Smuggler's Kiss (6 page)

We were on a narrow, sandy beach. Low sandstone cliffs ran along the back of it with trees growing at their foot. Out to sea to our left I could see some bright white cliffs and beyond them, white rocks rising out of the sea.

‘Are they not bringing the brandy ashore here then?’ I called to Will who was still striding ahead of me. He whipped round and pressed a hand over my mouth.

‘Keep your voice down, you stupid girl!’ he muttered angrily. He cast an uneasy glance around him. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he hissed in my ear. ‘The rumours of ghosts will have brought the Preventives over here. Which is what we want. Meanwhile the men will run the goods elsewhere in safety tonight. But we don’t want them to hear talk of … for the love of God, Isabelle, if you have to talk about the goods at all, you say Cousin Jacky.’

I nodded obediently and he released me. ‘You are a liability,’ he muttered. I shrugged. I really didn’t care.

‘What are Preventives anyway?’ I asked.

‘That’s our name for Revenue officers.’

‘I thought you called them Philistines?’

‘Preventives, Preventers, Philistines or just damned interfering scoundrels. They are all in the service of His Majesty’s Customs or Excise.’

‘Oh,’ I said, digesting this. ‘So we are a diversion tonight?’ I asked.

‘Something like that.’

We climbed a path off the beach up a sloping green hill. From the top, I could see a vast area of scrub, low trees, and water to our right. ‘What is this godforsaken place?’ I asked. ‘And who is there to see or care about a ghost here?’

Will paused and glanced back at me. ‘That is Studland Heath,’ he said shortly. ‘Its very remoteness is useful to the Gentlemen. But it’s the village we’re heading to now.’

As we approached the houses, the short day was fading. Smoke was rising from a couple of cottages and a few lights twinkled in the deepening dusk.

Will vaulted over a gate into a meadow with cows in. I paused and fumbled at the gate, unsure how to open it and reluctant to enter a field of cows at all.

‘Just climb over it,’ sighed Will. ‘Can you at least try to bestir yourself? A lame snail could make swifter progress.’

His words stung me. ‘You’re unreasonable. No one told me I’d be climbing gates into fields full of beasts.’

‘And no one said you wouldn’t be. Give me patience! I’d rather have anyone else for a companion but you.’

‘I’d rather walk with Hard-Head Bill than with you,’ I retorted with a scowl. ‘Is it the black hair that makes you so bad-tempered?’

Will put his hand up to his hair. He had either dyed it or he was wearing a convincing wig, I wasn’t sure which. His eyebrows too had been darkened and there was a mole on his nose that had not been there before. He was wearing the rough smock and waistcoat of a farmer. I would barely have recognized him. I wondered why he had disguised himself. Perhaps it had something to do with the haunting.

‘Just hurry, will you?’ he ordered. ‘Or the building will be haunted by the body of a girl in breeches and not a bride at all.’

Ignoring his threat, I followed him in silence past a small village church built of grey stone and up a lane to a tumbledown old house. It was clearly abandoned. Weeds ran riot in the neglected garden and there were gaping holes where windows had once been. It looked like a face with empty eyes, staring at me in the dusk.

Will forced open a creaking, broken door into what must have once been the kitchen. Pieces of broken furniture lay scattered about. The room was dirty and smelled of mice.

Will abstracted my gown from the sack he’d been carrying and threw it to me. ‘Time to transform yourself,’ he whispered. I caught it and glared at him. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going,’ he taunted. ‘I’ve had a bellyful of being your maid!’

He left and I began to pull the gown out of the sack, dreading the task ahead. I struggled out of the repulsive breeches I’d been wearing for the past few days and into the bride gown. Patches of it were still damp and it clung clammily to my skin. Putting it on once more, this time alone in the dirt and squalor of a ruin, raised all sorts of strange emotions in me. I remembered how I’d felt last time. Not overjoyed precisely. But excited, hopeful. And now? I was helping to protect a gang of thugs engaged in an illegal trade. My fortunes had fallen below what I could have believed possible.

I’d tied on my hoops and my petticoats as best I could and donned my gown before Will appeared. I looked over my shoulder at him, half afraid to ask him to hook up my gown behind. Luckily, he stepped up behind me without a word and began to fasten it. When it was done, I turned and found he was offering me a small bag. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Chalk, to whiten your face. At the moment, you look to be in excellent health. We need you to look dead.’

