She wasn’t surprised to find Donovan leaning just outside against the whitewashed wall. Hoping desperately that he hadn’t overheard her speaking with the Robbertses, she beckoned for him to enter just as a terrible moan split the air, followed in quick succession by another. Donovan at once stopped in his tracks and looked at her doubtfully, glancing just as doubtfully inside the cottage as a third moan, this one even more pain-wracked than the last two, came spilling forth from the inner room.
“It’s all right, Donovan, you can come in,” she encouraged him, astonished that his swarthy face had seemed to pale. “Peggy and Morton were honored to hear you’d accompanied me—”
“No, no, I think I’ll wait out here,” he said, backing away as another moan shattered the stillness. “Go on, Corie. Do what you must.”
“But it’s going to be a long night, Donovan. Peggy’s pains are just getting started.” Corisande gestured to an uncomfortable-looking stool by the hearth. “You could sit there, or, well, are you sure you wouldn’t rather come back for me in the morning? I fear it’s bound to get worse, much worse. Peggy’s always been a screamer, poor thing—”
“Oh God, enough.”
He’d waved her to silence, but that didn’t quiet the moan crescendoing into a keening wail that seemed to burst from the back room, punctuated now by the cries of two young children awakened in the loft. Corisande had no sooner glanced over her shoulder as Morton rushed up the narrow wooden ladder to comfort them than she looked back to find Donovan had disappeared.
“Donovan?”
She raced outside, trying not to show how relieved she felt that he was already mounting Samson, clearly anxious to be gone.
“I’ll be back for you in the morning, Corie.”
She nodded, struck again by how unsettled he looked when another of Peggy’s convincing moans carried out into the night.
Men. It was a good thing they weren’t the ones made to bear children. They’d never withstand it.
“Don’t dare cross the heath without me. Do you understand? Wait until I can come for you. And if you must step outside for any reason, make sure Morton Robberts is with you.”
She nodded again, rushing forward when Donovan held out the lantern.
“Here. You might need the extra light.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure we will. Birthing can sometimes be quite a mess.”
He swallowed hard at that comment and was gone, disappearing into the dark as Corisande rushed back inside the tiny cottage.
She wasn’t there long. She waited five minutes, no more, encouraging Peggy to give a last few groans and moans for good measure.
Then Corisande, too, was galloping out into the black night, doing her best to force back her fear that someone who meant her grave harm might yet be lurking as she turned her thoughts to Oliver Trelawny and the Fair Betty.
“Ais now, Corie, you’ve lectured me enough for one night. I know ‘ee were worried, but I’m safe an’ sound, ‘ee can plainly see, an’ I’ve the finest cargo of French brandy moving ashore that Cornwall has ever known! You’ll soon see, too, that it was well worth it for me to wait those few days in Roscoff until I had the stuff aboard when the gold guineas start filling our pockets!”
“And the coffers for the poor, Captain Trelawny,” Corisande reminded him with mock sternness, taking care to keep her voice down so it wouldn’t carry across the deep cove to shore, although Oliver didn’t seem concerned at all that he wasn’t whispering. It was because the night was so dark, she knew, doubting herself that any king’s excisemen would be straying about on such a bleak evening as Oliver threw a beefy arm around her shoulder.
“Ha! Those coffers will be filled to such overflowing ‘ee won’t know what to do with it all!” Laughing heartily, Oliver steered her to the cutter’s starboard railing where his crew was hoisting eight-gallon kegs over the side into waiting rowboats. “Go on with ‘ee now an’ mind the landing, Corie, me brave girl! I want to be finished here in no more than an hour’s time so I can sail home to my Rebecca.”
Corisande hesitated at the rope ladder. She wondered if she should mention to Oliver that someone had mimicked their signal to lure her into danger earlier that night, but he seemed so eager to be on his way to Porthleven harbor that she decided to wait. Instead she hauled her cloak and skirt between her legs and clambered expertly over the side and down the ladder, easing herself into a rowboat that she could see from the pyramid of kegs was quite full.
