“Is there anything you require from below?”
“No.”
She stood and faced him. He had put his coat on and stood by the door with the look of a man about to vacate his own quarters because they were no longer entirely his—and finding the necessity intolerable, and governing the intolerability with an economy of movement she was beginning to catalogue as his first language.
“I cannot keep calling you William if it is not your name.”
His hand stilled on the door frame. “It will serve.”
“It will serve you. It does not serve me. I am lying to a harbour warden about a brass collar, managing a cover story for a collapsed cottage, and sleeping on your cot. If I am to do all of that, I should at least know the name of the man whose reputation I am protecting alongside my own.”
“You are protecting the trust. My name is immaterial to the trust.”
“Your nameismaterial to someone who must work beside you.”
He opened the door. The morning air entered, and with it the sound of the sea and the distant knock of a boat against the harbour wall. “William is sufficient, Miss Bennet. I have nothing else to offer on the matter.”
She held his gaze longer than the exchange required—long enough that he would know she was not yielding the point, only deferring it—then took up the dead lantern she had carried from the cottage, the small one, still sitting by the door where she had set it that first night, and held it toward him. “Might I have oil for this? It will serve on the west track in the mornings.”
He sighed and took the lantern from her hand without touching her fingers. He turned to the shelf where the oil tins stood, poured a measured amount, and trimmed the wick with a small blade before returning it.
She watched him work the wick. The blade moved with the same economy he brought to every task—no wasted motion, no hesitation. It was the competence of a man who had been trained, and trained well, and by someone who did not tolerate imprecision. She was assembling a list of such observations, and the list did not yet point anywhere she could name, but it grew longer with each hour she spent in this tower.
“The wick was fouled,” he said. “Rain got into the housing. It will burn now.”
She took it from him and left without thanking him, because thanks had become a currency she could not spend without altering the terms of whatever stood between them, and the terms were already more complicated than she couldafford.
She descended toward the village by the western path, the little lantern swinging at her side, in full view of anyone who cared to watch.
Mrs Hargreaves’ son was called Robert, and he kept a house at the upper end of the village that smelled of dried fish and turpentine. His wife, Anne, was a woman of few words and many opinions, all of which she communicated through the angle of her brows and the velocity with which she placed things on the table.
Elizabeth sat in their kitchen and ate porridge with salt, which was how it was served here, and drank tea that was stronger than anything her aunt had ever brewed, and submitted herself to Mrs Hargreaves’ inspection with the patience of someone undergoing a necessary procedure.
“You look as though you’ve not slept.”
“The cottage is draughty, as you warned. I rose early.”
“I told you. I told you, and I told your uncle—”
“You did, and you were right. I have a letter for the trustees requesting that the chimney be examined by a mason. I have the authority to order repairs, but the funds must come through the trust. In the meantime, I am spending my waking hours familiarising myself with the property.”
Mrs Hargreaves looked at Anne. Anne’s brows communicated something between vindication and resignation.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” Mrs Hargreaves said. It was not a question.
“I may. The day is long and I cannot say what it will require.” Elizabeth sipped the tea and set the cup down. “Tell me about the keeper.”
Mrs Hargreaves blinked. “Wickie?”
“How did he come to the post?”
“Applied for it, I’m told. After old Ridley died. The trustees put out word through the usual channels, and he came up from—well, I don’t know where from, if I’m honest. He arrived with a letter from the trustees and a sea chest and not much else.”
“No references? No family?”
“If he had references, he showed them to the trustees, not to me. Family—none that he’s spoken of. He’s a private man, Miss Bennet. Five years here and I couldn’t tell you where he was born.”
Elizabeth turned her cup on the table. “And the village simply accepted him?”
