My Lord Deceived

by King, Rebecca

  MY LORD DECEIVED

  The Star Elite

  Book Six

  By

  Rebecca King

  My Lord Deceived

  Rebecca King

  Copyright 2014 by Rebecca King

  Smashwords Edition © Rebecca King 2014

  Cover Design by Melody Simmons of eBookindiecovers

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Heads up!”

  The busy hustle and bustle around the harbour paused for one brief moment as the warning echoed around the houses. Within seconds everyone burst into a flurry of activity that left the streets empty within the blink of an eye. Shutters were slammed closed. Washing lines were gathered in. Children who were joyfully playing in the street were picked up bodily by their mothers and swept inside. Doors were locked and bolted, and shops were shut by anxious shop keepers who hastily trapped some unfortunate customers inside.

  Silence descended upon the small fishing port of Bentney on Sea, while everyone waited with nervous anticipation.

  Catherine ‘Kat’ Baird hurried the last few feet to her front door. Her mind ran frantically over the problems within the fisherman’s cottage she called home. She closed the door quietly behind her and took a deep, fortifying breath. Although she couldn’t see the excise men, she could hear them call to each other as they began their inspection of the village. She closed out the sound of the heavy pounding on the first door further up the hill and began to pray.

  She hated the excise officers and everything they stood for. Especially Mr Harrison, the Chief Excise Officer for the area. The man was arrogant and smarmy. He knew that he made her uncomfortable, and seemed to enjoy it. He usually took great delight in sweeping his cold, dispassionate blue eyes over her and it made Kat immediately want to go and wash. She didn’t need to be able to see him to recognise that snobbish drawl of his as he ordered his men to leave no stone unturned in their search for smuggled goods.

  Kat sighed, and wondered why the man had suddenly started to focus so much on Bentney on Sea. It was a relatively small fishing port, and had nothing going for it except for a few well-run boozing establishments and the fishing boats. There was certainly nothing about it that should draw the interest of the officials. Well, except for a little bit of smuggling, but then everyone in these coastal parts of Cornwall did it, didn’t they?

  Her thoughts immediately turned to Hester, who lived across the narrow cobbled street, and she wondered if her friend had managed to hide her stash safely. She wondered if Hester had managed to keep the youngest kids out of the way while she hid the goods so that they wouldn’t give the game away.

  “Kat, come and help me,” Billy gasped as he pushed the large stone across the floor with all of his might. At ten years old, her brother was a thin, wiry boy who was only just big enough to shove the heavy millstone a few inches. With a sigh, Kat moved across the room and bent down to help heave the large millstone into place in the corner of the room. Moments later she stood back to allow her mother to rub at the scratch marks off the floor. Billy added some soot to cover the tell-tale marks on the floor that revealed one of their secret hiding places.

  “Was that all of it?” Kat asked. She shot her mother a worried glance.

  “No, we have the bolts over there,” Agnes replied, and nodded toward two bolts of cloth propped up against the wall.

  “Quick, Billy,” Kat snapped. She hurried over to the large rolls of cloth and shoved one of the bolts at her brother. She picked up the other and followed him across the sitting room to the fireplace. Once there, she hefted her brother up the chimney where he lodged both bolts onto a secret shelf hidden half way up the inside of the chimney breast. He secured them into position with several bricks Kat passed up to him before he dropped back down.

  Anyone who happened to look up the chimney wouldn’t see anything amiss. However, if they didn’t do something about the state of Billy now that he was covered in soot, the excise men would know exactly where to start to look for the smuggled goods that Kat had helped bring ashore that very same morning.

  She strongly suspected that someone in the village had turned traitor, and had started to tip off Harrison and his men with details of when the shipments were due to arrive. This was the second time in recent weeks that the village had received cargo, and the second time the excise men had arrived in the village to conduct a search later the very same morning.

  Nobody was able to prevent the excise officer’s access to their houses and places of business. The excise men had legal authority to carry out official business after all. The penalty for trying to block their entry into whatever property they wanted to search was a long stay in jail; something that none of the smugglers were prepared to risk. As a result, everyone had been forced to invent some very creative places to hide their goods while the officials were in the area. Kat hated to think that any one of the villagers would turn against their own, and quickly turned her thoughts away from the possibility that she lived amongst someone who willingly placed the entire village in danger of being arrested.

  Only a few weeks ago, poor Hester’s husband, Andrew, had been caught with smuggled cargo ashore further along the coast. Although he had been handed a fairly lenient sentence, much to the disgust of the excise men, the few weeks that he was away in jail were far too long for his wife Hester, who had no income with which to feed their children. Everyone in the village was helping to provide her with food and staples she needed to keep her head above water until Andrew returned, but Kat knew that Hester was deeply upset by the precariousness of her situation. But would that really mean that Hester would turn against everyone? Kat hated to even consider the notion. There were far too many people involved in the smuggling operation. It was impossible to identify anyone who may be a traitor. Still, there was something decidedly odd going on.

