Spyfall

by Carter, Elizabeth Ellen

All he wanted since leaving France was a place to dump Doyle’s illicit goods, find a middling meal, and a bed without bugs in it where he could sleep for a week without drawing attention to himself.

  He had hoped to find it at The Queen’s Head.

  Bugger and bollocks!

  If he showed up directly at St. Sennen, he’d get no peace and quiet. No doubt he’d also receive a visit from Lillian Doyle, and she was the last creature he wanted to set eyes on.

  Perhaps he should set out to sea again. He could be in Ireland by nightfall and sell off Doyle’s goods as his own – that would teach the prig for keeping him moldering in prison for nigh on eight months.

  “Hey ho! That’s the Sprite!”

  Nate recognized the voice. He dropped the barrel on the deck of his ketch and shaded his eyes to look for a familiar face.

  “Clem Pascoe, you old bastard!”

  He found a last reserve of energy and hurriedly left the boat to where his friend waited. For an ugly, old midget of a man, Clem was the finest sight he had seen yet.

  “And it’s the devil himself!” his friend replied. “After so long away, I thought Neptune had claimed you for one of his own!”

  Nate clasped Clem’s shoulders with true affection.

  “A sight for sore eyes you are, too!”

  It was strange – Nate could feel himself smile and respond but the pounding headache grew worse. A cramp cut across his gut. Clem’s face turned from overjoyed to shock, just before Nate doubled over.

  “Get him out of the sun,” ordered a female voice, but it did not belong to Mrs. Linwood. “I’ll get this pirate a bed.”

  He managed to raise his head to see a shorter woman hurry away with the dog at her heels. He felt his weight supported by Clem on one side; to his other, the mysterious Mrs. Susannah Linwood.

  He stumbled over the uneven paddock ground and Clem held him more firmly around the chest. The man bit back a curse. If Nate wasn’t in so much pain, he would have chuckled at his friend’s effort to mind his manners in front of the woman.

  “What did those Frenchies do to you, man? I can feel your ribs!”

  “Long story,” Nate gasped.

  Chapter Four

  Peggy bustled about the kitchen with an efficiency and intensity that left Susannah feeling useless. She returned to the bar with the plan to stay out of the way and stay there until she had washed, dried, and polished every last glass and goblet to within an inch of its life.

  She watched the light change through the windows as the day advanced. Now, the setting sun cast the landscape in a warm peach hue. The ticking wall clock told her the first of the regular evening diners would be here in about an hour.

  “Well, I’ll say this about our guest,” Peggy called to her amid the banging of pots and pans, “he’s certainly quiet.”

  Indeed, Nathaniel Payne had accepted convalescence with little argument – which worried Susannah just a little bit. No man who could stand on his own two feet wanted to be coddled. But then, he could barely stand, could he? She offered to call for the doctor, but he refused it, although he did eat the beef broth Peggy had prepared before collapsing into bed.

  That was over a day ago now and he had slept since.

  “Where’s he come from, I ask?” Peggy continued. “I’d have pried it all out of Clem, but Old Boots disappeared as quick as you please once you got the pirate upstairs.”

  Susannah heard a creak from the floorboards above and glanced up to the ceiling. “Clem mentioned something about France,” she replied, lowering her voice a little.

  “Oooh, he must be a smuggler! But that doesn’t explain why he’s been away for so long.”

  No. No, it didn’t.

  Against her better judgement, she had allowed Clem to talk her into storing Nate Payne’s smuggled goods in the boatshed temporarily until the man recovered.

  “Don’t you worry none, Missus,” he told her. “Two days from now, you can forget you ever saw Nate and the Sprite.”

  But the truth was she did worry.

  Even after two years in the grave, Jack Moorcroft gave her cause to worry even now – and her fear took the form of a ledger she kept under her mattress. Not even Peggy knew about it. She had only discovered it herself by accident after she had sold up the house at Lydd.

  It had been in a secret drawer in her husband’s large, oak desk.

