“A word with you now, Mistress, if you please,” he said, though the way he was blocking her path left her little choice.
“Not here, Hood,” she whispered urgently, smiling for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. She saw him so seldom by day that he seemed almost like a stranger, his face pale and lined beneath a grizzled shadow of beard, and uneasily she thought of the gun and the knife that were surely hidden beneath his long homespun coat. “You know there’s no business between us like this.”
“And you should know, mistress, that I’ll not go again to Feversham, not with your bloody Navy-lord living there, ready to take me for the price on my head.” Pointedly he spat against the wall beside them. “This be quick, anyways. Tonight, by the churchyard, and we’ll ride together to Caddem’s.”
“Not tonight,” she said, glancing nervously over her shoulder to make sure no one could overhear. “On Thursday, three nights from this, the way I decided when we parted last.”
“Tonight,” countered Hood. “None o’ us can see the use in waiting, ’specially not with a rascal like Caddem. Your father always said Caddem’s the biggest catch in the Company’s net, mistress, and there’s no good reason for leaving him be after you’ve told the others last night.”
Fan hated it when Hood invoked her father like this, just short of out-and-out defying her. The reason she didn’t wish to go to Caddem’s tonight was that she was, quite simply, too tired after catching so little sleep here and there. She’d need all her wits about her to deal with John Caddem, and now those wits felt as dull as an old knife. Not, of course, that she could use that as an excuse to Hood or the others.
“Thursday night,” she said firmly, refusing to back down. “Not before.”
Hood narrowed his eyes, tugging the cocked brim of his old hat lower over his forehead. “The men won’t take to this, mistress,” he warned ominously. “They won’t like—ah, ’tis your damned Navy-lord!”
At once Hood hurried off, hunching his shoulders and looking downward in a way that, to Fan, only seemed to make him look more furtive rather than less so. Not that she had much time to consider it, for George was even now striding resolutely across the lane towards her, his black brows drawn together in fierce concern. He was wearing his undress uniform, the spring sunlight glancing off the polished brass buttons and gold braid, and all he needed was a snow-white charger to look the part of the rescuing hero.
Not, of course, that Fan felt as if she needed either a hero or to be rescued, except perhaps from how her heart was racing so foolishly at the sight of him.
“Was that rascal bothering you, Fan?” he demanded, looking past her towards the corner where Hood had disappeared. “I know a scoundrel when I see one, and that man was—”
“He’s an old friend of my father’s,” she said quickly. Could there be a greater disaster than having George chase after Hood on her behalf? “He may look like a scoundrel to you, My Lord Captain, but he means me no harm.”
George looked at her sharply as she addressed him formally, but there were other people within earshot, and here she had to be as careful, as proper, with him as she had been with Hood.
“Then why the devil did he bolt away like that?” asked George. “There’s no more sure sign of guilt than that.”
“It’s your uniform, My Lord Captain,” she said, almost painfully aware of how handsome that same uniform made him to her. She glimpsed their reflection in the glass of the store window behind them: he, tall and splendid and commanding, while she in her habitual black seemed as common and forgettable as a little crow. “You forget you’re in a little harbor village in Kent, not some grand port like London or Portsmouth. Navy captains are precious rare here.”
“And precious unwelcome, too,” he said, shaking his head at such a preposterous notion, “if even half the tales I’ve heard of smuggling along this coast are true.”
“But there are the press gangs, too,” she reminded him gently. As dangerous as it might be, she still could not let the Company go undefended. “They’ve done their share to make the Navy unpopular, stealing men away from their families. And mind that in this county, smuggling’s not seen as an evil, but as a way for common folk to make ends meet in hard times.”
“It’s also a way that will lead them to the gallows if they don’t watch themselves,” he grumbled, though the fire had faded from his argument as he looked down at her. “You left my rooms deuced sudden this morning, Mistress Winslow.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. She hadn’t forgotten why she’d left, no matter how handsome he might be in that blue coat with the brass buttons. “Yes, My Lord Captain, I did leave. But there seemed no real reason for me to stay.”
