Page 45 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

Though a tiny niggle of doubt stirred, she was nearly certain that this time, given the opportunity, she would be able to invite his caresses without being seized by fear or panic.

She was startled from her thoughts by the entrance of Tamsyn with a tray of cups and saucers. As the maid checked on the doorstep, doubtless surprised at seeing Honoria dressed and down for breakfast a full hour earlier than normal, Honoria noted that the girl had been weeping.

Anxiety raced through her. She’d left the moor before the free-traders finished moving their cargo, without knowing the outcome of their confrontation with the King’s men. There’d been shooting aplenty. Had any of Tamsyn’s friends or family been injured? Had the revenuers returned with reinforcements?

Was Captain Hawksworth all right?

‘Tamsyn, what’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Oh, miss, the most awful news! Truly, I don’t know how I shall bear it!’

‘What news?’ Honoria demanded, even more alarmed.

‘It’s the Hawk! He and my brother Johnnie had the most dreadful row last night and now he’s…he’s leaving! Leaving the Gull, leaving Cornwall! Oh, my heart is like to break!’

While Tamsyn fell into a new fit of weeping, Honoria’s own heart hammered in sudden panic. The captain was leaving? Everything in her being protested the thought.

What was she to do? And how long did she have to do it?

Frantic to find out, she grabbed the girl’s arm. ‘When, Tamsyn? When is he leaving?’

Halted in mid-sob, the girl looked up at her. ‘I d-don’t know. D-dickin just said “soon”. Conan Willes, that was skipper of the Flying Gull before the Hawk, is going to take her back. But it won’t be the same. Nothing won’t ever be the same.’

Honoria cast a frantic glance at the mantel clock. Though it was still too early for anyone to be at the school, suddenly she couldn’t bear remaining in the house another minute.

She’d saddle Mischief now, ride along the cliffs, gallop over the moors, then proceed to Sennlack and pace the vicarage garden until the captain appeared.

She knew he would not leave without seeing her. But after he saw her, would he leave anyway?

The prospect of having him walk out of her life—and perhaps never return—filled her with a sick horror. Though there was nothing she could do to make him stay, if he was truly set on leaving.

But that thought being too awful to contemplate, she put it out of mind. Striding past the snivelling Tamsyn, she made for the stables.

The animal saddled and ready, she set off, giving the mare her head, the rush of wind past her face as the horse galloped across the moor not working its usual soothing magic. When the mare tired, she reined in and proceeded at a slower pace toward Sennlack, her mind pulsing with anxiety, longing and dread.

She’d thought she would have time—weeks if not months—to try to entice the captain into staying forever. How could she exist without the hope of a future with him?

Before long, she reached the bend in the road where a track led out to his Irish Cliffs. The site drew her as irresistibly as the tide running back to the sea. Here she had laid her soul bare, shared with him her deepest shame, explored with him a passion more powerful than anything she had ever imagined.

Surely he couldn’t just turn his back and walk away from the connection she was certain he felt as intensely as she did.

Drawn by the hope that the cove, which held such vivid memories of the two of them united, might bring some peace to her troubled, fearful soul, she dismounted and took the track down the trail to the church. Then stopped, her heat stampeding with gladness and panic as she saw a horse tethered near the structure.

She didn’t recognize it, but the captain rode a variety of different mounts out of the Gull’s Roost stables. Certain it must be his, she darted onto the trail leading to the beach, slipping and sliding in a heedless rush down the narrow, rocky path until she reached the bottom where it spilled out onto the beach.

There she halted, her heart soaring upward like one of the heaven-bent gulls circling overhead, for sitting on the rock where they’d talked—kissed—was Gabriel Hawksworth.

She hurried across the sand and stopped behind him, heart hammering, hesitant now, hungry, aching.

The joyous smile that lit his face when he turned and saw her poured a healing balm on the cruel cuts anxiety and doubt had scored on her heart.

Then she was seated beside him, he taking her hand—ah, the luxuriant bounty of his touch!—and kissing it.

‘Lady Honoria,’ he said, a touch of reproach in his tone. ‘So you couldn’t wait either?’

‘No. I nearly rode to the inn to see you last night. Please, you must tell me straight away—’

‘What I discovered?’ he interrupted.

