Regency Masquerades: A Limited Edition Boxed Set of Six Traditional Regency Romance Novels of Secrets and Disguises

by Brenda Hiatt

  “Precisely. We will have harbored a criminal and helped him to escape. Would you punish us for this kindness by subjecting us to an inquisition? I did save your life, you may recall.”

  “I do, and you’ve nothing to fear. My word on it.”

  “The word of a smuggler fails to reassure me,” she informed him briskly. “But should you be tempted to speak out of turn, keep in mind that I was witness to what happened last night and can testify against you in a court of law.”

  She had an answer for everything, he thought, abandoning his efforts to pry information from her by means of direct confrontation. This matter required subtlety, if not downright sneakiness. As she went about her work, he contented himself with watching her, slim and vibrant in loose homespun brown trousers and a tan shirt worn outside the pants to conceal her shape. But whenever she passed in front of the fire, he saw the outline of her lovely backside and two small, perfectly shaped breasts.

  He had always been especially partial to the company of females, but this one engaged him more than any other in his experience, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, extensive. She fascinated him with her razor tongue and keen intelligence. She was beautiful, to be sure, and naturally he desired her, but with such ferocity that it rendered him breathless—also wildly uncomfortable in the relevant sectors of his anatomy, which he knew would be forced to wait a considerable time for satisfaction. Miss Luke would not fall easily into his embrace.

  She was at the table again, slicing a chunk of bread from a crusty loaf. She tossed it onto a plate beside a mug of steaming liquid, and the aroma of chicken broth caused his belly to rumble again.

  He was disappointed when she disappeared into the back room, but she soon emerged with a thin straw-filled pallet. Folding it in half, she propped it against the wall at the head of the cot and helped him to sit up. He had to wriggle backward to prop himself against the pallet, and when he did so, the blanket failed to follow him. Nor did he make the slightest effort to help it along. Well, he thought, what man would?

  She blushed to a bright crimson, fixing her gaze well north of where the blanket finally settled. “Pray cover yourself, sir,” she murmured, spinning away from the cot as if it had caught fire.

  “Sorry.” He tugged the blanket to his waist, no farther, enjoying himself immensely.

  He was less pleased when she came back and tossed a towel over his chest. Then she pulled a chair to the cot and sat beside him with the plate on her lap and the mug in her hand. “If I hold the cup, can you feed yourself?”

  He could, of course, but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. “I’ll try, if you wish. But I’m somewhat shaky.” He held out a hand and forced it to tremble. “The aftereffects of laudanum, I expect.”

  She regarded him suspiciously.

  He gave her a look meant to appear earnest, cooperative, and helpless.

  She wasn’t convinced, he knew, but with a grumble she began to spoon up the soup. It was unexpectedly delicious, a hearty barley broth containing a few bits of stringy chicken, potato, and turnip. She concentrated fixedly on what she was doing, never meeting his gaze, and each time he tried to speak, she stuffed a wad of bread into his mouth.

  With little left for him to do except to chew and swallow, he focused on her transparent gray eyes and wonderfully shaped lips, the finely carved cheekbones, the slope of her graceful jaw, and her long, glorious neck. Her startling complexion was pure cream whenever she wasn’t blushing, and the sleek, pearly hair outlined the perfect shape of her head.

  Why the devil was such a beauty as this hiding out in the back of beyond, shabbily clothed in male garb and keeping company with a veiled widow? She wasn’t about to tell him, that was certain, but he suspected that she was as curious about him as he was about her. If she asked questions, though, that would give him an opening to do the same. So she pretended indifference, and he pretended helplessness, and the air between them grew overheated.

  When the mug was empty she erupted from the chair, apparently forgetting about the plate on her lap because it tumbled to the floor. She left it there and went over to the owl. “Let’s take a walk, Fidgets.”

  The owl fluttered down to her shoulder and they left the cottage.

  Kit erupted in laughter. Oh, she was obstinate, that one. But he could outstubborn her and pare his toenails at the same time. Obstinacy ran in his family.

