The Smuggler's Captive Bride

by Christina Dodd

  Instead, he’d been swept away by hers. He’d never failed to get his way with a woman before; of course, he’d never neglected his duty for a woman before, either, and that made him uneasy. “Surely you know I’m not a man to falter in anything he sets out to do, don’t you? I’m determined to capture Jean, and I will. I’m determined to keep you safe, and I will.”

  “Probably that’s why you remained here with me, wasn’t it? To keep me safe while your men hunted this infamous Jean.”

  It was a indication of his perturbation that he wanted to snatch onto the shameful excuse and agree with her. Only her sarcastic tone kept him sane enough to say dryly, “Oh, yes, I’m that noble. Laura, surely you don’t imagine I’m going to keep quiet? I know Ernest. He’s been the innkeeper at the Bull and Eagle for years. I’ll shout and he’ll come to my rescue before you’ve walked across the taproom.”

  She grinned at him smugly. “I don’t think so. We’re married, remember? Ernest won’t interfere regardless of what he hears.”

  The phrase sounded familiar.

  Then Hamilton recognized it. He’d said that to her when she’d threatened to scream. If he hadn’t been in such desperate straits, he would have laughed. But damn the woman! She couldn’t leave him here. “When I call Ernest,” he said, “he’ll come.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “You’re probably right.”

  As she walked toward the bed, Hamilton’s heart leapt with triumph. “That’s a good, reasonable girl,” he said. “You’ll see. You’re doing the right thing.”

  Stopping short of the dais, she leaned down out of his sight, and when she rose, she had gathered his clothes in her arms. “Yes, I think I’m doing the right thing, too.” Walking to the window, she opened it and threw them out.

  “Hey!” His incredulous shout came a moment too late. “How could you?”

  She shrugged. “I had to do something. Even if you do yell for Ernest and he arrives to help you, a lack of clothing will slow you down”

  “Of course I’m going to yell for Ernest.” As loudly as he could, Hamilton bellowed, “Ernest! Ern —“

  She pulled a pistol out of the desk drawer.

  His shout died. Outraged, he asked, “Where the hell did you get that?”

  She checked the small weapon in a manner that proclaimed her competence. “From my father. He taught me how to use it. I thought it best if I brought it, for I feared I would meet a villain.” Her gaze surveyed him directly, coolly. “I did, but I didn’t shoot him.”

  For the first time, Hamilton faced an ugly truth.

  He wasn’t going to get his way. She wasn’t going to free him. She was going out into the dark and rain to escape him.

  And Jean was still free and no doubt bent on mischief — and worse. Smuggling was a serious crime, but one the government more often than not turned its back on.

  Espionage was something else again. England was at war with France, and secrets leaked from this coast to the French command and into the ears of Napoleon himself.

  Hamilton knew all about it, because Hamilton was the man in charge of maintaining security in the government.

  Ronald Haver had worked for Hamilton, not as a secretary as his sister originally believed, but to ferret out the source of the leaked information. The son of a career soldier killed serving in India, Ronald had been competent, daring and courageous — a family trait, Hamilton had discovered later — and it was Ronald who’d discovered where the information exchange was made.

  Hamilton hadn’t believed it at first. The smugglers landed on the very beaches of his own manor? Did Jean knew his identity and mock him by using his home? Or was it simply serendipity, the fact that his beaches had always been and would always be the best place to land with smuggled goods, with caves in the cliffs above to stash the contraband?

  Ronald’s diary had given him the answer he sought, as well as posing a question — who was Jean’s accomplice?

  “Laura, don’t go,” Hamilton begged. “I’m not the villain you should fear.”

  “I can take care of myself.” She slipped the pistol into her cloth purse and hung it around her wrist. “I’ve been doing it for longer than I care to remember.”

  It was true. Ronald had spoken of his sister in glowing terms. He mentioned her competence, her good sense, and her skills, and before he met her, Hamilton had formed a picture in his mind of a brusque, broad, homely woman.

