O'Roarke's Destiny (Cornish Rogues Book 1)

by Shehanne Moore

  of this. What there would be was Lyon right here in Doom Bar Hall. God Almighty though, when there was no getting away from this, what exactly was she prolonging? Her misery? If she’d kept her mind on Great Aunt Modest’s plates perhaps? But she hadn’t exactly won any prizes for doing that. How could she? Ennis hadn't kissed her all night long like that. So even now, what flooded thoughtwise, what flooded, more than thoughtwise, dried her throat. But ultimately she couldn’t ever go to a place where she couldn’t breathe because she didn’t have someone in her life. Once was enough.

  She looked round. Somehow she’d sat up, hadn't she? There wasn’t much point in sitting here lamenting the general state of her life because that state was hardly going away any time soon.

  She edged the sheet loose and wrapped it round herself. Then she eased off the bed. Even if wild horses careered through the door and dragged her away, she couldn’t afford not to listen at it. It might be she heard nothing. She tiptoed forward, taking care to avoid a creaking board. Hesitation was for the faint hearted, after all. Gil was speaking. And not, what some might say, was very nicely at that.

  “Sir, you can lie to yourself about her, the snake she is—”

  “Who says I’m lying?”

  Obviously. It was something she knew already. The news would have been if he wasn't. And she'd seriously been worried last night about caring for him?

  “All right, but even if you weren’t going to take any of that consignment for yourself the other night and you’re not going to warn Berryman, or any of the—”

  “I’ve told you, all that is behind--”

  “Because … Sir, all right, why do you think I’m saying this? I’m with you on this. You know that. I understand Berryman's not a bad man. He's not a wrecker And he keeps a squad of grandchildren. A daughter who's a cripple too. People who all depend on him."

  What the blazes was going on here? Berryman? Why the hell would Divers O’Roarke warn Berryman? Unless he was lying to Gil about what he did, or not really working for Lyon at all?

  She pressed closer. What, with the thickness of the door and the fact they stood on the other side of it, it was difficult to make out what was being said but she did her best.

  “And that was why you went with sorry tales to Lyon, was it?”

  “I told you why I did that. See sense when he’s on to you. To us. Why the hell else would he damn well nearly blast your head off? He knows. He just doesn’t have proof. You need, you must, give him what he wants. That’s this gang, pure and simple. The sooner, the better.”

  “You think that’s not exactly what I’m doing? That I don’t have reason to now?”

  “Come on, man. The other leg rings when you pull it.”

  “Because I’m with her? You somehow think I’m going to help Berryman?” Divers O’Roarke’s tone notched down to icy waters but she didn’t mistake the words.

  “Sir, I’ve lined, you’ve lined your pockets, on occasion. But with a snake, like her on the lo—"

  “Think very carefully what you’re saying here.”

  Some might say that people who listened at doors never heard any good of themselves. But really, since it was no more than what was being said in Penvellyn, did it matter? Especially when she was also hearing all this too. Lined his pockets? Well, knock her down with one of Lizzie's feather dusters. How could he be doing that?

  “All right, so lined maybe isn’t the right word?”

  But then again, how could he not? Was that why he was after Raven’s Passage? Knocking bloody great holes in the wall to find it too?

  "And I know we, neither of us, meant it or that money would have been spent," Gil went on.

  "I'm glad you think so."

  She was too. It meant there might be something left to give Lyon.

  “Don’t think we both don’t know how a man can get drawn into this world. Get involved with these people. Look the other way. Find it hard to stay clean. Stay away from the thrill of doing something illegal as they do, like … like handing back a consignment that’s short, because it’s more trouble to explain why it’s short and man, the bag of gold is in your hand and you’re being asked to get in deeper. But this is not the occasion. Christ, why can’t you just see that with a snake like her on the loose?”

  Drawn into this world? Well, she never. Destiny pressed harder against the door, so she drank its essence through her pores and the secret words being whispered on the other side. She’d hear better if they’d speak up but she couldn’t very well ask them to.

