Wind forced itself down the flue in a violent breath, scattering ash across the flags and sending sparks outward against the iron grate. She seized the poker and attempted to shift the coal, thinking to lower the heat, but the chimney answered with a sharp crack above her head.
Not thunder. Her eyes went upward, tracing the sound.
That was the crack of stone.
She lunged away from the hearth as a thin rain of grit fell from the edge where chimney met ceiling.
Another report followed—louder. A fragment of mortar dropped, struck the edge of the mantel, and shattered upon the floor.
The smoke thickened rapidly, stinging her eyes, burning her throat. She could not see the roof seam she had inspected earlier; the air itself had grown solid and dark.
Then, the heavy, inward collapse of something that had long been held in precarious balance. A section of the chimney breast gave way.
Stone and soot fell inward in a violent rush. The impact struck the hearth, scattering coal across the floor. The ceiling above split along the south seam, and from that opening the rain found immediate entrance.
It did not trickle. It poured.
Cold water drove through the fractured join and fell directly upon the hearthstone, hissing where it struck the coals and sending up a suffocating cloud of steam and smoke.
Elizabeth staggered back toward the mantel.
The books!
She seized the volumes from the stone ledge—Shakespeare first, then the Horace, then Mary’s sermons pressed against them, the travel book last—and gathered them against her breast, wrapping the linen from her trunk about them as she moved. Without thought for the gowns draped across the settle or the cloak hanging by the door.
The floor was already slick. Smoke pressed low, her eyes streamed. A second cascade of water broke through the widening seam, striking the centre of the room.
She could not stay. The weather or the smoke would finish what the chimney had begun. By smoke or by the elements, she would not survive the night.
With the books bound against her and the small lantern clutched in one hand, she crossed to the door, unbolted it, and forced it open against the wind.
The storm struck her full in the face.
Rain drove sideways across the headland, flattening the grass and tearing at her cloak. The pyre still burned, though bent nearly horizontal by the gale. Beyond it, the tower stood dark against the sky.
She lowered her head and pressed forward, boots sliding against the wet earth. The lantern at her side swung wildly; she shielded its flame with her body, but it was snuffed before she had taken three steps.
The slope was longer in the dark. The wind caught her at the shoulder and shoved her sideways; she staggered, regained her footing, continued. The books she held tighter than her breath.
The tower door loomed through the rain, a darker shape within darkness. She reached it, struck once with her free hand, and grasped for the latch. The storm howled behind her as she pushed her way inside.
Chapter Eight
Thedoorstrucktheframe behind her, and the wind fell to a muffled roar.
She stood with her back against the wood, chest heaving, water streaming from her cloak and pooling beneath her boots on the flags. The small lantern she had carried from the cottage was dead in her hand—snuffed three steps from the door—and she set it down upon the stone.
The books. She loosened her arm from around the bundle and drew the linen wrapping aside. Shakespeare had taken the worst of it; his spine was dark where rain had found the seam. But the pages had not parted, and the binding held. Horace was scarcely touched. Mary’s sermons, tucked innermost, remained dry. And the travel book—she turned it carefully in her hands—damp at one corner, but whole.
She gathered them against her again, more gently now, and pressed her shoulders to the wall.
The room was narrower than she remembered from her brief errand that afternoon. The storm had stood between her and attention then; now the walls closed about her without apology. Twelve feet across at most. A faint glow from the hearthstone—embers only, banked low against the evening—gave her the barest sense of shape and surface. His cot against the far wall. The table with its logbook and weighted letters. The shelves, spare and ordered. And above her, the stair rising in its tight coil and vanishing where the stone swallowed it.
That strange man would be prowling about the room above her head. The same even tread she had marked that afternoon, circling the lantern room. And soon, he would discover her in his space.
She was dripping on his floor. Clutching four volumes of rescued literature in a stranger’s quarters at midnight, while above her, the keeper of Blackscar Lantern walked slow circles around a gallerythat held no flame.
She pressed her lips together against the sound that tried to rise in her throat. Her ribs locked around it. Her jaw ached from the clenching, and her hands would not open from the books, and the shaking had migrated from her arms to the place behind her sternum where it could not be governed by posture or will.