  Lucy stomped a good long way before realizing that she couldn’t see where she was going. Dense fog covered her body like a lover’s embrace—

  Oh, my. Wherever had such an image come from?

  She halted, stunned by the path her wild thoughts had taken. With a sharp pull, she reined them in. Fog was fog. Fog had nothing whatever to do with lovers. And for that matter, neither did she.

  Kit had got on her already inflamed nerves, that was all. She was snapping at dust balls these days. And really, he was the most annoying man on the face of the earth. He had deliberately set himself to rile her up, and she had given him the satisfaction of seeing her thoroughly riled.

  “I am a complete idiot,” she said.

  Fidgets made a sympathetic noise.

  “You will do well to stay clear of him,” she advised. “Mind you, I am speaking as an idiot, and I know your kind are reputed to be wise. Nevertheless, take a lesson from my own sorry behavior, Fidgets, and direct your affections to a creature who is capable of returning them. Which does not, by the way, include a certain smuggler of our acquaintance.”

  The owl nuzzled her scalp with its beak.

  And now I am talking to a bird, she thought, wholly disgusted with herself.

  But what else was there to do? A good healthy walk to dispel her churning energy was out of the question in this weather. She dared not risk the precipitous descent to the cave, where Diana was isolated with the horse and her own thoughts, and she couldn’t use the stairs while Kit was awake.

  Above all, she must not return to the cottage. Not yet.

  So she stood in place for a long time and told Fidgets stories about the five recalcitrant boys in her charge, never mind that the owl had heard them all before.

  Until now she hadn’t realized how often she confided in the stubby assemblage of feathers and claws. Except for Diana, with whom she had exchanged only a few letters before the last of them begged for her help and brought her north, she had no other friends. Most times she was kept too busy to notice, of course. How came it that her loneliness, her longing for things she could never have, so forcibly struck her at a time when she had more responsibilities than ever to distract her?

  Before he sent her wits begging, she had firmly intended to ask Kit for an explanation of what she had muddled into last night. She must discover if he and the other smugglers had been aiming for her cave before they were accosted on the sands. Instead, she had staggered out into the fog, weak-kneed and vibrating with absurd, wholly inappropriate female vapors—she didn’t know what else to call them—and now here she was. Accomplishing nothing.

  Well, she was getting wet and cold.

  That was something, she decided, and enough of an accomplishment for her to order her feet to start moving again. For several minutes she stumbled about in the fog, but eventually she ran directly into the tree stump where she had parked Kit fewer than eight hours before.

  How very odd. She felt as if she had known him for a lifetime.

  When the plain fact was, she didn’t even know his full name.

  At least she knew her way from here to the cottage. Fidgets took French leave when she arrived at the door, off on important owl business, she supposed, inconsiderately abandoning her to face Kit all by herself.

  Where was an owl when a person really needed one?

  Stiffening her spine, she raised the latch and entered the cottage.

  Kit was sitting where she’d left him, but he hadn’t been there the entire time she was gone. At the very least he’d made his way to the table and back, because he was greedily gnawing his wa
y through the heel end of the bread loaf. The towel she had placed over his bare chest lay in a heap on the floor.

  She jabbed a finger in his direction. “You are devouring Mrs. Preston’s breakfast, sir.”

  “Where is Mrs. Preston?” he inquired with a full mouth.

  “That’s none of your business. But when she returns, she’ll have nothing to eat.”

  His face looked contrite, but his eyes were dancing. “In that case, I am truly sorry. She has no taste, I gather, for what is contained in those jars on the shelf?”

  Insufferable man! Lucy couldn’t imagine why she had a sudden urge to laugh. “You must be feeling better if you can wolf an entire loaf of bread.”

  “To the contrary.” He sank an inch or two on the folded pallet. “I was feeling frailer than a lightskirt’s virtue, so I rolled off the cot and crawled to the table and forced myself to take some nourishment. You are meant to be awed by my courage and impressed by my initiative.”

