But perhaps more importantly for Fan, the gentlemen’s conversation had seemed completely preoccupied with the Frenchman Buonaparte, with not a single word to squander for local smuggling. Now that the weariest of George’s guests were beginning to make their farewells, Fan was daring to hope her earlier worries had been unfounded.
“Remind me of the day again, Fan,” teased George, leaning closer so that no one else could overhear. “Tell me I haven’t truly been standing in this room for the last month or so, and that it’s only some demon trick that makes it seem so.”
“Hush,” she whispered back. “Though perhaps by now we may have slipped from one day into two. It must be close to midnight, isn’t it?”
He slipped his heavy silver watch from his waistcoat pocket just far enough to check the time. “Five minutes to midnight it is.” He cleared his throat, and watched the dancers for a moment. “When this tune is done, Fan, I would like a word with you.”
She glanced at him sideways, curious. “You are having words with me now.”
“More words, then. Different ones.” He cleared his throat again, oddly ill at ease for the first time that evening. “Blast it, Fan, don’t make this—now what the devil is that ruckus?”
Like everyone else in the ballroom, they turned towards the stairs and the front door, where the clamor of excited voices threatened to drown out the musicians. Finally Sir Simon Blackerby pushed his way through the crowd, half-dragging a young servant with him to the edge of the dance floor.
Uneasily Fan felt for George’s hand for comfort. She had a bad feeling about anything involving Sir Simon, and his crowing, red-faced exhilaration sent ripples of dread through her.
Not tonight, not like this, not now. Please, please, please, don’t spoil the first love and happiness I’ve ever known….
“Where’s Sir Henry?” Sir Simon shouted as the dancers stopped raggedly in mid-step. “Where the devil is the magistrate when we need him?”
“I’m here, Blackerby,” answered an older gentleman, making his way through the others. “What has happened that you must interrupt us this way?”
Blackerby gave the servant a little shove in the back to move him forward. “Tell him, Falk. Tell him the great news!”
The servant flushed, unaccustomed to being the center of so much attention, but still eager to deliver his message.
“It be grand news from Waverly Point, M’Lord, not far from th’ town,” he said, raising his voice so everyone could hear. “This very night, not an hour past, th’ soldiers from the garrison at Lydd killed or captured a whole pack o’ them Tunford smugglers!”
Chapter Fourteen
At once George let go of Fan’s hand, and stepped forward.
“I’ll come with you into Tunford, Sir Henry,” he said, his voice ringing out easily over the din of excited conversation. “I offer you my experience in dealing with the French, and besides, there’s nothing I’d like better than to see these rogues brought to justice.”
Applause rippled through the crowd, along with several hearty “huzzahs” and “hear, hear’s”, while Sir Henry bowed to George. Of course they would all be thrilled by George’s offer, thought Fan unhappily, her dread blossoming into full-fledged fear.
What a noble display of duty and patriotism, courage and confidence he made, there with the candlelight shining on the medals on his chest! What sorrow and pain his offer could bring to them both!
“I shall be honored by your assistance, Captain My Lord,” said the magistrate as a footman came hurrying with his coat and hat. “Though I hesitate at taking you from your home and guests on such an errand.”
“I can think of no better reason,” declared George, motioning to Leggett to fetch his things, too. “My brother His Grace shall play Feversham’s host in my stead, won’t you, Brant?”
George scarcely waited for his brother’s nod of agreement before he was striding off to lead the way, down the stairs and through the front door, with Fan racing to keep pace with him. The night air was clean and chilly after the crowded ballroom, the men’s voices louder out-of-doors, more full of bravado as they milled about, waiting for horses and carriages.
Shivering, Fan stood to one side, hugging her shawl around her bare arms and wishing desperately for some way to keep George from this dreadful errand. She knew she must go to Tunford herself as soon as she could, to learn the truth of what had happened and make certain none of her own people had been killed or arrested. She was sure to know the men who had, and the families who’d been stricken, for even among rivals, the smuggling community was a small one, and bound to come together at such a time.
On the rare occasions in the past that the beleaguered customs officers had decided to send for soldiers from Lydd as reinforcements, she and every other smuggling leader had learned of it well in advance through the network of companies up and down the coast. There hadn’t been a successful capture like this in years, and it terrified Fan to realize that it could just as easily have happened tomorrow night, when she had been on the beach with the others waiting for Markham.
What would George have done then, if he’d found that she were one of the ones waiting in irons for the magistrate? What if she’d been one of the bodies now lying stiff and cold and ignominiously tossed beneath a tarpaulin in the back of some wagon, to be held until morning as evidence?
“Arm yourself, Captain My Lord,” advised Sir Simon Blackerby with relish. “There could be stragglers from the band, lying in wait to ambush you. These smugglers are dangerous villains, you know, not to be treated lightly.”
“I never underestimate any enemy,” said George gravely, taking the pistols that Leggett had brought along with his coat. Now Fan saw that the rest of his old crewmen had joined him as well, making a swift transition from Feversham’s staff back into stern-faced fighting sailors.
