A Lady's Honor

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Shone . . . and remained open and clear. Her shoulders, broad for a female’s, straightened. Her chin elevated and grew a hint firmer, and her lips, though bloodless, betrayed only the merest quiver.

  Miss Elys Trelawny possessed too much of a backbone to faint.

  More than a twinge of disappointment pinched Rowan’s middle. He’d have welcomed the opportunity to hold her again, kiss the quiver from her lips, bring color rushing to her mouth and cheeks like that glorious night in the bower. Lilies had made the ballroom smell more like a funeral than a festival, yet the sweet innocence of her kiss had tasted like the elixir of life itself for those precious moments.

  Tamping down the disappointment, Rowan released her, shoved his hands into his salt-stained coat pockets, and addressed the two females with as much cool indifference as he could produce around the lady who had piqued his interest the minute he found her surreptitiously reading John Locke in the lending library.

  “I’m sorry, Elys—Miss Trelawny.” He must remember to be formal with her in Cornwall, where he was just short of being a gentleman, unlike in London, where his quest for information had necessitated he play a different role. “I know Conan Lord Penvenan was your friend.”

  “And yours.” Compassion shown through the tears in her eyes.

  Rowan inclined his head. “And mine.”

  For too short a time, but they had liked one another.

  Guilt twisted Rowan’s gut. If he had created a better plan for helping Elizabeth escape, if he had done more in the week he had been in Cornwall, he might have been able to help Conan more, extricated him from the smugglers, kept him alive.

  “He was such a dear boy.” Miss Pross’s moan rose like wind around a house corner.

  Miss Trelawny gripped her elbows, but not hard enough to stop her shaking. “Who? Why?”

  The answer wasn’t pleasant, but she might as well know since her brother was quite likely involved. “A falling out amongst the smuggling gang. The revenue men got information when to be on the beach. But Conan shouldn’t have been there. He said he wouldn’t after recent events.”

  “Lawlessness.” Miss Pross wiped her eyes with a stiff linen handkerchief. “He never should have smuggled.”

  “He thought he had no choice to save his estate. He’s been trying to break away, but they’ve threatened him and his sister.” They, the anonymous smugglers who lived and worked and attended church services side by side with those who never dared tell anyone if they noticed a neighbor slipping off at the dark of the moon.

  “Those who snitch die.” Miss Trelawny spoke as though she was reciting something she’d heard. “If Conan was the informant, they would kill him. Drake might even be tempted to do so. But Conan wouldn’t inform on his fellow Cornishmen.”

  “No.” Rowan wished he could wrap her in something warm—like his arms—to thaw that frosty façade she had donned. “He wouldn’t do that even with the threats.”

  “Who would threaten Lord Penvenan?” Miss Pross made her enquiry in a quiet wail.

  “How?” Miss Trelawny asked. “Is Senara safe?”

  “His sister is safe. As for the threats, they didn’t seem particularly dangerous at the time—a message chalked on the front door of the house, a dead bird on the doorstep . . . Almost child-prank stuff.” Rowan clenched and unclenched his fists. “Maybe his dog.”

  Her face paled. “Someone hurt his old dog? That’s unconscionable.”

  “We don’t know. It simply vanished from his rooms one day.”

  If only he had been around when the messages were left. He knew a little of tracking and might have been able to trace the originator—and gotten his throat cut.

  Rowan rubbed his thumb along a crust of sea salt on the pocket of his wool coat and turned away from Miss Trelawny. “We can bemoan Lord Penvenan’s smuggling all we like, but it doesn’t get you ladies safely to Bastion Point today. There’s been no sign of Romsford or his men since yesterday morning, but the sooner I get you home, the better.”

  “Romsford. I’d have been home if he hadn’t caught up with us, and then perhaps Drake and Conan . . .” Miss Trelawny trailed off, spun on her heel, and strode across the room so fast the bottom frill on her skirt swung up to reveal trim ankles in white silk stockings and the pink ribbons from her shoes. Not fashionable, dainty ankles. Nothing about Elys Trelawny was dainty, from her name, to her height, to her masses of mahogany hair. She was slender and strong, Boadicea in pink muslin.