‘No, no!’ she said impatiently. ‘Whether you forgive me for not telling you everything, including my name.’

‘Why did you not tell me?’ he asked softly, recapturing her hand and tucking it in his own.

‘I was afraid,’ she confessed. ‘Afraid you would be angry over the deception I’d practised. And ashamed,’ she added in a lower voice. ‘After what happened in London, the name Honoria sounded too much like a mockery. So I gave you my second name, Marie, instead.’

‘Honoria,’ he repeated. ‘It suits you. I would wager no one who knows you well would ever doubt that.’

‘My own brother did,’ she reminded him, her tone still bitter. ‘You do understand why I chose not to use my real name? I didn’t wish for scandal to follow me here and taint Aunt Foxe, just as I wanted to leave London so that it would not further stain my sister. You…know all about my family now, I suppose.’

‘Yes. But don’t you want to know what else I know?’

‘Nothing matters as much to me as knowing I’ve not lost your…friendship,’ she asserted, shying away at the last moment from daring to say the word ‘love.’

After all, she was the only one who’d yet acknowledged that emotion. But he was smiling at her so tenderly that some of the icy shackles of fear loosened and fell away.

‘I’m not angry,’ he confirmed. ‘Now let me tell you what I learned.’

For the next few minutes, he related to her an almost unbelievable tale: the three friends and spymasters, the fight, the murder, the Gypsy curse, the hanging of his best friend that her father did nothing to prevent even as Leybourne protested his innocence. And finally, the most intriguing news: that the gem trader she’d seen in the garden, the Gypsy Gabe had met at the inn, was the long-missing son of the murdered Baron Framlingham.

‘No one knows what happened to Leybourne’s family,’ he told her. ‘I think it highly probable that one of his relations who believes in his innocence and blames your father for not trying to exonerate him may have hired the Gypsy, who has reasons of his own to seek vengeance, to find a way to strike back at him. And you provided the means.’

‘An innocent man’s murder is certainly grave enough to justify the extreme measures taken against me,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But after nearly twenty years, how could one hope to prove a connection?’

‘I must track down the Gypsy trader, Stephano Beshaley—or Stephen Hebden, as the jeweller called him. He is the only link in the story we know for sure was present the night of your ruin—the one who must hold the key to the why of what happened. I mean to compel him to give it to us.’

The fear that his nearness and his smile had set in abeyance returned with a vengeance, like a punch to the gut. ‘And then…you’ll be leaving Cornwall for good?’

He gave her a sharp look. ‘How did you know?’

‘Tamsyn.’ She tried a smile that didn’t quite succeed. ‘She was distraught to think of you leaving. I…I am distraught, too.’

Whether or not she would have had the courage to baldly confess her love, she had no opportunity to discover, for he put a thumb to her lips, stilling them—and distracting her so effectively that for a moment, she could think of nothing but the scent of his skin and the feel of his callused finger.

‘Don’t say anything. Not yet. Let me discover what I can, see if it’s possible for Lady Honoria’s honour to be vindicated. To give you back a choice of what to do with your future.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘Honour is not redeemable.’

‘You don’t know that,’ he argued. ‘You have passion and intelligence, spirit and fire! You deserve so much more than to be exiled to a quiet backwater, shunned by Society.’

As he spoke, he rose from his place beside her on the rock. ‘I suppose we’d better go back now.’

Every particle of her protested his loss. Casting about desperately for a means to make him stay, she recalled the siren on the rocks. Could she tempt him, lure him to remain with her? Seize with both hands what she wanted—what she knew he desired as well, even if he might not love her? Use every trick she had read about to create one unforgettable memory of a passion that, if she did not seize this chance, she might never experience?

And perhaps, in this one last encounter, bewitch him as he had bewitched her?

Her heart already pounding with nervousness and anticipation, she grabbed his hand before he could walk away. ‘I do deserve more. A man willing to defend me from revenuers’ pistols and Gypsy traders’ lies. One who believes in my honour and honesty even more than my blood kin, who’s willing to search until he finds the truth that could clear my name. I deserve it and I want it. I want you, Gabe. Only you.’

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