the middle of a freakishly cold March, she did it quietly one day when he was away. She took only her car, her clothes, and her art supplies.
She drove north along the coast, following narrow, rural lanes. From time to time, like someone testing the water temperature with a toe, she'd dip down into a tiny fishing village tucked in a cleft in the cliffs to see how she liked it. She was intuitively unwilling to stray far from the sea that gave her so much pleasure and that informed so much of her art. On the third day of her meandering journey, she turned down a steep hill and found herself at the harbor in Boscastle at low tide. Something about it was right: the way the colorful local boats leaned this way and that on the mudflats, waiting for the tide to turn; the pretty river twisting through the village; the protective folds of the valley. The trees had just begun to break leaf and the slopes were furred in pastel green. Daffodils and lemon-yellow primroses bloomed along the river, as if their color alone could bring warmth. Tucked beneath the cliff on the south side of the little harbor was a small, honest, stone building with a WELL-APPOINTED COTTAGE TO LET sign in the window. She punched the number into her cell phone and discovered there was no signal there at the bottom of the valley, so she phoned from a public phone in the Wellington Hotel. She agreed to rent the place for a week. A few days later, she extended her stay another week. Eventually, she came to an understanding with the owner, a born-again Christian who owned a gift shop in the lower village, for a year-to-year lease. What the owner lost in high-season rates was offset by the cottage's no longer being empty during the winter and the fact that she no longer had to clean the place every week.
About a month later, Nicola was working in her upstairs studio when she heard a knock at the door. She had no friends at that point and couldn't imagine who it might be. When she got downstairs and opened the door, she found Sir Michael there, leaning on his cane in the rain, with a large parcel under his arm.
“Good afternoon, my dear,” he said, his great head tilting downward, almost shyly. “Do you suppose I might come in out of the elements?”
Nicola felt a surge of fear. “Jeremy?”
“I come alone, Nicola. I should like a word with you, if you'll permit me.”
Nicola stepped back from the door and the big man entered. He set down the parcel, leaning it against the wall with great care, straightened, and shrugged off his wet coat. Finally, he turned to her and smiled, his sagging, bloodhound face transformed with warmth.
“Hello, dear Nicola,” he said softly. “I have missed you.”
Tears slipped down Nicola's cheeks and Sir Michael took her into his arms.
“Oh, Dad,” she said into his shoulder. “I'm so sorry. It's just that I couldn't …”
“I know, dear one. You couldn't tell me. But I found out. Nigel told me, in the end. He didn't want to, of course; managing the farm is his life, and he didn't want to jeopardize that. Annabelle made him. He went after her, you know.”
“Nigel did?” Nicola was confused.
“No, dear girl. Jeremy. Made a play for her, you see. Well, attacked her, actually. First you, then the staff. Disgusting. My own son.”
Sir Michael looked around the tiny sitting room and dropped into a chair by the coal fire.
“I don't suppose you have a whisky?”
Nicola shook herself out of her shock. “Um, no. Brandy? I have a nice cognac …”
“Splendid.” He inched the chair closer to the fire.
When she returned, Nicola sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around her father-in-law's knees.
“How did you find me?”
The old man shrugged. “Not so difficult, really, for a man in my position. Put in a word at the Yard. They traced your auto, you see.”
“But why?”
Sir Michael looked at her, placed a wrinkled, age-spotted hand upon her shoulder, and chuckled. It was more a rumble. It came from somewhere deep within him, somewhere rich and sonorous. It was a sound that wrapped around her like a goose-down duvet.
“Thoroughbred stock, my dear; thoroughbred stock. Knew it from the moment you walked through the door. Told him that Christmas someone like you came along once in a lifetime and it was time he settled down. But