Chapter 8
Outside, he spotted her lamp, bobbing along the stone path between pockets of gorse and wild berries. Perry would not stumble over that cliff, not if she stayed on the path to the stable. He waited until he saw the stable door open and close, then he turned his own lamp low, shuttered it, and set it down on the door stoop.
Out at sea, there were no lights. That didn’t mean no one was out there watching, wondering who was lighting the path at Lady Shaldon’s seaside cottage. And why they were there.
Perry staredthrough the slats at the dark gelding confined there. A white diamond between his eyes reminded her of the foals borne by a spunky mare that Bakeley had purchased several years earlier. This one’s eyes were slack from fatigue, yet he mustered the energy to lift his head and curl his lips revealing young sturdy teeth.
“Just like your surly master, aren’t you?” she said. MacEwen had ridden him hard and put him away quickly. He would need a good brushing down and a look at those feet tomorrow when she could see better.
She picked her way past the plodding inn horse and Fox’s big gelding, down the row to Chestnut’s stall. For a seaside cottage, this was a very fine stable. Fine enough for the Earl of Shaldon, though as she remembered, Father did not much give a rat’s bum about the state of the stables. He’d left all of that to Mother and then, by necessity and birth, Bakeley.
As Perry drew closer, Chestnut turned in her stall and took two steps closer. Perry slipped inside.
The snuffing soft mouth tickled her hand and sent warmth through her. “I’m so sorry, my lady, I’ve not brought you anything.” She chuckled. “And, anyway, we’d not have your insides twisting from eating soggy biscuits.”
She smoothed her hand over the silky coat. “You did well on the journey today, my girl.”
Chestnut’s head lifted, and a current of air ruffled the straw, sending the hair on her neck dancing. She heard it then, the soft click of the latch closing.
“Lady Perpetua.”
Her lungs froze. Fox had opened that door soundlessly.
Chestnut shuddered and shifted around, nostrils sucking in the air that Perry couldn’t seem to find.
She sensed him moving through the dark and mustered a breath. “Go away. I’ll not ride away in my nightclothes.”
His dark form appeared next to her, silent and hulking.
Chestnut looked him over, remembering. She flicked her tail and nosed his hand.
“Traitor,” Perry muttered.
Fox didn’t laugh. His hand, that large hand with its long fingers, slid over the horse, stroking and soothing, the action pulling the warmth through her own flesh, soothing the hair on her neck and the tension behind her eyes.
She straightened her shoulders. “You’ve no doubt come to tell me again how dangerous it is here. How I shouldn’t be out in the stables at night.”
“Itisdangerous, my lady.”
Hislady. The words stirred her tension into a hot knot of unshed tears. She swallowed them back and made herself snort. “Ah, yes. Dangerous country. Smugglers and such.”
“You shouldn’t make light of it.”
“I don’t. I’m not unprotected. I have my knives and my pistols.”
“Would you use them?”
“I’ve been tempted to use them on you several times this night.”
His hand stopped. “Lady Perpetua, your government is cracking down on smugglers. Desperate men do desperate things. There is but one of you and many of them.”
“There’s a riding officer in these parts. There’s a baronet justice of the peace down the road. I will look them up if there is trouble.”
“And if they’re part of the smuggling organization?”
Her mind froze around the idea.
But of course. She was not so naive that she shouldn’t have realized—smuggling corrupted all of the locals. Though in all fairness, the smuggling in these parts had not been on her mind at all when she came here.
