The narrow stairs were as black as pitch on the upper floors, so she used cautious feet and hands to feel her way down them. At the bottom was a dingy corridor with doors leading out to different parts of the house. Her appalling sense of direction made her dither. If she went out of the wrong door, then the game would be up. In desperation, she closed her eyes and tried to picture the house in relation to the route she had just taken. If the servants’ stairs were behind her, then the garden had to be to the left. The kitchen had to be nearby.
Fliss stopped at the second door to the end and put her ear against it. Only when she was certain there was no sound coming from behind did she dare open it. The room beyond was blessedly empty, but well shy of the kitchens. The silhouette of the enormous gilt harp and the expensive Italian pianoforte told her that she had stupidly managed to get herself to the room furthest from the kitchen. The Music Room was the least used and most ostentatious of Uncle Crispin’s showy entertainment spaces. The only other door led directly out towards the main staircase and the biggest concentration of guards. She was about to retrace her steps when the moonlight disappeared behind a cloud, plunging her into complete darkness again. Her eyes drifted to the windows. At least they overlooked the garden, although wholly in the wrong place... This new knowledge made her dizzy as Fliss heard her own heartbeat bang loudly in her head. Before she could talk herself out of it, she had pushed open the sash, hoisted up her billowing and flimsy nightgown, then clumsily lowered her body out.
The February cold made her skin prickle with goosebumps, although the rush of excitement and the forbidden made her hot all over. Taking a convoluted route behind the screen of shrubbery and flowerbeds, it took a few minutes to get to the wall directly outside her uncle’s study and she pressed her back against the icy brickwork, willing herself to look like a brick in a feeble attempt to blend in.
Barely breathing, Fliss shuffled a little closer to the window, then closer again until the back of her head came level with the frame. With her heart in her mouth, her pulse drowning out all other sounds, she had to give herself a stern talking to. Several deep cleansing breaths later, she was finally able to hear something. A London accent. Broad and flat. Common. More menacing now that she knew who he worked for. She concentrated hard on the sounds, trying to discern the non-existent consonants from the vowels. Eventually Fliss was able pick out one or two words, hearing them clearer because they kept being repeated.
Tomorrow and fobbing—whatever that meant?
The scrape of a chair and the sounds of movement had her leaping away, hugging the wall until she risked darting behind the skeleton of a rosebush and crouching low in the prickly branches to avoid the pristine white linen of her nightgown being discovered by the transient moon. As an afterthought, Fliss dragged off her spectacles, too, in case their lenses reflected the light, and squinted as the door to the garden opened and the Londoner appeared out of it.
Thanks to her poor vision and the hat pulled low, casting shadows over his face, she still could not make out his features and within seconds he had disappeared into the trees. She considered following him and decided against it. Just this had been terrifying enough and she was in no hurry to die. She had two words more now than she had had before and the King and Lord Fennimore would have to make do with that for now. In the meantime, she had to get back into the house unseen and then count the hours until she could surreptitiously pass the information to someone from the King’s Elite on her morning walk.
Chapter Fifteen
Hidden in the mist on Fobbing Marshes
Jake methodically tried to close all the gaps in his greatcoat for the hundredth time, then pulled his thick woollen scarf up to the rims of his eyeballs. After close to six hours exposed, he was prepared to do anything which might make his frozen body less cold. Beside him, Seb seemed cheerfully unaffected by the temperature and his legendary patience was driving Jake insane. ‘What time is it?’
‘Probably ten minutes on from when I last checked.’
‘Can you look at your damned pocket watch?’
‘I find time moves much more slowly when you watch it tick past.’
‘It’ll be light soon.’ Which meant that Jake would have wasted an entire night for nothing, worrying about Fliss the whole time and wishing he was there in Berkeley Square, in case she needed him, rather than here hoping to end her torment once and for all.
