Contraband Hearts

by Alex Beecroft

  He will find out his way.”

  Perhaps it was not just his mother who needed to guard her heart.

  His morning was spent on the beach amongst the wreckage. He exchanged pleasantries with the usual suspects, working his way slowly from the west to the east side of the beach and keeping an eye out for Dean. Around midday, Jowan Ede told him that he might find Dean up on the cliff above, sheltering in the huer’s hut and shouting down to alert his colleagues on the shore when anything notable was swept in.

  “Didn’t want a repeat of last time, did we?” Jowan shrugged, though there was an unusual hardness in his easygoing eyes. “I don’t know what would’ve befallen him if I han’t seen him go down and dragged him away from them kidnappers.”

  “Do you know who they were?” Tomas asked. “There’s a new player in town, and I don’t like his style. If we could capture his men, an enquiry could be made.”

  “I don’t know.” Jowan gave him a twisted smile. “I were bent over young Perry, giving him a bit of a slap to wake him up. By the time I straightened, they were gone.”

  The Edes had five relatives in total serving aboard Tomas’s ships. Good people, though inclined to indolence, and Jowan had always been a most obliging opponent. So Tomas believed him. He smiled back. “Well, I am glad to hear Mr. Dean has at least one friend in his office.”

  “Not two?” Jowan raised dusty eyebrows. “I can’t tell the lads you vouch for him? They’d feel better about him if you did.”

  Tomas huffed, somewhat touched. “I can’t go that far yet,” he admitted, “but I’m working on it. It is my hope that Mr. Dean will fit in here comfortably once he has shaken off some bad influences.”

  Jowan nodded. “Them in the big house.”

  “Exactly.” Tomas turned toward the path that would take him up to the small white hut on the cliff, and paused. “Your Margaret is fond of hats, is she not?”

  “She’d put a flat iron on her head and call it macaroni,” Jowan scoffed with fond amusement. “Why?”

  “Tell her to call on my mother. We have a guest who is a talented milliner, and who also needs friends in the town.”

  “Got your finger in everything, you have.”

  “That’s how I like it,” Tomas agreed and, walking away, thought, I will be a big man in this town one way or other, fucking Quicks be damned.

  The mizzle seemed to be turning into yet more rain. Tomas was glad to be able to duck under the roof of the huer hut. Here, watchmen usually stood gazing out for shoals of pilchard, so they could call down to the bay and alert the boats. But today Dean was here, in a crimson suit that might be conservative in London, but here was peacock fine. He looked magnificent in it, the colour rich and opulent against the umber of his skin.

  Perhaps hearing his footfall, Dean had turned from the window, was watching Tomas slap the raindrops from his hat by clapping it against his leg. There was a consciousness about the man’s gaze now that Tomas found delightful. Dean might have disowned the kiss, but it was there in every visible doubt.

  “I like a man in a suit.” Tomas grinned, dragging his eyes from Dean’s shoe buckles to his eyes, lingering a little on the sturdy calves in their silk stockings. “Going somewhere special?”

  Dean blushed a deep plum colour, very becoming with his jacket, but his mouth twitched, as if amused. “My other set of clothes are being laundered and repaired. I had not conceived how hard this posting would be on my linen.”

  There were several salacious responses Tomas could make to a sentence like that, but perhaps they would be unwise. It was hard to tell how appropriate he was being, when Dean’s presence seemed to hit him like wine, leaving him drunk and happy.

  “I’m not here to renew my attentions,” he began bluntly. “Have no fear. I’m here as a concerned citizen to report an incident of wrecking. After we had our talk, I went out in my jolly-boat to cool off. You recall the light went suddenly and the wind blew up? The snow that is currently washing up in pieces on the beach passed me in the dark and turned towards a light on the cliff, sailing directly into the Needles as a result.”

