Page 9 of The Smuggler’s Escape

“A week?” Relief flooded Noelle. By then, she would be gone.

“One long, long week.” Richard sighed. “As every minute passes, I am increasingly impatient to claim you as my wife.”

“How romantic!” Lucretia uttered. A sentimental tear ran down her cheek.

“Isn’t it?” Richard agreed. “My mother will call on you, Lady Tifton.”

He bent to kiss Noelle’s fingertips, but she snatched her hand away. She mustn’t let his seductive power distract her from business. She had two days to reorganize everything, evade Hale’s patrols, collect her money, and leave.

He grinned. “Darling, I must fly, but thoughts of you will keep me awake tonight. I can only hope your secret dreams will be as fraught with longing as mine.”

Her secret dreams had nothing to do with Richard. If he intruded upon them, she would throw him out on his ear.

Richard winked at her and with a bow to the others was gone.

Uncle Matthew turned a florid countenance on the two women. “Be off with you, and don’t delude yourself that I’ll lay out even a farthing for bride-clothes. You can tell that to your precious Boltwood when you see him next.”

Once the door of Noelle’s bedchamber was shut, Lucretia gathered Noelle into her arms for a crushing hug. “What a wonderful surprise, my love.”

“It was rather sudden,” Noelle said, hugging Lucretia firmly back. Mordieu, what had Richard been doing in the dovecote? He certainly hadn’t come to see her.

“How dashing of Lord Boltwood to return and sweep you off your feet.” Lucretia wiped away a lingering tear with her shawl. “Your mama would have been so happy! What’s wrong, dearest?”

“My mother would not have approved,” Noelle said. “She believed in the ideals of the Revolution. She wanted me to live a useful life, not become the wife of an idle aristocrat.”

“If you love the aristocrat in question,” Lucretia said softly, “I’m sure she would understand.”

Her mother had eloped with a French viscount who had renounced his title and become embroiled in the politics of the day. Despite his revolutionary views, he’d been caught up between rival factions and guillotined. Noelle’s dying mother had sent Noelle to Sussex. “France has become too dangerous. You will return someday. In the meantime, don’t let my English family turn you into a simpering miss with no thought of anything but frivolous clothing, and no ambition but to trap a wealthy husband. I want my only daughter to live a productive life.”

“I shall,” Noelle had sworn that day, and she meant to keep that oath. Fortunately, she wasn’t in love with the aristocrat in question. She’d been infatuated with him once. Now that she knew what he really was—a selfish, arrogant libertine who had proposed marriage and then sailed away without a thought—she wouldn’t succumb again.

“Your mother followed her heart, and I am sure she would want you to follow yours. I was a young child when she left England, but I remember her well. I admired her greatly. She must have been an exemplary mother.” Lucretia wiped away another tear. “Perhaps Sir Matthew is right, and I am unsuited to motherhood.”

“You would make a perfect mother,” Noelle said automatically. “Uncle Matthew is the unsuited one.” Nothing she said—and she had tried and tried again—would convince Lucretia to value herself as she should, and when, one frustrating day, she had suggested that Lucretia leave her abusive husband, her aunt had responded with a shocked refusal. “I made a vow to honor and obey Sir Matthew. It is my duty to keep that vow.”

“You were forced to marry him. Sold to the highest bidder, Aunt! It’s wrong, and you shouldn’t feel held to that vow.” Now twenty-nine, Lucretia had been tied to Uncle Matthew for twelve long years.

But Lucretia had been adamant, and with a regretful shrug, Noelle had given up on truly helping her aunt. She had hoped that when Matthew Tifton died, they would live happily together, helping the poor, educating the lower classes, holding salons as her mother had done to discuss societal reforms. But he was still alive, and since her presence made life even more difficult for Lucretia, she’d planned to leave his household as soon as she could afford it, and set up on her own.

But not on the Continent. Not under threat of arrest.

She suppressed a wave of sadness and passed a handkerchief to her aunt, hoping to bring this tête-à-tête to an end. By now, the contraband would be cached in several nearby locations, but with the excisemen hovering like vultures and searching every shed and cow byre for five miles around, and the moon waxing brighter every day, how were the smugglers to deliver the goods on time? She would have to come up with an extremely clever plan, or they would risk losing one of their best customers, an inn in Chichester, to one of the larger gangs along the coast. What a waste of all her work to improve the lot of the villagers!

And to improve her own circumstances as well, but that was in the hope of helping others, too, for whilst she was largely dependent on Matthew Tifton, she could do little that mattered.

“To think I had completely despaired that you would marry Lord Boltwood,” Lucretia said. “You seemed so taken with him when you first met, and then suddenly he went off to Amsterdam, and you could scarcely tolerate hearing his name spoken.”

With good reason, the heartless lecher.

“Have you been corresponding in secret? I won’t blame you, I promise. Sir Matthew would have forbidden it.” Without waiting for a reply, Lucretia prattled on. “Think of the fun we’ll have. There will be shopping and visiting with Lady Boltwood. I’m glad Lord Boltwood intends to marry you immediately, regardless of being in mourning. It might be looked at askance in anyone else, but Lord Boltwood is the sort of man who does as he pleases, without regard to the opinions of others.”

Definitely without regard to my opinion, Noelle thought bitterly. And yet, she had to admit that his arrival had come in the nick of time. She must take advantage of it rather than rail against his highhanded behavior.

She stirred the coals in the fireplace and added a few more. She must go out again tonight and meet with the smugglers, once Lucretia and Matthew were abed. She pulled off her soggy slippers, toasted her feet before the fire, and yawned. And yawned again, hoping Lucretia would take the hint.

The problem with yawning, though, was that it made one sleepy, and she couldn’t afford to sleep. She glanced at the mantel clock: only ten, but it felt like the small hours already.

Lucretia curled up on the hearthrug beside her, hugging her knees. “We aren’t really dowdy, are we? I suppose Lord Boltwood would know, coming directly from London.”