Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (35 page)

But still, life went on. Anne conferred with cook most mornings, and then the housekeeper. She made parish visits for the vicar, who was still unmarried, and therefore had no wife to fill that valuable post of minister to the sick, old, and crippled. She settled arguments among some of the local women, delivered food to the needy, and helped the teachers at her dame school plan for the next year, now that most of the students were busy helping their families with the farmwork.

In other words, she did the tasks her mother, as countess, should have done, but didn’t because of her estrangement from the earl. Anne’s mother had not visited Harecross in two years, and would not deign to set foot there, even with the incentive of a daughter who had received an extremely eligible offer of marriage from a marquess. A flurry of letters had followed Anne to Kent from Bath, but the countess herself would not come to Harecross Hall.

Walking the wild coastline near the village of Kingsdown on a breezy late spring day, looking out over the channel from the chalk cliff, Anne was beginning to feel that all the exciting events of the past months were receding to that gray area of memories and dreams, even the powerful arms and seductive kisses of Lord Darkefell.

Beloved Tony.

Well … no. She was lying to herself, for she would not,
could
not forget his kisses, and the feel of his heart thumping against hers, and the wild sensations that coursed through her when she had let him go too far for modesty, but not far enough for desire. She closed her eyes, the salt dampness of the wind tugging at her bonnet. Every time she stood still, she could feel Darkefell with her, and she wanted him. She ached to see his face, to hear his voice, to feel his arms.

Had she been a desperate fool to feel the need for solitude in which to consider her feelings for him? Wasn’t this madness pulsing through her veins proof that she loved him deeply enough for a lifetime commitment? She just wasn’t sure anymore what she felt or wanted or needed. It was all a tangled blur, and she was going to make herself wretched if she continued to yearn for him in such a schoolgirlish fashion.

She turned away from the choppy view of the channel and walked inland, along a well-known path from her home of Harecross Hall, past Wroth Farm, and over a hill past a wooded valley hugging the Wroth Hill Stream. She carried a laden basket and had an objective. Her father was terribly worried and in a dilemma. Early in the spring a band of gypsies had politely begged permission to camp in a field quite a distance from the house, promising not to cause any trouble, and to keep the peace. The earl, always interested in language and culture, had agreed, asking only that he be allowed to meet with some of the elders to study their Romany language. He had a theory that if he could trace the roots of their native tongue, it might lead to some surprises about their country of origin. He did not believe they were originally from Egypt, as most claimed, nor from Hungary or Romania, as was also commonly conjectured.

But a few of the local farmers, including the earl’s own home farm tenant, complained that the gypsies robbed the henhouses, fished from the stream, and stole. The earl thought that a few of the local ne’er-do-wells were taking advantage of the presence of the gypsies to run wild, but could not prove it. Unhappy, but sure of his duty to those who depended upon him, he had decided the gypsies must go to keep the peace with his villagers.

However, they were being slow to move. Always, it was
“tomorrow … we’ll go tomorrow.”
Their tomorrows were used up, but the earl didn’t know how to enforce his command, other than by taking drastic measures. His steward was recommending burning their tents and caravans, but the earl would not hear of it.

Anne was visiting to see if she could ease their way off of Harecross property, and she had some gifts for the children and old folks. Gifts had a way of softening bad feelings. There was one old woman her father found especially intriguing, because she told tales of being related to European royalty, and though he did not think the stories were true, he would have liked more time to get as much information as he could, to try to figure out if it was true or not. That was not to be, but he had sent, by Anne, a very fine broach that she could keep or sell, as she saw fit.

Walking the path she had taken as a child, over hills, across open fields, away from the windy, high-cliffed shoreline that the gypsies disdained, she remembered her childhood run-in with the gypsy boys, who had made fun of her and tore her gown. Her big brother, Jamey, had beaten them and sent them back to their camp chastised and bloody. It was past time that she should visit Jamey. Depending upon his state when she saw him, the visit could be easy and fun, or sad and tiring. But she would make the effort. Spring was usually good for him, as he loved flowers and butterflies, caterpillars and birds.

What was Darkefell doing that very moment? she wondered. Was he somewhere thinking of her, too?

She sniffed. Likely not. He was probably recovering his equanimity and wondering why he had followed a stiff-necked, long-nosed spinster all the way to Cornwall, and thinking what a lucky escape he had had. She didn’t want to imagine that, but it could be true.

She put those morose thoughts out of her mind as she approached the gypsy encampment cautiously. Perhaps it was foolhardy, but she had slipped away without any escort. Mary would have come, if she’d known, but Anne had been to the camp before, and didn’t feel any sense of menace from these folk.

The site was a straggly group of tents and carts, circled around a central area where a big fire smoldered, and a pot hung over it. Rope lines of clean clothes were strung from tree to tree. At this time of day, Anne knew it was mostly women at the camp, some young but many more older, stirring pots, washing laundry, and looking after the multitude of dark-haired, dark-eyed children. The younger men were gone off to work on local farms, for farmers did take advantage of their strong backs and inexpensive labor, even as they demanded that the gypsies be evicted from the earl’s land. The older men would be selling tinker’s wares or following their trade, mending pots and sharpening knives in the village of Kingsdown and beyond as far as Ringwould.

She was about to make her presence known, when she saw something that made her stop dead; it was a familiar profile. A man stood talking earnestly to a pretty young gypsy woman who held a baby to her breast. Her heart pounded. The man’s dark curling hair reached his broad shoulders, and the prominent nose and full lips were evident even at a distance.

