Emma sipped her cider and watched out the window as three fishermen guided their boat into the harbor. She knew without looking that the boat would be in perfect condition, not a speck of paint chipped off of its sky-blue prow. She knew it because everything she’d seen so far in Penford Harbor had been perfect.
The church, with its ancient carvings and shining brasses; the tiny schoolhouse, with its computer terminals; the bakery, the butcher’s shop, the boathouse—nothing was rundown or weatherbeaten. The whitewashed cottages, roofed in blue slate or wheat-colored thatch, looked as though they’d been painted fresh that morning.
The air of well-being was more than skin-deep. According to Derek, the small fishing fleet provided the village and the hall with a great variety of seafood, and Mr. Carroway, the greengrocer, grew vegetables all year round in a solar-heated greenhouse behind his shop. An inland town supplied Mr. Minion, the butcher, with mutton and beef—it was his van that Gash had been repairing—but Herbert Munting, a middle-aged widower with a passion for poultry, provided him with chickens, geese, and other feathered delicacies from his multilevel henhouse. Mr. and Mrs. Tharby, the proud owners of the Bright Lady, made their own ale, pressed their own cider, and experimented with flavored liquors, but claimed that Crowley was the local authority on wine-making.
Penford Harbor’s air of cheerful self-sufficiency should have been appealing, but Emma found it almost eerie. It was too polished, too pristine. Old Jonah Pengully, with his cluttered shop, moth-eaten gray pullover, and curmudgeonly manner, had come as a refreshing change of pace.
Emma turned away from the window as Derek took his seat, and nodded when the matronly Mrs. Tharby stopped at their table to assure them that their lunch would be right out. When she’d left, Emma murmured uncertainly, “Did we place an order?”
Derek smiled. “One doesn’t order at the Bright Lady. One eats whatever Ernestine Potts decides to serve. She trained under Madama, so there’s no need to worry. Matter of fact, I’ve promised to bring Nell a pot of Ernestine’s jam.”
“Strawberry jam?” Emma asked.
“Why, yes. How did you guess?”
Emma studied Derek closely, wondering how he could possibly be unaware of his daughter’s fondness for strawberries. “She seems to eat a lot of them,” she replied carefully.
“Is that unhealthy?” Derek asked, faintly alarmed. Emma reassured him as Mrs. Tharby returned with their food.
“Supreme of Cornish turbot,” Mrs. Tharby informed them as she unloaded her tray. “Filled with a light scallop-and-grainy-mustard mousseline, and served on broad beans cooked French-style with a Chablis sauce. Ernestine’s having fun today. Enjoy.” She’d just turned away when the front door swung open.
“Hello, boys!” Mrs. Tharby called. “Your missus is expecting you for lunch, Ted.”
Three fishermen had come into the pub, their rubber boots trailing water, their hands and faces reddened from the wind and sun. Emma recognized them as the three she’d seen sailing into the harbor moments before. The youngest appeared to be in his late twenties, the oldest somewhere in his thirties. Emma thought she detected a family resemblance in their upturned noses and dark, wavy hair, and a moment later, Derek confirmed it, introducing her to the Tregallis brothers: Ted, Jack, and James.
“Told Debbie I’d stop by here to drop off the papers,” Ted replied to Mrs. Tharby as she headed for the kitchen. “How’re things up at the hall, Tom?”
“Peaceful, so far,” said the red-haired chief constable.
Ted placed a bundle of newspapers before Chief Constable Trevoy while Jack and James came over to shake hands with Derek. Their heavy wool sweaters reeked of sweat, diesel oil, and fish.
“Press conference went well,” Ted called from the chief constable’s table. “Seen the rags yet?”
Derek shook his head. “How bad is it?”
“See for yourself.” Ted brought several of the papers over to Derek. The first contained a black-and-white photograph of a scantily clad Susannah cavorting beside the words:
ASHERS SMASHERS!
“Blast,” Derek muttered. “Must’ve got the snap from Syd.”
“Bastards probably nicked it off him,” said Jack, wincing as Ted jabbed an elbow into his side and told him to mind his language.
“The other one’s not so bad,” said Chief Constable Trevoy, holding up a second newspaper. Its front page featured an unflattering photograph of Grayson surrounded by white-coated doctors, paired with a gorgeous shot of Susannah in a semitransparent gown, stretched full-length on her back on a rocky beach. The headline screamed:
FALLEN BEAUTY!
“Doubt Debbie’ll let me keep ’em in the house,” said Ted ruefully. “Not with Teddy around. My ten-year-old,” he explained to Emma.
“We could keep ’em on the boat,” Jack suggested, and was rewarded with a swift clout in the head from James, who asked, “This won’t affect the Fete, will it, sir?”
With admirable patience, Derek confessed yet again that he really didn’t know, and the Tregallis brothers trooped off to Ted and Debbie’s house for their midday meal, while Chief Constable Trevoy scanned through the rest of the papers. Mrs. Tharby returned to the table shortly, with a fresh round of drinks. Before leaving them to enjoy their lunch, she put a hand on Emma’s arm. “I just wanted to say what a pleasure it is to meet the garden lady. God bless you, dear. I’ve heard so much about you.” The Penford Hall grapevine, it seemed, was linked directly to the village.
13
Emma leaned over the retaining wall of the gray granite quay to look down at the lapping waves, while Derek stood beside her, facing the village. In the harbor, a gull plummeted headfirst into a wave, then rose back into the air, wings straining, a sliver of silver in its beak. A cool breeze caressed Emma’s face as she followed the gull’s flight upward and along the edge of the enclosing cliffs.
It was like standing at the bottom of a canyon. The curving walls were neither as steep nor as barren as they’d appeared from above. The rockface was cross-hatched with cracks, and a scattering of twisted cedars, buckthorn bushes, and tufts of purple rock samphire clung to narrow ledges.
The beacon and the chapel stood like sentinels on either side of the narrow opening in the canyon wall, where the sea swept in. Emma could easily imagine Grayson’s pirate ancestor hiding out in this sheltered cove, though he would have had to be a good seaman to maneuver his ship past the shoals. Emma’s gaze came to rest on a spot just beyond the mouth of the cove, where the water swirled and eddied, and ruffling waves seemed to break on an unseen shore.
“The Nether Shoals,” she murmured. She and Derek had retraced Lex’s steps from the door of the Bright Lady to the very spot where the duke’s yacht had once been docked. The cleats were still there, set firmly in the stone walkway, even though, as Susannah had taken pains to point out, the yacht had never been replaced.
But nearly everything else in Penford Harbor had been. Derek observed that the village had almost certainly undergone a renovation as extensive as the one that had taken place at Penford Hall. “I know how long it takes for rafters to settle, new thatch to turn from yellow to dusty brown,” he’d told her. “It’s not an exact science, but I’m willing to swear that most of these buildings were decaying ruins in the not-too-distant past. Someone’s done a great deal to lure people back here and make them want to stay.”
Derek turned to her now, his shoulder brushing hers as he leaned beside her on the wall. “Another odd thing about the Penford family legend,” he murmured. “In order for Grayson to bring it to fruition, there must also be a village.”