Said demoralization had clearly been transient; Barnaby fell to demolishing the last sausage, then he looked at Gerrard. “So, when do we leave?”

Gerrard met his eyes. Patience had been right, not that he’d ever tell her. “I’ll write to Tregonning’s agent today. I’ll need to get in extra supplies, and make sure all else is in order here…shall we say the end of next week?”

“Excellent!” Barnaby raised his cup in a toast, drained it, then reached for the coffeepot. “I’m sure I can lie low until then.”

Twelve days later, Gerrard tooled his curricle between a pair of worn stone gateposts bearing plaques proclaiming them the entrance to Hellebore Hall.

“It’s certainly a long way from London.” Relaxed on the seat beside him, Barnaby looked around, curious and mildly intrigued.

They’d set out from the capital four mornings before, and spelled Gerrard’s matched grays over the distance, stopping at inns that caught their fancy each lunchtime and each evening.

The driveway, a continuation of the lane they’d taken off the road to St. Just and St. Mawes, was lined with old, large-boled, thickly canopied trees. The fields on either side were screened by dense hedgerows. A sense of being enclosed in a living corridor, a shifting collage of browns and greens, was pervasive. Between the tops of the hedges and the overhanging branches, they caught tantalizing glimpses of the sea, sparkling silver under a cerulean sky. Ahead and to the right, the strip of sea was bounded by distant headlands, a medley of olive, purple and smoky gray in the early afternoon light.

Gerrard squinted against the glare. “By my reckoning, that stretch of water must be Carrick Roads. Falmouth ought to lie directly ahead.”

Barnaby looked. “It’s too far to make out the town, but there are certainly plenty of sails out there.”

The land dipped; the lane followed, curving slowly south and west. They lost sight of Carrick Roads as the spur leading to St. Mawes intervened on their right, then the tree sentinels that had lined the lane abruptly ended. The curricle rattled on, into the sunshine.