by Carla Kelly
‘I know you do,’ she said, her arms possessively around his waist, just as unwilling to let him go.
He went to sleep almost immediately after they separated, holding her as close in sleep as he had in love. She watched his dear face by the flickering light of the single lamp, relaxed now, with that frown line gone between his eyes. She knew she would want him again before morning and she knew he would give himself to her with no more encouragement than the slight touch of her hand on his chest, or her foot running down his leg. Maybe this time she would mount him. He had wanted her to, but she had felt shy about that. Maybe early morning in a priest’s hole in Lady Tutt’s surprising manor would be a good time.
I know you well, she thought, as she closed her eyes, relaxing her hand on his thigh. No one will fault me if I pretend we are married and in Nantucket, with no sound louder than seagulls. I can dream now.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After a kiss and an embrace that lasted so long that Lady Tutt cleared her throat with some impatience, Grace waved Rob back into the priest’s hole. She left the manor before dawn, walking arm in arm with Lady Tutt down the front steps, assuring her that she would have a letter that morning for the baroness to take to Mr Selway’s Exeter Post Office box.
‘It’s no trouble,’ Lady Tutt had assured her. ‘I’ll be in the bakery just after you open. I’ll tell my coachman to spring ’um.’
Grace smiled at that, thinking of the geriatrics Lady Tutt employed and how much they seemed to be enjoying the cloak and dagger. ‘I think that is a sound idea, my lady,’ she said. ‘In a day or two, I know we will hear from Mr Selway. He will surely tell us what to do.’
* * *
She made it back to the bakery as dawn was breaking, bleak and cold, even though it was early March, when the buds should have been shouldering aside the frost on bare limbs. She was grateful for the mist and fog, which hid her as she walked the alleys behind Quimby’s High Street.
To her consternation, Nahum Smathers was already standing in front of the candlemaker’s shop, which was shuttered and dark. His head was tucked down into his coat. She thought he slept, but then he stomped his feet. Grace felt a certain triumph to see him there so cold, knowing he had not found Rob. She found the extra key by the bakery’s back door and let herself in quietly.
She went into the back room, lit a lamp and wrote a hurried letter to Mr Selway, telling him what had happened, describing Rob Inman’s location so he could spirit him away to safety and asking for help. She wrote quickly, concluding with a plea: ‘Mr Selway, I know you must be busy, but I am afraid Lord Thomson will do terrible mischief if he finds Rob Inman. I know Rob is not Captain Duncan, but the late captain’s only thought was for his crew, when he asked me to choose another. Yours sincerely, Grace Curtis.’
She read it through twice, and saw no way to improve it, except to send it fast with Lady Tutt to Exeter. Where the note went from there, she had no idea. Hopefully, Mr Selway had a suggestion to end this tension and spare Rob from capture and death. She picked up her pen again and dipped it in the ink. ‘Mr Selway, I have already agreed to go to Nantucket with Rob, when he is freed. You are helping not only an American, but a future countrywoman as well. G.C.’
* * *
Lady Tutt was as good as her word, looking around discreetly before stashing Grace’s letter in her reticule. Waiting until only her companion remained in the bakery, she leaned forwards across the counter and spoke in her best stage whisper.
‘Grace, when I return from Exeter this afternoon, the password will be “Evensong”, if I have carried out our intentions.’
Grace leaned forwards, too, because Lady Tutt seemed to want a co-conspirator. ‘I think all you need to do is tell me that the letter was safely delivered.’
‘Never!’ the woman declared in shocked tones. She glanced around again. ‘At least that nasty Bow Street Runner is gone. I wonder what could have happened to him.’
Too much jalap and a charge of indecent exposure, I am sure, Grace thought, but that was probably more than even Lady Tutt needed to know. ‘He is likely up to no good somewhere, ma’am,’ she said, trying not to smile at the memory of the man squatting so desperately in the alley.
There was nothing to do but wait now.
* * *
Grace breathed a sigh of relief when Lady Tutt returned in the late afternoon, sidled up to the counter and murmured, ‘Evensong.’ Grace thought about attempting to see Rob, but decided she would be wiser to remain at the bakery, especially since Smathers glowered at her from across the road and Emery was equally observant.
