Daring Masquerade

by Mary Balogh

  “A good thing we was passing this way,” her captor said with a grunt.

  Even her terror became of little importance to Kate for the following ten minutes. It was replaced entirely by pain. The two men walked quietly but briskly away from the cottage in the direction of the cliffs and the sea and then clambered down a cliff path to a small pebbled beach below. Kate, hanging head-down against the back of the larger man, felt as if her head would burst from the pressure of the blood pounding through it and as if her mouth were being cut to ribbons by the handkerchief. She almost choked and had to fight in a blind panic for breath when she tried to swallow. She tried to keep her bound hands against her back, but sometimes they swung backward painfully, pulling at the muscles of her shoulders. Once during the descent her knuckles grazed against some rock. She tried to keep her eyes shut but could not seem to stop herself from watching in terror the precipices that swung below her vision as they descended.

  Finally they were down on the beach and she became aware of other hushed male voices.

  “What ’as Fred got there?” she heard one voice whisper.

  “There was a wench snooping outside the cottage,” Fred’s companion explained. “From the ’ouse, like as not. We brought ’er down ’ere.”

  “Are you mad?” someone hissed. “She hadna seen anything. Nothing’s ’appened yet. Yer should ’ave just bumped ’er over the ’ead and dumped ’er somewhere close to the ’ouse. Now she’ll know bloody well what’s going on. We’ll ’ave the coast guard at our ’eads.”

  “Fred and Jake never were ones for sensible thinking,” someone else said.

  “Lord,” another voice said in an awed whisper. “It’s Mrs. Mannering. She’s from the house, all right. You numbskull, Fred. Why bring her here? Now we’ll have to do something about her. And we have never had to do violence before.”

  “I’m taking ’er into the cave,” Fred said sullenly. “ ’E can decide later what to do with ’er.”

  Kate felt half-dead by the time she was finally set down. She was sitting on sand; she could feel that much. But it was several minutes before she could raise her head and take note of her surroundings. She was sitting inside a cave, which was large enough to delight children perhaps, but not as large as she would have expected a smuggler’s hideout to be. It was empty of anything except one dim lamp hanging from a projection of rock in such a manner that its light would be visible only from inside the cave. There was one man standing at the entrance, his back to her. She suspected it was probably the man she had first seen: Jake.

  She would not be able to save Nicholas now. Sir Harry Tate had found him and somehow he would bring him harm. There did not seem to be any soldiers around, but anyway, Sir Harry could be up to no good. “Your friend may live to see another day,” he had said to Mr. Dalrymple that afternoon, ominous words if she had ever heard any. Nicholas was going to be led into a trap, and he would hang. The one consolation to her was that she would not be there to see it. She would already be long dead, her throat slit on the sand of this cave.

  Terror came bounding back.

  Nicholas Seyton arrived at the cottage rather later than he would have liked. But he had not wished to retire too early at Barton Abbey. Even insomniacs do not go to bed immediately after dinner. When he did arrive, it was to find Russ Evans standing at the gate, looking dubiously up at the sky. As usual, the night of a new moon had been chosen so that there would be as much darkness as possible. But the clouds this evening actually made the sky light and luminous. Well, Nicholas said, clapping his friend heartily on the shoulder eventually, there was nothing they could do about the matter now. The ship from France would be sending its boat into the bay within the next hour or so. They would just have to trust to good fortune and the sharp senses of Josh Pickering and a few other men who had been stationed in places where they might note the approach of the coast guard.

  He was pleased to discover that all was ready. The cellar at the cottage had been cleared out ready to receive the boxes and casks that would fill it for the next two days until the smuggled items could be distributed. It was a risky business, hauling all those items up from the beach and across the open ground to the cottage, but it was really the only sensible thing to do. The cave was neither large enough nor sufficiently concealed for them to risk leaving everything there.

