Chasing the Heiress

by Rachael Miles

  He rubbed a coin between his fingers, a commemorative medal recognizing participation in some charity benefit. This one had been his brother’s. A medal for wasting the estate’s money in some foolish scheme or other. The outlay would have been acceptable if it had led to something: a new ally, a perception of generosity that could be taken advantage of later. But no, his brother had smiled on everyone indiscriminately, calling it noblesse oblige.

  He liked the feel of the edge of the medal against his fingers. It was a shame that the blood from his brother’s body had long worn away. He’d enjoyed the reminder of how easily he’d deceived his family and the sheriff into believing his brother’s death a tragic accident. He’d mourned well, he thought. Cain to his brother’s Abel.

  But for now, he waited. Over the last several weeks, his new crew of reprobates, thieves, and murderers had sold the forged banknotes they’d printed. His forging operation had allowed him to extend his reach into the deepest corners of the London hells. He could now count among his allies a range of criminals with skills he did not have himself. If he wished to manage the criminal world, he had made tremendous inroads.

  With the money from his forging enterprise, he had generated enough capital to buy the shipping partnership he’d needed. Now, he—or rather, one of his identities—held controlling interest in a fine merchant fleet. He laughed to himself. Others might find it a bad time to go into shipping, but he’d found it a lucrative proposition. The time to advance was when all others were in retreat.

  From his first attempt in shipping, he had garnered enough profit to open a tavern and a small gaming establishment for sailors and wharf men. He’d named it the Blue Heron. Run by his trusted lieutenant Flute and specializing in games of chance, the enterprise was already turning a nice profit.

  He moved a nautical chart to the top of the papers in front of him. He’d drawn a line from London to Lisbon. A week ago, his favorite ship, the Clytemnestra, had left, carrying beads and textiles. Today or tomorrow, at Lisbon, his cargo would be moved from the British Clytemnestra to a ship with an indeterminate nationality. Some would call it a privateer, but he preferred to think of it as a ship of international trade.

  He drew another line from Lisbon to Benguela, one of the states of Nouvelle-Guinèe on the southeastern coast of Africa. At Benguela, his beads and textiles would be sold to Portuguese slavers. Since the British had voted to abolish the slave trade a dozen years ago, he wouldn’t risk being caught with human cargo. But no law kept him from providing the slavers with the goods they needed to purchase slaves in the African interior or prohibited him from buying goods produced by slaves. It was a precious distinction, he knew, but one that suited his moral code.

  He drew another line, this time from Brazil, tracing the route of the Portuguese ships coming to meet his in Benguela. When the slavers arrived from Brazil, his captain would buy their goods: cocoa, sugar, and coffee. The British Navy loved cocoa, treating it as an alternative to rum.

  While waiting for the Portuguese to arrive from Brazil, his captain had orders to buy other cargo: cannabis and opium. He looked to the right of Nouvelle-Guinèe to the country on its western border: Ethiopia. Comprising most of the center of the southern African continent and extending as far to the western coast, Ethiopia had proved the bane of Napoleon, tempting his soldiers with cannabis.

  He drew a final line on the map, from Lisbon around the southern coast of England and Cornwall to Wales. The Clytemnestra would travel to the Welsh coast, where another of his identities had rented a rural estate with a fine isolated cove, protected from observation. There, he could move the cargo quietly.

  But his lease was up at the end of the year—and he would need another secluded cove to land his goods.

  Marner’s land.

  He needed to find the heiress, then find a way to end up with that piece of land. But he had three months yet to work it out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  With the porter watching the front entrance, and Fletcher and Bobby alternating between walking the grounds and guarding Jennie, Colin positioned himself to watch the other approaches to the house. He didn’t explain the measures to Lucy, and she didn’t ask, grown used—he assumed—to not knowing why or how or when from her years in the camps.

  He chose as his watch station the weapons room at the end of the second floor. It gave him full vistas of the back and side of the house.

