“A very good point. That’s entirely likely.”
“Good that our two men have vanished into the night.”
Fox was good at vanishing, as he’d done after Bakeley’s wedding ball. No one knew to where. Except possibly her father, and if she’d asked him, he’d never have told her anyway.
The hair on her neck prickled. She’d found Fox again, even though she hadn’t been looking for him, even though her father had not thrown them together.
He was here, she was here. He was, perhaps, the one for her, the one to help her launch her new life.
If he wanted to kiss her and lie to her, well, she might as well accept the dishonesty and see if it led to seduction.
Seduction…yes, she hadn’t a clue how a woman went about seducing a man, but Fox certainly knew how to draw her out. Even when she’d hated him, it had been his teasing, goading, infuriating voice she’d wanted to hear. She’d stay to see where things led.
And then there was the matter of Carvelle. He’d mistreated Charley’s wife, and he’d escaped Father’s net. What he had done, besides acting with Father’s enemies, she didn’t know. But she would help Fox to capture him. And when Father came swooping in, she would try her own luck at vanishing. On the other side of that water lay the lowlands, and beyond that, France.
Fox tookthe spyglass back from MacEwen.
“Might be him,” MacEwen barely whispered the words.
He’d moved noiselessly behind Fox, skirting the lookout the gang had placed on the crest of the cliff. Fox had found a snug spot to watch both the watcher and the action below.
The casks were offloaded, counted, and parceled off to the six men on shore. The oarsmen helped with the offloading, then climbed back into the boat. Their passenger came ashore and stood to the side talking to a seventh man who appeared, a burly man who fumbled his hat in his hands.
“Scruggs.” Fox whispered.
“Aye.”
The passenger had the advantage of height, but not bulk. Yet in spite of his wiry frame he commanded the other man’s obeisance. Surely this was Carvelle.
He should send MacEwen back on the fresh gelding with a message, and himself follow the man to his destination. Likely, Scruggs would take him to the inn, and it was too late in these parts for a man to stop in for a tankard without arousing suspicion.
And he had Perry to think about. If he went to the inn, and MacEwen went with a message, Perry would be alone and unprotected.
Already she’d put a tall slender cog into her father’s spy works.
The boat pulled away and the men started up the trail to the road, passing them not ten yards distant. Fox counted six men passing. Scruggs was one of them, as was the intimidating passenger. MacEwen took the glass and eyed the lookout man until he too had left.
When the others had cleared, he handed the glass back and whispered “Message?”
Fox shook his head. “Follow him,” he said, breathing the words. He signaled that there were two men left below, and he would watch them.
MacEwen departed in utter silence. A skilled operative, he needed no more instruction than that. No matter the watchers or followers, MacEwen would find a way.
The two below were weighting and sinking the excess casks in a tidal pool trapped by the rocks. Fox picked his way nearer.
They muttered and grunted as they worked and he heard snippets of words over the sound of the surf. “Shut up,” the bigger one kept saying, but the other continued to mutter as they ran the casks down on lines. Though hidden from view of the sea or the shore, it was a shoddy job of concealment. A man could pull up those casks without so much as getting his boots wet.
So it was when a gang of smugglers had both the Riding Officer and the local Justice of the Peace in their pockets. The only reason they bothered with the sinking was to conceal the booty from the likes of him.
When the men finished their task, they hoisted their own casks, and headed straight for him. He slid into the shadows and held his breath.
“I tell you, Gaz, it was her. She’s come back for revenge.”
His nerves stood on edge, sharpening his hearing. They were almost upon him.
“Shush with it. No such thing as ghosts.”
“You saw it.”
