Chapter 10
Gaz choked. The raw gin scalded his lungs and he had to muffle his wheezing. Two of the new men glanced over and then turned away.
“Bloody hell,” Gaz croaked.
He glanced up again, and what he saw set his heart racing. In a top floor window, the white figure glowed like a selkie, tall, unmistakably feminine, shimmering hair streaming.
He’d seen her ladyship more than once, as a boy, delivering his mam’s eggs. The lady used to come to the kitchen door herself when she was in residence, many a time. Itwasher. He dropped his gaze. Always kind, she’d been. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.
“Bloody hell, ’tis where someone is going,” Davy said, darkly. “We shouldn’t—”
“Shush, man.” He needed to think. He needed to get them through this night in one piece, and shutting Davy up was first. “’Tis the new tenant’s woman, is all.”
“Nay. He’s but one man alone by hisself.” Davy leaned close, blowing gin-breath at him. “Came alone, he did. An’ he’ll run, soon as she shows herself to him. That earl can’t keep a tenant.Shedrives them all off.”
Gaz didn’t believe in ghosts. Not really.
Still…his jaw ached from the punch he’d caught earlier that day. Bloody Scruggs was on edge. The Dutchman was coming back. The town was too leery even to whisper.
If she’d come back for revenge, almost he’d be willing to help her.
“Oh, God.” Air whooshed from Davy.
“What.”
“The maid too. Oh, God, Gaz. She’s back too.”
“And I suppose all that’s lacking is the bloody coachman,” he said, trying to bring some humor. “I suppose he’ll be lurking here somewhere, dressed all in black.”
“’Tisn’t funny.”
The boat was nearing, and one of the new men was beckoning.
“Here.” Gaz handed Davy the flask. “Pour this down your maw and stop talkin’.”
Perry and Jenny moved downstairs,choosing to wait in the dark in the house’s main parlor with its tall French windows and view of the sea. If the village used this inlet for its smuggling, then the residents of this cottage had been able to see everything. Mother’s grandfather had been in trade and then banking—likely his mercantile career had begun on this Yorkshire coast where he’d had strong connections.
Free trading, she realized, must have been part of it. Perhaps her grandfather had stood on that balcony observing the proper dispersal of goods.
Or—no. Like her own father, he would have been down in the thick of it. Which was where she wanted to be, and it was fair enough since the blood of smugglers and spies ran in her veins.
She was still accommodating the idea that Fox was a spy. Yes, during his long months at Cransdall ten years ago, he had produced portraits of all the family but Bink and her father, who had both been, presumably, on the Peninsula in different capacities supporting Wellington.
Besides the portraits, why had Fox been at the Earl of Shaldon’s home? Was he spying for France or America? Or was he somehow helping her father?
Mother had displayed a high regard for Fox, and if she’d asked him to accompany her here, she’d trusted him.
And then he’d disappeared until last winter, when she’d found his painting and recognized the scenery, the folly on the lake at Cransdall at sunset, streaks of light coloring the scene like a magical fairy world.
She’d run into him by that lake one boring evening, long ago, when she was angry and frustrated with Bakeley. Fox had teased her out of her foul mood.
“Where are they, do you think?” Jenny asked.
She shook off the memories. “Down there somewhere with the shadows.” The smugglers had their lanterns turned to the dimmest of lights.
“Do you suppose someone else might be watching from high up like us?”
A pang of guilt went through her, and to be honest, jealousy. She should have thought of that. Jenny, a servant, was more astute, more practical, more level-headed than she. The daughter of a spy should have realized the free traders had lookout men, and yet, she’d stupidly exposed the light in the upper floor window.
