By the time the noise subsided, the cottage was half-choked with dust and the air tasted of old plaster.
“Dear God,” the Admiral wheezed, clinging to Edmund’s arm. “Is that Bonaparte at the door?”
“I suspect a tree, sir,” Edmund replied, though his heart still pounded. “Stay here.”
He had left the Admiral seated near the hearth and gone to look.
The sight would remain with him a long while: the heavy bulk of the oak lay across the rear portion of the roof, its trunk sunk deep into shattered beams above the kitchen, its branches clawing at the sky like hands still reaching for help.
The next hours had passed in a steady, relentless round of labour. He had dragged what he could from beneath the damaged section, moved Mrs. Grealey and the Admiral into the front room, built up the fire, checked the walls, and wedged a length of timber where the ceiling bowed most threateningly. He had not thought, only acted—on training, on habit, on that stubborn refusal to leave another human being to chance when he might stand between them and disaster.
When the worst of the wind had howled itself to a lower pitch, he had sat down opposite the fire and watched the Admiral doze in his chair, blankets heaped to his chin. The old man had woken at intervals to mutter of past storms, of gales in the Atlantic, of battles and sunken ships.
“Ha! We have weathered greater tempests than this, Leigh. The house will stand.”
He had not the heart to tell the man how bad the western half of his house was.
Yet when dawn came, the sky was clear and the wind as calm as it ever was on the coast.
He pushed another log onto the embers, then went to survey the damage from the outside.
Mrs. Grealey was weeping in what remained of the kitchen, fretting over what was to be done about the master’s tea.
It was Edmund’s place to worry about ciphers and ledgers and the possibility that Captain Larkin’s quiet, composed widow might know far more of both than she let show, but that would have to wait for now. He could hardly abandon his host in his time of need, and it was unlikely he would gather muchintelligence at a time like this. The weather would have inhibited any clandestine activities as well.
He had only half finished the thought when there came a rap on the damaged door and Mrs. Grealey’s startled exclamation in the passage.
“Mrs. Larkin! Miss Archer!”
And then she appeared in the doorway, cloak damp at the hem, curls escaping beneath her bonnet and her eyes wide with apprehension, telling him she had scarcely slept either.
He watched that apprehension alter, shifting from fear to relief to something quieter when she saw the Admiral upright by the fire.
Now, an hour later, he was carrying the Admiral over another fallen tree that blocked the path.
“Careful, sir,” he murmured, one arm braced beneath the Admiral’s knees, the other firm around his shoulders as he picked his way along the fallen trunk.
The Admiral, to his credit, submitted with only a few protests. “This is devilish undignified, Leigh—oh, mind that branch, man, I have but one sound knee left, you know?—”
“I have you,” Edmund said calmly.
The path from the cottage to the school had been reduced to a hunting field of obstacles devised by an enemy with a sense of humour.
“Shall I go back and see what I may find upon which we might bear him?” Mrs. Larkin asked.
Edmund had looked at the cottage sagging under its new arboreal burden and said, “There may not be time, ma’am. The walls shifted twice after you arrived. The next tremor may bring the chimney with it.”
He had seen her swallow and nod. “Do what you must.”
So here he was, walking along a wet, resin-slicked trunk in a high wind with a retired admiral in his arms, while Mrs Larkinand Miss Archer moved ahead and behind, steadying what they could.
If Baines could see him now, he would never hear the end of it.
Manners would murmur, “Lost in Devon, crushed beneath patriotic timber.”
He tightened his hold on his burden and stepped down from the trunk onto firmer ground with a care that made his teeth clench.
“There,” he said. “We are past the worst of it, sir.”