  “Well, maybe that’s so. I don’t deny it. The fact is I’m with her precisely because this is not the occasion. And only a blind man wouldn’t see she’s in league with Lyon. All for the sake of a house. Because that’s Destiny Rhodes, for you. So, you might even call it insurance. No more, no less, when she’s exactly what you say. So she goes to Lyon as I know she’s done—"

  “So this is what? Insurance you keep your nose clean? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Give me the tray.”

  My God, but obviously he hadn't answered so maybe she wasn't? Maybe he was with her because he was drawn to her?

  “Christ, it is, isn’t it?”

  “I said—"

  “And that curse … that curse makes you safe. So you don’t even have that to fear.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing. The sacrifice I'm making here. The tray. Thank you.”

  The handle turned. Maybe Destiny had crept across the floor, now she streaked faster than if she was a comet entering the local best person dash competition by mistake, crash landed in the bed, rearranged herself on the pillows, eyes shut, hand strategically placed beside her left cheek, breath squeezing through the peepholes in her throat, her lungs, her eyelids. After what she’d just heard, was it any wonder? No wonder that her heart hammered with such force, he must hear it too.

  The insurance wasn’t just that Lyon was on to him. It was what Lyon was on to him about and what he was doing about that.

  Soft footsteps padded towards her. The rattle of crockery said the tray had been placed on the bedside table. She didn’t move. She daren’t although her throat was scalded dry, her breath scaling such dizzy heights--largely over her own folly--she might be flying. Did he look at her? If he did she must pray he found her attractive, although paradoxically, if he did, given how alive he made her feel, given it was easier walking a mile barefoot on broken glass, was that wise? Everything she cared about, remember?

  And she was starting to care. By the tiniest degrees and inches. And she couldn't. Not that it was a tit for tat competition or anything but he'd agreed she was a snake.

  “You might as well stop pretending you never heard that.”

  Christ, he wouldn't have driven by mistake over that cliff like Ennis, would he? Because he’d never have been in the sodding coach.

  "That's rich." She flicked an eye open. "With me deaf as a post ears."

  But maybe he would have been in the coach? Spilt what he just had to Gil, hadn’t he, knowing she was in here? As for where this information left her ...?

  He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Well then, would you like some tea before you go to see Lyon? It’s there if you do.”

  What she’d like, what she’d really, really like, settling her gaze on his plain grey greatcoat gracing his shoulders like an embrace, the triangle of golden skin that peeped out? One thing and one thing only. Never to have heard what she damn well had. But she had heard it. She hadn't denied it either.

  So now? There was only one thing she could do here when she was meeting Lyon later this morning and that wasn't just to wipe every trace and memory of last night from her mind either. She sat up.

  “Not if you made it. I mean I wouldn’t want to drop dead before I got there because you put something in it.” She tugged the sheet free and rose from the bed. “Especially as you probably want me to. Go to Lyon, that is, although, let's face it, I’m sure you’d be happy if I did the other thing too.”


  Then, despite the fact it was technically hers, she walked from the room.

  ***

  Divers O’Roarke stared at the floor, then he flicked his gaze over the ceiling, before settling it on the tea pot, the backs of his eye-lids and the floor.

  He wasn’t dying to have her--that was the last thing he’d do--just as she hadn't gone to Lyon the other day to beg him to spare his life. On that he staked that same life.

  So why think otherwise because last night, yet again she'd wanted him?

  He shook his head largely to clear it. She was his insurance here. No more. No less.

  All he needed to do was see this and sit quiet. And when he could soon discredit her with Lyon, feed her falsehoods, do whatever it took to finish this job, he'd be damned to thinking she was anything other than what Gil said. A poisonous snake at that.

  So why do it?

