Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (7 page)

Four

Darkefell took her arm. Anne, garbed in a lilac gown and contrasting gray caraco, with a jaunty bonnet perched on her thick, intricately coiffed dark hair, kept glancing sideways at him as they walked down the garden and out the rickety wooden gate, followed closely by Irusan. She pointed out the best path, as she was well acquainted with the bluff, and they ascended. Finally, as they strolled across the scrubby grass toward the escarpment, she turned to him and said, “I was surprised to see you at the market, but I had a feeling you were not surprised to see me.”

“You’re correct. I knew you were here, Anne.” He crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet in a wide stance, watching her. “And I’m not sure you were really surprised. You must have known I would follow, for you clearly intended it.”

She glared at him. “I beg your pardon?” she said, her tone cold. She meant him to understand that she was displeased by such presumption.

The wind lifted the dark lock of hair that always trailed over his high, pale forehead. He swept it away and smiled, an undeniably attractive expression on one so handsome. “Oh, come, Anne, after what we’ve shared, you knew I would follow you. You intended it. Don’t be coy; it ill suits you.” He reached out, and with lingering fingers brushed back a stray, wind-tossed lock of her hair from her cheek as he leaned toward her.

Ignoring the jolt of pleasure his light touch sent through her, she stepped back, and gained a small measure of mean satisfaction that he lost his balance. Irusan sat staring up at him with ill-disguised hostility. Darkefell righted himself and frowned, appearing somewhat less sure of himself, which was all to the good in a man so supremely overconfident.

“How is Lydia?” she asked.

“She’s well. I have engaged a house in Bath for her and John beginning in the middle of July.”

“And how are my mother and grandmama?” she said, with a hard tone in her voice that she fully intended he understand. Words alone could not express her displeasure at him seeking them out. He
meant
her to think that he had simply come across her kin at a fete or party, but Grandmama never went out; people came to her. He must have visited with no invitation, a breach in courtesy that her mother and grandmother would overlook in someone of his elevated stature.

But he was not discomfited by her ire, chuckling as he said, “They seem very well, both of them; completely charming, I must say. Lady Everingham and Lady Harecross both send affectionate greetings.”

“Oh, they sent more than that,” she murmured, now understanding the timing of Lolly’s arrival. Her companion was to be a watchdog, but also, no doubt, she was to further the match between Anne and Darkefell at every opportunity. Anne knew her mother well. Could she blame her, really, when a marquess satisfied every requirement of a husband for the daughter of an earl?

But Anne was willing to set aside his presumption, as she had more interesting things to think about. “Word from Lydia and my family is not the reason I agreed to walk with you here.”

“Really?” he said, with an appreciative gleam in his dark eyes. He moved toward her and put his arm around her waist. “I knew there was more.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, pulling out of his grasp, battling a desperate wish to throw herself back into his arms.

Irusan growled threateningly.

Darkefell must never know about her dreams, Anne resolved, and how she still remembered every kiss between them. She couldn’t think rationally when he caressed her as he did, and if she was to ever consider marriage with him, she would need every ounce of her rational thought, every bit of brain power, to figure him out, and decide if she could live with such a rogue for the rest of her life.

But she still could not quite believe that he was serious about courting her with an eye toward marriage, and felt sure he had some ulterior motive she could not yet fathom.

“You never did answer me, Anne. I asked you a question the last time I saw you, and you did not answer.”

He referred, or course, to his proposal, hurled at her as a command or challenge.

“I believe my leaving the next morning was all the answer that should be required of such an absurd question, if you can even call it that,” she said, and was surprised by a pained look that flitted across his face.

“Very well,” he said, grudgingly, “for now. But we will speak of it again.”

“As I said, I had another reason for walking with you here.” She strode to the cliff edge and he followed, grabbing her arm as if he was afraid she would go over. “Isn’t the view breathtaking?”

“Yes, but come away from the cliff edge, if you please.”

She was surprised by his tone, and when she looked at his face, the unease amply displayed in his expression. “What is it, Darkefell?”