  She bent down and shoved three boxes of sugar into the secret hole behind the skirting board, and pushed the dresser in front of it before she turned toward the boxes of tea mother held out to her. Kat snatched them off her and raced upstairs. Having unscrewed the false back off her chest of drawers, she quickly secreted the several boxes of tea and hastily began to secure the back panel that hid the false compartment. Thanks to the inventiveness of Andrew, who had made a larger top and sides to the drawers, they had been able to create a wide enough space to accommodate several boxes.

  She shoved the drawers back against the wall with a grunt and rubbed at the scratch marks on the wooden floor with her foot. She roughly pushed Billy out of the room before her and together they raced downstairs with a mixture of urgency and nervous dread that heightened the tension within the house to breaking point.

  Once in the kitchen, Kat sighed and pushed a wash bowl at Billy. She waved him out into the yard to wash while she helped Agnes tidy the house. She replaced the stone that hid the secret compartment that contained their life savings. On her way back to the kitchen, she nudged a piece of skirting board back into place and ensured it covered all trace of the small packets of sugar hidden in the small recess before she blocked the area with a small cupboard. Satisfied that they had done all they could for now, she shared a look w
ith her mother, Agnes, before she went to answer the loud thumps on the door.

  She pulled the door open with a sigh and stood back to allow Harrison and his men inside. The sight of another group of excise men going into Hester’s house across the street was worrying and she sent a silent prayer that Hester’s youngest children wouldn’t give the game away by pointing to Hester’s hiding places and shouting ‘peek-a-boo’. Kat closed the door and turned to look at her mother and Billy, who stood by the kitchen door.

  “I take it you don’t have anything you shouldn’t have today either?” Mr Harrison drawled contemptuously, and swept his nonchalant gaze over Kat in a lascivious manner that made her shudder with revulsion.

  Kat merely stared at him. “We tell you every time you invade our home that we are not smugglers, but you don’t seem to be able to hear us.”

  Agnes moved to Billy’s side and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. She knew he would cry as soon as the excise men had left, he always did. He held his emotions at bay while the men were in the house but fell apart once they had gone. She could feel her son tremble with nerves and wondered whether all of this stress and worry was worth the money they made from the smuggling.

  By day, Kat worked as a bar maid at the Shipwright Inn down in the harbour. Billy helped one of the fishermen out, and Agnes herself ran a market stall that sold fruit and vegetables. Together they made enough money to survive without the need to be involved in the smuggling but, over the past eighteen months, they had built up a small side business and sold the smuggled goods. It made them all a tidy profit that eased their way through life considerably. They now had an established group of customers from all walks of life, who purchased the luxurious bounty of tea, sugar, lace and brandy, and Agnes really felt that she couldn’t let them down.

  Despite their protested innocence, Kat felt tension within the house increase tenfold as the men began to search. She stood back and watched as the men moved the furniture, pushed against the stone floor while they looked for loose tiles, and searched every room within the two-storey fisherman’s cottage before they moved outside to scour the yard and gardens.

  When the men began to upend the crates that were stacked in the far corner of the yard and scattered vegetables everywhere, Kat’s fury began to burn.

  “Hey, that’s our livelihood!” she protested. “Take a look, but don’t damage that. We have to sell it.” Kat snatched an empty crate off one of the men, and glared hatefully at him. She scowled down at the mess. She began to carefully repack the box and threw Harrison a filthy glare as she did so. “I don’t care how hard you search this house, you will find nothing. What I won’t stand for is you destroying our livelihood with your heavy handedness?”

  She hastily shoved the box on top of the others. Her heart hammered in her throat and she worked hard to keep her face mutinous. She studiously kept her gaze averted from the boxes tucked away at the bottom of pile. They held six valuable barrels of finest French brandy. On previous searches, the excise men had not bothered to come out to the yard and, on the one occasion when one of them had ventured as far as the kitchen door, he had studied the boxes crammed full of vegetables and fruit from the doorway. Today’s search had been close; very close. Why they had chosen today to search the vegetables was anyone’s guess.

  She watched as the excise man studied the untouched boxes in the yard before he turned away with a shake of his head.

  “Nothing,” he growled with a huff and stomped past his boss.

  “We have a duty to perform, Catherine. You know we have to search and you cannot stop us,” Harrison drawled and moved aside to allow his colleague back into the house. His pale blue eyes scoured her insolently from head to toe once more. He clearly hadn’t unnerved her enough the first time, and wasn’t prepared to give up until she squirmed with discomfort. Rather than give him the satisfaction of knowing just how deeply he disturbed her, Kat curled her lip derisively and, with one hand perched tauntingly on her hip, insolently returned the favour. She studied him dismissively from head to toe, her face lined with disappointment and disinterest. She saw the ruddy blush steel over the man’s cheeks, and smirked at the flashed of temper that appeared briefly on his face before his features turned cold and hard.

