But though this betrothal ring was the kind that would take most women’s breath clean away, Fan didn’t spare so much as a glance at it, her eyes enormous and intent only on George.
“You would marry me?” she whispered. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” he said, his confidence growing. “I love you, Fan, and can’t fathom loving any other woman more. Say yes, lass. Please say yes.”
“You would marry me,” she repeated, too overwhelmed for more.
“I would,” he said. “I will, as soon as the banns are read.”
She stared at him for what seemed like years to him, before she gently closed the box with the ring.
“I cannot, George,” she said softly. “Not the answer you wish or deserve. Not yet, not now.”
He felt the certainty of his hopes lurch beneath him. “Why the devil not? What must I do to change your—”
“Oh, George, you must never change one blessed hair for me!” she cried unhappily. “It’s me, all me, for one more time, I must do what is right rather than what I wish!”
He shook his head, refusing to understand. “But what you wish—what we both wish—is right, Fan!”
“Then ask me again tomorrow,” she said, reaching up to kiss him, more pledge than passion as she threaded her fingers into his hair. “Ask me tomorrow, if you can, when the dawn is as new as it is now. Then you shall have all your answers, George, and I pray for both our sakes that they’re the ones you wish to hear.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Why didn’t you tell me, daughter, that your new master-lover was a king’s man?” Her father glowered as he took another swig from the bottle, then spat contemptuously into the grate. “Don’t try saying he’s not, for I saw him from the window last night with my own eyes, the two of you standing cozy-close outside in the yard. All that gold braid and epaulets surely would make for an easy spot of shooting, wouldn’t it?”
“Father, don’t,” ordered Fan, setting the plate with his supper down before him. “Don’t even begin saying such things.”
“I’ll say them if I mean them,” he answered, suspiciously studying the roast chicken. “I’d only be defending what’s left of your good name, which must be wicked little. I’ll wager he doesn’t even know I’m here in his house, does he? Hidden away up here like a hermit?”
“A good thing he doesn’t, too, if he learned you’d been ferrying Frenchmen to his doorstep,” she said, wiping her hands in her apron.
She was already on edge enough tonight without a conversation like this with her father. How could she not be? In less than an hour, she would be meeting George in the stable, and though she knew what she must tell him about her role in the Company, she hadn’t begun to find the words to say it. Then, together, they’d have to face Will Hood and Bob Forbert and the others she’d summoned, and after what had happened to her last night in Tunford, she knew she must be prepared for the worst. Before the night was done, she could not only lose her joyful, love-filled future as George’s wife, but her own mortal life as well.
And she could not honestly say which would be the greater loss.
“Go on, Father,” she said, trying not to think of the warm rush of pure love she’d felt when George had asked her to marry him. “Eat your supper. I’m not about to poison you.”
“I don’t know what you’re about to do, Fanny,” he grumbled, taking a chicken leg daintily between his thumb and forefinger as he sliced away with his own long-bladed knife instead of the one she’d brought. “What does your fancy lord captain make of you and the Company, eh? Or is that the trade you’ve made, that if you warm his bed, he’ll keep you from the magistrates?”
“Maybe I should poison you for talking like that,” she said defensively. How dreadfully wrong her father’s guess was; she couldn’t imagine George making such an agreement, any more than she would accept it. “I thought you’d be happy to be home in your own snug room again, but I’m sure the Tunford gaoler can find a place for you there with all your fine new French friends.”
Her father looked at her sharply. “So are you keeping company with the town gaoler, too, daughter? Friendly-like with all of them that can save your skin, and the Winslow Company be damned?”
“You’ve had too much to drink.” She snatched up the empty bottle, determined to leave before either one of them said more that they’d later regret, and gave him a quick, guilty kiss on the forehead. “I must return to the kitchen now, Father, but I’ll come back in a bit for the tray.”
But to her surprise he dropped the chicken and seized her wrist, holding her so she couldn’t escape.
“You know you’d be breaking your poor mother’s heart, Fan, taking to sinning so natural with such a man,” he said, his expression too serious to blame entirely on the rum. “She wanted more for you than this sort of harlotty rubbish.”
“Please don’t, Father,” she said helplessly as she looked down at her hand in his, her emotions too raw to venture more. As much as she wished to, she couldn’t tell him of George’s offer, not yet, not when he might still take it back when he learned the truth. “Please.”
“Oh, aye, you can stand up to me, Fan, all full of fire and sparks,” he said, his eyes flinty. “But do you speak the same to this man? Or is he the one giving all the orders, bidding you lift your petticoats for him?”
“I told you, Father,” she said as firmly as she could, which was now not very firm at all. “He doesn’t care that I am his housekeeper. He loves me as I am.”
“He loves part of you, you mean,” growled her father, “and I can guess which obliging part it is. I don’t care how proper and honest you’re pretending to be with your pretty lordling. High-bred men like him don’t stay with women like you. If he don’t care to know about where you’ve come from or your place in the Company or even that you can aim and fire a gun straighter than most men, why, then he’ll never bother with loving you true.”