  And like a queen, she wasn’t for a peasant like him to take an interest in.

  Rowan suppressed a sigh and fixed his gaze on a row of nails pounded into the plaster wall to hold a motley collection of pots and pans. “The weather is calm this morning. I can get you onto a boat up the Fal River to Truro. I’ll send someone with a message overland to Bastion Point to have you met there by a carriage and outriders.” He let himself gaze upon her straight back and the proud carriage of her head. “Without Conan, I don’t think you want to arrive with me.”

  “And have them think I traveled all this way with you?” Miss Trelawny gave her head a hard shake. “Certainly not.” She faced Rowan, her face cold. “Why didn’t Drake come to help me?”

  “If he’s wise,” Rowan said, settling on evasion, “he’s already out to sea.”

  Lightning flashed in Miss Trelawny’s eyes. “He will still be here in Cornwall. Trelawnys know who we are. We do not run.” Her voice rang as hard and cold as a steel blade on a frozen pond.

  Rowan paused, seeing for the first time that rumors of this lady’s great-great-something grandmother being a pirate were quite possibly true. A man tended to forget her family history when he had witnessed her surreptitiously trying to read Locke behind a bookshelf at Hookham’s Lending Library, and her desperate, “I am twenty-one and never been kissed” before she—

  “You ran.” Rowan spoke the truth with as much of a chill as Miss Trelawny to counter a flash of warmth in his middle—a memory of that kiss and a flash of anger for her arrogant assumption her brother could smuggle and go unscathed while Conan got his throat cut and common folk went to prison, got transported, or lay shot down on the beach like mad dogs.

  She glanced at him with dislike narrowing her eyes, yet with a hint of vulnerability in the quiver of her lower lip, a touch of humor in the slight lift to one corner of her lush mouth. “You’re not intimidated by my family, are you?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

  “No wonder Drake entrusted my safety to you.”

  Rowan shifted from one foot to the other, clasped his hands behind his back, and strode to the door. “I’ll get that message sent and ensure the boat is ready.”

  He opened the door. Chilled, damp air drifted into the kitchen, too cold for late April, as far as he was concerned. But a profusion of wildflowers in the narrow strip of overgrown garden and birds merrily singing behind the cottage belied the idea that the weather was unseasonable. A narrow beam of sunlight struggled to slice through the clouds. He stepped toward it, reaching for the promise of warmth—any kind of promise for a future that had become all too uncertain in the past twenty-eight hours.

  He closed the door on the lady the murder of Conan Lord Penvenan had placed beyond his reach and headed into the mews. A number of lads lounged about seeking work. He chose two at random to take separate messages to Sir Petrok Trelawny in the event Romsford had sent his minions around the coast in search of his would-be bride to waylay her on the road to Bastion Point.

  Had Romsford, the marquess no one had considered, ordered Penvenan killed for taking the Trelawny lady out of his clutches? No, Rowan decided. It was unlikely, even for a man with too many dead wives in his past. He’d never order the death of a peer.

  Rowan, on the other hand, wasn’t even an Englishman. He watched his back on his way to the harbor in the event Romsford or his men had returned to Falmouth in the past hour. He watched his back while arranging for transport to carry the ladies upriver. He watched his back on his re
turn to the cottage where the ladies waited.

  He noticed no one interested in his activities. More than likely, the marquess had gone on to the north to keep an eye out for his prey where he knew she’d end up—Bastion Point, the three-hundred-year-old house perched on a cliff above the sea, owned by the Chinoweth family until the English Civil War, then claimed by a Trelawny ancestress when the Restoration came. A house Rowan had heard of all his life but never seen.

  He reached the borrowed house to find the ladies had barred the door. Good thinking on their part. Miss Trelawny opened it to show Miss Pross still seated at the table with a cup of tea and her crumpled handkerchief, then stood waiting for news.

  Miss Trelawny’s tresses would be so glorious fanned around her shoulders . . .

  He focused on her ice-blue eyes. “All the arrangements are made, and I saw no sign of anyone too interested in this house. There’s just one difficulty.”

  “What is that?” the ladies asked together, Miss Pross anxious, Miss Trelawny cool.