“I wanted you to,” he said. “Or isn’t that reason enough?”
She lifted her chin, and the ends of the bow tied beneath it fluttered up against her cheek. “Is that only a reason from you, My Lord Captain, or an order?”
He paused uneasily, rubbing the back of his neck. “No order, Fan—that is, Mistress Winslow, not for you, not like that. Oh, blast, I’m not good at this, not like Brant.”
“You are,” she said fervently. “You’re even better. Go on, pray, go on.”
He nodded, his gaze intent upon hers. “Very well. I did not intend to give you an order. Rather a wish. I wished you had stayed with me. I wished you hadn’t left. I wished you’d always stay at Feversham, where we both belong. There, I’m done.”
Swiftly she looked down, away from him, at her black skirts ruffling back and forth over the toes of her shoes. It was as close to an apology as a gentleman like him would ever make, and far more than a woman like her could reasonably expect, let alone deserve. Yet was it enough to pin her heart, her life, her whole future upon?
“Was I as bad as all that?” he asked, trying to tease, and failing miserably. If they’d been anywhere other than the middle of Tunford, they both knew he’d have kissed her instead. “I warned you I’d no gift for fancy poesy.”
“You did fine,” she said softly, without looking up from her toes. “His Grace your brother could not have done better if he’d tried all night.”
“Good for us he didn’t have to try.” Self-consciously he cleared his throat. “So did this friend of your father’s have any news for you?”
“News?” she repeated, stalling, and now she quickly looked up to search his face for his meaning. Had he somehow overheard her conversation with Hood? Had she revealed so much of her sympathy towards smugglers that he had guessed the rest?
“Of your father.” He smiled crookedly, as if the answer were so obvious she must be jesting. “Has this man heard something fresh of your father’s fate? Is that why you’ve come to the village?”
“No,” she said, faltering at this, the second time her father had been mentioned in the last hour. “I—I came to Tunford for the apothecary. And no, no, there is nothing new regarding Father, although I expect to hear any day.”
“You will, lass,” he said with conviction, and with kindness as well. “Surely your loyalty will be rewarded, yes?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice to answer. She’d always tried to be both loyal and honorable, true, but where exactly did her loyalty now lie? With her father, and the Winslow Company, and all the people here that depended on her leadership in her father’s absence? Or with George, a man so vastly different from herself in so many ways, a man she now realized she loved?
“Ah, here comes my own reason for journeying to Tunford this day,” said George, unaware of her thoughts as he waved at his brother. “You cannot keep Brant anchored in one spot for more than a day at a time, even if the alternative is only a little village like this one.”
“Ahoy there, Captain Brother,” called the duke as he crossed the lane to join them. “And ahoy to you, too, Mistress Winslow. You see—or rather hear—the nautical airs I have acquired in my brother’s company. I am glad to see you looking more like your charming self, thanks no doubt to the salubrious airs of
fair Tunford.”
He grinned wickedly, stopping just short of winking at her. So much of what he did seemed calculated to mock the rest of the world, or perhaps simply being a duke made him immune to worrying about what others thought or said about him, the faces peeking curiously from open windows and the passersby with marketbaskets on their arms slowing to catch the spectacle. Surely he didn’t give a fig about the attention he was drawing to himself now, ahoy-ing away and grandly taking Fan’s hand to bow over it as if she were a duchess herself.
Yet all Fan could think of was how fast the duke’s playacting would be relayed to Hood and the others in the Company, and how many heads would be shaking in Tunford over Mistress Winslow being so familiar with those two lordly brothers. And her father—her father would have had her head outright, and demand to know why she hadn’t shot the blue-blooded idiot where he stood.
But Fan had already done that once, with decidedly mixed results. Instead she pulled her hand free of the duke’s, and curtseyed stiffly as a proper housekeeper should.
