The Smuggler and the Society Bride (22 page)

No one present doubted that fact. One tear leaking down her battered cheek, Laurie nodded. ‘We'll stay, then. How can I ever thank you, Father?'

To Gabe's shock, the vicar actually gave her a wink. ‘Oh, I shall think of a way,' he said before turning to Miss Foxe. ‘With Miss Steavens here to reassure Eva, why don't you take the captain's horse and go directly to Foxeden? He is right; the mare will doubtless return straight to her barn, and I should not wish for your aunt to worry.'

‘Well…if Eva has her sister, I suppose she doesn't need me,' Miss Foxe said.

Eva darted from her sister's side and threw her arms around
Miss Foxe's waist, hugging her fiercely. ‘Oh, I think she does need you, Miss Foxe,' Laurie said. ‘But she can see you at school tomorrow. Can't you, Eva?'

Nodding, the girl released Miss Foxe, who gave the child's head a quick caress; her eyes were suspiciously bright. ‘But, Captain, if I take your horse, how will you get back to town?'

He shrugged. ‘I must find Richard Kessel and settle some business first. I'll claim a ride back to the inn with him.'

‘Very well, then. Father, Captain, Eva, Laurie, I suppose I'll see you tomorrow.'

Gabe indulged himself in one more opportunity to touch her as he helped toss her into the saddle, just that brief contact firing the desire always simmering within. Then he stepped back to savour the view of her trim ankles emerging from the froth of petticoats, since, as the mare with the sidesaddle had galloped off, she was forced to ride astride. Pulling his gaze from that distracting and delectable sight, he murmured. ‘Until tomorrow,
Miss Foxe.'

Her eyes widened, telling him she understood from his subtle emphasis that her true name was no longer a secret. She gave him a quick nod, doubtless in appreciation for his not revealing it to the others. ‘Until tomorrow, Captain Hawksworth.'

 

After watching the arousing spectacle of her trim posterior bouncing on the saddle as she rode off, Gabe set his jaw and walked off to find Dickin. Since neither he nor the elder Kessel had been at the inn, they were probably down at the beach, supervising the unloading.

John Kessel approached him as he walked to the stone hut. Brushing off his clothes with an elaborate gesture, John said coldly, ‘Make no mistake; I'll see you pay for your interference.'

‘Truly,' Gabe said, within a hair's breadth of taking out his
frustrations by pummelling that smug, arrogant face. ‘Just how do you think to manage that? I'm not a little girl a fourth your weight and size.'

Kessel inhaled sharply and curled his hands into fists. Gleeful at the possibility of a satisfying fracas, daring the man to try to strike, Gabe glared at him.

Kessel looked away first. ‘We'll see about that,' he muttered.

Gabe felt an itching premonition between his shoulder blades as the man strode off. He'd have to be vigilant. Kessel was more the type to strike with a knife in the back out of some dark alley than with fists openly raised in a fair fight.

He ducked into the hut and swiftly followed the tunnel to the cave. Emerging onto the beach, he spotted his friend immediately, directing the unloading of a small boat that was retrieving tubs moored along the cliff wall.

‘Ah, Gabe, my lad,' Dickin called out as Gabe walked over, ‘will you plant me a facer first or let me explain?'

‘Explain. But it had better be good.'

Dickin nodded. ‘I don't blame you for being angry, but you knew the order was almost complete when you hared off to London. After Dubois sent word that all was in readiness, we needed only the right weather to make the run. I delayed as long as I could, but when a perfect, sweet little storm blew in from the southwest, with Johnnie arguing we should go at once, at length I had to give way. Conan Willes skippered the
Gull
before you; he is nearly fully healed, and after five months on shore, was itching to get to sea. So I let him. He and Will Glasson both had a most successful voyage.'

‘And the landing?'

Dickin flushed. ‘I thought Johnnie had agreed not to bring in another cargo in daylight. 'Twas already in the works when I found out, too late to call a halt. But after today, I'm sure he'll not try it again. Jake Dawes took a ball in shoulder, the men tell me, and there were other injuries.'

‘Aye, from a group of three, kicking and beating a single
revenue agent,' Gabe said, angry all over again as he recalled the incident.

‘The boys do get carried away sometimes,' Dickin said noncommittally.

