The Bad Luck Bride (The Brides of St. Ives #1)(49)

Northrup immediately began a descent, and Henderson followed behind as the three women and St. Claire looked on in shock. Alice had never seen a dead person other than one carefully arranged in a casket, and seeing the pale, unmoving corpse was horrifying. It appeared to be a man, floating face down and nudging up against the rocks with each incoming wave. He was fully dressed, as far as she could tell.

“I do hope it’s no one we know,” Alice said.

The two men each grabbed an arm and heaved him up onto a large flat rock that sat above the surging sea.

“You might want to look away,” Henderson called up to the group standing on the bluff. Harriet and Eliza turned away, but Alice could not, her gaze fixed on the man. He was missing one shoe, his pale foot visible beneath his trousers, and Alice inexplicably felt tears push at her eyes. It was that missing shoe; she couldn’t help thinking that the poor man would be sad to know it had been swept away into the sea, and even though she knew it was not possible, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking that foot was likely cold.

“I know him,” Henderson said, looking sharply up at Alice. “It’s Sebastian Turner. I saw him just two nights ago in the village.”

“Oh, no. Are you certain?” Alice asked, staring down at the pale and slightly bloated face. It didn’t look like Sebastian at all to her.

Henderson hunkered down and studied the man. “Yes. It doesn’t appear he has been in the water long. He had a scar on the chin from cricket. A lad was swinging the bat and hit him by mistake. I was there when it happened. It’s Sebastian, I’m sure. These are the clothes he was wearing last night. It doesn’t make sense. How would he have gotten here?”

Alice put one hand against her mouth as if she could hold in the pain. Sebastian Turner had been one of Joseph’s friends, part of a group of young men who were often in their house. It seemed impossible that the lifeless body on the rock was he. He’d had the most infectious laugh.

“Let’s get him up, shall we, Mr. Southwell? Then we can fetch the coroner.”

The group was silent as they watched Henderson and Northrup struggle to haul the body to the grassy area where they stood. As they grew near, Harriet and Eliza stepped back, and St. Claire moved with them and shielded them from seeing the body. Alice, though, stood there still, watching as Sebastian’s hand banged against a rock. “Careful,” she said, though she knew it didn’t make any difference to the poor man anymore.

When the two men settled the body on the grass, Henderson straightened, his eyes still on Sebastian’s body. “I don’t understand it. How can another one of us have died? Just two days ago, he was telling me he was getting married. I just…” He swallowed heavily, and Alice took a step toward him, thinking to give him comfort, just as Northrup took up her hand.

“Come on now, Alice, this is nothing for a young lady to see,” he said kindly as he drew her toward the other women huddled together.

“I knew him too,” she said. “He was Joseph’s friend. This is horrid. How could it have happened? He was an excellent swimmer. All of them were. They used to go out and ride the surf like seals and swim and swim. I don’t understand.”

“He may have struck his head and fallen in. I’m sure he didn’t suffer, my dear.”

Alice took a deep and shaking breath. “I do hope not.”

When Alice reached her friends, Harriet drew her in for a welcome embrace. “It’s a terrible thing on such a lovely day. Death is always difficult but to have it be someone we know… Who shall tell his parents?”

“I expect the coroner will,” Alice said softly. She knew Sebastian’s parents vaguely, and wondered if they were already worried about their son.

“Do you think it might have been foul play?” Harriet asked, and immediately snapped her mouth shut as if realizing this was not the time nor place for her love of the macabre. Alice gave her friend a look of exasperation tinged with no small amount of annoyance, and Harriet, in turn, managed to look slightly repentant.

“I’ll stay here with him while you go into the village and fetch the coroner,” Henderson called.

“Good man,” Northrup said, and the oddest expression touched Henderson’s face. Alice gave him a long look, and he gazed at her, his eyes bleak, his jaw set. She nodded a good-bye and he dropped his eyes. Alice got the feeling he was sick and tired of good-byes.



*



Before returning to the village, the much-subdued group gathered their art supplies. St. Claire grabbed up his painting, and for a moment Alice thought he might fling it into the sea. The fun they’d been having, just feet away from where a man lay dead, seemed somehow obscene. Alice suppressed a shiver and tried to get the image of Sebastian bobbing in the water from her mind, but it was impossible. Why had she stood there watching? Now she would never get the sight of him out of her head: his pale skin, the blond hair plastered to his head. Sebastian had been a handsome man, jaunty and lively, the one who would laugh at inappropriate moments, the one of them all who seemed to have the most life in him. And now he was dead.

“I wish we hadn’t come today,” she said softly.

Eliza put a hand on her arm. “If we hadn’t, he’d still be there. Perhaps he’d never have been discovered and his parents would always wonder. That would have been much worse, don’t you think?”