  The small, leather-backed volume listed names, addresses, and sums. Large figures they were, too – amounts of two hundred, three hundred, five hundred pounds. And beside the amounts were the description of goods. Jewelry mostly – diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, but also silverware such as candles and platters. It was a veritable treasure trove.

  None of it had been familiar. Certainly nothing so fine had ever passed through her doors that she had seen in seven years of marriage. The bitter truth was that not only was her husband a brute, but he was also a criminal, a fence, receiving goods stolen from the great houses in London.

  She knew only one of Jack’s associates, a man by the name of Robert Lawnton. He had looked respectable enough, but there was an air of menace about him that frightened her as much as Jack had done.

  Lawnton had shown up the morning of Jack’s disappearance. He did not take kindly to the news his partner was missing. The look he gave her when she told him was full of unspoken threats that she knew he was capable of carrying out. He insisted on joining the search party.

  She had not seen him since Jack’s inquest, but she knew in her bones that while he lived, there would be unfinished business between them.

  She shuddered. Two years and four hundred miles hardly seemed any distance at all.

  There were simply too many things she wanted to forget. But no matter how hard she tried, there they were, lurking at the edge of her consciousness, just out of sight. The idea that they would one day return to destroy her would not be quelled.

  “Can I help with those?” said an unexpectedly close voice.

  She fumbled the glass in her hands, which were soon enveloped by two much larger ones.

  The captain of the Sprite now stood before her.

  “Easy there!” said Nate. “I don’t know how much bad luck it is to break a glass, but I know it’s seven years bad luck to break a mirror.”

  For such large hands, they were gentle. They cradled hers rather than gripped. When she finally pulled herself together enough to look into his grey eyes, she found them kind rather than mocking.

  “Only bad luck for anyone stepping on it,” she answered.

  Having seen she was now composed, Nate took away his hands. She put the glass gently on the bar.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.

  She picked up a cloth to continue polishing. “You didn’t… I didn’t expect you to be up, that’s all.”

  The expression Nate returned suggested he didn’t quite believe the answer, but was content not to press further.

  “Is there one for me? A polishing cloth? Since Clem isn’t here, I may as well do something useful.”

  “But you’re a guest.”

  “Until I can get paid for my goods, you’ll just have to consider me a hired hand, instead.”

  Susannah handed him the rag she was using and reached under the bar for another.

  “You’re a smuggler.” Her tone was as flat as her mood.

  “I take it you don’t approve?”

  She shook her head. How could she condone such a thing considering the “enterprise” her late husband engaged in?

  “Laws are to be obeyed,” she said softly.

  “Including bad laws? Taxes set so exorbitantly high that the cost of goods is higher than decent men can afford?” Nate set down one glass and picked up another to continue polishing. “A man is a better custodian of the fruits of his own honest living than some man in Parliament, is he not?”

  “I might agree, except smuggling is not honest.”

  He shrugged. “Those selling the goods get paid a price t
hey’re happy with and those buying pay a price they’re happy with. It’s only the big wigs at Westminster who are upset. Smuggling will disappear as soon as the tariffs reduce. Perhaps the representatives should learn to manage their money better, like the rest of us do.”

  “And you get a cut from both the seller and the buyer.”

  “Enough to make it worth the risk.”

  “Is that why you do it? The excitement of staying one step ahead of the revenuers?”

  “Perhaps that was true in my younger days, but eight months in a French prison is enough to change a man.”

  The conversation trailed off as they worked on polishing the remaining glasses.

  Susannah supposed she could be persuaded that there was a difference between smuggling and the outright theft and receipt of stolen goods. If Jack had been caught, would it have changed him? Somehow, she thought not.

  And what of his ledger? Should she hand it in to the authorities? The goods had been destined for foreign shores – France, Flanders, Holland, Spain. There would be no hope of recovery. It would only be of value to one man – Robert Lawnton – and the threat of its exposure was the only weapon she had against him.