‘The
boys
take their cue from their leader. Dickin, your brother is beyond controlling. Nay,' he said as his friend raised a cautioning hand, ‘I'll not be silenced. It's not just the cavalier confiscating of my boat and crew. Johnnie has no care for the danger into which he puts his men or the pain he inflicts. Did you notice the bruises on Laurie Steavens's face?'

Dickin's flush deepened. ‘I did caution him about that.'

‘And how did John respond?'

Dickin looked even more uncomfortable. ‘He said she was his whore and he would do what he liked with her.'

Fury scoured Gabe. ‘She's not a whore, damn your eyes for doing nothing! She's Mrs Steavens's daughter, Eva's sister, a maid who worked for your father for years! Are you going to wait to restrain Johnnie until after you find
her
floating face-down in the harbour some morning, like you did that miner who crossed him?'

‘We don't know that Johnnie did that!' Dickin defended hotly.

‘Dickin, he's your little brother. You don't see him clearly. If you could have looked into his eyes as he held Eva before him, his hands cutting into her thin bare arms, hurting her, liking that he was hurting her, daring that revenuer to shoot…'

Dickin looked away. ‘He's young; he'll grow out of it,' he said at last. ‘I can bring him back to heel.'

‘Can you?' Gabe asked softly. ‘I'm not so sure. Even if you can, I fear more men will die before it happens.' He shook his head. ‘I can't be part of that, Dickin.'

‘Oh, posh,' his friend responded. ‘Your Irish feuds are much deadlier than anything we Cornishmen get up.'

Gabe laughed. ‘You don't know my oh-so-righteous brother! Maybe there's something I can agree with Nigel about
after all. I'll honour my pledge and serve out my six months. But then I'm leaving, Dickin. For the sake of your safety—and your soul—I urge you to get out of it, too.'

‘And leave it to Johnnie?' Dickin shook his head sadly. ‘Nay, my friend, I've Da and the inn to run, Tamsyn and all the family to support. What, I should try to eke a living out of the sea? Live on fish and the promise of next season's catch? But you've fulfilled your bargain. Conan came through the voyage well, despite the sea being so rough. I think he's healed enough to resume captaining the
Gull.
You're free to go whenever you wish, Gabe. With my thanks—and the reckoning between us made even.'

Gabe smiled. ‘Nay, we'll never be even. There's no reckoning you can figure to repay the man who saved your life.'

‘If we can part friends, then that will be payment enough. But—' Dickin gave him a curious glance ‘—what will you do?'

Gabe stood silent a moment, reflecting. ‘I've never liked the lawbreaking part of free-trading—the scent of shame and the gallows luring around each bend. As the Gypsies would say:
You cannot walk straight when the road is bent.
But I do love matching my wits and my ship against the sea. Watching moonlight sparkle on the wake while the wind sings in the rigging. I've also discovered I like bringing goods to people who need or want them. I think I'd like to acquire a ship and keep on trading—lawfully this time.'

Dickin nodded. ‘You'll settle in London then, or Dublin?'

‘I don't think so. My family would be only slightly less scandalized by my setting up as a merchant than they would be if I were carted off in irons for free-trading. Perhaps I'll live aboard ship. I imagine the fingers of American maidens would appreciate the warmth of Cornish mittens just as much as those of London shop girls. There's Bruge for lace, Ghent for tapestries, Brussels where art dealers may be as interested as London ones in having Cornish landscapes to trade.'

‘When will you leave?'

Gabe's thoughts winged instantly to Miss Foxe—no, Lady Honoria; he
must
start accustoming himself to referring to her by that name. ‘I have some personal business to settle. A few days, at any rate.'

Dickin grinned. ‘Give that
personal
business my best, and if she is too much a fool to hang on to you, half the wenches in Cornwall would be happy to take her place!'

A man called to Dickin about a problem with the towlines. Turning back to Gabe, he said, ‘I'll see you at the inn later?'

‘If I can borrow a horse. I lent mine to Miss Foxe.' It was a blessing, really, that her identity was not yet generally known. For a few more hours, anyway, he could go on pretending they inhabited the same world.

‘With most of the cargo inland, we can spare a horse. Tell Will Glasson I said to give you the freshest one.'

The two men clasped hands. ‘Thank you again for your help, old friend,' Dickin said. ‘And good luck, in all your endeavours.'

Gabe felt curiously light, now that the decision to leave Cornwall had been made. But that decision had been the easy one.