“You’ve lost your gift, Brant,” warned George. “Can’t you see your antics don’t amuse the lady?”
“That’s because she’s so bedazzled by your antics, dear brother, that she’s scarce had a chance to admire the glory of mine.” He smiled, smoothing the linen ruffles on the front of his shirt. “You haven’t told her yet, have you?”
At once Fan looked at George, questioning. There were far too many secrets between them without adding another.
“It’s nothing worth a long face,” he said, smiling to reassure her. “Quite the opposite. I have decided to host a gathering at Feversham in a week or so, supper, music, dancing, the usual folderol. It is high time I met my neighbors in the county, you know, and Brant shall be my attraction for all the local young ladies and their mamas, eager for a chance to bring a duke into the family.”
“Just as all the gentlemen shall come from miles around, hoping that some of the famous Silver Lord’s heroic glory might rub off upon their unworthy shoulders,” noted Brant, thumping his brother’s own shoulders for good measure. “You shall have them clamoring in droves before your house.”
“But Feversham isn’t ready yet!” exclaimed Fan, her uneasiness growing. “A grand entertainment such as you propose would take weeks—months!—to prepare!”
Yet George only shrugged, unconcerned. “Oh, I think not. Small and the others will help you however you please. And remember that Small learned his trade in a tavern before he went to sea. He’s quite adept at cooking for great numbers, whether a ravenous ship’s crew or my guests.”
“But the supper is the least of it,” she protested, shaking her head. She hadn’t forgotten the awful visit from the Blackerbys, how they’d tittered at Feversham’s crooked old rooms and stiff-backed chairs. While George had done much to shore up and repair the aging structure, the interiors were still shabby and peculiarly old-fashioned by modern standards, and Fan dreaded more county gentry coming to poke fun at the ancient house she loved as her home. She also worried about her own abilities to oversee such a complicated event; Mr. Trelawney had never entertained company, and she’d no experience with ordering so much food and drink, or with marshalling a small army of hired musicians and extra servants, especially not with a duke as the guest of honor.
But there was another, more threatening reason as well. At any gathering of gentlemen in Kent, the talk was bound to turn to the smuggling and ways to stop such an infernal, illicit trade, and the last thing Fan wished was for them to come to Feversham to recruit George. Rich, well-bred gentlemen were always looking for ways to crush those who hadn’t the same blessings, indignantly planning and plotting to destroy the smuggling companies. In their virtuous opinions, to imprison, try, and hang a poor man for smuggling was purest English justice, no matter if the poor man’s wife and children were left homeless and starving.
Once, when Fan had been a girl, her father had taken her to see the results of such justice with her own eyes, the rotting, eyeless corpses of men they’d known, now hanging in chains at the crossroads near the harbor as a warning for other smugglers. She’d retched in the street at the sight, shaming Father, but she’d never forgotten what she’d seen, either. Given George’s boundless loyalty to his king, she could unhappily guess whose side he would choose if the county gentlemen asked for his help, and it wouldn’t be hers.
But George, of course, could know none of this. “I have endless faith in you, lass,” he said. “So long as the wines flow, no one will be critical. Besides, I will be depending upon you to act as my lieutenant. I’ll need you to stand by my side that night and identify everyone properly for me.”
“At your side, when you receive your guests?” she asked, surprised by his unusual suggestion. She could do it, of course, for the local gentry and other fine folk likely to be invited led public enough lives that, by asking about, she could learn whatever she didn’t know already. But George granting her such an important and prominent position was sure to offend guests like the Blackerbys, and cause no end of difficulties for them all. “You would wish your housekeeper there beside you, as if I were your equal?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” answered George gravely. “I’d like you by my side the entire night. You possess the information that I don’t, and shall need, unless I wish to make a bumbling ass of myself. I’ve told you before, Mistress Winslow, I judge a man—or a woman—by ability, not reputation.”
