Caught in a Cornish Scandal

by Eleanor Webster

  ‘Miss Lansdowne.’ Sam took her hands. He felt her start of shock, but continued to hold them within his own. ‘You are able to do this. Remember you do not need to know more than your mother. Or your sister. You need only know more than the Captain.’

  For a moment, she did not react, as though requiring additional time to process the words. Then he saw her exhalation. Her face relaxed with just the tiniest softening of her lips. She looked at him and then away. In the torchlight, her lashes formed a delicate lacey pattern against her cheeks.

  ‘Indeed, he doesn’t look the type of gentleman to have a deep appreciation for fine cloth.’

  * * *

  Millie felt the anxiety lessen. The painful bands which had constricted her chest eased. Mr Garret’s hands felt warm against her own. She found herself conscious of him as a person. She’d recognised him previously, connecting the features of the half-drowned man with her brother’s friend, but that had been an instinctive act of survival. She’d grasped at his identity as she might any tool which could delay execution.

  But as his grim expression gentled, she found herself thinking of him not only as a half-drowned body, but as a person, a man. He had a strong jaw, dominant cheekbones and straight nose. His eyebrows were well-shaped and he had a lean strength about him. Even the bloodied, swollen welt on his forehead was not as unpleasant as it should have been. Rather it gave him a warrior appeal.

  She frowned. He had undoubtedly received the wound in some drunken scuffle or mad gamble which had led to his near death. He was, as Tom had been, a risk taker. Anyone who ended up half-drowned off the Cornish coast did not seem to be an individual of caution—although, obviously, she had a similar failing.

  She should move away from him, but there was a comfort in the warm strength of his grasp. There was an intensity in his gaze and she had the impression that he understood some part of what she was feeling.

  This was a fallacy, of course. Mr Samuel Garrett was from a privileged position, a place of power. He could hardly understand the feelings of someone duty bound to marry. Or the sense of inadequacy in knowing that her sister might be doomed to a worse fate, enduring marriage to a worse man.

  Millie moved back against the wall, taking her hands from his grasp, turning back to Jem. ‘I should have listened to you,’ she said. ‘You warned me not to try smuggling. I looked for a quick answer. I am more like my brother than I thought.’

  ‘You were desperate, miss, and with reason. No point worrying about that now. You do a good job when we get to France, you might still end up earning a bit. The Captain’s a fair man.’

  ‘Won’t I look conspicuous?’ She glanced down at her seaman’s pants and boots.

  He frowned as though bemused by her words.

  ‘We’ll say yer a cabin boy. You’re a drab little thing, not the sort to get attention.’

  ‘That is a cause for gratitude,’ Millie said.

  Sadly, it was true. Drab and mousy had always been apt descriptions and she felt a familiar longing that she might be more like Lillian. Although, she shouldn’t.

  Indeed, she should not wish she was like Lil, but that Lil was like her. If Lil had been drab and mousy, she would not have caught Harwood’s attention.

  Not that ‘attention’ was an apt word. It was more like ‘fixation’. Lord Harwood wanted Lil. He had always wanted Lil. Even when Lil was little more than a child, he’d appear on their estate at odd times, so frequently that Lil seldom went out alone unless he was in London. Sometimes he’d stop her, smile and say too nice things while his gaze roamed over her body.

  In those days, Lord Harwood had been a predator, but a distant one, a shadowy menace but not an imminent threat.

  Two days ago that had changed.

  Even now, Millie shivered when she remembered Lord Harwood’s visit.

  He’d smelled of perfume, the scent somehow worse than the stink of vomit and urine which permeated the ship. He wore a dirty wig that was out of fashion and had a sore on his lip. He’d talked to her mother alone and when he’d left, he’d bowed, smiled and strutted, leaving a trail of stale scent in his path.

  ‘Tom owed him money, a promissory note. He showed me,’ her mother had said. ‘He wants to marry Lil. He said that he would throw me in debtors’ prison. And I just couldn’t survive.’

