Page 14 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

In this garden, I am grateful for ...” Amelia couldn’t think of a way to finish that sentence that didn’t require sarcasm.

Even the garden, her favorite spot on the entire island, was proving a source of frustration at the moment, on account of a particularly thorny patch of weeds. “I am grateful for very thick gloves.”

She’d managed to restore only about a fifth of the garden in the month she’d been on Guilford, all but guaranteeing she’d need every day of her six months to put the entire thing to rights. She would restore it only to leave it behind.

Mick’s whistling reached her before he stepped into the garden. The boy had come with the house, as it were. Mrs. Jagger and Marsh had told her that Mick had arrived on the island a couple of years earlier with no other explanation than that his parents had been swept off a ship and drowned.

The housekeeper and butler had taken him in, and he’d proved himself a joyful addition to life on Guilford. Everyone liked Mick. Amelia wished she knew the trick of that.

She was lonely on this island. She’d not truly had friends at her aunt and uncle’s house, but she’d at least had company.

And now, she didn’t even have that any longer.

She spoke with Jane now and then, but there was the unavoidable distance between a maid in a household and the mistress who employed her.

Her butler and housekeeper saw to their work and kindly watched over her the way a pair of distant relatives might.

She’d held out some hope that the Iverses would prove friends, being much nearer in age to herself, but they kept to themselves.

She had the impression, every time she was near the lighthouse or when she dropped into their home to offer her greetings, that they couldn’t be rid of her soon enough.

She told herself they weren’t the spies her grandfather had predicted would surround her during this six-month imprisonment, but she couldn’t entirely shake the possibility.

She looked up from pulling weeds and watched as Mick sauntered down the little path toward her. “I met Mr. Summerfield,” he said. “Strange one, him.”

Amelia shrugged. “He’s American.”

Mick nodded his agreement with the explanation. “I went and saw the Iverses’ baby this morning.” He picked up a rock and tossed it from one hand to the other. “Him’s getting bigger.”

Mick always returned from their home with tales of having played with the baby or helped Mr. Ivers at the lighthouse. Amelia hadn’t managed that at all.

“Mr. Ivers thinks the road will be up from the water in another day or two. I asked he why it was that the waters come in so fast when there’s a storm but dawdle on the way out.”

“And what explanation did he give you?” Amelia was curious about that herself.

“Him said it’s to do with the shape of the little bay and how the island traps the water. Anywhere else, him said, the road would likely uncover itself as fast as it got covered.”

So it was geography conspiring against her. That somehow felt fitting.

“Him said it were likely also the reason so many ships go down here. The dip of the bay around Loftstone is shaped the same. Water gets trapped, and storms get trapped, and then people get trapped.”

People get trapped . If there were a more apt description of how she felt on Guilford, she couldn’t think of it.

“Don’t you go talking Miss’s ear off.” Marsh had the ability, despite his slightly shuffling step, to arrive in a place without making noise.

“I wasn’t,” Mick said. “I was answering her questions.”

Amelia pulled off her gardening gloves and tucked them into her gardening apron pocket. Then, using her trusty cane for balance, she got to her feet. “Mick is no bother. I appreciate that he comes to talk with me.”

She gave the little boy a smile and received one in return. He wasn’t a friend in the sense that someone would be were they of the same age, but he was friendly, and that was a lovely thing for a person as alone as she was.

“I think I found the paper you’ve been looking for, Miss Archibald,” Marsh said.

Nervousness clutched at her heart. She’d told Marsh and Mrs. Jagger that she was attempting to find the papers pertaining to her requirements while on Guilford. She was certain the solicitor had left them here, but she hadn’t been able to find them.

Marsh held out a folded bit of parchment to her. Grateful she had already taken her gloves off, she took it with her free hand and quickly unfolded it. Though she didn’t read it in any detail, she knew it was indeed what she had been searching for.

“Well done, Marsh. Thank you.”

The man dipped his head, clear pride in his posture. “You’ll tell we what you discover in it?” Marsh asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“And will you also tell we,” Marsh pressed on, “if that Mr. Summerfield is bothering you?”

“I will. Thus far, he’s not caused any difficulty, aside from the inevitable upheaval of an unexpected arrival, especially one who has arrived with nothing.”

“Did him fall off a boat?” Mick asked quietly, no doubt thinking of his own parents.

“That is the impression I received.” Amelia offered him a smile of understanding. “He is fortunate that Mr. Ivers found him and brought him to the island.”

Mick nodded. “And I suppose us is fortunate him knows how to build and repair things. Him will be helpful at Guilford.”

Marsh didn’t seem to understand what was being referenced.

Amelia took pity on him. “I discovered in conversation with Mr. Summerfield this morning that our American visitor has some carpentry skills.”

Marsh was clearly surprised. “Him has the mark of Quality about he.”

Amelia nodded. “The only explanation I can think of is that things must be different in that respect in America. A person can be a gentleman and yet still have the skills of a tradesman. He didn’t seem embarrassed by the ability, so it must not be something they are taught to be ashamed of.”

“And him said him would be willing to work about the place?” Marsh didn’t manage to hide his doubt.

Amelia nodded.

“Him asked me to show he where the work cottage is,” Mick said. “When I left he there, him was looking over the tools and asking after others I’d not heard the names of before. But, then, I weren’t never apprenticed to a carpenter.”

Mr. Summerfield was already setting to work? That felt like a very good sign. A whisper of hope bubbled, something that had happened with little enough frequency in the last month that Amelia almost didn’t recognize it.