Seb rolled his eyes, then promptly closed one to stare through his telescope. ‘We’ve got at least another two hours before the dawn breaks. A lot can happen in two hours.’
‘Because so much has happened in six! And what have you got to be so blasted cheerful about? There must be something wrong with you that you are incapable of feeling the cold.’
‘I feel it, but like the time I choose to ignore it. What can I say? Some of us are cut out for field work and some of us aren’t.’
‘I’ve spent years working in the field.’
‘Yes—but your fields have feather eiderdowns and perfumed sheets.’
Jake didn’t want to be reminded about those again, not after Fliss had made him more ashamed of what he did than anyone ever had before. His friend must have seen the flash of pain cross his face and assumed it was because of their situation. ‘You did insist on coming here tonight, so you only have yourself to blame for your current predicament. You could be tucked up in a nice warm bed somewhere and have left this to the Excise Men.’
‘Just as you could have. But like me you knew they’re likely to make a ham-fisted hash of it.’ The eager bunch who had been assigned to chase Fliss’s sketchy intelligence were currently dotted around the marshes, hiding just as Jake and Seb were, waiting for their signal to move a muscle. ‘We need the blighters alive, not peppered with musket balls.’ So that Jake could shake the truth out of them and then snatch Fliss out of that monster’s house.
If only they had more to go on. While Fobbing was a small village sat conveniently on one of the many marshy tributaries of the Thames, it was large enough to mean they could be in entirely the wrong place to see the smugglers if they turned up. Just because the Norman-built tall tower of St Michael’s Church behind them had once been a beacon guiding the boats into these treacherous waters didn’t mean it still did. The Excise Men firmly believed they had eradicated free trading from this stretch of Essex nearly twenty years before. The increasing sea defences built since had blocked off many of the small inlets which the boats used and much of the marshland had been drained to make way for grazing land. But they were currently camped near a shallow creek, one of the few barely navigable ones left. One which had been getting progressively deeper over the last couple of hours as the tide came in and tides only came from the sea.
‘Tell me what if feels like to be you right now? I mean, it must be quite alien for you to desperately want the love of a woman and to be confronted with the cold shoulder of abject disappointment and total disgust.’
It wasn’t. Something which caused his chest to constrict painfully every time Fliss looked through him. The disappointment in her eyes eerily mirrored that of his mother’s, except this time it wasn’t caused because he merely happened to look like someone. Fliss’s disappointment was real and well-earned. With hindsight, Jake wished he had broken ranks and told her the whole truth early on. The deception now created a chasm between them which he didn’t know how to breach because she wasn’t the usual sort of woman he dealt with. She was frustratingly resistant to his charms. She saw right through it and Jake only had the truth left in his arsenal. Truth which she had no interest in hearing because she had already worked out most of it for herself.
‘I want her forgiveness, not her love, Seb.’ Although the latter should frighten him, his heart craved it none the less.
His friend grinned, clearly enjoying his misery. ‘I doubt she’ll ever forgive you for pretending to want her and then pursuing her relentlessly till
you wore her down. I’m no expert on women, but I should imagine a woman like her, one who prides herself in her own common sense around men, would be furious at falling for a man who was only kissing her because he had been told to do so.’
‘That wasn’t...’ He clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late. Seb was staring at him incredulous.
‘Good grief... I never thought I’d see the day... You have genuine feelings for the girl. Proper romantic ones. You do want her to love you back!’ He chuckled softly and shook his head. ‘Now your belligerent mood makes perfect sense. Jacob Warriner is in love! And with a woman who now loathes him! Oh, how the mighty have fallen.’
‘I haven’t fallen.’ Although he was beginning to suspect he had. This last week had been pure torture. Jake had followed her everywhere, hoping he would see a chink in her frosty, indifferent armour and when he hadn’t it had hurt. Real pain. A constant knot in his chest. A head which ached because of his constantly furrowed brow. A tightness in his throat. Hell, last night when she had glared at him as if he were as abhorrent as something foul she had stepped in, he had experienced the overwhelming urge to hide himself in some dark corner and weep. He was even displaying all the irrational behaviours he had watched his normally sensible brothers go through when their hearts had been lost to the women who were now their wives. Jake couldn’t sleep, eat or think straight because the only thing on his mind was her.
