Endure My Heart (32 page)

“I had a letter from my aunt, telling me your wedding date was set. Lucy’s wedding, that is, and as she did not mention any change of groom, naturally I thought... And you said you had to go to London that very weekend too!”

“That is not very flattering, my girl,” he said, with a little smile beginning to form on his lips. “I was only going to stand best man at her wedding. She wrote asking me to. In fact, you delivered the letter yourself.”

“And you said it was from Lady Hadley, who is dead!”

“You had given me enough roasting about a match with Lucy that I did not wish to mention her name at that particular point. If you will cast your mind back, you were as jealous as a green cow that day, with Miss Simpson in the store.”

He looked quite satisfied with the memory. While he was in this softer mood, I rushed on to strike a bargain that would save my men (and possibly me too). “Stamford, about the smuggling. We agreed…”

I had rushed my fence. He frowned to be recalled to troublesome reality. All my wrongs resurfaced, to dampen the tender atmosphere that had been settling in around us. It was back to hard business. “You knew from the beginning this romance could never amount to anything. It was no more than a game for you,” he charged.

“We have a bargain! You are to capture Miss Sage and let the men go free. You promised!”

“How can I turn you in? A woman—a lady even! The minister’s sister, my own fiancée—a walking saint in the public’s view.” He riffled his hair with his fingers, till it looked like windswept straw. “And how can I not turn you in? I have been here longer than half a year, sent to capture Miss Sage, to halt the smuggling. My career depends on it. I was to be made special assistant to the president of the Board of Trade, to take his place in a year’s time when he retires. My whole future depends on it.

“You know what my circumstances are. I am not independently wealthy. I have my way to make in the world. I have worked damned hard at it. I was baked, broiled, starved, shot at in the Peninsula, and crippled in Belgium. I didn’t buy my commission; I earned it in battle. Then I was shipped home to inherit this can of worms that no one else would take. Hadley led me to it, for old times’ sake, but since my attachment with Lucy is broken off, he is less eager to help me. This is my chance—there has got to be some reward in this for all my years of work and misery.
You’re
the saint. I’m not.”

“Turn me in. A bargain is a bargain.”

He looked at me, such a look. Frustrated, defeated. I knew he wasn’t going to arrest me before he knew it himself. “Don’t think your skirts and your halo will save you. You’re already a thorn in the side of the Tories with your campaign to get Miss Lock’s reward money plastered all over the papers, making fools of us all. More treachery behind my back!”

“I am not asking for any special consideration,” I told him, wearing a self-righteous face. He was not taken in by it.

“It’s what you deserve,” he said, through clenched jaws.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. Go on home now. You won’t mind if I don’t offer to escort you, Miss Sage? I think you are quite accustomed to navigating in the dark by yourself.”

I figured it would be well to keep him occupied while Jemmie freed my men, just in case some overly conscientious officer decided to check on the authenticity of a certain note bearing Wicklow’s signature. I tucked in my chin and peeped up, wearing a frightened face. “I never actually took any part in the smuggling. I just planned it. I don’t mean to say I am not guilty, but I am not used to going out in the dark alone. But I know you are busy, I’ll go alone,” I said, with a frightened look out the black window.

“I have to go back to the school in any case. As I am going in that direction, I might as well take you,” he replied, with no enthusiasm, but with no hesitation either.

Taking me meant he walked his horse, which would give Jemmie a few extra minutes. I set no very hot pace as we walked along the dark main street, neither of us finding much to say. We arrived at my door without anything of interest having occurred.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do with me?” I asked before entering.

“No.”

“Don’t hesitate to turn me in just because I am a woman.”

“That is not why I’m hesitating.”

“A deal is a deal. I understood the risks when I struck the bargain with you.”

“I wish to God I had!” he declared in frustration.

“I am sorry, Stamford. But you know it all came about by degrees. I was already Miss Sage before you arrived, and I could not desert my men then, when they had come to depend on me. If I had known…”

“You knew who I was the minute I landed, I think—the first day in the shop. How did you figure it out? Did my accent betray me?”

“There were many things. Your uncertain accent served to confirm it.”

