Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (9 page)

“No more, milady,” Mary gasped, as some more shots rang out, and shouting alerted them to a tussle on the beach. “We’ve got to go back. Please!”

“Where did that ghost go? Did you see anything?”

“Nooo!” Mary wailed. “Please, milady, come away!”

At the bottom of the cut, Darkefell had been lurking in the shadows of the scrubby shrubs at the base of the cliff. Above him explosions crackled, echoing off the cliff face, while beyond him, in the open, the smugglers beetled up the shore, abandoning wooden crates, dumping whatever they carried in their haste to get away.

He had followed Johnny Quintrell as the young man snuck from the inn that night, and this was his destination, directly below the St. James’s rented house, if he judged correctly. That answered Joseph’s questions about his son’s involvement. Darkefell was looking for an opportunity to snatch the boy back before the revenue men, who swarmed out of the cut, got to him and arrested him.

But shots rang out again, and when he looked up in a flash of light from some explosive, it was to see Anne—
his
Anne—tottering on the edge of the cliff! After he had told her to stay out of it! That made his decision simple. Johnny would have to fend for himself; Darkefell was for rescuing Anne.

He slunk into the shadows and up the jagged cut, struggling against the wet sand, willing himself to not break out into the open. He was aware of men just to his left who were working their way down, likely the revenue men in a pitched battle with the smugglers. Shouts and confusion surrounded him, but he went unnoticed in the fray. There was only one direction for him, and that was up, toward Anne.

He finally topped the cliff face, and saw Anne, not alone, he was happy to see, but with her faithful maid, Mary. He raced to her, pulling her down. “What the devil are you doing out here?” he growled.

“Darkefell?” she cried.

He put his hand over her mouth, “For God’s sake, madam, keep your voice down. Mary, go back to the house,” he said, for in the ghostly light of the rising moon that slanted its pearly rays across the surface of the ocean, he could see that the Scottish maid was frightened out of her wits.

“Aye, milord,” she said, and scuttled away. But then she paused, looked back and said, “Take care of her, milord, please!”

“You know I will.” Once Mary was gone he pulled Anne down to the ground, and whispered in her ear, “I’m going to let go of your mouth, but keep quiet!” He took his hand away.

“If I didn’t know better,” she hissed, gulping in air, “I would think you were trying to smother me.”

In answer, he pulled her toward him and fastened his mouth over hers, grimly determined to silence her. He half expected her to bite his lip—she had done
that
before—but instead she returned the kiss, pushing him onto his back. The dormant sensuality he kept ruthlessly subdued roared to life as he felt her long hair streaming about him, and her warm, soft body covering his hard angularity. The sensation of her full lips pressed to his raised his heart rate to pounding. Hungry for more, he grabbed her hips and pulled her close, but she resisted.

“Happy?” she gasped. “Now,
let me go
.” She pushed out of his grasp and rolled away from him, then slithered to the edge of the cliff on her elbows and knees.

He rolled onto his side and cupped himself, adjusting, trying to make himself more comfortable, but to no avail. Trying to ignore the physical discomfort her passionate kisses and voluptuous body had ignited, he crept to her side and collapsed.

“Darkefell, I saw it again, the Barbary Ghost,” she muttered. “Then Mary shrieked, and I swear, the ghost stared right at us and howled!”

The scramble below was dissipating, but a shot rang out, and Darkefell pulled Anne back from the lip of the cliff. Holding her close, he murmured, “Do you think Mary’s scream alerted the smugglers to the revenue men?”

“I don’t know,” Anne whispered, in his ear.

His eyes rolled back at the intimate feel of her warm breath on his neck and ear, the murmur of her beautiful voice, and he supposed he unconsciously dug his fingers into her arm; she protested. He forced himself to relax. “I … I beg your pardon, my dearest Anne.” He nuzzled her thick veil of hair. “I had no idea your hair was so long,” he whispered, tangling his fingers in it, his voice oddly gruff. “And it smells so lovely.” He put his hand on her back and stroked, down to her bottom.

“Darkefell, stop!” she said, swatting at his hand. “What are you doing here, anyhow?”

