A Kiss in the Dark (8 page)

“Most of the members will return to their constituency, but the inner circle still meets to plot strategies and counterstrategies. No rest for the wicked—and no cottage for the baroness, I fear. So you met young Brewster,” he said, quickly changing the subject. “He is the leading bachelor of the parish. I expect he will soon be enlivening your dull evenings. You want to have him show you over his abbey. A very fine building. The east wing ...”

He spoke on of Brewster’s estate while Cressida half listened, but her mind was on Dauntry’s intransigence. She did not believe he had a
chère amie
at the cottage. He would have had his gardener tidy up the grounds if the place was occupied. The woman would be seen about the place. Beau spent a good deal of time on the coast, looking out for the
Sea Dog’s
arrival, and he had reported no sign of life at the cottage.

Dauntry remained for half an hour, at which time he said he had to leave for London early in the morning and must be off. “No need to send for my mount. I walked down,” he said. He thanked them for the tea, said he looked forward to returning soon, and left.

“This room is still too warm,” Cressida said, trying to poke the fire out. “Let us go out for a breath of air before retiring.”

They walked down to the shore, breathing in the fresh, moist air. A new moon cast a sparkling white net on the calm water. About half a mile from shore, a small boat lay nearly becalmed in the still air. Waves washed quietly on the pebble beach. Some other sound was there as well, a sound not loud but regular.

“What is that?” Beau asked. “It sounds like footsteps. Someone is coming.”

A delicious shiver scampered up Cressida’s spine as she and Beau took cover under a spreading willow. They waited, peering through the drooping branches into the shadows, but no one appeared. In fact, the footsteps were receding. Beau darted out to see if he could spot the intruder. He was back in an instant.

“It is Dauntry!” he exclaimed in a low whisper. “He ain’t returning to the castle at all. He is going to the cottage. There is no place else he could be going along this stretch of beach.”

“So he does have a woman there,” Cressida said, and was aware of an angry heat inside her.

“Devil a bit of it. It is something else. Let us follow along and see whom he meets.”

“It is of no interest to me,” she said, and strode back to the house.

It took Beau two minutes to convince Cressida to accompany him to the chalet, and another five for her to run upstairs and change her pale rose evening gown for a muslin day dress more suitable to rough usage.

“Dash it, he will be gone by the time we get there,” Beau complained when she reappeared. “If that ain’t just like a lady, having to change her gown at the last minute.”

“I will not destroy my new rose gown for Lord Dauntry. He is not worth it,” she said haughtily, and stalked into the hallway.

“The moonlight is so lovely, we are going out for a walk along the shore, Muffet,” she said in a calmer voice to her butler as they hurried out.

Muffet was not so easily misled; Missy would not be running like a filly to look at the moonlight. He had a fair notion where she was going, and followed after her, taking up a walking stick from the Chinese urn by the door in case there should be blows involved in the lunar excursion. The only error in Muffet’s reading of the outing was that he lay the blame on Melbury, not his cousin, Dauntry. Muffet assumed they had some knowledge that Melbury meant to return and were endeavoring to catch him red-handed.

Cressida had not thought to change her shoes and found the walking rough over the shingle beach in her kid evening slippers. They saw from a distance of a hundred feet that no lights were lit at the cottage. The only illumination was the ghostly reflection from the dark panes of glass. They stopped to look up and down the beach.

“We’ve lost him,” Beau said in disgust. “Next time I shall go by myself. I wager that was a smuggling vessel we saw tacking toward Beachy Head.

“If it was, they did not unload any brandy,” she pointed out. Neither the shore nor the steps of the cottage held any contraband.

“Perhaps Dauntry was placing his order for next time, or just bought a barrel from them. It might be around here someplace. Let us have a look.”

They climbed the stone staircase cut into the cliff, up to the plateau where the cottage stood. They poked around the shrubbery without finding anything.

“He might have taken it inside,” was Beau’s next idea.

Cressida had begun to lose interest. If Dauntry was doing nothing worse than buying a barrel of brandy, it was of no interest to her. She was relieved to see there was no female staying at the cottage, but she had to wonder why he had intimated there was. If he cared for her good opinion, he would have been at pains to hide it. Of course, Dauntry had no interest in her good opinion. He had made that crystal clear.

