“We can leave.”
“And how is Mam to live? What’ll happen to the girls? What about yer boy?”
“I’ll go and take Pip.”
“And leave me with Scruggs asking why?” More shuffling. “C’mon.”
Fox waited while they passed and their footsteps grew distant, and finally breathed again, blood pounding fiercely on every nerve.
In spite of all of his instructions, Perry had lit a lamp and stood in a window.
His skin rippled and a smile fought its way out. It was one of her acts of defiance and a damned brilliant mistake. Davy and Gaz believed her to be the ghost of Lady Shaldon, who it seemed had a history of driving tenants away from this cottage and limiting the smugglers’ squatting to the stable and sheds.
More importantly, Davy and Gaz knew more about Lady Shaldon’s death. Shaldon would want the particulars, and Fox would get them and to his lordship, all in good time. He tamped down his nerves and watched the retreating shadows.
Maybe Perry could make herself useful. She’d dug in her heels anyway to the point that a twenty-four pounder wouldn’t blast her out of that cottage. To keep her safe, he’d have to stay close. Her presence now had a reason besides the obvious one banging around in his breeches, the one he could never give in to.
Once Davy and Gaz crested the road, he stowed the glass and picked his way down to the water.
Tap-tap-tap. Perry raised her head from the deal table in the kitchen.
Good God. She’d fallen asleep, and only the coals glowed in the oversized hearth. Across the table from her, Jenny was curled over two chairs, fast asleep.
Tap-tap-tap.
“Let me in,” a man said gruffly.
She leaned against the door. That was Fox’s voice, wasn’t it?
“Who’s there?”
He muttered the password and she slid the lock open.
Fox was a shadow wreathed in shadows. He was good at this business of being almost invisible. Perhaps that was another skill he could teach her.
His lip quirked up. “Let me in?”
She pulled the door wider, and wider still when she saw the tubs he had tucked under each arm.
“Smugglers’ booty,” she said. “Left behind? Or did you have to fight someone for it?”
His smirk grew into a full smile. “There’s more of these submerged in that cove down below. Too much for the men to carry. Let’s see what we have here.” He went to the pantry, came back with a kitchen knife, and began to work the lid.
One did not use one’s good stabbing dagger for such tasks, she guessed. “Will they be back tomorrow, do you think?”
“They won’t want to wait long.”
Jenny stirred, sat up, and rubbed her eyes. Her cap had slipped off and hair tumbled over her wary eyes. For but a moment she was that child again, waking up in a doorway, an eye out for the flesh peddlers.
Perry wished anew some happiness for the girl.
And that reminded her. “Where’s MacEwen?”
The lid came off and Perry leaned closer to sniff. She turned away to sneeze, waving her hand in front of her nose.
Fox laughed. “It’s gin.”
“Dreadful gin.” Though in truth, she had never smelled the stuff.
He dipped a finger in and tasted it. “It needs letting down. I wished for brandy.” He walked away and came back with the bucket of water, a ladle and a cup.
Jenny was fully awake now, watching intently. “Is Mr. MacEwen coming back?”
“He’ll be along in a bit.” He dipped out spirits and added water.
Jenny moved closer. “You’re watering the gin?”
“It’s brought in over proof,” Perry said. Years ago, her brothers had discussed the free trade practices over some badly mixed brandy. They’d discussed who of their peers with Kentish estates could fetch them a cask of pure spirits so they could add good water from Cransdall’s well.
Fox glanced at her, his eyes warm with humor. “Know a bit about the free trade, do you?”
“More than a bit.” Conversations came to her, talks between Bakeley and her mother. Charley had gone off to school about the time Bakeley’s formal education ended and he came home to learn his life’s work from Mother. The three of them were seldom in London during those long years of war. Quiet country nights had been filled with discussions of history and current affairs as well as farming and horses and commerce. Her education had not been as thorough as Bakeley’s, but she would never need a husband to run an estate for her.
She smiled back at him watching him spoon spirits and water, stirring and sniffing.
“That should do it.” He passed her the cup.