Fan’s thoughts were already racing ahead. If her place was at George’s side for the entire evening, then while she was whispering a lady’s husband’s name, or that an elderly gentleman had served with the army in Nova Scotia, she could also be gently guiding George away from the men known to be most vehemently against smugglers. She hated being dishonest like this with George, especially when he was so willing to trust her, but the alternative could be as grim, and as fatal, as the gallows that her father had shown her so long ago.
“Very well, My Lord Captain,” she said, lowering her gaze as much to hide her shame as from respect. “I shall do as you wish, and serve you as well as I can.”
And oh, George, my love, my love, forgive me whatever I must do….
“I am heartily glad to be through with him,” said Fan to Will Hood as they rode away from John Caddem’s tavern three nights later, the darkness swallowing them up. “He’s the only one who balked at the increase, but no matter. We won’t miss them. I can sell their portion of the next shipment to the White Horse instead.”
She’d almost expected Caddem to refuse to pay more for tea, for he was a mean, tightfisted man, disagreeable even when she didn’t come with unpleasant news. No wonder he’d been the last customer she’d told of the increase in the Company’s price, and no wonder, too, that she felt more relieved than angered that he’d tartly ended their relationship tonight because of it.
“’Tis not what your father would’ve done, mistress,” said Hood, steadfastly looking over the head of his pony as they turned down the dark-shadowed lane. It would not be long until dawn, and both of them needed to be home before then. “That wasn’t his way, not at all.”
Fan frowned, urging her pony Pie to keep pace with Hood’s. She’d thought Hood’s arguing was done when he’d joined her tonight as they’d first planned. The wind was sharp across the fields from the water, full of salty bite as it tugged at her skirts and tossed Pie’s rough mane across her hands. “Nothing was lost. The profit’s the same.”
“Your father wouldn’t have settled for that, mistress,” said Hood doggedly. “Letting a customer of ten years’ standing like John Caddem wriggle away neat as a greased eel! Your father would’ve done different for certain.”
“Very well,” said Fan, too weary to be truly impatient. Why should she, when Caddem’s last payment was sitting in her pocket? Everything was even and fair, as it should be. “What would Father have done that was different? How would he have settled with a man as stubborn and cross as old Cadd
em?”
“That be easy, mistress,” said Hood promptly. “He would’ve told Caddem he’d burn his barn if he didn’t agree, and then your father would’ve kept his word and done it.”
Incredulous, Fan stared at Hood. “Father would have set fire to the man’s barn over this?”
Hood nodded. “Aye, mistress, he did what he must. Joss Winslow wasn’t a man who shied from such things.”
“Isn’t,” she corrected unhappily. “My father isn’t a man who shies from such things.”
“As you please, mistress.” Hoods tugged his hat lower over his forehead. “But burnings have always been part of the trade. Barns, shed, hayricks, whatever be necessary, mistress, whatever—”
“I know,” she said, cutting him off before he said more. “I know the trade.”
She knew it, yes, but wished she didn’t, and worse, she’d tried to pretend otherwise. Just because their company was a small one compared to others along the coast didn’t mean they could afford to be soft. Caddem would find another source for the tea he served, and even if he had to pay more for it, he’d still boast to anyone who’d listen of how he’d gotten the better of the Winslow Company. As soon as Father heard of it, likely he’d set fire to Caddem’s barn anyway, just on principle.
That is, he would after he’d thrashed Fan for being so meek and cowardly as to let Caddem go in the first place.
“How much longer, mistress?” asked Hood.
“How much longer?” repeated Fan, jerked from her own thoughts. “Why, you know that as well as I, Hood. We’ve only to cross the stream and the wizened oak at the crossroads, and then—”
“Nay, mistress, not that,” said Hood, still not meeting her eye. “I meant how much longer are you going to keep with the Company?”
Sharply Fan drew Pie to a halt, forcing Hood to stop, too, and double back to where she waited.
He swore softly when he saw the pistol in her hand, the long barrel glinting dully in the moonlight.
The Silver Lord Page 14