  So he was not late after all. All he had to do was go inside the house to don his wig and mask and then follow Russ to the beach. Mrs. Evans and Parkin would remain at the cottage to oversee the arrival of the smuggled goods and their orderly stowing in the cellar. He had worn the mask and wig almost from the start of his work with the smugglers, rather than the woolen cap and the coal-blackened face favored by the other men. He supposed that their disguise was more practical, but he liked the idea of his own. He knew that the very blond hair was especially unwise. But it was so different from his own hair that he felt it would offer sufficient protection from recognition if he were spotted from a distance.

  In actual fact, he never had been spotted. This smuggling business was by no means a frequent event. Sometimes two months, sometimes three, passed between shipments. And although the coast guard knew that smuggling did happen in the area, they had never come close to catching any of the culprits. Indeed sometimes a whole operation was conducted without their seeming aware that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

  When Nicholas reached the beach, he walked to the water’s edge. The other men—some dozen of them-were also watching the water tensely. And they did not have long to wait. Soon a ship’s boat was rowed almost silently up onto the beach and all the men went to work lifting boxes of silk and lace and kegs of brandy out of the boat and carrying them up the beach to be stowed temporarily in the cave. All worked quickly and silently. They had done this often enough that each man knew his job. Nicholas meanwhile spoke with the French captain who had come with the boat to receive his payment and to make arrangements for the next run. The usual wrangling continued during most of the hauling process. The captain asked too much for his cargo. He must be satisfied with less. He pressed too hard for an earlier run. The next one must not be within two months at the soonest.

  Finally the last box had been carried to the cave, and the Frenchman climbed back into the boat, shrugging and gesticulating, but satisfied with his night’s work. Nicholas watched the boat grow smaller as it drew out into the bay, and turned to watch the men, stretching and resting themselves for a few minutes before beginning the far more demanding haul up the cliff path and across to the cottage. One of them wandered toward him.

  “Begging pardon, Master Nick,” he said, “but there be one small problem tonight.”

  Nicholas was alert immediately. His eyes moved to the clifftop. “What is it, Jake?” he asked.

  “There were a wench snooping around the cottage,” Jake said. “Fred and me caught ’er at it.”

  Nicholas’ eyes narrowed. “Snooping?’ he said. “What did you do about her?”

  “Fred carried ’er down ’ere,’ Jake explained. “She’s trussed up inside' the cave, Master Nick. She won’t escape, ’ave no fear.”

  Nicholas stared at him, speechless for a moment. “You have her a prisoner in the cave?” he said. “Are you mad? Who is she, in the name of all that is wonderful?”

  “She’s from the ’ouse,’ Jake said a little uncertainly. He did not like the look in the eyes that gleamed through the black mask. “Mrs. Mannering, Barret says.”

  Nicholas closed his eyes, relief washing over him for the first moment. Then he snapped his eyes open again. “And you have her . . . ‘trussed up,’ as you put it? And she has been there since before the boat came? Why did you not tell me this before? You had better assure me now, Jake, that neither you nor Fred has laid one violent hand on her.”

  He was striding up the beach even as Jake, trotting along beside him, was assuring him that they had not harmed one hair of Mrs. Mannering’s head.

  Kate was at the back of the
cave behind piled boxes and kegs. Her mouth was cruelly bound, Nicholas could see as he elbowed and kneed his way past the obstructions. Her hands were tied behind her, the handkerchief that was knotted around her wrists also tied to the handle of one of the boxes. She was staring at him, her eyes growing wider ... with fury.

  “All right, Katherine,” he said, kneeling in front of her and tackling the knot at the back of her head, “I shall have you free in a moment, and you may rip up at me to your heart’s content. Only quietly, please. Just don’t screech.”

  “How can I screech . . . Oh!” Kate grimaced with pain as her mouth and jaw moved freely again. Her tongue felt like a dry rag in her mouth. “When my mouth has been cut to ribbons. Ouch! Oh, ouch!” This last was a response to the freeing of her wrists, which set up an almost unbearable tingling in her hands.

  “Katherine,” he said. “Oh, my poor Katherine. Are you badly hurt?”

