Oliver couldn’t breathe, try as he might to suck island air into lungs well accustomed to gulping it in after a jog or a row or a quick climb from sea level. But air wouldn’t come, and it had nothing to do with the run from the quay. And everything to do with the fact that the young woman standing in Beth’s doorway wasn’t Beth.

His fingers curled into his palm as he tried to make sense of it. But there was no sense to find. He’d gone about his morning as planned. Visited the Floyds. Puttered in the Abbey Gardens with Mr. Menna. Tried and failed to track down Enyon. Finally made his way home for tea with Mamm-wynn, ready to put everything aside and enjoy a rest.

But his grandmother wouldn’t eat or drink. She just kept worrying the edge of her shawl. And when she looked at him and said, “Beth’s not where she’s supposed to be, Ollie. She’s gone,” the strangest feeling had come over him.

He’d crumbled his biscuit instead of eating it and just stared at her. Mad. That’s what he heard in his ears, in Casek Wearne’s voice. His grandmother was mad.

But he couldn’t quite believe it. Not with those unwritten letters haunting him when they should have been sitting on his desk. Not with his own uneasiness nipping at him. He’d set his teacup down and forced a smile for Mamm-wynn. “I’ll just check on her, shall I?”

Her eyes hadn’t brightened though. If anything, the clouds in them had flashed lightning. “You won’t find her, lad. But go anyway. See what you can learn.”

He’d jumped into his sloop, the rigging melding with his hands. Straight here to St. Mary’s, to the cottage along the garrison wall that he knew should have housed his sister. His fist upon the door. A hundred excuses ready to crowd their way to his tongue when Beth scowled at him and demanded to know why he’d interrupted her summer after he promised her independence.

But it wasn’t Beth. It wasn’t Beth. It was another young lady of a similar age, with similar golden hair in a similar braid, wearing a similar white blouse and a similar grey skirt. Similar—but not Beth.

“Is your sister by chance called Elizabeth?” The question echoed in his brain long after she finished asking it, too many thoughts knocking about with it for him to make sense of the words.