Louise Allen Historical Collection (25 page)

The thought of Ross’s thighs in fine knitted silk evening breeches had Meg turning to fuss with the flower arrangement. That half-hour on the terrace when she had cried in his arms and he had comforted her seemed like a dream now. The next day he had appeared to be engrossed writing letters in the intervals between inspecting the cottages on the estate, setting on a veritable army of men to repair them and continuing with his daily rides out with his steward.

His mood had seemed not so much grim as serious, she had thought, watching him pace across the hall between drawing room and library. Meg could only hope that he met a young woman for whom he could feel real affection and attachment.

And then she would have to leave, for she could not imagine staying at the Court with Ross wed to another woman. But she had kept busy, and outwardly cheerful. Sometimes she had not thought about Ross or her sisters for an hour at a time.

‘Any more news of your sisters?’ Perrott asked, jerking her away from uncomfortable speculation and back to the main anxiety in her life.

‘I have had one more letter from Jago, but he is not getting anywhere. They are definitely not at home and my father informed him that he had no daughters when Jago was making conversation with him when he called.’

‘Perhaps they both eloped?’

‘There is no gossip—it seems the villagers are keeping silent out of fear of my father’s anger.’

‘No news is good news, in my opinion. After all, if—forgive me—they had been taken ill or met with an accident at home and died, Jago would find out about that.’

‘That is true.’ Worrying over something you could not do anything about was not productive, she knew that. Instead, she went over the arrangements for the dinner party for the tenth time that day.

Heneage and Mrs Harris had thrown themselves into preparations for the event with enthusiasm and Meg had been caught up in it, finding to her relief that she now knew enough to fulfil her part.

The large dining room and long drawing room had been turned out, the gloomier paintings removed to the attics and the candelabra lowered for every tinkling crystal drop to be washed. The silver had been polished and the laundry maids attacked the yards of napery with soapwort and starch. Footmen had been set to clean windows on the inside while the gardening staff polished at the outside and Meg had turned the two largest spare bedrooms into boudoirs for the ladies to leave their wraps and to retire to during the course of the evening.

Now, as Heneage threw open the front doors and Ross walked back into the hall, Meg went to check on the maids. She could have watched, seen the guests arrive, but somehow she did not want to, although the maids were all agog and had had to be chased back to their stations. Once, as Lieutenant Halgate’s wife, she would have been an eligible guest for a dinner party like this; now she must think herself grateful to be able to attend to the comfort of the ladies.

It was clear, as the footmen led one chattering group after another up to the ladies’ retiring rooms, that no one was thinking of being fashionably late. They were all far too eager to see the new Lord Brandon presiding over his dinner table for that, Meg thought, half-amused, half-irritated by the prattle. She should have been attending to the married ladies, but the opportunity to size up the little flock of prospective brides was too much for her curiosity.

Ross had not been so obvious as to invite only those families with daughters, but even so, there were seven unmarried girls to fill the bedchamber with giggles and gossip as they prinked in front of the dressing-table mirror and the long cheval glass.

‘He isn’t at all handsome,’ Elizabeth Pennare remarked as she pinned up one of her elder sister’s curls.

‘Deliciously brooding, though,’ one girl Meg did not recognise countered. ‘Like a Byronic hero.’

‘And brave,’ another added. ‘He was a major, after all, and was wounded. I wish he was still wearing his scarlet uniform.’

The Rifle Brigade wears green, you ignorant chit.
Meg helped Jenny fold evening cloaks away, her tongue between her teeth.

‘And rich,’ one of the Pengilly girls remarked. ‘Papa says he owns mines and fishing boats and a warehouse in Falmouth.’

One or two of the young women exchanged glances, eyebrows raised, lips pursed, at this vulgar mention of money. But they are all interested, Meg thought. Money, title, looks.
What about the man? What about his character?

‘Well, I think it must be very hard to have to come back after years away in the army and find all your family gone and have to make a fresh start,’ one rather mousy girl said. Meg smiled at her sensitivity and her soft voice, wondering who she was.

‘Not quite all,’ Anne Pengilly remarked, eyes wide with the scandal of it. ‘They do say there’s a boy who looks remarkably—’

‘Come along, girls.’ Lady Pennare swept in. ‘We must not keep our host waiting.’

They streamed out of the room, chattering and laughing, all except for the quiet one with the soft voice who hung back.

‘May I help?’ Meg asked. ‘I am sorry, I am afraid I did not hear your name. Would you like your mama?’

‘Oh, no, thank you. I’m Penelope Hawkins, the vicar’s niece,’ she said with her shy smile. ‘I just… They are a bit overwhelming,’ she added breathlessly. ‘Like a flock of birds all twittering and pecking. Poor Lord Brandon,’ she murmured as she slipped out of the door and followed in their wake.

She would do. Just so long as she isn’t frightened of him.

They are all impossible
, Ross thought. He scanned the length of the table while paying smiling attention to Lady Avise Westmoreland, who was regaling him with her opinions on the absolute necessity of visiting London at least four times a year. ‘Otherwise, how is one to dress?’ she enquired. Ross hoped she was not expecting a serious answer to that.

‘Absolutely,’ he agreed. ‘May I help you to some more of the fricassee?’ No, one day—let alone one night—with any of the pretty young things arrayed down the length of his dining table would result in him either strangling his new wife or shooting himself. All except, perhaps, the little brown sparrow halfway down who was, if he remembered correctly, the vicar’s niece.

