Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (8 page)

Studious, intelligent and reserved, it was painful to Osei to deal with the stares of strangers, but given his skin color, his demeanor, even his perfect elocution, he knew himself to be somewhat of a rarity. There were many Africans in England, but they were mostly servants and laborers, not given the opportunity to learn and better themselves. The few who were not in that class were viewed as aberrations, thus his own singularity. With a reticent manner, he still drew attention wherever he went.

He was aware of the marquess’s reason for traveling to Cornwall, but kept his own counsel on how effective he thought the journey would be with a woman as proud and stubborn as Lady Anne Addison. Darkefell’s shrewd rationale for bringing Osei with him to Cornwall had in part been the secretary’s warm friendship with the lady. Darkefell, limping from the cat’s attack, told him all that had occurred, even Anne’s story of the Barbary Ghost and smuggler sighting, up to the moment when he had clasped her to his heart and kissed her on the cliff.

After a pause, Osei diplomatically said, “I do not think, sir, that it was a propitious moment to press your suit, when the lady had just declared her independence.”

“I know, I know,” Darkefell said, throwing himself on the lumpy bed and passing one hand over his face, grimy from the wind. “But she looked so damned wonderful to me. She’s magnificent, and I handle her completely wrong. Still, I know she’s attracted to me. Why does she not just accept her feelings and marry me?”

Osei turned from the desk by the low window, where he was organizing some papers that required the marquess’s signature. “Perhaps,” he said, diffidently, “she has rashly responded to a proposal before and regretted it?”

“Or she’s still weeping for her damned red-coated fiancé from five years ago. Women have a capacity for mourning that escapes men.” He stood and straightened his jacket. “I’m going down to speak to Quintrell, and try to get to the bottom of this smuggling near Cliff House. If Anne is truly in danger, I will carry her away from here even if I have to kidnap her to do it.”

“Oh, I am sure that is the perfect way to win her heart, sir,” Osei said, his dark eyes glinting with humor behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

Darkefell grimaced. “Don’t be insolent.” But he softened his words with a snort of laughter and a shake of his head.

The landlord was in his stockroom, a plump, pretty serving girl told the marquess, and he followed her directions. He tapped on the door and entered, glancing around the dark room, with its stacks of barrels and crates of goods.

“Let me buy you an ale,” Darkefell said, after some desultory talk about the weather. Quintrell agreed.

They talked for a while and drank, and finally Darkefell broached the subject of the smugglers, though he didn’t divulge that he had heard about them from Anne, or anyone at Cliff House. His questions opened a floodgate of information from Quintrell, who appeared genuinely troubled about the gang that had, in the past year, begun business along the shore near St. Wyllow. There had been many smugglers, but this gang was well organized and steadfast. Quintrell shook his head over it all; he was concerned that their success would bring imitators, and there would be a kind of war among the smuggling gangs. It had happened before, in other places. That settled one question Darkefell had. Quintrell would surely not be so effusive if he were a party to the lawbreakers.

Quintrell finally fell silent, but then looked up into the marquess’s face, and asked, “Milord, I need counsel from someone not connected to St. Wyllow. Might I tell you somethin’ on the hush?”

“Of course.”

“No, sir,” he said, his pouchy face lined with worry, “I mean this not lightly. You’ll not tell the authorities, even though it may be something illegal I must confess?”

Darkefell hesitated. He was no friend to crime, and if there had been some violence, or some connection Quintrell was now regretting, what should he do? He took a deep breath; he trusted the steadiness of his father’s old equerry. Quintrell was a sober, honest man. If he’d made a mistake, it was just that, a mistake he now regretted and would not repeat. “You can tell me anything,” he said, finally.

With relief, the fellow began to talk. At first, he just spoke about his happiness when they first bought the Barbary Ghost Inn, and how his wife and he had some good years. Her passing was a very dark time, for he had loved her dearly, and ever since, he said, it felt like he had been missing from some parts of his life, one of those being his son, Johnny. “I just haven’t bin here. Not in the ways that matter, anyhow. Still, ’e’s a good boy, is Johnny … most of the time.” He fell silent, a brooding expression on his lined and scarred face.

“But?” Darkefell urged, feeling that they were finally coming to the crux of the matter.

