Page 55 of A Daring Pursuit

“After Mama’s passing, Papa spent most of his time away from Chaston.” The bitterness etching her voice rendered sentiments similar to those that swirled through Geneva regarding her own odious sire. “Then, one day, he just up and left.”

Geneva’s mouth dropped. “What? I don’t understand. What do you mean? That he… heneverreturned?” She gasped a quick breath, too astonished to snap her mouth shut.

Miss Hale looked out at the open sea with an indiscernible expression, her distant gaze unseeing. She shook her head. Without answering, she turned and walked along the pebbled sand, leaving Geneva to stay where she was or to follow.

She followed. “Where are we going?”

“There are some interesting areas about. I must have been a child the last time I came down here. My maid at the time refused to allow me to come along, and she had a fear of dark places. She murdered Cracked Colbert.”

She hurried to keep up, and not just physically. It was all too much. “Cracked Col—I don’t understand.”

“Oh, he was a mad old man. Bound for Bedlam if he hadn’t been done in.”

“What? No! Yourmaidkilled a mad man?” Mercy, how many other revelations could there be?

Miss Hale went on. “I almost believe she pushed my sister down those stairs, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d poisoned my mother. There’s no proof of either after all this time.” She let out a melancholy sigh. “It’s just a feeling.”

“Good heavens,” Geneva breathed. A sense of impending doom clamored in, around, and up her spine. She eyed the waves ebbing over the sand then pulling back with each pass. Apprehension added to her mounting anxiety. “Do you think the tide is rising?”

Miss Hale stopped and glanced at Geneva, flicked her gaze to the sea and back, then turned. “We should be fine.” The confidence with which she spoke did little to reassure Geneva. Miss Hale resumed walking, but her steps picked up and now appeared purposeful.

Geneva glanced over her shoulder for her own assessment of the water. It seemed to be moving faster. Of course, that could have been Geneva’s own lack of understanding how the ocean actually worked adding to her mounting anxiety. In any event, she hastened after Miss Hale. “What is our hurry?”

“I said we should be fine,” she snapped with a glimpse of her usual surliness. “But that’s only if we limit our time.”

“Then what the devilarewe doing?” Geneva demanded. She could not swim and had no desire to learn. Certainly not wearing heavy skirts and a snug corset where she’d never be able to retrieve a breath long enough to survive seconds if she sunk under.

Miss Hale’s stride increased and Geneva dashed after her. Just ahead, a rocky path led up an incline where Geneva spied an opening in the hillside. “There are caves?”

“Of course.”

Her terseness set Geneva’s teeth on edge. The woman was a conundrum. And she hadn’t slowed her steps. If anything, the closer they drew to the macabre opening, the faster her hostess moved. Uneasiness crept over Geneva. London had its share of dark, confined spaces and Geneva typically avoided them at all costs. “Is there something unique about this cave?”

They reached the opening and Miss Hale came to a sudden stop at the threshold. “I-I used to play here as a child. My father used to bring me. He told me harrowing tales of piracy and smuggling that happened during the Peninsula War.” Her voice had taken on a childlike quality, as if she’d slipped into the past. “Sometimes I lie awake at night feeling as if he hadn’t left at all.”

Bumps raised over Geneva’s skin. A chilling gale lifted the hair at her nape and a spray of salt water moistened her face. She glanced over her shoulder to the beach, empty but for all the ebbing and flowing of the sea on the sand. The flowing had definitely expanded in its velocity. She took Miss Hale’s arm. “Perhaps we should head back.”

“Not yet.” Miss Hale took a tentative step deeper within, but instead of releasing Geneva’s hand, her grip tightened.

Something unsettling permeated the cave. Geneva swallowed hard, not about to let go.There are no such things as ghosts.Again, the incline angled up to drier ground, as if the sea never reached this level.

Miss Hale gasped and her quick stop had Geneva crashing into her.

“What—” Geneva’s hand flew over her mouth. “Oh, no. Not again.”

Chapter Twenty

“They wentwhere?” Noah had left Julius sleeping in his chamber with Isabelle looking after him.

“Hitched up the ’orse ’erself, ’er an’ that maid o’ ’ers. Tho’ I reckon the maid did most o’ the work.” Rory, a wiry young man with a lean, hard-earned frame and a sun-bronzed complexion that gave testament to the satisfaction of his working outdoors, hung a rake on the wall and faced Noah. “’Ad to ’elp ’er, sir, but they both seemed sharp as tacks, they did.”

“Rory! An answer, if you please.”

“Aye, sir. Chaston House. Seemed in a bit o’ a ’urry, they did.”

“Saddle my mount,” Noah ordered.

With the clear weather, Noah made it to Chaston in twenty minutes, taking the shorter route over the moors. There was an apology to make. But something deeper drove him. Fear. Fear that she’d disappear and he’d never see her again? His attraction, for the length of time he’d known her, seemed too intense. Hell, they’d met just days before.

---