Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (13 page)

He didn’t start at all at her voice, but gave a wide, gap-toothed smile that split his seamed face in two. His dark eyes were marbled, Anne could see, the cataracts in both clouding them completely. Blindness darkened his life; his smile despite such a bleak fate humbled her, when she considered her own perfect health, wealth and dismal mood.

“I sit here most fine afternoons,” he said, gently.

His voice had a faint accent, or perhaps a dimension she felt was familiar somehow, the cadence and inflection ones she had heard before.

“It’s cloudy today,” he continued, “but fine, still, after a long damp winter. Any day it doesn’t rain, in Cornwall, is considered fine, you know.”

They chatted for a while, and she learned all about him. Mr. Abraham Goldsmith was from Kent, her part of the world—he heard something in her voice, he said, that told him so—but had moved to St. Wyllow when his blindness progressed until he could see nothing beyond shade and light. His only relative, a widowed niece, Mrs. Rebecca Miller, lived here and cared for him. He held up his walking stick, a fine piece of carving, and said, blind as he was, he still did woodworking, and sold what he could for his living.

Anne examined it. “It’s beautiful!” she said, awed. The top knob was a deeply carved tree, intricate and handsome, and below the tree were circles of symbols. “The tree of life,” she said, softly.

“It is! How did you know?” he asked.

“I’m familiar with the symbolism, sir. Do you make walking sticks for other people?” she asked.

“I do on occasion,” he answered.

“My father suffers from gout, but will not admit it hobbles him, and so sits in his library more than is good for him. If he had a stick to lean on, I might encourage him to walk with me over the estate. Will you craft one for me?”

She was rewarded by a wide grin and a softly spoken thanks, and they discussed the design of the stick. Anne wanted to incorporate Irusan, and so picked him up, placing him on the bench between them. The gentleman felt the giant, shaggy tabby, saying yes, the fellow’s massive bushy head would make a fine ornament for the top of a walking stick. Anne’s father loved the cat, and Irusan returned the sentiment, following the earl from room to room and sitting atop his piles of books long into the night, as her father read and studied. Irusan was to be immortalized on the head of the cane, and his eyes would be inset chunks of emerald. Dignified and haughty, Irusan seemed to take the honor in stride. He crept onto the old gentleman’s lap, purring in his deep, throaty way, while he allowed himself to be petted, a rare reaction to a stranger.

As Anne and her new acquaintance talked, about nothing and everything, she felt a deep sense of peace pervade her. Perhaps she had lost Darkefell’s friendship—it had never occurred to her before that she valued it at all—but she was still a fortunate lady, with wealth and health and more choice than any young woman she knew. Life progressed. She would forget the marquess in time. He was not worthy of her regard, if he could do such a thing as destroy her reputation without a thought.

***

“Johnny, you
will
talk to me. I know what you’ve been up to,” Darkefell said for the third time. He had cornered the lad in the storeroom of the Barbary Ghost Inn, and was determined to get to the bottom of things. After the night before and Anne’s incomprehensible message, sent via Osei, he knew he should be trying to find out what was going on with her, but he was angry. Someone had told her lies—he suspected Marcus St. James—but she knew him at least well enough that she should have come to him first, before believing them.

“Milord, I ain’t got nothin’ to say.” The young fellow’s hands were shaking as he carved a piece of cork to act as a stopper for a flask of ale.

Darkefell sat on a barrel and examined the young man. At twenty-one, Johnny was stout, strong, with the powerful frame of a fighter. He would be the ideal sort for a smuggler to hire, a fellow who could tote ankers of gin, and fight excise men at the same time.

“Your father is worried, Johnny,” he said, switching tactics. “Ever since your mother died, he knows he’s not been himself, but he wants you to know he will do anything to help you, if you will just break free of the villains. I won’t turn you in if you tell me the truth. I only want the best for you and your father.”

The mulish expression melted from his broad face, and Johnny said, “There’s nothin’ I can do, milord,” he said, shrugging hopelessly. “Micklethwaite’s got me. If I try to say no, he’ll have someone kill me da, he said it! I can’t let ’im do it. Poor da don’t deserve that. I just gotta keep goin’.”

