Spyfall

by Carter, Elizabeth Ellen

  “Now, that’s a beer! And the only thing to make my life a little sweeter would be a smile from my Peg. Is she in the kitchen?”

  “She’s around the back in the garden.”

  Clem finished the beer in another large gulp and rose from his stool.

  “Well, I’m goin’ to kiss the cook.”

  Susannah hesitated then spoke. “Clem, you haven’t seen Nate around at all today, have you? He went out first thing this morning with Mr. Hardacre and they didn’t return at noon.”

  Clem shook his head.

  “No, love. Anythin’ the matter?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just have a message for him, that’s all.”

  The crowd of regulars started arriving for dinner and, finally, Nate and the boarder returned.

  Hardacre shared a meaningful look with Nate then trudged up the stairs without a word or a glance in her direction.

  That little feeling of anticipating dread Susannah hadn’t felt in more than two years returned. Mysterious comings and goings; the certainty something was happening around her; the knowledge she was purposefully being kept in the dark.

  She had suffered the consequences once. She would not let it happen again. She touched Nate’s arm to get his attention.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “We need to talk. Privately. In your office.”

  There was enough gravity behind his words to bring long submerged dread to the surface. The anticipation was the worst, the trepidation when Jack returned from his trips and no one knew what mood to expect from him.

  Susannah headed to the door marked Private, pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the door.

  “Adam Hardacre will join us shortly,” said Nate, “but I want to talk to you first.”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on.” Susannah forced the tremor from her voice.

  “Remember the contraband I brought back with me a couple of months back?”

  She nodded.

  “I thought I knew who had commissioned the run, but it turns out I was wrong.”

  “You thought it was Lillian Doyle, didn’t you?”

  Nate seemed taken aback.

  “Why would you—”

  “She came here today to look for you. She seemed most insistent on meeting with you. She said to meet her at ‘the usual time, usual place’.”

  Nate’s face darkened. She watched the play of expressions across his face as he seemed to consider then discard a response. When he finally answered, his voice was tight.

  “I haven’t been anywhere near that woman since I returned from France.”

  Out of long habit, Susannah lowered her eyes before she spoke. “I know we both have a past, and I have no right to pry…”

  Nate took her hands. His were warm where hers felt cold. She had the sensation of withdrawing into herself once more.

  “Susannah…”

  One look into Nate’s eyes forced her to fight it. He looked at her with a desperate want, and she felt the answering hunger in her own body.

  His lips were on hers before she could form another thought. She responded with growing confidence, wrapping her arms around his neck to hold him close. He replied by sweeping his hands over her back, his touch through the fabric of her dress as sensuous a feeling as she had ever known.

  She tossed back her head and his lips found her neck. She pressed herself to him more fully as heated desire shot through her body.

  If she wasn’t careful, she could grow used to being in this man’s arms – having him touch her, bring her to the heights of passion she had heard existed between man and woman. She had every confidence a man such as Nate could bring her such ecstasy.

  A knock at the door shocked them both back to their senses. Nate kissed her forehead and Susannah was pleased to hear his breathing as ragged as hers.

  Adam Hardacre didn’t wait for an invitation. He entered and closed the door behind him firmly. In his hand was a folded sheet of paper. If he noticed the tension in the air or the disheveled state of her hair, he was too polite to make comment.

  He got straight to business.

  “Mrs. Linwood, I don’t how much Nate has told you, but I must ask that anything discussed here goes no further than the three of us in this room.”

  She was startled. Gone was the affable guest and, in his place, was a man whose manner exuded authority. She glanced at Nate. The set of his jaw was firm.

  “Nate has told me nothing of your business together yet, and I will make no guarantees of secrecy regarding it,” she said with an alacrity so forceful that the tall blond man was taken aback. Susannah was beginning to feel confident again. “The Queen’s Head may have been a smuggler’s den once but not since I’ve owned it. I will not have it turned into a meeting place for criminal conspirators.”

  Hardacre relaxed and tried to disguise his grin.

  “You remind me of my wife, Olivia,” he said. “The next time I visit St. Sennen, I should bring her with me. I think you’d like her, Mrs. Linwood.”

  Then his humor vanished once again. “I carry no credentials with me; only this,” he said, raising the folded paper in his hand.

  “But after I tell you the story I told Nate, I hope I will be able to count on your discretion.”

  *

  Susannah did not reply but, with a sweep of her hand, gestured that they sit. Nate glanced about, taking in the room for the first time.

  It seemed Susannah’s parlor doubled as her study. At one end of the room, it was all business with few ornaments. Beneath the window was a small desk with a green leather-upholstered chair. On the wall that faced into the room was a bookcase. The middle shelf was half-filled with ledger books and accounts.

  The rest of the room was distinctly feminine.

  An embroidery frame, with a cascade of colored silks spilling down its face, stood on one side of the fireplace; a couple of books sat on a small side table. One was apparently only part read. It had a red strip of leather poking out of the volume like a reptile’s tongue. A small clock cased in pale yellow alabaster stood on the mantel beside a white glazed vase filled with bunches of hollyhocks in several shades of pink.

