opening in the embankment, and the wind whipped rain and sea-spray into his face. The waters mixed, and a strange bittersweetness crossed his tongue. Without looking back at the cave entrance, he began making his way back up the embankment.
The rocks had grown slippery with the wetness of the storm, and the wind seemed to be trying to pluckhim from his perch. Each time his foot slipped, his hands bled a little more, but he didn’t feel it. He felt only the firmness of the earth below him, and the fury of the elements around him.
Then he had gained the top of the embankment, and he plunged back into the woods as if the sea would reach up to take him if he hesitated for even a second. When the forest closed behind him, he began to relax.
He walked purposefully through the woods now, past the trampled ground where he had so recently lain with the child, to the spot where the empty bottle still lay where he had dropped it.
And the rabbit.
He stopped then, and stared down at the rabbit, whose rain-soaked body lay pitifully still.
He picked it up, cradling it in his arms like a baby, and began to make his way across the field to the house beyond.
He didn’t pause in the field, didn’t take even a moment to look once more at the place where she had played. Instead he kept his eyes on the house, with the same hypnotic concentration with which he had earlier watched the child.
He left the field, crossed the lawn, and entered the house through the wide front door.
No one was there to watch him as he bore the body of the rabbit down the hall and into his study, nor were the gaslights yet casting the shadows he feared to see.
He closed the door to his study, then went to sit in a chair in front of the fireplace, the dead rabbit in his lap.
He sat there for a long time, huddled forward as if to draw warmth from the cold hearth in front of him, his hands stroking the rabbit’s wet fur. Now and then he glanced up at the portrait of the beautiful child in the cornflower silk dress that hung above the mantel.
He didn’t hear the carriage arrive, or the sound of the knocker as it fell against the front door.
He didn’t hear the light tapping at his own door; didn’t hear the slight click of the door opening, or the soft step of the maid who came into his study. She waited quietly by his chair until at last he noticed her.
“Yes?” The word was strange-sounding on his ear, as if someone else had uttered it.
“I’m sorry, Mr. John,” the maid said softly. “I’m looking for Miss Beth. Her grandmother’s asking for her.”
“Miss Beth? Isn’t she in the house? She was in the field.”
“No, sir,” the maid replied. “She doesn’t seem to be in the house at all. I thought perhaps—”
He held up a hand wearily. “No,” he said. “She isn’t with me. Not any more.”
The maid turned to go, then turned back.
“Mr. John?” He looked up at her. “What’s that in your lap?”
The man looked down, and for the first time seemed to be conscious of the small creature on his lap.
“It’s a rabbit,” he said slowly.
“But what’s wrong with it?” the maid asked.
“It’s dead,” he said. “It was so innocent, and now it’s dead.”
The maid left the room.
He sat there for a few more minutes, then he stood up. Carefully, he placed the rabbit on the chair, then glanced once more at the portrait above the mantel.
He left the study, closing the door after himself once more, and retraced his steps down the hallway.
He passed through the front door, then turned to follow a walkway around the corner of the house.
He followed the walkway until it ended, then followed the path that picked up from the end of the walk.
At the end of the path, a cliff fell away to the sea below.
He stood for a moment, staring at the sea that battered far below him, and his lips moved almost silently. And over the wind, lost in the noise of the surf, a word drifted soundlessly away.
“Beth,” he whispered. Then he repeated the name, and as the sound fell away from him, he flung himself into the waiting sea.
For him, it was over.
BOOK I
Fifteen Years Ago
1
Port Arbello perched snugly on the bluffs above the ocean, its trees flourishing the last of their fall