Stephanie Laurens - B 6 Beyond Seduction

by Stephanie Laurens

And when it came to her brothers, he was the only man she’d ever met whom she trusted—had instinctively trusted from the first—to guide and steer them in the ways she couldn’t. To understand them as she did, and join with her in protecting them as needed.

  Lots of benefits. But she could see the difficulties, too. They were harder to put into words, but were nonetheless real. Most derived from the fact she’d initially identified, one he hadn’t attempted to deny. They were very alike. Both were accustomed to being in control of their world, and largely in command of it.

  If, for each of them, the other became a major part of their world…what then? Both of them had managed largely alone for all their adult lives. Finding the ways to share command at their respective ages—to accommodate another as strong as they themselves were—would not be an easy task.

  That was one point where they might stumble. She knew herself too well to imagine she would ever be the sort of female to retreat from a path she was sincerely convinced was right. Regardless of any potential danger to herself…and therein lay the seed for serious discord. Because she knew how he would react. Just as she would if their places were reversed.

  He was a warrior, a being raised to protect and defend—but so was she.

  That brand of strength, of commitment, ran in his blood, and in hers. It was what had had him risking his life in France for over a decade, what had had her without a blink sacrificing the life most young ladies yearned for to care for and protect her brothers.

  He was what he was, and she was who she was, and neither of them could change those fundamental traits. Which raised the vital question: Could they, somehow, find a way to rub along side by side, to live together without constantly abrading each other’s instincts, each other’s pride?

  Heaving a long sigh, she gazed at the house, peacefully basking in the sun. Rather than finding answers, the more she thought about marrying Gervase, she only threw up more questions.

  Worse, crucial but close-to-impossible-to-answer questions.

  Inwardly shaking her head, she rose; still entirely planless and clueless, she started back to the house.

  The sun was well past its zenith when Gervase led Crusader off the Helford ferry, swung up to the gray’s back, and set him cantering out of the village south along the road to Coverack and Treleaver Park beyond.

  He’d left Falmouth an hour ago having satisfactorily fulfilled his reasons for going there. After the harbormaster’s office, he’d talked to a number of the officers from the revenue cutters bobbing in the harbor, then had ridden on to Pendennis Castle to check with his naval contacts there.

  No official had heard so much as a whisper of any ship lost in the last month. No records, no complaints, nothing.

  Quitting the castle, he’d ridden back into the town to the dockside taverns to seek the unofficial version. But that, too, had been the same. So if the brooch Madeline’s brothers had found did hail from a recent wreck—one for which someone around might harbor an interest in the cargo—then that wreck had to be some smugglers’ vessel, moreover, one not local.

  He was inclining to the belief that the brooch must have come from some wreck of long ago.

  That belief had been reinforced by a chance meeting and subsequent discussion with Charles St. Austell, Earl of Lostwithiel, and his wife, Penny; Gervase had stumbled upon Charles in one of the less reputable taverns. His erstwhile comrade-in-arms had been doing much the same as he, keeping up acquaintance with the local sailors he’d developed as contacts over the years.

  Charles had been delighted to lay eyes on him. Gervase had found his own mood lifting as they’d shaken hands and clapped each other’s backs. They’d sat down to share a pint, then Charles had hauled him off to the best inn in Falmouth, there to meet Penny.

  And Charles’s two hounds. The wolfhounds had inspected him closely before uttering doggy humphs and retreating to slump beside the hearth, allowing him to approach their master’s wife.

  Gervase had been impressed; he was seriously considering getting Madeline a similar pair of guardians. Despite Charles’s excuse that he’d brought the hounds to be company for Penny, it was plain—at least to Gervase, and he suspected Penny—that Charles felt much more comfortable having the hounds to guard his wife while he went trawling through the dockside taps.

  Thinking of how his and Madeline’s life would be once she moved to the castle—especially if and when any children came along—although he had no intention of leaving her side for any length of time, having two such large and loyal beasts to guard her while he rode out around the estate…he could appreciate Charles’s thinking.

