Page 44 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

‘Aye, from a group of three, kicking and beating a single revenue agent,’ Gabe said, angry all over again as he recalled the incident.

‘The boys do get carried away sometimes,’ Dickin said noncommittally.

‘The boys take their cue from their leader. Dickin, your brother is beyond controlling. Nay,’ he said as his friend raised a cautioning hand, ‘I’ll not be silenced. It’s not just the cavalier confiscating of my boat and crew. Johnnie has no care for the danger into which he puts his men or the pain he inflicts. Did you notice the bruises on Laurie Steavens’s face?’

Dickin’s flush deepened. ‘I did caution him about that.’

‘And how did John respond?’

Dickin looked even more uncomfortable. ‘He said she was his whore and he would do what he liked with her.’

Fury scoured Gabe. ‘She’s not a whore, damn your eyes for doing nothing! She’s Mrs Steavens’s daughter, Eva’s sister, a maid who worked for your father for years! Are you going to wait to restrain Johnnie until after you find her floating face-down in the harbour some morning, like you did that miner who crossed him?’

‘We don’t know that Johnnie did that!’ Dickin defended hotly.

‘Dickin, he’s your little brother. You don’t see him clearly. If you could have looked into his eyes as he held Eva before him, his hands cutting into her thin bare arms, hurting her, liking that he was hurting her, daring that revenuer to shoot…’

Dickin looked away. ‘He’s young; he’ll grow out of it,’ he said at last. ‘I can bring him back to heel.’

‘Can you?’ Gabe asked softly. ‘I’m not so sure. Even if you can, I fear more men will die before it happens.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t be part of that, Dickin.’

‘Oh, posh,’ his friend responded. ‘Your Irish feuds are much deadlier than anything we Cornishmen get up.’

Gabe laughed. ‘You don’t know my oh-so-righteous brother! Maybe there’s something I can agree with Nigel about after all. I’ll honour my pledge and serve out my six months. But then I’m leaving, Dickin. For the sake of your safety—and your soul—I urge you to get out of it, too.’

‘And leave it to Johnnie?’ Dickin shook his head sadly. ‘Nay, my friend, I’ve Da and the inn to run, Tamsyn and all the family to support. What, I should try to eke a living out of the sea? Live on fish and the promise of next season’s catch? But you’ve fulfilled your bargain. Conan came through the voyage well, despite the sea being so rough. I think he’s healed enough to resume captaining the Gull. You’re free to go whenever you wish, Gabe. With my thanks—and the reckoning between us made even.’

Gabe smiled. ‘Nay, we’ll never be even. There’s no reckoning you can figure to repay the man who saved your life.’

‘If we can part friends, then that will be payment enough. But—’ Dickin gave him a curious glance ‘—what will you do?’

Gabe stood silent a moment, reflecting. ‘I’ve never liked the lawbreaking part of free-trading—the scent of shame and the gallows luring around each bend. As the Gypsies would say: You cannot walk straight when the road is bent. But I do love matching my wits and my ship against the sea. Watching moonlight sparkle on the wake while the wind sings in the rigging. I’ve also discovered I like bringing goods to people who need or want them. I think I’d like to acquire a ship and keep on trading—lawfully this time.’

Dickin nodded. ‘You’ll settle in London then, or Dublin?’

‘I don’t think so. My family would be only slightly less scandalized by my setting up as a merchant than they would be if I were carted off in irons for free-trading. Perhaps I’ll live aboard ship. I imagine the fingers of American maidens would appreciate the warmth of Cornish mittens just as much as those of London shop girls. There’s Bruge for lace, Ghent for tapestries, Brussels where art dealers may be as interested as London ones in having Cornish landscapes to trade.’

‘When will you leave?’

Gabe’s thoughts winged instantly to Miss Foxe—no, Lady Honoria; he must start accustoming himself to referring to her by that name. ‘I have some personal business to settle. A few days, at any rate.’

Dickin grinned. ‘Give that personal business my best, and if she is too much a fool to hang on to you, half the wenches in Cornwall would be happy to take her place!’

