“That can’t be true, none of it!” she said again, trying to make her voice sound steady and sure.
But she was too late for that, far too late. When she felt the first stone strike the ground near her feet, an ominous thud, then the second, she didn’t wait for the third. Instead she’d turned and ran, as fast as a terrified coward could, until she’d come here to reach Pie.
Her fingers trembled as she untied the reins, and tried to set her thoughts straight. She had to leave now, before the others decided to follow her, and she had to find George, to learn the truth. She had to decide what she’d do about tomorrow night, whether taking her place with the Company for the last run as she’d planned would mean risking her life, or proving her innocence to the people of Tunford. And most of all, she had to determine her place in George’s life, and whether the joy of loving him would be worth having stones tossed at her.
How had everything gone so wrong so fast?
“Mistress Winslow, here, here!”
She looked down as Matthew Carr darted around the pony, his knitted cap pulled down low over his eyes.
“Matty, don’t stay,” she whispered urgently. “You’ll only bring sorrow to yourself and your mother if you’re seen talking to me now.”
But the boy only shook his head. “I know what they be sayin’ about you and the lord, an’ I don’t believe it, mistress, not a word.”
“Thank you, Matty,” said Fan, unexpected tears stinging her eyes. “But you really shouldn’t—”
“I saw what happened at Waverly Point, mistress,” he interrupted, his voice shrill with urgency. “I was comin’ back from my auntie’s house when I saw th’ boat comin’ in off the Point. I went down to th’ beach then, on account of maybe makin’ a shilling or two if they needed a watcher, same as I do for you and th’ Company.”
Fan nodded, encouraging the boy to continue. Matty wasn’t the only one in Tunford who would greet boats at night like this. There were a good many men, even those in regular smuggling companies, who’d earn extra money by simply appearing on the beach at night. An extra pair of hands and a promise to secrecy were almost always welcome.
“But it didn’t go right, mistress, not at all.” Matty swallowed hard, worrying the hem of his cap. “Them three men that be dead now, mistress, they was there to help out, same as me. But them others in that boat, when they rowed up in th’ shallows, jabberin’ Frenchie-talk, they just pulled out their pistols and fired coldhearted at th’ Tunford men, shootin’ them dead for no reason at all. Then the soldiers came, and I ran away, and they took up them murderin’ men in th’ boat, and likewise took all th’ credit, th’ lyin’ wind-bags.”
“Oh, Matty,” said Fan softly, shocked by his story. “You could have been killed, too!”
“I know that.” His voice quavered perilously before he swallowed back the tears. “It be a good thing I weren’t, else Mam would’ve been left without anyone. But it all be queer, mistress, queer as anything, and wrongful, too, t’blame such a thing on us smugglers. Even those three caskets o’ wine were false, tossed into th’ sea by th’ sailors in the boat, t’look on purpose like smugglers. Them soldiers don’t have one part of it right, exceptin’ puttin’ them Frenchies in th’ gaol.”
“You have to tell the magistrate what you saw, Matty,” said Fan, realizing that this was exactly what Sir Henry needed to hear. “You’re the only one who knows the truth. Come, I’ll take you myself.”
“Nay, mistress, I’ll not do that!” exclaimed the scandalized boy, ducking beneath the pony’s neck to put more distance between them. “That old magistrate’ll put me in th’ gaol, too, just for spite, and then who’ll look after Mam?”
“Matty, if you don’t tell them, then it could happen again,” coaxed Fan. She never thought she’d hear herself advise turning to a magistrate for anything, but then she’d never heard such an ominous story as this one, with Frenchmen shooting good Tunford men dead on their own beach. “You have to tell him, at least for the sake of the trade and the rest of the companies on this coast.”
Unconvinced, the boy only scuttled farther out of her reach. “Nay, I told you, mistress, so’s you could tell your captain, and set things to rights like that, without poor Matty Carr in th’ middle.”
Her captain: she still didn’t think of George like that, even if the rest of the world did. “Wait, Matty, please!”