“Us’ll leave you to your work and to your papers.” Marsh set a hand on the scruff of Mick’s neck and turned him about to face the exit to the garden. He gave the boy a tiny nudge, and the two of them made their way past the gate.

Amelia had intended to keep working for a while, but the unread paper in her hand proved too pressing.

She took the garden’s paved walkway to the gardening shed.

Clearing the path and making it safe for her to navigate with her sometimes-precarious balance had been her first task in the garden when she’d arrived weeks earlier.

She pulled off her gardening apron and straw bonnet and placed both, along with her gloves, in the gardening shed, then she closed the door and made her way back out of the garden entirely, her cane offering a needed bit of stability.

Away from the distraction of weeds and flowers and shrubbery, the ocean was uncomfortably loud.

Fortunately, she had another ready distraction in her hand.

She took a deep breath, reminding herself that the house sat high enough on the island that should a storm whip up immediately, the sea wouldn’t reach her where she was.

She unfolded the parchment once again. She held it in her left hand, used her cane with her right, and carefully traversed the familiar path back to the house as she read.

To prove herself able to look after an inheritance, one which might lead to the purchase of an estate of her own, I am requiring her to look after this estate for six months.

She remembered that part. She had to prove her aptitude and intelligence and trustworthiness. She dropped her focus lower on the paper, to where the requirements for her had been summarized.

My solicitor as well as my son, Woodrow Stirling, will make regular unannounced inspections of the estate, to make certain it is being cared for, its needs are being met, and Miss Archibald has not left.

Should Miss Archibald meet these requirements, at the end of her six-month sojourn on Guilford Island, she will be granted the entirety of her inheritance and the freedom to live her life in the way she chooses with the generous windfall she has been provided.

Should she fail, the entirety of her inheritance will be reverted back to the Stirling estate.

Caring for the estate and remaining on the island were both required for her to receive her inheritance. Both. So she did have to convince her uncle and the solicitor that she was undoing the neglect of decades.

She slid her eyes once more over the words. At the bottom of the last page, in the style of a footnote, was more writing.

For purposes of this binding contract, remaining on the island is understood to mean that at all times, Miss Archibald will maintain physical contact with the island itself.

Swimming in the sea, venturing out on a boat, stepping onto the sea road, and any other activity that results in her not being in physical contact with Guilford Island will be considered leaving the island and will result in a forfeiture of her inheritance.

Did Grandfather truly think he had to specify that she wasn’t permitted to undertake any sea bathing?

While Amelia could see herself growing desperate enough to attempt a flight down the road when it was not buried under the ocean, she would never intentionally head out into the surf.

Even doing so on a boat sounded utterly horrifying.

A second footnote sat beneath the first.

As the purpose of this exercise is to prove whether or not Miss Amelia Archibald can, with capability, oversee the fortune that awaits her, an accounting must be made of how she executes the responsibilities she is given at Guilford.

A report is to be made at the end of the six months, detailing what was accomplished, what was not, and what might have been done differently.

Declarations of unfitness must be supported with evidence so as to meet the legal requirements of denying Miss Archibald her inheritance.

There was the answer to the question that had plagued her. She couldn’t be denied her inheritance simply because someone said she had done a poor job. There had to be evidence—proof.

At some point she had stopped walking and was simply staring at the paper in her hand. Her mind had begun spinning so hard that her feet no longer knew what they were meant to do. Just as well. Walking while distracted was a good way to end up on her face.

She didn’t think her uncle or the solicitor were intent on finding evidence of ineptitude.

Her uncle often treated her with indifference and dismissal, and he was notoriously stubborn, single-minded when he had decided on a course of action.

But he’d never truly been cruel or unfair.

It would be a significant change in him if he were suddenly to become that sort of person.

But should she fail at this test, he would receive a tremendous amount of money and the ability to see her married to someone who might allow him to keep the dowry meant to be hers, or to share it with him.

Money changed people. It was one of the truths most in Society learned quickly.

Regardless of whether Uncle Stirling was hoping to see her fail, she needed to make sure that she didn’t. She needed to do a good enough job that there simply wasn’t the necessary evidence.

Amelia folded the parchment once more and tucked it up into the sleeve of her coat. Wind off the sea clutched at her, but she stood stalwart against it.

She had the funds to put Guilford to rights, but she would never have sufficient staff. Jane, who had grown up there, told her that not everyone in the village at the other end of the sea road was willing to come to Guilford.

Amelia was beginning at a disadvantage, something her grandfather had no doubt planned on, but he could not have planned on Mr. Summerfield.

The usually heartless ocean had brought her the potential for salvation.

But it had done so in the form of a stranger she didn’t understand and didn’t fully trust.

Mick had said he was already setting to work. If that was true, there was a chance this could work.

The sight of him that morning, bare-chested, muscled, tattooed, of all things, flashed quickly through her mind. She pushed it out just as quickly. She hadn’t the luxury of indulging even in a moment of girlish swooning. Her entire future hung in the balance.

For twenty years, all she’d been able to hope for was survival and tranquility, and both had depended on staying quiet, staying out of the way, never taking any risks.

For the first and likely last time in her life, she now had a chance for something more.

But reaching for it meant being bold and risky and aiming for something that felt impossible.

All her hopes were tied up in this place that struck such fear into her and in this mysterious stranger the ocean had brought to her doorstep.