Her. Her. Her.
Blunt by Name and Nature.
The woman he very probably loved.
Good grief, he was doomed.
The knowledge came with a wave of nausea so acute that for a moment Jake thought he was about to lose his long-ago consumed dinner. How had he let that happen? And, more importantly, what was he going to do about it? She hated him. Rightly so. He’d lied to her from the outset. It didn’t matter that he had always lied to women, justifiably for the good of the nation, but Fliss wasn’t most women. The second bout of nausea was accompanied by the depressing knowledge she would likely never forgive him for using her. Like every man she had knowledge of he had been wholly undependable in the end. The knot in his chest throbbed painfully and the urge to weep into his frozen hands sprung afresh. He’d made a ham-fisted hash of things...
The pathetic sound of one of the Excise Men attempting to mimic a herring gull, the call they had insisted would not arouse suspicion, made a welcome diversion from his maudlin introspection. Someone must have seen something. Seb scanned the waterway with his telescope until it fixed on one spot. ‘There,’ he whispered, pointing. ‘I see a lantern.’
Jake soon saw it for himself, although barely. Smugglers were very good at blacking out all but the essential light and this one was no bigger than a shilling, flickering as it passed through the long marsh reeds. It made slow progress as it navigated the shallow creek, the long flat-bottomed hull of the barge sitting low in the shallow water. After an interminable age it finally moored at the bottom of the very hill the church stood on.
In the gloomy silence, one man jumped off the boat and raised the miserly lantern in the air. Only when he was satisfied they were all alone did he signal his mate. For the next ten minutes Jake watched the two men offload barrel after barrel from the vessel. When Seb nudged him, Jake readied his pistols and nodded, focusing on the scene in front while his friend moved towards them under the cover of the grass. It was quite a haul, but as yet nobody else had arrived to collect it. They couldn’t make a move until they did.
‘Put your hands in the air! In the name of his Majesty!’ At the shout behind him, Jake wanted to scream in frustration. The Excise Men had jumped the gun and jeopardised the whole mission. The smuggler stood on the deck of the barge immediately dived over the side into the water and disappeared out of sight. The man on the shore partially raised his hands, but appeared ready to bolt at any moment.
‘Hold your fire!’ Jake stood up and raised one fist in the air to stay the idiots behind, pointing one of his own pistols directly at the smuggler’s head. ‘Stand still or I will kill you!’
The man paused, his gaze furtively darting from left to right as the Excise Men lit all their own lanterns and exposed him to their eyes. He took a step backwards towards the water’s edge, then yelped as Jake’s warning shot sent the turf next to his feet spraying in the air.
‘I said stand still! Don’t do anything silly...’
In his peripheral vision he saw Seb less than twenty feet away from the man, ready to strike, and calmly raised the second pistol in the air, making sure the smuggler saw the slow cock of the hammer and the deadly aim of the barrel. They couldn’t afford to lose this man, too, now their only link to Rowley and the Londoner, and by default Fliss’s safety.
Seb inched closer, his head finally emerging from the reeds. A genuine herring gull call spooked the smuggler and he took another clumsy step back, his hands groping at his belt. Jake heard the blast of a shot behind a split second before it exploded in the smuggler’s chest, flinging him back into the water. He held his breath while Seb plunged in to retrieve the body and felt the boiling fury course through his veins when his friend shook his head. Their only link was now dead.
‘Which one of you fools fired?’ Jake grabbed the closest Excise Man by the lapels and shook him. ‘We needed him alive, damn it!’ This was about more than a few paltry barrels of brandy. The woman he was head over heels in love with was in danger! Grave danger and this was Jake’s one chance to get her out swiftly.
