“Good. No. Why didn’t he stay—?”
“Because the doctor was in a hurry, and he found Mr. Dow stumbling around in the yard. You said we’d take care of him.”
“Good.”
But no one opened a chamber door, came out to wonder at the procession. “Emma,” Miss Beryl said, her voice very low.
“Yes, miss.”
“I know you keep your secrets.”
“So do you,” Emma commented with amazement. “How much of the other Aislinn House do you know?”
“What Ridley has told me.” She waited, balancing Ridley between her shoulder and the doorjamb while Emma opened Lady Eglantyne’s chamber door.
She was relieved at the absence of crows, as well as of Sophie. The faint breathing, the muted light and soft summery air, made the room seem safe, as far away as possible from the strange, violent, incomprehensible world within the walls around them. She looked into the dressing room, an airy chamber nearly as large as the bedchamber, full of dusty wardrobes and chests, a daybed, and a stand with a jug and basin, both harboring forgotten puddles.
Ridley collapsed with a sigh on the daybed. Miss Beryl sent Emma for water, linens, blankets. Emma, returning with blankets and a full water jug, saw her peeling away Mr. Dow’s torn clothes with breathtaking efficiency. On her way back from the linen closet, with her arms full of sheets and towels, she was startled by a voice in the quiet hallway.
“Emma, is it now?” Mr. Moren drew up beside her, idly spinning a monocle on its ribbon. “I have been looking for Miss Beryl. Is she still abed?”
“No, sir,” Emma said, before she thought, then stood groping for something plausible, while Mr. Moren flipped the monocle into his fingers and fitted it into his eye. It made one bright eye seem larger than the other, she saw, and twice as difficult to think.
“Ah, you’ve seen her, then. Where is she?”
“I think with Lady Eglantyne, sir.”
“I think not.” He raised a brow, dropped the glass circle from his eye socket, and spun it again. “I just looked in. She is not there.”
Emma blinked. She had closed the dressing room door, she remembered, lest Lady Eglantyne open her eyes and spy a half-naked man on her daybed. “Well, then,” she heard herself gabble, “perhaps she’s dressing. I heard her mention a ride on the beach this morning with Raven Sproule.”
He let the monocle fall, looking mildly amused at the idea of the squire’s son. “There’s a thought. Perhaps I’ll ride out and join them. You needn’t mention it. I’ll surprise her.”
“Yes, sir,” Emma said woodenly, her mouth as dry as day-old ashes. She didn’t move until he had turned down the stairway, and she heard his footsteps on the floorboards below. She returned to the dressing room to find Mr. Dow neatly bandaged, and beginning to breathe quietly. Miss Beryl helped her unfold sheets and a blanket, settle them over him. Emma glanced around the room, saw the streaked towels, the bloody water in the basin.
“I’ll clean these up, miss, as soon as I can. There’s a potion in the stillroom my mother made up for soothing pain. Shall I get that for him?”
Miss Beryl nodded. “That would be good.” She blinked at the dried stains on her dress, then brushed at them, her long fingers trembling slightly. But her voice was still cool. “I must hurry and change to go riding with Mr. Sproule.”
“Now?” Emma said incredulously.
“He’ll be here soon. I must still be seen as the rich Miss Beryl, idling away my time while my great-aunt fades.”
“Whatever will your maid think about your dress?”
“Who knows? We lead unsavory lives.”
For some reason that made Emma remember the monocle, the enlarged, peering, glittering eye. “Oh. Mr. Moren stopped me in the hallway, looking for you.”
Miss Beryl’s face took on its mask-like calm, as though she had turned herself into porcelain. “What did you tell him?”
“That I thought you were dressing to go riding with Mr. Sproule. So he went away, to surprise you on the beach.”
The porcelain blinked; Emma heard it breathe. “Emma, you are astonishing. I am so grateful.” She paused, her eyes no longer chilly, remote, but wide and shadowed with what they had seen. “I walk always, always on thin ice,” she said softly. “Emma, the best you could do for all of us now is to find that stranger whom I would not recognize as such in Sealey Head. You know him as Mr. Moren, in one of his guises.” Emma opened her mouth, closed it wordlessly. “He has been among my friends—” Miss Beryl checked, waved the word away with her hand. “My following—my disguise, I suppose you could call it. He has been close enough to watch me all of my life. And now that I’m here in Aislinn House, about to become its heir, he wants me even closer still. He wants what I cannot, would never give him. But, oddly enough, he is rarely with me now. He disappears; no one sees him outside of Aislinn House, and only then early in the morning, when I visit my great-aunt, or late at night. He told you that he would meet me on the beach. But he won’t be there.”
“He said—he asked me not to tell you.”
“So. You’ll think he is there, and I would never expect him to be there. But where will he really be? I think he disguises himself during the day from those of us who recognize him.”
“But why?” Emma’s voice barely cleared her throat. “Why would he hide himself? What does he want? Who is he?”
“The man who controls the secrets of Aislinn House.” The implacable voice shook finally. “He is Ridley Dow’s uncle far, far too many times great. He is Nemos Moore.”
Seventeen
That evening Gwyneth read to the twins:
