“Perhaps we’ll locate Dunn House by nightfall.” Then everything will change for us, one way or another.
But the moment we step outside, I see a familiar flash of gray wool and top hat. Sabine’s agent? Can it be that he’s found us so quickly? He leans against a building, hands in his pockets as he casually scans the town. I pull AJ back inside and we slip out the service entrance, running behind the buildings on a narrow walkway. AJ asks no questions, and I point toward the quaint post office nestled between shops on the main thoroughfare. He nods.
Soon. Very soon, I will come face to face with my dreaded past.
Hopefully before that agent catches up with us.
Chapter 15
Wereachthepostoffice, breathless, just as the sign in the window is flipped from open to closed. I step up to knock, but the girl opens the door. She beckons me in and looks my husband over with a thoroughness that tells me she recalls every word of my telephone conversation concerning him. “You’re her, aren’t you?” Her face is eager and bright, her voice far warmer than before. “The maid who came by an inheritance?”
“I’ve not…” I sigh. “Yes. Yes, that’s me.”Companion,though. Not maid. And there’s no fortune yet.
“I’ve read it in the paper. Every little bit.” Her bright eyes ask the questions she doesn’t dare voice—What will you do? How will you beat them?“How can I be of help, now?” As if we’re suddenly friends.
“Dunn House,” I say, gripping the counter. “Do you know it? Surely you must deliver the post there.”
Her look is either intrigued or pitying. “Dunn House, like an estate, miss?”
“You’ve never heard of it?”
She shakes her head.
“Well, thank you kindly.” I back toward the door. “Good day, then.”
“Oh! Here,” she says, shoving a small paper my way. “Came for ’ee after you gone—’round noontime, it were. That’s why I waved ’ee in just now.”
A telegram.
Merryn de Montfort does not exist STOP Isabella alive STOP please advise STOP
“It’s from Mr. Gould,” I say to AJ.
“Gould? What is it?” He grabs the counter, peering over my shoulder. “Has he news? Everything’s all right, isn’t it? We’ve not lost?”
His intensity is oddly calming. To have a person on your side who is this intensely upset about the state of your affairs is…reassuring.
I glance at him but movement outside the window catches my eye. “No. I don’t believe so. But AJ…” I lean close and whisper, “We must go.Now.” He’s found us. The agent. In his finely cut suitcoat and perfectly turned-out hat, he stands out in this quiet coastal hideaway. He paces slowly down the cobbled street before the post office, his gaze roving the quiet shops.
For me, of course.
I approach the desk. “I’d like to send a return tele—” I glance down. “But I can’t, can I?”
“’Course you can,” says the girl with a cheeky grin. “For sixpence.”
I finger the calling card, but I haven’t any idea what to tell him if I ring. Not yet, anyway. “And now, have you a back entrance?” I smile at the clerk.
Answers are around the corner—the air here is thick with them, if only I can grab one.
We’re close.
Dusk finds us buried beneath itchy straw, bouncing down the road out of Newquay. “You’ve a keen sense of adventure, Mr. Winthrop,” I quip. My head is beginning to throb behind my eyes, which means this headache will spread. “What have you gotten us into?”
“A cart,” he says cheerily. “One that will carry us discreetly farther up the coast—at no charge.”
I blow the straw out of my mouth. “You truly mean to travel all the way around the Cornish coast?”
“Depends on how quickly you remember things.”
