by Jane Feather
ELIZABETH ELLIOTT
ELIZABETH ELLIOTT is the national bestselling author of three novels and one novella, all published by Bantam Books. Her first novel, The Warlord, won Waldenbooks’ Bestselling Debut Romance Novel award, and the Romance Writers of America RITA award for Best First Book, Publishers Weekly called her second novel, Scoundrel, “… an exciting story filled with dramatic tension and sexual fireworks,” and Romantic Times recently nominated her third novel, Betrothed, for the Reviewer’s Choice Historical Romance of the Year. Elliott’s newest full-length novel, The Assassin, returns readers to her popular medieval settings to tell a story that the author describes as “A bit like a medieval version of The Bodyguard meets The Saint,” coming soon. Ms. Elliott lives on a chain of lakes in Minnesota with her husband and two sons, and for an amazing portion of the year, a lot of snow.
CHAPTER ONE
Cornwall, England, 1830
HOLLY HASTINGS SHIVERED in the bitter cold of the night, but the tremors came from fear far more than the icy winds.
Her da and brother were crazy to be out this night. And she was just as cod-headed for disobeying her da’s order to stay home with her mother and for being here standing watch.
Honest men both, Da and Paul had been forced to smuggling. A few shipments only, they said, and they would have enough money for passage to America. Tim Bailey, who had arranged for the shipment, had promised to keep the constabulary busy elsewhere.
Holly didn’t trust him, nor the man she believed was backing him—John Haford, the earl of Gatwell. She didn’t trust any of the gentry. But most particularly she didn’t trust the earl.
He’d known they were desperate for money. Her mother was sick and needed to move to a warmer climate, but as tenants they owned nothing to sell, not even the crop Da and Paul worked so hard to cultivate. Their share was scarcely enough to feed them through the winter.
Her da’s one wish was to go to America, where they would have a chance to prosper, to own their own land, and to find the climate her mother needed. So despite the fact that a stranger was in their village, and a regiment of the king’s soldiers was billeted not far away, her da was determined to meet the smugglers and row in the contraband of French brandy.
Holly huddled inside her cloak as she eyed the bleak landscape, with its twisted trees and rough-hewn rocks. A hundred places could conceal the king’s men—or one spy. That could very well be what that tall, dark stranger was, the one who had been dallying at the Kings Cross Arms Inn for the past several days. From the moment she’d first seen him, she’d sensed he was trouble.
She’d run into him as she’d rushed out of the physician’s office with medicine for her ma. She’d smiled, amused by her own awkwardness. Then her gaze had moved upward, pausing on an oak-hard chest before resting on a startlingly handsome face with smoky gray eyes and tousled hair so black it could grace a raven’s wing. She’d felt a quickening of blood, which gave way to foreboding.
In all her nineteen years, she’d never seen colder eyes or a more expressionless face. Neither had softened even when he’d tried to smile in apology. He had righted her with efficiency, had quickly withdrawn his hands as if he’d been burned, but his eyes searched and weighed her all in a second’s time. She couldn’t tell whether he approved or disapproved.
“I’m … sorry, sir,” she’d stuttered.
“No harm done.” His words had sounded automatic, devoid of real meaning. “And I bear fault, too.”
He was obviously a nob. Though his dark clothes were plain, they were made of fine cloth and his speech was that of the gentry. She didn’t see much of his kind in the village, and that made her suspicious.
She’d already heard rumors about him. John Savage, his name was. A gambler by trade, he’d told the innkeeper and thus the village. He was here to collect a large debt from the earl’s son, who was away with his father on a hunting trip. No one questioned the reason. Gatwell’s son, Lord Barkley, was a known wastrel and gambler, and both the earl and his son were notorious for not paying their debts. Were all gamblers’ eyes so cold, Holly wondered, so dangerous-looking?
Yet she felt something else, too. She was seldom tongue-tied, but she seemed unable to do anything but stare up at a face that was stark and uncommonly interesting. Her breath caught in her throat, and her legs didn’t seem to want to move.
“Can I be helping you find someone?” she finally asked.
“No,” he said. He then dipped his head slightly, turned, and headed in another direction.
Holly watched his back as he walked toward the inn. She noticed, for the first time, that he used a cane. He moved stiffly, as if each step was an effort.
Despite that, there was something dominating about him, an air of authority and leadership. He was no ordinary nabob, she decided as her throat tightened in apprehension.
She recalled all that now as she stood high above the cliff, near a path that wound down to the edge of the sea, where her father and brother waited with two other men for a signal from the French ship.
Nothing moved except the wind. The sky was black, the moon and stars smothered by heavy clouds. Below her, she heard the heavy crash of waves against rocks. Even without the fear of exposure, the venture was dangerous. The seas were rough, the rocks unforgiving.
In the darkness of the water, she saw a light, then three quick flashes. At the signal, a small skiff left the narrow strip of beach and started toward the light.
Holly glanced around another time. Seeing nothing amiss, she began her descent. Her da and brother would rage to find her waiting for them, but in the end they would relent. Slender though she was, she sometimes worked the farm and carried buckets of water and seed and sacks of food. Tonight she could help unload the caskets of wine. Another hand would mean less time, and less danger.
