The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne (21 page)

“You have no idea how much danger you might have been in. None at all. If any other man had heard about your housekeeper’s request for your meeting, I might have had to use this pistol.” He removed it and set it on a table. “That whole damned village is involved in illicit trade. Everyone knows it.”

He crossed his arms and regarded her with no sympathy. He reminded her of the way he had appeared when she first approached him before the Outrageous Misconception. She was in no mood for whatever he wanted to say, but she knew she would end up hearing it. With a heavy sigh of resignation, she sank onto a chair, set aside her scathing disappointment
in her failed adventure, and gathered what strength her indignation might afford her.

“Why did you want to meet with
any
smuggler, Miss Fairbourne?”

“I am not obligated to submit to an interrogation. You have no right to—”

“The hell I don’t. You have been too willful from the start and my tolerance of that has led to this. Did you think to arrange a special consignment from them, to enhance that damned auction? Yet one more set of lots from the estate of an esteemed and discreet gentleman?”

Her heart pained her, it beat so heavily. “What are you implying? I’ll not have you impugn him.”

He exhaled an impatient sigh. “Those accounts are incomplete and vague for a reason. I thought to spare you my suspicions, but I do not think that is necessary any longer. Is it?”

She refused to answer. She bowed her head, gritted her teeth, and prayed he would just go away.

He did not. He stood there, overwhelming the chamber and her.

“You appear to know at least one smuggler yourself,” she said. “That is one more than we are sure my father knew. If my father had any doings with them, perhaps you led him into it.”

A mistake, that. For a terrible moment his fury crackled through the air. He paced away from her and stood there, a tight, tall figure exuding power and intensity. She braced herself for the slicing words sure to come.

Instead he reined in whatever had broken in him. He turned back to her, his eyes flaming. He was still angry, but he had composed himself.

“I know Tarrington because he does a bit of work for me. He is the king of his kind here, and he knows others of his stature all along the coast.”

“I am told you take a particular interest in the coast.”

“I and others. The Royal Navy does not have the ships to patrol it all, or even most of it. Even the sloops that make
up the Prevention Service stay near the major ports. The bulk of the naval fleet sits at Portsmouth, to be ready if the French invade. Meanwhile, they can come in other ways short of a fighting force. Spies enter with impunity, as easily as French brandy. Information leaves the same way.”

“Are you saying English smugglers help them?”

“Some do. Better use is made of others, though. They watch and report activities that are suspicious. There is a chain now, all along the southeast coast, made up of such as them, and fishermen and landowners.”

“And lords?”

“There are some lords who remain at their coastal estates for this purpose.”

“Not you, I know.”

“I and a few others coordinate this surveillance, and ensure the links do not weaken.”

She guessed that meant he had helped put this in place. “What do the smugglers get in return? A blind eye?”

“They get nothing, except the satisfaction of aiding England. If Tarrington or another is ever caught, his efforts might speak for him and procure some leniency, but it has not been promised.”

“Why not? It would be only fair for the government to do that.”

“One does not bargain with thieves. Loyalty bought with such a promise could be just as quickly bought by another for a higher price.”

That made sense, she supposed. However, she wondered if the government had made no promises because the government was not involved, at least not officially.

Of larger concern to her was what this bargain revealed about himself. He would give no quarter with these men, should he catch them in their crimes, even though they aided this network of watchers that he had arranged.

Her spirits sank yet more on accepting how rigid Southwaite would be in matters of honor. That spoke well of him, she knew. It indicated that he would give no quarter to Robert or her either, however. She thought about the wine hidden
deep in the storage room of Fairbourne’s, beneath obscuring swaths of canvas.

“You must make no attempt to meet them again,” he said firmly. “There are some of them who would kill you for the coin you carry. Do not let Tarrington’s manner fool you. Better if you stayed away from the coast entirely, now that you made the grievous error of being seen with him. This adventure was inexcusable, no matter what you hoped to achieve by it.”

She did not miss the ambiguity he gave her motivations. She assumed he attributed the worst to her, and believed Fairbourne’s was in league with Tarrington. She also heard the tone of a man who still had much to say. The storm clouds reappeared at the edges of his mood and blew in fast. Their winds puffed him up. She knew what was coming.

On a different day she might have defended herself, or tried to deflect his reprimand by being witty, indignant, or shrewd. Right now she felt too sick at heart that she had failed so spectacularly today. Worse, the longer she was in this house, the more she felt the presence of her father. His scent seemed to surround her now, and she sensed that his spirit reproached her as clearly as the earl did. Images of him kept invading her mind, distracting her from Southwaite’s lecture.

D
arius could not hold back his profound irritation with Emma. An equally profound relief wanted to temper his ire, but he was not a man accustomed to biting his tongue.

His brain had been rehearsing this moment since Maitland opened the door to her London home and explained that Miss Fairbourne had gone to the coast. Maitland had appeared worried about that, or perhaps about Darius learning it. Neither the information nor the butler’s expression had encouraged an innocent interpretation of Miss Fairbourne’s behavior.

He had contemplated the possible reasons for this unexpected journey during his ride to the coast, and well into
the night. Ridiculous visions of her digging up loot on a beach taunted him. While he doubted she would be that bold, she was up to no good, he was sure. The only question was whether she embarked on something merely foolhardy or truly dangerous.

Damnation, but he should have ridden to this cottage at dawn today. Noon had clearly been too late for such as this woman. Thank God the housekeeper poured out the whole story once she heard his title. Mrs. Norriston had reacted like an accomplice being threatened with the rack.

He explained most of this to Emma while he gave her a sound dressing-down. He did not mention his sickening worry, but he itemized the rest of it, the elements that pointed out she had a lot to answer for. Describing his pursuit only made the emotions fresh and chaotic again, and they fed the fire in his head.