  He clattered through Coverack and turned for Treleaver Park. The mystery of the brooch still nagged at him, but when he’d told them the story, Charles and Penny, both of whom, like him, had long experience with local smuggling gangs, had inclined to the same conclusion as he. The brooch was most likely from some ancient wreck.

  Indeed, as Penny had pointed out, echoing his own thoughts, it was hard to imagine why smugglers would have been ferrying such a cargo.

  Yet that nagging itch between his shoulders persisted. He’d decided to get Harry, Edmond and Ben to show him where they’d uncovered their find, just in case the precise location suggested anything else—any other possibility.

  The Treleaver Park gates were perennially set wide; he trotted through and up the drive. The westering sun was lowering over the peninsula when he drew rein in the forecourt.

  Dismounting, he waited, then running footsteps heralded a stablelad, who came pelting around the corner to take his reins.

  “Sorry, m’lord.” The youth bobbed his head and grasped the reins. “But there’s a right to-do indoors. We was distracted.”

  “Oh?” Premonition touched Gervase’s nape, slid coolly down his spine. Unwilling to gossip with the stablelad, he nodded and strode swiftly up the shallow steps and through the open front door.

  There was nothing odd about the open front door; most country houses, especially those with younger inhabitants, especially in summer, left their doors wide. What was odd was the absence of Milsom.

  Gervase halted in the middle of the hall; voices—including Madeline’s—reached him.

  He was too far away to make out the words; he followed the sound down the corridor to the office.

  Milsom was standing just inside the door, his countenance a medley of shock, concern and helplessness.

  Madeline was perched on the front edge of her desk, leaning toward her brothers—Harry and Edmond—both bolt upright in chairs facing her.

  One look at her face—at the bleak fear therein—had Gervase striding into the room. “What’s happened?”

  She looked up; for one instant he glimpsed relief, then her face, her expression, tightened. “Ben’s…” She gestured helplessly, plainly torn over what word to use. “Gone.”

  The tremor, the underlying panic in her voice, shook him.

  Harry had swung around; he met Gervase’s eyes as Gervase halted beside Madeline, taking her hand, holding it, not releasing it. “We don’t know what’s happened. Ben’s disappeared, and we don’t know where he is.” Anguish colored Harry’s eyes and voice.

  Years of experience took over. Gervase dropped his other hand onto Harry’s shoulder, gripped. “Take a deep breath, then start at the beginning.”

  Edmond’s eyes, too, were wide, his expression stricken.

  Drawing in a huge breath, Harry held it for an instant, then said, “We rode to Helston midmorning. We thought we should check whether there’d been any more rumors about the tin mines. We went down to the Pig & Whistle—it’s the best place to learn things like that, and we knew we’d meet some of the other lads there, the ones who tell us things.”

  Gervase nodded. “It’s a rough but useful place.” The Pig & Whistle was one of the taverns along the old Helston docks.

  Relief washed through Harry’s eyes. “Exactly. But, of course, because it’s so rough we didn’t want to take Ben into the ta
p with us—and anyway, Old Henry, the innkeeper, doesn’t like ‘nippers’ brought in.”

  “Perfectly understandable.” Madeline leaned forward, meeting first Harry’s, then Edmond’s eyes. “I don’t blame either of you in the least for leaving Ben outside.”

  She’d had a moment—a moment Gervase’s arrival had granted her, his stalwart presence had allowed her—to assimilate what she’d learned. A minute to grasp the implications as well as the horror, and focus on what had to be done. Having Harry and Edmond sinking under unnecessary guilt was the last thing she needed.

  “So you left Ben outside,” Gervase said. “Where, exactly?”

  “He was sitting on the bench along the front of the tavern when we went in,” Edmond said. “He was happy as a grig, swinging his legs and watching the boats on the river. He didn’t want to come inside—he doesn’t like the smoke and the smells.” Edmond’s voice quavered. “That was the last we saw of him.”

  Harry swallowed, nodded. “When we came out, he was nowhere in sight.”

  “How long were you in the tavern?” Gervase asked.

