Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (14 page)

“I’m confused!” she cried, turning away and gazing down the long hill toward the dockyard.

“But you acquit me of licentiousness, or of taking your honorable name in vain?” He touched her shoulder and she turned around to face him. “I would never hurt you, Anne.”

She took in a long, tremulous breath and let it out. “I think I believe you, Tony,” she said, softly, meeting his gaze.

Tony; she only used that name when they were intimate. He let out a deep breath. It was enough for that moment, and in a public place, but he vowed he would kiss her again before long. “Let’s walk back up along the high street, for you said you were waiting for your maidservant.”

“Where is my cat?” she asked, looking up and down the slanted street.

Irusan trotted out of an alley just then, down the street to them, and deposited at Anne’s feet a large, gray, dead mouse. He sat and looked up at her with a triumphant expression in his green eyes.

“Why, thank you, King Irusan,” she said, in jest, at the mythical origin of his name. “Dinner!”

Eight

Darkefell had some kind of errand he needed to perform, so they parted, Anne collected Mary, and they walked back to Cliff House. Mary went upstairs to rest; her tooth had been extracted and she was wan with pain. Lolly volunteered to care for Robbie for the afternoon. She’d given him a task, she said, and he seemed excited about helping “Miss Lolly” with some “secret” project. Pamela was resting, after coming back from St. Wyllow a half hour before Anne had, apparently, and the whole house felt oddly empty.

Mrs. Quintrell, in a huff over Lolly’s intent to cook dinner and her steadfast refusal to allow the hired woman to “help,” had accused Lolly of insulting her, a ridiculous accusation, and likely a ploy to raise her wages. Lynn, her daughter, who did all of the maid work in the house, left with her mother. Fortunately, she had already emptied the slops, swept the fireplaces, and changed linens.

Alice, a pale, quiet girl who was Pamela’s maid, and was completely devoted to her, busied herself with the other chores. Compared to the noisy Quintrells she was ghostly, flitting from room to room but disturbing no one, as she swept and polished.

Anne would bribe the mother and daughter to come back to work the next day, she told Lolly, so that poor woman must not worry. Grateful to be left alone to think, Anne sat with her traveling desk open on the table near the window in her room and began a letter to her father. Talking to Mr. Goldsmith had reminded her how much she missed his gentle good sense and unfailing geniality. But the letter was doomed to be unfinished. She stared out the window over the distant bluff toward the gray, tossing ocean and looming sky.

Who was she to believe concerning the contretemps of the night before? She had known Marcus St. James for six years, and he had been unfailingly kind, gentle, polite, even courtly toward her. She had known Darkefell for just a few weeks, and he had been unfailingly irritating, commanding, dark, incomprehensible and overwhelmingly,
lavishly
seductive. And yet the marquess would have her believe that St. James had said something so hurtful about her that Darkefell had not only taken offense and beaten the captain to a pulp, but he would not repeat it.

And she was inclined to believe him. She tapped her fingernails on the fine mahogany finish of her traveling desk. Was that the power of his kisses, or just the honesty and pain in his eyes?

Knowing she’d not finish the letter that afternoon and looking for a little fresh air and outdoor solace, Anne folded it up, put it away in her desk and retreated to the garden. But what she found there was St. James, sleeping on a padded bench in a protected alcove. His face was swollen and bruised, and one of his eyes looked like it would be shut until healing diminished the swelling. That brought her back to her dilemma; did she believe Darkefell, or St. James?

She sat down on a bench nearby, at an angle with the captain’s, and huddled in her warmest shawl. She waited, watching Lolly and Robbie, who were out on the broad open bluff picking something. Irusan had joined them and leaped around after grasshoppers, making the boy laugh and shout. If only she could recapture that lovely peaceful feeling she had experienced on the St. Wyllow green, in Mr. Goldsmith’s company.

“Where have
you
been all afternoon?” St. James asked, staring at her out of his one good eye.

His tone was distinctly petulant.

She frowned. “I was in St. Wyllow, shopping. I thought you were at your regimental infirmary, and I thought Pam had gone to visit you for the day. Did she not tell you I saw her in the village?”