  Overlooking the west yard where the kitchen garden still grew under the keeper’s care, he could look through one large window and a smaller round one. Overlooking the back yard into the wilderness, he could watch from two large windows or from the four petal-shaped ones. With leaded glass, each of the four petals opened individually to allow a breeze through—or a gun for protection. At each set of windows, he had set up a stool to lean against and a pair of loaded pistols on a short table.

  * * *

  When Lucy arrived with tea, the weapons room was empty, and she took the occasion to investigate.

  The room stored the guns and other sporting equipment a group of hunters might need for a week’s retreat. A large cabinet held the small guns, each with its own case and loading kit; on the wall hung the larger guns alongside each one’s powder horn. The drawers of a short cabinet below held powder and paper-wrapped cartridges in carefully labeled sections.

  The room held more than forty firearms. It read as a history of British weaponry, or at least British weaponry from the American and Napoleonic Wars. She named the guns as she recognized them: a breech-loading Ferguson rifle from the American Wars; Paget carbines from the light cavalry in the Waterloo campaigns; muskets from the East India Company.

  She stopped before the six Baker rifles, muzzle-loading, each one accompanied by horns of fine-grain gun powder and a supply of paper-wrapped cartridges. She ran her fingers across the fine wood graining of the closest rifle. She remembered James, his green uniform for the Ninety-fifth Rifle Regiment scuffed and dirty, carefully cleaning his Baker. She turned away from the memory.

  On the opposite wall were the swords and other weapons, and in between were the more historic pieces: a suit of armor, beaten and rusted (or at least she hoped it was rust); a battle-axe; and other weapons dating as far back as the Middle Ages.

  Well, if we grow bored, we could start a war with the local farmers. She returned to the wall of swords, picking up a light cavalry officer’s sword, much like the one of her father’s she’d had to leave behind at her great-aunt’s house.

  She held the sword up before her face. En garde. She was caught for a moment in a memory of her father, during one of the endless sieges of her youth, wearing the leather reinforced overalls of undress, calling her his “little swordsman” as they danced around one another. She could still hear his instruction: “Body upright! Head up! Shoulder easy. Wrist opposed to the sword. That’s it. Turn your left side in. Now thrust. Good girl. Watch for the counter-thrust. Keep the pommel in line with your temple. Good girl. Now again.” Instinctively she took her stance, thrust, and parried, pretending once more she was fencing with her father.

  At the sound of footsteps, she replaced the sword. But when they left the hunting lodge, if she could, she’d take one of the pistols and some powder with her.

  Colin smiled when he saw her.

  “I thought you might be hungry. I brought you the last bits of Alice’s fruitcake and some tea,” she said.

  “I am. Just a moment, and I’ll make us a seat.”

  He pulled a game table from against the wall behind his watch station, then two chairs. He positioned the whole thing where he could still survey the lawn. She met him at the table, placing the tray nearest the seat he held out for her. She tried not to notice how well his leggings fit his form.

  He bowed as if they were at a ball. “May I offer you a seat, my lady?”

  She laughed. “Why, thank you, kind sir.” She offered him her best deep curtsy.

  He took her hand and lifted her out of the curtsy. Then, holdin
g her hand out in front of him as if he were leading her into a dance, he directed her into the chair.

  “Had I known we were to be so formal, I would have found a way to make weak lemonade and brought up some pieces of yesterday’s bread with a thin veneer of butter,” she said, pouring the tea into two mismatched cups.

  “And I would have braved the crowds at Almack’s to bring it to you.” He lifted his cup to her in salute.

  “I fear you would have had trouble finding me, dear sir. You forget: scullery maids would be in the kitchen.”

  “Ah, no, my lady, you are an officer’s daughter whose beauty and graciousness on the fields of battle have attracted the attention of all London. The patronesses have sent me with this voucher.” He pretended to withdraw a piece of paper from his pocket, and held it out for her. “To honor your service to the men of England on the fields of Waterloo.”

