Page 3 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

Amelia Archibald had managed to find a degree of peace in her less-than-ideal life as a perpetual poor relation with an even more perpetual limp. But her grandfather had managed to reach out from beyond the grave and wreak havoc.

Infuriating man.

She told herself to be grateful Grandfather’s mission of misery would be a very temporary one. She would return to the family’s estate outside of Tunbridge Wells just as soon as the excursion required of them was completed.

She traveled with her aunt, uncle, and cousin, and one look at them would have convinced an even mildly curious onlooker that their current journey was, in fact, a pleasant one. All three of her companions looked out the windows of their carriage with expressions of awe and excitement.

Amelia was doing her best to ignore the view entirely.

Guilford Island was a very minor holding for the Stirlings, her late mother’s family, and a place she had heard mentioned many times but had, blessedly, never before been required to visit.

The uncle with whom Amelia was currently traveling and with whom she had lived for twenty of her twenty-five years was her mother’s older brother.

He had often spoken fondly of Guilford and the time he’d spent there as a child.

And as if it weren’t a horrifying prospect, he’d mentioned repeatedly in every retelling that Guilford sat in the embrace of the sea.

The house and estate sat on an island connected to the stability of the mainland by a long and narrow road surrounded on both sides by the ocean. When a storm passed through, the surge of waves and water buried that road entirely.

“Sometimes for weeks!” her uncle had once declared, sending shivers of horror through Amelia.

She would have been far more enthusiastic about Guilford if she’d spent a lifetime hearing her uncle declare that the house was home to well-organized wolves with a penchant for hunting redheaded women. Wolves could possibly be reasoned with. The ocean didn’t believe in negotiation.

Amelia’s grandfather had died six months earlier.

His will had been opened and read, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, Amelia had not been included in it, despite being the only child of his only daughter.

At the time, she’d assumed Grandfather had considered that exclusion his way of having the last word in their mutual, if not outright stated, dislike of each other.

But she had, to her own annoyance, underestimated him.

He had left instructions that another portion of his will be read at Guilford six months after his passing, and he had required that Amelia be in attendance. He’d known she was afraid of water; everyone knew it.

At last, the ocean road reached the rocky shore of Guilford Island and began the ascent toward the house.

Guilford was not used very often, it being not so large and impressive as the estate her uncle had inherited six months earlier or the one on which Amelia had lived nearly all her life.

Guilford was also impractical, isolated on an island, battered by storms . ..

This was no place for a house.

It was no place for her . But poor relations, especially those who had the unfortunate tendency to be female, had very little say in their lives.

The higher the carriage climbed, the more easily she breathed. The ocean was still far too near for her peace of mind, but they were getting farther from it, and the likelihood of a surge of water sweeping them away was decreasing.

“I haven’t seen Guilford in years.” Uncle looked more excited than he generally did.

Her uncle was not an unhappy person, but he could be very stern.

And when interacting with her, he was often irritated.

Not unkind, not hurtful, but moderately vexed.

That had more to do with his having been saddled with a ward than any dislike of her specifically.

Amelia, likewise, wasn’t precisely overjoyed to be an orphan living in another family’s home.

The island was visually intriguing, seeming to be made of dark rock—not quite black but approaching it.

In places, thickets of shrubbery and trees grew, apparently having found soil among the rocks.

All around the house itself were what appeared to have once been well-maintained lawns and, if the walls she spotted were not deceptive, perhaps even an enclosed garden.

Amelia loved gardens, provided one acknowledged that the word loved could also mean “being so engrossed that she likely ought to be marginally concerned about her mental state.” But as a tragic orphan, she thought herself entitled to a smidge of eccentricity, especially as it had arisen directly from that early tragedy.

The garden at her aunt and uncle’s home had been her escape from almost the moment she’d arrived at the tender age of five years old.

No one bothered her there, and she’d found she could easily make friends with plants and birds and the occasional fox that scampered through.

