A Lady's Honor

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “I’d like to say no.” He took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. “I haven’t seen any sign of another boat or horses present, but we’ll proceed with caution. Shall we?” He led the way across the common room, his booted feet making less sound than her slippers and dragging gown.

  At the inner door, he released her and raised his hand to his neck. When he brought his fingers in front of him again, light flashed off the blade of a knife.

  Elizabeth raised her own knife and stepped back.

  “One can’t be too careful.” His teeth flashed in the faint light, and then he lifted the door latch with his free hand.

  Light flared from a single candle guttering on a deal table in the center of the kitchen. Cold air swirling around them suggested an open door beyond the stacks of barrels lining the walls and forming a divider against one end of the room. Despite the candle, the room appeared deserted.

  “Where’s the innkeeper?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought he would be in here by a fire.” He glided away from her, moving through the shadows cast by the flickering tallow dip on the table. “I’ll secure this back door and then build a fire.”

  Teeth clenched against their chattering, Elizabeth huddled by the door to the common room, her dagger drawn, her gaze fixed on her brother.

  He prowled around the periphery of the room, looking behind the stores too plentiful for an inn with little business, a clear sign of a man in league with smugglers. He moved with grace and stealth for such a big man. And a man he was now, not the youth of nineteen she’d left in Cornwall. He’d grown brawnier, seemed a bit taller. And he apparently cared little for the fashion of shorter hair; his own fell in loose waves around his ears and collar. Such pretty, dark hair for a man to possess.

  Too pretty. Too dark.

  He glided out of the shadows behind a stack of barrels. The candlelight fell full on his face for the first time, and Elizabeth pressed a hand to her lips to stifle a scream, her heart battering against her ribs like the sea beating at the rocky shore outside. She managed to choke out, “You’re not my brother.”

  CHAPTER 2

  HER ONE BREAK FOR FREEDOM FROM THE CONFINES OF her parents’ strictures and she’d played the fool, trusted without thinking. Simply because the man used her Cornish name, she’d presumed he was Drake. She should have made him stand in the carriage lamps. She should have insisted he speak to her in his normal voice. She should have done anything but let him drag her across Cornwall to this remote inn. Now she must be twenty miles from Bastion Point in the middle of the night. No matter. She must get away before Romsford arrived.

  She whirled toward the common room and grabbed on to the open door’s edge.

  “Don’t go out there, Elys.” He spoke louder this time, his real accent clear, not the broad vowels of the West Country, nor the clipped accents of an educated Englishman. Something soft and slow and a little mesmerizing. “You might not be safe.” Despite herself, she turned to look at him, gazing into his eyes shining with candlelight.

  “Better ‘might not be safe’ out there than ‘most certainly not safe’ in here.” She was shaking again, but not from cold. Looking into his eyes, like the deep blue of the sea on a clear day, sent warmth spreading through her despite her wet cloak and gown.

  He started toward her. “You’re safe in here.”

  “I can’t be. You lied to me.” She released her hold on the door.

  “I didn’t lie. I let you think I was Drake so you’d come with me.”

  “To turn over to your master.” Her throat closed and her eyes burned.

  He reached out a hand with long fingers bronzed from exposure to sunlight—a worker’s hand, not the hand of a gentleman. “If you mean the marquess, he’s not my master. My master—”

  “What have you done with my brother?” She lashed the question at him. “If you’ve harmed him . . .” She lifted her dagger.

  The stranger smiled. “Drake was just fine about three hours ago. He just ran into a bit of trouble with some excise men and needed someone to come fetch you.”

  “Excise men? Oh, Drake.” Instantly deflated, Elizabeth covered her eyes with one hand.

  Her brother was forever taking risks with the revenue service. Grandpapa kept warning him he wouldn’t continue to free Drake from his follies. One day he would go too far and find himself transported to New South Wales.

  Elizabeth groaned. “Why would he risk it tonight of all nights?”

  “He found it necessary to move goods for Conan Lord Penvenan.”

