Smuggler's Glory (14 page)

Once at the door he turned the handle and tugged, cursing
fluidly when the door didn’t give. He stood beside the wall,
peering out of the dirt-smudged window as far as he could, for any
sign of movement. At least now he knew why his instincts had been
ringing so alarmingly. There
was
someone nearby, and that someone had seen fit to
lock him in the mine.

Had he
walked into a trap? He wasn’t sure but had been fairly certain
nobody had followed him. If they had, they were professionally
trained at subterfuge, and were as adept at following someone
undetected as he was.

Tugging
on the door once more, his mind began to race with possibilities.
His situation had grown alarmingly dangerous all of a sudden. He
had to get out of the mine now while he was still alive to do so.
Racing over to the far end of the room he plastered himself against
the wall, peering cautiously out of the window.

“
Shit,” his curse echoed hollowly around the empty room at the
sight of the thirty foot drop on the opposite side. He had known
the mine had been built on the side of a hill and sat protruding
from the moorland like a barnacle. With that escape route closed to
him, he made his way back toward the door, his mind calculating the
best way out. Although he knew it was futile, he tried the door one
last time, unsurprised when it refused to budge.

He
cursed himself for being several kinds of fool, knowing that he had
just made a colossal mistake in not leaving the door wedged open.
At least the noise of the wedge moving would have alerted him to
another person’s presence, if not their intentions. He would
usually have had the foresight to do so, and would have done today
too, if his thoughts had been locked on the woman he had left
across the valley. The woman who, in a small space of time, had
taken firm control over his thoughts. He realised there and then,
just how dangerous Francesca had become not only to his physical
safety, but to his emotional security as well. It was a situation
he couldn’t allow to continue.

He
tugged hard at the door, twisting the knob this way and that in an
attempt to gain his freedom. When it didn’t give, he drew his gun,
took several steps backward and pulled the trigger. The boom that
echoed around the room made his ears ring, but he was oblivious to
everything but the daylight that now lay before him. Lunging
forward, he burst through the door as though the hounds of hell
were on his heels, fully expecting the sound of reciprocal gunfire
from outside. He almost felt cheated when nothing
happened.

Not
bothering to glance behind him, Simon raced to the top of the hill
behind the mine. He had learned long ago that there was an
advantage in finding the highest point in the area. Cresting the
rise, he paused, his chest heaving with a combination of exertion
and exhilaration, only to curse fluidly at the sight that met his
eyes.

There,
far across the valley, racing toward Thistledown House and
Francesca, were two riders. Even from a distance, Simon knew they
were Tom and Charlie. They had undoubtedly been watching him, and
following, and had decided to confine him long enough to finish
what they had started the other day.

Glancing
around the moors, Simon mentally plotted the quickest path back to
Thistledown, and took to his heels.

The race
back to Thistledown took the longest minutes of his entire life.
Simon was sure he aged with every step. His heart thumped heavily
in his ears as he thundered across the moor, his eyes locked firmly
on Thistledown, his thoughts fixed on Francesca. Whatever Charlie
and Tom wanted with her, Simon was determined they would cause her
no harm.

He raced
as fast as his feet could carry him, his gaze flickering between
the moors around him and the house that Francesca called home.
Francesca’s words of warning about the marshes rang in his ears but
it held little significance at that moment. Nothing mattered more
than getting to Francesca and keeping her safe.

If he
had taken a moment to look back at the tin mine, he would have seen
the door he had just shot his way out of close ever so
slowly.

Sometime
during his flight across the moor, the soldier deep within him
resurfaced. By the time he arrived at the burned out wing of the
old mansion, he had already considered whether he was actually
going to kill Tom and Charlie, or save them to interrogate, only
deciding on the latter given they were riding two horses it would
be difficult to hide.

Silently
tip-toeing to the first window of the burned out room that had
contained the library, Simon squatted down and peered into the
building. It was impossible to tell if the men had gone inside; if
they had, they weren’t there now. From his stance he could see
through the room, out into the stable yard, which at first glance
remained undisturbed. Scanning the area, he headed over to the
small copse of trees and began to circle the area, picking up the
new hoof tracks at the rear of the stable block. Following them was
easy yet caused more questions than answers, when he circled all
the way around Thistledown House before heading back to Much
Hampton’s main street.

Although
Simon couldn’t see them, he knew they were probably waiting for him
to appear in the village. Shaking his head, he had a strange
feeling that he had just been taken on a fool’s game. Were they
testing him to see what he was capable of? Or were they trying to
get him away from the tin mine? He wasn’t certain, but he suddenly
had the need to check Thistledown and Francesca.

He may
have been sent on a merry chase around the moors, possibly with the
intention of trying to get him to fall into one of the marshes. How
close he had just come to doing exactly that, he wasn’t sure, but
he did know that he wasn’t going to be put off from searching the
abandoned tin mine some other time. They may have won this
particular skirmish, but they weren’t going to win the overall
battle.

One
thought crossed his mind as he made his way back to Francesca’s
house; Tom and Charlie weren’t likely to have the intelligence to
send him on a merry chase by themselves. They were brutes, more
akin to fighting than strategic thinking. Someone was definitely
behind their activities. It was down to Simon now to find out who
it was, and if this morning’s events had any relevance to the real
reason he was sent to Much Hampton.