Just then, she heard a bleat, and groaning aloud, she looked back over her shoulder. Meandering down the crooked path behind her was Georgette. The goat followed her everywhere, so tonight she’d tied the animal inside her pen with a stout rope. That rope, its end frayed, now trailed the beast. Georgette, named by her father after King George, whom he considered no better than a goat, was an escape artist of note, but tonight was a most irksome time for a demonstration of her talents.
The goat’s bleating was plaintive—and loud—and Holly went over to her and rubbed her ears. Georgette bleated again. She didn’t want affection; she wanted a treat.
“Shh,” Holly said. But Georgette was having none of it. She wanted what she wanted.
Holly sighed. She had hoarded a biscuit from dinner to eat during the watch tonight. But silence was more important than satisfying hunger. She offered the biscuit to Georgette, who accepted the treat as no more than her due.
“Be still,” she whispered to the goat. She couldn’t go all the way home, not the nearly two miles there and another two back. After consideration, she tied Georgette to a small oak sapling; the goat had a tendency to butt everyone, including herself, and she wanted no more surprises this night. Then once again she carefully started her descent.
The path was treacherous, and she slipped several times before gaining the sandy beach. She thought she might have ripped her cloak, threadbare as it was.
The beach was deserted, only the slap of waves against rocks audible in the night air. The darkness was broken by the flicker of a lantern tucked in a hollowed-out shelf of the cliff to guide her father, Paul, and the others—a father and son who owned a rickety skiff they used for fishing.
What would she and her mother do if anything happened to Da and her brother? If they were caught and died at the end of a rope? The four of them had always been so close. Her mother’s privileged childhood had, in some subtle way, isolated them from the other tenants, as had her insistence that her children receive a sound education. She had worked in the fields alongside her husband until her health had crumbled, and Paul had had to end his studies with the vicar. But Holly had continued hers, at her mother’s
insistence. She wanted a better life for her daughter, had hoped she might obtain a position as a governess. But her mother’s sickness had precluded Holly’s leaving home.
As long as Holly could remember, every member of her family had sacrificed for the others, all except her. They had not allowed her to take a job as a servant at Gatwell’s estate, no matter how much she’d begged. She had tried to do what she could, taking on all the household duties and occasional farm chores.
Tonight, she was determined to do more.
She heard the splash of oars against water. The skiff appeared as a blot against the ocean, its bow barely out of the water. She saw the outline of barrels piled high and realized the danger. The king’s preventive men—the law officers charged with stopping smuggling—now seemed the least of the perils risked by her father and Paul. The sea was just as dangerous to those in an overloaded boat.
Her brother and Ted Conley jumped from the boat, splashing up on the beach and pulling the skiff up onto the sand by long, thick ropes. Her father and Ted’s father, Ethan, followed, joining their sons in tugging the skiff farther up onto the sand.
Finally satisfied, they dropped the ropes and her father went to a small recess between two jutting cliffs. He dug into the sand with a shovel he’d carried from the boat, then pulled off a wide board covering a vast hole.
Holly stepped out then. Ted Conley saw her first, and he swore before his father cut it off with a sharp reprimand. Then her father and Paul approached her.
“What are you doing here, girl?” her father said harshly. He never called her girl. It was always Holly or daughter or some term of endearment.
She shivered under his withering anger, but then straightened her back stubbornly.
“I thought I could help. You could use more hands, and I’m strong.”
“Go home, Holly. Go now. Don’t you know how dangerous this is?”
Paul, as always, interceded for her. “Now that she’s here …”
Ethan Conley shifted on his feet. “We don’t have time to argue. We’ll just barely beat dawn as it is. Demmed Frenchies were late.”
Her da gave her a long look, which told her she would hear more of this later, then turned away. He started for the skiff and picked up a barrel. The others followed with Holly going last. The keg was far heavier than a sack of seed, but she was aware of eyes on her and she wouldn’t be found wanting. Using every ounce of strength, she managed to heft the keg to her shoulder as the others did. Her body bowed under the load, and she staggered to the hole. Paul was inside, taking them and stacking them. One, then another. A third. She thought her body would break.
Just when she was unloading her fourth, Ted Conley stumbled and the keg he was carrying fell, the wood shattering and brandy spilling over the sand.
“Clean that up, Holly,” her father said. “Bury signs of the brandy and the staves.”
She stooped down, picking up the new-looking staves. Then her hand found something else. A small bottle. What was it doing in a keg of brandy?
“I can use some help down here,” her brother called out, and Holly slipped the bottle into her pocket for later inspection. She finished her task of wiping away all signs of the broken keg, then joined her brother in the man-made cave, moving kegs to make room for more. It was easier work, and the hours passed swiftly. When the last keg was stashed away, she helped fit a piece of wood over the cache, then cover it with sand.
“Now it’s Bailey’s business,” her father said before facing her. “You can go back with us in the skiff.”
She shook her head. “Georgette is up there. She followed me.”
Paul chuckled. “Worse than a dog, that goat. I’m surprised she didn’t come down to the beach.”