He rolled away from her, cleared his throat and summoned coolness. “I was down on the beach watching the smugglers,” he said, deciding not to divulge his reason for being there yet. He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked over the cliff edge. The beach below appeared deserted, from what could be sensed with the wan moonlight. There could be a battalion of men hugging the cliff, in the shadows, though. “Then I heard an altercation,” he whispered, “then the fireworks, and the excise men came swarming down from the cliff opposite here, on the other side of the cut. I saw you flailing about on the cliff’s edge, and began up the cut, staying in the shadows.”

“I wondered where you came from.”

“You were tottering about on the edge of the cliff, so I came up to make you heed common sense.”

He thought she would retort angrily, but her tone was thoughtful, when she said, “I hope no one was hurt.”

He remembered Johnny Quintrell, and fervently said, “I hope that, too. But what the devil were you doing out? I specifically told you to
stay in
.” Even as he said it, he knew it was wrong; would he never learn that to command her was to alienate her? Or did he just enjoy being censured by her?

But again, she reacted coolly. “And I told you I had no intention of being bullied into doing what you think is suitable. Are you going to help me discover what this ghost is all about, or not?”

He made a quick decision. “I am indeed going to help you.”
To stay out of trouble
, he finished in his mind.

“But we can do nothing right now,” she said. She peered over the edge of the cliff. “All’s quiet. They’re gone, I think, but it’s too dark right now to detect. I do hope no one was hurt.” Anne got to her feet and dusted off her dress. “Come back tomorrow, Darkefell. I want to have a look at this cliff side, and figure out how the ghost does his disappearing act. Then I want to find out what—or who—it is, and what his game is.”

“Kiss me,” the marquess said, taking her arm, “and I will agree to anything.”

So she did.

***

“But dear, I don’t understand what you mean to do,” Lolly said the next afternoon, wringing her hands together.

Anne, with Mary’s help, dressed appropriately for clambering about on the beach and rocky cliff. Luckily Pamela had some business she could not avoid that day, and would be gone until dinner, after which they were going to the assembly at the regimental mess. “I told you, Lolly dear … the marquess and I are going for a walk. Given what must be on Mother and Grandmother’s minds, you are merely fulfilling your duty by promoting such an endeavor.”

She looked doubtful. “I’m going with you.”

“No, Lolly!” Anne turned and gazed at her companion.

Lolly Broomhall was an untidy, pudgy woman with a pouchy, pale face. Her clothes were out of style, and though carefully mended, were sadly frowsy. But that very moment, her lips pursed in an unusually firm line, she appeared dignified and every inch the lady she was born. “I won’t be any trouble,” she insisted. “But I would be dreadfully remiss if I didn’t accompany you.”

Anne sighed and turned back to the glass. “Mary, can you make just a few wisps of hair dangle? It softens my angularity.”

“And why wouldya be worryin’ about that?” Mary asked, with a sly smile.

Anne caught a glance between her maid and companion. So, the two women were cohorts in the effort to get her leg-locked (as she had heard marriage termed by a male friend) to the marquess. “No reason.”

“You will be careful, milady,” Mary said, anxiously, leaning in and working on her mistress’s recalcitrant hair.

Anne nodded, soberly. “Yes, after what Mrs. Quintrell said this morning, I certainly shall be careful.”

That morning the cook had, with great relish, talked about the skirmish the night before, and the death by shooting of one of the excise officer’s hired men. Anne had had a terrible moment when she considered that Darkefell had been down there in that scuffle, and could have been the one to take a stray bullet if he had not scrambled up to tackle her. Then she had another few terrible moments when she realized that she could no longer imagine her life without Darkefell in it. That, however, must be a passing feeling brought on by the intimacy of their last moments together. The last kisses as he walked her back to Cliff House had been spectacularly lovely. He had held her close for a long few minutes, kissing her ears and neck, a sensation she found was particularly sweet. She had dreamt of him all night, but this time when she awoke she did not feel angry or irritated.

An hour later, as the afternoon sun climbed the sky, arching over through the blue dome, she met the marquess on the bluff beyond Cliff House, and tried to ignore the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw him. She was prey to an insidious attraction to the handsome marquess; his looks seemed designed to delight the female heart and mind, she thought, gazing at him as he politely greeted Lolly, bowing over her hand as the woman twittered a drawn-out greeting. He was dark-haired, broad-shouldered, dark-eyed, and with sensuous lips and a muscular torso.