While he reiterated her danger, he pictured that cliff walk from which her father had plunged to his death, and the fetid chambers at Newgate prison where women were housed, and the fate that could befall a woman at the mercy of men with nothing to lose. The last became a hot iron in his head and he heaped more admonishments on her.

She said not a word. She sat there, hands clasped on her lap and gaze fixed on the carpet, while his words rained down on her. Her silence only annoyed him more, but then he found it troublesome. Her manner was uncharacteristic of the Miss Fairbourne he knew.

He began to sound too forceful to his own ears. He wondered if the way he paced back and forth frightened her. Her refusal to defend herself, to have a decent row, put him increasingly at a disadvantage.

“Have you nothing at all to say?” he demanded, at wit’s end with her docility. “Not even one word?”

“You had so many that I thought to give you the stage.”

He would have preferred if she said that with more spirit, instead of a quiet, almost dejected voice. He angled a bit to try to see her face better. Hell, she wasn’t weeping, was she? He thought he heard a sniff.

He cursed himself. Dismayed, he dropped to one knee beside her. “Forgive me. My worry for your safety almost drove me mad and I have perhaps been too vigorous as a result in expressing my—” His what? Anger, but not the normal sort. Fear, perhaps, but not for himself and not only for her, but also about a situation that might leave him faced with a terrible choice. “My concern.”

She turned her gaze on him. He saw tears and sadness, but little that indicated contrition. “That is good of you, to be concerned, especially since I am not your responsibility.”

Her statement carried a rebuke of its own. Since she was not his responsibility, she was saying, he had no right to scold her like this, or to even question her behavior.

His essence rebelled at the claim. She had occupied his thoughts and time enough these last weeks that he possessed some rights, damn it. He remained ensnarled in that auction house too, and whatever she plotted no doubt involved it, and hence him. She could not really expect him to remain uninterested in her meetings with known smugglers.

He began to explain that, but her eyes and expression arrested his attention so completely that further words seemed unnecessary. She already knew all that he might say, he was sure.

No more than two handspans separated their faces. She was so close that her sweet breath feathered his skin. So close that he felt the shadows burdening her. Something dark weighed on her right now. It occupied her mind more than anything he might say.

You unbearable ass
. Admonishing himself more violently than he had her, he withdrew his handkerchief. He dabbed at a tear that began a tiny path down her cheek, and battled the impulse to use his lips instead.

S
outhwaite did not ask her why she wept. Perhaps he assumed his long, hard scold caused it. Yet as he knelt there, too close, closer than was wise, she believed she saw in his eyes that he knew her tears were not in reaction to him.

He pressed the handkerchief into her hand and stood. He hovered for a long moment, standing right beside her, before stepping away.

With the absence of his close presence, other forces had their way again. Thoughts of her father evoked almost palpable manifestations of his person. The ghost was not in the house, she knew. It was inside of her.

“I did not spend much time with him here,” she heard herself saying. “I do not think anyone did. This was all his, and nothing intrudes to dilute the lingering sense of him.” She used the handkerchief to blot her eyes. “It is different in London, except in his apartment.”

“Have you entered that apartment much since you received the news of his accident?”

She shook her head. She rarely went there.

“You were remarkably composed at his funeral,” he said. “Less than a month later you were busy taking up the threads of your life. Perhaps you have not mourned him.”

“Of all you have said today, that is the most cruel.”

“It is not uncommon, Emma. I did not truly mourn my father until two years after his death. It is not an emotion one can command, so those accustomed to command might well avoid it.”

She wished she could say he spoke nonsense, that of course she had mourned. Yet she realized now she had avoided the worst of it, and busied herself whenever grief threatened to break in her. She had not wanted to acknowledge the frightening emotion that had been gathering in her since she arrived at this house.

“Will I go mad?”

“No. You will just accept the truth of it.”

She understood what he meant, in ways she would not have a week ago. She understood well enough that she now considered what would have been unthinkable even yesterday.

“I want to see where it happened. Do you know exactly where?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“Will you take me there?”

“Acceptance does not require that you torture yourself with the details.”

“I should like to see, all the same.”

He did not agree right away. Perhaps his protective inclinations debated against it.

“We will take your carriage,” he finally said. “I will speak with your coachman and tell him to prepare it.”

M
rs. Norriston served a light supper before they left. Southwaite excused himself as soon as he was finished, to see that the carriage was ready.

Emma noticed as she stepped into the carriage that the earl’s horse had been tethered to the rear. He would come with her and show her the spot in question but she would return alone.

It took them no more than ten minutes to arrive at a rise along the coast where the shore began the climb that would end in the high cliffs at Dover. Southwaite helped her down, and they walked the hundred yards to the path that snaked at the top of this bluff.

“He walked here from the house, I was told. There was no horse or carriage,” she said.

“Apparently he walked along this path often. It goes all the way along the coast, and he could access it not far from his cottage.”

She stepped cautiously from the path to where the ground dropped away. It was not as steep as it would become farther
south, but it was steep enough. “I suppose he was right here when it happened.”

“So I am told.”

She raised her gaze and looked out to the sea. The height and location of this spot gave good prospects of the coast. Far in the distance to the north she spied a massing of lines and forms. It was the Thames fleet, she realized, guarding the sea route near London.

“I was told he fell in the evening but was not found until morning.”

“The justice of the peace learned at the inquiry that he was seen walking the path around eight o’clock.”

“Late evening, then. Almost twilight. Did you attend the inquiry?” She had not. She had not wanted to hear the details then, or ever, until now.

He nodded.

Southwaite left her to her thoughts. She appreciated that, but she also found his manner very reserved. The man who had revealed his emotions so vigorously a couple of hours ago had become a cipher.