  Ronald had requested that, in case of his death, Hamilton care for his sister, and Hamilton had been determined to do precisely that. He would give her a pension and keep her in comfort for the rest of her life.

  Then for the first time Farley had ushered Laura into his office, and Hamilton had been knocked back on his heels. It wasn’t that she was gorgeous or sweet. Quite the opposite. She was too short, too thin, too fierce, too … right for him.

  The wanting had shaken him to the core. He’d always kept his passion well in control. He chose mistresses for their experience and he planned to chose his wife for her suitability.

  Laura was not particularly suitable. She dressed well, but that was because she was a seamstress. A seamstress! Poverty obviously hovered close. Her father had been the younger son of a baron with not even a knighthood.

  But for Hamilton, those matters were trivial compared to his desires.

  Yet he had hesitated to make his love known to her. For she had viewed him with suspicion, although he had not understood why. So he formulated a plan; he would find and arrest Ronald’s killer and present him to Laura as a nuptial gift. She would have Hamilton then.

  Instead Jean slipped through the trap set for him, and on entering the inn, Hamilton had been hailed as Laura’s bridegroom by Ernest.

  At that moment, his whole life changed. The calm, rational, duty-bound man he was became an opportunist, and he’d forcefully seduced an innocent.

  He grinned. He still couldn’t work up one shred of regret.

  After donning her redingote, gloves, and hat, Laura walked to the settle and picked up the diary.

  At that reminder of Ronald and his fate, Hamilton’s smile faded. “Laura, please don’t do this. Leave me tied if it makes you feel safer, but don’t go out tonight.”

  Going to the door, she twisted the knob. “It’s locked again. Did you instruct Ernest to make sure I couldn’t easily escape?”

  Bristling, he said, “I can control you without any man’s help.”

  She inserted the key in the lock and turned it, then looked back at him stretched naked and defenseless. “I can see that.”

  “I’ll find you, Laura,” he said.

  And he meant it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HAMILTON’S PROMISE echoed in Laura’s ears as she walked down the hall. I’ll find you. Yes, he probably would, but not tonight, and that would give her a much-needed reprieve. She’d take a horse from the stable and go to another inn to catch the stage back to London. She would wiggle her way through the government bureaucracy until she found someone to listen to her concerns, and if they told her Hamilton was the Seamaster, well …

  Oh, he was the Seamaster. What was the use in fooling herself? He was the Seamaster and just as he claimed, he no doubt hunted Jean.

  Pausing at the top of the stairs, she listened for sounds from the taproom.

  She heard nothing.

  Carefully she crept down, avoiding the squeaking step.

  Hamilton couldn’t get Jean tonight, and tonight she needed to get away and try to accept the fact she lusted after the man who’d sent her brother to his death.

  Yes, she lusted after Hamilton.

  She also wanted him to pay for his determination and her loneliness with at least a measure of mortification.

  In the taproom, the fire had burnt down to almost nothing, and the complete and eerie silence spooked her. She wanted to run back to her chamber, to the safety that Hamilton represented. Instead, she stiffened her spine. She was, after all, a Haver, and worthy to carry the banner of her
father and her brother.

  Then a burst of shouting from the kitchen made her stumble backward and she found herself on the top landing again.

  Two men. Ernest and … another.

  “Those are important papers!” the unknown shouted.

  While Ernest answered, “Ye can’t have my lord.”

  Something crashed. glass broke. There was a hoarse cry. Then silence.

  Hastily Laura crept back down the stairs, keeping to the wall, listening with all her might.

  That unknown voice spoke again, this time lower and with enough menace to make the hair stand up on her head. “I can have anything I chose,” he said. “Need I remind you that should your beloved earl of Hamilton discover what you’ve been doing with me, he’ll tack your ears to the stocks?”

  Laura put her hands to her mouth to stifle her gasp.

  Ernest didn’t reply to the man’s accusation; he didn’t rush to deny it.