  Elizabeth lowered her hand and looked at the man. With his back to the candle now, his face lay in shadow, all chiseled planes and angles forming a rather rugged beauty like the West Country moors. The harsh features didn’t go well with the gentle voice. But the information that he knew of the nighttime activities of Drake and their nearest neighbor, Conan Penvenan, eased the knot of apprehension in her middle.

  And yet . . . he had tricked her once, and he might know just enough to do so again in order to deliver her to the Marquess of Romsford.

  She opened the door. “Just the same, I think I’ll be better off—”

  A pistol cracked. Elizabeth staggered as though the ball had struck her.

  “The landlord. The double-crossing—”

  The stranger lunged for the rear door, then stopped, his head tilted, his face hard.

  More shots rang out, two in the distance, one closer.

  “I was told I could trust him, but he hid himself from us good.”

  Elizabeth tensed all her muscles to keep herself calm. “He isn’t trustworthy if that is him signaling”—she gulped—“someone.”

  As if she didn’t know it was Romsford on her trail. With the storm blowing itself out to sea, the hoofbeats and rumble of carriage wheels surged through the night. Apparently the marquess had gotten his men along the coast ahead of her this far west on the track north to Bastion Point.

  If this stranger truly was from Drake and not in Romsford’s pay, whatever he claimed, he was helping her.

  He grasped her arm and spun her away from the door. “Hide yourself. I’ll try to divert them.”

  She nodded and ran for the nearest stack of barrels. The instant she crouched on the floor behind the pillar of wooden crates, she wished she hadn’t. The odors of spirits and worse tickled her nostrils. Something scurried across her foot, and a spiderweb trailed over her shoulder like a boa.

  Drake would be ashamed of her cowering like a craven. Souvenez qui vous etes.

  Trelawnys didn’t hide like mice behind the wainscoting. She should race into the night, hide herself amidst the trees and rocks and blackness of the night. Yet she huddled, shaking, sobs clogging her throat.

  If only her family allowed her to do anything for herself, she might know how to make wiser choices.

  A draft to her left suggested another door. She might have been able to reach it before anyone entered the inn if the stranger hadn’t positioned himself between her hiding place and both doors. To keep others away? Or her trapped?

  A scream gurgled in her throat.

  “Shh.” The stranger rested his hand on her shoulder.

  Heavy footfalls rang on the floorboards. “Where is she?” Romsford’s gravelly voice rang through the common room.

  Elizabeth shoved the side of her hand between her teeth.

  The stranger raised his hand from her shoulder. His fingertips barely skimmed across her cheek, but Elizabeth felt a peculiar kind of reassurance, as if he said, “Trust me,” and gave her irrefutable reason to do so.

  Oh, how she wanted to trust . . . someone!

  “Where is she?” Romsford shouted. “Where is my wife?” Elizabeth stiffened, grinding her teeth. His wife, indeed! Over her dead body!

  As the sound of footsteps came toward the room, the stranger squeezed her shoulder. Then he stepped forward and propped his own shoulder against the barrels. He rested one hand on his hip, the thumb looped thr
ough his waistband. “You don’t have a wife, Romsford.”

  “Who the devil are you?” Romsford demanded as he entered the room.

  Tension eased from Elizabeth; Romsford didn’t know him.

  “Who I am isn’t important,” the stranger said. “You being here is.”

  “You’re right, it is,” Romsford said. “I’m looking for my wife. I’ve reason to believe she’s here.”

  “You don’t have a wife,” the stranger repeated. “Miss Trelawny is not your concern.”

  “In her parents’ absence, she most certainly— How do you know about her?”

  The stranger didn’t answer.

  “I asked you a question, man,” Romsford barked.

  The stranger remained silent.

  “Answer me.” Heels pounded on the floor as Romsford advanced toward the stranger—and Elizabeth’s hiding place. She shook hard enough for the chattering of her teeth to be heard on the other side of the Tamar River despite biting through her leather glove.

  The stranger didn’t move.