But Matty was already gone, lost in the shadows and the darkness that were like another home to him. The boy had trusted her with this story, and trusted her, too, to know what needed to be done next. Fan wouldn’t fail him, not now when so much was at stake. Quickly she swung herself up onto Pie’s back and turned the pony’s head towards Feversham, and George.
For several reasons, George chose to return through the house from the stable by way of the kitchen instead of the grand front door. He was still too preoccupied by what he’d seen and heard in Tunford to wish to leap back into the festivities that still lit his house like a lantern. Most of the guests had long since left—it was, after all, nearly dawn—but the few that did remain would likely be well into their cups by now, and full of garrulous questions that George was in no humor to answer.
But he’d also wanted to walk through the kitchens to reassure himself that everything in his house was still as it should be, from the lingering scents of cooking food to Small swearing and crashing about with his pots, to the gossiping scullery maids elbow-deep in sudsy wash water. No invading Frenchmen had disturbed this place that to him seemed peculiarly English, and he was determined to risk his life to keep it that way.
Yet the last reason was the most immediate: he was far more likely to find Fan down here in her usual domain, and he wanted to find her as soon as he could.
“Polly, isn’t it?” he said to the first maidservant he met, a young Tunford girl who dipped a curtsey of respectful acknowledgement with a wet teacup in one hand and a cloth for drying in the other. “Would you please tell Mistress Winslow I wish to see her directly?”
“Can’t, Cap’n My Lord,” she said, her broad cheeks flushing red as a cherry. “Mistress don’t be here.”
“Not here?” repeated George, frowning. “Do you mean she’s upstairs with the guests?”
“Nay, Cap’n My Lord,” said Polly. “She be gone in to Tunford on her pony, oh, hours ago, and she don’t be back yet, least not that I’ve seen. Gone to see to them that be grievin’, she said.”
“Did she take one of the men with her?” he demanded, though he already could guess the answer.
“Oh, nay, Cap’n My Lord,” answered the girl. “Mistress wouldn’t hear of it, saying all the men were needed here to help with serving the guests. Not even Mr. Small could change her mind.”
Of course Fan would go to Tunford, and from habit, of course she would go alone. With her kind heart for the people in the village, she’d be unable to keep away from sharing the grief and the losses that had struck the village tonight. He was surprised he hadn’t seen her as he’d stood at the gaoler’s window and watched the families claim the victims’ bodies. He could hardly fault Fan for being there at such a time; to expect her here now waiting at Feversham would be unconscionably selfish on his part.
Yet he hated to think of Fan out there on the roads or in the marshes alone, with only that infernal pistol of hers for protection. What if she stumbled across another band of these Frenchmen? He’d wring Small’s neck for not insisting she take one of the footmen with her. For that matter, he was a damned idiot himself for not predicting what she’d do, and leaving Leggett or Danny or one of the others to ride with her.
He considered taking Caesar and going back out after her, but he wouldn’t know where to begin. Fan was like every other native of the county who knew a score of different routes to the same place, and blithely prided herself on never travelling exactly the same path twice.
But such knowledge wouldn’t be enough to keep her safe against a pack of desperate smugglers, English or French, and far
too easily George imagined scores of dreadful dangers waiting for her in the night. How could he live with himself if any of them happened to her? Likely she’d be furious if he came after her, but how could he not? She was the one woman he loved more than any other, the one he’d meant to ask to be his wife, if only she’d had the good sense, just this once, to stay put and wait for him to return and propose.
“Thank you, Polly,” he said, swallowing back his doubts and worries. He wouldn’t panic. He’d write his letter to the Admiralty, a quarter hour at most, and if by then she hadn’t returned, he’d begin searching. “But as soon as Mistress Winslow returns—the absolute minute, mind—be sure to send her to me.”
Unfastening her cloak, Fan hurried up the back stairs, thankful that she’d met no one else on her way. Because she’d no wish to be distracted by anyone or anything else before she saw George, she’d taken Pie around to the old stable, away from the grooms and drivers gathered by the main door. She had seen Caesar through the window, so at least she knew that George had returned as well.