  Then she heard an explosion of sound, like air escaping a clogged passage, and someone gasping in deep breaths. She’d seen enough violence done on the streets of London to recognize this.

  The unknown man had been choking Ernest.

  “They took my cargo, those damned government men, and some important papers which I must recover.”

  Ernest recovered himself enough to croak, “‘Ye and yer papers! It’s all a cover, isn’t it, this smuggling? Ye’re spying fer the Frenchies, ye are.”

  Laura made it across the taproom to the doorway by the kitchen in less time than it took the unknown man to laugh.

  “What if I am?” he said. “You’ve been well-paid for your assistance.”

  A spy. A French spy. Jean.

  Laura leaned against the casement and listened, her heart pounding, her breath short.

  “I’m an honest, God-fearing Englishman, I am, and I never agreed to help a Frenchie.”

  “Honest?” Jean mocked. “Smuggling’s not honest.”

  “In this part of the world, it is.” Ernest sounded firm and sure of himself. “My father did it, my grandfather did it, and my great-grandfather did it, but we never stooped to helping the Frenchies.”

  “You have now.”

  Laura heard the click of a steel and her hand went to her purse where her own pistol rested.

  “Hey!” Ernest’s voice rose an octave. “There’s no need fer that!”

  “We’re going to go upstairs now, get your lord, and when we’re done with him, Hamilton will give me my information without a qualm.”

  With horror, Laura remembered the torture that had scarred her brother’s body. This unknown man, this smuggler, this traitor, intended to do the same to Hamilton.

  “M’lord never help ye.” Ernest sounded as scornful as possible for a man facing a gun. “A Hamilton’s honor is above all things.”

  “Normally I would agree with you,” the unknown said. “But Hamilton has a lady in that room with him. Her name is Laura Haver, and while I doubt they’re truly married—”

  “They wouldn’t lie to me!”

  “—I’ve seen how Hamilton looks at her.” The unknown chortled until he snorted. “To keep her safe, he’ll cooperate with me.”

  Shocked, Laura stepped back. She recognized that laugh.

  Farley. It was that little worm, Sir Farley Malthus, the one who ushered her into Hamilton’s London office with such obsequious grace while sneering at her desire to find her brother’s assassin.

  He’d taken her aside one day and told her how ludicrous she made herself, pretending that a mere woman could influence the grand workings of English government. At the time, she’d hated him for it, hated him even more for his insinuation she sought an illicit union with Hamilton, but never she imagined such a fussy little gossip could be a traitor and a murderer.

  Again she touched the pistol in the purse.

  But no, that wouldn’t do. She only had one shot, and Hamilton had told her assistance waited in the stable. Quickly and quietly, she made her way to the outer door and eased it open. As she stepped outside, she heard voices in the taproom. Swinging the door almost closed, she fled toward the stable.

  Mud clung to her skirt and sucked at her boots.

  Ronald’s diary hit her knee; the book came flying out of her pocket.

  She didn’t stop. The diary was a memento of her brother — but her brother would have told her to rescue the living.

  So she ran harder, right into the dark stable. Pausing, she listened, but she heard nothing behind her. She had escaped without being spotted.

  She groped her way along the stalls. A man waited within, Hamilton said, but how would she know if it was the right man? Might not Farley also have stationed someone in here to take care of any unwanted intruders?

  She sighed, her breath a frightened exhale.

  Without warning, something human and undersized hit her from the side.

  She tumbled over. Smacked the wall.

  Small hands reached for her throat.

  She knocked them aside.

  A boy’s voice demanded, “Where’s m’lord? Tell me what happened to m’lord.”

  When she didn’t respond at once, the boy’s hands grappled with her again.

  “Ye’re a woman!” He sounded disgusted, now. “Are ye that woman he saw on the cliffs?”

  “Are you the man he left stationed here?” she countered, wondering what to think.

  “What’s it to ye?”

  Of course, a boy to carry messages would be better than using a man, and it would keep him out of harm’s way, too. “If you are,” she said cautiously, “he might be in need of help.”