His next task, the interview tomorrow with Miss Foxe, would be much harder. In the face of danger, the small deception over her name had seemed trivial. He couldn't seem to work up any indignation over it any more.

He knew he would willingly have taken a bullet for her today. Emotion welled up in him, expanding his chest, constricting his breathing, filling him fuller than the headsails on the
Gull
in a tearing wind. If he'd been a sloop he could have sailed all the way to the Americas on the power of it.

He might as well admit it; he, who had meant to avoid female entanglements for another decade or more, had fallen in love with Miss Foxe…who had turned out to be Lady Honoria, a woman so far above his touch that he would never had given her more than an admiring glance, had he known her true identity when they met.

Now it was too late.

However precious she was to him, there was no escaping the fact that Gabriel Hawksworth, even as a respectable merchant and trader, could never begin to offer Lady Honoria the comfort or position in society that were her birthright as the daughter of the Earl of Narborough.

A man of noble character would find the Gypsy, uncover the truth that would free her from an unjust exile, then walk away and leave her to live out her much more magnificent destiny.

Was he noble enough to do it?

Thrusting that question out of mind, he headed for the tunnel and his ride back to town.

W
aking before dawn after only a fitful sleep, Honoria detained the startled tweeny, who came in to relight the fire, long enough to assist her in donning a riding habit. With the pale pink fingers of early morning just creeping into the eastern sky, she walked to the breakfast room, unable to remain in her chamber a moment longer, though it would be hours before she could hope to see Captain Hawksworth at the school.

She'd paced like a caged beast all last evening, too, uninterested in her dinner, too restless to settle on any activity, impatient and so testy she'd had to apologize several times to Aunt Foxe after uttering some sharp remark. Almost, almost she'd been tempted to slip out to the stables, saddle Mischief and ride into town to accost the captain at the inn, so anxious was she to learn what he'd discovered.

How he now felt about her.

He knew her real name, for certain. She hadn't missed the subtle emphasis he'd given her alias on the moor yesterday. But, she recalled, brightening a bit, neither had he seemed furious about it. Perhaps she hadn't mangled things between them irretrievably after all.

Actually, accosting him in his bedchamber sounded as appealing by morning light as it had at midnight. The knowledge
acquired from her aunt's naughty books burning in her, she was most eager to put it into practice.

She'd wanted him even when she told herself the attraction between them was little more than lust. But as the emotional connection strengthened and now, after admitting she loved him, the caution keeping her from giving physical expression to the joy that bubbled up in her at the mere sight of him had steadily eroded until it now restrained her from acting by the thinnest of threads.

Even the terror of yesterday's ambush hadn't wholly muted that joy or done more than reduce to a simmer the passion that made her yearn with ever-increasing fervency for total union with him.

That deliciously wicked poem from
Aristotle's Masterpiece
ran through her head again. Indeed, she thought of it often, for with its sea-going metaphors, it seemed as though written expressly for her and the captain. She couldn't look at him now without thinking of the admonition to take his ‘rudder' in her bold hand ‘like a try'd and skilful pilot' and ‘guide his bark in love's dark channel…'

Her channel liquefied at the thought. She closed her eyes, imagining what it would be like to run her fingers down the solid length of his ‘yard,' to explore and caress the soft and sensitive tip and navigate it within her…

From time immemorial, women had captured and held their men using the power of those navigational tricks. Might she, like a modern siren, lure the captain onto the shoals of delight and keep him there…until he no longer wished to leave?

Though a tiny niggle of doubt stirred, she was nearly certain that this time, given the opportunity, she would be able to invite his caresses without being seized by fear or panic.

She was startled from her thoughts by the entrance of Tamsyn with a tray of cups and saucers. As the maid checked on the doorstep, doubtless surprised at seeing Honoria dressed and down for breakfast a full hour earlier than normal, Honoria noted that the girl had been weeping.

Anxiety raced through her. She'd left the moor before the free-traders finished moving their cargo, without knowing the outcome of their confrontation with the King's men. There'd been shooting aplenty. Had any of Tamsyn's friends or family been injured? Had the revenuers returned with reinforcements?

Was Captain Hawksworth all right?

‘Tamsyn, what's wrong?' she asked.

‘Oh, miss, the most awful news! Truly, I don't know how I shall bear it!'

‘What news?' Honoria demanded, even more alarmed.

