Page 9 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

A sudden scream tore through the silence of Guilford House the next morning. Amelia jumped, anxious, worried. The unnerving sound had come from the direction of the blue bedchamber.

Amelia snatched up her cane and rushed—rushed for her —toward the noise.

She didn’t know enough about the mysterious Mr. Summerfield to predict what might be happening.

Canes were handy tools for a person with a twisted foot wishing for a touch more stability but also for a person needing to fend off a strange American who’d been mysteriously plucked from the sea.

Amelia reached the room and its wide-open door. She switched her cane from walking-stick duty to makeshift sword duty. Holding it like an épée, she stepped inside Mr. Summerfield’s room ready to go to battle, if need be.

The scene she found inside was so odd that she lowered her “weapon” and simply stared.

The maid, Jane, stood by the fireplace with her ash brush and can in her hand, facing the bed, where Mr. Summerfield was sitting up.

From the waist down, he was under his blankets, and from the waist up, he wasn’t wearing a thing.

“What did you do to her?” Amelia demanded.

“What did I do to her ?” he scoffed. “I woke up, and there she was. I asked her what she was doing in my room. She turned around, took one look at me, and screamed.”

Amelia eyed the ash brush and can in Jane’s hand. “She was seeing to the fire, obviously.”

“And I should have locked my door, obviously .” He rubbed at his eyes, then blinked a few times. He still looked half asleep.

And he was still half dressed and fully distracting. It was more than the fact that he was handsome, tousled, and bare-chested, which would have been stupefying enough. There was something drawn on his shoulder, as if someone had taken a quill and sketched a pattern there.

“I’m sorry I screamed,” Jane said. “Quality’s not supposed to have tattoos. I thought maybe a pirate had burst in and us were all going to be murdered in our beds.”

“You can’t be murdered in your bed if you aren’t still in it.” Amelia was attempting to remain calm in the hopes that the girl would manage it as well, but she had also never seen a tattoo. Like Jane, she had only heard of them in the context of seafarers of questionable repute.

Who was this man she’d let stay in her temporary home?

“You’ve never seen a tattoo?” Mr. Summerfield asked the question as if he not only didn’t believe it but also thought it a rather ridiculous lie.

“Of course not,” Amelia said. “I don’t spend time lingering in seedy dockside taverns.”

“I’m guessing I don’t either,” Kip said drily.

She gripped her cane tighter. “You’re guessing . Are your wits still addled?”

“I’ve just awoken. I can’t be expected to be witty yet.” He pushed out a breath. “I’ll make sure the tattoo is covered up.”

“I should certainly hope so. It would only be un covered if you weren’t wearing a—”

Amelia was hit with the remembrance of just how excessively inappropriate it was for her to still be looking at him in his state of undress.

She turned around, her back to him, facing the fireplace.

Hanging over the fireplace screen were the most odd assortment of clothes.

They bore enough of a resemblance to what she was familiar with for her to guess at their function, but the fabric was odd and the cut odder still.

Was there anything about this stranger that wasn’t confusing?

“Was your sleep restorative enough that you’ve pieced together more of who you are?” she asked.

“I thought someone here might know,” he said. “Kipling Summerfield? Tennyson Lamont?”

He was Kipling Summerfield; he’d said so the evening before.

“There is no Tennyson Lamont at Guilford,” she said.

“I’m not looking for Tennyson Lamont. I am —” He stopped abruptly with a short sigh. “I’m Kipling Summerfield, but what that means, I haven’t yet been told.”

Did tattoos impact the functioning of the mind? That seemed unlikely, yet he was clearly very confused.

“Am I to stoke the fire or not, Miss?” Jane asked, having turned around as well. The two of them were speaking, standing shoulder to shoulder, facing the cold fireplace.

“I have no idea. He didn’t seem particularly keen to have it built up, did he?”

“No, Miss.”

“Perhaps Americans don’t like to be warm.”

“Is that what Americans sound like? Him speaks so strange.”

“I feel I should interject,” the American said from behind them, “and let you know that I can hear you.”

