A Reluctant Courtship

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Verses learned long ago from a sermon or a governess ran through her head, something Jesus said in one of the Gospels. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

  Papa had never given her anything but what she wanted, and she became wayward and rebellious. And when God tried to give her a chance to gain understanding and wisdom, she had rejected Him for not giving her what she wanted. And all the while, the Lord was giving her more bread and fish than she could need—a time to reflect, to be obedient, to make her heart right with the Lord.

  And He had shown her the depths of true love.

  A lifetime of sermons, Scripture readings, and, of late, Miss Morrow’s wise reminders coalesced in Honore’s heart. Peace filled her, warmed her. God had never been giving her stones; He had loved her all along. He had been more than generous with loving patience. He had been with her all along. She had simply not reached out and accepted the truth.

  She reached out now. Lord, I cannot take one more step without You beside me.

  Not certain what she was about to do was right, yet feeling perfect peace, she spun on her heel and looked at Chilcott. “I must follow him. Will you help me arrange passage? Directly to France, if possible, or through one of the Channel Islands would be safer, I expect.”

  The two of them stared back at her. “Have you lost your reason, my dear?” Miss Morrow asked.

  “No, I have just found it. I will not allow Ashmoor to go into exile alone.”

  “But what you are giving up . . .” Chilcott gave Miss Morrow a helpless glance, then turned back to Honore. “If he forfeits the estates, he will be back where they started save for what he managed to smuggle out of England. And even people with money do not live as comfortably in America as they do here.”

  “I care not for that. I am learning to cook and I sew well.” Honore fairly skipped to the door. “I will be ready inside an hour. If you will not assist me, then I will go away on my own.”

  29

  Meric and Philo reached the dower house after dark. They had put into a small port in Cornwall so Meric could be tended by an apothecary, who declared Meric’s injury as a mere flesh wound that wasn’t likely to kill him, and took several guineas for his promise of silence about their presence. For good measure, he provided Meric with some worn but rather well-fitting garments not stiff with dried blood.

  Philo did not set the smack in the harbor at Clovelly. “The Crown is still looking for you, I expect. We’ll set in at an inlet and try to get horses or some other mode of transportation to Bainbridge.”

  “And hope the riding officers aren’t there too?” Meric hoped the mode of transportation would be some means other than horses. As bumpy as carriages often were on the country roads, riding a horse would be worse. “Can’t we simply put into a cove near Bainbridge and walk?” he asked.

  Philo gave him a disgusted glance. “You couldn’t walk above a mile right now.”

  He was probably right. Mention of his weakness tempted Meric to lie down and sleep. If he did, though, Philo just might turn around and again set sail for Ireland.

  Philo found a cove below a village that was little more than a cluster of hovels around an inn. But one of the local farmers was willing to take them in his wagon as far as Bainbridge—for a consideration. The guinea Philo gave him was likely the most money he saw in a month or more.

  “How much money did you come away with?” Meric asked his brother in the back of the jouncing wagon.

  “Not nearly enough.” Philo leaned against the side panels. “You are a fool, brother. I hope I never fall in love.”

  “I hope you do. It’s a good place to fall.”

  If the lady loved in return. Meric had believed at one time that Honore loved him, but lately, since he had kissed her at the harvest moon ball, she had seemed less inclined to look at him with the adoration he had known before. She claimed she helped him for herself and not for him.

  “But I can hope—”

  “Hope?” Philo’s tone held disgust. “I hope it’s more than hope you have. If you’ve risked your life and freedom for the mere hope of a female’s love, you are a fool.”

  “No, it’s more than that.” Meric clutched at the lump of bandage beneath his coat. “I need to prove my innocence for all your sakes. I’ve given up too much to get this far. I won’t sacrifice it to the Crown over suspicions.”

  Philo spat over the side of the wagon. “We were all right without this wealth. We were all together and had enough.”