  ‘He can’t marry Lil. We’ll think of something. I’ll marry Mr Edmunds, I suppose.’

  ‘Mr Edmunds wouldn’t have that sort of money.’

  ‘I’ll manage. She can’t marry that man.’

  Millie had been managing throughout the gruelling six months since Tom’s death.

  Indeed, her mother had been little help, remaining in her bed for weeks armed with smelling salts and laudanum. Millie had been the one to make sense of the accounts and keep the family out of debtor’s prison.

  And she had done so. She’d haggled, scrimped and saved. She’d sold livestock, furniture and paintings. She’d even considered marrying the humdrum Mr. Edmunds.

  But Harwood would not touch Lil.

  And it was this desperate, foolhardy determination which had led to this moment, sitting on a smuggling vessel with Sally’s mountain of a husband discussing lace.

  Jem picked up the tin cups as he prepared to stand within the narrow space. ‘I’ll go back to the Captain. See when he wants to see you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Millie said.

  Jem nodded. Taking the lamp, he went to the door, stepping into the corridor. The door clattered shut behind him, blanketing the room in thick darkness.

  Millie shivered. She could hear the scrabble of rats across the floorboards, audible now that the storm had lessened. She wondered what time it was. It must be dawn soon, surely. One lost any sense of time within this interminable darkness, deep in the very bowels of the ship. Her family would be worried. Lil would be worried. Sal would be worried. It was Sal who had suggested smuggling. ‘We cannot let Miss Lillian marry that man. And your mother is not like to do much,’ she’d said.

  Millie pressed back against the wall. How long to get to France?

  France. France. She’d only been twice to London and now she was going to France. On a smuggling vessel. To look at lace. Would she even recognise shoddy lace?

  As a child she’d avoided going to London. Her love had always been for Cornwall and she’d been allowed more freedom than was usual. Her parents had been distracted. Her, lovable jovial father was often inebriated and always busy chasing an improbable scheme. Although, he’d had a larger-than-life presence when he was around, teaching them to row and swim.

  Her mother was anxious, too often dosed with laudanum. As the years went by, her mother had withdrawn, shunned by the people she wanted so much to impress, and her father’s gambling had worsened, marked by desperation.

  ‘I do not even speak French,’ she muttered. She’d shared a governess with the vicarage children, but Miss Collins did not run to French.

  ‘I do,’ Mr Garrett said.

  ‘I knew I’d rescued you for a reason.’

  For a few moments, they were quiet, surrounded by the dark, the scuttling of rats and the creaking groans of a moving vessel.

  ‘When did we meet, by the way? I have been racking my brains, but I cannot recollect.’

  Millie laughed. ‘Sorry, that was an exaggeration. It was more a sighting than meeting. It was about a month before Father lost his money and Mother insisted I come to London. I was little more than fourteen. I woke up one night when I heard you and Tom coming in. You were singing and I crept out of my bed and stared through the banisters.’

  ‘You remembered my name? How did you even know it?’

  Millie felt a wash of heat through her cheeks. Truthfully, she could still remember how he’d looked that night. Slimmer than now, but tall, well dressed, with broad shoulders and a merry laugh.

  ‘I asked Tom th
e next day. He called you a “good egg”, as I recall.’

  Of course, a ‘good egg’ to Tom meant anyone willing to drink, gamble or otherwise risk life and limb. Tom had been more than two years older than her, but it had never felt that way. She remembered trailing after him, trying to stop him from climbing too high, galloping too fast or swimming too far.

  The noise had somewhat abated and the movement of the ship had lessened so that Millie was no longer bracing her back and legs against the floor and hull.

  For this reason, the sudden, lurching movement of the ship was unexpected. Indeed, the vessel shuddered with such violence that they tumbled, sprawling across the bare boards. The sound was louder than a clap of thunder and longer. The grinding continued, rattling through their bodies, the noise mixed with crashing, shouting and running feet.