“Please, George,” said Fan, too frightened to keep silent any longer. “Please don’t do this, I beg you!”
He turned towards her, his smile bittersweet. “I’m sorry to leave like this, Fan, but this is something I must do. I want you to be safe here at Feversham, and that won’t happen until this coast is rid of these smuggling gangs.”
“But why can’t you let the soldiers handle this?” she pleaded. “You are supposed to be on leave, and—oh, George, I don’t wish any harm to come to you, not now!”
“You worry over me that much, Fan?” Touched, he took her hands in his, linking their fingers together. “I do believe that’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me before I went to—that is, before I left.”
“How could I not, when I love you so much?” she cried. She knew he’d stopped just short of saying he was going into battle, and she knew, perhaps better than he did himself, that it wasn’t an exaggeration. That splendid blue and white uniform with the row of medals would make an easy target in the night for any coward with a musket bent on revenge.
“I love you, too,” he said softly. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have to do this now. And when I return, Fan, regardless of the hour, we will talk, and I wish you to be ready.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice to answer. Of course they would talk when he came back—when did they not talk?—and though she would pray with all her heart for his safe return, she would also have to do her best not to weep when he told her how many Tunford smugglers he’d helped send to the gallows.
“My own dearest Fan.” He kissed her quickly, his lips warm upon hers, and held her for a final moment before he left her standing on the steps.
She pulled her shawl more tightly around her arms, a miserable substitute for his embrace as she watched him mount Caesar and pause to speak to Sir Henry as the magistrate climbed into his carriage. He looked back to her and waved, but did not smile, and then he was gone with the rest into the night. She sighed, and shivered, staying on the step until she heard the last of the rumbling wheels of Sir Henry’s coach.
A sad night, she thought, a sad night indeed, and as s
he hurried upstairs to change her clothes, she realized the worst could still lie ahead for them all.
“A sullen lot, Captain My Lord,” muttered Sir Henry with disgust as he sat, his black silk evening breeches and waistcoat at odds with the rough slat-back chair that was the best the Tunford gaoler’s front room could offer. “I’ve never seen thieves so able to hold their own counsel and say not a word in their own defense. ‘Companies’, they call themselves, you know, smuggling companies, though a pack of mongrel dogs is closer to the mark. Let them hang together, I say, if they wish to be so damned uncooperative.”
“Perhaps,” said George, purposefully noncommittal as he warmed his hands over the tiny fire. He and his men had spent the last hour making a final sweep of the beaches around Waverly Point, hunting for any stragglers or latecomers, and he’d come to the gaol in time to hear only the last few minutes of Sir Henry’s interrogation. George agreed that the prisoners were a sorry enough group, but he’d noticed more about them than their silence, especially after he’d been shown the bodies of the three who’d been shot.
Yet still he’d hesitated to share his observation, not only because the customs officer who’d made the capture had been rightly territorial about the prisoners when faced by a Navy captain. But also, and far more importantly, George wondered about the possible larger significance of these seven silent, threadbare prisoners.
“Pity their boat got clean away from us,” continued Sir Henry, inhaling a large pinch of snuff to soothe his indignation. “That’s where the army always fails, eh? If we’d only had a good Navy man like yourself in some swift little cutter, we’d have more than a single cask of burgundy and a handful of Tunford’s worst to show for the trouble.”
“They weren’t from Tunford,” said George quietly. “At least the ones you tried to question weren’t. They weren’t even English. They were French, which could explain why they didn’t understand you to answer.”
“Eh?” Sir Henry looked at him sharply. “What the devil are you saying?”
“What I’m saying shouldn’t go beyond this room,” said George firmly, clasping his hands behind his back as he turned to face the magistrate. “At least not yet. But I’ll swear to this—what those soldiers interrupted was no ordinary smugglers’ run. The seven men captured are French sailors, not English. The way they dress, how they crop their hair, even their gestures when they didn’t, or couldn’t, answer your inquiries—there’s a score of little things that give them away.”
“Upon my word,” said Sir Henry, shaking his head. “Frenchmen on our very beaches!”
“They could simply be smugglers, too,” said George, wanting to consider every possibility, even though his instincts pointed to a single likelihood. Here he’d been reading the London papers, searching for news of a formal declaration that the peace had ended and the country was once again at war.
But given the anarchy that now ruled France, their lack of respect for rules and traditions, who was to say that the republicans in power would bother with declaring war at all? Why couldn’t they simply launch a fresh attack on the unsuspecting English coast like this, a few boats at a time with men trained to infiltrate the countryside? Because smuggling was so openly condoned, the harbor masters were notoriously blind to all kinds of small incoming vessels, and even if the invaders were captured, the local authorities would most likely be as unsuspecting as Sir Henry. It would be the perfect arrangement for France; for all George knew, it had already succeeded in other villages.
He thought of the small box with the emerald ring, a little square lump waiting inside his waistcoat. Had it really been this same night that he’d been laughing and dancing with Fan, with no greater care than to choose the best words to use to ask her to be his wife?
