“Doubt Debbie’ll let me keep ’em in the house,” said Ted ruefully. “Not with Teddy around. My ten-year-old,” he explained to Emma.
“We could keep ’em on the boat,” Jack suggested, and was rewarded with a swift clout in the head from James, who asked, “This won’t affect the Fete, will it, sir?”
With admirable patience, Derek confessed yet again that he really didn’t know, and the Tregallis brothers trooped off to Ted and Debbie’s house for their midday meal, while Chief Constable Trevoy scanned through the rest of the papers. Mrs. Tharby returned to the table shortly, with a fresh round of drinks. Before leaving them to enjoy their lunch, she put a hand on Emma’s arm. “I just wanted to say what a pleasure it is to meet the garden lady. God bless you, dear. I’ve heard so much about you.” The Penford Hall grapevine, it seemed, was linked directly to the village.
13
Emma leaned over the retaining wall of the gray granite quay to look down at the lapping waves, while Derek stood beside her, facing the village. In the harbor, a gull plummeted headfirst into a wave, then rose back into the air, wings straining, a sliver of silver in its beak. A cool breeze caressed Emma’s face as she followed the gull’s flight upward and along the edge of the enclosing cliffs.
It was like standing at the bottom of a canyon. The curving walls were neither as steep nor as barren as they’d appeared from above. The rockface was cross-hatched with cracks, and a scattering of twisted cedars, buckthorn bushes, and tufts of purple rock samphire clung to narrow ledges.
The beacon and the chapel stood like sentinels on either side of the narrow opening in the canyon wall, where the sea swept in. Emma could easily imagine Grayson’s pirate ancestor hiding out in this sheltered cove, though he would have had to be a good seaman to maneuver his ship past the shoals. Emma’s gaze came to rest on a spot just beyond the mouth of the cove, where the water swirled and eddied, and ruffling waves seemed to break on an unseen shore.
“The Nether Shoals,” she murmured. She and Derek had retraced Lex’s steps from the door of the Bright Lady to the very spot where the duke’s yacht had once been docked. The cleats were still there, set firmly in the stone walkway, even though, as Susannah had taken pains to point out, the yacht had never been replaced.
But nearly everything else in Penford Harbor had been. Derek observed that the village had almost certainly undergone a renovation as extensive as the one that had taken place at Penford Hall. “I know how long it takes for rafters to settle, new thatch to turn from yellow to dusty brown,” he’d told her. “It’s not an exact science, but I’m willing to swear that most of these buildings were decaying ruins in the not-too-distant past. Someone’s done a great deal to lure people back here and make them want to stay.”
Derek turned to her now, his shoulder brushing hers as he leaned beside her on the wall. “Another odd thing about the Penford family legend,” he murmured. “In order for Grayson to bring it to fruition, there must also be a village.”
Emma shivered. “Let’s go back to the hall,” she said, glancing upward. The sky was clouding over and the waves were kicking up. “I need to think, and it looks like another storm is moving in.”
Derek telephoned from the Bright Lady, and Gash came to meet them at the car park, then drove them the rest of the way up. The azaleas fluttered by, but Emma scarcely noticed them, and when the hall came into view, she smiled ruefully. She was ashamed to admit it, but the past two days had, without doubt, been the most interesting two days in her whole life. And a part of her didn’t want them to end.
Lady Nell, Master Peter, and Sir Bertram of Harris request the pleasure of your company at supper tonight in the nursery.
At seven o’clock.
Dad’s coming, too.
The last two lines had been added as a postscript, crowded in below the tempera-paint scrolls and flowery flourishes that framed the rest of the hand-printed text. Emma stood on the balcony and reread the invitation. It had been lying on the floor just inside her room when she’d returned from Penford Harbor, as though someone had slipped it under the door. She hadn’t yet sent her reply.
Derek had given her so much to think about. She would have liked to spend some time in the garden—she always thought more clearly with a trowel in her hand—but the clouds had moved in and the air was heavy with ozone. Suddenly, there was a patter of rain, then a downpour, brief and powerful, followed by a steady, ground-soaking shower.
It’s a good thing Bantry stored the gardening tools in the chapel, Emma thought, turning to go inside. Otherwise, they’d be—