  “No dowries for the girls? No education or training for trades for all of us? Too little land to support us beyond the minimum, let alone with families added? No, Philo, it was not enough. We prayed for God to provide all these things, and this is what happened.”

  “And if you’re found to be a traitor, we lose it all and you. Is that God providing?”

  An excellent question.

  “That’s where faith comes in.”

  Listen to him talking about faith, something sorely lacking in his life of late. Faith, trust, believing God’s promises were true—all those things his parents taught him had vanished little by little the more he lived in the world of the haut ton. He had believed what they said. He had believed that Honore Bainbridge was worse for him than no wife at all. Yet he had loved her and hurt her by denying that love in exchange for doing what others told him was best.

  If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, my dear . . . He formed his speech to Honore.

  But in truth, he needed to ask the Lord for forgiveness. He had allowed the pressure of society to steer him from a right and godly course. He had not trusted the Lord to provide; he had tried to provide for himself by shunning Honore, by courting a young lady with good family and little character, in order to protect his reputation, his self-interest.

  If the inheritance was the Lord’s way of providing, then the Lord could transcend any power of the Crown to take it away. He knew that. He had not lived it.

  He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. “Lord, I’ve been wrong. Please forgive me for trusting in men and not You. Whatever happens, I know You are not surprised and will provide for us in our bodies and our souls.” He could not stop himself from adding, “And our hearts. Please do not let my bowing to the world keep me from my love, from—”

  The farmer drew the wagon to a halt outside the Bainbridge gates, jarring Meric from his prayer.

  “Far as I go, gentlemen,” the farmer said.

  “Wait until we see if we gain entrance.” Philo leaped to the ground and tugged at the bell rope.

  A moment later, the porter stumbled from the gatehouse, grumbling about late callers being indecent, though the hour could not be later than seven of the clock.

  “Who is it?” The old man sounded less than gracious.

  “My lord Ashmoor,” Philo snapped out.

  The porter said nothing but swung the gate open.

  Philo returned to the wagon, paid the farmer a few more shillings, then assisted Meric to the ground. “Can you walk all the way back to the dower house, or should we get the wagon in?”

  “If the wagon carries us in, the main house will know of my presence.” Meric gazed up the drive. It looked to be a score of miles long. “I’ll manage.”

  “Crazy, milords,” the porter muttered before slamming the gate closed and shoving home the bolt. “Suit yourself. Wagons and walking . . . Not sure you are Ashmoor.”

  Meric decided ignoring the man would go further in convincing him of the truth, and started up the drive leaning on Philo’s sturdy arm. At halfway, Philo stopped to cut a stout walking stick from one of the overarching trees. It helped. Meric’s knees threatened to buckle with every other step, but the drive was only a mile long, not twenty, and the dower house was merely a few hundred yards behind it. He could manage. He could, with the image of Honore’s face before his mind’s eye, so lovely, so sweet, so stubborn .
. .

  The main house appeared deserted. No light shone in any of the windows. Perhaps Bainbridge and his guests had departed for the city.

  No light shone in the windows of the dower house either. The gate to the garden stood open, however, and Meric, knees buckling from more than simple fatigue, barely managed to reach the front door and pound the knocker. No one came. Surely Honore would not have gone with her brother. Yet she would not have gone to bed this early.

  He applied the knocker to the door again. This time, the flicker of a candle through a side window flashed in the corner of his eye. A moment later, the door opened to reveal the little maid shaking hard enough to send her candle bobbing like a jig dancer.

  “Who—milord? Oh no.” She covered her mouth with her hand, and her eyes rounded.

  “Is something wrong with Miss Bainbridge?” Meric asked.

  “N-no, milord. But she ain’t here.”

  “What?” Meric sagged against the door frame. “How can she be gone? That is . . . ”

  “I’ll fetch Miss Morrow.” The maid took the steps up two at a time.