  “Get away from me,” she said as he tried to take one of her hands in order to chafe her wrist and start the blood circulating again. “Don’t touch me, you blackguard, you. Highwayman. Ouch! Kidnapper. Seducer. Ooh, ow! Smuggler. And to think I risked coming out tonight to warn you of danger again. You deserve everything that will finally happen to you, Nicholas Seyton. Ohhh!” She gasped and hung her hands helplessly before her.

  Men entered the cave at that moment and began to lift the boxes closest to the entrance. One or two of them peered in curiously. One of them came a little way inside and called to Nicholas in a hoarse whisper.

  “What do you think, Master Nick?” he asked. “Do you want me to take care of the wench? Snooping around, she was, sir.”

  “No, thank you, Fred,” Nicholas said dryly. “I think you have taken care of her well enough for tonight. Fortunately for you, my man, Mrs. Mannering is a friend and will not betray us. Otherwise you would have placed us in an awkward situation indeed.”

  “I am certainly not a friend!” Kate retorted. “And I can hardly wait to get away from here so that I might inform the coast guard of just what is going on under their very noses.”

  Nicholas turned toward her and grinned. “Not so loudly, love,” he said. “Some of the men might believe you.”

  “Then some of the men have more sense than you,” she said.

  He grinned again. “We will talk later,” he said. “Stay here, Katherine, until I come back. And please do not try any heroics. If you try to leave, one of the men will catch you and haul you back here again. And I cannot guarantee that they will do so with any more gentleness than Fred and Jake seem to have shown. Stay here please.”

  He left the cave, but he did not do his share of carrying as he usually did. He merely made sure that Russ Evans was the first up the cliff path so that he could stand watch at the top and halt any movement below him if any unauthorized person happened to be within sight. And he stood and watched the line of men disappearing up the path, each laden with goods. He did not have to give directions because every man knew his job. Almost as soon as the last man reached the top of the cliff, the first was on his way back down again.

  He stood there for nearly half an hour until the last of the boxes had been taken away. And then he waited for Russ to join him and they spent their usual amount of time brushing the sand of the beach so that there was no sign left of telltale footprints. He sent Russ home, promising to sweep out the sand of the cave himself. Then he went back inside.

  Kate had stayed inside the cave. Not that she had done so at all meekly. But weighing the odds against her chance of escaping, she had wisely decided that she had better wait. It had seemed as if dozens of men had entered and reentered the cave, first bringing the boxes in and then taking them all out again. And they all looked like hefty brutes, with their blackened faces and wool caps pulled low over their brows. She had no wish to be caught by one of them again. And she certainly had not liked the look of that cliff path, though she admitted that it might not look quite so formidable when viewed from the right way up.

  But what chiefly convinced her to stay was her need to see Nicholas Seyton face-to-face again so that she could tell him exactly what she thought of him. She was not going to miss that opportunity! So she was pacing the floor of the cave when he came back inside. Her hands had long ago recovered from the dreadfully painful pins-and-needles sensation, and her tongue felt like a tongue again. One of the men had brought her a scoop of water from goodness knew where and she had gulped it down gratefully. She was ready.

  “Katherine,” Nicholas said, coming toward her with extended hands, “are you fully recovered? I seem doomed to bring you terror.”

  “Terror!” Kate said with a contemptuous toss of her head. “Contempt, more like, sir. I might have guessed you would be worth no more than to be the leader of a band of ruffians. Smuggling, sir! How low can you get! And I do not doubt that you would have added murder to your crimes tonight if my identity had turned out to be any other.”

  “Ah, Katherine,” he said, smiling at her, “you cannot believe that, surely. I admit that that oaf of a Fred might have placed us all in a damnably awkward situation, but there would have been no murder, my dear, We would have had to solve the problem somehow. I suspect this would have been our last such enterprise.”

  “I suspect it will be anyway,” Kate said. “I have no intention of keeping my mouth shut about this, Nicholas Seyton. This is a terrible crime you are involved in.”

