He stood in the doorway with the morning air at his back and the fire at hers, and he searched for the flaw in her reasoning the way he searched for the fault in the mechanism—methodically, thoroughly, with the expectation that diligence would eventually reveal what was not immediately visible.
He found nothing… at least, nothing that would move her.
And like the mechanism, the absence of a flaw did not reassure him. It made the entire construction less trustworthy, not more.
“The west track,” he said at last. “Below the ridge. Use that when you leave the tower before dawn. The eastern path is visible from Calder’s boat in the harbour. You will want to walk back up after first light, where your approach can be seen.”
She did not thank him. She did not smile. She received the concession the way she had delivered her terms: as a transaction completed, not a kindness extended.
“I looked at the ground yesterday while Mrs Hargreaves was talking about her son’s house,” she said. “I already saw that the western path is hidden from the harbour by the shoulder of the hill.”
He stared at her. She had been here less than a day. She had spent that day arguing about chimneys and coal and the right to remain upon a headland she had never seen before. And somewhere between those arguments, she had mapped the sightlines.
“You had already planned for this?”
“I had planned for the possibility that I might need to move between the cottage and the tower without observation. The cottage collapsing was not the scenario I had envisioned, but the path serves, regardless.”
She said it without pride. Without cunning. With the flat practicality of a woman who had learned, somewhere before this headland, that planning for the worst was not pessimism but survival.
It did not comfort him. A woman who mapped escape routes on her first afternoon was a woman who expected the ground to give way beneath her. Whatever had taught her that expectation, it would land upon his doorstep—because his doorstep was now, apparently, also hers.
He turned to the stair without another word, and he climbed, and the stone closed around him, and the lantern room received him in its accustomed silence.
Below, he heard her cross the floor. The settle creaked. Then nothing.
Two people in one tower. The same dark. The same dead flame. And not one degree closer to an answer than they had been the night before.
Chapter Ten
MrsHargreavesarrivedathalf past eight, climbing the path with the grim determination of a woman who expected to find disaster and intended to manage it.
Elizabeth met her forty paces from the tower.
She had prepared for this. She had washed her face with water from the jug, rebound her hair, and brushed the worst of the soot from her sleeves with a dampened cloth. She could do nothing about the gown—it was wrinkled, stiff in places, and carried the faint scent of coal smoke—but she could account for that. She had risen early. She had lit the fire. She had been working.
“Mrs Hargreaves. Good morning.”
The older woman looked her over with the undisguised appraisal of someone who had been managing other people’s foolishness for decades. “You look as though you slept in your clothes.”
“The cottage is draughty. I dressed at first light to conserve warmth.”
“Draughty! I told you—”
“You did tell me, and you were right that the night was uncomfortable. But I am here, and I am well, and I have a great many things to attend to this morning.” Elizabeth took her arm and turned her gently but firmly toward the tower. “Might I trouble you for help with provisions? I find myself in need of bread, and perhaps eggs, and if there is butter to be had in the village, I should be very grateful.”
Mrs Hargreaves frowned but allowed herself to be redirected. “You’ve not eaten?”
“Not yet. The fire wanted attention, and I wished to be up before the mist lifted.”
“And the keeper? Is he about?”
“He went out at dawn. I believe he is attending to the pyre.”
This was true. She had seen him from the tower door, climbing the knoll with a length of timber over his shoulder, rebuilding the structure the storm had diminished. He hadnot looked toward her or the path. He was, she understood, keeping himself visible and occupied—a man about his ordinary work, with nothing to conceal.
Mrs Hargreaves cast a glance toward the cottage. From this angle, the door was not visible—the slope of the ground and the position of the tower obscured it. But the path forked ahead, one branch leading to the cottage, the other continuing to the tower and the knoll beyond.
“I’ll just look in on the house,” Mrs Hargreaves said. “See how it fared.”
