“I trust it is not broken?”

Seraphine shook her head and patted the bandage she had only just secured. “Our good Mr. Dagliesh has been and gone, and he assures us that Toby will be walking in no time. But until you are, young sir,” she finished somewhat sternly, “you are to pay heed to Mr. Dagliesh's words. Rest and sit, or your leg will be the worse for it.”

With a dark look and a mutter, Toby swung his ankle from Seraphine's lap and set it on the floor, barely disguising a whimper as he did so; and at that very moment, a shadow fell across the door and I turned to find Geoffrey Sidmouth standing behind me, his eyes intent upon my face and a pair of newly-whittled crutches in his hand.

“Mr. Sidmouth,” I said with what I trust was my usual composure, and a bob of my bonneted head. “I am able to return your cloak at long last, with my deepest thanks. I have no excuse to plead for my neglect of your kindness these many days, but the usual absorption of a lady in seaside schemes of pleasure.”

“There is no need for apology, Miss Austen — I might have sent a manservant, had I felt the cloak to be wanting — but your exertion in returning it is considerable, and not to be dismissed.” And at that he bowed, though the hint of mockery in the gesture served to lessen somewhat its civility, and reached a hand for my burden. I gave over the cloak into Sidmouth's safekeeping; and saw that his thoughts had shifted already to the stable boy Toby.

“Come along, lad,” he said, with a hand to Toby's head. “These crutches will have you to rights in an instant. Well do I remember my own turned ankles, from falling out of trees, Miss Austen,” he added, with a look for me, “and tripping over fox holes; they were as much a part of childhood as the turning of the seasons. And fortunately I remember how to fashion a crutch, when need be.”

Such gentleness, as he helped the boy to his feet! Such a tender concern for a stable lad's well-being, that he should whittle some support with his very hands! And how fond the look, as he watched Toby swing haltingly out the doorway, and cross the yard to the barn! Could such benevolence co-exist with the most vicious propensities? Impossible! But how, then, to explain the waggons about the courtyard, all speaking so eloquently of haste and necessity in the night?

My thoughts were disturbed by a sudden Bump! overhead, and the sound as of something rolling into a garret corner; I glanced up swiftly, and would swear I heard the shuffle of knees along bare floorboards, and then the very stillness of suspended breath. I looked to Seraphine for explanation, but she was bent over a cauldron hanging at the hearth; and if her cheeks were a trifle flushed, surely die heat of the fire might be taken as cause. Sidmouth, too, appeared insensible of the secretive movements above his head, being engaged in gathering up the cloth Seraphine had used for Toby's bandage; and I should have thought myself quite mad, did I not believe them both to have a purpose for assumed tranquillity.

I glanced about the kitchen, and observed a doorway in the far corner — concealing, perhaps, a staircase, and the way to the rooms above, where even now the Reverend's henchmen were foiled in their activity, by the appearance of a visitor below. The image of Davy Forely's grimacing face, glimpsed a week ago as he fled the dragoons on Sidmouth's horse, rose with conviction in my mind — was the lander even now recovering from his wounds, in hiding at High Down Grange? But to what purpose? For had not Captain Fielding divulged that no charge could be brought against the men, for retrieving a cargo of small beer? But someone was assuredly above, and keeping covert; Seraphine had pronounced my name quite clearly at my arrival, and Mr. Sidmouth equally so— a signal, perhaps, for the cessation of all movement in the garret. I must try what outright interrogation should reveal.

“I see you have visitors? Mr. Sidmouth,” I said, and awaited his response.

He moved lithely to the doorway and peered out into the sunshine, as though in search of an arriving chaise. “I fear you are mistaken, Miss Austen. We must look solely to yourself for amusement this morning.”

I allowed the slightest suggestion of confusion to cross my features. “But what, then, is the purpose of the waggons in the courtyard? I expected an entire party of pleasure-seekers upon my arrival — and yet could barely discover a soul!”

“We were about the hay-making yesterday,” Sidmouth said evenly, with a look to Seraphine; “until halted by the onset of the storm. Had Toby been better fitted to his work, the equipages should hardly have been left standing; but his injury, and the pressing nature of my own affairs, necessitated their present abandonment.”

He could not have known, of course, that Toby had declared his injury to be a thing of the night — and well after any waggons should have been put up.

“I hope your expectations are not all downcast, Miss Austen, at finding us quite alone? For we are generally so retiring at High Down Grange, that the addition of merely one to the circle is taken as a novelty. We are in your debt, you see, for this visit.”

“And I feel it particularly,” said Seraphine, turning from the fire, “for you know I see almost no one. I wonder, Miss Austen, if you would care to take a turn along the cliffs — the weather being so fine? We might converse at some leisure in the open air; and as such days will offer only rarely in the coming months, we ought to seize them when we may.”

Though I had toiled fully two and a half miles uphill from Lyme in the previous hour, I surmised Seraphine to be seeking some privacy, if not my safe removal from the vicinity of the kitchen garret; and declared myself not antagonistic to the notion of exercise. While the lady went in search of her cloak, there being a brisk breeze off the sea, I settled myself into an empty chair; and so was left in the company of Mr. Sidmouth for some anxious moments.

“Let me repeat myself, Miss Austen, the better to show my gratitude, even at the risk of increasing your tedium,” he began, his brown eyes warm in his harsh-featured face. “I am very much obliged to you for this visit. I know full well that you are come at my express request, made only a few nights ago — a melancholy night, in retrospect, given the events that followed hard upon our evening's enjoyment at Darby.”

For a moment I knew not how to reply, surprised that he should mention even so obliquely the death of Captain Fielding.

“There is to be an inquest, I understand, at the Golden Lion,” I ventured at the last.

“It will avail them nothing,” Sidmouth said grimly, and threw himself into the chair Seraphine had vacated. “Fielding's murderer is long gone from the vicinity.”

“You would credit, then, the notion of a footpad? You believe Captain Fielding to have died by misadventure?”

“Is there an alternative?” he enquired, with a knitting of the brows. “For the Captain is unlikely to have done away with himself, Miss Austen, having first dispensed with his valuables.”

“But another might have effected a similar appearance.”

“To what purpose?” Mr. Sidmouth's voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, and his countenance was stilled and shuttered.

“To suggest that what was murder by design, was merely a perilous encounter with a highwayman — the better to divert suspicion, and throw into doubt all hope of confounding the killer.”

“And why should any wish to trifle with Fielding's life in so terrible a manner?”

“Come, come, Mr. Sidmouth!” I cried. “Km are a man of the world. You know what it is to inspire enemies, and to maintain a relation of enmity with another. Surely you may supply a myriad of reasons for such an extraordinary course. You bore the Captain too little love, not to wish him as much ill-fortune as he was unhappy enough to endure.”