid neatly into place beside Pierce’s account. Together, they fit like fingers closing around the same small object. She did not yet know its shape, only that it fit the palm too well.
Gabriel returned, settling opposite her. “Nothing certain,” he said softly, “but the name is known here. More than I’d like.”
“Pierce was right,” she said.
“Pierce was right about more than he said aloud.”
The landlord brought out a plate of oatcakes, and Lady Eastbury promptly declared them the best she’d ever had, though she admitted she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten any. “The secret is lard,” she confided to Leticia in a whisper that carried across the room. “All good things are scandalous.”
When the driver came in to tell them the tide had dropped enough to cross, they rose, settling cloaks and gloves before stepping back into the wind.
*
As the carriagerolled toward Sommer-by-the-Sea, the landscape shifted from ragged shore to gentler fields. Leticia leaned her shoulder against the window frame, watching sheep dot the hillsides, their wool bright against the green. The air inside was warmer now, heavy with the faint scent of peat and salt clinging to their clothes.
The man with the glove returned to her thoughts, the whispered warnings about the shed, the crabber’s caution, and Gabriel’s watchfulness at the inn. The threads were drawing together her mother’s brooch, the Order’s shadow, and now this coastal meeting place. It all moved toward something she could sense, the feeling of a door half open in the dark. Tug the wrong one, and everything might come loose. Wait too long, and someone else might tug it for her.
She glanced at Gabriel and found him already looking at her. Nochallenge in it, only the steady question he carried for her alone.Are you with me?The answering warmth surprised her, quiet, certain, like a harbor found in hard weather.
“Sommer-by-the-Sea,” he said quietly, as though promising both an answer and a reckoning.
“And seedcake,” Lady Eastbury added, rousing from her corner with a decisive rustle. “I cannot be expected to face villains on an empty stomach.”
Gabriel’s mouth tugged. Leticia let her cheek rest against the cool glass and watched the road unspool ahead. For the first time since leaving the cove, she let herself believe the storm might be steering them toward the truth.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The carriage leftthe cove road and settled into the smoother way toward Sommer-by-the-Sea. Wind off the water softened to a steady breeze through the open window, carrying the faint salt of drying kelp. Leticia sat opposite Gabriel, his hat beside him on the seat. He had the stillness he wore when thinking, not distant, but assured.
Lady Eastbury tapped her closed parasol once against the floor as if to signal the day to behave. “We shall stop in the square.”
“For Beckett’s?” Leticia asked.
“For seedcake,” her aunt said. “If I send Peters, they will call it fresh and hope I do not know the difference. If I arrive in person, they will find their best and add a proper slice as a courtesy.” Her lips curved. “I enjoy being served what I actually requested.”