  “How unfortunate for you, then, that I am only vexed by your effrontery.” She mustered the courage to approach the chair beside his cot but lacked the resolve to seat herself. Propping one hand on the chair back for support, she focused her gaze on the wall directly above his head. “If you have no objections, sir, I wish to discuss the events of last night.”

  “Certainly.” He popped the last nugget of bread in his mouth. “Anything to oblige. What do you wish to know?”

  She decided that she trusted him least of all when he was being cooperative. “That is perfectly clear, sir. What you were doing, and where you were going, and why you were shot.”

  “Well, that’s simple enough then. My companions and I were, shall we say, importing a few bottles of wine and spirits when we were rudely interrupted by a pack of thugs. Being gentlemen, and also because they were pointing guns at us, we graciously offered them our cargo.” He gave her a speculative look. “You cannot have been far away, Miss Luke. Did you not see all this for yourself?”

  “I was on the cliff, and it was exceedingly dark. Mostly I saw lanterns and shadows. Some of them began running in one direction and some went more slowly in the other, leading what I assume were pack animals. But I’d no idea what was transpiring, I assure you.”

  “Ah.” He folded his uninjured arm behind his head. “So long as you are still on your feet, would it be too much trouble to fetch me something to drink?”

  “Not at all.” It was a relief to escape across the room, truth be told. Looking at him made it infernally difficult to pay attention to anything else. “But do proceed with your story, sir. What was your destination before the thugs appeared?”

  “What’s that to the point? We never got there, did we?”

  “Indulge me.” In fact, this was the only piece of information she required of him, but it wouldn’t do to say so.

  “If you must know,” he said amiably, “we were headed to a spot just north of the Keer Channel. We’d have taken a more direct route, but with the tide due to turn, we elected to move closer to shore and follow the coastline.”

  “I see.” Her hands were trembling as she filled a tankard with ale. “You understand my concern, sir. If criminals are operating in this vicinity, it will not be safe for Mrs. Preston to remain here in the cottage.”

  “She is in no danger from the general run of smugglers, you may be sure. Since the war embargoes ended, most are common folk who mean only to stock their cellars without paying import tariffs. The real criminals have moved on to more profitable ventures.”

  “Those were not real criminals firing bullets last night?”

  “I’ve no idea who they were,” he admitted, all trace of amusement in his voice gone. “Come sit beside me, Luke. I’ll give you a plain tale, and a truthful one. You are entitled to that much, after placing your own life in danger by coming to my rescue.”

  Reserving judgment on how much truth she was likely to hear, she gave him the tankard and sat on the chair with her hands folded in her lap.

  He took a long swallow of ale. “I pretty much abandoned the midnight trade at war’s end, and was a mere dabbler before that. But I’m always ripe for a bit of excitement and chanced to meet up with three Lancashire lads in a pub house several nights ago. After a few togs of ale, they confided their plans to transport a load of goods across the sands, if only they could locate a carter willing to mark the way without betraying them to the constable. It happens I am friendly with one such, so we all joined forces.”

  “What precisely is a carter?”

  “You are not a local then? Well, it’s a dangerous business, crossing the sands. Morecambe Bay is much like a saucer, enormous but shallow. You have seen how it empties when the tide goes out. But four rivers and four smaller streams drain into the bay, and the courses of their channels are continually changing. The push and pull of the tide also creates sandbanks and areas of virtual quicksand, never at the same places from one day to the next. A carter is a guide, someone who has made it his profession to ride out when the tide has ebbed and mark a safe crossing with birch branches. Folks have been using the sands as a shortcut for centuries, and I understand the first guides were all from a family by the name of Carter.” He grinned. “Well, that was a long answer to a short question. Where was I in my story before I wandered off?”

  “You were drinking in a pub,” she said tartly. “And plotting with smugglers.”