  The boy sprang off her. “What have ye done with m’lord?”

  “I haven’t done anything with him, but there are two men in the inn who will hurt him if you don’t get assistance.”

  “I’ll save him myself.”

  She snagged him as he started to run out the door. “Hamilton sent me down here with specific instructions that you go for help.” She lied, but that child should not foolishly run into danger. Not when she was here to be the fool instead. “He wants me to stay.”

  “Ye?” The boy sounded scornful. “Why would he want a girl when he could have me?”

  “Because I have a gun.”

  The lad paused. “That’s a choice reason. Do ye know how to shoot it?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “How do I know ye’re telling the truth?”

  Laura committed herself to Hamilton with her next words. “Because I work for the Seamaster.”

  The boy’s indrawn breath told her of his awe, and he answered, “That’s good enough fer me.” Like a barn owl swooping toward the open air, he was out the open door.

  When Laura stepped outside she couldn’t even see his form as he raced across the heath and into the dark.

  Looking up at the inn, she could see the light from the bedchamber where Hamilton lay, tied and naked.

  This wasn’t what she’d imagined when she tricked him.

  No. Not at all.

  For a mere moment, she covered her face with her gloved hand.

  Then she tucked her chin into her chest and marched toward the door of the inn.

  For all her knowledge of firearms and for all of her practice with the targets, she’d never shot a man — and feared to do so now. She feared it all: going upstairs, confronting two men bent on murder, seeing the accusation in Hamilton’s eyes.

  Because of her, Ronald’s murderer might go unpunished. Because of her, he might murder again. Because of her, this time it would be Hamilton — and she couldn’t stand to lose both men she loved to such wickedness.

  Crossing the yard, she swerved at the last moment and looked in the windows. The taproom was empty.

  What stupidity, to love a lord when she was nothing but a seamstress and a commoner. He’d made it clear he welcomed her into his bed, but she wasn’t stupid enough to believe his talk of marriage.

  The door still stood off the latch, just as she’d l
eft it when she fled, and she stuck her head in. Still nothing moved. Stepping inside, she left the door ajar for the help which would arrive.

  But would it arrive soon enough?

  Now she would go upstairs, and save Hamilton’s life.

  And if he wanted her to remain with him as a mistress, she’d do it. She had only enough strength to leave him once. And she’d made it no farther than the stable.

  If she didn’t save him … well, she knew herself well enough to recognize all the signs of rampaging infatuation.

  She would save him … or die at his side.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WHEN MEASURED against such a resolution, Laura’s fears seemed petty and small.

  Light spilled down from upstairs and she listened, straining her ears.

  Voices sounded up there. Men’s voices.

  Moving like a wraith, she crossed the floor.

  Farley’s voice rang out. “Untie him!”

  Grasping the hand rail, Laura climbed the stairs and moved down the hall.

  “I’m trying. I’m trying.” Ernest sounded surly. “M’lady’s quite a woman. These knots are well-done.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” Hamilton was cool and almost amused. “I’ve been struggling to free myself ever since the first time I saw her. I doubt I’ll ever get free.”

  Laura paused, warmed beyond reason, and waited just beyond of the square of light outside the chamber door.

  “Cut the damned things!” Farley said. “We haven’t got time for this nonsense.”

  “Haven’t got a knife,” Ernest answered. “Do you want me to go down to the kitchen and get one?”

  “No!” Farley snapped. “Here Use this one.”

  Laura heard the clatter as Farley threw his blade.

  Someone cursed. Ernest, she supposed, and she listened as he scrambled around on the floor.

  Farley warned, “Don’t imagine you can take me out with a puny thing like that knife.”

  Moving a step at a time through the shadows in the hall, Laura adjusted her position, angling to see in the door.

  Ernest held the knife. Sweat glistened on his forehead. He bowed toward the bed. “Beg pardon, m’lord. I’ve got to climb on the bed with ye. Beg pardon.” He wiped his forehead on his sleeve.