Most likely she’d find him in one of the parlors, back with his brother and the last of his guests. When Brant had cheerfully warned her that such parties could go on until dawn, she thought he’d been exaggerating, but she had seen the lights still blazing clear from the main road. At least George wouldn’t have already gone to bed himself, she thought as she climbed the last steps, and then froze.
A thin line of light gleamed from beneath the door to her rooms, a light that should not have been there. She distinctly recalled snuffing out the candles when she left earlier—she’d never be so careless as to do otherwise, not in a house as old and dry as Feversham—yet they were most definitely lit now. Yet who would have entered her rooms while she was away, and now be so brazen as to light candles, too? One of the hired servants, a nosy guest from the party, even one of those hate-filled people who’d thrown stones at her in Tunford?
Her heart racing, she drew her pistol from under her petticoat and cautiously pushed open the door. She just glimpsed a figure darting into shadows and hiding behind her bed’s curtains.
“Show yourself, you thieving coward!” she ordered sharply. The intruder was wrong to test her like this, when her nerves had already been so sorely tried this evening. “I’ve aimed my pistol your way, and though I’d hate to tatter those curtains, I’ve no scruples at all about shooting you!”
She saw the curtains shiver, and with the vilest of oaths, the old man stepped into candlelight.
“Fine sort of homecoming this is, daughter,” growled her father. “Since when do you greet your old da by pointing a gun at his gut?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Father!” With a happy cry Fan raced across the room and threw her arms around her father. “Oh, Father, I cannot believe you’re really here, that you’re alive after so long!”
“What else would I be but alive, lass? Dead?” Clumsily he patted her back. “There’s already enough mischief in hell without the devil coming to claim me just yet. There now, Fanny, don’t cry, don’t cry. No woman that’s got the nerve to aim a pistol like you do has any business at all blubbering like this.”
“I cannot help it,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes with her fingers as she stepped back to look at him. Though her father’s spirit—and tongue—remained as unchecked as ever, he seemed shorter and older than she remembered, and that first hug was enough to prove that, in the time he’d been away, he’d grown so thin as to be almost frail, every rib a bony ridge beneath his patched coat. His hair had turned completely white above his weather-worn face, and his snowy brows bristled emphatically over his dark eyes.
“Wherever you’ve been, Father,” she said with concern, “you’ve not had enough to eat, have you?”
“France,” he said succinctly, patting what used to be his belly. “That’s where I’ve been, and that’s where I’ve nigh starved, too.”
“France?” repeated Fan incredulously. “But why didn’t you come back sooner, or send me word?”
He puckered up his face almost as if to whistle, an expression that Fan knew seldom brought the complete truth with it, and her heart sank. This was hardly the warm, wonderful homecoming for her father that she’d longed for, but rather instead the one she should have expected.
“Oh, sweet Fanny, it’s a long, sad tale,” said her father dismissively, clearly disinclined to tell the details. “On that last night I was here, Tom Hawkins and I had a mite to drink, enough to make us take a boat and row ourselves to France, just like Will Hood’s always bragging about doing. We were doing well, too, until one of those damned French cruisers gathered us up, almost like they was told to expect us.”
“Who would do that?” she scoffed uneasily, wishing she couldn’t think of so many in Tunford who’d do exactly that to her father, given the chance.
“Who would, I ask you, two old sots like us of no use to anyone!” marveled her Father. “Plunked us down in some sort of half-prison in Marseilles, picking oakum and feeding fleas, until another new set of king-killers in Paris decided we wasn’t worth the gruel and tossed us into the street, with nary a shilling in our pockets. Still an’ all, Tom decided to stay. He’d become a great favorite of this red-haired brothel-keeper, you see.”
“But how did you come back here?” asked Fan, her initial delight at this reunion now dampened by an ominously growing suspicion. “And why tonight?”
“Why tonight, and why not?” he answered easily, without giving any real answer. “Seems there’s changes a-plenty here at Feversham, though I’ll warrant not so great that you can’t find a morsel or two of good English beef for your poor old father, there’s a good lass.”