She thought of the other letters she had written to the elusive Mr Selway. Perhaps Mr Selway would suggest Rob remain in his priest’s hole. She didn’t want to consider what the solicitor would do if the sailing master was not worth a worry, since he wasn’t Captain Duncan. She had made it amply clear in her note that Lord Thomson had vowed to shoot him on sight.
* * *
Two days passed, long days with her usual bakery
duties performed by rote, because her mind and heart were on Rob Inman. The nights seemed even longer. After two nights spent tossing and turning, Grace decided she was a bit of a rascal. It was hard to imagine a real lady feeling so empty without Rob close by, a man—her man—who required very little encouragement to refresh her. Maybe all men were that way; she didn’t know. Maybe she truly had slid, as everyone in Quimby knew. Maybe it was normal for healthy women to crave healthy men; she had no one to ask. Rob would tell her, even if she blushed.
She did know the whole business was occupying her to distraction, so she concentrated on making Yankee Doodle Doughnuts in Rob’s place, which only made her cry, because he was gone and she was worried.
The Wilsons bore up admirably, Mrs Wilson keeping her too busy in the shop to spend time in fruitless thoughts and Mr Wilson going to the coffee shop every morning without fail, to glean any news about the treaty situation. All he came away with by March was the news that the British Army, under the command of no less a general than Wellington’s brother-in-law, had been soundly thrashed by pirates, Acadians, free black men and a crusty General Jackson near New Orleans.
‘This all happened after the treaty was signed,’ Mr Wilson told her. He shook his head. ‘If news ever travels at the speed of light, we won’t know what to do with ourselves.’
Still Mr Smathers watched the bakery, watched her, thinking she would lead him to Rob. Angry at his persistence, Grace took him a dozen doughnuts, thinking it might embarrass him. All he did was thank her and bare his teeth in what he probably considered a smile. No shame there, she told herself, feeling foolish. Well, they are good doughnuts, she scolded herself. I am an idiot.
On the third morning after she had given the letter to Lady Tutt, Grace discovered what was worse than having Smathers watch her: having him not there at all.
Mrs Wilson noticed his absence first. She had been stocking the day-old bin when she called Grace’s attention to it. ‘The nasty man? He’s gone,’ she said.
Grace went to the door and peered up and down the street. The candlemaker must have noticed her, because he came to his own door, hands out, shoulders up.
She looked down the street, but there was no Emery, pacing back and forth by the elm tree that was slowly beginning to leaf again. No Emery. No Smathers. She turned to go into the bakery again but stopped, as her heart leaped into her throat.
Casting all dignity aside, Lady Tutt’s companion ran down the High Street, bonnet gone, dress hiked up. Oh, please, no, Grace thought, her mind in a tangle, as she felt her whole life unravelling.
It was a few moments before the woman could speak. Grace led her inside the bakery and sat her down, calling for Mrs Wilson to bring some spirits of ammonia.
The lady waved away any ministrations. She grasped Grace by her apron front. ‘Mr Smathers has him!’
Grace didn’t wait for another word; she ran. She looked back once to see Mr Wilson gamely puffing along b
ehind her. He waved her on and she redoubled her efforts.
A black-curtained carriage was just coming out of the long lane leading up to Lady Tutt’s wonderful, foolish mock-Elizabethan manor. Grace ran to the vehicle, pounding on the door. She didn’t think the carriage would stop, but it did. When the wheels were still rolling, she leaped between them, frantic hands on the door latch as she screamed Rob’s name over and over.
His own face set, Mr Smathers opened the door and grabbed her wrists before she could scramble into the vehicle. Tears streaking her face, she looked around his shoulder to see Rob Inman, bound hand and foot and staring at her with a bleak expression, tears running down his face, too.
She didn’t know if she spoke any words; she may have cursed Mr Smathers. She sobbed and begged the man to let Rob go. She might have tried to reason with a statue. With a grip far stronger than any he had laid on her before, he held her off from him and gave her a shake.
