Smuggler's Lady (15 page)

“Thank you, Jud.” She followed him upstairs and was surprised, on being shown with considerable flourish into the only private parlor the Royal possessed, that it contained only Lord Rutherford and a laden table.

“I did not expect to find you alone, sir.” She drew off her gloves and removed her hat, tossing both onto the window seat. “Where are the boys?”

“Rob heard tell of a traveling circus.” Rutherford smiled and poured her a glass of sherry. “Also a fair, as I understand. Even Hugo was induced to go to see if they would be worth an extended visit this afternoon.”

“Then I daresay we shall not see them for hours.” She took the sherry and went to the mullioned window, looking down onto the street. “Had I known, I would have given Theo and Rob some money. They would never ask for it, but a fair can provide little amusement if one is penniless.”

Her companion cleared his throat and said somewhat hesitantly, “I—uh—took the liberty of ...”

She whirled from the window. “Thank you. It is what I would have expected of you, to think of such a thing.” She spoke with completely natural warmth. There had never been any constraint between them when it came to dealings with the Trelawney brothers. “How much do I owe you?”

“You would not, I suppose, allow me to make a present of it to my young friends?”

“No,” she said definitely. “I could not possibly.”

“Very well then—half a sovereign apiece. Hugo did not see any need for funds.”

Merrie laughed. “No, he would not.” She handed him a sovereign which he pocketed with appropriate solemnity.

“How was your business?” Lord Rutherford inquired politely. “Successful, I trust.”

“Yes, thank you. Quite successful.” The accompanying smile was, however, distinctly preoccupied.

“That is not an entirely honest answer,” he declared, leaning broad shoulders against the mantel. “I am intrigued. In general, when you lie you do so with such consummate artistry that it is near impossible to detect. You have made little attempt to disguise that particular untruth. I wonder why.”

“Perhaps, sir, because with you there would be little point.” She took a slow sip of sherry. “I beg your pardon if I appear a trifle distrait, but there are matters that concern me at present, and I had not intended to take on social obligations in addition to my business.”

Lord Rutherford whistled softly. “So, I am a social obligation. That is something of a facer, I confess. I have never to my knowledge been viewed in quite such an unflattering light before, particularly by my guests.”

Meredith flushed to the roots of her hair. “I must apologize if I sounded impolite, my lord. It was not my intention.”

“Liar,” he said without rancor or emphasis.

“I wish you would stop accusing me of lying.” Meredith gave up the pretense of formality.

“When you stop, so will I also. It is a very bad habit, you know,” he informed her rather in the manner of a kindly schoolmaster addressing an erring pupil.

Her lips quivered at the absurdity, and with two long strides he stood in front of her. One hand removed her glass while the other lifted her chin.

“No . . .” she managed to say, the instant before he kissed her. “You must not,” she completed when his mouth released hers.

“Why must I not, Merrie?” He smiled, the warm, glowing, all-embracing smile that fuzzed the edges of reality and seemed to make nonsense of her fears. But they were not nonsense, and she was no naive maiden to be swept foolishly off her feet by an engaging countenance, a beguiling smile, and a pair of sparkling eyes. Widows in their twenty-fourth year, with debts and brothers to raise and provide for, could not afford to lose touch with the ground beneath their serviceable shoes.

“Lord Rutherford,” she began, stepping backward away from his hand. “I must ask you, please, to—to cease your visits to Pendennis and to refrain from singling me out in any way. I do not wish for your company—although, of course, I am deeply honored by your attentions,” she added with the self-deprecating smile she reserved for her neighbors.

“You dare do that to me!” he exclaimed, all humor vanishing from his expression. Taking her by the shoulders, he gave her a vigorous shake, ignoring her gasp of outrage. “Never smile at me like that again! Now, what is all this nonsense?”

“A gentleman, my lord, does not require an explanation when a lady says she does not wish for his company,” she said icily.

“You lack many of the definitive qualities of a lady, Merrie Trelawney,” he retorted. “It is hardly surprising that I should act accordingly.”

“You are insufferable!” Snatching up her gloves and hat, she marched to the door, but Rutherford reached it before she did. A long arm in a maroon velvet jacket barred her progress.

“I will beg your pardon for that remark, Merrie, if you insist that it is necessary,” he said. “But will you not acknowledge the truth? What has passed between us from the first has had little in common with the veneer of propriety.”

“That may be so,” she said in a low voice, keeping her eyes fixed on a hairline crack in the door's paneling. “But that does not mean that I forfeit my right to make my wishes known or to have them granted.”

“Yesterday, I said that I loved you, that I wished you to be my wife. You were kind enough to tell me that I was quite mistaken, that I was merely amused and challenged by you, found you a diversion from my boredom. Those observations, I beg to inform you, were insulting. If you have the right to make your wishes known, I have the right to be believed in what I say. Do you not think me more likely to know how and what I feel than you?”

Meredith remained silent. If she could fall in love with Rutherford, why should he not have fallen in love with her? It did not alter the facts, however. Talk of marriage between them was as chimeric as believing in fairies. If he had not been in such a strange state of mind, dissatisfied and unhappy, he would see that as clearly as she did.

“I await an answer, Meredith. And I would like you to look at me when you give it.”