  Nate chose one of the tapestry-covered wingback chairs by the hearth. Susannah sat down on its twin opposite. Hardacre occupied the matching settee.

  Nate remained silent as Hardacre related to Susannah the story he’d heard this morning. He watched the flutter of her eyelids as the man told her about the French prison and the fate of the agent, Felix. He regretted the fact that a man who was a stranger to them both was revealing something of Nate’s own past that he should have told Susannah himself, but there it was.

  Other than that, very little gave itself away in her expression, but he studied it closely. Studied her. Her face paled ever so slightly and, although both hands rested in her lap quite serenely, she fiddled with her gold wedding band, turning it around and around her finger restlessly, only ceasing when Hardacre handed over the paper in his hand.

  He caught a glimpse of gold from an embossed crest on the letter.

  “It is my letter of recommendation, signed by Sir Daniel Ridgeway on behalf of the Prince of Wales,” Hardacre told her.

  Susannah read it silently and returned it.

  “Then what do you need of me and The Queen’s Head?”

  “Your discretion only, Mrs. Linwood, and that of your household. Can you vouch for Peggy?”

  “She is my partner in the tavern, Mr. Hardacre,” she answered firmly. “I will tell her everything and she will be discreet.”

  Nate felt obliged to add, “Clem as well. He’s been a friend of mine for years. He and Peggy are courting. We should take them both into our confidence.”

  Both he and Susannah watched Hardacre consider before he gave a brief nod.

  “Agreed – but no more than we five.”

  Outside the parlor, a door slammed along with the tinkling bell, accompanied by the sound of loud voices passing by the cl
osed door.

  Susannah rose from her seat. She’d taken to turning the wedding ring around and around her finger once again.

  Nate and Hardacre rose also.

  “Meal service will begin shortly,” she said quietly. “I need to help Peggy at the bar.”

  Nate watched her leave and wanted nothing more than to go after her, to offer reassurance that however unusual this circumstance might be, there was nothing to fear and nothing he wouldn’t do to protect her from whatever it was that worried her.

  It had something to do with her past. He knew it to the depths of his soul.

  And he knew just as well that he was powerless against it.

  *

  Despite bone-weary exhaustion, Susannah found it difficult to sleep.

  She started awake with every sound, only to berate herself as she recognized it – the creak of the timbers as the inn settled, the pop from a coal in the fireplace, the hooting of an owl, the rustling of night creatures outside – at least she hoped they were outside…

  She had worked hard to become accepted as a member of the community here without being forced to live a double life once again.

  How she had hated being used as a veneer of respectability for her husband – and resented it even more so when she eventually learned the depths of his criminality.

  She turned her head on the pillow and looked over to the bedside table. She wished for a bit of light now, a comfort in the dark, but she resisted lighting a candle. She was safe from the past, she was sure. It had been more than two years now since Jack Moorcroft met his end in the Denge Marshes and, in all that time, she had heard nothing from any of his business associates.

  She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Surely after so long her nightmare was over; her pleasant, peaceful life here in St. Sennen was the world finally put to rights. She prayed it was not a dream from which she would have to awaken.

  Little by little, the creeping tide of her past recalled itself as Susannah drifted back off to sleep, pulled under the current of the dream…

  Susannah Moorcroft had stumbled back into the house, midge-bitten, cut and bruised.

  Of all the servants, Peggy Smith was the one who most had her wits about her. While Susannah sobbed hysterically, the housekeeper took her by the shoulders and led her into the drawing room alone and urged her into a seat.

  “H… he… he’s d-d-drowned… drowned,” Susannah wept. “I couldn’t save him. I… I didn’t save him. I didn’t want to.”

  “Shhhh, Ma’am.”

  She looked up. Peggy had poured a small glass of brandy and pressed it in her hand. She took a careless gulp. The liquor burned down her throat and she let out a gasp. Peggy took advantage of the silence.

  “You listen to me, Mrs. Moorcroft,” she said, her voice carrying an edge that went beyond the bounds of deference. “You were home all evening. We did not see the master return home at all. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Susannah felt her eyes widen. Peggy’s words cut through her shock.

  “Tomorrow morning, I’ll send one of the boys out to the tavern at Lydd to see if the master is there and to raise a search party to look for him if he’s not,” she continued.

  “But I know where he is… I saw—”

  Peggy tapped her hand firmly.

  “You saw nothing. We know nothing and neither do you.”

  Susannah nodded and took another swallow of brandy. When she next spoke, her voice was calm.

  “He may not be dead.”

  Peggy shot her a look of visceral disapproval. “I’m sure he will be by morning. And good riddance, too.”

  A scant moment later, in the way dreams do, morning came.

  Peggy sent one of the stable boys into the village looking for Mr. Moorcroft. The boy returned with two men, one of whom Susannah knew as Robert Lawnton, a business associate of her husband’s. The other was a local farm worker.

  She met with them in the parlor. She didn’t have to feign worry – the tension of it ran along every nerve.

  Jack was a harsh and unyielding man and so was Lawnton. She never did like him. His face was cruel and, unlike Jack, who could turn on charm in abundance, Lawnton never made a pretense of being a gentleman – at least not to her.

