My Lord Deceived

by King, Rebecca

  “So, are you going to tell us, or do we have to prise it out of you with shoeing irons?”

  Jonathan sighed and handed each man a liberal shot of brandy before he took a seat beside the fire. “How much as Hugo told you?”

  “Just that you needed reinforcements,” Stephen sighed. He moaned as the fragrant liquid he sipped slid down his throat like amber nectar.

  Jonathan sat and explained what he had witnessed last night and his suspicions about Harrison. Half way through, he rang for refreshments and only paused his explanation long enough to hand out the sandwiches and cake before he resumed his description of the smuggling operation down on the beach. He left no stone unturned. He knew that if they had any chance of bringing an end to the villagers’ activities, he had to be honest and forthright with his colleagues and he knew that he could trust Rupert and Stephen with his life. They wouldn’t fail him.

  “Damned thing is, while I have been off fighting to protect king and country from bloody smugglers, my own villagers have been smuggling goods right on my own doorstep,” he snorted in disgust and reached for the brandy decanter again.

  “We have all been so busy that none of us have had much time to see to our home life,” Rupert sighed as he rubbed a weary hand down his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he had bothered to go home. His thoughts turned to Theodora, and he mentally cursed. Usually he could block out all thought of Theodora Weatherby when he needed to but, of late, she seemed to be all he could think about. Theodora looked a lot like Kat, although had a wild mass of black hair that was as free and unfettered as the woman herself. He quickly blocked out the memory of the last time they had met and turned his attention back to Stephen, who looked equally as morose.

  “So what do you want us to do?”

  “I had a note the other day to say that my contact in Dadington had spotted Bernard.” That captured the interest of both of his colleagues who immediately tensed and leaned forward.

  “Just Bernard?” Stephen asked, his gaze as sharp as his voice.

  “No, there are rumours that Dubois is here too,” Jonathan replied. Dubois and Bernard were two of the ten French spies the Star Elite knew had been smuggled into the country. So far Beaulieu, Petit, Moreau and Legrand had been captured or killed. That left Rousseau, Guerin and Laurent still at large, along with Dubois and Bernard.

  “Assuming that we do find out that your villagers are frequent smugglers, what do you want to do with them?” Stephen asked as he lifted his glass to study the amber liquid in the firelight.

  “I am going to have a strong word with all of them. I am going to threaten them with the weight of the law and am going to uncover who their contact is. As soon as I have that, then I will find out whom that contact is using and how they are getting messages to the French, and then I am going to shut them all down. I will not have smuggling on my damned doorstep.”

  He rose and poured more brandy into everyone’s glass and was about to put the decanter back onto the table between them when he froze. He stared at the liquid that glinted in the firelight. His mind was locked on to one peculiar point in time that he had not considered important before.

  “What is it?” Rupert asked with a scowl. Tension rose in the room as everyone waited.

  Jonathan replayed the scene over and over in his mind as his fury grew to mammoth proportions.

  He turned to stare at the decanter. “Kat,” he whispered as he stared blankly at the decanter.

  “Do you think she is involved?”

  “I take it she is a villager?”

  “It isn’t like you to dally with the locals, so what gives Jonathan? What are you up to?”

  Rupert’s question snapped Jonathan out of his anger and he turned to find his colleagues staring expectantly at them.

  “I have known Kat all of my life, and worshipped her from afar from the first moment I clapped eyes on her at nine years old. Although she is the daughter of a villager, the feelings I have for her have brought me back home time and again.” He scowled at the decanter. “She is one of the smugglers.” His voice was cold and hard.

  “How do you know?” She didn’t look like the smuggling type to Stephen; the beddable type, definitely, but a smuggler? He scowled at Jonathan and wondered whether he was just dazed with passion.

  “I went to her house the other day to ask her if she was going to read to uncle. She has been coming to the hall to read to him for several years, ever since his eyes started to fail in fact. When I called by, she offered me a brandy.”

  “So? What’s wrong with that?” Stephen sighed, and studied his glass again in confusion.

  “Her mother runs a market stall.”

  “And?”

  Jonathan rolled his eyes and sighed impatiently. “This brandy is the finest French brandy and cost me a small bloody fortune. How in the hell can Kat, whose mother runs a market stall selling fruit and vegetables, afford something like this?”

  “Are you sure it was brandy she offered you?” Rupert was only half teasing. Personally he would accept anything she would offer him but he was too much of a gentleman to admit it.

  “She definitely offered me a brandy.”

  “So, say that she was smuggling, what do you want to do with her?”

  “I am going to teach her a bloody lesson she will never forget,” Jonathan snarled, his eyes ablaze with fury.

  “I take it you don’t want the villagers arrested?”

  “God, it would wipe out the whole bloody village. From what I saw the other night, most of them are involved. Unless we are going to drive the entire village into the ground, it is better if we just frighten them a little. There is one massive problem however.” He smiled when Stephen sighed and rolled his eyes.

  “Isn’t there always?”