He was right, and to her sorrow Fan knew it. Why else was she taking George with her to the run tonight? True, she did wish to do what she could to stop more Frenchmen from coming ashore at Tunford. But she’d other, more personal reasons as well. Before George could make her his wife and give her his name, he did need to know about her role with the Company. But he also needed to see for himself that, no matter what gossip he might hear, this was to be Fan’s last run. She’d finally, definitively, break with her past to make her future with him—if he still wished to share it with her.
Not that she was about to confide any of this to her father.
“George knows about my gun,” she said, purposefully avoiding the rest of what he’d said. “I had to shoot at him once, just to get his attention.”
“Then you should’ve finished the job while you had the chance, and saved me the trouble.” He jerked her lower towards him, so close she could smell the rum sweet on his breath, and pressed the flat blade of his knife against the inside of her wrist. “Mark what I say, daughter. I won’t be kept in this room forever. You’ve made a wicked mare’s nest of my affairs and my life while I’ve been away, and I mean to untangle it as soon as I can.”
“But it’s my life, too, Father,” cried Fan as she wrenched free, rubbing her arm where the knife had pressed a red brand into her skin. “It’s not just yours! I always tried to do what was right, for you and the Company’s people and for me and for George as well, and I’m still trying, no matter what it costs me!”
“Then instead of all that trying, daughter, remember who you are, or you never will do what’s right,” ordered her father, his gaze as sharp and relentless as the knife in his hand. “Remember you’re a Winslow first, else you’ll answer to me. To me, mind? You remember, and don’t you ever forget.”
“Keep to the path,” cautioned Fan, turning back towards George over Pie’s back as the horses walked single file, “and away from those rushes, there. The marsh sand’s so soft it’ll swallow you and Caesar like breakfast, and all I’ll be able to do is watch.”
“Then I must thank you for the warning, lass,” said George, drawing his larger horse to the very center of the twisting path. “I’d hate to be anyone’s breakfast.”
She nodded over her shoulder, her face barely visible in the dark before she turned back to watch the path ahead. He could hardly complain; without Fan to lead the way, he and Caesar might very well become a marshy breakfast, and the sobering thought made him pull the collar of his cloak a bit higher against the wispy damp of the fog. The night was chilly and moonless, even without the fog that had fallen almost as soon as the sun had set, and he already felt the saltwater dampness of the nearby sea settled familiarly into his bones.
Yet the chill was no match for the excitement racing through his blood. It wasn’t just the weight of the long-barreled pistols he carried, or the scabbard of the cutlass swinging against his thigh, or the realization that behind every nodding leaf or branch could wait a Frenchman or smuggler eager to blow his head from his shoulders. It wasn’t even the challenge of knowing that, no matter what he’d promised, he’d have to be very clever and very quick to garner the information he sought. That was simply doing his duty to his king and country.
No: what made this night so special was having Fan with him. She was his partner, her bravery equal to his, but she was also his woman, the one in all the world that he loved most. If this was to be his final test to prove it to her before she’d accept him, then he was determined to pass with flying colors, leaving no possible doubt in her mind when he asked her again to be his wife.
The path widened, more sand than soil now as they drew closer to the water, and he guided Caesar alongside Pie.
“We must be nearly there,” he said, taking care to keep his voice low. “I can hear the waves.”
She nodded. “I planned it so we’d be first to arrive,” she said without taking her gaze from the path. “There’s less chance for surprises that way.”
He agreed, though her foresight in turn had surprised him. “Are you certain there’s a landing here tonight?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered. “This company is quite steady, you see. They trade in tea, not wines, brandies, or rum. The returns are not so great with tea, but more constant, and the risk of piracy from other companies is less.”
He glanced at her, impressed by how much she must have prepared for this night. “I should have had you write to the Admiralty about these smugglers instead of me.”
“Ah, I doubt those fine gentlemen would care for what I’d have to say.” She shrugged, fussing with Pie’s reins. “Here we are now.”
The horses’ hooves sank into the soft beach, laboring until they came closer to the water where the sand was packed hard. Without waiting for George’s help, Fan slipped easily from Pie’s back, and began unbuckling the bulky pack behind her saddle.
“If you wish to help, you can light this for me,” she said as she handed George a bulky tin lantern with a tallow candle inside. “The sloop that brings the tea from France will wait off shore until they see the proper lantern signals.”
“And that sloop’s captain will be the one who can answer my questions.” He took the lantern and lit the candle with his flint and striker, the yellow light spilling out across the sand. “Do you know him by name?”
“Ned Markham,” she said. The candlelight washed across her throat and cheeks, pale and golden inside the dark hood of her cloak. “He’s the least trustworthy man to sail this coast, which also makes him the one captain most likely to have dealings with the French.”
“Then you take the horses back into the rushes,” he ordered, acutely aware himself of the danger they were in. “There’s no need to put yourself at risk with a villain like that.”
“Of course there is,” she said briskly, tucking loose strands of her hair back beneath her hood before she bent to close the door on the lantern. “Markham won’t have the faintest idea who you are without me to tell him, and he’ll think nothing of shooting you dead for your trouble.”
“And you, too, Fan, if he’s as bad as you say,” he said, thinking of how impossibly dear she’d become to him. “I’m not about to lose you over something like this.”