He nodded, not paying full attention to our conversation, to judge by his distracted expression. “Go on in now. Don’t run away, Mab. That would be foolish. I don’t want to have to set a guard on you, but if it comes to that…”

“I have had one chance to run away already this evening. You can trust me to keep my word.”

“In some matters,” he answered stiffly. Then he mounted his horse and galloped off.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Andrew was sleeping the sleep of the just when I returned. His innocent soft snores came from his doorway. Edna did not sleep at all, but came out to meet me as I crept up to my room. I gave her a calming assurance that things had gone well. There was no point in robbing her of the night’s last few hours’ sleep, as her bleary looks told clearly enough she had not closed an eye thus far. I lay down on my bed, but for me sleep was not even thought of. I had some serious scheming to do still.

Stamford was not inclined to turn me in, but neither was he of a mind to go to London with his tail tucked between his legs and report a total failure. Some sort of a nominal victory must be worked out for him. The brandy—at least he must be allowed to capture that, and keep it safe. But that was not enough. As he had said, he might have had a load of brandy any time. No, he would never be satisfied with so little, nor was it fair he should be, when he had captured Miss Sage.

I thought about it all night long, just occasionally slipping into happier reveries of what might have been. It was a thorny bookkeeping chore, trying to find the right balance to place opposite Miss Sage. What victory was large enough to counterbalance robbing him of that success? I do not like to imply my value was so great that nothing on earth could match it, but in this one particular case, I could think of nothing. It was his future against mine. As the dawn purpled through my window, slowly bringing into focus my dresser, washstand and pitcher, I was no nearer a solution than when I had lain down some hours before.

There was some good news awaiting me belowstairs, and some bad. The good news was that Jemmie and his friend had succeeded in freeing their henchmen. He had as well a plan to put forward for the rescue of the cargo, but I quickly vetoed this. Miss Parsley was not intransigent when he learned my safety rested on his agreement.

The bad news was that Lady had been shot in the melee of escaping from the school. “Captain Lawson it was that shot her, but it was me he was aiming at, so I guess I’m lucky,” he said, looking very sad. “I do believe Wicklow had set him on to watch me in particular. Remember at the wharf he went for me right off, and it was the same there. He took me for Miss Sage, I believe.”

I sympathized, but as all the men had got away unscathed, there was more joy than sorrow in our talk. One point did worry me, though. “Lady’s body will lead them right to you, Jem. They won’t be long in discovering her dark coat is only mud, and Lady is well known to be your dog.”

“They never knew there was a dog there. She fell without a whimper, and I didn’t leave her behind. She was hurt real bad, but Mark got her home. She died at home. I buried her just before daylight out back of your school. The soldiers were all gone, and I didn’t want a new-dug grave so close to home. I laid that pile of bricks from the old chimney over the spot, to hide it. Ye’ll see them moved a few yards when ye go to school this morning, miss. Don’t be asking any questions about it.”

“What makes you think Lawson took you for Miss Sage, Jem? Wicklow knew I was her, before he knew I was Miss Anderson. He said so, and he made a beeline for me at the wharf, as Lawson did for you.”

“I reckon he’s known I’m more than just one of the haulers for quite a spell. Well, ye said he knew I was your contact. I suppose when I darted out at the wharf to give Jed a hand, Wicklow said something about Miss Sage. In the confusion, I daresay Lawson saw no more than that we were both a mite smaller than t’other lads. At the school when Wicklow arrived, Lawson tore up to him whooping and hollering, ‘I got him! I shot Miss Sage! The ringleader, the fellow in charge of them all.’ Ye never heard such cawing and crowing. Another went on to say, ‘That couldn’t be the leader. It was no bigger than a boy, or a woman,’ which is a pretty good giveaway it was myself, for I’m the shortest of the lads.”

“I tried to keep Wicklow with me as long as I could.”

“He wasn’t there when we gave Lawson the note. Abbie was the one give it to him, said Wicklow had sent him off with it, and it was very important. They don’t know Abbie for one of us, as he’s a new recruit. No, I stuck around after we sprung our lads, to see what happened, and it was then that Wicklow arrived. They’re to send men around to all our houses today, looking for a man with a clipped wing, but they won’t find any. And they won’t find Lady either. Ye might just check the pile of bricks, miss, to see it’s not been disturbed.”