‘Grace, don’t,’ was all he said. She heard nothing harsh in his voice now, but a steely determination to see the business through. He had captured Rob Inman.
‘He’s going to Dartmoor,’ Mr Smathers said when she stopped to draw breath, confirming her worst fears. He shook her again. ‘You two have caused me no end of trouble.’
She gasped at his monumental self-interest and tried to slap him: anything to wipe that unsettling calm off his face. ‘They’ll put him in the dark hole, the cachot! Mr Smathers, they will kill him!’
Her pride gone, Grace knelt in the road, pleading with Smathers, her tightly held hands clasped together now. ‘You’re a murderer!’
That must have been Smathers’s last straw. With an oath so vile it made her flinch, Smathers dragged her to her feet as Rob tried to move closer. One terrified glance in his direction told her that not only was Rob bound hand and foot, but tethered by a chain bolted in the floor. Rob struggled to free himself as Smathers put his face close to hers, his eyes boring into hers until he commanded her attention.
‘You fool! The only place he is safe is Dartmoor!’
With another oath, he flung her away, scrambled with no dignity into the carriage again and growled to the coachman to move off.
Grace ran after the carriage, screaming, until she could not breathe. She sank onto the empty highway and was still there when Mr Wilson found her. She looked at him and began to sob again, just when she thought she could not have cried another tear.
Gently, he helped her to her feet. ‘Gracie, let’s go home,’ was all he said.
* * *
Hours later, she was still sitting in the back room of the bakery. The front of the shop had finally cleared of villagers, most silent and as shocked as Grace was. Maybe because she understood heartache, Mrs Gentry had taken over in the back room, helping Mrs Wilson finish the day’s orders, her quiet comments restoring some tattered order to a day gone badly wrong.
Her eyes shocked, Lady Tutt had held Grace’s hand, dabbing at her eyes, as she described what had happened—how Rob had been safe in the priest’s hole, panel closed, when Mr Smathers and two Bow Street Runners had burst into the manor, raced up the stairs and pulled the nearly invisible cord to open the panel.
‘They didn’t even hesitate,’ Lady Tutt said. ‘They went right to the spot and there was nothing I could do!’ She dabbed her eyes again and the guilt was there in rich abundance. ‘I delivered that letter to the Post Office in Exeter. We never said a word to anyone!’
Lady Tutt’s heartfelt anguish finally pried Grace loose from her own terrible recriminations. Grace took the handkerchief twisted in her own hands, and touched it to the widow’s eyes, ready to console now, because there was nothing else she could do.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Grace said. ‘Something happened in Exeter.’
Lady Tutt turned piteous eyes on her. ‘We never said a word.’
‘I know. In the letter, I told Mr Selway precisely where to find Rob,’ Grace replied quietly. ‘The guilt is mine. The only way we will know what happened is if Mr Smathers…’ she could barely say his name ‘…if Mr Smathers tells us.’ She tried to smile, to soothe Lady Tutt’s profound misery, but found she could not. ‘I doubt he will oblige us with answers.’
She was wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After two sleepless nights, Grace looked into her mirror and didn’t like what gazed back.
No one else was up. She crept into the laundry room, pumped water, heated it and poured herself a bath. She washed her hair and scrubbed her face, maybe harder than usual. Maybe she thought she could erase the sadness there.
What Mrs Wilson had done last night had tipped the scales for living again. The woman had done nothing more than take Grace’s hand, sit down and pull her on her lap, as though she were a child in desperate need of comfort and not a woman grown.
When an hour had passed in silence, she had kissed Grace’s cheek. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘What else can we do?’
It was a good question. Grace had stared at the ceiling most of the night, then rose in the morning to resume the business of living, if she could call it that.
By unspoken consent, no one suggested making Yankee Doodle Doughnuts. Silent, thoughtful, Grace kneaded bread dough, keeping her mind a deliberate blank. There it would have remained all that day, if Mr Smathers had not walked into the bakery.
‘Grace.’
Her back was to the door. For a moment, the voice reminded her of Rob. She turned around, almost afraid to look. When she did, her eyes narrowed and she pointed her finger at the door. ‘I never want to see you again.’