“No more, no more, we don’t want to capsize,” she warned the two dark-clad men who settled down at once to their oars. She signaled, and they pushed away from the sixteen-gun cutter, their small craft quickly replaced by others waiting to be loaded and then rowed to shore.
As the boat lumbered through the calm waves, Corisande peered at the black forbidding cliffs where she knew tinners armed with stout cudgels and muskets stood watch to give warning if strangers should approach by land or sea. In fact, everyone had been assembled and waiting at their places when she’d arrived at the secluded cove and saw that the Fair Betty had, indeed, made it back safely from Brittany.
That welcome sight had convinced her at once that the first lantern signal at ten o’clock had come from their own loyal men. But the second? Somehow her attacker had known she would leave the house upon seeing the signal, which meant, too, that he must know of her involvement in fair trading. So either there was an informer among them, God help any fool who betrayed their sacred trust, or somehow she and Oliver had been overheard at the inn…
Corisande’s dark thoughts scattered as the rowboat came to a scraping halt upon the beach. She jumped out over the prow to keep her shoes well out of the water, having no wish to explain any suspicious salt stains to Donovan. Immediately a host of waiting hands unloaded the rowboat while Corisande hurried farther up the beach to where a line of thirty pack ponies waited patiently, two kegs apiece already strapped to their backs.
“Are you ready to go, John?” she whispered to the tall, lanky farmer standing near the lead pony.
She got a nod, no more, the man as reticent as a clam, which was a virtue in a smuggler.
“Head to Helston, then. Stanley Hawkins is waiting at the Golden Lion to take every last keg off your hands. We want top price for this load, though. Don’t accept anything less, or we’ll hear of it from Captain Trelawny. Godspeed.”
And so it went, Corisande rushing about the beach as more heavily laden rowboats were hauled onto land, the precious kegs first counted and then either strapped onto ponies or carried up and out of the cove along winding stone-strewn paths to where carts and wagons waited to convey the contraband throughout the Cornish countryside. At least half of tonight’s shipment would be sold outright to innkeepers like Stanley Hawkins or local gentry friendly to the trade, while the rest of the kegs would be hidden in caves, down deep wells, or stowed away in cellars and then dispatched later as time and opportunity allowed.
“Godspeed, Tobias. Take care with that load, now. Captain Trelawny says it’s the finest brandy he’s ever brought home from Roscoff. Top price, don’t forget.”
Then to another, “We’ll be expecting to see you back from Falmouth by Thursday, Michael. Godspeed.”
And still another: “Godspeed, Thomas. First, Squire Bellamy in Marazion, then on to Penzance and the White Horse Inn with the rest. Godspeed!”
Corisande was nearly exhausted by the time the last of the kegs had faded with their silent bearers into the night, her legs cramped from running back and forth across the sand and up and down the narrow cliff paths so many times that she’d lost count. But she hadn’t lost count of the kegs, oh, no.
There were six hundred forty-two, and she never lost track of the thirty different directions in which she’d sent them and how many kegs with whom. Add to that two hundred pounds of Dutch East Indies tea and six bales of Brussels lace, and her head felt crammed with places, names, and numbers.
Usually now she would make her way to the church and then ne
atly record everything in a ledger she kept under one of the altar flagstones, partly so she wouldn’t forget and partly to relieve her mind and enable her to sleep. Oliver had long since turned the Fair Betty for Porthleven, the cutter never lingering after the hold had been emptied, but heading back to the safety of the harbor. In fact, he’d left a few hours ago; it always took three times longer to dispatch goods than to unload the ship.
Tonight Corisande had no wish to head for Porthleven even though she could have asked some of the tinners just now drifting home from their lookouts to accompany her. Yet then they’d all have to walk—most of the tinners had come on foot to the cove—and the sky was already beginning to lighten to the east. By the time she finished with the account book it would be light, and she couldn’t risk Donovan arriving at the Robbertses’ to find her gone.
She would just have to risk riding back to the cottage alone, although the prospect was daunting as Corisande untethered Pete from a stunted tree and mounted. She took a cautious look around her, but it was still so dark she doubted she would see any hint of danger until it was too late. That thought made her kick Pete at once into a gallop, her thighs so sore that it was difficult to grip his sides. Yet she urged him to run even faster. Surely if she rode hard enough, no one would dare try to stand in her way to stop her—
“Oh, Lord.”