He must have a predilection for the daughters of the church, he thought ruefully, although Miss Hawkins roused no stirring of desire in him. She just looked as though she would be tranquil company and had her fair share of common sense. Which, he was rapidly becoming convinced, Lady Avise singularly lacked.

It seemed an age, but at finally he stood on the front steps and saw off the last of his guests, their carriages clattering away down the drive in the moonlight. Ross rolled his shoulders to release some of the tension and took a cigarillo case out of an inner pocket. One of the footmen brought him a candle to light the thin cylinder. He nodded his thanks as he began to stroll along the terrace. ‘Tell Perrott not to sit up for me, will you?’

The air was still enough to hear the sea and on an impulse he began to make his way along the path that led towards the lane to the bay. He leaned on the gate, savouring the cigarillo, letting his mind wander as he looked down the moonlit lane.

Then, just at the bend before the lane ran on to the beach, there was a flicker of white. Something, or someone, was down there. Tregarne had accused Billy of smuggling. He had put off confronting the old man about it; now he realised that this was a perfect night for landing casks. If he found evidence, then he must act.

Ross pinched out the cigarillo between fingers and thumb and tossed it aside, pulled the lapels of his coat together across the betraying white of his shirt, climbed the gate and trod silently down the lane to the beach.

R
oss kept to the ridge of grass in the centre of the lane, his evening shoes silent on the soft turf. There was no further movement ahead. At the bend before the beach he stopped, listening, but the sound of the surf was too loud to make out any other sound.

Slowly he eased around the corner, the fragrance of bluebells competing with the smell of the sea as he brushed close to the bank. The beach seemed deserted, the sand bleached white and the foam on the small breakers glinting, but even as he studied it in the moonlight he knew he was not alone.

The old instincts refined by years of hunting the enemy, not rabbits, were sending prickles of awareness down his spine. Ross realised he was smiling, teeth bared, as his blood stirred. God, but he had missed this, the
frisson
of danger, the skill of stalking, the challenge of outwitting the other man. If there was another man out here and it was not just his imagination.

If the other man was Billy Gillan, then it was likely that he was stalking Ross and could have brought him down five minutes ago, if he was so inclined. But although Billy might enjoy teasing his old pupil, he was no danger. It was not the poacher making every one of his senses alert to peril.

Here, now, he was the man he had been trying to hide under the civilised trappings of a country gentleman. He was the killer again, the man with blood on his hands and death in his heart. He shivered, partly appalled at the bone-deep rightness of what he was feeling, partly sliding easily into the skin of his old self. The difference now was that he was defending his own turf, not fighting his country’s enemies.

It was perhaps not the most prudent thing to be searching for an unknown danger unarmed and in evening dress, but it added to the challenge and he was sick of being prudent.

The caves were around the corner. To approach them he would have to leave the cover of the bank and work his way around under the edge of the low cliff, across tumbled rocks and numerous rock pools. He eased off his evening shoes and removed his stockings, his bare feet flexing on the sand as he stripped off all his upper garments. His darkly tanned torso was less likely to show up than the stark white of a shirt he could not completely cover.

Half-naked Ross slid round the corner and headed for the caves. There was a splash, a creak, a sudden flash of light offshore, gone so rapidly that if he had not been alert for just those signs he would have missed them. A boat was rowing in, very cautiously. He crept on a little further to where a jumble of bigger rocks would give him cover.

Someone was humming. Ross flattened himself against the rock as the sound came closer and a figure emerged from the shelter of the rocks.

It was a woman clad only in a shift, her legs visible from the knee down, her arms bare as she walked towards the edge of the sea where the wavelets were breaking in silver foam on the sand. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head and she was humming, it seemed, out of sheer pleasure for she gave a little skip and a low laugh as the first waves touched her toes.

Meg? Here in her shift?
Ross straightened up, opened his mouth to shout. If whoever it was in that boat heard him they would turn back, not knowing how many men were waiting for them on the beach. But even as he drew the breath into his lungs Meg ran into the surf to her waist, laughing and gasping with the shock of the cold water. Then she began to swim.

The dark shape of the boat loomed out of the darkness, right on top of her. Meg gave a startled shriek, someone swore and the shutter of a dark lantern opened, revealing six men at the oars and a seventh in the bows holding the lantern. Ross bit back the shout.

‘Shutter that damned light.’ The growled order carried clear over the water.

‘It’s a woman—row harder, boys, catch her.’ The man in the bows held the light up, illuminating Meg’s frantic efforts to swim ashore. She staggered to her feet, still waist deep as Ross reached the water’s edge.

‘Meg, to me!’ She changed direction, floundering towards him as she recognised his voice. ‘Run.’ Up to his thighs in water he grabbed her, pushed her behind him towards the beach and faced the boat.

One unarmed man against seven with oars, knives and possibly pistols did not seem good odds. Ross showed his teeth; if they touched Meg, he’d kill the lot of them with his bare hands. ‘I am Brandon. Get off this beach.’

‘Going to stop us, are you?’ A big man vaulted over the side into the surf, knife in hand. ‘You and your mermaid?’

Ross backed up. There was no point in heroics yet—if he was knifed, Meg would be at their mercy. He had to buy her enough time to run clear. If he could lure the man in close enough to grapple with him…

Then something flew past his ear and hit the big man square on the chest, something else splashed into the water beside him as he roared with rage. Ross looked over his shoulder. Far from running, Meg was on the beach hurling stones at the boat.