She didn’t think she had raised her voice, but she must have, because the Wilsons tried to shoulder through the door from the backroom at the same time. Holding his baker’s peel like a weapon, Mr Wilson glowered at Ugly Butler.
Mr Smathers held up his hand and levelled a look at the baker that could have stripped paint from wood. ‘Don’t think I won’t haul you up on assault-and-battery charges,’ he said. ‘I must speak to Grace.’
Grace turned back to the bread dough. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘I said it before,’ he replied. ‘I swear before God that I took Rob Inman back to Dartmoor to keep him alive.’
The words hung on the air like a bad smell. Grace felt the tears start in her eyes again. ‘Please don’t torment me, Mr Smathers,’ she managed to say. ‘Go away.’
‘No.’ He said it softly, and something in the saying of it compelled her to turn around. ‘In God’s name, hear me out.’ Smathers looked around at all of them.
Mr Wilson snorted in disgust. ‘Grace, take him upstairs. Listen to him. When he’s done, send him out the back door and that will be all. Do you understand me, Smathers?’
‘I ask no more,’ Smathers said.
He followed Grace up the stairs to the Wilsons’ rooms. He sat in a straight-backed chair. She sat down opposite him, but not too close.
‘You have a village full of champions,’ he began.
She finally noticed what was different about him. He did sound like Rob Inman. ‘Mr Smathers, what has happened to your accent?’
‘Gone, never to return,’ he told her. ‘My name is definitely Nahum Smathers. Who would lie about a thing like that? I own a farm near Braintree, Massachusetts. This may or may not interest you, my nearest neighbour is John Adams, second president of the United States.’ He cleared his throat. ‘His apple orchard is much better than mine.’
Grace felt the blood drain from her face. It must have been obvious to Mr Smathers because he took her hand. She shook it off, but he moved his chair closer.
‘Who are you?’ It was a simple question. It struck her for the first time that she had been asking it of so many people since spring—Emery, Rob himself, Mr Selway. She had never thought to ask it of Nahum Smathers.
He gave her a question instead of an answer. ‘Did Rob ever mention Reuben Beasley?’
‘That’s no answer!’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘bu
t I’m asking. Did he mention Beasley?’
‘He did and not in a favourable light.’ She couldn’t keep the contempt from her voice. ‘Mr Smathers, you are stalling.’
‘I am not,’ he declared firmly. ‘Reuben Beasley is the American agent assigned by my government—Rob’s government, too—as liaison with prisoners of war in Britain. He was—and still is—serving as American consul to Britain.’
‘Rob said he has done nothing to ease their sufferings.’
Smathers nodded. ‘He is nearly correct. After the treaty was signed in Belgium, Reuben visited Dartmoor.’ He managed a sour smile. ‘I’ve heard that after he left, the POWs made an effigy, labelled it Beasley and burned it.’
He paused, thinking she might have a question. She shook her head wearily. She wanted him to finish, then leave her to her misery.
‘I am also an agent, working at the consulate in London. My role was to oversee the paroling of prisoners.’
‘You’ve picked a strange way to ruin your own countrymen!’ she burst out, leaping to her feet.
His sharp reply reminded her of the Smathers she knew too well. ‘On the contrary, I am good at my job!’ he retorted, standing, too. ‘My task—until I was specifically assigned to Captain Duncan—was to visit the parolees, assess conditions and write reports. I am a mere pencil pusher. Eager to return to Braintree, I might add.’
‘It couldn’t be soon enough for me,’ she murmured, daring him to placate her.
He sat down again, observing her in silence, as if wondering how she would react to what he said. When he spoke, she could tell he was picking his words carefully.
‘Captain Duncan was a special case and Philip Selway assigned him to me.’
‘Mr Selway! Where is Mr Selway? He has done me no good!’ she declared, then burst into tears.
Grace had left her handkerchief by the bread trough. Mr Smathers took his own and pressed it into her hand. She put it to her face, wishing he would go away. ‘I suppose you will tell me that Mr Selway is a…a…Red Indian from the forests of…of…wherever they live in America!’