“I didn’t see her come home. Must have been sleeping. If she went to St. Ives, she had a wasted trip, for they let me go for a few days. Said my face was disreputable, and hurt the regiment’s reputation.” He stretched and sat up, moving a little stiffly.

He wasn’t wearing his uniform, and Anne noted that his clothes, though impeccable as always, looked a little threadbare. She wondered once again whether the brother and sister were still solvent. It was expensive to be a captain in the Light Dragoons, for one was expected to pay for meals on a rotating basis, linen, a washerwoman, cleaning services and a soldier-servant, who would do his valeting. If he was also contributing to the rent on Cliff House, it would stretch his pay beyond the breaking point.

He hadn’t spoken of Darkefell, and Anne found that odd. Was he not going to complain? Surely, if he was innocent of any wrongdoing, he should be trying to elicit her sympathy. It was something he did for every slight, real or imagined.

“I spoke to the marquess in St. Wyllow,” she said, watching him.

He stiffened momentarily, but then shrugged and gloomily stared off at Lolly and Robbie.

“St. James, tell me the truth,” Anne said, leaning forward and staring him in his one good eye, his right. “What really happened between you? He told me that you didn’t attack him, but rather
he
was the aggressor.”

“Did he say why?”

There was something about the odd alertness of his tension, how his eyes—or rather eye—was hooded, secretive, and something about his tone … she suspected that what Darkefell said was the truth. “St. James, I cannot abide people lying to me. I would rather hear any unpalatable truth than be soothed with a lie.”

“Women always say that, but they never mean it,” he replied, with an attempt at his normal, charming smile. “Ow!” he moaned, and touched his split lip. It oozed a little blood, which welled over the crusted scab.

“I mean it. Take me at my word and tell me the truth. What did you say that caused Darkefell to hit you?”

But he was silent. Finally she cast her gaze toward the sea, and watched a boat bobbing on the horizon, probably a fishing vessel. On it, men would be hauling in nets, casting a worried eye to the sky, hoping they could make it back to harbor before the looming storm hit. All the other lives unknown, she mused, and it would all remain unknown to her. Most of life, most of the
world
, would remain unknown to her.

For the last six months or so she had been feeling a restlessness, a desire to experience new things. If she were a man, she would take up exploring, go to sea, or make a new life in Canada. To do any of that as a woman would require a complete break from everyone and everything she loved, for a woman who did those things would be shunned by society, her reputation irrevocably ruined, while a man would be celebrated for a similar boldness.

Something bright glittered near the horizon, on the boat. “St. James, did you see that?” she asked, putting one hand up to shade her eyes. Even though it was not sunny, the bright daylight made it hard to see so far. “There it is again!”

“What?”

“Like … like a mirror, or something … shining on the horizon, near or on that boat.”

“Probably someone holding up a spyglass, watching the weather,” he said, negligently. “I’m going in for a nap. Your friend has given me enough bruises and cuts that I shall need to heal for several days. I’ll see you at dinner.”

***

Lolly was the only bright spot at the dining table. The dinner was wonderful; roast lamb with wild thyme, a salad of baby greens—sorrel, salad burnet, cress and dandelion—tender young carrots and new potatoes. The salad was Lolly and Robbie’s surprise, the greens wild ones she had identified on the open bluff and the bitter watercress from a stream a half mile away.

However, Pamela had no appetite and St. James’s mouth hurt too much for him to eat properly. Anne, though, was surprised, given how upsetting a day it had been, how much she enjoyed the food. “Lolly, dear, you are a genius,” she said.

“I’m only sorry Mrs. Quintrell was so … that she left so hastily. I should visit her, apologize …” She drifted off and stared down at her plate. Her lined face was drawn down in a worried frown.

“Nonsense. I’ll take care of it,” Anne replied, easily. “That is, if you do not mind me interfering, Pamela?”

Her friend, sunk in her own thoughts, just nodded as she picked at her salad. The rest of the meal was consumed—or not consumed by most—in silence.

After dinner, Anne sought Pamela out in her sitting room, reclined on a brocade sofa by the window.