  “Is it?” He asked quietly. “Are you quite sure of that, Katherine? Oh, I grant you that what we do is against the law and a capital offense to boot. But whom are we really harming? This is a small operation. We bring scarce and desirable goods to those families that can afford their price. We bring a little extra money to the poor families who live with the constant threat of starvation. A poor fishing season, a poor crop of vegetables, a number of other seemingly minor disasters: all these things can spell the difference between survival and starvation to many of the people living hereabouts. I have lived all my life here, Katherine. I have seen it on occasion: thin, crying children, and even worse, thin children who are too exhausted and hopeless to cry.”

  “And what about you?” she accused. “Are you starving?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I have always lived a life of privilege, Katherine. I believe I was as outraged as you when I first knew there were smugglers in this area. I set out to find them, and did better than I hoped for one night. They found me, as they found you tonight. Fortunately, most of them felt kindly disposed toward me, especially the servants from the Abbey who are of their number. After they had finished talking to me, I had agreed to be their interpreter with the French captain who puts in here. And I discovered on my first encounter with him he was driving an impossibly hard bargain with these poor folk. Before I knew it, I was far more than the mere interpreter. I was accepted as the leader of the group. I do not have the heart to abandon them. They need the money that these runs bring them.”

  “And you enjoy the danger and excitement too,” Kate said.

  He grinned. “Yes, I do,” he said. “You are quite right. And you must not betray us, Katherine. Not them, anyway. Betray me as your kidnapper, if you must, and I shall fight my own case before a magistrate. But leave these people be. Think of all the wives and children who will suffer if their menfolk land in jail, never to return to them again.”

  “Ohhh!” Kate beat the air at her sides with her fists. “Why do you always do this to me? I know you are wrong. I know there are all sorts of arguments that could be used against you. What would happen to law and order, for example, if everyone could choose which laws he was justified in breaking? Why can I not argue against you?”

  “I think because you have a kind heart,” he said with a smile.

  “A bleeding heart is what you mean,” she said. “One should not feel kindly disposed toward lawbreakers. And you. You seem quite determined to put your neck in a noose.”

  “By no means,” he said. “Come, Katherine. Let us sit down for a wh
ile and you shall tell me of the danger you came to warn me of tonight. Will you spread your cloak on the sand? I am afraid I have none.”

  “Oh.” Kate’s eyes widened as he took the cloak from her shoulders and spread it on the sand of the cave floor. She had totally forgotten. “That man was after you. He was at the cottage.”

  “What man?” be asked, indicating with a sweep of the hand that she could sit down.

  “Sir Harry Tate,” she said. “He is one of the guests at the Abbey. And he knows you. He met you, he said, at Mr. Dalrymple’s home. And Mr. Dalrymple is at the Abbey too.”

  “Yes,” be agreed. “Charles Dalrymple and I were at Cambridge together. And I recall meeting Tate.”

  “He knows where you are living,” Kate said. “And he came to the cottage tonight. I saw him talking to Mr. Evans just before I was caught and brought here. I was creeping around to the back of the house in the hope of getting to you before be did.”

  He seated himself beside her and reached out to take one of her hands. “You are incredibly brave, Katherine,” he said. “You came tonight to warn me that Tate was after my blood? Why might it not have been a social call?”

  “Because I heard him this afternoon behind the lodge planning to come here late tonight. And he was going to use Josh to help him. You must be careful of whom you trust, Nicholas. What has happened to Sir Harry? Maybe he has hidden somewhere and has witnessed everything that has happened tonight.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Do not worry about Tate,” he said. “You saw him outside the cottage? Talking to Evans? I have a loyal follower there, you know. Evans quite convinced the man that I was not at the cottage and never have been. And he watched him ride for the Abbey again.”

  “Are you sure?” Kate asked. “I do not trust the man. He appears to be lazy and bored, but I have the feeling that he is very alert and very clever behind the facade. He is dangerous. Dangerous to you. I am sure of it. I wish he had not come. He was not invited, you know. But he was visiting Mr. Dalrymple and came here with him.”