Page 16 of The Case at Castle Rock Cove (Beau Monde Secrets #4)

“A re you sure you want to go for a walk today?” Phoebe peered out the window, studying the overcast sky. “It looks like it might rain, and that wind will make for a rough sea.”

Willa smiled. Since when did Phoebe uses phrases like “rough sea”? Maybe she’d started picking up nautical language from the locals. By now, Phoebe had become fast friends with a girl her own age who lived a few houses down from Cousin Sarah.

“We probably will not stay out very long,” Willa assured her sister. “If the weather grows too bad, we can return home. And I will be prepared in case of rain.” She lifted up the umbrella she’d taken from the hat stand near the front door.

“Even if it doesn’t rain, the wind is still cold,” Phoebe complained. “I would much rather wait until the sun comes out. Maybe the afternoon will be better?”

Willa hesitated and scanned the entryway, making sure no one else could hear them. “If you feel so strongly about it,” she said quietly, “you may stay home. It is a pity Miss Hadfield is not available, but I do not need an escort. In the country, you know, it is perfectly acceptable for a young lady to walk alone.”

She held her breath as she waited for her sister to decide. She did not want to say too much to convince Phoebe to stay home. This must be Phoebe’s decision. It might look suspicious if Willa actively tried to leave her sister behind, especially since Miss Hadfield could not take Phoebe’s place.

“If you really don’t mind, I believe I will stay home,” Phoebe decided. “I wanted to do some reading today, anyway.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a boring old history book, but I promised Haddy I would try to finish it.”

A smile bloomed across Willa’s face. Phoebe had just given her the perfect excuse for walking by herself. Miss Hadfield would hardly complain when she learned that her pupil had stayed behind to study history. On the contrary, she’d be delighted. Unlike Willa, Phoebe was no great reader.

Anticipation warred with anxiety as Willa left the house and turned down High Street, walking briskly toward Newell Bay. She drew a deep breath and caught the faint scent of rain, overladen with the stronger odor of the sea. Phoebe was probably right to worry about the weather.

She worried that Mr. Radcliffe might have taken one look at the overcast sky and decided not to wander so far from home. Or he might have already come and gone. She could not expect him to linger on the beach all morning in the hope of encountering her. This might well be a wasted walk.

Or not.

As soon as Willa turned onto the stone walkway that skirted the beach, she saw him. Or rather, them . Mr. Radcliffe’s brown-and-white dog trotted by his side, ears lifted and tail wagging. When Cato caught sight of Willa, he dropped his jaw to display a canine grin.

Willa stepped more quickly as she hurried to join them. Fortunately, Mr. Radcliffe met her on the stone walkway, so she did not have to walk through the sand. The gritty feel of sand in her shoes might be only a minor annoyance, but she would still rather avoid it.

Avoiding the presence of the ocean was harder. The wind drove the sea against the curving harbor wall, making the rumble and crash of the waves louder than ever. She kept her eyes fixed on Mr. Radcliffe and his dog, refusing to look out over the water. Her neck already ached from the strain.

“Lady Wilhelmina! Fancy meeting you here!” Mr. Radcliffe’s eyes were wide with surprise—too wide, in fact.

She bit back a snicker. That exaggerated look of surprise would not have convinced anyone. But the smile with which he greeted her seemed both warm and genuine. So warm, in fact, that it made Willa’s heart briefly flutter.

Or maybe that was indigestion. Who could say? Either way, she smiled broadly back. She had not misread his letter. He really did want her to meet him here.

But now that they were face-to-face, without a chaperone at hand, she was not sure what he expected of her.

When in doubt, Willa decided, be direct.

“Why did you want to meet me here, Mr. Radcliffe?” Too late, she realized the words might sound accusatory, so she softened them. “Was there something particular you wished to discuss?”

“Ah, yes.” He flicked his gaze in the direction of the turbulent ocean before turning back to Willa. “Does it upset you to be so close to the water?”

“I try to avoid looking at it,” Willa admitted. Or thinking about it, for that matter. “Though it is not possible to ignore the sound or smell of it. But being here is not as bad as being out on a boat.” Nothing in the world was as bad as that.