“I’ve never had gin. How will I know if it’s right?” She sniffed. “It smells like…” She sniffed again. “It smells like the green glen near the lake at Cransdall.”
She looked up into Fox’s eyes, swimming in a darkness that sent tingles through her.
Perhaps he remembered the lake, and the night she’d run into him. He’d teased her without mercy that night.
The corner of his mouth quirked up again, in a way that made her grow very warm.
She cast her gaze down at the clear liquid and sipped. The zing of the alcohol burning the back of her throat was bearable, the taste was not. “I don’t like it.”
“I’ve tasted gin,” Jenny said, not very subtly. “Used to have a nip now and then when Ma…” She stopped and bit her lip. Jenny had been one of the older girls taken off the streets by Perry’s friend, Lady Hackwell, back when the lady was plain Miss Harris.
“Then you’re our second expert.” She handed Jenny the cup.
The girl drank and let the spirits sit on her tongue, like a lord they’d hosted at a dinner last spring. The high-in-the-instep fellow had taken the glass of wine, sniffed and swirled and smacked his lips until Charley had chortled and joked about wine connoisseurs loud enough for the fribble to be rattled.
Charley’s fun-making had indeed rattled the man right off his high horse and into some parliamentary plot of Father’s. God save her from her devious relations.
“What do you think?” Fox asked.
“It’s good. A bit weak. You mixed it two parts to one?”
He took the cup back and drank it down. “More like three to one. Yes. Too weak.”
He dipped out more, diluted it again, and shared it with Jenny.
“Better,” she said. Is the barrel pure alcohol, do you think, sir?”
“I’ve heard sailors mix a bit with their gunpowder to test the proof,” Perry said. “If the proof is too low, it takes the life out of the powder and it won’t blow.”
Oh, drat. She sounded like a pedantic bluestocking.
Jenny’s face lit. “I’ve heard that, miss.”
Her heart eased a bit. Like her, Jenny had picked up knowledge where she could.
“No need to fire up the cottage, though. We know it’s pure.” Perry went to get another cup and handed it to Fox. “You and Jenny have a nightcap and then up to bed. It’s almost dawn. I’ll have tea and wait up for MacEwen.”
“Oh, no, miss—”
“You can take the next watch, Jenny. Do you think the gang will be looking for their missing tubs, Fox?”
He smiled up at her from his mixing. “I’m counting on it.”
That smile started up a great buzzing inside her. She turned away and busied herself heating water and spooning tea leaves. Fox had a plan. And he hadn’t said anything more about sending her away.
Every nerve in her body sprang to life, tingling warmth igniting a blaze in her like his smile was two hundred proof spirits and she’d been packed with black powder. This was why her sisters-in-law went all moon-eyed around her brothers. This was why women did foolish things for men. This was it.
Please, God, before this was over, she would be very foolish.
Chapter 11
This far into the night, the free traders hurriedly stowed their booty in a cellar at Scruggs’s Inn and t
ook their leave of the place, breaking into pairs and heading back to their crofts and hovels.
It was a spot forsaken by all but the evil fairies. No overnight coaches plied this side road on regular runs, just the occasional lost traveler who’d missed the turning to Scarborough. The elderly ostler was part deaf. The young one would be asleep in the loft.
MacEwen saw the light in the window of Scruggs’s one parlor, crept stealthily along the wall and stationed himself in the bracken below it. Scruggs kept enough rough weeds here that there’d be no tell-tale footprints left behind, and this spot had been tramped down by the dog MacEwen had seen wallowing here when he’d stopped earlier. Thank God, the lazy cur was gone now, probably asleep in the stables.
The window was open to the cool air and Scruggs’s bellow was unmistakable. The other man’s intonations—clipped and nasally, almost froggy—were a bit harder to discern. Mayhap he’d spent his life dodging men like MacEwen lurking outside his window.
“It’s but one man in the cottage. Not his man. Some queer bookish gent, Goodfellow, took the place for the summer. Said summat about a death in the family and wanting to get out of the crush in London. That’s all.”