  Harry and Edmond exchanged glances. “Half an hour?” Harry looked up at Gervase. “Forty minutes at most. We came out with Tom Pachel and Johnny Griggs, and Ben was gone.”

  “We searched—all four of us,” Edmond said. “The others helped when they realized we were worried.”

  “The more we searched, still others joined in.” Harry took up the tale. “We covered the entire docks, but there was no sign of Ben anywhere. That’s when Abel—Johnny had fetched him—said we should ride home while the rest of them kept looking.” Harry glanced at Madeline. “Abel said we should find you and tell you.”

  She gave mute thanks for Abel Griggs. She glanced at Gervase. “They arrived only a few minutes before you.”

  He nodded.

  She tensed to rise from the desk, but through his hold on her hand Gervase halted her. He met her gaze briefly, then turned again to the boys. “Through all the searching, did anyone say anything at all about seeing Ben wander off, or seeing someone approach him, speak with him—anything like that?”

  Harry glanced at Edmond, then looked at Gervase. “Old Eddie was the only one who said he saw Ben, but, well”—Harry grimaced—“you know Old Eddie. You can’t trust anything he says after midday, and he was well away by the time we talked to him.”

  Old Eddie was one of the town drunks.

  “Never mind his state,” Gervase said. “Tell me what he said.”

  “He said a flash cove came up to the bench and spoke with Ben, not just a hello—they had a conversation. Eddie said it was all sunny and happy as you please. And then Ben upped and went off with the man.”

  Gervase frowned. “A flash cove? Eddie used those words?”

  Harry nodded. “I suppose he meant a flashily dressed gentleman.”

  Gervase didn’t reply; Madeline glanced at him in time to see the muscle in his jaw clench. Glancing sideways, he met her eyes, hesitated as if he wanted to explain, then he shook his head infinitesimally and turned back to Harry and Edmond. “No other sighting, nothing at all?”

  Harry shook his head.

  Edmond wriggled. “Mrs. Heggarty said she saw a man and a boy walking up her street—the one past Coinagehall Street—but she couldn’t say if it was Ben or not. She’s blind as a bat, so it could have been anyone. She couldn’t say anything about the man.”

  Madeline had heard enough. She looked at Milsom, waiting by the door, opened her mouth to ask for Artur to be saddled—only to hear Gervase say, “Before we go haring back to Helston there’s things we should do—arrangements which will make finding Ben easier, quicker and more certain.”

  She glanced at him, saw the seriousness in his eyes. “What arrangements?”

  Gervase drew breath, swiftly reviewing the list that had formed in his head. He didn’t want to tell Madeline, let alone Harry and Edmond, what a ‘flash cove’ was. Old Eddie had been a London gentleman’s gentleman until he’d become too fond of the bottle; to Eddie, as to Gervase and anyone with knowledge of London’s underworld, a ‘flash cove’ meant a swindler or trickster usually based in London who made a living by leading others astray—usually into the clutches of some more powerful and nasty villain.

  No matter how inebriated Old Eddie had been, if he’d said a flash cove, that was what he’d meant. But what such a person was doing in Helston, let alone why he’d approached Ben…despite all the possibilities, instinct screamed that Ben’s disappearance had something to do with the other inexplicable thing that had recently come into his young life. The brooch.

  Gervase met Madeline’s eyes. “We need to assemble a search party, one big enough to scour the town more or less in one fell swoop. You need to gather the men on the estate, all those you can mount. Also send a note in my name to Sitwell at the castle asking him to do the same with my people and send them to Helston to wait for us there.” He paused, thinking, then nodded. “That should give us enough men.”

  Madeline blinked, then nodded; rising from the desk, she moved around it to her chair. She frowned. “Should we—”

  He held up a hand. “While you write those notes, I’ll send one of your grooms to Falmouth. I was there earlier today and ran into a friend—another member of my club—Charles St. Austell, Earl of Lostwithiel. I’ll ask Charles to do two things. First, to talk to the mayor and the governor of Pendennis Castle and get a roadblock set up on the London road.” When alarm crossed her face, he forced a reassuring smile. “A precaution. Let’s hope there’s no need for it, but it won’t hurt to have that in place just in case.”