I accorded his joke a small smile. Tentatively, I dipped my fingers in the chalk and smeared the dust onto my face. It felt slightly greasy and unpleasant. Will shook the bag a little. ‘We don’t have all night,’ he said.

I took a handful and rubbed it all over my face, working it into the skin, rubbing it down across the portion of my chest that was exposed too. I even rubbed it over my hands and forearms.

Will looked at me critically. He produced another small bag and dipped finger and thumb into it. ‘Soot,’ he explained in answer to my puzzled look. ‘To make you look really scary if they get up close.’

With a few deft touches of his thumb, he smoothed the soot under my eyes. He was gentle for the first time since I’d met him, and the action brought unwanted tears to my eyes. I blinked them away, reminding myself he hated me. His touch might be gentle but it certainly wasn’t tender. He stepped back and looked critically at me again. ‘Good. You’ll do now. Do you have the veil?’

Veil in place, arranged over my tumbled, cut-about hair that most definitely did not resemble a bride, I clumped outside after Will. ‘No one who catches a glimpse of these boots will believe I’m a genuine ghost for one instant,’ I muttered. ‘Or at least not a ghost with the slightest fashion sense.’

Will chuckled. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh in a way that wasn’t mocking. ‘They’re hidden by the gown and the long grass,’ he said after watching me walk. ‘If you’re really concerned about it, you could take them off. A barefoot bride would be quite poignant, you know.’

I remembered walking into the sea just a few nights ago, all hope gone, my shoes left behind me on the beach, and swallowed hard. ‘No, I thank you,’ I retorted, trying to shake off the powerful memory. ‘It’s freezing cold, the grass is wet and probably full of slugs.’

Will merely shrugged. ‘As you wish. We’re probably going to have a few locals on their way to the local tavern looking over the wall there,’ he pointed to a gap in an overgrown wall. ‘You need to appear from the outhouse over there,’ he pointed to the doorway we’d emerged from, ‘and flit along the lawn here. You can flit, can’t you?’

‘Being a ghost isn’t something I’ve a vast deal of experience of,’ I told him acidly.

‘Clearly you never had a governess you needed to get rid of,’ Will responded.

‘I didn’t need to play the ghost.’

‘I bet you didn’t. Frightened her off without dressing up at all, I should think.’

‘I find I can dispense with your observations on my character,’ I told him, provoked to anger. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘I don’t need to and I don’t want to.’

‘That’s entirely reciprocated, I assure you. I’d be very pleased if I never set eyes on you again. Now are we going to play this ghost or are we going to stand here bickering all night like children?’ I demanded.

Will’s eyes glittered in the darkness as he stood facing me. He was breathing heavily and I realized he was as angry as I was. I just wasn’t sure why.

‘How do I even know I can trust you with this?’ he asked at last. ‘How do I know that you won’t deliberately sabotage this whole thing to expose us?’

I didn’t reply at first. I couldn’t deny that the thought had crossed my mind. I summoned up a wan smile. ‘Can you imagine the scene?’ I asked as lightly as I could. ‘A ghost chasing some terrified local farmers, begging for help?’

Will continued to regard me steadily with those hostile, glittering eyes until my own dropped, half-ashamed of what my plans had been. ‘This isn’t a game. We hold many lives in our hands.’

‘Criminals,’ I said defiantly.

‘Wrong. Men who are trying to survive and support their families in difficult times.’

I shrugged. ‘Men are only poor if they are lazy or knaves,’ I retorted. ‘Everyone knows that. There’s always honest work to be done.’

Will’s fists clenched. ‘You’re spouting the convenient platitudes of your class,’ he hissed. ‘Abominable! These are phrases you’ve heard from the wealthy and privileged. You know nothing of work or wages. You do not have the slightest idea of what it entails to support a family on a few shillings a week.’

I stared at him in silence. I felt sure of my views. I’d heard such things said a hundred times, at dinners and at balls by men and women who knew the world: the poor deserve to be poor. They are poor because they’re lazy and ignorant and can’t be helped. No one had ever challenged this within my hearing. And yet somehow I didn’t feel comfortable saying these things out loud to this angry young man. Instead, I challenged him on safer ground: ‘What do you mean,
my
class? You are gently born, don’t deny it!’

