Chapter 55 The Man Who Asked Questions

The gentleman was at the inn at Peniche when they reached it, seated in the best light with a decanter and a leather writing case, and he rose as they entered with the particular courtesy of a man who has been waiting to be discovered. English, fortyish, neat as a ledger. "Mrs. — forgive me — *Mrs. Merrick*, I believe? Mr. Selby, of Chancery Lane. At your service, madam, and your husband's. What a small world it is, that we should meet on this wild coast." Rosalind had faced lawyers across her mother's library table and a judge across a courtroom, and she knew the species: courtesy as reconnaissance. "Mr. Selby travels far for a small world," she said, unwinding her bonnet strings without haste. "Does Lord Penryn send his compliments?" Something flickered at the name. "Lord Penryn," Selby said smoothly, "is anxious — genuinely anxious — that certain misunderstandings be prevented. The claim before the court touches the validity of a conveyance made, shall we say, under pressure of a testamentary condition. My lord's case would be greatly simplified — and I speak as much in your interest as his — if the recent marriage were not presented to the court as a contrivance. A hurried ceremony within weeks of the claim; a sudden voyage abroad; these theatrical lamp-lightings one hears described—" he gestured faintly at the tin lamp in Rosalind's hand, "—the whole apparatus looks, to a suspicious mind, like a structure erected to defeat a lawful inheritance. My lord asks merely: why does a bride leave England within a month of her wedding? What papers does the lady of Blackmore carry so carefully to Portugal?" "She carries," Rosalind said, "wedding clothes she never wears, because she is walking a coastal road in boots. As for papers — you may tell his lordship that everything worth reading about Blackmore is already before the court, sworn and copied, and that the originals have not left Derbyshire. What I carry is a commonplace book, Mr. Selby. Would you like to see the pressed flowers?" Selby smiled the smile of a man declining a trap. "There is also the question of appearance," he persisted gently. "The court sits after Saint Andrew's Day. Witnesses travel slowly in winter. My lord wonders whether the lady means to be present, or whether the lady intends the estate to defend itself while she — collects lamps." He paused, and let the next remark fall as though it were an afterthought, which was how she knew it had been rehearsed. "And Captain Merrick will of course be asked to account for his own affairs. A man who spends seven years riding out of Plymouth to haunt a wreck in Derbyshire raises questions of his own. My lord has people in Plymouth. Sailors' towns talk, madam. It is remarkable what a guinea buys at the sign of the Anchor." "My lord's guineas bought my grandmother's beacon oil too, I daresay, from a distance," Julian said pleasantly. "Give his people my regards. Tell them the Merrick papers are exactly where Sarah Merrick left them, and that what she wrote has been read by precisely the people she wrote it for." "My lord," Rosalind said, "may wonder at his leisure. I was present at Derby assizes when I was a child of the house, and I watched a judge throw out a stronger claim than his with less ceremony than he'd give a poacher. Tell him the lady of Blackmore will appear, will answer, and will bring with her two hundred years of witnesses who are very hard to discredit because they wrote everything down. Good day, Mr. Selby. The road is long and your master's patience is not." Julian had drifted near during the exchange, positioning himself with an old sailor's instinct just outside conversational distance, a fact Selby marked and Rosalind saw him mark. The clerk bowed, wished them a calm passage, and withdrew to his decanter; and only when the stair-door had closed behind him did Rosalind allow her hands to shake. "He knew about the lights burning together," Julian said quietly. "Not the wedding. Anyone could know the wedding; it was read in three churches. The *lights*. Who describes that to a London lawyer, and how would it help his case unless it were true enough to frighten him?" "Sailors talk," Rosalind said. "Plymouth talked; the Cormorant's officers talked; half the fleet watched us sail out of a cove with no wind in our canvas and a story instead of cargo. We did not do any of it secretly, my love. We did it in front of a county." She heard her own steadiness return as she said it, and was grateful to it. "But write to Catalina anyway. Ask who else has written lately to Plymouth, or been asked questions by travelers. Not because I suspect the house. Because Vane suspects *something*, and a man who suspects something watches the places where answers might be, and I want us to know which of our windows he believes in." Ines, who had listened to all of it over her soup with the attention of a woman supervising weather, set down her spoon at last. "Every chain has a rusted link," she said. "Usually it is not a traitor. Usually it is only a link that was honest in the wrong direction — someone who told the truth to someone who paid for it. You will not find the leak by hunting faces. You will find it by being worth more than the price of telling." She picked the spoon back up. "Also, the gentleman's boots were English, but his spurs were bought here, and a man dressed for riding who takes ship everywhere is dressed by a schedule. Someone expects reports weekly. Remember that when you decide how fast to walk." They walked faster after that, though Ines never once altered her pace; what changed was the hour they started, before light, and the care with which Julian chose their lodging, always with two doors. In the evenings Rosalind sat by whatever fire they had and did what her mother had trained her to do and what the road had taught her to value: she wrote it all down — Selby's questions, word for word as near as memory allowed; the phrase about the guinea at the sign of the Anchor; the exact wording of the notice's summons. A deposition begun in the field, Graves would have called it, and he would have been right; if Vane wanted a court, she would give him a court that had already read her testimony. Julian watched her write the first night and said nothing until she had signed and dated the page. "You knew he would come," he said. "Before he walked in. You saw him sitting there and you knew." "I hoped," Rosalind said. "It is always better when they come to you first. Then you have seen their boots." And on the fourth night, at a farmhouse where the fire was green and smoked abominably, Rosalind dreamed of the courtroom at Derby and woke to find Julian awake beside her, watching the traveling lamp on the sill. "It's leaning again," he said. "West and south. Harder than before." "How long?" Rosalind asked. "Since the gentleman mentioned Saint Andrew's," Julian said.