It would have been precisely the sort of thing written in a tale for children, provided they’d left out the part where she’d cried through most of the first year she’d lived there and the fact that as she’d grown older and had been required to be a companion to her cousin, Susanna, five years her junior, she’d had little say in her comings and goings and no prospects for her own future.

Her grandfather’s death had brought a vague sense of relief but very little other emotional reaction.

Eccentric , she acknowledged to herself, was not as accurate a descriptor of her as lonely . But that was hardly her fault. When a person didn’t belong anywhere, a person was lonely everywhere.

The carriage stopped under a portico at the side of Guilford House. A boy opened the door, serving as footman, despite being nowhere near old enough to serve in that capacity. He didn’t seem to entirely know what to do but appeared eager to attempt it.

“I guess you can come out, then,” the boy said. That earned him raised eyebrows from Aunt and Uncle Stirling and a hint of a giggle from Amelia’s cousin.

For her part, Amelia’s heart went out to the boy. Filling roles one was ill-suited to and ill-prepared for was a very accurate way of describing most of her existence.

Despite the boy’s inexpert service, they had all soon alighted from the carriage and were standing on the ground, looking at the house.

“It’s not quite as well maintained as it once was.” Uncle eyed the facade with a critical expression. “Not falling to pieces, mind you, but clearly in need of attention.”

Despite its location in the worst possible of places, Amelia found herself feeling an odd kinship to the place. She knew how it felt to be in need of some attention.

“The grounds are rather lovely. Or were years ago, at least,” Uncle said. “I will go inside and see if the solicitor is here while you girls walk around the island.”

Walk around the island? Was he daft? “Could we not explore the interior of the house?” Amelia asked.

“This is likely to be a difficult day for your uncle,” her aunt said. “One does not like to be reminded of the death of a parent, after all. Don’t argue with him today.”

In the six months since Grandfather had passed, Amelia had been extensively lectured on what it feels like to lose a parent. How fortunate for her that she had someone to explain that to her after two decades of being an orphan.

“Take a walk about the grounds,” Uncle said again, shooing Amelia and Susanna away before he and Aunt stepped inside.

The house was large enough that Amelia likely could have slipped in a moment later and avoided them long enough not to reveal the fact that she had disobeyed.

But she didn’t know the space terribly well, and a lady with a limp didn’t precisely navigate even familiar spaces clandestinely.

There was nothing for it but to obey the directive and spend time out on the island, with the menacing sea staring her down.

Amelia turned to ask Susanna where she would like to wander off to first only to discover that her cousin had already left to explore on her own. Abandonment, yes. But also freedom, which Amelia didn’t mean to scoff at or waste.

She would go see if the wall she had spotted toward the interior of the small island did, indeed, surround a garden. Nothing could stop her from hearing the waves, but perhaps in that space, she wouldn’t be able to see them. And she would be in a garden, which always made her happier.

With her trusty cane for added stability, she made her way along a path edging an overgrown lawn.

Her wool cloak was buttoned firmly in place, but the robust sea wind sent it billowing all about her.

She snatched hold of the edges with her free hand, attempting to wrap it more tightly around herself.

It was not designed to be in such a place.

She was not designed to be in such a place.

One wasn’t supposed to think ill of the dead, but Grandfather was impossible to think well of.

And it was, in all honesty, his fault that she was currently having to think about him at all.

So, really, she could be excused for silently declaring him a curmudgeonly old grubber.

Silently. Poor relations had to be very, very careful to appear very, very meek. And always grateful.

“In this moment, I am grateful that ...” It was a game she played with herself, finding something to be grateful for, even if she sometimes did so with a heavy dose of irony. “I’m grateful that I don’t actually live on this island.”

Upon reaching that mysterious wall, she followed it, looking for a gate. All the while, the crash and pull of waves bombarded her senses with a rhythmic reminder that she was, for the time being, in what amounted to a living nightmare imposed on her by a no-longer-living nightmare.

She didn’t like water. Nothing frightened her the way it did. Nothing left her more shaken than feeling surrounded and closed in by it. Nothing.