Mrs. Jack was discovered in the kitchen, drinking tea at the table with Cook, who was patting her shoulder in a sympathetic kind of way. Four children of varying sizes had piled on to the two other wooden chairs. Everyone jumped to their feet as Gillie swept in.
“Forgive me coming here, Miss Gillie. I know you’ve been looking after my Jack and I’ve been so grateful. I would never add more trouble to you, only I need to speak to Jack—”
“Well, of course you must speak to Jack. Did Dulcie tell you his fever is broken and she believes he will mend now?”
“No, Miss, I haven’t seen Dulcie.”
“Her house’s been ransacked,” Cook interrupted. “Scared the life out of her. Came home from the harbor with the children and found the place turned upside down.”
“But that’s terrible!” Gillie exclaimed.
“I can fix it. Mostly,” Mrs. Jack said anxiously. “But I need to ask my husband if–if we should–if he…”
“Of course you must,” Gillie said. “But I think you must stay here until he’s well again.”
Mrs. Jack’s mouth fell open. “Stay here? Miss, there’s five of us and you’ve already got Jack!”
“I know, but we do have space since the household has shrunk since my father died. I’ve already told the others, none of you should go out alone.”
“Oh no,” Mrs. Jack uttered, “What’s my Jack got into now?”
“Until we know, you’d better pretend we’ve employed you as an extra housemaid or something.”
“Housemaid? I’ve never been in service in my life!”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gillie assured her. “You won’t actually have to do anything – except maybe look after Jack.”
“We can’t all stay here for nothing, Miss.”
“Well we can talk about that. The important thing is you don’t go home just now. Come, Mattie will take you to Jack and help you make up rooms for yourself and the children.”
*
If Danny hadn’t been keeping watch on Bernard, Gillie would have worried herself sick. As it was, by the time they returned after dark, she’d resorted to pacing the parlor and looking out of the window every few minutes for a glimpse of them. However, they rolled home happy and unharmed – it seemed that, as was often with the way with gentlemen-only gatherings of this nature, several had ended up in the tavern.
Bernard had had a whale of a time. Lord Braithwaite’s London friends had been both tolerant and friendly, and Lord Wickenden was pronounced to be a great gun and not at all full of himself as everyone said.
“I’ll tell you what, though,” Bernard confided. “The amounts of money those fellows drop on wagers would make your eyes pop.”
“Oh dear, you didn’t, did you?” she said, discovering a new anxiety.
“Lord, no, I kept out of it. Mostly. Here, have you quarreled with Kit Grantham?”
“No.” She frowned, suddenly remembering the abortive waltz and proposal which had become lost in the far more exciting events with Lord Wickenden. “That is, we had a disagreement at the ball, but I’m not bearing a grudge if he isn’t.”
“Well, I think he might be. I bumped into him in the George, told him to come tomorrow evening, but he said he wouldn’t be welcome.”
“He’s being silly,” Gillie said flatly. “And he was silly last night, too. Oh, Bernie, Jack’s family is here because their house was ransacked, so if you come across children in odd places, that’s who they are.”
*
By the following morning, Smuggler Jack was sitting up in bed. Although still as weak as a kitten, he’d eaten some gruel fed to him by his wife and been well-hugged by his lively children. So by the time Gillie visited him, he did at least look more like the Jack she knew.
“So sorry for all this trouble, Miss Gillie,” Jack said. “Never entered my head they’d leave me here.”
“I suppose they thought we’d fetch you a doctor. Um…I need to talk to you, Jack.”
Jack’s wife immediately herded the children, who looked mutinous but were clearly still too in awe of Gillie to disobey, out of the room, and Gillie sat on the end of the bed.
“I need to talk to you, too,” Jack said at once. “I need my clothes.”
“Oh don’t worry, you shall have them back,” Gillie said in amusement. “We only took them away to wash and mend. You bled a lot.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, but there were things in the pockets I need. You wouldn’t have thrown anything out, would you, however useless it might seem to you?”