“I tied her up there,” she said.
Her father nodded. “The walk back is safe enough, probably safer than the sea,” he said. “You go on now, and meet us at the cottage.”
She needed no more urging. She was soaked through to the skin, and every bone in her body ached. She turned, but her father’s hand caught her. “You were a help, Holly, but don’t do this again. If anything happened to you …”
She nodded, then started up the path, a sense of worth and satisfaction coursing through her. She had helped. And she hadn’t dropped a keg. Pleased with herself, she reached the top of the cliff and headed toward the spot where she’d left Georgette.
She glanced around. The moor seemed as it had been, quiet and deserted. Yet she sensed something was wrong. A crackling tension struck her and ran down her spine like lightning.
Georgette! She wasn’t munching happily, but stood with her ears cocked, her body stiff. The wind had stifled bleats of distress but now Holly heard them.
She had a sudden impulse to flee, but she couldn’t leave Georgette. Fear made her legs quiver as she took one step, then another, aware now that she and Georgette were not alone.
To confirm that fact, a figure stepped from underneath a tree. “It’s a bloody poor night for a walk,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
IT SEEMED HE had waited forever.
Justin Talmadge had spent the last few hours stretched out on the rocks above the beach, watching the activity beneath him, planning his next move. Finally, he was close to getting Gatwell.
He had learned to be a patient man over the years, but he’d waited so long for this chance. So bloody long that he was breaking his own code. He was going to use innocents to catch his prey.
The night fit his mood: dark and brooding and menacing. A night for smuggling, a night for deception and fear and, if he was lucky, retribution that was too long in coming.
As one of Prime Minister Wellington’s agents, he was seeking proof of criminal acts by the earl of Gatwell. The prime minister wanted Gatwell’s hide, but no more so than Justin. He had his own private reasons, and he’d spent almost half his life chasing the bastard. Now, at last, he hoped he had Gatwell by the throat. The earl needed money, badly enough, Justin hoped, to take chances he’d never taken before. Rumors had it that the earl was now engaged in smuggling. The man was careful, never allowing one part of his illegal operations to know what the other parts were doing. What Justin needed was to turn the earl’s henchmen back on him. If one person talked, he would lead to another, then another….
Everyone who’d ever worked for, or with, Gatwell had paid heavily for that dubious honor, often at the price of their own lives. He didn’t want to see that happen to the young woman who’d nearly knocked him down in the village.
Yet even as he’d followed the sound of the goat, which led him to her, and to the scene beneath the cliffs, he knew he would use her. It was his only chance to succeed. He tried not to think of her large green eyes and copper hair and that smile that had an enchantment all its own.
Holly Hastings. He’d asked about her after their encounter that morning. The question hadn’t raised any eyebrows, since she was a pretty thing.
The girl’s name had interested him. He’d heard the Hastings name in the tavern, whispered as looking for someone to help with a night’s work. And her first name was unusual in Cornwall. The people here had simple Biblical names such as Mary and Sarah, John and Peter.
But Holly fit the girl. It had a lilt that matched the mischief in her eyes and the smile on her lips. Even he, who had trained his heart not to betray him, had been momentarily beguiled.
Now tension curled his stomach. He didn’t like the idea of confronting her, of frightening her. But he had no choice.
He watched the girl stiffen, take a step backward as if to ward off a blow. Then she appeared to force herself to relax. Ignoring him, she went directly to the goat. “So there you are,” she crooned. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He admired her bravado. He had meant to surprise her into giving him answers he wanted to hear, but she was too quick-witted. He worked at putting sarcasm in his next comment. “She tied herself to that tree?”
She trembled slightly and he realized she w
asn’t quite so sure of herself. He felt a momentary sympathy. Bloody hell, more than that. He also felt guilt. He tried to brush it aside. He couldn’t afford guilt at this point.
“Georgette often gets herself tangled in a tree when she tries to eat its leaves,” she said, not looking at him.
“Very good, Miss Hastings,” he said. “I’m impressed. I might even accept it, if you hadn’t climbed down that path and back again.”
“I enjoy watching the sea at night.” She untied the goat, rubbed its ears in apparent indifference.
Justin stepped closer, and he could almost feel her fear now. He had to cultivate that fear, even as he despised himself for being a bully.
“How long have you been smuggling, Miss Hastings?” he asked coolly.
Her shoulders slumped, and she turned to look at him then. The clouds slid from the moon and he saw that she was afraid of him, saw that her hands trembled. He found himself wanting to take her in his arms and comfort her, rather than scare the wits from her.
“I haven’t—”
He put a finger to her mouth. “No lies, Miss Hastings. They’re most unproductive.”
She tried to move away, but he clasped her wrist.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I mean you and your family no harm,” he said, then added in a cold voice meant to intimidate, “if you’ll help me.”
Her words had a desperate edge to them. “Are you a preventive man?”
“No,” he said flatly and saw her relax slightly.
“Then what? Why are you here? What do you want?”
“Lord Gatwell,” he answered. “Help me, and I’ll make sure your family isn’t hurt.”
“I don’t … understand.”