  ‘What was that?’ she gasped.

  ‘We have hit something!’ Mr Garrett shouted.

  Disoriented, Millie twisted, her body striking a wall. She stretched her fingers across the planking, feeling for the door.

  ‘Here! This way!’ he shouted.

  She followed his voice, scrambling over the floor.

  ‘Damn—it’s locked. Stand back,’ he yelled.

  She froze in position, crouched low. She heard the impact of his boot and then, at last, the splintering crack of the door. Light and noise assaulted her. Pushing forward, they stumbled into a torrent of water swirling around their feet and ankles. The lamp had broken, igniting the wood and illuminating the corridor’s darkness. Flames already twisted and snaked along the beams, the amber light eerily reflected in the flooding corridor.

  Millie could feel the fire’s heat even as her feet froze. Noise was everywhere, magnified tenfold as water rushed about them, mixed with screams, shouts and the rending of beams and timbers. Men were running in the corridor behind them, pushing and shoving, so that they were moved forward more by sheer momentum than by any rational thought.

  The outer deck was equally chaotic. For a moment, Millie stood quite still, as though stricken with a strange paralysis, unable to process the sights and sounds. Men ran by her, scrambling over the deck and into the water. Flames licked up the mast. Sparks showered like angry fire flies.

  ‘Jump!’ Sam shouted.

  Jolted into action, Millie moved, instinctively searching for escape. Indeed, she never fully remembered how she crossed the deck. She recalled only a mismatch of images; sharp moments set against a blur. She remembered the crazy slide down the steeply angled deck and the shock of the cold, salty water. She remembered the blind panic as she fought for the surface, coughing and choking. She remembered her desperate flailing kicks and the weight of her boots and trousers.

  Gulping for air...swallowing water...the blind eyes of a dead sailor...sudden quiet...

  And darkness.

  Chapter Three

  Millie broke the surface.

  Gasping, she gulped at the air, feet and arms desperately paddling.

  ‘Swim! No point living on an island if you cannot swim.’

  If she’d believed in the supernatural, she’d have said that her father spoke from his grave. Those words pulled her from the briny depths. They cut through her panic, investing her with purpose. Kicking off her boots, she struggled upwards, fighting to stay afloat, even as the waves tossed her about like so much flotsam.

  ‘Mr Garrett!’ she shouted.

  She stared wildly at the debris, fragments of rigging, casks, men and rope strewn across the ocean, all eerily lit in the fire’s ugly amber glow. The Rising Dawn had been split down its centre. The bow stuck up, propped on a jutting rock. Masts poked upwards, still burning and starkly outlined against the night sky.

  It was a scene more reminiscent of the portals of hell than anything earthly.

  The need to survive pulsed through her. She had to live for her sister and mother. She could not leave them. They needed her. She could not let them down.

  Like her father.

  Like her brother.

  Except she was exactly like them.

  Like her father.

  Like her brother.

  The thoughts flashed through her mind, indelibly etched on her brain. It almost seemed as though she could hear the words in steady, rhythmic incantation.

  ‘Miss Lansdowne!’

  The shout grabbed her attention. She jerked around, but could see little. The salt water stung her eyes, the waves obliterating her view. For a moment, she saw him and then, just as quickly, he disappeared. A second later, he resurfaced, gulping at air, arms thrashing.

  ‘Kick off your boots!’ she shouted, but her words were taken by the wind.

  She swam towards him, conscious of the strong current pushing her back. Mr Garrett clung desperately to a piece of wreckage. She looked towards the shore. The beach was some distance away. Only one or two men seemed to be nearing it. She could see the movement of their arms.

  Could she try to push Mr Garrett to the shore? The tide was going out. She could feel its current.

  ‘Won’t...make...it... The...tide...’ she shouted to Mr Garrett, as she neared him, although she doubted if he could hear or comprehend her words.

  Desperately she scanned the scene. The stern had sunk, but the bow was still propped up.

