The ride to John’s passed in a cold, wet, thundering blur. Although there was a cover on the carriage, the rain blew in. She pulled her jacket close around her, tightened the hood, and hunched her shoulders against the onslaught. It wouldn’t matter, she knew, because she was soaked to the skin already and her face felt raw from the stinging rain. Sergeant was curled under the seat beneath their feet. Smart dog, she thought. He knew when to get out of the rain.
“I’ll put your bag in your room, Sam,” John said, moving up the stairs two at a time.
She didn’t answer but moved into the kitchen. Lillian and Ryder sat at the large oak table, their hands wrapped around big blue mugs. On the stove, a pot simmered and the smell told Sam it was Lillian’s beef stew. Even though she had eaten supper, her mouth watered at the thought of Lil’s stew with biscuits.
Lillian jumped up and rushed to Samantha’s side, grabbing a towel from a folded stack in a basket on the counter. “Darling! You’re soaking,” she said. She began to help Samantha off with her coat and wrapped the towel around her shoulders.
“Sit and I’ll get you a cup of coffee. We have all had supper and so you can eat in peace and warm your insides with my stew. I’m going up and get you some dry clothes to put on. You can step into the pantry and change.” She dashed off before Samantha could stop her.
Samantha turned and nodded to Ryder, toweling her hair. “Hello. John said you were here. What’s happened, Ryder?”
He shook his head and sipped from his cup. When he sat it on the table, he began turning it in circles. He took his time answering and when he spoke he stared into his cup. “We aren’t sure. Mrs. Parker was found in a store room, dead, around seven o’clock. I don’t want to say more at this point because they are still investigating several things.”
“An accident? Could she have fallen off the ladder? She was always climbing and having dizzy spells. Mr. Parker and I were always after her about it and she wouldn’t pay us any mind.” He looked up at her. She shook her head and smiled.
Ryder got up and moved to stand in front of her. “Sam, don’t.”
She paid no attention to him, staring through him and vigorously rubbing her hair. “And then she had that fainting spell during the summer. You remember how hot it was, Ryder.” She grinned up at him and draped the towel around her shoulders. “People dropped like files for a week. She got too hot and she fainted while old Miss Crane was paying for her pickles. Poor Miss Crane didn’t know what to think. There were pickles all over. Days later we were still finding them. I think it nearly gave her a heart-attack. For months after every time she came into the store she had to repeat that she nearly fell over when Mrs. Parker dropped like that.”
“Stop, Samantha.” He placed his hands on her shoulders.
“I don’t know how many times Mr. Parker had told her to stop and cool down. The doctor was in only last month and told her to take it easier and to take more days off. But she wouldn’t let me help. She said I was doing too much already.” She laughed and rushed on, “Doing too much! Me. I could have taken on more.”
His hands slid down to her arms and he gently shook her, “Sam! Stop!”
“Why would anyone hurt her? Ryder, why would. . .” she got no further, but burst into tears. Ryder, never comfortable with tears anyway, was at a momentary loss. However, the knot in his stomach grew at the sight of tears flowing down her cheeks and those beautiful green eyes looking to him for an answer. He pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her tightly and resting his cheek on her head. She fit so perfectly in that spot. He didn’t answer at first, but held her close until the sobs slowed and quieted.
He said, “I don’t know, Sam. I wish I could tell you. We don’t have a lot of answers yet. We’ll know more when the local Council reviews the evidence. I have to be there in the morning. I only came by here this evening to tell John that he needed to bring you here for a few days.”
The words didn’t register for several minutes. The warmth of his arms, the soft cotton of his shirt against her cheek, the smell of his aftershave, and just the simple maleness of him all distracted her. She could hear the steady beat of his heart against her ear and it seemed to echo her own. Finally, she realized he had stopped talking and she looked up at him. He smiled down at her.
“I’m. . . sorry. . . I. . .” she quickly stepped back, wiping her face on the towel.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “For what?”
“Acting foolish. And getting you all wet.” She brushed at his shirt as if she could erase the damp patches she’d left.
He caught her hands and gave them a squeeze. “It’ll dry. As for Mrs. Parker, she was your friend and you worked for her. It is going to be difficult for a lot of people. She was well liked.”
Lillian came back and said, “Here,” she handed her a some folded garments and guided Samantha to the pantry. “I brought this for you. It’s one of mine but you didn’t bring anything practical in that bag of yours. I put your things in the drawers so you won’t have to worry with that tonight. Get changed before you catch cold and then come eat something.”
There was no use charging the tide nor Lil’. Both were ceaseless and impervious to immovable objects. Lillian shut the pantry door behind her and she changed from her drenched clothes to the warm nightgown and robe. A comb had been stuck in the pocket and she used it to fix the mess her hair had become as a result of wind, rain, and toweling.
When she returned to the kitchen, Ryder and John were seated at the table with fresh cups of coffee. She joined them and Lillian placed a steaming bowl of stew and biscuits in front of her. The wind and rain rattled the windows and she felt a slight draft around her ankles. In the distance she could hear the thunder and through the glass of the kitchen window she saw only a flash of lightening in the distance.