Amelia further leaned on her cane. She wasn’t in pain or feeling unsteady; it was simply her habit when feeling overwhelmed. “Tattoos don’t impact hearing, obviously,” she muttered.

“I heard that,” he added.

“American clothes”—she pointed to the items hanging on the fire screen—“are very strange. Did you hear that as well?”

“Loud and clear.”

Loud ? She hadn’t spoken loudly at all. Was Mr. Summerfield truly softheaded? It seemed more and more likely.

“Are these clothing items common or fashionable in America?”

“Thomas Pink isn’t as popular in America.”

A third name? “There is also no Thomas Pink at Guilford.”

“Obviously.”

Strange clothing. Nonsensical answers. A tattoo. Two people he claimed to be looking for whom he knew weren’t at Guilford. He was either mad or hiding something, and she didn’t know which possibility she disliked more.

Here was another reason to never live in a place entirely surrounded by the sea: she couldn’t simply toss him out.

With her back to him still, she said, “After you’ve dressed, will you come speak with me in the book room?”

This was her home, and he was an interloper, so she would have been well within her rights to simply tell him to do so rather than request it, but old habits were difficult to shake.

She had been the interloper for twenty years.

She had needed permission for almost everything she did, and ladies were taught not to be bold, not to put themselves forward.

Until she knew better how to approach this stranger, she would lean on what had worked in difficult situations in the past.

“I’d be happy to,” he said, “but I’d recommend that both of you vacate the room first, or my tattoo will be the least shocking thing you encounter in here today.”

It was a rather uncouth way to speak to a lady, yet she didn’t detect any actual insult or malice in it. He grew stranger all the time.

Amelia pushed the swirling thoughts from her mind as she stepped into the corridor and closed the door to the blue bedchamber.

“Him’s a strange one, isn’t him?” Jane said with a quick shake of her head.

“Yes. But he is an American. Some patience must be shown on account of that.”

Jane acknowledged the truth of the situation before moving away, no doubt to see to more of her work. The house was understaffed, and everyone had to work hard and work long, but she hoped it was, at least, not an unhappy place for them all to spend their day.

Amelia spared a quick glance at the closed door, pondering the man inside.

He spoke strangely, dressed oddly, had arrived under suspicious circumstances, sported a tattoo, of all things, and couldn’t seem to decide whom he was looking for.

He was also handsome and intriguing, and despite his insistence that he was too tired for being witty, she had seen more than a few hints that he was, in fact, clever.

She put those thoughts firmly from her head and made her way directly to the book room.

She was one month into her six-month imprisonment on Guilford.

She was meant to prove she had a good head on her shoulders and could be trusted with her inheritance.

That meant running Guilford well and comporting herself appropriately.

More than anything, it meant not leaving the island.

The first two weeks had been the hardest thus far.

She’d wanted so desperately to flee, to run with every ounce of strength she had down the narrow road back to the mainland.

She’d managed to endure that desperation and was now firmly in a daily rhythm that helped her forget where she was and the water that surrounded her.

Except the sound of the water never stopped.

Even when the Channel was calm, the water lapped against the rocks, reminding her that she was never free of it.

She sat at the small writing desk in the book room, leaning her cane against it as she always did.

This had become a favorite place of hers, as it was the spot inside the house that was the least disturbed by the sounds of the sea.

And the garden she had spied on her first day was her favorite place out of doors.

The sea was impossible not to hear when she was in the garden, but the walls were sufficient that she didn’t have to see it.

If she could keep to those two places as much as possible, she could last another five months.

She had to.

She looked over the list she had been working on in the past few days.

Her uncle and her late grandfather’s solicitor had made one of their surprise visits, checking to see that she was still on the island, that there had been no reports of her leaving, and that she was fulfilling her assignments in looking after the estate.

They’d not been there more than a few minutes when they’d begun pointing out things that appeared to be neglected and in need of attention.

When she had countered that those things were that way when she’d been given the keeping of the place, they’d looked at her with pity rather than understanding.