Tull grunted. He put his hat back on. “I’ll file a preliminary report. Mechanical fault identified. Repair in progress. Interim measures in place.” He paused. “But I’ll want to see the new collar installed myself. And if the light is not restored within fourteen days, I am obliged to recommend intervention to Trinity House.” He held the keeper’s gaze. “Fourteen days, Wickie. Not fifteen.”
The keeper absorbed the number. A month would have permitted patience. Fourteen days permitted nothing. Tull had filed the collar story because Tull needed a report that did not read “cause unknown” … and because he could not admit that a woman might perceive something about the brassworks that he could not. But the deadline told the truth of his assessment. He was giving them rope, not belief.
“I understand,” the keeper said.
“Good.” Tull turned to Miss Bennet. “And you, madam. You say you are the steward?”
“I am.”
“Then you are accountable for the condition of this apparatus, the safety of this coast, and the conduct of its keeper. I shall expect to deal with you directly from this point forward.”
She smiled andinclined her head pleasantly. “You shall find me available, Mr Tull. However, I might remind you that it will take some weeks to even hear back from Heaton's. What remedy do you propose in the meantime?”
The keeper held his breath. She was brazen, this Miss Bennet. She was also right… if the causewereactually the collar. There was no remedy that did not include waiting.
Tull's expression fell into a thoughtful glower. He had not anticipated any sort of pushing back, least of all from her. His tongue shifted around inside his cheek, as though he were trying not to bite it. “A month, then. Thirty days, Miss Bennet—not an instant longer, mind. I won't have the coast dark all winter.”
“Of course not, Mr Tull, and neither would I have it so. I shall write to Heaton's again, reminding them of the urgency.”
Tull grunted, then descended the stair without further questions. His clerk followed, the leather case held against his chest. Tom Calder and Robson’s son went with them, the barrow rattling over the stones.
The tower emptied by degrees, and then they were alone.
She stood at the gallery window, looking out at the sea. The mist had burned away. The water lay grey and flat under a pale sky, and the reef showed its dark spine at the low tide—jagged, patient, indifferent to the arrangements made upon the cliff above it.
He waited until the footsteps had faded entirely from the stair before he spoke.
“You have never touched that collar.”
She did not turn from the window. “No, but I saw you inspecting it last night. Particularly the southern quarter.”
“You told the harbour warden you had examined it yourself.”
“I told him you showed it to me and that I perceived the fault. He needed to hear that more than one pair of eyes had confirmed the deficiency. A keeper reporting his own failure invites scrutiny. A steward corroborating a keeper’s diagnosis invites confidence.”
“You lied to a harbour official.”
“I supported a diagnosis that you provided to Robson, that Robson provided to the village, and that you repeated to Tull not ten minutes ago.” She turned from the window. “If thereisa liar in this room, then there are two of us.”
The air between them held the charge of something that could not be taken back. She had yoked herself to his fiction. She had done it without asking, without warning, and with a competence that left him no ground to stand on, because Tull had walked awayfiling “mechanical fault identified” instead of “unexplained failure,” and the difference between those two phrases was the difference between time and catastrophe.
She had bought them a month. And she had done it by putting her own credibility on the same line as his.
He crossed his arms. “You should have told me what you intended.”
“When? While Tull stood at your door with a clerk taking notes? You had told the village a story. I made certain the story held. That is what a steward does.”
“That is what a co-conspirator does.”
“Then we are co-conspirators.” She said it without flinching. “You would prefer I had stood silently while Tull wrote ‘cause unknown’ in his report and sent it to Trinity House by the evening post?”
He could not say he would have preferred that, because he would not have. The report Tull carried down the hill was better than any outcome he could have secured alone. She had read the room, identified the lever, and pulled it with the certainty of someone who had been managing difficult men and insufficient information long before she arrived at his headland.
He disliked all of it. He disliked that she had lied for him. He disliked that the lie had worked. He disliked, most of all, that she had been right to do it, and that his disapproval was a luxury neither of them could afford.
“Tull gave us one month,” he said. “It would take at least two to get the new collar, in the best of circumstances. The deadline tells you what he believes.”
“I know what it tells me.” She held his gaze. “Which means either the fault is real and too subtle for any of us to measure, or it is not real and the lantern is failing for a reason that has nothing to do with brass. Either way, we have thirty days. I suggest we use them.”