  Dean’s awkward intimacy faded. The very shape of his face seemed to sharpen. “You think it was deliberate?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  Tomas huffed out his frustration. “I don’t. I’ve spoken with a lot of people, and their feeling is that it’s someone new to our town.” It was his turn to blush, this time in genuine shame for the sake of his home. “You are not seeing us at our best, Mr. Dean. This slaving and wrecking? I’ve never known either here before. I hoped we could work together to prevent it happening again.” A vivid memory of the ruined ship—fire on the water—flashed behind his eyes, and he was hotter, angrier about this than even he had thought. “There are things which are crimes because the law is an ass and the rich have all the power. And then there are things which are abhorrent because of their terrible ruin to human lives and happiness. Those things I am utterly against, and if you will help me, I will— Mph!”

  Dean’s mouth had silenced him, sealing against his own. The unexpected kiss was like touching a match to a fuse—a startled snap followed by a growing fire. He melted into the strong embrace with some of the relief of an addict, as though their first interrupted intimacy had already established a habit, and when Dean’s mouth moved to his jaw, he laughed from sheer delight.

  It was a bad move. Dean turned to stone against him, and then—again—he stepped away. “I’m sorry. I still can’t.”

  “Because you insist on being the unpaid lackey to my evil cousins,” Tomas mocked, unhurt—that had been a much gentler rejection. One that promised to turn into an acceptance in time. “Mr. Dean, I—”

  Dean laughed too now, ducking his head as though that could hide his somewhat bashful smile. “I think by now you can probably call me Perry.”

  “Perry? No wonder I’ve been drunk on you since you arrived.”

  This second laugh was louder and more astonished, as though no one had ever flirted with the man before and he didn’t know how to take it. His eyes were still sparkling when he looked Tomas straight in the face and said, “We cannot get involved because if I find evidence that you are the rogue I have been told you are, I will still see you hang.”

  Tomas didn’t know what it said about himself that he found that breathlessly exciting. He had to swallow hard before he could speak. “I’m willing to take that risk if you are.”

  At that kiss, Perry’s mouth had dried as a great wave of heat pulsed out from the core of him, passing through every fibre before it reached and darkened his skin. He had dropped his eyes to Tomas’s perfect mouth, still flushed and damp from kissing, and desire seemed to pull him forward like a harpoon through the chest. He wanted, needed to take that risk, but—

  He had not overcome every obstacle in his life by weakness of will. The very yearning itself frightened him, as a force he had never had to contend with to this degree before. He’d had illicit encounters, of course, reading the condemnations in the papers and using them as guidelines to parts of London where others like himself congregated. But the excitement had always been admixed with a queasy dread, lest he be found out, lest he let his patron and his family down. He was recognizable, after all, and after the first few fumbling times—scarcely worth their while—he had resigned himself to fantasy and his own hand.

  One day, he had told himself, he would be wealthy enough, respected enough, to have love on his own terms. To find someone he could do more with than fumble in a shop doorway on a rainy night. Someone he could fuck, and yet also sleep with, rise with and come home to.

  Until that day, he would not settle for less.

  As though he was tearing his own skin off with the motion, he stepped back, heart labouring at the effort, and a pain like a belly full of icy water in his stomach. “You. You are . . .”

  He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. He was appalled at the way Tomas’s eyes sho
ne at the thought of Perry killing him. Perhaps the word he was looking for to describe his tempter was merciless? Did Tomas have no softer feelings? No human warmth that should revolt at the idea of a love affair that ended in murder? Perry was romantic, and he could appreciate the idea of a doomed love in art, but in his own life, no. He could not risk being drawn further in because his heart once set was set forever. It would have to be torn asunder if Tomas truly was guilty, and . . .

  And maybe that was the point. The ice water in his stomach was joined by a chill in his spine as he remembered that Tomas was guilty. Briefly there, the man had made him forget the warehouse robbery. Just because he couldn’t prove it, didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. And now he was being seduced into forgetting that along with his duty.

  “They were right. You are a dangerous man. A menace to public safety. You need to be taken down.”

