“I know.” Oliver sighed and scanned the beach. “Mr. Menna’s checking the Abbey Gardens. And Mrs. Dawe is checking the house and grounds again.”

“I’ll hug the coast, see if I spot her anywhere. She’s probably just out for a morning stroll. It’s a beautiful day.”

Though Oliver nodded, Libby could see the tension in his lips. The fight to hold back the words, the worry.

To keep himself from saying that the beauty of a day didn’t insulate it from horror. Last night had been just as beautiful, but his cousin was sleeping off a head injury even now, the same sort that had killed Johnnie Rosedew.

To keep from voicing the worry that the constable’s men had been wrong and there had been a threat lurking in a neighboring house, and it had found her.

Sour fear burned Libby’s throat.

“You two walk the south path. I’ll start going north. We’ll have found her in a few minutes.”

Oliver made no attempt at conversation as he moved to obey, and she could hardly blame him. Once you named a thing, after all, it became a bit more real.

She instead let her gaze dart every which way as they walked the coastal path southward, though she saw nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.

Oliver halted her, though, when they reached the turn that gave them a view of Samson. She wasn’t certain why, what had knit his brows together, until he pointed out to the water. Or more particularly, to the small sailboat upon it. Its sails were down, and it looked to be drifting. “That’s Tas-gwyn’s boat.”

Her stomach flopped. She was no boatwoman like Mabena, but it didn’t look right to her. She didn’t see an anchor line, nor could she make out anyone in the boat keeping it where it should be. Which was probably why it was just drifting there, halfway between the islands.

“Come on.” Oliver had apparently thought much the same thing, because he took off at a run back for the beach where they’d seen Enyon, dropping her fingers after they turned.

She tried not to focus on how cool and lonely they felt without his around them. Better instead to focus on keeping up with him, which was trial enough.

Perhaps she needed to spend more of her days moving and fewer sitting around studying slides under her microscope. But she was determined not to slow him down, not when his grandparents were his reason for hurrying. Grateful that she was at least in reasonable clothes that allowed for movement and not the restrictive sort of dress Mama always tried to make her wear, she ran as fast as she could on the path. And fought for breath enough to call out, “Does Tas-gwyn . . . usually go out . . . so early?”