It was a strange sensation to be sitting in her brother’s kitchen at nearly midnight. She was used to a smaller house and few people and for a moment she wanted to go home, to go to bed and wake up and find it had all been a dream. Mrs. Parker would wave and smile at her as she walked into the store in the morning and immediately began to relate some tale about something in the village. She wouldn’t give Sam a chance to respond but would go about the business of the shop without missing a beat. When a customer came in, Mrs. Parker would talk with them and still carry on her conversation with Sam. It always amazed Sam that Mrs. Parker could keep her conversations straight. She never mixed them up.
“You think one of your dogs would work, John?” Ryder asked.
Sam pulled her attention back to the kitchen and her brother’s response. The night would be long for them all, particularly Ryder. He was part of the constabulary force in this province. They fell under the rule of the Port Authority but reported directly to their district council member. He wouldn’t be able to go to bed until he had finished whatever duties they’d assigned him tonight.
“Not likely, not with all this rain. If we’d been able to start earlier, before the rain, we might have got something. I mean, we could use the dog inside but I doubt it would find a scent outside now.”
John’s dogs had a reputation as trackers. He had bred a string of hounds that were always in demand with hunters. She looked at him and in the lantern light she could see her father as he had been when Samantha was only a child no older than Lily. Strong and broad shouldered, sun-bleached hair and blue eyes. Her mother had always told Sam that only John, of all the boys, was the spitting image of his father but until this moment she had never really seen it. Still, tonight it wasn’t so much his looks as the sound of his voice, the way he held the cup, and the way he looked at Ryder. It was the way her father had looked at Mr. Boatwright the night he came to tell her father about the woman who had been murdered by a newcomer.
Ryder said, “We are to meet in the morning at the Council House to review what evidence we’ve found. I doubt there’ll be much. It seems unpremeditated. Robbery has to be the motive. The store room was a wreck. Mr. Parker said he’d do an inventory to see what was missing but it’ll take a few days to do that. I am supposed to check out some of the stories of theft that have been circulating. We think there may be a connection.”
Lillian had been bustling about the kitchen, washing up their dishes, brought the coffee pot and refilled their cups. “I can’t imagine anyone killing the old dear. She was so good, especially to Samantha. And why, I want to know, would anyone need to steal? Don’t everyone of us have whatever we need. If we have a need that we are unable to fulfill, we have only to take it to Council for review. I’ve never heard of anyone being turned away if there was a real need!”
“Something has been going on in the province in the last week.” Ryder paused and again staring into his cup, as if he could divine the answers in the steam rising from it. “I don’t know. . .”
“Don’t know what, Ryder?” Samantha said.
He looked at Samantha then back to John and said, “She came to the Council earlier in the week. I don’t know what she told them.”
John also glanced Sam and then at Lillian, who had returned to the sink and washing dishes. Then he gave his full attention to Ryder, clearly shutting the women out. “Did they believe her?”
He shrugged. “You know the Council. Some believe, some don’t. I can’t tell you if she made a difference. I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed into the meeting. I had to sit in the bailiff’s office.”
Sam sat her cup down hard. “What’s this about?”
Ryder flushed and John took a drink from his cup. Neither spoke for several minutes. Lillian turned from the sink, wiping her hands on her apron. She approached the table and stood at her husband’s elbow. “John, you’ll not be keeping secrets in this house. We’ve never done that and we won’t start now.”
“Lil’ its all gossip. We don’t actually know anything. And it isn’t right to spread gossip.”
She laughed. “Oh, ho, and then why are you talking about it to start with? Are you not spreading it as you speak? We have a right to know, particularly if we are in any danger. How can you expect us to watch the children and protect ourselves if we don’t know where the danger lies?”
“May I have another cup of that delicious coffee, Lillian, my dear love?” John smiled that blinding smile and held up his cup.
“Won’t work, love. I’ll get you a cup but if you haven’t started spilling your guts by the time it heats the cup, you’ll be wearing it to bed with the dogs.” She smiled and took the cup to the stove. Samantha grinned at this loving banter between her brother and his wife. It was always so with them, even in the worst times. She sipped from her own cup.
“There is a woman on the island that says several nights ago someone came through the mist. She said they put in near the white beach. There were several, by her account.”
Samantha gasped and the coffee in her mouth went down the wrong way, sending her in to a spasm of coughing. Lillian came around the table and proceeded to pound her back and offer words of comfort. “Now, now, dear. Easy. Easy.”
She coughed until she gagged, nearly losing Lillian’s stew she’d had for her supper a short time ago. Finally, after she’d gained some control, she covered her face with her hands. Silence fell on the room, disturbed only by the sound of the ticking kitchen clock and a renewing of the storm’s energy. Rain began to fall in heavy pelting drops that threatened the window glass. In the back of her mind, Sam knew it was hail but lacked the strength to rise and check.
John remained silent, looking down, into the chipped blue mug. It occurred to her that they seemed to think that the answer to everything that had happened lay in the bottom of their coffee cups. Suddenly, without any apparent reason, she wanted to slap them.
“Don’t let it worry you, Sam. I’m sure it is just all a tempest in a teapot. It’s all superstition. These kind of stories have been going around the island for centuries but people don’t usually talk about it outside of their families. People tell these things but it is always someone’s sister’s brother’s mother’s stable hand. No one has ever been able to predict when someone was coming.”
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