“No, no,” Gillie soothed. “There’s a little pile of your things on the dresser.” She rose to fetch it, but he stayed her with three words.
“It’s not there.”
“What isn’t?”
“A letter. Part of a letter. A folded piece of paper.”
Gillie sat down again very slowly, and raised her eyes to his pale, anxious face. “That is yours? It has writing on it that doesn’t make sense?”
He nodded, although he looked, if anything, even more anxious, rather than relieved as he should have been at his precious letter being found.
“It’s safe,” she assured him. “A friend of mine has it.”
He closed his eyes. He might have been in pain from his wound, but it looked to Gillie more like mental anguish.
Her breath caught. “That’s what they were looking for, the men who broke into your house and tried to abduct me to find the cellar… Why?”
“It’s got their names on it. Traitors who’ve been carrying more than contraband—information, prisoners, information, spies—across the Channel.”
Gillie’s eyes widened. “Then they’re not rival smugglers?”
“Part of our…colleagues in the south. I took money from our government to find out who they are. Their names are in that letter, along with those higher up French agents who were discovered by our agent in France. I was to give it to my contact back here, but I think the traitors knew. No one saw who attacked us, but it was from the sea. We assumed excise men or soldiers, but they never followed us ashore. Our ship was damaged and we were forced to land at Braithwaite Cove, even with his lordship in residence.”
“Ah!” Gillie exclaimed. “That could be why they thought the tunnel entrance was there rather than the Black Cove.”
“Probably. They must have thought I was dead, and by time someone told them my information was written down, we must already have been round at the Black Cove and heading through the tunnels. So, Miss Gillie, who did you give that letter to?”
“A friend,” she said. “But you may trust him. And I’ll get it back.”
Even as she said the words, she wondered if they were true. If Lord Wickenden didn’t wish to return the document, she would need to go to a lot of creative trouble to retrieve it. As for trust…
Her instinct to trust him had always been strong, but the very first night they’d met he’d shown her how misplaced that trust was. They didn’t call him the wicked baron for nothing. And yet, in his own way, he’d been kind to her, far beyond what was necessary from either civility or silly wagers, even before he’d rescued her from abduction.
She frowned. “Can you read, Jack? Do you know what the document said?”
“Reading wouldn’t have helped me. It’s in code.”
“So you don’t need to worry about anyone else reading it either.”
“I suppose not,” he allowed reluctantly. “But I do need to get it to where it’s meant to be.”
“Where is that?” Gillie asked. “Who are you working for in this matter?”
Jack hesitated, then said reluctantly, “Colonel Fredericks.”
*
Gillie waited impatiently for Lord Wickenden to call. Somehow, she was sure he would, in pursuit of his wager, if nothing else, and she really needed to get Jack’s document back from him.
At least, she told herself that was the reason. Fortunately, she was kept busy arranging things for the evening’s card party,
but she strained her ears for any knock on the door, and her heart fluttered at every footfall. It was never him.
In the end, it was quite a rush to change for the party. Even so, as she dragged her familiar grey evening gown from the wardrobe, she paused and eyed it with disfavor. There didn’t seem much point in wearing mourning still when they were holding parties. Besides, she’d worn the green gown to the castle ball…poor green gown.
On impulse, she shoved the dull grey gown back inside and found her old evening gown of pale amber silk. It was more than three years old, so it was hardly the height of fashion either, but at least it was not drab. She hurried into it, avoiding all thoughts of exactly why she didn’t wish to be drab.
“Oh, that looks much better,” Aunt Margaret approved, bustling in to help with her hair and fastenings. “I’m sure your father will understand. If you still wear the black gloves.”
Obediently, Gillie reached for the black gloves.
“Oh, there was a note from Lady Serena,” Aunt Margaret remembered, placing pins with admirable accuracy. “Now, where did I put it?”