“I don’t wish you to be quite so close to obliteration, that’s all.”

“Oh, pish tush!” she cried, and spun away from him, doing a turn on the cliff edge. “I won’t fall. I’m very surefooted, and have an excellent head for heights. If you remember, I climbed the tower folly at your estate and felt no unease. Or, well, a little shakiness in the ankles on those dreadful stairs, but nothing more.”

“
Please
, Anne, come away from the cliff edge.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, eyeing him, noting a tightness around his generous mouth. Did he really care for her so deeply, or was it just his own anxiety over the height? It occurred to her that the last time they had been together, she had almost tumbled off a cliff of similar height. Perhaps that explained his unease. “But there is a reason for being here,” she insisted. “Look out … what do you see?”

He relaxed as she stopped edging toward oblivion, and turned his gaze to sea. “Water. Sky. The sun. Clouds.”

“And?” she asked.

The bluff was high and had a grand view of the shoreline for miles. To the west the property sloped gradually, trailing downward for about a half mile toward a scythe-shaped slice of beach in the distance. Directly below the bluff upon which they stood was a sand beach that was broad at low tide, but that virtually disappeared at high tide. To the east was a jagged cut, a deep V that sloped up, with high-walled sides of rock and a floor of sand disrupted with rocky outcroppings, like broken black teeth jutting through the sandy slope.

The marquess held his hand up to shade his eyes and surveyed it all, then turned back toward Anne. “Am I missing something?” Darkefell asked. “What the devil else is there to see?”

“No, you’re absolutely correct,” she said, returning to stand in front of him. “There is nothing else to see. Except,” she said, coming closer to him, “I saw, night before last, a Mussulman pirate hovering just beyond the cliff edge in the middle of the air!”

He stared into her eyes, then burst into laughter. Sobering, he said, “Really, Anne, you had me believing you were serious for a moment.”

“But I did see it!” she insisted, feeling the irritation he always seemed to inspire within her. “I saw the famous local specter, the Barbary Ghost!”

“And this was in the middle of the night? What were you doing out here at that time? And alone? Anne,” he said, taking both her shoulders in his big hands, “promise me you won’t venture out in the night again. Promise me!” He shook her slightly.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Darkefell,” she said, twisting her shoulders out of his hands. Of course he had missed her point, or was ignoring it, which amounted to the same thing. “There’s more … listen!” She leaned into him, excited even at the memory of the spectacle. “Before I saw the Barbary Ghost, I saw smugglers gathering on the beach, welcoming a rowboat, and transferring smuggled goods to a dray on the beach!”

“This is too much!” he growled. “You’re no fool, or at least I didn’t judge you to be one. If there are smugglers involved, then this is even more dangerous than some tomfoolery with a ghost. You must never come out at night, Anne, for those who witness smuggling often pay with their lives. They’re a cutthroat tribe, and would not hesitate even though you’re a woman.”

“I’m no fool, Darkefell,” she said, coldly, disappointed in his prosaic reaction. She had thought him adventurous.

“Exactly what I said. But you have proven to be
reckless
in the past.”

She watched his eyes. He was genuinely concerned for her safety, and she understood that, but still, he could not expect to tell her what to do. “Darkefell, I don’t suppose you really understand a woman’s life.” She examined his face, and saw the quick frown of incomprehension, but she would get to her point soon enough. “I have been watched and guarded my whole life. While the young men I knew in my youth went to sea, traveled to Italy and beyond, studied at Oxford, and spent their years gambling, drinking, and roaming the world, I took dancing lessons, learned to play the pianoforte, and spent my hours netting purses, learning the fine art of directing a household of servants, and entertaining the vicar and his wife.”

He sighed. “I understand your wish for excitement, Anne, but engaging in hazardous … no, worse than hazardous,
thoughtless
activities will only end in an early death and heartbreak for those who care for you.”

“By your judgment, but why should I substitute
your
judgment of unsuitability for my own?”