Scruggs’s belligerent tones ended with a whimper. Sure, and this man was Carvelle. Shaldon had set MacEwen and the others tracking the scoundrel all over England and half the Continent.
“No,” Scuggs said. “Don’t worry about revenuers. The Riding Officer’s green as spring corn, and Glenna’s happy to be ploughed.” He growled out a laugh. “Turned up his nose at her, did that Goodfellow.”
Carvelle spoke quietly. MacEwen couldn’t make out the words.
“As long as he gets his spirits and his cut, Sir Richard’s happy to be locked up in that moldy manor. Don’t bestir himself for nothing short of capital murder.”
The hair rose on MacEwen’s neck and a scent wafted his way. The high gorse rustled.
“Someone’s out there.” Carvelle voice came from above.
He melted back into the wall and slipped out his blade. Two golden eyes stared at him, teeth bared.
The window sash rattled. The fox jerked his head up and ran off through the yard.
“Bloody fox,” Scruggs shouted. “Boy,” he bellowed out the window.
The elderly servant stumbled from the stables, lantern in hand. Scruggs shouted oaths and instructions about his chickens and made quieter requests to his guest to let him show him his room.
By this time, the fox was long gone, and the inn’s meager staff would be stirring themselves. MacEwen would learn no more.
One Day Earlier
Lady Sirena, the Viscountess Bakeley, was all lovely elegance in her fashionable morning gown as she took a bite of marmalade toast and unsealed the first letter on the stack next to her breakfast plate. No one would believe that only a year or so ago, Lady Jane Montfort had fished the girl out of a hedgerow on her family estate.
“I’m surprised to see you up so early, my dear.” Lady Jane Montfort slipped into a chair across from Sirena. Sunlight streamed into the breakfast room of Lord Shaldon’s huge home near Berkeley Square. In this quiet corner of the house, a few chirping birds in the garden added their sweet noise to the comforting sounds of distant traffic. “I am glad we left the party early, but even so it was very late. Perhaps you should have some more rest in your present condition.”
“I’m fine, dear Jane. Bakeley has already left for some meeting regarding the coronation, and Shaldon is off to his study already. Kincaid came in early this morning bearing secrets.” She grinned. “Will the torment to my curiosity never cease? In any case, we have this grand room all to ourselves. Have we not fallen into the pot of gold, my lady?” She set the letter aside and picked up another.
It was Lady Jane’s turn to laugh. “You’ve done me a great kindness allowing this visit to your new home.”
Lady Sirena glanced up and smiled. “Turnabout is fair play.”
They both knew this “visit” had no fixed ending date. Sirena’s fortuitous marriage to Shaldon’s heir had been a blessing for both the orphaned Sirena and for her benefactress. Jane’s cousin, Lord Cheswick, would arrive in London any day and insist that she come stay with him and his petulant wife. She wasn’t so sure she would go. She’d been invited to stay on at Shaldon House, and she could live very economically and peacefully here, as long as she kept a careful balance between saying too little and saying too much.
The thought stirred a sadness in her. Even a lady of a certain age liked to have her own home.
“Ah. A letter from Gracie.” Sirena unfolded the paper and squinted at the lines. “Little Reina has had a belly ache from eating too many early berries. Their new estate continues to be lovely. Charley has been teaching Gracie how to ride and taking her around to meet the tenants.”
“But I thought her last letter suggested…well, is that a good idea?”
Sirena waved a slim hand. “It’s not certain. In any case, we are neither of us so far along.” She flipped the paper over. “She says Perry has gone off to visit a friend in Yorkshire.”
“By herself?”
“She’s taken Jenny.”
Lady Jane rested her fork on the plate. The maid, Jenny, had the makings of a wild little thing, as did Lady Perry, come to think of it. “What friend did she visit?”
“Hmm. She says here it is Cecilia Broadmoor.”