  Tomas winced, and it looked real. It looked so convincing that Perry knew, for a moment, that he was being unjust—that whatever Tomas was, he was not cold enough to be unaffected himself by this pull between them. But it made no difference. Perry clenched his hands in his pockets and backed away. One day, Perry would have to stand in a courtroom and condemn this man to death. On that day, it would be better if Tomas did not have a crime of equal weight to accuse him of in return.

  Kisses would get Perry ruin enough. He could not go further without risking his integrity in its entirety.

  “And you continue to be a tool of those who would enslave us all.” Tomas wiped his hand over his mouth, as though erasing the kiss. The movement bared the milky skin beneath his jaw, where the sun rarely touched, and his galaxy of freckles had not ventured. Perry’s teeth ached with how much he wanted to bite there, to leave his claim in arcs of red and purple.

  He turned his back and walked away.

  Fortunately for Perry’s nerves, by that time the beach had been mostly cleared, so his coming down from the huer’s hut to help the rest of the customs men to haul their bounty of salvage up to the warehouse was not remarked upon.

  An hour shifting barrels and writing up and signing off lists was a comfortable thing, giving him no time to think about his predicament. The snow was unknown to the local area, so he wrote to the registries in London, to inform them of her fate and allow them to trace any local shareholders to whom the cargo might be returned, and when that was done, he found Jowan Ede, standing by his desk with a red cap wrung between his hands and an obliging smile.

  “Time to go and visit the usual suspects.”

  By this point, Perry’s honour and duty, his sense that he was in the right, and that his integrity demanded nothing less than the abandonment of all his earthly wants, had begun to wane. He followed Jowan out to the stables with legs heavy with uncertainty and a mind to which work was far down its list of priorities.

  “What happened to the spring in your step?” Jowan observed as they led their horses to the mounting block. “You all right? All this being hit in the head can’t be good for you, I reckon.”

  “Who told you I’d been knocked out again?” Perry asked, sharp at the revelation that his misadventure with the miners was known to anyone but himself and Tomas. “Has Tomas Quick been bragging?”

  “I don’t know what Tomas Quick has to do with it,” Jowan said in a placating tone. “’Cept as he has a hand in everything around here. I heard it from Zeb, who heard it from Old Jack, by way of repenting of his sins. Zeb told me not to spread it around, but thought I ought to know, since I’m supposed to be your partner.” He looked askance at Perry as they turned onto the high street, aiming to go up and check the cellars of the Angel before swinging round to search the houses off Big Guns bay.

  “No one would know I was your partner, mind. Next time you go into something like that, you take me with you, all right? That’s why there is two of us, so no one of us has to take this on alone.”

  Touched, Perry smiled at his partner. “I’m beginning to see why you and everyone else suggested that I was not appreciating the complexity of the situation. I’m sorry I haven’t . . .” It would be hard to say I haven’t trusted you and have it not be taken as an insult, and it was still impossible to say I trust you completely now. But something middling was necessary. He had a vast need for a friend right now. Someone who—unlike his letters to his mother—would answer him as soon as he spoke.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t paid better attention to your wisdom. I should have listened more attentively to what you were trying to tell me.”

  Jowan smiled back, but his eyes were sceptical. “Fine words,” he said. “I’ll wait and see if you can back ’em up.”

  Mary Castille must either have been watching out for them, or have been warned by someone who was, because she met them at the front door of the Angel and fussed about their horses in a way that made Perry suspect that she was delaying them deliberately so that someone inside could hide the barrels. He pushed past her, hearing her snort and Jowan’s apology behind him as he went straight for the cellar.

  Jowan caught up with him, whistling as he swung a bundle of keys from one finger. “If you’d have listened to me then, I’d have told you she’d hand these over if you asked. I don’t want you to sweet-talk me. I want you to act like you think I know what I’m doing.”

  “Do you?” Perry asked, annoyed with himself and needled still with the deep disappointment of having rejected something he wanted as much as Tomas. He was right to have done it. He was. But it had left him holed beneath the surface. He felt like he was sinking. “Oh damn. I’m sorry. My head is in such a spin, and my heart is . . . I don’t know what to believe.”