  Meric and Philo stepped into the entryway and closed the door behind them. If Miss Morrow was there, Honore should not be gone. If she was gone, his journey was in vain.

  No, not in vain if he managed to stand firm and prove his innocence and, he hoped—no, he prayed—the innocence of his father.

  Miss Morrow sped down the steps in a fashion more akin to Honore’s manner than the staid companion’s. “My lord, what are you doing here? Mr. Chilcott said you had sailed for Ireland and then on to—”

  “Where is Honore?” Meric demanded.

  “My lord, she has gone after you.”

  If ever a man needed proof of a lady’s love, it was Honore’s foolhardy journey to follow after him. The knowledge warmed Meric, lent his weakened body strength.

  So he could somehow catch up with her and stop her.

  Miss Morrow gave him as many details as she could manage. If they could somehow get to the Clovelly harbor . . .

  That proved easier than not with Bainbridge and his fiancée gone. Miss Morrow ordered the grooms to saddle up two horses. She looked concerned over his ability to ride, but he managed to haul himself into the saddle and hold the reins in his right hand. Five miles to Clovelly felt like five hundred. More than once he found himself slipping to one side or the other, ready to collapse and land on the ground. But at last the lights of the village shone in the distance. The earthy scents of the stables rose in the fresh night air, and the harbor glistened below with several boats getting ready for the night’s fishing.

  Chilcott would get Honore on one of those. That would make the most sense. No one questioned a fishing boat that went out night after night. That was why smuggling was so very easy.

  Getting down the hill to the harbor was not easy. At least a dozen times, Meric stopped to catch his breath. He, who had thought nothing of walking ten miles rather than riding a horse, could scarcely walk a few hundred yards down a hill—a steep hill, but a hill nonetheless.

  At last he and Philo reached the water, black and oily beneath the lights of bobbing lanterns. “We’re seeking a boat that might have a young woman on it,” Meric began to ask . . . and ask . . . and ask . . .

  Mostly, blank stares and shaken heads were the response. Then a grizzled old man who smelled like a barrel of three-day-old fish pointed toward the mouth of the harbor. “Gone.”

  “How long?” Meric tried not to sound too eager.

  The man shrugged. “Quarter hour.”

  “I expect you can’t catch him?” Meric suggested.

  “I can catch anybody on t’ water,” the old man declared. “How much is ’t worth t’ you?”

  Meric didn’t bargain. He paid the fee the man demanded. Then they climbed aboard the fishing smack and clung to the rails while the old man and his crew—two loutish-looking youths—set the single sail and sent the small craft skimming over the bay . . .

  To nothing but open sea. Yet open sea with distant lights bobbing on its surface like floating stars.

  “They are probably going to dump us overboard after killing and robbing us,” Philo muttered.

  “He can’t possibly know which boat is the right one,” Meric said loudly enough for the fisherman to hear.

  The old man shot a glare from the tiller. “’Course I can. We all have our places.”

  “But this boat won’t be going to a place.” Meric leaned forward as though his action could drive the smack faster.

  “He’ll go thatta way.” The old man shoved down the tiller, sending the sail swooping over the deck. The fishing boat’s starboard rail nearly dipped into the sea in the change of tack. Capsizing seemed imminent.

  “Move back,” Philo admonished.

  “Chilcott?” Meric called.

  The two boats came abreast, swooped dangerously close to locking a jibboom over the taffrail. Half climbing, half crawling, Meric mounted onto the bowsprit and dropped onto the deck of the other craft, where two men with darkly stubbled faces met him, their hands on their hips, likely ready to draw weapons.

  “Do you have a lady aboard?” Meric asked.

  “Maybe,” one of the men said.

  “Or maybe not.” Philo started to leap aboard the squat craft. “Where?”

  “She’s below.” The fisherman jutted his chin toward the cabin. “Let’s go.” He shoved off from the other craft with a boat hook.

  “Wait!” Philo ran to the end of the jib.