The man stared down at the scarred tabletop. “I’ve coom to the part o’ the story, sir, where I must confess what ill suits my wish that you think well o’ me.” He didn’t pause, though, launching right into the rest of the story. “There’s a fellow by the name of Sam Micklethwaite. ’E’s a local man, owns a lugger an’ a cutter. Does some honest shipping, good business. But a year or so ago, ’e come to me with some ankers o’ gin to get rid of. Says he found ’em offshore. Now, that happens, right enough. Many a fisherman has found smuggled barrels—ankers, half ankers—sunk offshore to hide ’em. Nothing wrong with rescuing such goods, I say; it’s not like ’e smuggled ’em, ’e just found them. I bought ’em, and sold the gin in the taproom.”

He stopped. Darkefell was about to speak after a long silence, to say he didn’t think there was any cause for alarm, but Quintrell spoke again, staring steadily out the cloudy window toward the livery stable behind the inn.

“I thought nothin’ about it, ’til Micklethwaite came with more, another time. I bought them from him, but the
next
time I questioned him. He was cheeky about it, saying yes, they was smuggled goods. Didn’t I want to profit? I turned ’im down, milord, that day. But then he dropped it on me; said my Johnny ’ad been working for him, and if I didn’t want him turned in, I’d keep me mouth shut and buy some gin.”

“Turned in? To the excise men?” Darkefell asked.

“Aye. If it’s true, if Johnny’s bound to those smugglers, and Micklethwaite dropped a secret word to th’ excise men …” He trailed off and shook his head, mournfully. “Milord, that revenue man—Puddicombe is his name—e’s saying the government’s talkin’ about transportation for smugglers, to the ends of the earth, Van Dieman’s Land! Lord, I’d never see my boy again.”

“Have you told Johnny to stop working for Micklethwaite?”

“We haven’t spoke about it. ’E don’t confide in me no more, so I’m not dead sure, y’see. We’ve had our troubles, have Johnny and I since his mother died. He blames me, y’see, sayin’ she worked herself to death. She weren’t well, and that’s a fact, but I tried to keep her abed. Made her feel useless, she said, and she wouldn’t stop, but ’e don’t see it that way.”

“What can I do to help?”

A sweep of relief covered the older man’s face, and Darkefell realized that until that moment, Quintrell had been tense, waiting to see if his risk in telling the marquess would result in disaster.

“Find out,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Find out how my Johnny’s involved, what ’e does for Micklethwaite, and mebbe how we can get ’im out.”

Darkefell thought about Anne’s spying on the smugglers. This gave him an added reason to find out what was going on, and put a stop to this smuggling gang and the danger to young Johnny Quintrell. Quintrell had not worked for his family for many years now, but still … Darkefell’s opinion was that loyalty ran both ways with him and his. He clapped the other man on the shoulder and said, “Stop worrying. I’ll do whatever I can to extricate your son. If he’s anything like you, he’s a good fellow at heart, though perhaps in a little over his head.”

Tears welled in Quintrell’s eyes and he nodded, but Darkefell uneasily considered that he had no idea how he was going to do it, or even if he could. His own motives for watching the smugglers were in line with Quintrell’s fatherly concern, though, and he had full confidence that he could help.

Starting that very night.

Five

Anne was muddled and angry, unable to even think about bed. She paced her bedroom floor, and as it was a small room, that required much turning; her long dark hair was unbound and swung out at each turn, frizzing wildly in the damp sea air. Ever since Darkefell had left, she had been working herself up into a stew at his presumption in first trying to tell her what to do, and then kissing her in the open like that! Once Marcus had left to join his regiment, Pamela had demanded answers. All afternoon, and through a quiet dinner, she asked questions about the marquess, and even through the evening as they sat quietly, mending their spring bonnets.

Lolly, sitting with them and sewing, had listened with wide eyes but an amazingly closed mouth. Perhaps Anne shouldn’t have confessed so much about her relationship with the marquess in front of her companion, but even if her mother did find out how far the relationship had gone, she could not force Anne to marry the man.

Though she’d probably try.

And now Anne was so worked up she couldn’t sleep, regretting saying so much, frustrated by her life, feeling hemmed in on every side by her mother, her grandmother, her companion and society.