‘It's the Hawk! He and my brother Johnnie had the most dreadful row last night and now he's…he's leaving! Leaving the Gull, leaving Cornwall! Oh, my heart is like to break!'

While Tamsyn fell into a new fit of weeping, Honoria's own heart hammered in sudden panic. The captain was
leaving?
Everything in her being protested the thought.

What was she to do? And how long did she have to do it?

Frantic to find out, she grabbed the girl's arm. ‘When, Tamsyn?
When
is he leaving?'

Halted in mid-sob, the girl looked up at her. ‘I d-don't know. D-dickin just said “soon”. Conan Willes, that was skipper of the
Flying Gull
before the Hawk, is going to take her back. But it won't be the same. Nothing won't ever be the same.'

Honoria cast a frantic glance at the mantel clock. Though it was still too early for anyone to be at the school, suddenly she couldn't bear remaining in the house another minute.

She'd saddle Mischief now, ride along the cliffs, gallop over the moors, then proceed to Sennlack and pace the vicarage garden until the captain appeared.

She knew he would not leave without seeing her. But after he saw her, would he leave anyway?

The prospect of having him walk out of her life—and perhaps never return—filled her with a sick horror. Though there was nothing she could do to make him stay, if he was truly set on leaving.

But that thought being too awful to contemplate, she put it out of mind. Striding past the snivelling Tamsyn, she made for the stables.

The animal saddled and ready, she set off, giving the mare her head, the rush of wind past her face as the horse galloped across the moor not working its usual soothing magic. When the mare tired, she reined in and proceeded at a slower pace toward Sennlack, her mind pulsing with anxiety, longing and dread.

She'd thought she would have time—weeks if not months—to try to entice the captain into staying forever. How could she exist without the hope of a future with him?

Before long, she reached the bend in the road where a track led out to his Irish Cliffs. The site drew her as irresistibly as the tide running back to the sea. Here she had laid her soul bare, shared with him her deepest shame, explored with him a passion more powerful than anything she had ever imagined.

Surely he couldn't just turn his back and walk away from the connection she was certain he felt as intensely as she did.

Drawn by the hope that the cove, which held such vivid memories of the two of them united, might bring some peace to her troubled, fearful soul, she dismounted and took the track down the trail to the church. Then stopped, her heat stampeding with gladness and panic as she saw a horse tethered near the structure.

She didn't recognize it, but the captain rode a variety of different mounts out of the Gull's Roost stables. Certain it must be his, she darted onto the trail leading to the beach, slipping and sliding in a heedless rush down the narrow, rocky path until she reached the bottom where it spilled out onto the beach.

There she halted, her heart soaring upward like one of the heaven-bent gulls circling overhead, for sitting on the rock where they'd talked—kissed—was Gabriel Hawksworth.

She hurried across the sand and stopped behind him, heart hammering, hesitant now, hungry, aching.

The joyous smile that lit his face when he turned and saw
her poured a healing balm on the cruel cuts anxiety and doubt had scored on her heart.

Then she was seated beside him, he taking her hand—ah, the luxuriant bounty of his touch!—and kissing it.

‘Lady Honoria,' he said, a touch of reproach in his tone. ‘So you couldn't wait either?'

‘No. I nearly rode to the inn to see you last night. Please, you must tell me straight away—'

‘What I discovered?' he interrupted.

‘No, no!' she said impatiently. ‘Whether you forgive me for not telling you everything, including my name.'

‘Why did you not tell me?' he asked softly, recapturing her hand and tucking it in his own.

‘I was afraid,' she confessed. ‘Afraid you would be angry over the deception I'd practised. And ashamed,' she added in a lower voice. ‘After what happened in London, the name Honoria sounded too much like a mockery. So I gave you my second name, Marie, instead.'

‘Honoria,' he repeated. ‘It suits you. I would wager no one who knows you well would ever doubt that.'

‘My own brother did,' she reminded him, her tone still bitter. ‘You do understand why I chose not to use my real name? I didn't wish for scandal to follow me here and taint Aunt Foxe, just as I wanted to leave London so that it would not further stain my sister. You…know all about my family now, I suppose.'

‘Yes. But don't you want to know what else I know?'

‘Nothing matters as much to me as knowing I've not lost your…friendship,' she asserted, shying away at the last moment from daring to say the word ‘love.'

After all, she was the only one who'd yet acknowledged that emotion. But he was smiling at her so tenderly that some of the icy shackles of fear loosened and fell away.