Corisande’s hands froze at the reins as she heard a second loud snort behind her, the sound only another horse would make. She’d been the only one with a horse left at the cove, all the pack ponies and carts and wagons long gone. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord.
She didn’t glance behind her. She didn’t breathe. Instead she kicked Pete into a full run and rode as hard and as fast as she ever had in her life, the gelding lunging powerfully beneath her.
Within moments, she’d made it to the Robbertses’ tiny cottage, thinking it the most beautiful place imaginable as she slid from Pete’s back and raced to the door. It was only then that she dared to glance behind her, her heart stopping at the distant dark shape on horseback cutting to the southwest and heading back as if to Porthleven.
God help her, why was she being followed? Who could wish her harm? If not Jack Pascoe as Donovan had said—and that snake of a mine captain made the most bloody sense of all!—then who?
Shaking with fear, Corisande ducked inside the cottage; she gasped to find the two small rooms lit brightly, a cheery fire crackling in the hearth, and candles glowing at windows shuttered against the night. As if he’d been waiting for her, Morton Robberts, with a shy grin on his face, sat at the table.
“The babe’s come, Corie.”
“The babe?” Incredulous, Corisande glanced from him to the adjoining bedroom where Peggy lay cradling a tiny swaddled bundle in the crook of her arm. “Oh, Morton, the babe?”
“Ais, indeed, our first little girl. I think my Peggy wants to name her Corie Olivia, too, after all the excitement ‘ee going to help Oliver Trelawny brought to our house. What do you think?”
Corisande was speechless, both elated and chagrined. She threw off her cloak and ran into the bedroom, her terrifying ride all but forgotten as she dropped to her knees beside the bed. “Ah, Peggy, is she all right? She’s come too soon, hasn’t she? Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry—”
“Hush now, Corie, everything’s fine. She’s only a few days early, and my Morton knew just what to do, no trouble at all, thanks to him watchen ‘ee the last time with our Jimmie. Isn’t that right, Morton?”
Corisande glanced over her shoulder, the young tinner’s face split from ear to ear in a proud grin that nonetheless held a good bit of amazement at himself too.
“Ais, so I did, so I did. An’ now you’ve something to show Lord Donovan when he comes to take you home, eh, Corie?”
Corisande could but shake her head, grinning from ear to ear, too, as Peggy invited her to sit upon the bed so she could welcome the newest Robberts.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Corisande fluttered open her eyes as the thin wail of a babe started her awake.
For a confused moment, she stared at the rough hand-hewn timbers some four feet above her head, unsure of her whereabouts until another wail carried to her from below, the fretful cry of a newborn.
At once the previous night’s events came flooding back to her, but she didn’t move. She was too sore. Instead she turned her head and smiled softly at the two young boys still sound asleep in the crude crib next to her mattress, Jimmie Robberts, all of one, his tiny thumb resting near his puckered mouth, and his three-year-old brother, Morton, who shared his father’s name, freckles, and bright russet hair.
Such beautiful children, and now they had a new little sister too. Corie Olivia. Corisande still couldn’t believe it. She never would have forgiven herself if anything terrible had happened, but fortunately all was well.
Except that her body felt stiff as a board, she groaned to herself, especially her legs. She wondered how she was ever going to get down out of the loft. She barely remembered climbing up here, she’d been so exhausted, and that couldn’t have been more than a few hours ago. She’d fallen asleep almost at the moment her head had touched the straw-filled mattress, slumbering as soundly as if she’d been lying on the softest goose down. She could have slept longer too. Ah, well. Maybe if she closed her eyes…
“Ais, ‘tes a fine, fine thing ‘ee did for us, milord. I’ve been meaning to say something to you—I’ve seen ‘ee nearly every day at the mine but I s’pose this is as good a time as any. I was one of the tinners ‘ee spoke to that first morning ‘ee came to Arundale’s Kitchen with Mr. Gilbert. It was just after dawn, an’ I’d hiked in t’ work my core. Might you remember me?”