While she reviewed these thoughts, Beau tiptoed up the four stairs to the front door and opened it.

“It ain’t even locked!” he called to Cressida. “Let us just go in and see if we can find the brandy.”

“That is none of our concern,” she said impatiently.

“Is it not, by Jove? He can scarcely refuse getting me a barrel when he has one hidden away himself.”

“You don’t drink brandy, Beau.”

“No, but I should like to have a hogshead aboard to offer the fellows a drink when they come. All the crack.”

Even as he spoke, he was opening the door and slipping inside. Cressida followed a few paces behind. In the hallway, she stopped to peer around. The blinds were not drawn. Moonlight cast a wan light on the small parlor. She could discern the pot hanging at the open hearth, and as her eyes adjusted, she could see that Beau was not in the parlor.

She went back into the hallway and peered down a long corridor toward the rear of the house, where utter blackness prevailed. After a moment, forms began to emerge from the darkness. That angular construction at the end of the hall was a staircase, of course. And the shadow on it was surely Beau. He was not climbing the stairs, but stood at the bottom, as if listening.

As she stood, watching, she felt the hair on her arms lift in some atavistic warning. She had no idea how she knew, but she suddenly was absolutely certain that she and Beau were not alone in the house. Nor was the other person a friendly one. Some menacing presence lurked nearby. She turned instinctively to flee, then decided she must warn Beau.

Staring toward the staircase, she could not discern any other form. With panic rising to engulf her, she took a sudden dash forward, for she feared that to call her cousin would alert the invisible other and bring disaster down on their heads.

It was about halfway down the long corridor that it happened. One instant she was running, the next instant she had run into a human wall. He must have come out of a doorway leading to the hall. She heard a masculine gasp of surprise, and like an echo, her own lighter gasp following it. Strong hands seized her shoulders. As she stood, trembling in fear for her life, the hands brushed intimately down the sides of her body, gauging her size and sex. Her frightened breaths were the only sound; she was too shocked and afraid even to shout.

Of course, she must call to Beau for help. Even as
the thought darted into her mind, the dark head descended and hot lips pressed on hers. Strong arms encircled her waist, crushing her against that firm wall of bone and muscle. Between shock and fear, she scarcely had the strength to struggle.

When she recovered her wits, she braced her hands against the man’s shoulders and pushed with all her might, temporarily dislodging him. A low chuckle sounded in her ear, then his arms tightened and he kissed her again, hot and hard and long, as if in punishment for fighting him.

I
am ruined! she thought. This villain is going to have his way with me.

Then he lifted his head and rubbed his cheek against hers.
“Tu es très méchante, ma chérie,”
he murmured, and was gone as suddenly as he had appeared.

She stood staring all about in the darkness with her heart pounding in painful excitement, forgetful of Beau. A Frenchman! She might have guessed. Only a Frenchie would kiss like that. Shaking herself back to sanity, she looked to the staircase.

Before her gaze had time to focus, she heard a scuffle and a muffled gasp, followed by a dragging sound. The sounds were congruous with a struggle, and someone or something being dragged along the floor. Fear was left behind in her concern for Beau’s safety. She moved swiftly forward. Her fear for Beau’s life was soon preempted by a fear for her own. Some rough thing—a blanket perhaps—was thrown over her head. It covered her arms and legs, leaving her helpless. She was picked up bodily in a pair of strong arms and carried down the corridor. She heard a door open. She was carried into the room and deposited on the floor. She heard the door close and a key turn.

She immediately pulled the blanket off her head. The stench of fish and seaweed suggested it had been to sea. Before she had time to examine the room she had been placed in, she heard whispers from beyond the door but close at hand. The words sounded like gibberish at first, but as she listened more closely, she could distinguish that it was two men speaking French.

“J’ai cherché partout. Elle n’est pas ici.”
The man was telling his companion he had looked all over and could not find her—or it. The French had a troublesome habit of ascribing gender to their nouns and pronouns. Was it Dauntry’s
chère amie
that was missing?