Jane squinted at her cup. After so many years on the fringes of Britain’s wide social scene, her memory of names was encyclopedic. “I know her. She’s a bit older than Perry and…the last I’d heard, she’d married and gone off to India. She must be back visiting her family. I attended a house party once many years ago at an estate near theirs and —”
She bit her lip. Before Charley and Gracie left for their new home, they’d had a lively discussion about Yorkshire families.
Lady Perry’s interest then had been keen.
She felt Sirena’s gaze on her. “The Broadmoors live in Lincolnshire,” Jane said.
Sirena bit back a smile. “Perry has bolted.”
Jane paced to the window and looked out, unseeing. Lady Sirena had done her own bolting a few months earlier and had been lucky to land in Lord Bakeley’s noble arms, but it had been a near thing. Lord Shaldon was rounding up old enemies from the war, and at least one was still out there for whom Shaldon’s only daughter would be a grand prize.
Shaldon was such a consummate actor his children thought he knew everything that went on. She knew better. They’d met many years before, when she had been not much more than a child.
She went back to the table, downed the rest of her tea, and wished Sirena a good day.
“Are you sure you want to go tell him?” Sirena asked. “Perry may never speak with you again.”
“I’m afraid if I don’t tell him, she won’t survive to speak to me again.” She sighed. “You of all people know the dangers, Sirena.”
Shaldon had holed up with Kincaid in his small study, and both stood when she entered, two tall striking men of late middle years, and each seemingly unattached. Kincaid was the shorter of the two, a dark-haired Scot who had served as Shaldon’s second for so many years the men didn’t need to talk to communicate.
Kincaid’s personal history was something of a cipher. Not part of the ton, he’d appeared at his lordship’s side sometime after Jane had met Shaldon, but nevertheless, many years ago. Where Shaldon went, he went, unless Shaldon sent him off on a tasking. He was related to Shaldon’s eldest son’s wife, Paulette.
Jane had exchanged no more than a few polite words with him, weighing his responses carefully. It had been enough to judge his character favorably. Whether he had a wife and family tucked away somewhere, she didn’t know. She hadn’t touched upon that topic with him.
Shaldon, on the other hand, was widowed. Either man was vital enough to take a much younger woman to wife. Or perhaps they preferred to pay for such arrangements. Men could be a fickle, dispassionate lot.
Sha
ldon invited her to sit, but she shook her head. They were obviously at their business, and she’d dispense with the niceties. “Sirena has received a letter from Grace. We believe Lady Perry may have departed their home using subterfuge.”
Chapter 12
Shaldon sat down heavily.
“Bolted.” Kincaid leaned a hand on the desk.
“She said she was visiting Cecilia Broadmoor in Yorkshire. But Cecilia married some time ago and the couple were posted to India. And the Broadmoors’ estate is in—”
“Lincolnshire.” Shaldon’s dark gaze dropped to the sheaf of papers in front of him. “How careless of her.”
Careless? Did he not mean thoughtless? Or reckless?
He sighed. “Well, we know where she’s gone.”
“I can leave in less than an hour,” Kincaid said.
Shaldon shoved the papers into a file. “I’ll go also.”
Her heart accelerated. He had important obligations here. Perry must indeed be in danger. “You have the coronation, my lord.”
His dark eyes gleamed. “Matters of state, Jane. The King will understand.”
“Carriage or horseback?” Kincaid asked.
“Horseback, I think.”
“I’ll meet you in the stables.” Kincaid left.
The rapid-fire arrangements made her head spin. She turned to follow Kincaid.
“Jane.” Shaldon’s voice stopped her.
“Tell me. You seem to know everyone. I recall that you mentioned the name of a baronet from near Scarborough?”
A baronet. Near Scarborough. She frowned and then immediately caught herself. Frowning only deepened the lines between her eyebrows.
She did recall a baronet with an estate near Scarborough. “Sir Richard Fenwick.” A tall fellow with an ancient holding rumored to be falling down. A bit of a hermit, he was. She conjured up a face from a ball many, many years ago—dark hair, sullen eyes.
The Counterfeit Lady: A Regency Romance (Sons of the Spy Lord Book 4) Page 7