  He smiled. “I hope you like the smell of fish.”

  Elizabeth stared at the single-masted fishing boat bobbing on the Fal River and wrinkled her nose. She liked fishing. She did not like the smell of fish in this strong a compote. Even though no one could know she had been with Rowan Curnow, she did not like the notion of him leaving them on their own.

  “These men won’t let anything happen to you.” He had touched her arm as though he read her mind. “They won’t let anyone near you whom you don’t wish near you.”

  Elizabeth brushed at her arm, trying to remove the sensation of warmth his touch left behind. “But what if Romsford or his men are there instead of someone from Bastion Point?” Her voice held a note of panic, remnants of the tension with which she had struggled for the past week. “They could overpower these men or bribe them or—” She pressed the back of her hand to her lips.

  “I’m expected elsewhere . . .” He glanced from Elizabeth to the boat, then back to Elizabeth. “All right. A few more hours won’t matter now that Conan’s gone.”

  Her knees wobbled under the strength of her relief. “Thank you.”

  “May the Lord bless you.” Miss Pross bowed her head as though praying for that then and there.

  He tipped his hat to her. “He has blessed me. Shall we go now?” He shepherded them onto the boat, to a stretch of open rail near the prow, and said, “I won’t make myself too familiar in public like this.” With that pronouncement, he strode aft to join the fishermen by tiller and taffrail.

  Elizabeth stood on the deck of the fishing smack that reeked of its recent catch and fixed her gaze on the throng of fisherfolk and townspeople along the wharf, the former selling, the latter buying. For a while, even as the fishing boat cast off its mooring and headed against the river current, she remained motionless and silent, glad Mr. Curnow was with them, wishing she hadn’t so desperately wanted him to abandon whatever work he had to come along. She stood at the rail until a warehouse blocked her view of the town, then she turned to Miss Pross. “I won’t feel safe until I’m inside Bastion Point.”

  “I do not believe I’ll ever eat fish again.” Her normally pink and white complexion tinged with green, Miss Pross leaned on the rail and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. “If I cast up my accounts in front of these young men, I’ll never forgive that Mr. Curnow.”

  He wasn’t the one who needed forgiving. Elizabeth was for setting this entire debacle into motion with the man she had just persuaded to risk compromising her even more than the past day and a half already had, more than her behavior in London had, if anyone learned the truth of that masked man’s identity.

  “No wonder he does not treat a Trelawny with any deference.” Elizabeth dropped her hand to the rail and gripped it hard enough to split the seam on her right ring finger where a silver knot ring graced her hand. “I made a fool of myself with him.”

  “Not at all, my dear.” Miss Pross covered Elizabeth’s hand with hers. “You acquitted yourself most appropriately this morning. I thought for a moment you might faint when you heard the news of Lord Penvenan’s . . . demise, but you neither swooned nor resorted to histrionics.”

  “I was too stunned to do either. But that’s not what I am speaking of.” Elizabeth gazed at the tree-clad riverbank slipping past, the sun-dappled water, the pale blue sky with its remaining wisps of cloud drifting toward the sea, and swallowed against a dry throat.

  Miss Pross peered up from beneath the brim of her hat. “What then, child? His dress might be rough and his speech odd, but he conducted himself with—”

  “He kissed me in London,” Elizabeth blurted out. “No, it is worse than that. I kissed him in London. He kissed me back. The masquerade . . . the bower . . . it was him.” She slumped as though the confession weakened her spine, and cast a glance aft.

  Miss Pross dropped her handkerchief into the river. Her very silence spoke volumes more than the preface of the lost square of linen.

  Overhead, the single sail snapped in the wind, and the boom slid above their heads like a pointing finger. Someone shouted a command, the Cornish accent so strong Elizabeth barely understood the words after a six-year absence from her beloved homeland. The boat heeled to starboard. Miss Pross staggered away from the rail, and Elizabeth caught her around the waist, steadying her.