  “She’s here!” Romsford shouted. “Take her.”

  More feet pounded across the floorboards, and Elizabeth sprang to her feet. Romsford’s men would capture her in a moment, drag her out to his carriage, and carry her to a clergyman more interested in money than obeying the strictures of the marriage laws.

  Unless her parents had signed a special license.

  Please, Lord, no. She managed a prayer at last.

  The stranger stood poised between her and her enemies. Elizabeth didn’t notice him moving so much as a fingertip. Yet the tower of barrels crashed to the floor. Wood splintered. Tea sailed into the air like autumn leaves on a gale. Billows of flour formed choking clouds of dust. Men shouted and began to cough.

  Under cover of the chaos, the stranger grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and they raced out the back door.

  “After them,” Romsford bellowed.

  His men would have to run around the inn. Not much time wasted. Perhaps enough to give Elizabeth and her escort a head start.

  To where?

  Nowhere if she couldn’t run faster. Her wet skirt and petticoat clung to her legs, hobbling her like a pony in a paddock. Throwing caution to the wind, she caught up her skirt in one hand and sprinted after the stranger. Deceitful and untrustworthy as he might be, he was getting her away from Romsford, which was all that mattered for now.

  Rocks bruised her feet. Sharp little stones cut through her delicate slippers. Stifling exclamations of pain, she stretched out her long legs in a way her mother had always abhorred, the way she’d grown up racing along the beaches below Bastion Point.

  But six years of sitting in London drawing rooms and sedate walks in Hyde Park had taken their toll. Across a field, with Romsford’s men too close behind, she began to gasp for air. Her lungs seized up, and she stumbled over a tussock and landed on her knees.

  “I cannot.” She gasped out the two words on panting breaths. Her lungs heaved like a blacksmith’s bellows. “Can-not.”

  “I can.” He stooped beside her, then lifted her into his arms and slung her over his shoulder.

  “I’m too . . . heavy.”

  “You’re not small.” His soft voice held a smile.

  She suppressed the urge to knee him in the middle. “Can we hide?”

  “Not fast enough.” He set out at a lope, not the flat-out run of before, but eating up the ground.

  Not fast enough. At a shout, she raised her head. Through the tangle of her hair, she caught a glimpse of a man racing with a torch, sparks flying out behind him like the trailing vapors of fireworks. He’d soon see them. He must already hear them. The open fields and rocky shoreline offered no shelter. Soon, too soon, she’d find herself caught, this stranger caught and likely punished, and she’d become the fourth wife of a man whose other wives had died violent deaths.

  A sob rose in her chest, crowded her throat. The sob broke free. Another followed. Tears blurred her sight of the men in pursuit.

  The stranger tightened his hold. “Soon. You’ll be all right soon. Hold on tight.”

  She gripped the back of his coat as he slid to a halt, then veered to the right and began to walk in that near soundless way of his. Walked. Walked. Walked, with the marquess’s men too close.

  She did knee him this time, pushed against him.

  And he let her go. She slid to the ground in an ignominious heap and with an ooph their pursuers should have heard.

  Except they were shouting, bellowing, saying words she rarely heard even on the London streets. Their torches dipped, flared, extinguished.

  The stranger crouched beside Elizabeth. “There’s a ditch there. They’ll have a time getting themselves out.”

  “You led them— Why? Why are you helping me like this? Surely you never expected—”

  “Later.” He helped her to her feet. “Quietly.”

  They moved slowly this time, creeping along the ha-ha ditch that separated two fields, then into a copse of trees stunted from the constant wind off the sea. A thousand questions ran through Elizabeth’s head, but she clamped her lips against any of them bursting forth. From the sound of things, Romsford’s men were sorting themselves out. They were still too close.

  In the same county was too close for her.

  The inn was certainly too close for her, but they left the trees a mere dozen yards from the hostelry’s rear door, where Romsford stood near the opening, a torch in his hand.