Their captain stepped forward, unrepentant. ‘He was reaching for his weapon. My man did the right thing. At least the cargo has been seized.’ He gave a signal to his men and they all came towards the now-crewless barge, only to be stayed by Leatham.
‘You can board it once we’ve looked it over and not before.’
* * *
For the next half an hour the pair of them searched in vain for clues before reluctantly handing the vessel over to the others. All they could find were tankers filled with brandy. As the dawn began to break they made their way wearily back to the horses they had left almost half a mile away, exhaustion, the cold and Jake’s ridiculously heavy heart making each step an effort. He’d failed her again. Now he would need some divine intervention if he was to—
Jake paused and pulled Seb’s coat. ‘Why were they here? Specifically here?’ He stopped and turned full circle and took in the desolate marshland. There was the odd cottage, but the only building of any significance was the church. ‘One of us would have seen something if a welcoming party had arrived.’
‘Not if they’d heard the gunfire beforehand. Those idiots probably scared them off.’
‘But what if there wasn’t a welcoming party?’ An idea was germinating in Jake’s mind. ‘We’re assuming they came here because the creek runs off the Thames—but what if they came here because that church also used to hide contraband in its cellars?’
As one, they started up the hill. The heavy oak-arched doors were open, as church doors were often prone to be offering sanctuary to all comers, but at this early hour the church was deserted. They wandered past the silent pews to the vestry, locating the entrance to the cellar under a large, threadbare rug.
Jake squeezed his body into the small opening first and allowed his eyes to adjust to the pale lamplight as his friend followed. Ahead a long, narrow tunnel disappeared into the darkness. Together they moved along it, crouched at first as it twisted and turned, but then it evened out and widened. Eventually they came to a crossroads of sorts as the tunnel veered both left and right. Knowing they’d have to follow both, they turned left and followed it to the end. The wooden door in the ceiling came out on the edge of desolate marsh land. Not a sign of human habitation marred the landscape. There was water, though. Plenty of it and a solitary wooden quay built of strong new timber. In the distance, Jake could make out the sails of the ships traversing the busy Thames beyond and the miniature signs of civilisati
on that dotted the banks as the river wended its way directly into London.
The second tunnel took them to another cellar, although thanks to a heavy barrel placed over the trap door, they couldn’t see more than a small glimpse of the room beyond without dislodging the barrel and potentially alerting its owners to their presence. It was obviously a storeroom. A smuggler’s storeroom. Barrels and boxes were piled several deep along the edges. Above that were the sounds of people. Lots of people. Metal plates and mugs clattered as they were plonked down on tables, the smell of ale and beer hung heavy in the air. All they needed to do now was work out the name of the inn.
* * *
It was a little past ten when all hell broke loose at Uncle Crispin’s. One minute Fliss had been quietly reading in the drawing room, waiting for her aunts to surface, and the next the silence was filled with the angry growl of her uncle’s shouting and what sounded like furniture being thrown. She immediately went to investigate and was held at bay outside his bedchamber door by a shocked footman who politely suggested she make herself scarce until he had calmed down.
The cacophony persisted for almost ten minutes and was so loud it succeeded in rousing both Cressida and Daphne from their sherry-induced deep slumber. After that, while the ladies quietly discussed the possible cause of his fury, Uncle Crispin locked himself away for the rest of the day upstairs and Fliss watched a succession of harried-looking footmen disappear in and out of the house ferrying messages.
* * *
Close to seven, and in the middle of dressing, Fliss was informed that they would no longer be expecting guests for dinner and that neither would they be attending Almack’s as had been intended. With no way of colliding with either Mr Flint or dropping a paper message for Mr Leatham to find, Fliss could do little other than worry and speculate, convinced that, somehow, she must have been the cause.
A Warriner to Seduce Her Page 17