  That he was considering “just in case” seemed to calm her; she nodded and sank into her chair.

  He held her gaze. “The other thing I’m going to ask is for Charles to meet us in Helston. He has his dogs, two wolfhounds, with him, and I recall him mentioning that they’re excellent trackers.”

  And Penny would accompany Charles; nothing was more likely. Gervase hoped the arrival of another lady of similar standing would help distract Madeline, and stop her from imagining the worst.

  He was able to imagine far worse scenarios than she, but he knew it was pointless and likely self-defeating. Neither he nor she could afford to allow panic to deflect them, not if they wanted Ben back, safe.

  To her, he said, “I’ll leave you to write those notes.” Then he looked at Harry and Edmond. “I’ll need a groom to take my message to Falmouth—you two can help me with that.”

  He glanced back at Madeline.

  She was reaching for paper and pen. “Send Fanning—he’s reliable under pressure.” She looked at Harry. “Send all the other grooms to me—I’ll have notes ready for them soon.”

  “Milsom can stay and assist you.” Gervase locked his gaze on the boys. “Come on—let’s get my message off.”

  With last glances at Madeline—who already had her head bowed over a note—Harry and Edmond rose and followed Gervase into the corridor.

  They found Fanning in the stables; Gervase recited his message to Charles, had Fanning repeat it, then sent him off. Leaving the other grooms saddling up to take Madeline’s notes to the castle and surrounding farms, Gervase beckoned the two boys to accompany him and headed back to the house.

  Pausing outside the side door, he turned to them. “Where’s a safe place to talk?”

  Harry exchanged a look with Edmond, then volunteered, “The library.”

  Gervase waved them ahead of him; he followed them along a corridor and into the library.

  Closing the doors behind him, he faced them. They’d turned and fixed big eyes on him.

  “What is it?” Harry asked.

  “Does Ben know where you found the brooch? Was he with you when you found it?”

  Both nodded. “It was he who tripped over it in the sand,” Edmond said.

  Harry’s eyes had widened. “Do you think he’s been kidnapped over the brooch? By the wreckers?”

  “No.” Gervase spoke qui
ckly to dispel the looming horror. “Not the wreckers, that much seems certain. However, I told you I’d check again in Falmouth to see if there was any missing ship listed—that’s why I was there today. I learned there definitely isn’t any legitimate ship missing.”

  He caught Harry’s gaze. “As we discussed before, that leaves only two reasonable explanations for that brooch. Either it’s from a long-ago wreck—or from a smugglers’ vessel that went down on the Manacles in that bad blow two weeks ago.” He felt his lips thin. “As there have been no local smugglers’ vessels lost, until half an hour ago I was tending to the ancient wreck as explanation. Now…” He paused, then looked at them. “I can’t imagine any other reason for someone to grab Ben—can you?”

  Both boys’ eyes had grown round. Both thought, then shook their heads.

  “You think—” Harry’s voice squeaked; he cleared his throat and tried again. “You think someone wants the brooch and…” He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No—not if they’re after the brooch. But…” He’d never used two schoolboys to test his reasoning before, but he had enough respect for their mental acuity, and their involvement, to try. He moved to sit on the arm of a nearby chair, bringing his face down to Edmond’s level.

  “Consider this. If a ship did go down in that gale, then if it wasn’t one of our smugglers’ ships, it had to be one from the Isles of Scilly or from France. French captains especially wouldn’t necessarily know that it’s impossible to beat up the coast to the Helford estuary in a wind like that—that it would blow them onto the Manacles. Let’s say that’s what happened—a French smuggling vessel was wrecked two weeks ago.”

  He caught the boys’ eyes, first Harry’s, then Edmond’s. “If a French vessel was heading for the Helford estuary, then someone had arranged that—the ship had to have been carrying a cargo some person here, in England, didn’t want the authorities to know about. A cargo that had to be kept secret. But that person waited, and no ship arrived. Let’s say he knew—as most do—that these coasts are haunted by local smugglers and wreckers. So when his ship didn’t come in, he starts searching—”