The reply was also in French. The voice sounded slightly familiar, but the foreign language changed the timbre and inflection beyond recognition. “They must have been looking for it (or possibly her),
non
? We’ve got to find it/her. I trust you took care of that fellow?”

“Ah,
out,
and the lady.”

“I hope you didn’t hurt her?”

“A Frenchman hurt a lady?
Jamais!
Never! I treated her gently as a babe. As to the
gars,
I gave him only a tap on the head.”

“Bon!
I wonder if it"—still that troublesome
“elle,”
for they spoke French-—”could be slid under the carpet. Did you look?”

“Under every carpet and in every corner.”

The men moved beyond hearing in the corridor, but one thing was now plain—a woman was not hiding under a carpet. Cressida was nearly frightened out of her wits when a hollow voice suddenly spoke from the shadows within the chamber.

“Sid, is that you?”

“Beau! You’re alive! Oh, thank God.” They both spoke in low voices. “I feared they had killed you.” She scrambled out of the blanket and rushed to him. He lay prostrate on the floor, holding his aching head.

“Wounded, not conquered.” He struggled to his feet. “Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do. Bested by a pair of Frenchies. Or at least the one who caught me was, to judge by his curses. Took me by surprise, or I would have drawn his cork and darkened his daylights.”

“I think it was two Frenchies,” she said. Or had one of them been Dauntry? “I don’t think they were smugglers, Beau. They were looking for something they called
‘elle.’
”

“An ell of smuggled silk,” Beau deduced.

“No, not that sort of ell. They were speaking French. It could mean she or it.”

“A woman!” Beau exclaimed.

“No, they thought this
elle
might be under a carpet.”

“Oh, then it wasn’t the lady upstairs they were looking for.”

“What lady?”

“I heard light footfalls on the stairs as I went down the corridor. I couldn’t see much in the moonlight, but I think I saw a white gown, and light hair. And I know I smelled violet perfume.”

“You dreamed it. I saw no lady.”

“Of course you didn’t. She was hiding—under a carpet for all I know. We’ve got to help her, Sid.”

“You’ve been reading those gothic novels in the library.”

Beau rubbed his head. “You’re right, I was having a look at
The Mysterious Warning
this afternoon. Perhaps I dreamed her after I was coshed on the head. But I mean to return—after we escape, I mean—and search the house from top to bottom.”

“I shall come with you to search for
elle.
Meanwhile, we must get out of here and follow them, try to overhear what else they say.”

“We’d best do it quietly. Follow me.” He headed to the door. “Oh, it’s locked.”

“We shall have to go out by the window.” As she spoke, she moved quietly toward the window. The leaded panes that looked so charming from the outside were not made to open. They were firmly held in place by wooden frames with no locks or bolts. Cressida was aware of a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “We are locked in,” she said in a dying voice.

Visions of being discovered the next day, starving and parched from thirst, flashed before her eyes.

“I’ll bust the window,” Beau said bravely. “But first we’d best listen and make sure they’re gone.”

Beau put his ear to the door; Cressida looked out the window, which gave an angled view of the rock plateau in front of the cottage and the shining sea below. As she watched, two men came into view around the corner of the cottage. One was in shadow—he might have been Dauntry. But it was at the other that she gazed, a soft smile lifting her lips. Handsome! She felt he was the one who had kissed her and called her naughty. He had a French look about him. All the charm of the French, and the Gallic grace in his shrugging shoulders and gesturing hands. It was difficult to determine his complexion in the wan moonlight, but his hair looked black and his skin swarthy. He was not quite as tall as the other man, and slighter in build, but with broad shoulders.

He tossed up his hands, patted the other man on the shoulder, and walked away, laughing insouciantly. She watched as he clambered like a goat up the rock cliff and disappeared. The other one remained behind, looking uneasily at the cottage. Surely he was not going to go and leave them locked up all night in this horrid house! There might be rats. She peered around the dim corners of the room for signs of vermin. Then, to her great dismay, the second man turned and went down the staircase, away from the cottage.