  Soon, delicious savory aromas were emerging from the kitchen and the work of polishing the glasses was done.

  She looked up again and found herself caught by Nate Payne’s eyes, silvery in the late afternoon sunlight. He said nothing, but he waited until he had her full attention.

  She ought to be frightened by such an intense gaze but, for some reason, she was not. Strange how aware of his masculinity she was, and yet it was different to the force of power shown by Jack Moorcroft.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, little more than an undertone.

  “I’m sorry to have put you in an uncomfortable position, Mrs. Linwood. For what it’s worth, my word is good – for a smuggler. Those goods will be out of your boatshed by this time tomorrow.”

  She drew breath to steady her rapidly beating heart. “I… I feel I owe you a further explanation, Mr. Payne. Peggy and I are still new in St. Sennen and…”

  Nate shook his head. Once more, she felt his gentle but firm hand over hers. She managed to pull her gaze away from his eyes and was drawn to where their hands touched, his deeply tanned skin in contrast to her pale hand.

  “Then say no more. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

  Susannah jumped at the sound of the kitchen door being flung open.

  “Duchess, do you think the pirate will want his tea upstairs?”

  Nate pulled his hand away.

  Peggy gave Susannah a puzzled frown, before looking past her to see Nate on the other side of the bar.

  “Oh,” she gasped before flushing crimson.

  Nate offered Susannah’s companion a lazy smile – one of those confident smiles designed to charm unwary women. Susannah took it as a sure sign he’d heard his nickname. “I’d be delighted to dine with you ladies tonight,” he said.

  Peggy was having none of it. She matched the pirate’s look with a very direct look of her own, one that said she had his measure and was more than a match for him.

  “You try that charm of yours on someone else, Pirate. Mrs. Linwood and I are much too busy to dally with the likes of you.”

  *

  Nate attacked the roast beef on his plate with gusto but got no further than the third forkful when his stomach announced its fill.

  For more nights than he cared to remember, stuck in that detestable French prison, he’d dreamed of eating hot roast beef with potatoes, gravy and Yorkshire pudding. Tonight’s meal was better than any memories he could conjure up.

  Sitting across from him, Clem continued to shovel in the food but slowed as Nat set down his knife and fork with regret.

  “A froggie prison did this to you?” he asked.

  Nate straightened in his seat, hoping the knot in his gut would ease of his own accord.

  “For the last six weeks, I was in the donjon. I was lucky to receive one meal every couple of days. It’s going to take a while to get used to proper English cooking, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, you’re not goin’ to find better than the cookin’ here. The landlord at The Rose and Crown has had to lift his game since Peggy Smith and Mrs. Linwood came here.”

  Nate took a tentative sip of beer. That might help his stomach some.

  It didn’t work. The knot grew bigger. Perhaps distraction would help.

  He nodded across the dining room to where Peggy and Susannah worked.

  “What’s their story?” he asked. Clem’s eyes trailed Peggy as she made her way around the room with plates piled with food. It smelled delicious but Nate’s stomach complained once more.

  He hadn’t appreciated how old and haphazard Gilliam had become until he saw the dinner service tonight.

  The last time he was in The Queen’s Head, there had been just him and two other drinkers all night. Come to think of it, the place had been as tired and run down as the old man himself. Gilliam’s percentage from storing smuggled goods was probably his main source of income by then.

  Now, with the walls freshly limewashed and the floors actually clean, the dining room looked bigger and more welcoming.

  Tonight, the place was half-full – and not just full of drinkers propping up the bar, either – most of the men and women here tonight had actually come in to dine.

  “Dunno where they’re from exactly,” answered Clem.

  Nate forced his wandering mind back to his friend.

  “Kent is all Peggy’ll tell me. They got here six months ago and have done a right good job bringin’ the place up to snuff.” Clem leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Peggy’s a girl after my own heart. I could see myself settlin’ down again with her. She’s good to Sam as well, treats him like a young man, not a boy.”