  She blushed, pretending to take it. “Am I to be Cinderella then? Wiping the soap off my hands and waiting for my fairy godmother to transform my working dress into a ball gown?”

  He looked at her with unfeigned desire. “Has she not already arrived? Are you not the most beautiful woman in the whole assembly rooms? Your dress sparkles with the light of a thousand stars—to suit your nature. Lucy—Lucia, saint of light—opposite faces of the same coin.”

  “Well, in that case, if we were at a ball, you would find me standing in front of a window, hoping to get even the faintest hint of a breeze. Or in the garden with my abigail, trying to escape the crush.” She placed his cup on a saucer and handed it across the table.

  “No, you’ll be at a table in the gallery, fending off your suitors, while I”—he reached out and broke off a piece of Alice’s cake—“will be enjoying the refreshments.” He drank his tea.

  “You would leave me with a dozen suitors?”

  “Yes, but you are bored. You have seen me at the refreshment table, and you are waiting for me to approach and ask you to dance.”

  “Ah, I see. I suppose I am also holding the next dance open for you.”

  “Of course. Our eyes have met across the room, and I have signaled I will come to you. What piece are the musicians playing tonight? I don’t recognize it.”

  “Ah, I think it’s . . . no, it can’t be.... I believe, sir, they are playing a waltz. Scandalous.” She lifted her chin and turned her face slightly away from him as if mortified.

  “Dance with me.”

  She raised her wrist to consult an imaginary dance card. “Oh dear, I’ve made a mistake, I fear that this dance is already taken . . . by one of the men actually paying attention to me, not just watching me from the safety of the refreshments table.”

  He stood and stepped to her side of the table. He held his hand out. “Dance with me.”

  “If you insist.” She offered her hand, and he held it while she rose.

  “I do.” He held her hand out formally as he led her into the large open space in the center of the room. Then he turned to face her.

  “To what are we dancing?” She felt the warmth of his hand on her waist. She’d waltzed at the ball at Lady Richmond’s before Waterloo, in a dress borrowed from one of the British families in Belgium.

  James had been with her, dancing every dance, softly repeating the beats of the steps under his breath. She’d thought it sweet, the look of such concentration on his face. He’d kissed her before he’d left with the rest of the men in his regiment. The last time she’d seen him alive.

  “Mozart. Can’t you hear it?” His voice drew him back to the present. She opened her eyes, and that glittering ballroom of long ago disappeared in the gentle arms of the man before her. Colin, not James. This was a new memory, one to cherish for the rest of her life.

  He began to sing in a rich baritone, a wordless tune. Da-da-dada, da-da-dada, da-da-da.

  She listened to his voice run gently over the melody. She closed her eyes and just listened, the smoothness of his voice, his sense of the pitch and time of the song. She knew it, one of the country songs drawn from Mozart’s works.

  His hand began to lead her in the dance, moving her body by the slight pressure of his palm when he wanted her to move backward, of his fingers when he wanted her to move forward. He led firmly but gently. He was an easy dancer, in control, his every intention conveyed by the silent guidance of his fingers.

  It was an elegant movement, not too slow not too fast. Just enough to focus on the feel of his hands, the closeness of his body, the clean scent of him.

  They waltzed around the square of the room, learning the rhythm of each other’s bodies. She expected him to falter either in the singing or in the dance, but he did not. In each, he was consummate.

  Halfway around, he began also to turn them with each set of steps. Then he began to turn her in his arms, twirling her out, then stepping to meet her in the turn. Turning her out, meeting her again.

  He never missed a step. But she felt his arm tense against its own weight, and she saw his face grow pale.

  “You grow tired,” she said, watching his face. “Perhaps we can finish our dance another time.”

  His eyes met hers, determined, and he shook his head.

  He spun her away from him and back. As he drew the song to a close, he spun her out one last time, and as the song ended, he stepped closer, pulling her tight against his chest.