“What did it say?” Gillie asked, resigned to never reading it.
“Inviting you—well, inviting all of us, but since she stated distinctly that the party would be chaperoned, I shall probably decline—to an expedition to the ruins of Blackhaven Abbey. Tomorrow, I believe.”
Gillie’s heart leapt at the chance, but tomorrow seemed too long to wait.
Although the card parties had become part of normal life for her, she was conscious that evening of a twinge of excitement, a nervous hope that Lord Wickenden would come tonight. And it didn’t matter how much she chastised or even laughed at herself, she couldn’t shake off the anticipation.
Quite early, a couple of Lord Braithwaite’s London guests—men Bernard had made friends with—strolled in, but neither the earl nor Wickenden were with them. Presumably, Lady Braithwaite had instructed her son and Wickenden must have stayed away with him. Which made her wonder if the countess had sanctioned Serena’s invitation to the Abbey expedition tomorrow.
She refused to worry about that, although disappointment curled around her stomach. She told herself she needed to see Wickenden for Jack’s sake and resolved to find a moment to speak with him on the subject tomorrow. Providing he came to the abbey. For this evening, she refused to pine for him and busied herself welcoming guests and being as perfect a hostess as she could manage.
She was just shooing Jack’s children back into the kitchen—they were crouched by the door, half hidden, watching guests arrive–when a novelty occurred. A lady stepped through the front door into the hall.
Gillie let the kitchen door swing back, hiding the children, and hurried across to meet the newcomer.
Escorted by a gentleman in a well-fitting black coat and pantaloons, she wore an evening gown of black silk beneath a matching pelisse. She must have been a little past thirty, and at the height of her haughty beauty. Although all the black she wore seemed somehow to shout respectability, Gillie had never seen her or her companion before. And recent events had made her careful.
“Madam,” she said pleasantly, “you are welcome. May I have your card of invitation?”
The woman raised her eyebrows, looking down her long, slender nose at Gillie before turning to her companion, who bowed.
“Mademoiselle,” he said. “I regret we have no invitation. We have only just arrived. Our luggage is waiting to be brought in.”
“Luggage?” Gillie repeated blankly. “Are you quite sure you have the correct house, sir?”
“You are Miss Gillyflower Muir?” He spoke English well, but in a distinctly foreign accent that sounded French to Gillie.
“Yes…”
“You are Captain Muir’s daughter?”
“Yes, I am, but—”
With an apologetic smile, the gentleman interrupted her floundering. “This is Madame Muir.”
Gillie picked up her dropping jaw with a monumental effort.
“Formerly Dona Isabella Maria Margarita de Vasquilez y Morena,” the gentleman pronounced. “Your late father’s widow.”
Chapter Seven
While Gillie stood in shock, the Spanish lady swept past her across the hall to the salon. She halted outside the doorway, gazing in.
“We have taken you by surprise,” the Frenchman said kindly. “But you should have received a letter…”
“It was written in Spanish,” she said, understanding at last. “I couldn’t read it and pursued it no further. I assumed it was a letter of condolence… But this makes no sense. How can my father have a widow?”
“They married in Spain.”
“But he never told us,” Gillie protested. “Nobody told us!”
“I understand he was waiting until he could tell you in person, but alas that was never to be. My condolences to you and your brother.”
Gillie dragged her gaze from her step-mother’s rigid back to the Frenchman’s face. “I’m sorry. If you told me who you are, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”
“Georges de Garnache, Mademoiselle. I am, sadly, an exile from my native France since the revolution, along with my brother, the Comte de Garnache. I also have the honor to be Madame Muir’s cousin. I escorted her from Spain.”
“I see. Um…why is she here?”
The woman spun around, turning her back on the apparently distasteful scene in the salon. Her dark eyes spat with anger. A stream of furious Spanish issued from her mouth.
M. de Garnache made a placating gesture with his hands and turned back to Gillie. “Dona Isabella is disappointed that you have left off mourning so soon,” he said apologetically.