  ***

  All right, so she’d left the room in such a hurry, she’d have won the golden ribbon in the fastest woman in Cornwall competition. Left it is such a hurry she was standing here in a leaky old coat, muffler, boots, hat, skirt and would also win the wooden spoon for first prize in the whatever she could cobble together and go out in at short notice competition. In a torrential downpour too, having no time to think either. But now she had. Did people think she was a helpless cabbage, or something? Hadn’t she thought about keeping that appointment with Lyon given the last thing she needed was him turning up at Doom Bar Hall and thinking she was fair game for winning the squeezed throat competition?

  "Miss Rhodes? You have what is required?" Lyon’s middle name was obviously desperate because he rounded on her before she reached the path. But she did. She did have what was required. “As opposed to hauling me all this way for nothing, like yesterday?”

  She also had a runny nose, advanced shortage of breath as she wheezed through the bracken and feet wet enough to put in her bath and save the need for any water.

  Why hadn’t she just played along that night Divers O’Roarke offered her to run things for him? Showed off her obvious talent in design by polishing up a few of Aunt Elowen’s old horse brasses and hanging them in the powder room? She and him might be sharing a tentative friendship by now, fired by their mutual love and adoration of design.

  All right, he wasn’t, technically speaking, going to win any prizes in the actual house and garden design stakes, what with him being a smuggler and that. But just think of how conflicted he’d have been feeling by now, had she only kept her cards tight against her chest instead of letting her blabby big mouth rule the roost.

  Think of how surprised he’d have been, coming in to find her maybe rearranging the dining room, how a golden glance could have been exchanged as he acknowledged her great taste in such matters and thought she wasn't so bad really. Just the kind of apple you'd want in your barrel.

  “And don’t think to cross me either.” Lyon eyed the dwindling horizon as she reached the path, her coat skirt soaking to her knees to add to her misery. “Do you think I can't smell him on you?"

  And so friendship led to love, it led to Doom Bar Hall. Instead of this.

  Look on the bright side though. It wouldn’t be news to this sodding stoat when Divers O’Roarke told him. Maybe he'd even leave her throat alone?

  “Well, I had some trouble getting here this morning. But yes, yes I do,” she gasped.

  “Well? Are you going to tell me what it is? Or are we going to stand here all afternoon too?"

  "Us?" She exhaled sharply. trying to catch her breath. She probably even smiled a little even if she’d be fair game for winning the squeezed throat competition, not as the person having their throat squeezed either. The sodding cheek of the sodding man. But she was too far in to take issue with it.

  This was about the sacrifice the sneaky O'Roarke sod was making here, in order to stay on the straight and narrow. Last night? The tangle of ecstasy, what they had been to each other, the images that crashed like waves in her brain, the places he had taken her to, they didn't any of them, mean a bloody thing. She’d given Divers O’Roarke his chance. He hadn’t taken it. At least she understood one thing now. Why.

  So, these other stupid, stupid, thoughts, the ones that might otherwise have been well-nigh panning her head in? About how she could have played this differently--when she and Orwell and Chancery had done terrible things to him as children? About how he’d this stash, he could lift and escape this whole situation with either? Why waste her energy even suggesting it, just because, when he kissed her, nothing else had mattered?

  No. The sod would rather use her as his insurance. Have her trailing back and forward like this in sodding weather Noah would have been right at home in. Water dripping down her back, her front, her nose, her hair.

  So what she was going to do here was swallow the cold, choking lump of marble in her throat, drag another breath to the furthest corners of her lungs, fasten her gaze on the smack bobbing out in the bay. Christmas was coming. What other way was she going to get her garlands? Not even that stitch in her side would stop her.

  Lyon not squeezing her throat and listening intently to all she had to say would be its own reward for now.

  "Well, as I say, I just had some trouble, so what I could do with getting, is back, before he sees I've gone. But yes ... he told me he is the Cleanser,” she panted.

  Lyon's gaze dug holes in her face. “And you didn’t think to say? Sooner that is?”

  “Well, how could I, when I didn’t know? Didn’t he tell me he was a smuggler, after all? Then obviously, that he was an undercover exciseman? What’s one more progression?”