  She paused for a moment looking up into his face, seeing his unconcealed desire. She wanted him to kiss her, wanted to feel the warmth of his lips against her own. Her belly tightened with expectation. But she was his nurse. She pulled away, never dropping his hand, and led him back to his chair.

  “I see, dear sir, that you are an experienced dancer.”

  “How else would I have the most beautiful woman in the room all to myself without raising the ire of her guardians?”

  “So, you have done this before?” She refilled his teacup and watched his face regain its color.

  “Never to such good success, and never before left so much alone by the other dancers. I like this place: no one cuts in.”

  “Then we will have to dance here again.”

  “We will.”

  She placed the largest piece of fruitcake on the plate. “Butter?”

  “No. Let’s save it for the stale bread you promised me.” He watched her eyes focus out the window and her expression turn from playful to pensive. “What is that faraway look, my sweet? Do I need to be more attentive to keep your interest?” He reached across the table to touch her hand.

  “I was just thinking that I can’t remember when I’ve ever had such a lovely time.” She brought her eyes back to his. “I’m storing up memories, you see, of you, for a cold day when we have parted, and I find myself lonely.”

  “There’s no reason to store them up, my star. I have promised to stay with you until you send me away.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Later that afternoon, after she finished preparing food for their dinner, Lucy set up several cushions in a corner of the weapons room to be near Colin as he watched. She had brought several possibilities from the lodge’s meager library, and she spent the next hour reading him another set of chapters from Castle of Otranto.

  “Tell me, what reason did the Princess give thee for making her escape? Thy life depends on thy answer.”

  “She told me,” replied Theodore, “that she was on the brink of destruction, and that if she could not escape from the castle, she was in danger in a few moments of being made miserable for ever.”

  “Stop,” Colin ordered.

  Lucy froze.

  Colin peered out the window, a movement near the trees drawing his attention. While he watched, two men left the shadows of the wood to stand at the edge of the yard. Their faces were obscured, whether from distance or disguise.

  “Stay here. Men in the garden.” He picked up his pistols as he ran from the room.

  Fletcher was sitting in the hall, carving a piece of wood, looking every inch the part of the bored servant dragg
ed to the country.

  “Men in the yard. Protect William.”

  Fletcher moved with surprising speed for a man in his sixties, toward the secret entrance to the priest hole.

  Colin slipped out of the house using the kitchen entrance. The door had the most protected entrance, a hedgerow separating the main yard from what had once been a kitchen garden. He tried to keep out of sight, using the trees of the yard and the hedges of the garden to obscure his progress. He walked only on the grass, not on the stone paths themselves, to keep his movements from being heard. One pistol in his hand, the other tucked in the waist of his pants at his front.

  He looked over his shoulder at the gallery window to gauge how distant he was from where he had spotted the intruder. Lucy had moved from the window into the dark of the room. Good.

  The lodge was set in the middle of a clearing, woods on all sides. From the house to the woods in any direction was not more than the length of the ducal carriage, but the carriage was in the stables, hidden from view. He had only a few more steps before he would have to leave the protection of the kitchen garden’s high hedges.

  There had been two men, he was sure of it, with kerchiefs around their faces. Even if they were only poachers, the penalty for poaching could be death. So even if they had nothing to do with the Marietta affair, they could still be dangerous if challenged. As Colin grew closer, he could hear their voices.

  “Got me a boy, Jock. No livery, but well fed by the look of him.” The first intruder—stocky and bearded—held Bobby by the neck. “What do you want me to do with him?”

  “Bring him here. The house was supposed to be empty. If there’s a boy, there’s likely others.” The second intruder—a tall man with red hair—stared at the house. “We might need a little bribery.”

  Colin moved to where he could see Bobby through a less densely leaved portion of the hedge. He appeared unhurt, but he was being pulled along by a large bearded man with a stocky build and a broad torso. As they walked past on the other side of the hedge, Colin could see that the man had two pistols, one strapped to his belt, the other pressed to the side of Bobby’s head. He couldn’t see the second man.