The Cornish Heiress

by Roberta Gellis

  There both girls, still sobbing intermittently with shock and fear—and perhaps a little for dramatic effect—threw themselves at him, hailing him as their savior. Nothing could be done in their presence, because they shrieked every time Monsieur Fresnoy or the police chief asked a sensible question or Philip tried to answer. Nor would they consent to being left alone. Fortunately Monsieur Fresnoy had had the good sense to send for Jeannine’s parents. Her mother took charge of the shrieking “maidens” and the men were left in peace.

  Everyone was exceedingly shocked at what had happened. There was the trouble with the thieves, of course, but that had subsided considerably after Bonaparte’s severities in the Vendée. Moreover, they were rebels who operated in larger groups and were not known to attack carriages on the road. Usually their raids were directed against well-to-do farmers or businesses whose owners were known to support the government. As for common highwaymen—it was most peculiar that they should be on the road to Ambleteuse, which was not heavily traveled and would be, in a general way, slim pickings.

  Since Philip did not dare mention the kind of establishment they had been visiting, he kept his mouth shut at first, although he knew it was common enough for a “madame” to work with a gang of thieves. Then another common connection of those who kept bawdy houses leapt into Philip’s mind. Surely here on the coast such a place would be in league with smugglers. No “madame” in her right mind would pay the tax on the wine she served, and the clinging, transparent Indian muslins were just the kind of thing a procuress would use to clothe her girls. True, Philip had not seen any “girls” at the house, but it was logical they would be kept out of the way when the place was used for an assignation. Thank God, there was his reason for leaving Boulogne. Philip assumed a worried frown.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I am afraid that I might be the cause of this attack. Monsieur Fresnoy knows that, by accident, I came across and exposed a smuggler’s cache. Could it be that this was an attempt of the gang I discommoded to punish me? I did not speak of it before because I had no proof and did not wish to seem like a nervous fool, but when I came to dinner in this house yesterday I had the distinct impression that I was followed from my lodging.”

  This proposal became a matter for lively argument and speculation, Philip adding this and that remark, trying to encourage the notion without seeming to do so. In fact the idea did not seem so farfetched to him as the discussion went forward. He remembered that Désirée had told his story to the First Consul in the dockyards in full hearing of at least half a dozen workmen and probably a great many others who had found a reason to pass close by in order to see Bonaparte. Eventually everyone seemed convinced that Philip’s suggestion was the likeliest explanation.

  “I do not wish to seem a coward,” he remarked then, “but I begin to think that the wisest thing I could do is return to Paris. I have only a few days more of leave in any case, and these men seem to be quite without scruples. Mesdemoiselles Désirée and Jeannine could have been injured in this stupid attempt.”

  As he said it Philip realized that if he had not resisted there would have been little danger to the women. Obviously the men had not expected him to be armed. That first one had approached without the slightest caution. Perhaps if they were smugglers they would have pulled him out of the carriage and beaten him or killed him as a lesson. The women would have been permitted to continue on unhurt, although they might have been robbed.

  However Philip was certainly not going to voice this idea, and if it occurred to anyone else, he did not mention it either. The two fathers in particular fell on his suggestion with joy. His continued presence in Boulogne could only cause them either embarrassment or danger. No doubt their daughters would insist on entertaining the “hero”. To refuse would be churlish; to agree might draw unwelcome notice to them from the smugglers, who did not seem to stop at violence. The Chief of Police hesitated fractionally, wondering whether Philip might be useful as bait, but actually he was not eager to tangle with the smugglers either. It was not impossible that too-close investigation would reveal things he did not wish to know. Soon all were in agreement that the interests of peace and safety would best be served by Philip’s departure.

  He spoke his regrets with an appearance of sincerity that was all the more convincing because of his passionate relief. He was ready, he said, to leave at once. He hoped they would be so eager to be rid of him that they would agree. No one could doubt his courage or think he was running away to save himself—not after the men the police chief had sent out returned with the two dead bodies. The man with broken legs was gone; they had not sought him in the dark. For that Philip was grateful. If the man had confessed that the group were simply highwaymen, his opportunity to depart would have been ruined. As it was, they would not hear of his going in the dark, and Philip had to wait until morning.

  To his disgust the police chief insisted on having him guarded and escorted out of town. Philip tried to protest that he could take care of himself. This was acknowledged as true, with some laughter and head shaking, but the police chief said he hoped another attempt would be made so that they could capture some of the men. Philip’s methods of self-defense were too permanent. He was spared taking leave of Désirée and Jeannine, however. Their fathers felt it would be too harrowing for the girls to be reminded of their horrifying experience, and Philip agreed with most insincere regrets.

  Fortunately the road to Paris and the road to Brittany were identical as far as Abbeville, and his escort only accompanied him as far as Montreuil. Philip had no more difficulty returning to Monsieur Luroec’s farm than he had had getting to Boulogne. It was a shame, he thought more than once as he rode through the peaceful countryside, that Bonaparte could not be satisfied to rule France without wishing to swallow up the rest of the world. He had done enormous good for the country in the few years he had dominated it.