“I’m not going to school this morning, Jem. I couldn’t face it—I didn’t sleep a wink.”

“Me neither.”

“It’s not easy money, is it?”

“There ain’t no such thing as easy money, miss. Fishing ain’t easy either, nor mole catching, nor poaching. Sometimes it seems to me the only ones that come by it easy are them that don’t need it—like Sir Elwood. I’ll tell Dame Aldridge ye ain’t going, to save ye sending over a note. Teaching isn’t easy either, I wager,” he added, with a commiserating smile. “Er—did ye manage to bring Wicklow round your thumb last night? What I mean to say—will he be turning ye in?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t really know.”

“Nay, he’ll never do it. But how can we save his face? Who can we give him instead of Miss Sage?”

It was a strange way of putting the question, for of course Jem did not mean we claim one of the other smugglers was myself, the leader. It set me thinking all the same. Could we concoct some imaginary person—but then figments of the imagination cannot very well be led to the authorities in chains. They are not so biddable. Jemmie left, but the phantom Miss Sage remained behind with me, occupying my mind till the post arrived.

I took no particular interest in the mail that day, glanced at a couple of letters, hardly having the interest to bother opening them, after paying the charge. One was from my aunt. Now, when it was too late to do me any good, she gave me a long exposition on the gentleman Lady Lucy was to marry, even including a paragraph on the disruption of her affair with Wicklow, which took place at Christmas. Absence had done its work in both cases, making their hearts grow fonder, of someone else. If only she had told me sooner.

The postscript was a gratuitous blow. A sly congratulation on my “approaching nuptials,” followed by a question mark, and the initials SW. How had she heard of it? From Lady Lucy, I assumed, who could only have heard from Stamford himself. So I had been acknowledged, discussed—the whole thing, all the visits to London had been on the up and up. We who are guilty ourselves fall into the habit of suspecting everyone and everything.

I was curious to discover who the other note could be from—done in an ill-formed hand, posted from a place in Berkshire called Wantage. It was from Rose Marie, outlining some new and probably invented accolades she was receiving for her portrayal of Cordelia in
King Lear
. At fifty or so she had graduated from ingenue roles to playing married (young) ladies. Ever discreet, she asked in a way comprehensible to us but not to outsiders how my “business affairs” were prospering, and expressed the wish that she could be here to help me. Her sister, she informed me, had not gone to London after all, but on a visit to Dover, had been offered the post of housekeeper to a squire, and accepted it.

My head spun, my eyes were heavy, I was worried, nearly sick with grief and futile remorse. I lay down on the sofa in the front room for a moment to collect my wits, and fell into a sound sleep. “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform,” the poet Cowper tells us. How very true that is. Frowning Providence revealed a smiling face to me in a dream, just as Joseph—or was it Mary—dreamed Herod was coming to slay the baby Jesus. The twisted skeins of my problem were all tangled up in a jumble when I lay down.

There was Wicklow wanting to hand over Miss Sage, but not wanting to punish me; Lawson thinking he had shot the ringleader; the other dragoon’s comment that it was small enough to be a boy, or a woman; Lady’s being shot; the coffin burned on the beach; Rose Marie at the Eyrie, and now in Wantage; Elwood Ganner an accomplice—all these disparate elements jostled round together to fall into a pattern, as if by magic. I truly believe the Divine hand of Providence was there, arranging them for me. It remained only for me to take a hand at the physical arranging of the details myself, and for that chore I would require the agreement (preferably help) of Stamford. That was the vital question now. Did he care enough for me to help Miss Sage in one last deception, or had I disgusted him with my behavior?

The razor’s edge is a perilous place to perch. One can endure the anxiety for only so long before she pitches herself purposely over the edge into the abyss below. If I was to be led to prison, I wanted to know it, and if I was not then I must be about the business of saving myself. I dispatched a note to Sir Stamford Wicklow, respectfully requesting him to come to me at his earliest convenience on a matter of the greatest importance. I took care that it was not the neat, grammatical note of a schoolteacher, but the worried plea of a lady in distress, signed with a humble “As ever, Mabel.”