‘I'm not angry,' he confirmed. ‘Now let me tell you what I learned.'

For the next few minutes, he related to her an almost unbelievable tale: the three friends and spymasters, the fight, the murder, the Gypsy curse, the hanging of his best friend that her father did nothing to prevent even as Leybourne protested his innocence. And finally, the most intriguing news: that the gem trader she'd seen in the garden, the Gypsy Gabe had met at the inn, was the long-missing son of the murdered Baron Framlingham.

‘No one knows what happened to Leybourne's family,' he told her. ‘I think it highly probable that one of his relations who believes in his innocence and blames your father for not trying to exonerate him may have hired the Gypsy, who has reasons of his own to seek vengeance, to find a way to strike back at him. And you provided the means.'

‘An innocent man's murder is certainly grave enough to justify the extreme measures taken against me,' she said thoughtfully. ‘But after nearly twenty years, how could one hope to prove a connection?'

‘I must track down the Gypsy trader, Stephano Beshaley—or Stephen Hebden, as the jeweller called him. He is the only link in the story we know for sure was present the night of your ruin—the one who must hold the key to the
why
of what happened. I mean to compel him to give it to us.'

The fear that his nearness and his smile had set in abeyance returned with a vengeance, like a punch to the gut. ‘And then…you'll be leaving Cornwall for good?'

He gave her a sharp look. ‘How did you know?'

‘Tamsyn.' She tried a smile that didn't quite succeed. ‘She was distraught to think of you leaving. I…I am distraught, too.'

Whether or not she would have had the courage to baldly confess her love, she had no opportunity to discover, for he put a thumb to her lips, stilling them—and distracting her so effectively that for a moment, she could think of nothing but the scent of his skin and the feel of his callused finger.

‘Don't say anything. Not yet. Let me discover what I can,
see if it's possible for Lady Honoria's honour to be vindicated. To give you back a choice of what to do with your future.'

She shook her head sadly. ‘Honour is not redeemable.'

‘You don't know that,' he argued. ‘You have passion and intelligence, spirit and fire! You deserve so much more than to be exiled to a quiet backwater, shunned by Society.'

As he spoke, he rose from his place beside her on the rock. ‘I suppose we'd better go back now.'

Every particle of her protested his loss. Casting about desperately for a means to make him stay, she recalled the siren on the rocks. Could she tempt him, lure him to remain with her? Seize with both hands what she wanted—what she knew he desired as well, even if he might not love her? Use every trick she had read about to create one unforgettable memory of a passion that, if she did not seize this chance, she might never experience?

And perhaps, in this one last encounter, bewitch him as he had bewitched her?

Her heart already pounding with nervousness and anticipation, she grabbed his hand before he could walk away. ‘I do deserve more. A man willing to defend me from revenuers' pistols and Gypsy traders' lies. One who believes in my honour and honesty even more than my blood kin, who's willing to search until he finds the truth that could clear my name. I deserve it and I want it. I want you, Gabe. Only you.'

One hand still holding his wrist captive, as she spoke she slid her other hand up his coat, from his chest to his cravat, then traced a single fingertip along the bare skin of his neck to his chin.

In a flush of joy and triumph, she felt the pulse leap at his throat beneath her questing finger.

He brought one hand up, as if to pull hers away, and instead clasped it over hers, holding her finger against his skin.

‘This is madness,' he whispered hoarsely. ‘I mean to restore your reputation, not destroy it.'

‘It can't be restored—regardless of what you discover. But
having no reputation can be liberating. It means I have nothing to lose, nothing to prevent experiencing what I most desire. I think—I hope—you want it, too. Don't you…Gabe?' she whispered.

He swallowed hard, still resisting, though the molten blaze of his blue eyes and the frantic pulse at his throat testified how difficult he was finding it. ‘I don't want to steal your innocence.'

She almost laughed at the irony: she had nearly been raped in a countess's garden by a nobleman the Ton called a gentleman, while this free-trader, whose company the men in that ballroom would probably have disdained, was too honourable to accept what she offered, what he clearly wanted.

Perhaps one more little lie would be justified to free them both. Tracing his face with her fingers from his temples down to his jaw, she said, ‘I have no innocence left to lose.'

‘I thought…your brother had arrived in time.'

‘The damage was already done.' Which was true, although not in the way she was inferring.