“All right.” Libby slid an arm around her companion’s slight waist as they walked, the better to support her, since it seemed her energy was flagging with each step. They slipped out a small door in the garden wall that clearly wasn’t used by many people, and Libby followed the subtle presses of the lady to know where to go from there.

They didn’t walk far before they’d entered the gate of a quaint stone house that she prayed was where the woman actually lived. It was bigger than its neighbors, set apart, with a beautiful vista stretching down to the sea. Nothing nearly so grand as Tresco Abbey, where the Lord Proprietor lived. But beautiful. She’d have liked to take a moment there at the gate simply to pause and admire it—the way it looked as though the stones had sprung from the ground itself and clambered atop one another, moss acting as mortar; the way the sun glinted off the windowpanes and made them wink a greeting; the explosion of color in the flowers growing along absolutely every line and boundary and wall.

If this was where Mamm-wynn’s Edgar had brought her when they wed, it was no wonder she had let the islands know her name. Who wouldn’t want to live here? Perhaps it was only a fraction of the size of Telford Hall, but it would be perfect for a family to grow in.

The door opened as they approached it, and a worried-looking woman of middling age bustled out. “There you are! And what will Master Oliver say when he learns you’ve sneaked out again, Mrs. Tremayne?”

Mrs. Tremayne? Master Oliver? Libby nearly stumbled on the perfectly smooth flagstones under her feet. Had this lovely woman—his grandmother, no doubt—mistaken her for Beth, as the strangers had?

But no. Beth wasn’t engaged or married either. She’d have no story of the Betrothal Stone to tell. Perhaps she’d mistaken her for a neighbor. A niece. Who was to say?

The worried woman—Mrs. Dawe, presumably—had reached their side and turned grateful eyes on Libby. “Thank you so much for seeing her home, miss.”

She didn’t have to force the smile. If this was what Mrs. Dawe looked like when cross, then she could only imagine her happy. “It was my pleasure, I assure you.”

Mrs. Tremayne linked her arm through Libby’s again. “We’ll have some tea now, I think. Are you hungry yet, dearover?”

“Oh, of course! Come in, please.” Mrs. Dawe—a housekeeper, perhaps?—waved a hand toward the still-open door. “A bit of refreshment is the least we can offer in thanks.”

“Oh.” She wanted to accept. Which might be the first time in her life she could say such a thing of an invitation from a stranger. “I’d love to, but Mabena Moon will be looking for me in the Gardens.”