“Will you shut it?”
They stopped right in front of him, voices so clear he could but whisper and join the conversation.
“I saw a woman, all in white. The tenant’s got hisself a girl, is all. Snuck her in, he did when all the busybodies weren’t looking.”
“An’ I says he’ll be gone soon enough, just like the other tenants, and we be using that stable again.” This one slurred his words. “Ain’t no regular woman, Gaz. She’s back to get the ones as threw her over that cliff, is she. I tell you—”
“Listen.” A cask dropped. A shuffle. Someone gasped. The man called Gaz had resorted to force. “Listen. You yammer this to anyone else, it’ll get to Scruggs. He’ll know we know, and how long till he sets his man on us? Ya bleedin’ idiot. You want to live, Davy?” More shuffling, grunting, and panting. “Then shut your trap. No more. No more to me, either, Davy, ’cause we don’t know who’s listening, and we don’t know who to trust, ’ceptin’ no one.”
“We can leave.”
“And how is Mam to live? What’ll happen to the girls? What about yer boy?”
“I’ll go and take Pip.”
“And leave me with Scruggs asking why?” More shuffling. “C’mon.”
Fox waited while they passed and their footsteps grew distant, and finally breathed again, blood pounding fiercely on every nerve.
In spite of all of his instructions, Perry had lit a lamp and stood in a window.
His skin rippled and a smile fought its way out. It was one of her acts of defiance and a damned brilliant mistake. Davy and Gaz believed her to be the ghost of Lady Shaldon, who it seemed had a history of driving tenants away from this cottage and limiting the smugglers’ squatting to the stable and sheds.
More importantly, Davy and Gaz knew more about Lady Shaldon’s death. Shaldon would want the particulars, and Fox would get them and to his lordship, all in good time. He tamped down his nerves and watched the retreating shadows.
Maybe Perry could make herself useful. She’d dug in her heels anyway to the point that a twenty-four pounder wouldn’t blast her out of that cottage. To keep her safe, he’d have to stay close. Her presence now had a reason besides the obvious one banging around in his breeches, the one he could never give in to.
Once Davy and Gaz crested the road, he stowed the glass and picked his way down to the water.
Tap-tap-tap.Perry raised her head from the deal table in the kitchen.
Good God. She’d fallen asleep, and only the coals glowed in the oversized hearth. Across the table from her, Jenny was curled over two chairs, fast asleep.
Tap-tap-tap.
“Let me in,” a man said gruffly.
She leaned against the door. ThatwasFox’s voice, wasn’t it?
“Who’s there?”
He muttered the password and she slid the lock open.
Fox was a shadow wreathed in shadows. He was good at this business of being almost invisible. Perhaps that was another skill he could teach her.
His lip quirked up. “Let me in?”
She pulled the door wider, and wider still when she saw the tubs he had tucked under each arm.
“Smugglers’ booty,” she said. “Left behind? Or did you have to fight someone for it?”
His smirk grew into a full smile. “There’s more of these submerged in that cove down below. Too much for the men to carry. Let’s see what we have here.” He went to the pantry, came back with a kitchen knife, and began to work the lid.
One did not use one’s good stabbing dagger for such tasks, she guessed. “Will they be back tomorrow, do you think?”
“They won’t want to wait long.”
Jenny stirred, sat up, and rubbed her eyes. Her cap had slipped off and hair tumbled over her wary eyes. For but a moment she was that child again, waking up in a doorway, an eye out for the flesh peddlers.