“Because I know better than you, that’s why!” he said, balling his hands into fists at his side. “I’ll not have my wife—”

“Darkefell, I am
not
your wife, not now, nor in the future; if you had set out to design a means of reminding me why I could never accept your proposal, you could not do better than this!” She glared at him, trying to ignore the rapid pulse in his temple and throat, the signs of agitation she knew well in him. Next, his cheeks would suffuse with red, and the color would sink to his neck. Male temper; it had been used to successfully bully women for millennia, Anne suspected.

Yet he did not speak.

Deliberately, coldly, hoping to chill his ire, she said, “I will
not
be confined or constrained, my every move approved or censured. My mother and I have parted over this, and though I am no fool, and am reasonably careful for my reputation—I have no desire to be notorious, my lord—neither will I hand over every iota of control to a coterie of servants, companions, parents and then, when I am so desperately bored I can no longer think of anything beyond the next assembly, a husband who will own me body and soul.”

He was speechless, staring into her eyes.

Would he not speak, not protest her declaration of a right to self-determination? She had expected him to spout a litany of reasons for feminine subjugation. After all, religion, tradition, even nature conspired to keep women dependent upon men. She thrust her face toward his. “Do you understand what it is to be a woman? Any man I marry would be able to decide where I live and how. He would even have command over my body, his to take pleasure in … or not. I am
not
a thoughtless chit. I have pondered long and hard and careful on this, Darkefell, and I will live as I see fit …” She paused, then in a lower tone said, “Or not live at all.”

Doubt clouded his dark eyes, and she thought,
There, now he will take me in disgust and leave with some vague excuse. I’ll never see him again.

But he grabbed her shoulders, jerked her into his arms, and bent his head, claiming her lips in a kiss so fierce and long that she could not breathe and beat at his shoulder, gasping for air, as she made smothered cries for him to cease. Irusan, who had been off hunting mice in the long grass, came pelting back and hurled himself at Darkefell’s leg, yowling in fury. The marquess released Anne and cried out, shaking the cat off his leg.

“Irusan, behave!” Anne yelled. The cat slunk away with a grumble. She put a trembling hand to her mouth.

Darkefell’s face was red. “I suppose I deserved that,” he said, touching his leg, blood beginning to show through the buff breeches of his riding costume, “but I think both you and your cat, madam, have given your opinion of me in ways more eloquent than words.” He whirled and stalked away, back to the house.

Pamela was still on the terrace, staring toward them. Even from a distance Anne could see concern in her friend’s stance. She waved one hand to her friend and turned back to the ocean to regain her composure. Anne had been about to tell Darkefell of her plan to investigate the cliff face and ask if he wanted to help; they had solved a murder together in Yorkshire, and she
had
felt that she would trust no one so well as him when it came to an adventure. But she was wrong.

Darkefell was gone by the time she got back to Cliff House, and Pamela was tactful enough to remain silent. St. James, who had fortunately not witnessed Darkefell’s rough embrace, kissed her cheek gently, and said he would see her on the morrow, but he had to get back to his regiment. He reminded them both that they were to meet the next night at an assembly in St. Ives.

Pam did not comment on what she saw, and Anne was grateful; she had no wish to talk about the scene she had just experienced. Mingled in her breast were warring emotions: fury at Darkefell’s attempt to dominate, thrill at his skillful kiss, overlaid by an ache at the knowledge that he could not change, nor could she, so they must stay apart. She would live under no man’s thumb.

Far better, for her, she realized, would be a husband like Marcus St. James, an indolent wastrel. Once she married, her family would finally leave her alone to manage her own affairs, and Marcus was an easy, controllable sort of fellow, only wanting to live pleasantly. One word from her would bring a serious proposal of marriage from the captain, and she was old enough that she did not require her parents’ consent.

It was certainly a thought to make her pause.

***

Osei Boatin had arrived at the Barbary Ghost Inn by the time Darkefell returned, and had his employer’s clothes tidied properly, the traveling desk set up on a table near the low window, and his own gear stowed. Though he was the marquess’s secretary, he would act as valet while they traveled.