Mary came in to Anne’s bedchamber from the attached dressing room, where she and her son slept, and closed the door quietly behind her. “That is one weary wee boy,” she said, softly, making her way around the room, tidying as she went, her full skirts softly rustling. “He spent all day on the seashore, and bathing too, even though the water was dreadful cold,” she said, dusting some spilled powder from the dressing table and then cleaning hair from a brush. “I was that worrit aboot him, dashing in and oot o’ the waves like he does. I didna take my eyes off him for one second. Your puss is curled up in his bed; it’s a precious sight.”

“What does he mean by following me here, Mary? Why is he plaguing me so?” Anne, still pacing, did not need to say who or what she meant, for they had already spoken of the marquess at some length.

As she put away some sheets of paper into Anne’s traveling desk and closed the lid, Mary gently said, “A man in love will do many a strange thing, milady.”

“He’s not in love with me,” Anne declared, contemptuously, though her maid’s words sent an odd thrill through her. “He doesn’t even know me,” she insisted. “And a man in love would not promptly try to change everything about the object of his affections, as Darkefell is trying to do to me.”

Mary paused in her tidying. She hesitated for a long moment, but then said, watching Anne, “I think it would be well for you, milady, to lairn more about the man, before tossing him aside. P’raps he’s just such a one as you
should
marry.”

Anne gave a snort of derision, but a sound outside drew her attention; she leaned on the windowsill and stared out. From her window, though, she could only see a small portion of the back garden, and none of the sea. A moving shadow angled across Pamela’s terrace. “Who is that?” she gasped. “And what are they up to, creeping around outside the house like that?”

With the imperious marquess’s commands fresh in her mind and heart, Anne impetuously decided to do the opposite of everything he said. Even as she made the quick decision, she felt how foolish it was to be guided by negation, but an anxious trembling within her would not let her stay still. She did not want to think of what Mary had just said, that she should give serious thought to marrying Darkefell.

“I want to know what, or who, that is,” Anne said, retrieving her cape, and heading for the bedroom door.

“You’ll not go without me, milady,” Mary said as she followed, throwing a shawl over her shoulders.

As Anne unlatched the garden door, feeling the rush of cool sea air on her face, she murmured, “Cliff House is certainly easier to leave than Ivy Lodge was.” She referred to the dower house of the marquess’s Yorkshire estate, where she had stayed while visiting Lydia; it was a much larger house with a regiment of servants and variety of locked doors.

She led the way out onto the terrace and paused, glancing around, her heart pounding in agitation. Whatever or whomever the shadow belonged to, it was gone now. Who could it have been? “Stay here, Mary,” she whispered, putting out one hand and touching her maid’s cloaked arm. “I’m just going up to the cliff to see if anything is going on.”

“I’m not letting you go alone,” Mary insisted, following her.

Anne crept down the garden in the moonlight, through the rickety gate and up the grassy slope to the bluff, huffing and puffing by the time she got there. She crouched and urged Mary to do the same, as they crept closer to the edge, near a stunted and twisted tree that clung to the edge of the cliff and shadowed the lip. It was too dark to see anything other than an impression of movement below. But when a lantern flashed for a moment, Anne could see that the beach was full of men.

But seconds later both Anne and Mary reared back in amazement as, out of the murky void on the cloudy night, a figure rose from beyond the edge of the cliff. It was the Barbary Ghost, so close they could almost reach out and touch it, if it truly was a substantial being! Mary shrieked in terror and started up. The ghost whirled, howled in rage and drifted closer to them, the air between them lit up with fireworks, smoke and flame blazing.

Mary grabbed Anne’s arm and yanked her back from the cliff edge, but Anne pulled away and strode closer, just in time to see the ghost flailing, men below on the beach scuttling away from a rowboat, as on the cliff opposite Anne and Mary—the bluff that topped the other side of the deep cut—men rose from the shadowy murk and swarmed down toward the beach.

“Milady, come away, please!” cried Mary, her voice a thin wail of terror.

“No, I have to see—” Anne’s words were drowned out by a burst of gunfire, then more fireworks. She tottered close to the edge, but the ghost was gone, disappeared in the drift of smoke that the sea breeze tugged and pulled, this way and that, particles glinting in the faint moonlight that peeped from behind a cloud.