‘I won’t deny that I was born to as much privilege as you, perhaps more,’ said Will. ‘But since then, I’ve seen things that have made me … ’ His voice tailed off as we both heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps and voices in the distance.

‘They’re coming. Can I trust you to do this?’

‘This, but nothing more,’ I told him. ‘I’ll make you no promises beyond the next half hour.’

‘Very well. Get ready now. And you’d better hope neither of the real ghosts turns up tonight.’

‘There’s more than one?’ I asked, feeling an icy finger of fear stroke my back.

‘Oh, did no one tell you?’ asked Will, cheerful once more. ‘Not only is there a murdered bride who can’t rest, but a headless spectre is said to stalk the grounds.’

I knew that I shouldn’t ask. The less I knew the better. But I couldn’t help myself. ‘A headless spectre … ?’ My voice trembled.

Will stepped closer, his face lit up with a ghoulish pleasure. ‘He creeps up behind you, just as you think you’ve escaped him. He grabs you and tries to tear your head off. No one knows if he is seeking revenge or a head to replace the one he has lost.’

I shuddered and couldn’t forbear a quick glance over my shoulder. ‘You’re making that up,’ I said as bravely as I could. ‘A ghost can’t grab anyone.’

‘Are you quite sure about that?’ asked Will, in a hollow voice.

I shivered from a mixture of cold and nerves.

‘I’m leaving you now,’ said Will, reaching up to straighten my veil. ‘This is going to be so much fun.’

‘How can you say so?’ I whispered indignantly, but he was gone, all but invisible in his dark clothing, running across the lawn, crouching low. I gripped my hands together to stop them shaking as I heard the crunch of footsteps and the sound of voices approaching. There was something altogether chilling about this tumbledown ruin and overgrown garden. It was the perfect setting for a haunting; eerie and other-worldly.

Somewhere nearby, a strange, unearthly wailing rose up. Ice cold shivers ran down my back at the sound. I stood frozen with fear listening to it. Slowly, it faded into silence, to be replaced, after a pause, by the slow clank of dragging chains. I shuddered with terror. I’d come here to pretend to be a ghost and the real ghost was so angry she’d come to haunt me. Perhaps she was offended and angry at my impersonation. I could feel myself sweating with terror at the very thought she could appear before me at any moment.

On the other side of the overgrown lawn, I caught sight of a slight movement. It took a moment for my fear-frozen brain to take in that it was by no means an apparition. Concealed behind some trees, shielded from view of the road, Will was beckoning me out into the open, his white hands showing up in the faint starlight. Had he not heard the appalling sounds? He couldn’t be so lost to fear as to be calmly ignoring them, surely?

I realized what must be the truth and relief coursed through me.
Will
was making those dreadful sounds. Had he not brought a chain with us? He probably hadn’t warned me because he’d wanted to frighten me.

The loud, confident voices I’d been able to hear from the road only moments ago were silenced. I needed to show myself to set the seal on their fear.

With an effort, I unfroze my limbs and began to step forward in response to Will’s repeated beckoning. Slowly, falteringly, I stepped out across the ragged lawn, the damp of the evening quickly soaking through the hem of my petticoats. I tried to walk slowly, smoothly, as though gliding. A breeze blew over me, fluttering my veil.

There was a cry of terror from the road. Another. The pounding of feet and whimpers of fear. I turned my head cautiously towards the wall, to see the backs of a number of men fleeing up the road. I continued my glide across the garden until I reached Will. He was leaning against a tree, laughing. ‘That was just too easy!’ he said, not bothering to keep his voice down. ‘We went to so much trouble to get them here and they barely stayed to look at you!’

I couldn’t share his laughter. I was still trembling with fear. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to make those awful noises?’ I demanded.

‘What noises?’ asked Will, suddenly serious again. ‘I didn’t hear any noises.’

My stomach gave a sick lurch and I stared at him. ‘The wailing … the chains … ’ I stuttered. ‘They were … ’ I stopped as a sound came to my ears. It was voices and the sound of horses’ hooves approaching. Will heard it too, and grabbed my hand, dragging me behind a tree. From where we were standing, we could see up the road, and could make out several men approaching on horseback. One of the horses was pale grey and his coat reflected the starlight.

‘What luck,’ whispered Will. ‘These are the Revenue officers and two soldiers.’

‘
Luck
?’ I gasped. ‘Are you completely mad?’