So it was as Quintrell feared; his son had gotten in deep and didn’t know how to extricate himself from the situation. “But if you are arrested and transported, that will kill your father more surely than any smuggler’s ruffian.”

Johnny shrugged and grunted, “Can’t do anything now.”

“At least let me try to help,” the marquess said.

The fellow gave grudging assent.

An hour later, after much questioning, Darkefell left the interview with a little information, all the young man dared tell him about future plans. Micklethwaite’s lugger was expected on the next good night in the cove below Pamela St. James’s house. Darkefell swore to help the young man get out of the trap he was in, but Johnny did not seem to hold out any hope of deliverance from the marquess’s aid.

“Why is the landing scheduled for that exact spot again?” Darkefell finally asked, but Johnny just shrugged. He didn’t know, and couldn’t guess.

Darkefell walked into St. Wyllow, intent on finding the excise man, Puddicombe, to see if the crown would ever make a deal in exchange for turning over evidence and information. If the boy would provide all he knew in exchange for not being charged, Darkefell could send the lad north for a time, to protect him. But he couldn’t protect Joseph Quintrell from possible reprisals from the smuggling captain, if it got out that Johnny had turned traitor. That was a problem the marquess hadn’t figured out yet.

Distracted by his thoughts, he heard her voice before he saw her. Anne. He whirled around, searching, and saw her sitting on a bench in the village green with an elderly man, talking. Just … talking, as if there was nothing wrong in her world. Anger bit into him.

There was a lot wrong in
his
world, and she was going to know about it as she explained what the hell she meant by the message Osei had been reluctant to share, that Darkefell should just go home, that she didn’t intend to see him ever again. He strode through the village green to the bench and was pleased when she appeared apprehensive.

“My lady,” he said, greeting her, frostily. “How are you today? How pleasant to see you, after the
charming
message you sent me by Mr. Boatin last night!”

“That is no tone to use with a lady, young fellow,” the old man, sitting beside her on the bench, said. “You have no right to speak to her so angrily.”

Darkefell, shocked at the temerity of the villager, when most quailed before his displeasure, gaped, speechless.

Irusan leaped down and stalked toward the marquess, while Anne put her hand over the old man’s, where it rested on his carved cane. “It’s all right, Mr. Goldsmith, this angry fellow is an acquaintance, and harmless for all his bluster.” She stood, smoothed down her full skirts, and said, gently, to her bench companion, “I will come by your cousin’s home and purchase that stick in the pattern we spoke of, if you will make it.”

The man put out his hand, and it was then that Darkefell realized he was blind. He took Anne’s hand, and said, “Thank you, miss. I have so few opportunities to help my cousin, who has been so kind to me. Your purchase will allow me to repay some of her kindness.”

“The pleasure is mine, sir, for I seldom know what to purchase for my father. This has been fortuitous. Shalom, chaver.” She turned to Darkefell, and with a haughty look, she said, “I will speak with you in private, sir.”

She walked a ways, and he followed, with Irusan keeping pace.

“How do you know Hebrew?” he said, examining her with interest.

“I don’t know Hebrew. I can stutter a few words. There is a vast difference.” She paused, then added, “My uncle’s second wife is a Jewess.”

“How did your family react to that marriage?”

“My uncle said he married the first time to please his family. He married the second time to
spite
them. I don’t think that’s completely true, because I can see that he loves Sarah deeply. But my mother—his sister—will not speak to him except through someone else, and to my grandmother, her son is dead.” She paused, but a smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. “I spend as much time with them as I can.”

He laughed out loud and strolled with her, gazing off down the road, the steep slant toward the sea. He had been furious with Anne just minutes before, but now … he shook his head in wonder. Just being in her company calmed him, even when she was the one at whom he was angry. It made no sense at all, and yet it made exquisite sense, summarizing the contradiction that was his relationship with Lady Anne. He glanced over at her, but swiftly looked away. The thought of what she believed about him was too painful to consider, for the moment.