“Do you think you could tolerate spending a quarter of an hour here? Not just today, but regularly?”

Willa frowned. “Tolerate, yes. Enjoy it, no. Especially not today.” She owed only part of her shiver to the driving wind. “You must admit that the sea is not at all tame today.”

“No, I suppose it is not.” He made a face. “It would hardly be pleasant to sit on the beach and read in this weather. Most unfortunate.”

“Read?” She stared at him blankly.

“Oh, right, I never had a chance to explain that part! You said the other day that sweet biscuits were not reward enough to lure you near the ocean.”

“Yes, I did say that.” Willa blushed. As it happened, he’d gotten her to the beach without mentioning any reward. She had come because she wanted to see him .

“Well, I thought of a better prize.” He opened up the satchel at his side and pulled out a leather-bound volume, which he handed to Willa.

She gasped. “ Terror at Carringford Park ! Where did you get this? I thought the bookstore sold all their copies.”

“They did,” he agreed. “So I asked Miss Thatcher to order a copy of it for you. This is just the first volume, of course, but I got the whole novel. I thought we could read it together by the ocean, and maybe...” He let his voice trail off. Then he shrugged, looking sheepish. “Maybe you would come to associate the beach with one of your favorite authors?” He stole a quick glance at her, then shifted his eyes away, as if he were too bashful to look her directly in the face.

“You really are the sweetest man!” she blurted out.

He stared at her, wide-eyed, for a painful moment that felt like an eternity. She had rendered him speechless!

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who found himself tongue-tied. Willa frantically searched for some way to backtrack from the unexpected compliment, but she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she would start babbling. Better to say nothing at all than to blather on.

“The feeling’s mutual, you know. That is to say, I like you, too.” He blinked owlishly, looking about as perplexed as Willa felt. “What I mean is—”

Before he could muddle his answer any further, his dog barked at him. Willa immediately lowered her eyes, relieved to have a good distraction. She stroked Cato’s soft head and hoped Mr. Radcliffe wasn’t going to declare himself yet. She was not yet certain how she would answer him.

“Cato’s probably annoyed that I stopped walking,” Mr. Radcliffe explained. “I ought to take him back to the Tower. Would you like to walk part of the way back with me? That is, if have you the time.”

“Certainly. I have all the time in the world. People are used to me taking long walks.” Actually, she realized that was only true when she was at home. She tended not to ramble as widely here, where she did not yet know the countryside.

Any time now, someone might wonder where Willa was. Miss Hadfield might have returned from her errands; her mother might have noticed her absence. Despite that, she did not turn back. Instead, she walked on by Mr. Radcliffe’s side, trying to ignore the angry rumble of the waves.

“Is your aunt any better today?” she asked.

He shrugged. “A little, I think. She seems to be past the worst of the sickness, but she is not recovering as quickly as we hoped. It will probably be some time before she resumes her usual responsibilities.” He frowned thoughtfully. “It is strange that no one else was sick.”

“Oh, but your aunt was not the only one! My cousin Sarah—Mrs. Trimmer—had an upset stomach after the picnic. But she recovered in a day or two, and no one else in our family sickened. You didn’t know?”

“No. I thought Aunt Faith was the only one.” A wrinkle formed between his brows as he stared into the distance.

Willa, recognizing the signs of someone lost in thought, allowed him the silence to think. When they reached the outcropping of rock that marked the end of Newell Beach, he gestured to the rough trail that wound up the sloping side of the cliffs.

“This path is much faster than the stairs on the other side of the cover, but not nearly as easy. Do you think you can scramble up to the top of the cliffs, Lady Wilhelmina? Or would you rather turn back?”

Cato had run ahead and was already halfway up the slope. He looked back over his shoulder, as if wondering why they hadn’t followed him yet.

She studied the rough slope. It really wasn’t that steep, and she was wearing her sturdiest half boots. “I do not need to turn back. Let us keep walking.”