  In the end, she could only manage being as polite to him as her role as wife dictated, but no more.

  “You say Jack didn’t come home?” said Lawnton. “His horse is here. The first thing I did was check the stable.”

  She bore the unsaid accusation of a lie without comment. She swallowed and fiddled with a piece of embroidery that she’d picked up to do something with her hands. Then she gave the answer Peggy had demanded she rehearse, over and over until it sounded like the truth even to her ears.

  “That may be so, Mr. Lawnton. I was upstairs resting with a headache. Jack might have come home and gone back out without any reference to me. He frequently did so.”

  Lawnton gave her an assessing look. She waited for the denouncement.

  “Mr. Moorcroft did come home, a little under the weather if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”

  All of them turned to Peggy who had arrived bearing a tea tray.

  “When he heard supper wouldn’t be ready for another two hours, he said he’d go for a walk,” she continued, setting the tray down on a side table.

  “Why didn’t someone look for him?”

  Susannah breathed a sigh of relief that it was Peggy he asked and not her.

  Peggy shrugged. “Mr. Moorcroft is a man who knows his own mind, sir. He doesn’t take kindly to being second guessed. If he’s out, then he’s good reason to be out, and it isn’t for any of us to question.”

  It seemed enough to satisfy Lawnton who bid Susannah a curt farewell. She set down her needlework, went to the window and watched Lawnton approach a group of searchers preparing to leave through the side gate to the path that led to the marshes.

  “The left sleeve on the green dress I wore last night is badly torn. The best thing to do is to unpick both sleeves – the bodice, too,” said Susannah to Peggy’s reflection in the glass. “There is some lace and ribbon missing. I’ll have to refashion it.”

  “I can start on that now, Madam,” said Peggy. “I’ll burn the torn bits and no one will be the wiser…”

  Susannah awoke with a start just as the sky lightened and turned pink in the dawn. She must have slept some more, but the lingering tendrils of the dream still seemed real. They were real.

  She left her bed and opened her wardrobe. The green dress was there, the damage repaired by a new white and green sprigged bodice. It was unrecognizable from the gown she wore on the evening of Jack’s death.

  Susannah touched it with relief; it had a new life as did she.

  And when Nate promised it would be only a short association with Mr. Hardacre, she believed him.

  But then there was still Jack’s ledger…

  Chapter Eleven

  Anyone watching from the cliffs overlooking the stretch of sandy beach would see a grey horse harnessed to a trap with two men on the driver’s bench and two women and another man riding in the back, sitting on blankets and guarding a large wicker basket.

  They would rightly assume they were a picnic party, there to enjoy the bracing sea air for a few hours before the tide turned and covered the sand with water once more.

  Down on the beach, outside a large cave mouth, Nate brought Sid to a halt with light tug on the reins. The locals knew this place well. Generations of lovers looking for privacy met there for their trysts.

  Even at high tide, the cave was safe, though during the worst of storms and the surging spring tide its giant maw would fill with churning waves.

  Further into the cave, hidden from a well-trod path about ten yards in and not visible from the beach, was another opening and another cavern. This too was a familiar place for certain men of St. Sennen – the smugglers who would hide their wares from the revenuers.

  Clem held aloft a mine
r’s lamp, the candle in it flickering wildly.

  “Well, I give up Nate. Where did you hide the bloody thing? This is where we usually put the goods,” he said.

  “And that’s exactly the reason why I hid it somewhere else,” Nate replied drolly. “Wait here.”

  As long as there was light, he could deal with the confined space and the instinctive claustrophobic terror of being trapped underground. The truth be known, it had always bothered him, but it seemed worse now after being as good as buried alive in the French donjon. He’d showed Hardacre the entrance to the cave yesterday but there was no way he was going deep into it without a lantern, no matter how eager the spy was.

  Now, he quelled his uneasiness to approach the side wall of the cave where there was a tumble of rocks. Here, there was a series of small crevices that could be used as hand and footholds, and he climbed up about eight feet before laying himself flat along a shelf hidden in the deep shadows.

  “Pass up the second lamp, will you, Clem?”

  It was Hardacre with his superior height who lifted the lamp. He then climbed to join Nate on the ledge.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” breathed Clem, looking up from below as the lamp revealed another aperture hidden in the dark.

  It was a deeply cut niche, hidden well out of sight from anyone who stood on the cave floor, and, in it, were the goods, bundled in a fishing net.

  “You got all of this up here by yourself?” said Hardacre.

  Nate flashed him a grin. “I didn’t say it was quick or easy.”

  Hardacre raised the lamp in the niche and examined the contraband more closely. He let out a low whistle. “Well, if nothing else, the two hundred and fifty pounds we agreed means I certainly got my money’s worth. Let’s get these out into better light and take a look at what we’ve got.”

  Together they dragged the goods to the edge of the shelf and grasped the rope that tied off the net.

  “Ready below?”

  “Aye-aye!” Clem answered, his voice echoing.

  The two men sat back to brace against the weight and Nate, legs outstretched, nudged the laden net with his feet until it slipped off the shelf. He felt the weight through the rope. He and Hardacre controlled its descent until the line slackened.