  “Harrison is an Excise man who is just a little too enthusiastic and efficient in his choice of days in which to search the village for smuggled cargo. So far he has searched every day and has come up with nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?” Rupert scowled, unable to believe that any efficient Excise unit, especially one armed with information, would search a village and come up completely empty handed.

  “Not so much as a coffee bean.”

  “Kat has also been threatened by a young lout, Brian Meldrew, and a small group of friends of his. They are nothing more than thuggish youths with nothing better to do with their time but recently, the fisherman who owns the boat the Brian works on died out at sea.”

  Stephen looked at Jonathan, his brows lifted as he thought. “Do you think it was murder?”

  “The man is from one of the village’s oldest families. He was a fifth generation fisherman or something like that. It just seems damned odd that the man turns up dead and Brian takes over his boat.”

  “The boy is running the fishing boat?” Rupert scowled and settled back in his chair to study his booted feet.

  “Do you think he is the one who is tipping Harrison off about the smugglers?” Rupert asked as he considered the latest turn of events.

  “I think that something damned odd is going on with everything in that village. Harrison claims that the information just turns up on his doorstep. Personally, I think that he has some sort of arrangement going on with someone. I can’t see it is any one of the smugglers. What purpose would it have to call the Excise men to their own front door? Someone in the village is a traitor and telling the Excise men when the deliveries are due to arrive.”

  “Unless they had a deal whereby Harrison calls at the village and supposedly finds nothing. If he helps himself and smuggles away the odd packet of tea or sugar, who is going to object? The smugglers can hardly report it to the magistrate.”

  “But what would be in it for Brian Meldrew?”

  “Getting back at the villagers?”

  “Who receives the main hoard though?”

  “I have no idea,” Jonathan sighed. “By the time I got to the cliff top and located the bodies of the sailors, the cargo had
disappeared off the beach. I am fairly certain it didn’t go into the village. There wasn’t the time or the people. Someone collected it and must have waited nearby and watched it come ashore.”

  “Who though?” Stephen sighed.

  “I don’t know, but Harrison keeps looking for it.”

  “He knows it is around but just doesn’t know who has it.”

  “But why doesn’t he wait with his men and seize it when it arrives on the shore if he knows when it is going to be delivered?”

  “Exactly,” Jonathan sighed.

  They all stared at each other.

  “Unless, Harrison stops the cargo on its way to the owner, seizes it and, on the seizure inventory, doesn’t list all of the goods. That way he gets to siphon off some for himself, has a list of seized goods to back up his regular searches of the village, and makes himself a tidy profit.”

  “Have you searched the Excise House yet?”

  Jonathan looked askance at him. “I have been back here three weeks now and have spent my time just trying to unravel the secrets thus far. I have been to and fro from Dadington more times than I care to count, but I cannot be everywhere all of the time.”

  “That’s where we come in,” Stephen sighed. He glanced at Rupert. “Unless you have any objection, I will take the Excise House.”

  Rupert shrugged. “I will go over to Dadington and see if Dubois or Barnard have surfaced yet, or left a trail for us to follow.”

  “I am going to keep watch on the smuggling operation and see if I can identify a few more of those involved in the village. There were a few that I couldn’t identify because it was dark, there were hats and the like.” He didn’t need to mention Kat’s name but from the looks that passed between Rupert and Stephen knew that they understood. “Thank you for that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Stephen sighed. “I am sure our turn will come.” He wasn’t referring to problems with women. He had seen enough of the troubles the rest of his colleagues had been subjected to while they tried to secure their wives hands in marriage. There was no way in hell he was prepared to go through the same ordeal for any woman. Some men were destined to enjoy bachelorhood for all of their lives, and that included him.

  The men made their way across the hallway toward the dining room where a veritable feast awaited them. Jonathan ate somewhat absently and almost choked on his soup when he remembered another vague snippet of a clue that he had previously missed.

  “What now?” Rupert sighed and brushed splatters of soup off his jacket.

  “Cloth,” Jonathan murmured and stared blankly down the table. His fury grew and his fist clenched around his spoon to the point that it started to bend under his fingers. He knew his colleagues waited for an explanation. All too carefully he placed his spoon back into his bowl and paid no attention to the mangled state of the handle. “She had a bolt of cloth propped up in the corner of the sitting room on the first day I called at the house.”

  “Cloth? What type of cloth?”

  “French lace.”

  Silence settled over the table and Rupert sighed. Kat was indeed one of the smugglers. He looked at the angry glint in Jonathan’s eye. If there was one thing he was certain of, he didn’t relish being Kat when Jonathan caught up with her.

  He ate the rest of his meal in thoughtful silence, and couldn’t help but wonder whether this time, unlike the other members of the Star Elite, Jonathan’s romance of the woman he loved would not end happily.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The following morning Jonathan stood in the shadows between two taverns and watched Kat work on her mother’s market stall. Tattersnell was a hub of activity and occasionally people blocked his view, but he had seen enough to know for certain that sold more than fruit and vegetables.