“Pam, I’ve been a wretched friend so far,” she said, sitting on a stool near her. She examined her friend’s face in the dim lamplight, but her expression was blank. “I’ll not let that go any further. Something is deeply worrying you. You told me you were going to see St. James today, but you were really in St. Wyllow with that dreadful man, that Puddicombe fellow. What was that about? Why were you talking to him? Is there anything I can do? Are …” She trailed off, not sure how to broach the subject. “Are you in
any
kind of difficulty?”

Pamela met her gaze and smiled, weakly. “I’m fine, my dear. I told you, it was just a misunderstanding! Please don’t let anything worry you.”

Anne examined her face. Though Pamela St. James was only a few years her senior, already the first signs of age were upon her. Lines bracketed her mouth and creased her forehead, and as lovely as her eyes were, they held an indefinable air of sadness. A couple of years before, Pamela had written Anne that she was to be married, but the fellow tragically died, and since then she did not seem to have recovered from the sorrow. She had declined into ill health, and now was prematurely aging.

Pamela closed her eyes and leaned her head back.

Anne took that as a hint. “I’ll let you rest for now. But please, think about talking to me. If you are in any kind of difficulty, I want to help.”

Anne quietly exited the room. Here she was with two of her best friends, and she had not told either of them about her and Darkefell’s discovery yet, along the cliff. However, with them both under the weather, now was not the time. There were clearly other priorities. Tomorrow, if St. James was feeling better, she would make him accompany her to have a look at the Barbary pirate costume and rigging off their cliff. It was unthinkable that someone was using their property to launch such a venture, for Anne suspected that the pirate ghost was a ruse to distract the excise officers and delay them from their capture of the smugglers.

The long, emotional day had taken its toll, though, and as evening crept in upon them and a steady wind buffeted the ancient house, she felt tired and out of sorts. An hour to finish her letter to her father, and then she’d go to bed.

***

Darkefell and Osei watched from the marquess’s open window. A thin yellow lamplight chased away the darkest of shadows in the stable yard and courtyard below them. The marquess, alert and watchful, heard steps on the flagstone path below, behind the inn, a path he knew led along the cliffs toward the cut between Barbary Ghost Inn property and that of Cliff House.

“There,” Osei said, pointing to a figure slipping along the path, keeping to the shadows.

“That’ll be Johnny,” the marquess said. “And that means there is more of the shipment coming ashore. I suspected the debacle of the other night meant not everything was unloaded.” Darkefell pushed himself out of his chair and launched toward the door, with his secretary behind him.

“No!” Darkefell said, turning and putting out one staying hand. “Osei, stay here. If I end up in trouble, or arrested by accident as one of the smugglers, I need you free to help me.”

He looked disappointed, and Darkefell almost laughed at his scholarly secretary appearing so downhearted and pensive, at missing the adventures of the night. “Don’t worry,” the marquess said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “I have a feeling you will see some action before we are done dismantling this smuggling gang and getting Johnny out of trouble.”

***

After finishing a long, detailed letter to her father, Anne had a burst of energy. There would only be a few more nights of low tide occurring at the right time, Anne thought, rummaging in her wardrobe for her darkest cloak. After the last botched landing, she had to assume the smugglers would continue to try to unload the cargo, and if they were counting on their pirate ghost to distract, then they would use the cove below Cliff House again.

And she was going to be there. How many times had she crept from Ivy Lodge, the dower house of Darkefell’s estate in Yorkshire, as she sought an answer to the werewolf mystery, and the deaths of three young women? One had been solved, certainly—Hiram Grover, a local landowner with a grudge against the Darkefell family, was the killer—but the other two, to her thinking, were still mysteries. An accident and suicide explained the other two young ladies’ deaths, Darkefell had said, but she was still not sure. And Hiram Grover’s dead body still not found! That, though, was not her mystery to solve. This was.

Anne slipped from the house completely alone, with just the faint glimmer of a lamp to guide her steps, for she was not going to disturb Mary for such a trifling walk, not when the maid was still suffering pain from her pulled tooth. Anne was just going to the cliff at the end of the bluff to observe, not a dangerous operation. If the Barbary Ghost showed up, then all the better, so she could, now that she had seen the rigging, judge for herself who it was and how they did it. She had no intention of interfering with the smuggling, nor of being seen by anyone.