“The steward’s work does not observe tavern hours.”
“The steward’s work does not require her to be alone with an unmarried man after nightfall.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Marian Hale was alone with her keeper for thirty-one years, and no one thought the worse of her.”
“Marian Hale was fifty when I knew her, and she looked sixty, and she had the temperament of a chapel wall. No one was going to talk about Marian and a man.” Mrs Hargreaves folded her arms. “You are not Marian Hale.”
“No. I am younger, and I have fewer years of service. But I am no less serious about the work, and I will not curtail my hours because Tom Calder has nothing better to do after dark than monitor my movements.”
“It is not only Tom. The village has eyes, Miss Bennet. And tongues.”
“Then the village may exercise both. I am here to restore this trust, not to satisfy the standards of people who have allowed the property to fall to ruin for twenty years without lifting a hand.” She heard the sharpness in her own voice and did not soften it. “Miss Hale managed this arrangement without a chaperone and without apology. I intend to do so as well.”
“Miss Hale was a confirmedspinster.”
She smiled. “Then we are not so different.”
Mrs Hargreaves looked at her for a long time—the kind of look that moved through what was said and what was held back and drew its own conclusions from the gap between them. “Confirmed spinster,” she repeated. “At twenty-one.”
“Some of us arrive at our conclusions early.”
“And some of us use conclusions as walls.” Mrs Hargreaves picked up the basket and set it inside the tower door. “There’s a ham in there. And a second chemise, since you seem determined to ruin the first. I’ll send Peter up with candles this afternoon.” She paused at the threshold. “When that mason comes, I’m going to look at the chimney with him, and I’ll expect to see the place in order.”
“That is very good of you, Mrs Hargreaves.”
She grunted, then turned and descended the path with the broom still in her hand—a weapon she had not been permitted to deploy and which she carried back to the village like a standard of an army in temporary retreat.
Elizabeth watched her go. Then she looked toward the cottage, where the door sat behind its wire and its fiction, and she calculated how many days remained before the mason would have to come and the story would have to change, and Mrs Hargreaves would stand in that doorway and see what ten days of omission had concealed.
Not enough days. Not nearly enough.
Hewentdowntothe village on the eleventh day because the oil supply would not replenish itself.
It was always the oil that forced him down. Everything else could be scavenged, improvised, done without. One would think by now that it would be delivered regularly, but it seldom was. The lantern required whale oil of a specific grade, and the chandler stocked it in barrels that could not be hauled up the hill without help, and so every fortnight he descended to the harbour and endured the village for the hour it took to arrange the delivery.
The harbour was busier than he expected. Two boats were unloading at the quay—Calder’sMargeryand a broader-beamed vessel he did not recognise, flying colours from further down the coast. Women moved between the boats and the fish house with baskets balanced against their hips, and the air carried the sharp tang of the morning’scatch mixed with the salt of the turning tide. A knot of children chased a dog along the harbour wall. Somewhere behind the net-mending shed, a hammer rang on metal in a rhythm he recognised as Robson’s.
He kept his head down and made for the chandler’s.
The shop occupied a low stone building wedged between the net shed and the Anchor, its doorway perpetually shadowed by a canvas awning that had been patched so many times it had ceased to have an original colour. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of tallow, rope, and the sweet, heavy scent of whale oil in its casks. The shelves ran floor to ceiling, stacked with everything the harbour required: lantern glass, copper nails, caulking pitch, coils of hemp and manila, blocks, thimbles, marlinspikes, and a hundred other items whose names the village knew, and the rest of the world had forgot.
Ephraim Hurst kept the shop. He was a man of seventy or thereabouts, lean as a spar, with hands that had been stained so deeply by tallow and tar that no amount of washing would ever return them to their natural colour. He had run the chandlery since before the keeper’s arrival and would, by all appearances, run it until the building fell into the harbour. He did not gossip. He did not speculate. He sold what was needed and kept his opinions behind a counter that had been worn smooth by four decades of elbows.
“Wickie.” Hurst did not look up from the ledger he was marking. “Been a while.”
“Oil. Two barrels. The same grade.”
“You’ll get it. Calder’s lad can bring it up this afternoon.” Hurst made a note in the ledger with a stub of pencil that looked as though it had been sharpened with a fish knife. “Anything else?”
“Candles. Two dozen, if you have them.”
“That's twice your usual order, Wickie.”
His neck heated. “The steward makes use of them as well.”
Hurst grunted. “Tallow or wax?”
“Tallow.”