Another tirade interrupted him and he sighed. “Dona Isabella is further disappointed that you are treating–that you seem to be treating–your father’s house like some den of iniquity.”
“It’s a few friends playing cards,” Gillie said tartly, roused at last from her torpor. “I trust Dona Isabella will give me leave to tell her that whoever is in my home or why is not her concern.”
A flash of triumph in the other woman’s eyes gave her an instant’s warning of the blow to come.
“But, Mademoiselle, it is very much her concern,” M. de Garnache said gently. “For this house is Dona Isabella’s. Captain Muir left it to her and she intends to live in it. Dona Isabella is, in fact, enceinte and intends to bring her child up here in England.”
For an instant, the world reeled, almost as if it had somehow come off its axis and she was falling away into darkness. Then, abruptly, a hand took hers, cool, firm, and steadying. She looked blankly up into the face of Lord Wickenden.
“Miss Muir is not well,” he said abruptly. “I’m afraid you must excuse her.”
Isabella’s mouth opened, clearly with more to say, but the Frenchman spoke before her.
“I’m sorry, our news has shocked you,” he said to Gillie. “It is not surprising. Also, since you have guests, we shall put up tonight at the Blackhaven Hotel. By your leave, we will call upon you again tomorrow afternoon. It would, perhaps, be helpful if Mr. Bernard Muir were also present.”
“Along with several solicitors,” Wickenden murmured as the pair departed, heads held high as if either oblivious or careless of what they’d just done and were about to do. “Go upstairs,” he advised. “I’ll send your aunt to you.”
But as he made to withdraw his hand, she clung to it as if to her only comfort. “Don’t. Please don’t leave me.”
Even in her stunned state, she was aware of the arrested expression in his eyes. Then, almost deliberately, he smiled. “Propriety, my dear Gillyflower,” he mocked. “You are forgetting propriety.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now. The house isn’t ours. We have nothing.”
“According to whom?” Wickenden said robustly. “Two people whom you don’t know from Adam and Eve. Go. I’ll send your aunt to you – or your brother, if you prefer—and we’ll talk more when you come back down.”
“I don’t need anyone. I’ll be back down in five minutes. Don’t tell…”
As it turned out, five minutes was all she needed to gather herself into at least an outward semblance of calm. The more she thought about it, the more she realized the unlikelihood of her father being able to marry in total secrecy, with none of his family or regimental friends being aware of it. Surely he hadn’t had enough time in Spain to marry, let alone father a child. No, the Spanish woman and her French “cousin” were flim-flam merchants of the worst order.
Deliberately, she stopped her restless pacing and took several deep breaths. She would write to Mr. Worthing, her father’s solicitor, first thing tomorrow and invite him to the meeting with her so called step mother. Very little got past Mr. Worthing’s sharp, if elderly, eyes. He’d soon send them packing to wherever they’d come from, whether that really was Spain or London’s east end.
Satisfied, she left her bedchamber once more and returned to the gaming salons. She saw at once that Wickenden was playing hazard at Bernard’s table, a half glass of brandy at his elbow. He didn’t appear to register her presence, and yet she knew he’d seen her. She made no effort to go to him, nor he to her. Under his tutelage, it seemed she was learning discretion.
Tonight, there was no game of snap in the alcove, merely a hastily exchanged few words as supper was served. They met as if by accident at the doorway, and Wickenden immediately stepped to one side, where she joined him.
“Jack is awake,” she murmured. “His message is in code, for Colonel Fredericks. You need to either take it to him or give me it back so that I can.”
He nodded once, without obvious interest. “Then your abductors were traitors?”
“Apparently so. They obviously know about the document and want it, because they seem to have ransacked Jack’s house, too.”
“Didn’t you say he had family? Are they hurt?”
She shook her head. “They’re here for now.”
“And the other matter?”
Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two Page 9
