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He groaned inwardly and shut his eyes. If it sounded that bad, even in his own head, how much worse would it sound if he said it out loud?
He should have told her how much she meant to him, that was what he should have done. The moment he’d got the ring on her finger. Or when they’d talked about his first proposal and he’d discovered she hadn’t thought all those vile things that her father had told him were her reason for turning him down. She’d have listened to him then, as he told her…
Told her—his stomach constricted painfully—that he…loved her?
Did he? Was that why the prospect of losing her was making him feel so ill?
Good God. He did. His eyes flew open to stare at her. She was still clinging to his arm and looking at him with concern.
‘Clare…’
His heart sped up. No. He couldn’t tell her. Not now. Not just before she went to speak to Clement. Even if she believed him now, once she heard her brother’s version of events, she’d look back on this moment and think he’d just been trying to turn her up sweet. So that she wouldn’t believe what Clement had to say. They’d lived for too long in a state of mutual suspicion to easily believe anything good the other might say.
The time was not right. He passed a weary hand over his eyes. The time was never right for him and Clare. They’d both been too young when he’d made his first, impulsive and rather rash proposal. And now they were adults and free to govern their lives the way they wished, he was locked in what she’d consider a long-standing feud with her brother.
‘There she is,’ said the Captain suddenly. ‘That be Peeving Cove. God ’elp us.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You will be fine, soon. We are nearly there.’
He would never be fine again. Once again, Clare was going to slip through his fingers. Because he’d…he’d gone about this all wrong. He should have…
‘See, the waves are less rough already,’ she said, as they slipped through the gash in the cliff face that led into a narrow inlet. ‘And the water in the harbour, further in, looks as flat as a mill pond.’
Even though the waves out at sea had been boisterous. It made the place a safe anchorage no matter what storms might rage elsewhere, he suspected.
‘Oh, what a charming little place,’ she exclaimed, straining forward now to admire the cluster of sturdy houses, built of and tiled with local stone so that they blended in with the cliffs backing the cove to the point where they looked as if they had sprouted there entirely naturally. They sat upon a sort of shelf projecting from the cliff face, down which poured a continual torrent, which was, he’d discovered by dint of studying maps of the locality, the River Peever.
She might see only a charming little village, nestling into the shelter of protective cliffs, but he was looking at a virtually impregnable stronghold. The mouth of the river, where it emerged into the sea between two massive, sheer cliffs, which provided the only access to the village, was only just wide enough to admit their craft. And the seabed there was festooned with rocks, so that only those who knew the channel extremely well would dare attempt to sail through the gap except at high tide. Though, by some quirk of geology, the water remained deep enough for craft to sail right up to a broad quayside. So that the inhabitants could sail their own craft right up to their front doors, should they so desire, and unload whatever contraband they had on board. And, thanks to their guided tour of the caves the day before, he’d learned that all the cliffs along this part of the coast were riddled with tunnels and caves, due to extensive quarrying. Tunnels and caves in which smugglers could conceal no end of contraband.
He wondered if the smugglers had mounted guns anywhere up on those cliffs, which surrounded the village like fortress walls. He could actually see one or two ledges, which would give cover to the entire sweep of the harbour. So that they could repel any potential invaders. Such as customs men.
‘I wonder which house is Clement’s,’ said Clare, reminding him that her motives for coming here were at such odds with his own.
‘I don’t like the looks of that, yer lordship,’ said the captain, sidling up to him and jerking his head in the direction of the quayside, which they were steadily approaching, upon which a group of tough-looking men was gathering.