The view down the sloping high street was squarely presented at the end, like a vignette in motion framed by the still life of the surrounding buildings; the ocean was dark gray and choppy, with curling white caps. A sailing ship approached the St. Wyllow dock. He hadn’t spent a lot of time in seaside villages, but he could see the charm of the ever-changing scenery of the ocean.

Irusan dashed down an alley after a mouse, cornering it behind a pile of wooden crates. They stopped to wait for the hunter. Calmer than he thought he’d be, he glanced over at his companion and asked, “Anne, what in God’s name did you mean by that odd message you sent me through Osei, that I might as well go home, because you wouldn’t see me again?”

“I think you know very well what I mean, my lord.”

She was back to “my lording” him again. He thought they were long past that. Tamping down the flare of anger he felt, he said, “I think you ought to reiterate, for me, what I am supposed to have done beyond defending your honor?”

She turned to stare at him. “Defending my honor?” she cried. She bundled her shawl around her and crossed her arms over her chest. “By exposing me …” She trailed off and glanced around. There were a sufficient number of people out strolling that she stepped closer to him, stared up at him and said, in an angry hiss, “Defending my honor? Is that what you call exposing every little detail of what we have done, of the kisses … in short, of the intolerable license you have taken with me, and in such a crowded place as that ballroom last night? My reputation, which
does
matter to me, is obliterated among the officers of the Light Dragoons. And all by your licentious mouth, my lord.”

He saw then his difficult situation, and what must have occurred. St. James, the cad, had gotten to her first and poured poison in Anne’s ear. He wasn’t sure how the fellow knew about the kisses and intimacies they had shared, but it was likely through revelations Anne would naturally have made to her intimate friend, Pamela. Regardless of how it had happened that the captain had such information, Darkefell couldn’t tell her the truth of what began the fight without hurting her intolerably. St. James’s words had such a cutting cruelty to them that he would never repeat them to her, not even to blacken the name of a man he must regard as a serious threat in his quest for Anne’s hand in marriage.

“And for you to have implied that we did more,” she continued, “beyond kisses … Darkefell, I would not have suspected it of you! I can only think you did it to damage my reputation with St. James, who you must view as a rival.”

He shook his head, bewildered. How to extricate himself? For he would not let her dwell in such an illusion. It would not be honorable to let her think him a cur, only to have her go straight into the arms of a man who would marry her for her wealth and make her miserable for the rest of her days. “Anne,” he said, gently, putting his hands on her shoulders, “do you not know me better than that? Better than to think I would do such a thing as destroy your reputation?”

She gazed up at him and shook her head, a sad expression in her fine gray eyes. “I have known you less than a month. How can I know of what you are capable?”

“You are the most intelligent woman I have ever met, and a good judge of character. I place myself utterly in your hands. What do you
believe
of me, then?” Their eyes locked, and he held her gaze, his fingers clutching her shoulders. He wanted to shake her, to yell, to make her believe him, but those things would only hurt his case, and he restrained himself. He must learn patience.

Finally she sighed. “What am I to think of what St. James said?” she mused. “Why else did he attack you? Did you slight Pamela? Or insult him?”

“I don’t really wish to discuss it, Anne.”

“No, Darkefell,” she said, earnestly, “you cannot just refuse to tell me what you said to make him attack you. That’s not fair. I’ve known St. James for these last six years, and never known him to be anything but equable.”

Darkefell stared down the street, feeling as storm-tossed as the approaching ship. “What if I told you that he did not attack me, but I him?” he said, gazing at her again, longing to touch her, to kiss her, but knowing that to be impossible in such a public place.

“Well, I suppose I would believe that, for you do have a dangerous temper,” she said, tartly. “I would still want to know the genesis of your disagreement.”

He thrust his chin up in the air. “I will never repeat what he said, but I was, indeed, defending you. What was said by Captain St. James was hurtful, but did not damage your reputation, you can rest assured of that, except in the manner any scurrilous words damage a lady.” He gentled his tone and said, as he gazed into her gray eyes, “Anne, believe me; no one beyond your circle knows about the kisses we shared. I would imagine you must have said something to Miss St. James, and she, probably in all innocence, told her brother, and so he used that to excuse his execrable conduct.”