“Yes, I do. It was very brave of you to come forward when most of the other men held back. Very brave.”
Corisande stiffened, her eyes flaring wide.
Donovan was here already? Then again, she had no idea what time it was—it could be almost noon for all she knew. And what was Morton saying to him about Arundale’s Kitchen? She raised herself on her elbows to peep into the room below but she saw no one, realizing that the voices were carrying to her from a small chink in the wall just above her head.
“It wasn’t bravery, milord, but fear for my dear Peggy and my children that made me speak out. We hardly had bread on the table as it was, an’ then for Cap’en Pascoe to cut our wages, I didn’t know what to do. I gave my food to Peggy for the babe—she was so sickly there for a time, I thought I might lose them both. ‘Course Corie—forgive me, milord, Lady Donovan—tried to ease our way, bringing what she could to help us, God bless her, though it wasn’t just us suffering but all the tinners and their families. Until ‘ee came that morning, milord. I could tell just from talking with ‘ee that things were going to get better.”
“You’ve my wife to thank for that, Morton.”
“Ais, milord, I know, but I was watching ‘ee with Cap’en Pascoe. I saw ‘ee talking to him alone before I went down the shaft an’ I saw his face when he stormed away. He said nothing to any of us, but we knew, milord, we knew something grand had happened. He disappeared with no word at all, an’ we had no mine cap’en until Mr. Gilbert came back later and hired Jonathan Knill to the job. An’ then when we heard our wages were doubled an’ grain coming on Monday—”
“I said you’ve Lady Donovan to thank, man.”
“Ais, maybe so, but I’ve you to thank, too, milord. You’re a good, honorable man, Lord Donovan, I’ll tell it to anyone who asks me, I will! An’ when we heard ‘ee were marrying our Corie Easton, all of us tinners couldn’t have been more pleased that she’d found a man with compassion and charity enough to match her.”
Compassion and charity? Incredulous, Corisande was even more astonished as Morton’s voice suddenly became choked with tears.
“I don’t know how to thank ‘ee, milord. I’ve a sweet new babe inside the house, a little girl, an’ my Peggy—God help me, for a time I feared she wouldn’t have the strength to push the child from he
r body or live herself to see that day…
Corisande wiped at her eyes as Morton grew silent, knowing well the terrible anguish he must have suffered. She’d seen it throughout the entire parish, seen it on so many faces, seen the desperation in so many eyes, heard it in so many voices—until Lord Donovan Trent had come to Cornwall, yes, that couldn’t be denied. That is, until she’d made her devil’s agreement with him; it was pitiful to hear how poor Morton had been fooled. If the tinner only knew…
“Let’s go see your new daughter, man, not stand out here.” Donovan’s deep voice carried into the loft, filled with emotion Corisande had never heard before. Except, wait…she had heard it before—in the stable after they had left the poorhouse that Sunday and Donovan had called her a shrew. She’d been railing at him about holding little Mary—
Corisande gasped as the cottage door swung open. She fell back onto the mattress, pulling the woolen blanket up over her nose to lie there still as a stone. A soft chortle made her look at the crib, little Morton Robberts plopping onto his back, too, and pulling his blanket over his head while Jimmie stared at her with a bemused smile and sucked his thumb. Noisily.
Oh, Lord.
She knew she was lost when young Morton began to laugh, sweet, husky laughter that made her smile in spite of herself. The little boy took great delight in raising himself up only to fall back again, tugging the blanket over his head as he played his newfound game. Corisande couldn’t help it. She sat up and then dropped back to the mattress, disappearing underneath the blanket for only an instant before she yanked the cover from her head and blurted out, “Boo!”
Little Morton shrieked, Jimmie giggled, and she laughed, too, leaving the mattress on all fours, albeit stiffly, to crawl to the crib. She couldn’t stand up anyway—the thatched roof was too low—so she went right up to the wooden rungs, stalking the boys like a tiger while Jimmie’s blue eyes grew round. Morton scrambled, squealing, to the far side of the crib.
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