She, on the other hand, was too tall, too plain, and too independent. His pursuit of her was some kind of strange quirk in an otherwise perfect male. She was not being silly about it, nor falsely modest; she was intelligent, and some men might like that. She was wealthy in her own right, with an inheritance over which she had complete control because of her scholarly father’s lackadaisical attitude toward finance. Not wishing to be bothered about it, he had made sure his banker gave Anne liberal access to her own funds. Many men would like her affluence.

And there was the crux of her problem with marriage: What would she gain by marrying? Any man who would marry her for money was not worth considering. (Did that mean she should really
not
consider Marcus as a possible husband? Would she despise him before long? She wasn’t yet sure.) But any man she married would expect to have full control over her finances. In fact, her money would become his. And her time, and her body.

She felt the flush of attraction mount her cheeks as Darkefell turned to her and took her hand, smiling into her eyes.

“Are you well, Anne?” he asked, anxiously, squeezing her hand and gazing steadily into her eyes.

“You’ve heard about last night? About the excise man killed?”

“Yes. Quintrell, the owner of the Barbary Ghost Inn—he was my father’s equerry many years ago—told me all about it this morning.” His lips tightened. “It is a terrible turn of affairs. If it was a purposeful killing, then it signals how desperate are these smugglers, and how dangerous.”

She waited, but he did not again command her not to go near the cliff or beach at night. “Let’s begin. Lolly,” she said, turning to her companion, “please stay up here. I need you as a lookout, for I do not want it to be too obvious that I am examining the cliff face. I’ll look up to you occasionally; wave if all is well.”

Lolly reluctantly agreed, and as Anne and Darkefell made their way down the steep, rocky cut, he chuckled.

“What are you giggling about?” she asked, clinging to his hand as she clambered over a rocky outcropping.

“You are a managing woman, aren’t you?”

“I come by it honestly,” she said, putting her free hand out, and steadying herself on the rocky spike. A stiff breeze came up from the beach, and she was grateful that she had not worn a hat. The wind tugged at her hair, pulling it down from her careful hairstyle. She glanced back at him. “You’ve met my mother and grandmother. Do you not think I favor them?”

His expression was serious, when he said, “No, not in the slightest.”

Her heart pounding wildly—just the exercise, she told herself—she turned back and recommenced scaling down the cut, dropping his hand and relying on her own perfect balance. Why should her heart pound so, at such an answer? Did he mean she did not have the opulent beauty of her mother, faded though it was? Or was his reference to something in her personality? She daren’t ask him.

“I don’t really understand you, Darkefell,” she said, in a conversational tone, glad her flaming face was turned away from him.

“Anne, women always say that about men, but we’re really very simple creatures.”

She didn’t respond. They got down to the beach, and she turned to the rock wall, trying to catch her breath. She examined the sheer rock face, looking for any indication of some mechanism. She resolutely did not believe in ghosts, and especially one dressed in Barbary gear who exploded fireworks.

But what, then, was the creature? The face was human, not that of a doll or dummy, and the floating was most often graceful, but last night, when startled, the ghost had become jerky. She shared her thoughts with Darkefell, who had joined her.

“Look,” she suddenly exclaimed, pointing to a spot about a third of the way up the wall. “That appears to be a kind of cave, or deep crevice. Let’s go up there.”

“In those skirts? No,
I’ll
go and report back to you.”

Like hell you will,
she thought, but did not say. Curse words were the province of a weak mind. Instead of answering, she hiked up the skirts of her cream and pink
robe polonaise
, the most suitable gown for such work, as the skirt was already tucked up somewhat, and began to clamber up the rock face. Luckily, it was not completely sheer, and had foothold and handholds a good ways up. She was red-faced from exertion, and panting, but was gratified that Darkefell, following her, seemed to be faring no better.

The crevice was just above her now, and there was a rocky outcropping at it. She pulled herself up as far as she could go but was in a dreadful predicament; she clung to the rock face, her skirts preventing her from getting her leg up to the rock shelf to mount it. Nor could she reposition herself. “I believe that skirts are a device of men to keep women from exploring a full range of movement,” she grunted, frozen in place.