At the
front door to Thistledown, he paused and turned around. It seemed a
flight of fancy to consider it a possibility, but he knew
instinctively that someone was watching, even from as far away as
the mine. One thing was for certain; there was a clear view of the
tin mine and its surroundings from Thistledown. Anyone keeping
watch from the front of the house, would be able to keep tabs on
who visited the building. Whoever it was clearly wanted everyone to
believe that it was abandoned and falling into disarray, and was
determined to do whatever it took to keep everyone away – but why?
Was it because the French spies were being housed there while they
received new papers? Or was something altogether more sinister
going on?

Sighing
deeply, he quietly entered the main hall, unsurprised to find it
empty. He could hear the quiet conversation between Matilda and
Francesca, who seemed to be involved in taking inventory of the
house contents. There was no sign of Bertie. He had been aware that
Francesca had yet to show him her uncle’s bedchamber, located
directly above the library. Was that because she didn’t want to
revisit painful memories? Deciding not to push her for now, he
eased away from the door and crept up the stairs, arriving at the
smoke-scarred door minutes later. It hadn’t been difficult to find.
He had only needed to follow the acrid smell of smoke that still
hung in the air. Beneath him the floorboards creaked once or twice
and he could only hope that they wouldn’t alert the ladies to his
snooping. He tried to be as quiet as possible, and was surprised
when the door to the room swung silently open with only the
slightest push. The ease in which it swung open seemed strangely at
odds with the blackened, unkempt state of the rest of the wing.
Immediately, his senses warned him that something was amiss. Had
someone oiled the doors in the house? If so, why?

Creeping
into the room, he closed the door carefully behind him. The charred
carcass of the four-poster bed stood in the centre of the room like
a spectre from past times. At the far side of the room, the floor
had been burnt through, leaving an open view of the equally carried
library below. Aware that the boards that remained may not carry
his weight, Simon kept to the beams that were visible, sending a
silent prayer that time hadn’t rendered them completely useless. He
would have enough explaining to do to Francesca if she found him in
the room as it was, destroying what was left of its carcass would
be considerably harder to apologise for.

The
floor did reveal that someone had walked around the room recently,
several times if the numerous footprints around him were anything
to go by. He studied the dresser standing beside the wall,
wondering if Francesca had managed to get that far yet. Moments
later, he had his answer when he eased open the drawer and found
several shirts, cravats and waistcoats lying waiting. Disturbance
of the dust that hung over them confirmed that someone had searched
through the drawers not so long back, but why? What were they
looking for? Shaking his head, he began to carry out a thorough
search of the room.

“
What are you doing?” Francesca demanded, warring between
curiosity and outrage as she studied him. She felt like they had
done this before, only last time he had been trying to shoot her
wardrobe.

Simon
rose to his feet, brushing soot off his hands while trying not to
notice the effect she had on his libido simply by being
nearby.

“
I have been taking a closer look at the smoke damage in here,”
he replied, nodding toward the hole in the floor and the room
below. “It looks bad, but I don’t think it will take too much to
return it to its former glory.” Although his attention was
seemingly focused on her, his mind was running through the last few
minutes, trying to remember if he had closed the door to the chest
of drawers entirely before Francesca crossed the
threshold.

“
I am not sure,” Francesca replied, glancing around the room
suspiciously. There was nothing out of the ordinary but something
warned her that once again, he wasn’t telling her the truth. “I
have yet to get someone in to take a look at it. I don’t really
know if it is worth the bother.”

Her
heart wept at the state of the room her uncle had once considered
his bedroom. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but
she felt certain she could smell her uncle’s distinctive scent
mingled with the scent of soot and burnt wood. She wished she could
speak to him, just once more. Suddenly she felt so very alone in
the world, and was not altogether comfortable with it.

She
wandered into the room, looking around her yet not seeing the
armoire sitting at the far wall, or the smudged and dirty mirror
next to the large bank of windows on the opposite wall. The floor
beneath her feet groaned alarmingly.

“
Watch out!” Simon snapped, lunging forward as a loud cracking
noise broke the silence.

Francesca barely had the time to turn toward him when she
felt the wood beneath her feet suddenly give. She tried to lunge
forward, away from the chasm that had opened up beneath her but the
downward fall of her body weight plunged her relentlessly toward
the floor below.

Simon
cursed fluidly. Oblivious to the danger he placed himself in, he
threw himself on the floor, barely grabbing hold of her wrists
before she disappeared through the hole completely.

“
Hold on, sweetheart,” Simon growled, reaching down with his
other hand to grab her wildly flailing arm. He could feel the
delicate bones beneath the soft flesh of the arm he was holding
onto a little too tightly, but there was nothing he could do about
it. At least she wasn’t very heavy. The ground was too far away for
her to be able to fall to the floor safely. The floor began to
groan alarmingly beneath the combined weight. He began to pray that
it wouldn’t give again and plunge them both to their deaths, or
severe injury.

“
Please, Simon, help me,” Francesca gasped, trying to stem the
threat of tears as panic took hold. Her pleading eyes met and held
his and she read the calm reassurance in his blue eyes.

“
I’m not going to drop you,” he replied, trying desperately to
figure out how to haul her up. There was nothing around him to gain
purchase against. He wondered briefly if he should call out for
Madeline to help, but couldn’t waste the time waiting for her to
get to them. The bones beneath his fingers felt so very fragile, he
was certain that he was crunching them.

“
If I pull you up, can you place one hand on the floorboards
there for a moment?” He nodded to the jagged edge mere inches from
his face.

“
I’ll try,” Francesca gasped, her voice trembling with fear.
She had no choice at that moment but to trust him implicitly. If he
chose to let go, she would plunge to her death and there was
nothing she could do about it. Her life was literally in his
hands.