  Slowly and deliberately, Jowan unlocked the padlocks of all the doors in the cellar one by one, never seeming to get the right key at the first try. Perry was convinced that above him the innkeeper and her little army of foundlings were hastily shoving barrels into the thatch. But if he stormed up there and found them red-handed, he would have to arrest Mrs. Castille on charges of receiving stolen goods, and what would become of the children then? It would be as though he had turned them out on the streets himself, to starve or thieve.

  Heavyhearted and undecided, he turned toward the stairs, to do his duty anyway.

  “D’you think you can believe me when I say you’re backing the wrong Quicks?” Jowan flung out, sharply, and Perry knew he was being managed, but he allowed it, because this was a question that pressed on him so hard he could scarcely breathe.

  “Do you have any evidence against Lazarus and his family other than hearsay?”

  Jowan drew in a hissing breath through his teeth and steadied his lantern on a perfectly legitimate barrel of beer. “You mean, apart from the way that they bought out all the grocers so anyone wants something they can’t gather themselves they got to buy it from the Quicks at a hefty profit? Other’n the way, when the miners tried to get a living wage, they brought in strike breakers from England who all but killed some folks?” He gave a humourless chuff of laughter. “No, I’m not saying there’s anything illegal about any of it. Lazarus don’t have to be illegal, do he? He already is the law. But he’s not . . .”

  Jowan spread his hands, as though he despaired of his own eloquence. “He’s not the side of the angels, Perry. You got to ask yourself in the end, what side are you on? Are you on the side that feeds the hungry and gets doctors for the sick, or are you on the side that raises the rent on every property in the town till the poor have to sleep on the streets?”

  “It is not my business to make moral choices. My business is the law,” Perry exclaimed, hot with shame and panic. And then he heard himself. That was what he believed, was it? Dear God.

  When he forced himself upstairs anyway, it was with doubt clawing back his feet on every tread. Was he on the side of the angels, or was he on the side of the magistrate? If forced to choose between his own advancement and the lives of the common poor, what would he choose? Why could they not both be the same thing? Who was the truly honest man here—Lazarus or
Tomas Quick? His whole frame seemed to clench with terrified desire at the thought there even was a choice, but he reached the top step without growing any clearer as to what he should do.

  A scuffling in the saloon interrupted his sense of having run over a precipice, waiting to fall. With Jowan’s feet heavy on the cellar stairs behind him, he strode into the room. Found it empty.

  And yet there it came again, a shuffling scratch somewhere within the walls. Jowan burst through the doorway behind him, Mary Castille on his heels, but neither were fast enough to stop him from bending beneath the fireplace and twisting until he could peer up the sooty length of the chimney.

  Above him, the toes of a pair of shoes poked over an almost invisible ledge. He got his arm up, soiling his crimson sleeve exceedingly, and clamped a hand around a bony little ankle. A child’s voice squeaked with fear, and when Perry tugged, it all came down together—a boy of about seven, carrying a box that clanged as he fell.

  The boy landed on his back in the ashes of the fire like an enormous dislodged bird’s nest. He tried to scramble up, grab for the box, but Perry put a foot on his chest and held him still.

  Both Jowan and Mary made an abortive dart forward, as though they meant to stop him. But it was too late; he had opened the box and seen inside six plates and six dishes of solid silver, with a decorative rope edging, and the accusing words USS Kittywake stamped in unforgiving letters around the rim.

  Perry’s first thought was I should have let Jowan catch me. I should have stayed in the cellar. If only I hadn’t known for sure, I could have gone years without bringing ruin on this good woman and her children.

  The thought made him pause, made him lift his restraining foot. The boy scrambled out from under it and flew to Mary’s side, cuddling into her apron as though he were still a babe in arms.

  She put a possessive arm around his back and pressed him closer in, her face gone curd-white, but her eyes very fierce. “You can’t blame the boy. He were only doing what I said. He’s not grown enough to understand—”