“The French ferry their share of untariffed English goods back to their own shores, too,” he continued carefully, unwilling to share all his suspicions. “I could ask them in French myself, though I doubt we’d get even a quarter of the truth in return. But what makes this perplexing is that the dead men are all English, likely your Tunford rascals. Yet all three were killed by French pistols at close range, not the Brown Bess muskets carried by the soldiers who made the capture.”
Sir Henry shook his head again, his expression growing more solemn by the moment. “Forgive me, my lord, but how can one judge such a thing?”
“There is a great difference in the wounds, Sir Henry,” answered George quietly, remembering all the men, good men, he’d seen die by gunshot, some so close he’d been splattered with their blood. “Unfortunately, I’ve seen far too many of both kinds in my career.”
“To be sure, with your gallant record,” said Sir Henry with the heartiness of a man who’d never seen battle. “But what are you to make of this, my lord? Your observations are suggesting a far different version of these events than the testimony given me by the soldiers.”
“I do not know what to make of anything as yet,” said George with a sigh. “For now, however, I would accept the soldiers’ version, and make that the public explanation. That, and with the cask of burgundy as evidence, are sufficient to keep the men in gaol. By your leave, I shall write of this to my superiors, and perhaps in a day or two we shall be able to discover the rest of the answers.”
“Excellent, excellent,” said Sir Henry with approval. “We need to prove that such wickedness will not be tolerated in this county.”
“One other recommendation, then,” said George. He didn’t want wickedness in this county, near his home and his Fan, but he didn’t want war, either. “Release the bodies of the dead men to their families.”
“Release them?” sputtered Sir Henry indignantly. “Tonight? You are new to this region, Captain My Lord, else you would never make such a suggestion with these people. They were villains, sir, perhaps even traitors in collusion with these Frenchmen, and now, my lord, they are evidence!”
“They were never convicted of any crime,” said George, his voice turning more forceful, “and they are beyond any punishment now. The only ones you shall hurt are their widows and children. Compassion is not a weakness, Sir Henry, not even in the British courts of law.”
Sir Henry grumbled, shifting unhappily in the chair. “Niceties are wasted on the lower sort, my lord, especially the stubborn variety here in Tunford. The only way to gain their notice is through direct punishment, and making a hard and fast example of those that are caught.”
“If you do not show these people—any people—a measure of respect,” George said sharply as his impatience grew, “then you can expect precious little in return, and you’ll never learn what really happened on that damned beach this evening.”
“Then have your way, my lord,” said Sir Henry crossly, throwing up his hands in unwilling surrender. “I shall oblige your request. But mind you, I do not believe for a moment that such coddling will put an end to this sort of mischief.”
“Nor do I, Sir Henry,” answered George curtly. “Just pray that it isn’t only the beginning of something far, far worse.”
Wearily Fan untied Pie’s reins from the fence where she’d left him, and the pony nickered happily, glad at last to be returning home. Fan wished her own life could be so simply resolved, that once again her greatest challenge would be not giving in to the delicious impulse to kiss George before his guests. But in these last few hours she’d seen and heard things that would remain forever in her conscience, and darken every memory she’d have of George’s grand candlelit party.
She’d been at the gaol just as the soldiers had grudgingly been ordered to stand back from the wagon with the three bodies. She’d seen the contempt on their faces as the Tunford women had rushed forward, pulling at the tarp as they held their lanterns high. She’d heard the keening wails of three new widows, the murmurs of those who offered comfort, the curses heaped on the villains who’d done such a thing, and she’d watched as the cold, stiff bodies were carried to their cottages one last time, their faces twisted into final grimaces of
pain and surprise and their clothes flapping heavily with dried blood and sand. The men weren’t from her Company, but she’d known them just the same as Tunford men: sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, friends, shipmates, with many in the village to mourn them.
She’d tried to join the other women in the ragged little processions, to offer her solace and respect as was proper, especially for her position in the small community. But to her shock and shame, she was not welcomed. She was pushed away, shoved aside, her way barred by strong arms and set faces full of hate.
“Ye don’t be wanted here, Fan Winslow,” one man had finally said, voicing what the others hadn’t dared. “Go back t’where ye belong, whoring at Feversham wit’ yer murderin’ lord.”
“Captain Lord Claremont didn’t do this!” she cried defensively, even as the others muttered their hostility against her. “He was at Feversham, giving a party for all the fine folk of the county!”
“Couldn’t ye keep him in yer bed, then?” jeered another woman. “Your fancy Navy-man was here not an hour past, pokin’ an’ proddin’ at these poor fellows like they was no more than meat at th’ market.”
“That’s—that’s not true!” cried Fan, faltering as her heart raced with fear. The pistol beneath her skirts would be of no use to her now, even if she could draw it before the others challenged her. She was painfully conscious of how alone she was in the narrow street, and conscious, too, of how George’s garnet earrings still swung from her ears, and how above her rough woolen cloak her hair was still elaborately arranged for the formal evening. These people were right: she didn’t belong here with them. She didn’t belong anywhere.
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