  “Nice chaps,” he corrected, “and farmers by trade. This was their first venture into the business, and they’d little idea what they were about. They had got so far as to take delivery of the shipment but feared to use the land route to carry it from Furness to their destination. That was what caught my attention. No one patrols the roads these days, for smuggling is no longer of real concern to the authorities. Indeed, that is precisely why I lost interest in the profession—no challenge to it anymore.”

  “Good heavens. You broke the law because it amused you to do so?”

  “That would be a fair assessment. But we digress. My new confederates told me they had heard of several caravans being ambushed by a band of armed hooligans. I made further inquiries among the suppliers—the fellows who transport the contraband across the Channel—and learned the attacks had begun only a few months ago. They are none too pleased, because the amateurs who have been buying their shipments are losing heart and reneging on their contracts.”

  “I believe, sir, I am learning more about smuggling than I really need to know.”

  He laughed. “Don’t forget you were the one who insisted on this topic to begin with. I’d much rather talk about you, and where you come from, and what you are doing—”

  “Never mind that!” she snapped, heat searing her cheeks. “I presume the thugs who accosted you were the same ones who have been making trouble elsewhere. But how did they know when and where you would be crossing the sands?”

  “Does it matter? I was in this for a lark, moonbeam. If thugs are robbing smugglers, someone else will have to get to the bottom of it. To be sure, I hope one day to meet up again with the rascal who shot me. There will be a reckoning then, I promise you. But otherwise, I care nothing for the hows and whys of last night’s misadventure. It is done with.”

  She couldn’t decide what she thought of his indifference to an attack during which he might well have died. In his place, she’d not have rested until she solved the mystery and saw the perpetrators hauled off to prison. Bad people should be made to pay for their crimes, or so she had always believed.

  “Would you rather I were a bloodthirsty sort of fellow?” Kit inquired amiably. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. But revenge, you know, is a great waste of time. No one gains from it, the avenger least of all. And besides, why would anyone choose to dwell in the past when the future is ever so much more promising?”

  “Is it?” Lucy no sooner spoke than she wished the words unsaid. They came out of their own accord, and now she could only hope that Kit did not take their meaning. She hurried to change the subject. �
�How came the man to shoot you, sir? Did you provoke him?”

  When an entire minute passed without a reply, she dragged her gaze to his face.

  It was expressionless, but he regarded her steadily from those disconcerting blue eyes. “I wondered if you ever meant to look at me again, moonbeam.”

  “C-certainly. Whenever there is any need to do so.” She ordered her hands to stop clawing at each other. “But you have not answered my questions.”

  “I’ll start with the first one then,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

  He was holding her gaze so firmly that she could not tear it away, however hard she tried. She understood well enough which question he was answering, of course. “If you say so,” she said lightly. “On to number two.”

  Kit shook his head. “Have it your way, my dear. For now. We shall speak again on the subject another day. As for why the scoundrel shot me, I can tell you only what happened. The robbers have never done violence before, so far as I know. In any case, this chap seemed to be in charge of the others. After directing them to make off with the donkeys, he took hold of Jason’s bridle and tried to lead him to shore. Jason was out of temper already, mind you. He’s not accustomed to being put to haul a wagon and he don’t like it worth a fig. So he bit the impertinent fellow.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed. That earned him a swat across the muzzle. Naturally I went after the man who had just hit my horse, but my foot hit a patch of wet sand and sank in directly as he pulled the trigger. The bullet propelled me backward, Jason jolted at the blast of gunfire, a box fell off the wagon and landed atop m’foot; everyone who was still there and able to run, ran off, and there you have it. At the conclusion Jason was still hitched to the wagon and I was trapped under the box, which was how you found us when you came to my rescue.”

  “A botched job all around,” she said, regarding him with a distinct lack of pleasure. “No one involved in this idiotic enterprise can be pleased with the outcome. I certainly am not. And you are under a misapprehension, sir. I did not come to your rescue. I came out on the sands to rescue the horse.”