  “You brought us back! What—”

  The stranger laid a finger across her lips. “Stubble it for now. We need horses. We’ll never get to the boat and cast off before they catch us, if they don’t already have someone on the dock to stop us.”

  “I should think Romsford’s men will be watching the stable as well.”

  “But their own horses are near the road with only one guard.” As easily as a man would stroll into a chophouse for a late supper, he disappeared around the stable and into the courtyard in front of the inn, where more than half a dozen horses stood, four of them hitched to the coach. Equines whinnied. A man shouted, and then hoofbeats slammed against the muddy ground. A moment later, he cantered up to her hiding place in the ha-ha. “Need help mounting?”

  She needed help climbing from the ha-ha.

  He dropped down beside her and lifted her out, again as though she weighed no more than a peck of apples. “Hurry. We only have a moment’s advantage.”

  She slipped her foot into the stirrup, and he tossed her onto the saddle fast and hard enough that only a lifetime of experience kept her from flying off the other side. She grasped the reins and kneed the mount to go. A glance behind told her the stranger followed. Beyond him, across the field, Romsford’s men seemed to be in confusion as to where to look next. Their torches bobbed along the tree line, the ditches between fields, and the shore. None of them looked toward the road.

  Elizabeth and the stranger had chosen the most visible route of escape, hiding in plain sight. Drake had done that more than once when eluding the excise men.

  Drake. She grimaced. Wherever he was, hopefully he had managed to do so once again. She didn’t want him jailed, especially not before she had a chance to give him a piece of her mind. She would only be able to scold her brother if she escaped.

  Someone near the inn called out, “They’re escaping.”

  “Yes, sir, we are,” her companion said. “Let’s ride.”

  Elizabeth leaned forward to coax more speed from her mount. She wasn’t on a leading rope this time. She could head up the track over the spine to the north coast, possibly lose her companion. If she headed for Penmara, the estate next to Bastion Point, she could get Conan and his sister to help her reach her grandparents. She began peering through the darkness in search of the track.

  “Elizabeth, Romsford will likely have sent men in that direction.” The stranger spoke as though he knew exactly what she intended as he spurred up beside her and leaned over to take her reins. “We’re safer
staying on this road.”

  “We don’t have that much of a lead on them. We have two of their horses, but they have ours.”

  “We should have enough of a lead. Their horses are as tired as ours, and Romsford will have to send one or two men north. It should delay them long enough to let us reach our contingency plan.”

  “What is that?” Clutching her horse’s mane, Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder.

  Lights bobbed directly behind, disappeared around a curve in the road, then appeared again. They were too close for comfort, but not gaining . . . she hoped.

  “Return to Falmouth.”

  “Return—” She glanced around, weighing the potential injury she would suffer if she simply leaped from her horse to escape over the hills.

  Not a good notion. The countryside was too open. Even if she didn’t sprain or break an ankle, she couldn’t run faster than these men. Even if she did, the land farther north was riddled with mines, and a body could fall into one in the dark.

  She made herself breathe calmly for several moments. “If I thought Falmouth was safe, I would have stayed there in the first place. But when we encountered Romsford’s men at the inn and Drake wasn’t there yet, I knew we had to keep going. That still seems like the best course—keep going and hide if we can’t make it to Bastion Point tonight.”

  “Not without fresh horses.” And nearly impossible to acquire at all that time of night, impossible with Romsford and his men sure to swarm over every hostelry in Falmouth the minute they arrived.

  “A boat?” Elizabeth suggested. “The storm’s gone.”

  Her companion—her benevolent captor—glanced behind them this time. “He’s going to look on the wharves as well.”

  “Why me?” Elizabeth closed her eyes, fighting the pain in her belly that assaulted her every time she asked herself this question. “I’m not that good a catch for him to go to all this trouble.”

  “An excellent question.”

  Elizabeth winced at the insult, but kept her voice steady. “So if inns are unacceptable and make me too easy to find, and the harbor is the same, but we cannot go north because of the horses, what are we doing back in Falmouth?”