  ‘This way!’ she shouted.

  Gripping the wood beside him, she started to kick, pushing them towards the remnants of the breached ship. If they waited there until the tide changed, they’d stand a chance of swimming to shore. Or, conversely, all life would be beaten out of them, smashed against barnacles and jagged rocks.

  Somehow, she got them to the wreck. With relief, she felt the rough barnacled rocks under her feet and the slight lessening of the wind as though the wreck was offering them some small protection.

  ‘We’ll try to get in to shore when the wind dies,’ she said as they hunkered low, hidden behind the wreckage and pressed against the rocks.

  The sudden crack was like thunder but sharper, like the snap of a whip. By itself, muffled by wind and sea, it seemed a muted thing. The scream was worse. The scream splintered the night.

  Startled, Millie lost her grip on the wood, bobbing under the water. Water shot into her nose. Coughing and retching, she grasped at the wood. A second shot ran out. With increased urgency, she scanned the shore.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Garrett shouted, his voice hoarse from the water he had swallowed.

  Millie stared past the wreckage. She saw a torch flicker. A man was crawling from the water, his silhouette briefly outlined as he moved up the beach on all fours, like a hound. She heard another crack and then, with an awful unnatural movement, the man’s arms flung upwards before he fell forward, quite still.

  ‘Dear God. They’re...’ Her incoherent words petered into silence as she watched at the panicked confusion on shore.

  ‘They’re being shot. We have to do something.’

  But, as quickly as it had begun, the shooting stopped. The pause lengthened into silence. Instinctively, Millie froze in place, holding her breath and waiting for another scream or pistol crack. She heard nothing save an eerie, deafening quiet, broken by wind and wave, but no human voice or cry.

  Millie counted the seconds. Time passed, unmarked save for the lightening sky and the gradual smoothing of the waves.

  ‘We have to go in,’ Mr Garrett said. ‘We can help.’

  ‘What if they are still here?’ she asked through stiff lips, although she had no idea who ‘they’ were.

  ‘I see a something...a light.’

  She peered towards the shore. She could see the dark shape of the land and a light, like a firefly, winding up the shoulder of the cliff. ‘I see it.’

  They waited, watching the faint light until it disappeared, either hidden by the landscape or the dawn.

  ‘We have to try to get to shor
e. If we stay here, we will die from the cold. And the tide has turned. It is rising,’ he said.

  ‘You cannot swim.’

  ‘I’ll kick and hold on to these.’ He nodded to the planks clasped in his hands. ‘At least we’ll have a chance.’

  * * *

  Somehow, they had made it. It was well past dawn and the scene was lit with the dull grey light of a winter morning. The wind had dropped and the tide was coming in, creeping up the rocky shoreline. Finally, her feet were no longer hanging into nothingness. She felt shale, smoother than the barnacles, and slippery tendrils of kelp—or perhaps seaweed—twisted, snake-like, about her feet and ankles.

  Crawling on all fours, they inched closer. On either side, she saw the bodies of the drowned men, twisted, half-submerged and moving eerily with the water’s ebb and flow. Her gaze scanned the shore as she listened for any sound: the click of the trigger, the rustle of movement or exhalation of breath.

  ‘This is evil.’ His expression reflected her own horror.

  The carnage continued, men sprawled, their faces contorted into expressions ranging from surprise to anguish. The dull grey light reflected in the puddles of sea water, now blood red.

  ‘You think they have gone?’ she asked, although she knew he had no way of knowing.

  ‘They would not have let us get this far if they were still here.’

  Millie nodded. They crawled from the water. She held her breath, still half expecting a shot to shatter the quiet. Her trousers clung in cold, damp folds. Her limbs moved awkwardly, numb and stiff, so that she lurched unsteadily, stumbling on the shale. The cold was intense. She wrapped her arms about herself as her body was racked with painful shudders that were almost violent.

  Slowly, as if drawn by a force beyond her control, she went to each crumpled figure.