A man called to Dickin about a problem with the towlines. Turning back to Gabe, he said, ‘I’ll see you at the inn later?’

‘If I can borrow a horse. I lent mine to Miss Foxe.’ It was a blessing, really, that her identity was not yet generally known. For a few more hours, anyway, he could go on pretending they inhabited the same world.

‘With most of the cargo inland, we can spare a horse. Tell Will Glasson I said to give you the freshest one.’

The two men clasped hands. ‘Thank you again for your help, old friend,’ Dickin said. ‘And good luck, in all your endeavours.’

Gabe felt curiously light, now that the decision to leave Cornwall had been made. But that decision had been the easy one.

His next task, the interview tomorrow with Miss Foxe, would be much harder. In the face of danger, the small deception over her name had seemed trivial. He couldn’t seem to work up any indignation over it any more.

He knew he would willingly have taken a bullet for her today. Emotion welled up in him, expanding his chest, constricting his breathing, filling him fuller than the headsails on the Gull in a tearing wind. If he’d been a sloop he could have sailed all the way to the Americas on the power of it.

He might as well admit it; he, who had meant to avoid female entanglements for another decade or more, had fallen in love with Miss Foxe…who had turned out to be Lady Honoria, a woman so far above his touch that he would never had given her more than an admiring glance, had he known her true identity when they met.

Now it was too late.

However precious she was to him, there was no escaping the fact that Gabriel Hawksworth, even as a respectable merchant and trader, could never begin to offer Lady Honoria the comfort or position in society that were her birthright as the daughter of the Earl of Narborough.

A man of noble character would find the Gypsy, uncover the truth that would free her from an unjust exile, then walk away and leave her to live out her much more magnificent destiny.

Was he noble enough to do it?

Thrusting that question out of mind, he headed for the tunnel and his ride back to town.

Chapter Twenty

Waking before dawn after only a fitful sleep, Honoria detained the startled tweeny, who came in to relight the fire, long enough to assist her in donning a riding habit. With the pale pink fingers of early morning just creeping into the eastern sky, she walked to the breakfast room, unable to remain in her chamber a moment longer, though it would be hours before she could hope to see Captain Hawksworth at the school.

She’d paced like a caged beast all last evening, too, uninterested in her dinner, too restless to settle on any activity, impatient and so testy she’d had to apologize several times to Aunt Foxe after uttering some sharp remark. Almost, almost she’d been tempted to slip out to the stables, saddle Mischief and ride into town to accost the captain at the inn, so anxious was she to learn what he’d discovered.

How he now felt about her.

He knew her real name, for certain. She hadn’t missed the subtle emphasis he’d given her alias on the moor yesterday. But, she recalled, brightening a bit, neither had he seemed furious about it. Perhaps she hadn’t mangled things between them irretrievably after all.

Actually, accosting him in his bedchamber sounded as appealing by morning light as it had at midnight. The knowledge acquired from her aunt’s naughty books burning in her, she was most eager to put it into practice.

She’d wanted him even when she told herself the attraction between them was little more than lust. But as the emotional connection strengthened and now, after admitting she loved him, the caution keeping her from giving physical expression to the joy that bubbled up in her at the mere sight of him had steadily eroded until it now restrained her from acting by the thinnest of threads.

Even the terror of yesterday’s ambush hadn’t wholly muted that joy or done more than reduce to a simmer the passion that made her yearn with ever-increasing fervency for total union   with him.

That deliciously wicked poem from Aristotle’s Masterpiece ran through her head again. Indeed, she thought of it often, for with its sea-going metaphors, it seemed as though written expressly for her and the captain. She couldn’t look at him now without thinking of the admonition to take his ‘rudder’ in her bold hand ‘like a try’d and skilful pilot’ and ‘guide his bark in love’s dark channel…’

Her channel liquefied at the thought. She closed her eyes, imagining what it would be like to run her fingers down the solid length of his ‘yard,’ to explore and caress the soft and sensitive tip and navigate it within her…

From time immemorial, women had captured and held their men using the power of those navigational tricks. Might she, like a modern siren, lure the captain onto the shoals of delight and keep him there…until he no longer wished to leave?

---