"Why did you not tell me?" I asked. "Why did you never tell me?"
"Well, it'd not be easy, would it? To explain to a young man something like that? And then you were off to war and foreign lands and then London, never to return, we all thought. It was the past. I married and I had children of my own."
I stood still, uncertain what to do. The desire to hit him and keep hitting had not left me. Though the reasonable part of me agreed that it had been long ago, that it scarcely mattered any longer, the rest of me was quivering from this new and painful wound.
I walked away from him. It was the best thing, under the circumstances. I strode up the path toward the marshes, my walking stick pressing into the mud. Buckley did not follow me. The wise man went back to his pub and left me alone with my thoughts.
I was never certain how long I wandered. The rain poured down, and my knee started to ache.
At least, I came across nothing gruesome-no severed hands, no bodies, no blood. Only me, the grasses, the rain, and sheep.
I found the shepherd under shelter of the bank that separated the salt marshes from the wet sands. He hunkered under a canvas tarp, taking nips from a flask while he kept one eye on his charges.
I sank to my heels, my game leg protesting, and he greeted me with a nod. "Now then, Captain."
I did not know the man, but I could not be surprised he knew who I was. Everyone in the area was aware of my return by now.
He offered me the flask but I declined, not because I did not want the gin or whatever was in it, but because the mouth of the flask was rust-stained and covered with sand.
"Are these Lord Southwick's sheep?" I asked. I did not much care, but I wanted to speak of anything to take my mind off my encounter with Buckley.
"Aye. And some from the villages. Parson's Point and Blakeney. We don't tell his lordship that we mix them together."
I watched the wet bundles of wool crop the marsh grasses, the aristocratic sheep unworried about being mixed with the common sheep. "How do you tell them apart?"
He shrugged. "Sheep are like people, Captain. They all have their little ways that make them different. I know which are which." He chuckled. "That and we mark them with a little dye."
His humor washed over me, unnoticed. "I suppose when you're out here all day long, you see more of the sheep than people."
"That I do." The shepherd grinned, showing broken teeth, and took another sip from his flask. "But I don't mind. Sheep know where they are and what's what, and they never mind it. It's people that fuss all the time."
"And hurt one another."
"Aye. Though the mamas can get protective of their babies."
"Do many people wander out here?" I asked. "Besides me, I mean."
"Not many. Saw you out here yesterday, with a horse."
"Yes." I rested my weight on my walking stick, my leg truly starting to hurt. "I'd lost it, and I found it grazing here. Did you happen to see it come out? Or a man with it?"
"Don't think so. But I move about, sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere. And this land looks flat, but it fools you. Little hills and ridges everywhere."
I'd noticed that. "He'd have been a large man, quite tall and broad. He might have had another man with him."
The shepherd rubbed his chin with the hand that held the flask. "Don't think so." He kept rubbing. "Did see a man, but not yesterday, and not with a horse. A few days ago. And he were alone. I think he were tall, though."
My moroseness fled. "Where?"
The shepherd pointed to his right, north along the ridgeline. "Up yonder. Walking away, heading westward. Not much out that way, but that's where he went. Didn't know who he were at this distance, and I never saw him again."
I stood up, my leg aching as I straightened it. I gazed down the ridge, shielding my eyes from the rain and the glare from the leaden sky.
"Thank you."
"If I see him again, should I tell him you're looking?"
I continued to study the direction he'd gone, the grasses bending under the wind. "No," I said. "No, do not mention it."
The shepherd touched his hand to his forehead in a mock salute. "Right you are, Captain. I'll keep your interest to meself. Can't speak for me sheep."
I looked down into his twinkling eyes and smiled with him. I was a native son; the man the shepherd had spotted, a stranger. He'd keep my secrets.
Now to find out whether the person he'd seen was Cooper, Cooper's killer, or someone else entirely.
Chapter Seventeen
I debated what to do. I walked along the ridge path a little way, but I soon found that the mud and pelting rain would defeat me.
I'd left my horse at the vicarage. I began my trudge back there, raising my hand to the shepherd as I passed. All I saw of him was the flash of lifted flask.
The rain became a gray curtain, obscuring the world. I bent my head to the wind, keeping my eyes on my feet. Pools of wet lined the path, which ran across a little rise of ground. If I stepped off the path, I would be knee-deep in boggy mud.
I knew that the path the shepherd had pointed to led to nothing. Or at least, twenty years ago, it had led to nothing. I had to remind myself I'd been away that long. Estate holders could have added outbuildings, and windmills continued to be erected. I hadn't walked that way in a long time.
And I would not today. I was thoroughly drenched by the time I reached the vicarage. Mrs. Landon, watching worriedly for me, wanted to fill me with hot coffee. I accepted a brief cup, but I needed to return to Easton's.
Before I departed, a carriage drew up and deposited Reaves at the front door. I recognized the carriage and the other man inside it. Grenville.
Reaves looked at me in surprise as the vicarage maid hurried forward to take his things. "Captain Lacey? What are you doing here?"
"I am equally surprised to see you," I said. "Has Lady Southwick ended her house party?"
"Pardon? No, some guests are remaining for a time. But it is Saturday, and when I enter the pulpit tomorrow, everyone will expect me to have something to say. I find this house quite conducive for composing sermons."
"Much quieter here," I agreed. And more restful. The vicarage was an old-fashioned cottage with flagstone passages and plain, polished wood that lined whitewashed walls. "What will be your theme, if I may ask?"
"I have not yet decided," he said. "I might work in the camel and the eye of the needle, in light of recent arrivals to our part of the world. Not meaning you, Captain."
No, I was hardly wealthy enough to worry about riches barring me from the kingdom of heaven. But if he meant Denis, I doubted Denis would care. Denis was not bothered by heaven and hell as far as I could discern. Nor would Denis likely attend the service. Easton's house was in a different parish anyway.
I could have pointed out the irony of a man who obviously loved the comforts of soft living lecturing on the sins of wealth, but I refrained. I wasn't certain Reaves would see my point.
I said good-bye to him and to Mrs. Landon and stepped back out into the rain.
Grenville's groom opened the carriage door for me, and Grenville called to me to get in. The groom would return my horse for me, he said.
I accepted. I'd had enough of the rain.
"You are exceedingly wet," Grenville said as my greatcoat spilled water onto the landau's floor.
The lanterns at our feet flickered as the groom shut the door. The welcome warmth of the coal boxes began to seep into my bones.
"I beg your pardon. I've been tramping about the marshes in the pouring rain. It is wet work."
Grenville drew his coat together under his chin. "Norfolk is lovelier than I thought it would be, but damp. Quite damp."
"Unlike London, which is only damp."
"You are in an interesting mood, Lacey."