Sanditon: A Sisterhood Forms

52

Lord Townshend's arms spread from one end of the table to the other, the plans unrolled before him, drooping over the edges as he dipped his head lower in the darkness, scanning the layout. "Shout at me if you must, Miss Heywood, but we cannot leave. Not until I find that bloody passageway, at least," he faded off irritably.

Charlotte eyed him defensively, having stopped abruptly at the entrance to Raynham Hall's library, the sight before her almost too much to take. Almost enough to prevent her from fuming over their previous exchange.

Every table and chair in the room before her was piled high with rolls of parchment or stacks of papers. Maps and diagrams lined the walls, books and ledgers lay haphazardly upon the floor next to the shelves where they might have belonged, and a large desk at the centre of the room was almost unrecognisable beneath the weight of documents upon it.

"Is that-"

"It is," he answered, "precisely where we are headed."

"You have drawings of the Campion estate."

"Indeed," he said, matter-of-factly, "several renditions."

She looked around them, the maps pinned to the walls capturing her attention, her mind uncertain of their purpose and yet positive that it all meant something. "Lord Townshend," she said, "if there is something I must know before we depart-"

"That, Miss Heywood, is a very long story. Too long, in fact, to even begin."

She narrowed her eyes in his direction before stepping closer to a set of diagrams upon the wall, then moved on to the next, realising that they were all markedly similar. "Well, with what evidence I have before me, I think it likely you have an interest in ships," she said, looking around at the walls, indicating them as she caught his attention.

"Yes," he said, looking back at the plans, his entire body rigid as it followed the course of his fingertip, moving gradually along a wing of the house, "something like that."

She glanced back at the drawings before her, moving closer to them, trying to make out the contents within each level of the ship, and when recognition dawned, she stepped back.

"It is a shock to the system, is it not," he said under his breath.

"It..." she paused, "I hope it doesn't belong-"

"What, to me?" he looked startled at the thought, "God, no. That is the Brookes ship," he said, "designed for the transport of what has thankfully become an illegal trade... and I assure you," he glanced back at her, his expression grave, "it is for research purposes only."

She stepped back to the wall, peering closer at the diagram. "This has something to do with Robert Campion. Doesn't it. It is why you travelled with him."

He eyed her across the room, "Perhaps it won't be as long of an explanation as I anticipated," he murmured.

She glanced over at him, her eyes drawn back to the wall again in seconds.

"Six hundred souls," he said, at last, "on a single ship. Six hundred laid out like cargo, not an inch between them. There are some, still, who condone such ungodly acts. And there are others who strive to prevent such a thing from ever happening again."

"And you count yourself among them," she said.

"I am no more than a man who wishes to do what is right."

"I've heard of men like you."

"What - Lords who have egos larger than their country houses, you mean," his eyes caught the firelight, his dark hair falling into them as he stepped back over to the table, checking the plans one last time, before standing to full height.