  Philip was a little concerned that his presence at the farm would be noticed, since he was supposed to be in Paris at his desk and a good many people in the area knew him now. However, his luck remained good. Pierre was actually in his own house when Philip arrived. That was not as much luck as it seemed, although Pierre did not confess it to Philip; he had made only one trip after bringing Philip to France. After that he had sat home and worried. It was a greater relief to Pierre than to Philip when the young man was guided safely through the dark without anyone but Monsieur Luroec and his daughter knowing anything about it.

  The reunion was all the more joyful because of Pierre’s past fears. All he had thought about for several weeks was that something would go wrong and he would have the unenviable task of telling Roger that his son was dead. Now he could really listen to what Philip had done and how he had done it and enjoy the adventure without feeling a sick anxiety under his encouraging exterior. He took such a delight in Philip’s cleverness that he insisted on hearing every detail, including how he had made out with Monsieur Fresnoy’s daughter.

  On this subject Philip was relatively reticent, but his expression and the things he did not say, coupled with his description of Jeannine’s “aunt’s” establishment, which he had to give to make the story of the smugglers-highwaymen comprehensible, told the whole tale clearly enough. Pierre laughed his head off, pooh-poohing Philip’s slightly nervous feeling that things were going entirely too well and that when the penny dropped, it would go right through the floor. Luck, Pierre insisted, was made by cleverness and care, by foresight and planning. And even when chance threw misfortune in one’s way, skill and a cool head could save the day.

  This latter remark was put severely to the test when they set sail for England a few days later. It was a fine, calm day with just enough wind to make good headway, and they crossed the Channel in excellent time. Here, however, misfortune was thrown in their way. Some alarm must have alerted the British fleet. It seemed, just when they were too far to put safely back to France, that every ship in the navy was scouring the Channel. Not that the
y were looking for the Bonne Lucie, but they were looking. Pierre flipped the Pretty Lucy signboards over the French name and ran up the Union Jack, but they really could not afford to be stopped and questioned—not with a crew of Frenchmen and a hold full of brandy and tobacco. They spent the night running and dodging, and between their speed and skill escaped challenge.

  Philip would almost have preferred that they were captured to what actually happened. He had the papers that would identify him and free Pierre, and they probably would have been brought to shore at Falmouth. As it was, they dodged about all the following day, and by night they were much too far east to make a signal to the cliff house for Meg in the allotted time. To add to their troubles a brisk westerly sprang up, which grew fiercer and fiercer until it was clear that they could not make port either in Lamorna Cove or at The Mousehole. It was too dangerous to thread the rock-fanged Cornish coast in the dark with such a wind blowing.

  It was also too dangerous to idle about all the next day where such a concentration of naval vessels was patrolling. Pierre gave up and allowed his ship to run before the wind. It was hoped that, if the navy was concentrating off the Cornish coast for some reason, the Kentish coast would be free. Philip knew he should be glad of Pierre’s decision. It would permit him to bring his information to the Foreign Office a full week sooner. Nonetheless he could have wept with frustration. He had been looking forward so much to seeing Meg, even if it was only for a few hours. He did not care whether they had time to make love. He just wanted to see her, to smile at her and have her smile at him, to tell her he was safe and would soon be back to make her his own for good.

  The settled fixity of that purpose both startled Philip and soothed him. Ever since Falmouth he had intended to make his relationship with Meg permanent, but the idea had been vague and nebulous, something to be considered seriously only after he was back from France. Now he was back, and his brief experience with Désirée had clarified and reinforced his desire for Meg. The trouble was that the unformed notion that he “would manage something” evaporated with the other vagueness.

  Philip had no time for more than a bare glimpse of the complexities involved in arranging such a relationship. Maneuvers such as Pierre had carried out to avoid the ships they had sighted required every hand, and Philip had been as busy and as exhausted as any other member of the crew before they made a safe haven at Kingsdown. There Pierre had paused no longer than necessary to set Philip ashore. He would beat back across the narrow strait to the French side, he told Philip, and wait in safety until whatever emergency had made the navy as thick as flies over bad meat subsided.

  “If I am not there before you, when you get back to Cornwall, tell Meg, I am safe in England and I will come to her as soon as I can finish my business,” were Philip’s last words as they parted.

  However, after he had got to Stour, where Leonie and his father should be established for a few weeks at this season of the year, any hope of preceding Pierre to Cornwall faded. He found only Leonie in residence. At first this did not surprise him. As Roger’s involvement with the government of the nation at large had become deeper and had taken more and more of his time, Leonie had assumed the management of their estates. There were, of course, bailiffs and estate factors, but Leonie had seen too vividly the results of absentee ownership in her native France. She not only checked the accounts herself but personally made the rounds of the tenant farmers to be sure there was no discrepancy between the bailiff’s reports and the actuality.

  The violence of Leonie’s joy in greeting gave Philip a hint that there was more to the separation than he originally thought. And when Leonie immediately made ready to accompany him back to London, Philip realized that their anxiety over him had been so acute that his father and stepmother had, probably for the first time in their married lives, been more comfortable apart than together. Not that Philip thought either blamed the other for allowing him to go; only together they could not leave the subject alone, and each infected and reinfected the other with fear.

