“You did not mention the valet,” he said.
She waited for some explanation. None came, only an accusing glare. “The valet?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Your husband’s,” he said.
Comprehension dawned. “Mr. Cooper? Oh, it was a terrible tragedy. He drowned.”
“He would have been your husband’s batman,” he said.
“He was looking forward to it,” she told him, “though Dicky offered to release him and give him a good character if he preferred to stay and look for a new position. It was terribly sad. He was only twenty-five.”
“And then Bains volunteered to go in his stead,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Dicky was fond of him, and he was very eager to go. We were surprised that his father would not agree. We expected that he would see it as a great opportunity for his son. But I suppose he wanted to keep him home, where he would be safe.”
“And so Mawgan went,” he said. “He had risked his own life trying to save the valet’s.”
“Yes, I believe he did try,” she said. “But it was not just that. Mr. Ratchett had a word with my father-in-law and he had a word with my husband, and Dicky needed a batman in a hurry.”
“Was it a reluctant choice?” he asked.
“Not particularly.” She frowned. “We did not know him at all well and there was no time to get to know him before we all sailed. But Dicky never complained about him. He was just a bit . . . sullen. Or perhaps that is too harsh a word. He was reticent.”
What was this all about?
“I went to pay a call upon Bains’s father this morning,” he said. He was still holding her by the waist, and he was still frowning at her.
“Oh, but he died,” she said, “not long before Christmas. I baked a cake and took it to Mrs. Bains because Dicky—and I—had always been fond of Colin. I was still at the dower house, so it must have been before the roof blew off.”
“Bains Senior was over the moon with pride and joy, or words to that effect, when he first knew that Viscount Barclay had chosen to take his boy to the Peninsula with him as his batman,” he said.
Imogen frowned back at him and shook her head slowly. “That is what Mrs. Bains told you?”
“And then suddenly, for no discernible reason, he changed his mind,” Percy said. “And he was quite adamant. Mountains would not have moved him. Neither would the pleadings and even the tears of his son. He would give no reason—not then or ever.”
“What?” Her frown had deepened.
He released her suddenly and turned to look at the cliff face on the west side of the path. He looked more than grim now. He looked like granite.
“I am going up,” he said.
They had not taken even one step along the beach after coming all the way down here. Neither had Hector. He was seated at their feet.
“Very well,” she said. Her mind was feeling a bit addled. There had been a number of threads to their conversation for the past few minutes, seemingly random threads that nevertheless should somehow connect themselves into a weave and a pattern, she felt. But she had not made the connections yet. Or perhaps she was afraid to try too hard.
“I mean up there,” he said, pointing off to the left of the path down to the beach.
“Up the cliff face?” she asked him. “You are going to climb?”
“I am,” he said, and he took off his hat and dropped it to the sand. His gloves and his greatcoat followed and then his neckcloth and cravat—and his coat. It was not a particularly cold day, but neither was it by any means a warm one in which to be standing on the beach in shirtsleeves and waistcoat.
“But why?” she asked. “You are afraid of the cliffs.”
“For precisely that reason.”
And he strode away from her.
20
It was what he had intended from the moment he had seen his cousins and friends off on their afternoon excursion. They had been disappointed that he was not going with them, and his friends had looked downright puzzled.
Percy had known he was going to climb the cliffs. Why he had not stridden off to perform the foolish feat alone, he did not know. Why drag Imogen along with him? To rescue him if he got stuck or to go tearing off to fetch help? To watch and admire while he defied death in such a daring escapade? To pick up the pieces if he fell? He had dashed well better not fall. She did not need that memory to add to all her others.
He had chosen what looked like a climbable route to the top while he was standing beside her, and strode toward the base of it. He noticed that he had picked a climb that was not too far left of the path, the unconscious idea being perhaps that if he got to a point at which there was no feasible way up, he would not have to find his way back down—perish the thought—but could edge sideways and walk the rest of the way to the top.
He looked down when he was probably not much more than his own height above the beach and decided on the instant that he would not do that again. Neither did he look up except to his next hand – and foothold. Climbing, he discovered, was like a number of other concentrated activities. It was a moment-by-moment-by-moment thing—don’t look ahead, don’t look back, focus upon what must be done now.
Terror started in his mind, then engulfed his heart and set it to pumping and thumping through his chest and up into his ears and his head, and then took up residence in every bone and muscle and nerve-ending in his body. At one point he was all pins and needles. At another he was so weak that he felt like a newborn babe. Everything in him screamed to stop while he was still safe. Except that he had never been farther from being safe in his life and stopping was out of the question. If he stopped, he would never move again—not until his tutor and a boatman arrived to pry him off the face of the cliff and carry him down to the boat.