  Small brown packages were handed over to several customers who paid more for their vegetables than they ought to, even from the most expensive stall holder. The last time he had checked, it hadn’t taken notes to pay for a bushel of vegetables or half a basket of apples. He studied the packages carefully. His fingers itched to know what was inside them but he couldn’t think of a way to get hold of one without alerting Kat and her mother to the fact that he was onto their scheme.

  He turned away with a sigh and made his way toward their house. Rupert had already gone to Dadington to look for Frenchmen, and Stephen was on watch over at the Excise House. Jonathan had more than enough time to get to Kat’s house in Bentney on Sea, and back to Tattersnell again unhindered.

  It was good to know that he had his associates at his back. It was going to be a difficult task to stop the villagers from smuggling, even with Hamilton-Smythe working with him, but he still had a job to do for the Star Elite.

  At the rear of Kat’s house, he watched the children play at the far end of the alleyway, close to the harbour side. A few doors away an elderly lady finished hanging her washing out to dry. After a quick glance up and down the alley, Jonathan hurried through the gate and into the back yard of Kat’s house. Once at the back door he studied the lock with experienced eyes. Given what he knew about the way the villages like Bentney on Sea worked, it was highly unlikely that Kat locked her door.

  To his consternation, he was wrong. He rattled the latch, but the door wouldn’t give. He eyed the lock carefully. He could kick it in, but that would alert half of the neighbourhood and he was surprised he had got thus far without arousing anyone’s suspicion.

  With a sigh, he eyed the window beside the door he took a small tool out of the pocket of his great coat, and began to scratch at the window. Moments later he hopped down into the kitchen and studied the room before him. At first glance there was nothing untoward about the kitchen, or the sitting room beyond that. Everything was neat and tidy, and very clean. However, the further he dug around; into cupboards, behind shelves and the like, the more his disgust grew.

  A search of the ground floor revealed the brown paper and broadsheets they used for the packages, along with several balls of twine. He wasn’t usually responsible for doing the shopping but he was fairly certain that his cabbages didn’t come neatly wrapped in brown paper packages. He studied the kitchen for a moment but couldn’t see anything amiss. The small bottle he had found in the kitchen cupboard contained rum, not brandy. So why had Kat offered him brandy? Had she wanted to tell him that she was involved, only couldn’t bring herself to say the words out aloud, or had it been a mere slip of the tongue?

  He made his way quietly upstairs and entered what appeared to be Billy’s room. There was nothing untoward in there either. With a sigh he stalked across the corridor into another bedroom, and stopped dead. One of Kat’s dresses was draped haphazardly on the floor. An undergarment draped over the end of the bed had small flowers scattered over it. Even if he ignored the clothing, the room smelled of her. His body immediately began to respond but he blanked out his eager response to her scent that lingered in the air, and began a thorough search of the room.

  “Shit,” he sighed. He shook his head and stared at the back of the drawers he had pulled away from the wall. It had only been when he had slid the drawer back into place after a thorough search of the contents that he realised that the drawer was shallower than the top of the dresser. He tugged the unit away from the wall and cursed when the loose panel rattled. With his flick-knife, he removed the screws and removed the panel. The boxes of tea and packets of sugar secreted in the hidden compartment was all he needed to see. He didn’t need to search the rest of the house, but he knew that he bolt of cloth was hidden around somewhere.

  When everything was placed back to where he found it, he turned to study the room. He wasn’t sure whether to be hurt, angry or just plain disappointed. He was probably all three, but he couldn’t make sense of which was the worst. Her lack of trust in him, her continual lies, or the fact that she was one of the people he had spent the last several years trying to eradicate from the country. Would marriage to her make him a hypocrite? He wasn’t sure, but at that moment didn�
�t rightly care much. She was going to be his wife, if only so he could make sure that she stopped the bloody risks she took and didn’t end up behind bars before he got her up the aisle.

  He clambered back out of the window and secured it as best he could before he made his way out of the yard. He was angry but also felt a thrill of anticipation at the confrontation that lay ahead.

  What he had discovered today meant that he was now able to take one giant leap forward in his drive to ensure Kat became his wife. As long as she learned the lessons he was about to give her, then they would have a very long and very happy life together.

  If not, then one of them was going to be broken hearted.

  Back at Tattersnell, Jonathan resumed his original position that overlooked the stall. He was close enough to be able to watch the transactions, and the purchasers, considerably more closely. It amazed him just how furtive the transactions were. If he hadn’t been watching closely, he would have missed the majority of them just by the blink of his eyes. It was very clever the way that the small brown packages were slipped into baskets under the disguise of apples or bunches of carrots and, on one occasion, the large leaves of a cabbage. It was very impressive to watch, and gave him some idea of just how long they had been involved in the sale of smuggled goods.

  From the depths of the shadows, he allowed his gaze to wander freely over the market. People from all walks of life milled about. Posh ladies held their skirts up to keep them out of the dirt while they absorbed the sights and smells of the local market. Villagers from miles around, dressed in their best, purchased the provisions they would need to survive the forthcoming week or so. Farmers drove their livestock through the crowds while children danced, played and squealed with laughter when the odd chicken or pig broke loose and ran amok.