  Philip was aware, of course, of how dearly he was loved by his father and stepmother, but this new evidence brought their devotion into renewed sharp focus and added to the problem of his relationship with Meg. The one deep sorrow of his father’s and stepmother’s marriage was that Leonie was apparently barren. The situation had been eased by his presence and by the recovery, soon after Leonie and Roger were married, of her Uncle Joseph’s younger daughter, Sabrina. But Sabrina was God-knew-where with her diplomat husband, and she was a worry also. Philip had guessed that Leonie was not as happy with Sabrina’s marriage as she should be.

  William, Sabrina’s husband, was the best of good fellows, but perhaps he was a bit too good-looking, and Philip knew William had been rather heavily into the petticoat line. Since Philip had been oriented in the same direction, he could not afford to criticize William—only William preferred the excitement of an “affair” to the simpler satisfaction of buying his pleasure. After he had declared himself to Sabrina, that had stopped naturally. It was obvious enough that William couldn’t look at anyone else once he’d seen Sabrina. But now that he had her…

  Was William finding marriage too tame? Mindful of painful, and embarrassing entanglements, Philip (except for one experience) had confined his dalliance to paid companions, but William seemed actually to take pleasure in the alarms and excursions of illicit love affairs. Probably that was what worried Leonie. Of course, if Sabrina never knew… Anyway, Philip wished most sincerely that Sabrina would get with child and stop traipsing around with her husband. That would solve a lot of problems. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, and Leonie would be so concentrated on the forthcoming child that, with luck, she wouldn’t worry about him.

  Even as the thought went through his mind, Philip knew it was ridiculous. Leonie’s heart was bigger than her whole body. There was room for everyone in it and unfortunately fear is proportional to love. It wasn’t her concern for him that Philip was trying to deflect; it was the desire she had, and his father too—although neither had ever said a word about it—for him to produce children. Meg’s children? Philip felt sick. How could he present the children of a maidservant, a female smuggler, to the St. Eyres and the daughter of the Earl of Stour?

  All the way to London that unpalatable question rattled around in Philip’s head. Various expedients passed through his mind. Some disgusted him; some he knew Meg could not or would not accept. It was an enormous relief to be plunged, hardly half an hour after his father’s ecstatic greeting, into a whirlwind of reports and questions.

  It took over a week and about ten different people had a go at him, including the past Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt, who, it was thought, might soon be back in office. Philip felt as if his brain had been picked apart, but a good deal more was found in it than he had realized was there, so he could not complain. Besides, everyone was so happy, so complimentary; he was not actually called the savior of his nation, but no one hid the fact that the information he had brought back—directly from the source—was as important as it was unpalatable. Moreover, when the extensive probing was finished and all departments felt they had drained him dry, Lord Hawkesbury handed him a draft on the Bank of England that struck him mute.

  This was fortunate, because if Philip had had the use of his tongue he would have protested and handed it back. He had never thought of himself as a paid spy. As it was, Hawkesbury, who did understand what he felt and for once knew that talking would only make the situation more uncomfortable, gently shoved him out of the office. Philip then voiced his protest to his father, at whose town house he had been staying for convenience. Roger laughed at him.

  “I am paid for my services. Lord Nelson is paid for his. So is everyone, down to the drummer boys. You have performed a service, a most necessary one, and have done it well.”

  “Very well,” Philip agreed, after a moment’s thought. “I can return Leonie’s money, then.”

  “Don’t you dare, you
idiot,” Roger exclaimed. “You’ll hurt her feelings. You could buy her a pretty trinket. She’d like that—but not too expensive. That would worry her. By the way, do you remember that letter you sent about Jean de Tréport?”

  “Yes.”

  Philip did remember it, but it seemed very far in the past now, and all he really remembered vividly was Meg trembling in his arms after the fight was over. Meg should never have been involved in such a thing. Again he was flooded by anxiety for her. How could be have left her so lightheartedly? He had to get back and get her out of this smuggling business. It was an effort to wrench his mind from that to what his father was saying.

  “Naturally we started an investigation as soon as I reported. It is still continuing, although not much has been discovered. Either de Tréport was operating individually, reporting only to one man who was clever about not being seen with him, or he covered his tracks very carefully. However, one odd thing turned up. Henri d’Onival who was known to spend a lot of time with the young men who worked at the Horse Guards, was found murdered in Hyde Park a few days after your letter arrived. He wasn’t a known associate of de Tréport, but they did know each other.”

  “You think d’Onival was involved too?”

  “I think so—yes. He hadn’t been seen in London during the entire period in which de Tréport was missing, and neither of them was at any of the country houses they were known to frequent either.”

  “But that would have made three—”

  “No,” Roger interrupted. “There’s virtually no chance that the man you shot outside of Exeter was actually a French agent. He may have been hired to kill or rob you, but equally likely he was just an ordinary rank rider on the high toby.” Roger laughed at the expression on Philip’s face. “Don’t bother to feel guilty. You just exterminated some vermin. He was well known in the area and badly wanted. You saved the country the cost of a trial and a hanging by killing him.”