  “I suggest that the next time you want to search my house, you have a bloody good reason for doing so,” Kat snapped dismissively. With a flick of her hair, she turned her back and slammed out of the yard. However, once she was on the other side of the gate, rather than head down into the harbour, she stood with her back to the wall and stared into space. Her ears were glued to the sounds coming from within the yard as the excise men completed their search and disappeared back into the house empty-handed. The familiar thump of the front door was the nudge she needed and she quietly returned to the kitchen.

  Unsurprisingly, Billy was sobbing into mother’s shoulder. It was as though the nerves that had got him through the last few minutes had snapped and left him heartbroken. Kat patted him gently on the shoulder as she moved to stand before the front window. The door to Hester’s house was closed. Kat didn’t know if the excise men were still there and decided against a visit to check on her friend just yet, just in case they were. She could hear the shouts of protest coming from next door, and knew that Mr Peat was giving the excise men an earful. He always did, bless him. Kat knew that she didn’t need to worry Mr Peat would get caught. He always did an excellent job, and was very inventive with the places he stashed the hoard in his house.

  Still, because so many people had goods in their houses, everyone depended on each other to hide their stash safely and not get caught. Everyone in the village had their role to play in the smuggling operation. Everyone’s freedom depended on each of them staying out of jail and keeping their mouths shut. So far everything had gone well although, of late, there were tell-tale signs that something was going wrong.

  It bothered Kat tremendously that two of the men in the village had been arrested, tried, and found guilty of smuggling. Although they had gone off on their own for one night and joined the gang further along the coast, they had been caught and it had been a warning to everyone in the village to be a bit more careful in future. Now that Harrison’s searches had begun to coincide with the deliveries of the cargo, everyone had started to feel unsettled that there was a traitor in their midst, and it not only heightened the tension within the village, but also made everyone increasingly angry. She could only hope it wouldn’t make them careless.

  Kat sighed and turned toward Billy, who had settled considerably now that his initial bout of nerves was gone.

  “I think you should take this as a lesson, Billy. You cannot go out to meet those boats with the others,” Kat said pointedly. “You are not up to it and you know it.” They all knew that she was referring to the long-standing argument both Agnes and Kat had been having with Billy, who was determined to join the smugglers who met the delivery boats down on the beach. In deference to anyone from the excise office who may be able to hear them, she pointedly refused to say the ‘s’ word.

  “But, Mr Ord said I could as long as it was alright with you. I go out to sea with him to catch fish, what’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that you can go out to catch fish if you really have to. If Mr Ord’s crew are busy and they need an extra pair of hands to bring the catch in, that’s fine, you can go with them and bring the catch in,” she sighed and suddenly felt far wearier than her four and twenty years. She glared at him when he took a breath to object and ignored his dark scowl. She lowered her voice and leaned toward him to get her message across. “Catching anything else is out of the question.” She saw the flash of belligerence in her brother’s eyes and knew they were going to get further argument from him. With a sigh, she shared a telling look with her mother and walked to the kitchen. Walking away effectively ended any further objection for the time being. She knew it was rude but there was little else she could do. “Let’s get something to eat and then I
will go and check on Hester.”

  Although the excise men had been and gone, Kat and her family left the goods hidden in their hiding places. It wasn’t unknown for the excise officers to make an impromptu return inspection. Nobody in her house was going to be lulled into a false sense of security. However, they all knew that once the all clear was given, they would have to remove their hoard and cut it down into saleable packages. Their afternoon would be spent dividing up the goods to fulfil their orders before Kat left to begin her shift in the tavern in the harbour.

  Later that afternoon, having stashed the packets back in their hiding places, she nudged her chest of drawers back into place and clapped a companionable hand on her brother’s shoulder as they made their way back downstairs for the second time that day.

  “Right, go and find something useful to do. I am off to work.”

  “Time to muck out Molly’s stall,” Agnes called. She threw Billy a pointed look that was met by his despondent groan. Kat smirked and called goodbye to her mother before she left the house.

  She took a deep breath of the crisp sea air and sighed at the sight of the harbour lying at the end of the road. Now that the excise men had left, the village had returned to normal. People hustled about as they shopped and gossiped. Several fishermen sat on the harbour wall mending their nets and baskets while gulls swooped and cried overhead in search of fishy cast-offs. She loved living in the village but, more importantly, enjoyed working at The Shipwright Inn. It was a small tavern that was always full of ribald laughter and singing, but it also had a friendly camaraderie that immediately made Kat feel relaxed and at ease with the world around her.

  At that moment, with the goods stashed and the threat of jail removed, life was good. Well, about as good as it was going to get for the time being, at least.