  Clem’s announcement surprised Nate. The man had been a widower for nigh on a decade. Nate believed the status was a permanent one, especially now that his son was sixteen and had no need of a mother to raise him.

  “Does Peggy know your intentions?” Nate asked.

  “Nah,” Clem answered with a grin. “But she will. A man’s got to be patient. It’s a bit like fishin’, you see. She hasn’t taken my bait, but she’s nibblin’ about. Sure, she’ll swim away a bit, so I’ll reel out a little more line…”

  Nate focused his attention on Peggy as she made her way back to the kitchen. She was long past the first bloom of youth. He wouldn’t describe her as beautiful, not even conventionally pretty with her sharply angled features and mousy brown hair, and yet he had to acknowledge there was a liveliness to her step and her manner which gave her a presence that was hard to ignore.

  “Well, I haven’t spoken with her before today,” said Nate, “but I’m pretty sure Peggy wouldn’t take too kindly to being described as a fish.”

  “Not a fish,” his friend grinned. “Nope, Peggy is my own real life mermaid.”

  Nate liked Peggy already and was secretly tickled by the pirate nickname she’d given him. In fact, he felt well enough now to try another mouthful of his dinner. He cut a piece smaller than usual and chewed the morsel slowly.

  A burst of laughter came from the direction of the bar. He glanced up. A group of three men chatted animatedly among themselves. Serving them behind the bar was Susannah. Her expression was relaxed, less guarded. She said something to the three and they laughed once more, drawing her into their conversation, although from what he could see, she mostly listened.

  “Peggy’s very protective of Mrs. Linwood,” said Clem.

  Nate heard the warning.

  “And what’s her story?”

  “Peggy warned me right at the first that Mrs. Linwood had been through rough times and I shouldn’t make a nuisance of myself.”

  “And what of Mr. Linwood?”

  “She’s widowed, but she never talks of him. Peggy’s more effective than that hound of theirs at keepin’ men away. And there were a few sniffin’
about at first, but after Mrs. Linwood showed no interest and Peggy bared her teeth, they’ve given her no trouble.”

  “So, who do you think Mrs. Linwood is?”

  Nate waited for Clem to polish off his meal for an answer while he attempted another bite of his own dinner. He caught a whiff of spiced apple and saw a redheaded woman at the table opposite break open the pastry with a fork. Nate’s mouth watered and he cursed his lack of appetite.

  “I heard Peggy slip and call her ‘Duchess’ once,” Clem admitted.

  “I heard her say that, too, this afternoon,” said Nate, idly picking at the dismembered remains of the Yorkshire pudding.

  “I’m not sayin’ she isn’t a pleasant woman – she is – but Mrs. Linwood is the type who keeps herself to herself. It took months before she addressed me as anythin’ other than Mr. Pascoe. Mister! Blimey, I don’t think I’ve ever been called that in my life!”

  Clem plastered a winning smile on his face as Peggy approached to collect their plates. She looked dolefully at Nate’s.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it justice, Peggy.”

  “If you’d had the stew, like I said, you’d have finished it all,” she gently chided. Nate inclined his head in silent agreement.

  “Any chance of gettin’ an apple spiced pie and another pint, my bird?” said Clem, swatting her on the bottom to get her attention. The woman didn’t react.

  “Perhaps,” she answered, turning away from both men, “when you’ve learned some manners.”

  They watched her leave. Clem turned back to Nate and grinned.

  “She likes me, you know.”

  Then the man’s face sobered and Nate found himself under his friend’s scrutiny.

  “When you didn’t return after a couple of months, we’d wondered whether a storm had taken you, or whether you’d had enough of Lillian Doyle and moved on.”

  Lillian Doyle.

  Nate pulled a face. Clem laughed.

  “There’s not much to tell,” said Nate. “I got picked up in a raid. When they learned I was English, I was taken to a fort where they were holding prisoners of war.”

  He really didn’t want to talk about it. There was too much unsettled in his mind – his arrest, his release – little of it made much sense. He needed time to think it through.