  “Thank you. I never have been much of a sailor.” Miss Pross seized hold of the rail. “But I am a good judge of character, and I’ve a difficult time believing that young man is anything less than honorable. After all, he could have taken advantage of you, so I cannot see him taking advantage of you in a London ballroom. Besides—well, this sounds horribly snobbish, I know, but he does not look the sort to be attending London balls, even masquerades.”

  “It was him.” Elizabeth toyed with the great-great-great-great-grandmother’s ring fashioned from captured Spanish silver. “Remember, I made the overture. Pushing me away would have made more of a scene than . . . than what happened. At least it would have been less of a scene if Mama had not found us and shrieked like a banshee.”

  “Are you saying kissing you was the gentlemanly thing to do?”

  “I am.”

  “But why would he be ungentlemanly enough to remind you of your folly?”

  Elizabeth winced at the reminder of such. “So I’d trust him with my safety. He is trustworthy.”

  “Trying to convince me or yourself?” Miss Pross asked the question in the gentlest of tones.

  “It does not matter. Once we reach Truro, he’ll be gone.”

  A hollowness yawned inside her.

  “So do we still tell your grandparents as little as possible?”

  “Yes. I’d rather they not know I was alone with a stranger for hours.”

  “I’d still rather not deceive Sir Petrok and Lady Trelawny, my dear.” Miss Pross curled her hands around the rail. “Even lies of omission are wrong.”

  “You can say that even after six years in London?” Elizabeth snorted. “Then say nothing at all, if it pricks your conscience. It does not prick mine to keep my family from making even more excuses for marrying me off to the murdering marquess. I am free of him and intend to stay that way.”

  But she was not free of him. The Fal bent eastward at King Harry’s Reach, and the fishing smack continued up the Truro River with its banks wooded in stunted oaks, to the Truro quayside, and when they moored, two men stood awaiting them on the wharf, one with an erect posture and mostly black hair that made him appear two decades less than his seventy-five years, the other with sagging jowls and lines of dissipation making him appear two decades beyond his fifty years.

  Her grandfather, Sir Petrok Trelawny, and the Marquess of Romsford, standing side by side.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE TEMPTATION TO BEG THE FISHERMEN TO RETURN her to Falmouth ran so high Elizabeth spun away from the rail and headed aft two steps.

  “Trelawnys don’t run.” Rowan Curnow’s voice rose from the hatchway. A reminder.
A taunt.

  She faced the dock, her hands buried deep inside the sleeves of her cloak so no one could see them shaking. “It seems that all this was for nothing.” Her voice emerged a bit steadier than her hands.

  Or her middle. Her insides felt as though she rode on a hurricane-tossed sea.

  She’d eluded Romsford for a week crossing England, had risked ruin spending hours alone with a stranger, and ended up landing at Romsford’s feet. At Romsford’s feet with Grandpapa’s blessing, apparently. They were standing close enough to have been engaged in dialogue. Dialogue about what? If Romsford had told Grandpapa about Elizabeth being alone in that inn with a stranger, she may as well start planning how to be the first of Romsford’s wives to stay alive for more than a pair of years. Kissing a stranger was bad enough, but being alone with him at night was social suicide.

  Mouth set in a hard, thin line to keep her chin from quivering, Elizabeth preceded Miss Pross down the gangway, pressed a guinea into the fisherman’s gnarled hand, and glided to Grandpapa as though Romsford did not exist. She dropped a curtsy. “You need not have come all this way to meet me, sir, but I thank you for doing so.”

  “Of course I came to meet you.” Sir Petrok Trelawny, once condemned as a pirate and ending up knighted for his heroic deeds—or the depth of his coffers—tucked his walking stick under one arm and gripped Elizabeth’s hands with a strength belying his seventy-five years. He held her gaze with eyes as black as Welsh coal. “I couldn’t entrust your safety to anyone else.”

  Her safety?

  She flicked a glance toward Romsford.

  “Your parents expected me to ensure your safety,” the marquess said.

  “As you see, your assistance was wholly unnecessary.” She smiled.

  He scowled.

  She held her breath, waiting for Romsford to proclaim victory or mention her escapade with Rowan Curnow. Waiting for Grandpapa to tell her she was in a depth of trouble.

  “We shall collect your luggage and be on our way.” Grandpapa spoke first.