But that was the coward’s way. So she limped to Libby’s door instead of her own. She didn’t knock—it would just give her an excuse to tell her to leave. She didn’t try the knob—it was probably locked. She just rested her forehead on the wood. “When I answered your advert—Cador had just left me for some London girl who promised him connections. He said . . . he said I wasn’t good enough. Not for the life he wanted. That I wasn’t fit to be the wife he needed, only a maid to serve her.”

How could it taste so bitter on her tongue, even two years later? “So I . . . decided that if that was all he thought I was, that was what I’d be. I saw the advert in a paper a tourist left behind, and I answered it. Beth wrote my recommendation. My family begged me not to go, but I needed to get away.”

The only sound from within was the squeak of the bed’s springs. She could imagine Libby lying on it, her back to the door, a pillow over her head to try to block out Mabena’s pathetic story.

“When I realized that Beth had found some sort of trouble . . . she’s my cousin. My best friend. I couldn’t just do nothing, my lady, and you had a problem of your own, so . . . It seemed a handy solution. I never meant you to be hurt by it, and I certainly never meant you to get mixed up in whatever she’s mixed up in.”

There. It was the closest thing to an apology she knew how to give, and it was true, every word.

But silence pounded from the other side of the door. And every pulse of it screamed that it wasn’t enough. That she wasn’t forgiven. That she didn’t deserve to be. That it didn’t matter what had chased her from Tresco two years ago. It didn’t matter what had brought her back now. She’d played it all wrong, and while her family here could overlook it, Lady Elizabeth Sinclair could not.

She sighed and tapped a finger once against the door. Then pushed away. Maybe it wasn’t enough. But it was all that she had.

Without another word, she slid back into her own room like a shadow and curled up on the floor under the window. The ocean’s heartbeat melded with her own.