  “Hopefully the one where you provide actual proof." She begged his pardon but perhaps him listening intently to all she had to say was yet to come? "But perhaps you are going to tell me words are cheap and saying is never proof and that was why you were sleeping with him?"

  “Not exactly." What kind of thing was that to say? Certainly it was not the kind of thing to suggest that something, that some might say deserved a medal for government service, was noble and self-sacrificing. "But when you’re taking the words out me mouth, why should I?”

  His ice-cold breath hit her face. “If I am taking the words out of your mouth, it is because I told you yesterday that whether or not he is the Cleanser, is in many ways irrelevant. I also told you other things.”

  “What? When you nearly broke my throat?"

  “Do not exaggerate.”

  “I’m not. I’m merely saying—"

  “Not good enough Miss Rhodes,” he snarled to match his name. Stomped up and down a bit too. “This is not what I came here to hear.”

  "Well, what did you come here for then?"

  Well really? Plainly not listening intently to all she had to say, about the gold, about what Divers O’Roarke had hidden, or he’d shut the proverbial up and stop bumping his gums to no good end. But maybe he just liked the sound of his own voice? Or he wasn't the only one gum-bumping around here?

  “That remains to be seen," he muttered. "But let me tell you this one thing.”

  “What?”

  He jammed his tricorn back on his head. Here it was finally. The reward she sought for now.

  “I can see why he likes you.”

  "Who?"

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know. If there is one thing I cannot abide, next to a traitor, it is a pretender. Who do you think?”

  What? Divers O’Roarke? It was why he’d made her tea this morning too, no doubt. With fairy bells on. Such big, fancy ones she smothered the laughter that rose in her throat. For that matter, what she'd overheard could be fanciful as her flying to the Moon and back. Something he hoped she'd overhear and come running here, so she looked no end of stupid while he was somewhere else all together. He'd said as much about tittle-tattle. So maybe it was as well she wasn’t getting her own reward?

  But what if he hadn't? What if he'd made that tea and then Gil Wryson got in the way? Never liked looking a fool, had Divers O'Roarke. A
nd who could blame him, the amount of times she, Chancery and Orwell had made him look just that. Her scalp prickled. The sharp tang of the sea caught her throat. Last night? Last night had been very different. An endless pleasure and treasure. And here she was betraying him because what else was there for her to do?

  Sometimes in life you had to get in the leaky boat, to see if you wanted to sink, or swim.

  And she had.

  Look at it that way. Gone to the wire she had.

  Rising from ashes even if her eyes prickled was her specialty after all.

  As she set off back along the bleak cliff path, she knew one thing. It was also Sir Tredwynne’s.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  “I say Destiny, old girl, would you mind telling me exactly what it is you are you up to?”

  “Me?” Destiny stopped her rummage in the broom cupboard beneath the staircase, the dark, cobwebby one that crawled into an emptier shell than her and smelled like an ancient cask. But then that might have been because Orwell was in the vicinity. “Apart from wishing you would stop calling me old and girl? Something that would not have been necessary if you hadn’t lost the house, that’s what I’m doing."

  She tossed a moldering shoe aside. Unless Gil Wryson had buried Sir Tredwynne in the garden, dumped him in the sea, the cupboard seemed the most likely, if not the only place, he could have been left to rot. Although some might say the thought of such an action would once have fried her veins, what was that to her now, so long as she found him? She could not do this without him. And frankly, she had to now. She’d stood in the leaky tub and there was no other way.

  “So? What are you looking for exactly?” Orwell’s voice dripped a honeyed helpfulness she didn’t need, as if finally, he really didn’t like seeing her on her hands and knees in the dust like this. At least it didn’t ooze booze. Sober? When the clock on the hall table had just chimed three. Well, she never. He never either.

  “Sir Tred … Oh never mind. Got him.”

  A metal leg, then a gauntlet then, well, then what she was looking for. She snatched it up, held it to her breast.