He prepared his supper with his usual economy: bread warmed at the edge of the hearth, a portion of salt fish, a heel of cheese. He ate standing, as he most often did, one hand resting upon the mantel while the other held the plate. There was no ceremony in it. The room was warm enough now. He had built the fire because the air had turned damp and threatened his books, not because it comforted.
When he had finished the fish, he set a scrap upon the floor near the hearth.
The motion was complete before the thought caught up to it—hand to plate, plate to stone, the scrap placed at the precise distance from the fire where a small body might find it warm but not too close. He straightened and looked at it. Grey and white, she had been, with the patchy fur of a creature that had outlasted too many winters and intended to outlast more. She had come to the tower without invitation and without apology, the only visitor he had admitted on those terms.
But she had not appeared in a fortnight. Perhaps longer. He had stopped counting the evenings because counting them produced an answer he did not require.
He picked up the scrap and threw it in the fire. Washed the plate, dried it, set it in its place.
He ascended once more to the lantern room at the appointed hour and examined the flame. The wick held true. The oil remained sufficient. The glass was clear. The beam moved in its accustomed arc across the darkening water, patient and unbroken.
He adjusted the wick by a fraction and descended.
Later, with the fire reduced to a low bed of coals, he drew a book from the small shelf near the window and seated himself beneath the lantern’s residual glow that filtered faintly through the stairwell. It was not a novel; he did not favour them. The volume was worn at the spine and marked at intervals with slips of paper cut narrow and precise. He read without haste, one finger resting lightly along the margin.
At some hour past midnight, his eyes closed upon the page. The book remained open against his chest, rising and falling with the steady rhythm of his breath.
Years of vigil had ordered his sleep as surely as tide obeyed the moon. At the hour he had long ago fixed in habit—when the oil must be examined lest it burn too low—he woke.
He did not stir at once. The room lay in its accustomed stillness, the embers faintly alive upon the hearthstone. But the faint thread of light that usually descended the stairwell at that hour did not touch the floor.
He was upright before the thought had fully formed.
The tower stood quiet about him. The sea moved with its steady concussion against the rock. Nothing announced disturbance. And yet the air within the room felt altered, as though a measure had been removed from it.
The ascent was swift but not reckless. His hand found the rail without searching. He took the steps two at a time where the curve allowed and reached the lantern room within seconds.
Dark.
The glass reflected only his own movement as a faint distortion against the night.
He crossed to the lamp and opened the chimney. The wick was intact. He touched it; it was warm but not charred beyond measure. The reservoir held oil. He lifted it to be certain. There was weight enough.
He struck the taper and brought flame to the wick. It caught. For the span of a breath, it burned.
Then it narrowed, thinned, and withdrew into nothing, as though the air itself had smothered it.
He adjusted the wick lower and tried again. The same. He removed the chimney entirely and relit it bare.
The flame held for three heartbeats.
On the fourth, it failed.
He examined the draft vents, the cap, the seals around the glass. There was no crack. No breach. No sudden wind forcing its will upon the flame. The air in the room lay still.
He replaced the chimney and lit it once more, shielding it with his hand. The wick burned obediently until he withdrew his fingers.
Then it died.
He stood with his hand upon the brass housing, testing its warmth as though the cause might be discovered there. The mechanism lay in perfect order. Beyond the glass, the tide advanced and withdrew with its accustomed weight against the cliff.
The lantern, for all his knowledge of it, offered nothing.
Chapter Three
Thecarriagesetthemdown before a narrow brick building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, its frontage plain but well kept, the brass plate beside the door polished to a respectable gleam. Elizabeth gathered her reticule more firmly as her uncle offered his arm.
“You need not decide today,” he reminded her as they crossed the pavement.