“You won’t.” She pulled her pistol out from inside her skirts, all business, turning her back to the spray blowing from the water to check her powder. “We are partners for tonight, mind? You need me, just as I need you, and I won’t be shuffled off into the bushes so you can play the great hero.”
“I don’t give a tinker’s dam over whether I’m a hero or a coward. What matters to me, Fan, is that you’re safe.” As often as he’d seen her handle the gun with this assurance and skill, he still didn’t like the uncertainty in her life that it represented, or the fresh uneasiness that was curling through him now. “This won’t be like shooting at mice from the kitchen door.”
“That’s right,” she said with maddening evenness. “It won’t, not at all. Now listen, because we don’t have much more time. As soon as Markham accepts the signal, he’ll come in close enough to send his boats into the stream, down there on the far side of those hills.”
“You are that sure?” he asked warily, again surprised by the detail of her knowledge.
She nodded, letting her hood blow back from her face as she scanned the horizon. “The company men will meet the boats, and shift the tea from the boats to the ponies, until the bags can be broken down and distributed to the customers around the county. That will be the best time for you to speak to Markham, when the tea is being unloaded but before he’s been paid. Ah, there’s the Sally’s light!”
He followed her gaze to see the shadow of a boat not far from land, dark except for the signaling flash of a lantern at the bow. Quickly she tucked the gun into her belt and turned her lantern towards the water. With a practiced ease, she flashed the door open and shut, two times slowly, then one fast, in a pattern that mirrored the one from the boat. Finally she left the door open, letting the light serve as a beacon to the incoming sloop.
Beside her George watched, the dull, angry ache of certainty growing somewhere near his heart.
Why hadn’t she loved him enough to trust him with the truth?
“There,” she said, her chin high and the spray blowing tendrils of her hair back from her face. “With this tide in their favor, Markham will be here with his hand out soon enough, the greedy bastard.”
But George didn’t want to hear any more. “Fan, look at me,” he demanded. “Tell me the truth. How long have you been a part of this? Was it your father who made you do it? Damnation, Fan, look at me, and—”
“Mistress Winslow, here!”
Fan was already looking past him as George turned towards the man’s voice. A wobbling row of lanterns was coming over the low hill towards them, and in the beams of their candlelight he could see at least a dozen men trudging across the sand. Though their faces were purposefully too shaded by their hats and caps to be recognized, the pistols and muskets in their hands were unmistakable.
“What mischief be this, mistress?” called the same tall, thick-chested man, the angry one in the front who George guessed must be the leader. “We’ve played fair with you, and now you turn traitor by bringing your king’s man to spy on us!”
“I didn’t bring him here to spy, Will Hood!” Fan shouted back, purposefully staying close to George. “Captain Lord Claremont’s here to help us all, if you’d stop raving like a madman long enough to listen!”
“Best you stand aside, mistress,” warned Hood, raising his musket, “and I’ll show him how we help ourselves.”
At once George stepped in front of Fan, shielding her behind his body. He didn’t know how good a shot the man was with his musket, especially at night, but he wasn’t going to wait to find out.
“Damnation, man, listen to her! Would I be standing here so openly before you if I meant to spy? Would I come here alone, without any reinforcements, if I intended somehow to bring you harm?”
But Hood didn’t lower the musket. “Maybe you�
��re here because sailing for his bloody majesty has made you daft as well as righteous.”
“Oh, aye, it’s made me daft enough to worry what becomes first of you people and your town, and then the entire country, too,” he said, his voice growing louder with well-earned authority. “Those men that died last night were killed by French guns, not British ones. The sailors that were captured were Frenchmen pretending to be English.”
“Frenchmen?” repeated Hood uneasily. “On our own Waverly Point?”
“Frenchmen,” said George firmly. “They weren’t smuggling, as they wished the world to believe, but determined to plot an invasion, infiltrating your Tunford—your families, your homes—from within, and making the way easier for General Buonaparte to come with his troops.”
A rumble of oaths and outraged disbelief circled through the men, the lanterns in their hands swinging back and forth as they glanced uneasily at their neighbor.
Hood lowered the musket from his eye, the better to glare suspiciously at George. “How are we to know you’re telling the truth? And what’s it to us if’n you are?”
“Why would he lie, Will Hood?” demanded Fan, slipping around George to stand in front of him, her arms crossed bravely over her chest. Instantly he rested his hand on her shoulder, wanting the others to know he was with her: still partners, no matter what else she’d done, still his proud, clever Fan.
“Captain Lord Claremont wants to talk to Markham,” she continued, “to learn what he’s heard from other captains crossing the Channel. He will use that information to keep other Frenchmen from landing on our shore, and other Tunford men—men like you, Will—from getting themselves killed.”
“I heard them prisoners was Frenchies, too,” said a man in the back. “I heard it from my wife’s brother, what heard them talkin’ their lingo together at th’ gaol.”
Hood’s musket dipped lower as he considered. “But Ned Markham won’t go with them republican frog-eaters, mistress,” he said doggedly. “He’s a good stout Englishman, and he’s served us and the Winslow Company for years and years.”
The Silver Lord Page 23
