* *
A week later, late in the afternoon, Aileen threw a shawl about her shoulders and left the confines of the boardinghouse to walk in the public gardens behind the rectory. She’d found the little oasis of civilized peace just a few yards up the road and down a short lane six days ago, and it had quickly become her favorite place for thinking.
As the sun began its final descent toward the western horizon, a cooling breeze often lifted off the harbor and estuary beyond, sweeping up the hill with gentle grace, refreshing and renewing the air after the stifling, muggy heat of the day.
Pacing along the lightly graveled path, Aileen made for her favorite bench. Situated beneath the spreading branches of a tall, shady tree, the bench was unoccupied, as it usually was. She’d seen only a handful of people using the gardens, and most of those were nursemaids or governesses with their charges; at this time of day, they were busy elsewhere, doing other things.
Amid the leaves of the old tree, long brown seedpods hung, dry now, and in the stirring of the breeze, they added their soft rustle to the evening’s chorus. She found the already familiar susurration welcoming. She sat, letting the fine shawl fall to her elbows so she could better enjoy the coolness on her skin.
She scanned the short stretch of lawn below and saw only a single couple who were already heading home. She watched them go, then she raised her gaze to the wider vista of the harbor and its ships, and the estuary beyond. From there, she could even see the opposite shore, so distant it was nothing more than a thick band of jungle green edging the water.
This was a very foreign land.
She told herself that. Told herself it was no real surprise that finding any trace of Will months after he’d disappeared would take time. More, that any trail wouldn’t easily be uncovered.
In search of that trail, she’d returned to sit through two more of Undoto’s performances. She’d spent both observing closely, searching for some hint of what had sent Will there—desperately hoping for some inkling of what he had gone there to find. Other than feeling faintly disturbed by the tenor of the services, she’d learned nothing more.
She’d spoken with Sampson again, but perhaps unsurprisingly given his earlier concern, he’d been discouraging.
His attitude had only added to her welling despondency.
She’d expected to get somewhere by now.
Glumness dragged at her. Instead of giving in to it, she focused on the scene before her. A ship—sleekly hulled and sporting three towering masts—was sliding gracefully up the estuary. Even from this distance, she could make out the tiny figures of sailors scrambling high on the spars, furling a quite staggering array of sails.
The sight of the ship held her transfixed. As she watched, it smoothly slid past the mouth of the harbor and continued up the estuary, still well out from shore.
She wondered why the ship wasn’t turning in. As far as she knew, there was no other settlement—certainly not a settlement of the size to which such a ship might sail—farther along the estuary’s shores.
She continued to trace the stately passage of the ship. Watching it was curiously soothing.
Courtesy of her brothers’ incessant obsession, she was more than passingly acquainted with the latest designs in sailing vessels. In the sleek lines of the ship nosing down the estuary, she thought she detected the telltale shape of the new ships out of the Aberdeen shipyards. Clippers, as people were starting to call them, because under full sail—which was how they were designed to be sailed—the hull rose and sped across the water, clipping the waves.
She imagined how fast the ship before her might go if all the sails she could see were set before a good wind.
It would fly.
Will would have loved it.
“Will will love it one day.” She frowned at herself, at the unintentional surfacing of her deepest fears.
The best way to eradicate fear was to face it. She didn’t want to, yet she forced her mind to consider the unthinkable.
She still couldn’t believe it. Will isn’t dead.
He’d gone missing, but he was somewhere, and still alive.
He was findable. In turn, that meant he could be rescued.
She would do it.
She would not give up—she would never give up—on Will.
Finally, the ship she’d been watching turned its prow toward shore. It came in a short way, then anchored just inside a cove two bays to the east of the harbor.
She wondered why the captain had chosen to avoid the harbor proper. “Perhaps they’re only anchoring for the night, or to take on water.”
Regardless, she’d seen enough; she had more pressing matters to address.
Eschewing the sight before her, she turned her thoughts inward. Doggedly, she retrod—yet again—all she’d learned. Now that she’d worked out why Will had gone to see Dixon—because Dixon had already disappeared and Will had wanted to learn more—that left Will’s attendance at Undoto’s services as the one peculiarity she had yet to explain.
She decided that was a clear enough sign. Either something happened at the services that Will had seen but that she had yet to notice, or...
She couldn’t think of anything that or might be.
Frowning, she refocused on her surroundings and realized the light was fading. In the tropics, night descended like a curtain falling on a stage—with brutal finality and quite surprising abruptness.
She rose. The temperature had started dropping with the setting of the sun. She flicked her shawl about her shoulders and set off at a brisk walk for the lane, the road, and Mrs. Hoyt’s Boarding House.
As she entered the lane, her senses came alert. Pure habit; she didn’t expect to meet with any difficulty in that area.
Nevertheless, as she emerged onto the road by the rectory, she recognized that, with the falling of night, the atmosphere in the settlement changed.
It wasn’t only the view, the surroundings, that grew darker.
She set off along the rough pavement toward the boardinghouse. Lights were already burning on the front porch, and a welcoming glow shone through the parlor curtains.
Then she nearly tripped as her mind connected her recent thoughts. She halted and stared ahead as she realized...
“I might have been looking in the right place, but at the wrong time.” She breathed the words as the possibilities firmed in her mind.
In this place—as in any other rough and dangerous place in which predators lurked—time of day made a very real difference to what anyone watching might see.
Her heart lifted. She stepped out, her stride firmer, more decided—even more determined.
She’d been watching Undoto during the day. She needed to watch him during the evening and night.
True