  “Wait for my brother,” Meric added.

  The fisherman, who smelled as clean as the old man on the other boat reeked of fish, and his mate ignored Philo’s attempts to get on the larger smack. The latter turned the tiller over hard, and the lugger dipped, plunged into the trough of a wave. The sail flapped overhead, then caught the offshore breeze and bellied out, sending the craft skimming for more open sea.

  Meric lifted a hand to his brother. “I’ll be back.”

  “I would not count on that, my lord.”

  Meric spun toward the voice, lost his balance on a wave of dizziness, and grasped the railing. “Tuckfield?”

  Indeed it was Tuckfield, with Honore in the crook of his arm—an arm that ended with a pistol pointed at her middle.

  A gut shot rarely killed—immediately. It killed slowly from infection, causing days of agony. If Meric took one step toward the Bainbridge steward, that would too easily be Honore’s fate.

  “Why did you come back?” she asked in her soft but steady voice.

  “Leaving was the coward’s way out.” Meric smiled at her. “And I couldn’t leave without telling you I love you.”

  “Touching.” Tuckfield curled his upper lip. “And stupid, just like your father.”

  Taunting him just like the man on the boat the previous night, a lifetime ago. This time he would not fall for the pressure to attack. He would not risk Honore’s life.

  “Why?” was all Meric said.

  Tuckfield shrugged one shoulder. “Money. Power. I am tired of not having enough of the latter to get away from taking orders from females or nodcocks like Bainbridge.”

  “You don’t have enough in—what, thirty years of smuggling?”

  “Power comes from knowing I’m fooling all these people who think they’re better than I am.” Tuckfield pinched his nostrils as though smelling something foul. “Watching you all speculate and worry has been far more gratifying than taking the money and running.”

  “I see that now. It must be difficult having to take orders from a young female like Honore Bainbridge.”

  “One stupid enough to let me lure her onto my boat.” Tuckfield looked smug.

  Honore ground her teeth hard enough for Meric to see her jaw work. He looked away from her and concentrated on Tuckfield. “But my father . . .” Meric slid one foot a half step forward. “Why did you set him up to take the blame for murder?”

  Tuckfield’s face screwed up. “Your father.” He spat over the rail
. “He intended to leave the gang. He’d gotten so pious, I thought he was going to turn on all of us.”

  “But he didn’t know who you were.” Meric slid the other foot to join the first. “He never said a word in all those years.”

  “I am so sorry, Ashmoor.” Honore met and held his gaze in the light of the bow lantern.

  Beyond her, the crew of the lugger went about their work of handling the tiller and sail as though one of their passengers were not holding another at gunpoint. They had sailed beyond sight of the harbor and other boats. The open sea lay beyond, black save for crests of white glowing against the horizon.

  Meric smiled at Honore as though they spoke in her parlor. “Why do you apologize, my dear? My love.”

  She bowed her head. “I thought for a bit that you might be involved with smuggling prisoners out of the country.”

  Meric flinched. “You still thought me a traitor?”

  “Just like everyone else now.” Tuckfield laughed, an eerie sound for the genuine amusement in its rumbling tones. “No one will think a thing when the two of you disappear. They’ll presume you fled from England and your brother stayed behind to try to keep the estate from being seized by the Crown—or to inherit.”

  “I suppose we will never see America?” Meric tried to sound casual, though his heart pounded like waves in a hurricane.

  “You won’t see Ireland.” Tuckfield waved his free arm. “There’s all this water to take you.”

  “Sometimes the sea gives up its dead.” Meric glanced back toward the invisible bulk of the land.

  “Two lovers drown while eloping.” Tuckfield snorted. “We all expected Honore Bainbridge to do something that dishonorable—run off with a traitor or a murderer. Why not another traitor, the son of a murderer?” He threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  With the man’s focus off of him for the moment, Meric loosened his knife from inside his right sleeve and tucked the hilt into the palm of his hand.