Elise forced herself to nod, but her heart would not let go of the fear.
“We have to hope Mr. Leigh—” she began, then stopped.
Jane looked pointedly at her. “Yes, we have to hope Mr. Leigh is able help our dear Admiral.”
Morning felt impossibly far away. Elise tried to sleep, but the storm made a mockery of the attempt. Rain lashed the windows like handfuls of thrown gravel. The house groaned in its beams. At times, the wind shrieked down the chimney with such force the candle guttered sideways.
She rose and paced up and down. She sat on the edge of her bed. She pressed her palms to her eyes. Thoughts circled her mind—too many, too painful. The possibility that the smuggling ring had not died with Singleton. The coincidence—if it was one—of Mr. Leigh’s sudden appearance.
Meanwhile, above it all… the question no thunder could drown: Who was using the cipher?
At last, exhaustion tugged at her. She slipped beneath the quilts fully clothed, letting the storm’s fury thrash unseen beyond the glass. Her last conscious thought was one of dread—not for herself, but for the quiet cottage on the cliff.
“What if the Admiral… what if Mr. Leigh…” She did not finish the thought.
She woke to a silence almost worse than the storm had been.
The air felt heavy, sodden, still dripping with the remnants of the night’s violence. Her room was cold. She rose at once, hurried into the corridor, and found Jane already awake, her cloak wrapped tightly around her.
“Elise,” Jane said breathlessly. “The south garden—it is half destroyed. But the roof held.”
“We must look to the Admiral.”
They did not wait for breakfast, nor for full light. They donned cloaks, lit lanterns, and stepped into the ruined garden.
The storm had torn down branches thicker than Elise’s wrist. Debris littered the path in wild disarray. The southern gate was gone entirely—ripped from its hinges. The yew hedges layflattened. Wind had driven seawater across the lawn, leaving patches of glistening sand.
The path toward the Admiral’s cottage was almost impassable.
“This is the worst storm I have seen here.”
Elise lifted her skirts and pressed forward, the hem of her cloak whipping against her legs as the breeze off the sea still hissed through the broken hedges.
Where the path should have wound neatly between bushes and the stone wall, the storm had gouged a hole straight through it. A great limb—no, nearly half a tree—lay sprawled across the track, its roots torn from the earth like the limbs of some toppled giant.
“We shall have to climb over,” Jane said softly, eyeing the tangle of branches.
Elise tied up her skirts and began to pull herself upward, treading carefully on wet bark and slick moss. Jane steadied her from behind. From the crest they could see the cliff path stretching ahead, battered but passable—until the next bend, where the Admiral’s roof came into view… or what remained of it. Elise’s breath shortened. “Jane… look.”
The whitewashed wall that once had enclosed the Admiral’s modest kitchen garden was shattered, stones scattered like dice. And beyond it—Elise clutched Jane’s arm.
A tree—an entire towering oak—had fallen directly across the cottage roof.
Its trunk lay diagonally over the western rooms, its heavy boughs drooping like broken wings. The roof beneath it sagged under the weight. Tiles had shattered. Part of the western chimney had collapsed.
“Oh, merciful heavens,” Jane whispered.
Elise forced her legs to move. “Come. Quickly.”
They scrambled down the broken wall and waded through the debris-strewn garden. Branches snapped underfoot. Water pooled where soil had washed away. The cottage door hung crookedly, the hinges pulled loose.
Elise knocked anyway. “Admiral? Admiral!”
A muffled voice answered. “In here!”
Relief nearly unmanned her legs. She shoved the door open.
The sight that greeted her made her halt. The Admiral sat swaddled in blankets to the chin, a plaster on his cheek, his boots before the hearth—where a brave little fire still burned despite the havoc outside. Beside him—sleeves rolled to the elbow, hair disordered and shirt open at the throat from exertion—stood Mr. Leigh.
