of Sidmouth's propensities, I confess my heart sank; but I determined to go forward, there being little comfort in turning back, as ever benighted by ignorance.
My arrival at the door occasioned another tremor—for what words should I summon, did the master of High Down confront me at his very portal, though I had committed to visit his cousin? The mere sight of Sidmouth should reduce me to a painful penury with words, so conflicted were my emotions towards himself. But I was spared even this trial; after some few moments, when I felt certain the entire household had been called away, the housemaid Mary answered my ring at the bell, and bade me come in search of Mademoiselle LeFevre.
I followed her down the cool stone hallway, and out a door on the nether end, and along a path to the kitchens—which, owing to a fear of fire, were separately housed. And there I espied the three dogs—jasper, Fang, and Beelzebub, if memory served—in attitudes of languor about the kitchen door, and the sound of song emanating from within. It was assuredly Seraphine, her head bent over an ankle propped in her lap; and had it not been for a conviction that the foot was too small to be Sidmouth's, I should have turned and fled that very moment.
A sound I must have made, and her blond head came up; an instant's bewilderment, superseded as swiftly by recognition, and the ghost of a smile. “Miss Austen,” Seraphine said quietly, and set down the shears she held in her hand; “what a surprise. And a pleasure. Please”— with that, a gesture towards the kitchen's interior— be so good as to find a seat. I am almost finished my work here.”
I entered, and found that the ankle was attached to Toby, and that his face and arms appeared singularly bruised. “Whatever can have befallen the boy!” I exclaimed, and received a surly glance from the fellow in question by way of reply.
“He has had a fall,” Seraphine said smoothly.
“From the hay-loft,” Toby added, with a quick look at his nursemaid. “Missed the ladder in the dark, miss, on account o’ the lanthorn blowin’ over in the storm. Quite a tumble I had, and my foot gone lame.”
A hay-loft, indeed. To judge by the Grange's barn, such a fall should have succeeded in finishing young Toby, with a broken neck at the very least. More likely, to my mind, that he had taken a fall about the cliff, in the darkness of night and the confusion of a storm.
“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-whitded 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