At the back of her mind, a little voice whispered that the longer she spent in Mr. Radcliffe’s company, the greater the potential scandal. But they had never really discussed his plan to try reading by the ocean. She wanted to hear more about that.

She did not really have to scramble to get to the top, but the ascent did take most of her attention and all of her breath. Neither of them spoke until they reached the cliff. Then she drew a deep breath.

Mr. Radcliffe broke the silence. “I have been thinking about that stomach upset. I wonder if it could have been something your cousin and my aunt both ate?”

Willa considered that, then shook her head. “We all ate the same foods. If anything tainted or foul was served that day, we all should have gotten sick.”

“Maybe.” He sounded doubtful, though, so Willa was not surprised when he continued on to say, “In my experience, different people may react in different ways to the same food. And it can change over time. There are many foods my grandfather used to love that now give him indigestion. There are foods that I can’t swallow because they feel so awful in my mouth. And my father had a friend who died while eating lobster.”

“Lobster?” she repeated, horrified. “I never knew lobster could be dangerous.” She loved lobster patties.

“That’s my point,” he said. “It was dangerous for Mr. Hampton, but not for anyone else at the table.”

Willa nodded. “I see. You are suggesting that whatever made Miss Marlowe and Cousin Sarah sick might have been perfectly safe for everyone else.” Certainly, she had felt no ill effects from anything she’d eaten at the picnic.

“Yes, especially since they are older than you or me, or even Miss Hadfield. Maybe our youth protected us.”

“You could be right,” she admitted. Willa’s mother was only a little younger than Ben’s aunt, but who knew whether that really made a difference? They would probably never know for sure what had made Miss Marlowe so sick.

After that, they walked in silence. Mr. Radcliffe took the gravel trail that led to Castle Rock Point. Willa followed him, though she kept her head stiffly directed away from the ocean.

Maybe Mr. Radcliffe was right that she ought to work on overcoming her phobia. It seemed a pity that she could not enjoy a trip to the seaside the way everyone else did. Was she to spend the rest of her life avoiding beaches and bathing machines? She did regret that she could not fully appreciate the scenery on today’s walk. The view from the cliffs would have been splendid if not for her phobia.

The cold splash of a raindrop heralded the fulfillment of Phoebe’s prediction. Willa was indeed caught in the rain, nearly a mile from Cousin Sarah’s house. She opened her umbrella, wondering whether she should offer to share it with Mr. Radcliffe.

Before she could ask, Mr. Radcliffe interrupted the silence. “Do the stars bother you the same way?”

The question came out of nowhere, stopping Willa in her tracks. “The stars? Do they bother me the same way as what?”

“Do the heights of the heavens bother you the way the depths of the ocean do?” He waved a hand towards the restless waters below the cliff. “I happened to remember a night when I was a boy, and my tutor took me out to study the constellations. We lay down on blankets and looked up, and...” He caught her gaze and held it.

“And?” she prompted. Why, she wondered, had Miss Hadfield never thought to take her out at night for an astronomy lesson? Naturally, Willa had seen the stars at night, even as a child, but she had never studied them.

He drew a deep breath, then said the rest of it in a rush. “I looked up at the stars and thought about how the world was turning on its axis orbiting the sun, and it made me feel as if the rotation might spin me off into the depths of space. There was nothing between me and the stars but miles and miles of space, and the immensity of the heavens terrified me. Only for a moment, but I remember it very clearly.”

They stared at each other. Willa had no idea what her companion was thinking, but she felt amazed that he’d shared such a memory with her. In her experience, most gentlemen did not like admitting to having been afraid of anything.

He lowered his eyes and kicked at the gravel in front of him. “Anyway, I wondered if your fear of the ocean were a little like that.”

“Yes, it does sound similar.” The breath she drew felt weighted with significance. “You are the only person I have ever met who understood.”

Their eyes met as she marveled over the unexpected connection. No one had ever understood her fear of the ocean; most people didn’t even try to understand. Mr. Radcliffe must be the one man out of a million who not only understood but had experienced something similar to her dread of the ocean’s depths.

She would have to be a fool to let such a precious discovery get away from her.