Her heart pounded, her nighttime dreams and daytime yearnings throbbing through her in an instant. She couldn’t help herself; she cried out “Tony!” and started forward, dropping her basket in her haste.

The man turned, stared at her in alarm, and took off, running. She picked up her skirts and ran after him. “Tony, wait! Stop!” she cried out. “What are you doing here? Why are you running?”

But he was faster than she, and galloped over a hill and was gone, while she, confined by her skirts and shawl, was fettered. She stopped running and, gasping for breath, leaned against a tree. What was Darkefell doing near her home, when she had told him to stay away? And yet, was it really Tony? It had looked eerily like him, and he had turned at the name called out and looked like he knew her. There was something not quite right. Surely Darkefell was taller? And broader of shoulder? And … more handsome?

But it
had
to be him! There could not be two men in England so similar. Furious, she clumped back to the camp, retrieved her basket, dropped it with the gypsy women, who steadfastly refused to even understand her questions about the dark-haired man she had seen, and then stomped off home, slashing through the lengthening grass, her skirts whirling about her.

Darkefell could be anywhere by now, for she doubted he’d go back to the gypsy camp. But why was he there, sneaking around like a bandit? Was he spying on her? It made no sense.

But if she couldn’t find him, then she would send a letter to Darkefell Castle and demand and answer from Osei. Why was Tony in Kent, if not following her and breaking his word? She would write to Lydia, too. And Lady Darkefell, Tony’s mother. She would write to them all, demanding answers! She would know the truth.

But now the fever that burned her from within whenever she thought of Tony, Lord Darkefell, and his lips against her mouth, his arms wound around her tightly, leaped into a fire. His hard body, his soft lips, his persuasive kisses. It seemed he was in her very blood, and her pulse pounded out his name. Tony. Tony.

Dreams of him obsessed her after that afternoon. Despite a certainty that he would not come back there, she haunted the gypsy camp every day, begging her father not to evict the gypsies until she figured out what was going on. The man didn’t come back—that she saw, anyway—and the gypsies would not speak of him. And yet every night Darkefell visited her in her dreams, calling out her name as she tossed and turned in her feather bed. In those dreams he would do wicked, shameful things to her as she reveled in his lusty abandon.

There was only one way to end her fever; she must see Darkefell, and soon. If the only thing keeping him in her blood was the heat of his kisses and the sensual temptation he presented, then she would make love with him, and either quench the flames or immolate herself on the pyre of passion.

Author Afterword

Dear Reader,

As with my last book,
Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark
, I’d like to offer interested readers some pertinent information on the factual basis of
Revenge of the Barbary Ghost
.

First, though the Barbary Ghost legend, the Barbary Ghost Inn, and St. Wyllow village are all the author’s own creations, Barbary pirates truly were a frightening fact of life in Georgian-era England and other northern hemisphere countries. The Barbary Coast is a stretch of north Africa coastline that runs along the Mediterranean Sea west, past the Strait of Gibraltar; Muslim pirates and privateers who came from this region were thus called Barbary pirates. Barbary pirates raided northern countries, including England and Ireland, right up to the late 1700s and took hostages to sell, use as slaves, or to trade for ransom.

These bold pirates even raided the ships of the new republic, the United States of America. In the very year in which
this
book takes place, 1786, Thomas Jefferson, ambassador to France, and John Adams, ambassador to England, met in London with the ambassador to England from Tripoli to express their dismay over the Barbary pirates’ continuing hostility toward American ships. They received no assurance that the practice of raiding American ships would stop unless an enormous amount of tribute money was paid as a bribe, money the new republic could not afford. It would be many more years before the threat would be contained.

Smuggling is another matter explored in
Revenge of the Barbary Ghost
. As an English county with a long coast and many remote beaches and ports, Cornwall was a favored spot for smugglers, and the illicit practice of importing tax-free goods grew to astronomical proportions in the late 1700s. Taxation of “luxury” goods, such as tea, liquor, tobacco, and even fabric, put those things out of the reach of most common folk, so smuggling was a common way to not only supplement income, but to add a little joy to a grim life with some tobacco or sugar bought from “free traders.”

Excise officers patrolled the coast, but though many were diligent, they often could not compete with the crafty and increasingly wealthy smugglers who did on occasion (it is rumored) use caves and tunnels along the Cornish coast to store and transport smuggled goods. More than one excise officer was charged with accepting bribes from the smugglers to look the other way.

There are many fascinating books about Barbary pirates and smuggling in Cornwall available, as well as Internet sites with much information, and both topics are wonderfully interesting details in the colorful tapestry of history. Happy reading!

Fond regards,

Donna Lea Simpson

Also available from

Donna Lea Simpson

Donna Lea Simpson is also writing

cozy mysteries as Victoria Hamilton.

Take a quick peek at the first book

in her new series,
A Deadly Grind
,

available now from Berkley.

No one would expect to find a new love at an estate auction, but Jaymie Leighton just had; her heart skipped a beat when she first saw the Indiana housewife’s dream. She wasn’t in Indiana and she wasn’t a housewife, but those were just details. Tall, stately and handsome, if a little the worse for wear, the Hoosier stood alone on the long porch of the deserted yellow-brick farmhouse. The hubbub of the crowd melted away as Jaymie mounted the steps, strode down the creaky wooden porch floor and approached, reverently.