But Fan wasn’t going to be a good lass, not about something as important as this. “Father, I have to know the truth,” she insisted. “Did you take passage here on a French boat?”
“Aye, aye, how else would I come?” he asked with an exasperated sweep of his hands. “In return for my crossing, I acted as pilot, steering the way to Waverly Point for a crew of Frenchmen. A fool’s sort of voyage, to my mind, for they’d brought more guns than goods to trade, with but three paltry casks of burgundy. But they set me ashore a bit to the south, as I asked, wanting to keep myself clear of another company’s trading.”
“Oh, Father,” said Fan softly, dropping onto the edge of her bed as if the weight of what she’d seen, and what she now knew, were too much to bear. She’d no choice now but to tell everything to George, including her father’s part in it. “What trouble you’ve made for yourself!”
“I could ask the same of you, daughter.” He gathered up the peacock silk gown from where she’d left it on the bed and shook it in her face. “What’s this, eh? Since when do you wear such harlot’s finery? Look at you now, with sugar-curls and scarlet ear-bobs! High time you stop asking me questions, Fan, and start giving me answers of your own.”
“There’s a new master here now, Father,” she explained carefully. She didn’t know which was going to be worse: George meeting her father, or her father meeting George. “He’s a good man, and he’s done much to improve Feversham. He wishes me to dress in London fashions when he entertains guests, and as his housekeeper, I oblige him. Did anyone see you come up the back stairs, Father?”
“Shamed of me, are you?” he said, raising his voice. He balled up the gown in disgust and threw it across the room. “Maybe I should be the one who’s shamed, having a daughter like you keeping such close company with the master!”
“Hush, Father, please, and listen to me.” Her father was exactly the same as he’d always been, all bravado and bullying. The difference was that she was the one who’d had to change while he’d been gone, and now she couldn’t afford to change back. “Those Frenchmen that brought you here tonight didn’t come for smuggling. Before they’d even landed, they killed three Tunford men who’d come to help. You’re lucky they didn’t shoot you, too, and God only knows what they would have done if the customs men h
adn’t blundered along to take them up.”
Her father looked at her sharply. “What manner of talk is this, daughter? Salvation from customs men? Every man and woman in our trade knows the dangers and the risks, and takes them along with the gold. I don’t care if those three poor dead bastards were from Tunford, and them being dim-witted enough to get killed isn’t going to make us in the Winslow Company turn tail and tremble, is it?”
She had to tell him now, and slowly she rose, standing before him with her shoulders squared and her hands clasped before her.
“You’re too late,” she said, the words sounding far more wistful than she intended. “Our family’s done with the Company. The men are choosing another leader, and most likely another name as well.”
“A new leader?” Shocked, her father shook his head in disbelief. “Not a Winslow? Who? Who?”
“Most likely Will Hood,” she said, trying to sound as if this were absolutely for the best. “You’ve always liked Will, and he’ll make as good a leader as any.”
“Did Will do this to you, then?” he fumed, so furious his face grew mottled. “Or was it some other bastard traitor that forced your hand? You tell me the name of the black devil, and I’ll—”
“No one forced me,” she said firmly, “though there’s plenty in the Company who thought I’d held on too long for your sake. For your sake, because you’d wish it, I carried on as leader, to make decisions that were for the best. This is what I decided, Father, and now it’s done.”
“The hell it is!” he sputtered, so filled with rage he was shaking, and when he raised his fist to strike her, Fan realized to her sorrow she’d almost been expecting it. Yet even so she held her ground and didn’t flinch, her gaze never falling away from his.
For nearly a minute they stayed like that, neither willing to take the next step, until, with another oath, her father swung away and struck his fist hard against the mantelpiece.
“You can’t know how this hurts me, Fan,” he said, staring into the hearth. “You can’t know at all. I never thought you’d be the one to betray me. The whole time I was wasting away in that damned frog prison, I kept thinking and dreaming on coming back here and having everything same as it used to be.”
The Silver Lord Page 21