She waited for him to turn up her face in his accustomed fashion and, when he did not, was obliged to look up of her own accord—an action that uncomfortably implied obedience. “I will grant, sir, that you know your own feelings best.”

He pursed his lips, continuing to scrutinize her expression in silence, then the sounds of hasty footsteps on the stairs and the voices of Rob and Theo engaged in argument came from outside. With one mind, they both moved away from the door. When the boys burst in, their elders were to be found sipping sherry, Merrie by the window, Lord Rutherford leaning casually against the carved mantel.

“Merrie, there is a famous fair!” Rob babbled. “The circus is nothing, just a mangy tiger and a parrot, but the fair has a Fat Lady. She is enormous! Sir, you would not believe ...” He turned shining eyes to his lordship whose rather hard expression softened.

“I think I can imagine, Rob,” he said. “What did you think of it, Theo?”

“Not a great deal.” With the wisdom and experience of his fifteen years, Theo shrugged in blase indifference. “It's nothing compared to the one that comes to Harrow in September. But Rob hasn't seen that yet, and he won't be able to until he's in the third year and allowed to visit the town.”

“Well, I do not care,” Rob said stoutly. “And as soon as I have had nuncheon, I am going back. I am starved!”

“I cannot think how you can be,” Hugo declared. “You have been eating humbugs and gingerbread all morning.”

“Peace,” their sister implored. “I cannot see what possible fun there would be in a fair if one did not stuff oneself with sweetmeats. Do you not agree, Lord Rutherford?” For a moment forgetting their quarrel, she turned naturally to him as an ally.

“Absolutely,” he concurred without the blink of an eyelid. “Shall we address ourselves to this more than adequate repast?” He drew out a chair for her, and, as she took her seat, his fingertips brushed the back of her neck.

Meredith shivered at the contact, knowing that he had felt the reaction. She passed a dish of Cornish pasties to Rob and made some inconsequential remark about the weather.

“May I carve you some ham, Lady Blake?” Rutherford inquired with sardonic courtesy. “Or perhaps you would prefer the game pie?”

“Some ham, thank you.”

“Very wise.” Carving wafer-thin slices, he laid them on her plate. “This Cornish predilection for pastry is something of an acquired taste unless one has the appetite of extreme youth.”

“Or one earned by labor in the fields or with the lobster pots,” she countered. “I would have thought that as a soldier you would sympathize with the hunger resulting from physical exercise in the open air.”

“Were you a soldier, sir?” Theo's attention was instantly caught. “In the Peninsula?”

Meredith held her breath, wondering if he would snap the boy's head off. There was a short pause, then Rutherford said easily, “Yes, as it happens.”

“Oh, famous!” Theo's eyes shone. “I wish of all things for a pair of colors when I am old enough. But Merrie is as difficult about that as she is about Hugo's taking orders.”

“I am not difficult,” Merrie protested. “I merely said that we would wait until you were older before we discussed it. And if Hugo is still of the same mind when he comes down from Oxford, then I will not stand in his way.”

“You are well served, I think,” his lordship said softly, placing a piece of bread and butter on her plate. She did not pretend to misunderstand him. Having brought up the subject of his army experience to annoy him, she had only herself to blame if the tables had been turned.

Theo, however, continued to question Rutherford eagerly and, after only the barest hesitation, his lordship responded, leaving Merrie free to retreat into her own thoughts without further interruption.

After the meal, at Rob's insistence, they repaired to the fair where Merrie was induced to shy for coconuts, and in the ensuing competition she found it impossible to maintain her air of hauteur with Rutherford. The Fat Lady was pronounced to be truly prodigious, and it was generally agreed that, if Rob's consumption of toffee apples continued at its present rate, she would soon have a rival.

At the end of the afternoon, Merrie found herself in possession of a number of trinkets representing presents from her brothers and their combined winnings at the stalls where the prizes seemed exclusively designed to appeal to the fairer sex. “What am I to do with them?” Laughing she laid out the trumpery bracelets and rings, the little bone fan, and a colorful scrap of material intended as a scarf. “There must be many a girl in the village who'd be glad of them.”

“Keep them.” Rutherford gathered up the fairings, tying them in the scarf. “One day, when you are old and gray, you will find them in a storeroom and wonder for a moment where they came from. Then you'll remember a sunny afternoon in Fowey when the world lay at your feet.”

Meredith frowned as a finger of cold touched her between the shoulders. “That is a most depressing thought, Lord Rutherford.”

“It is depressing to have the world at your feet?” he inquired with an unreadable smile. “Surely it will only be depressing if you kick it away?”

There was no mistaking his meaning and, with a definitive gesture of refusal, Meredith turned away from him, calling to the boys. “It is time we were returning home. Cook will not be best pleased if her dinner is kept waiting.”

 

 

Lord Rutherford's visits to Pendennis continued during the following two weeks, and Meredith avoided him as and when she could. But she could not avoid the thrill of eagerness when she heard his voice in conversation with the boys or the pang of disappointment when, on returning from some errand around the estate, she did not see the black patiently awaiting his master. He did not deliberately seek her out on these visits, but she was aware of his gaze, shrewd and just a little amused as if he could read her mind, whenever they were in the same room.

One afternoon in August, four nights into the new moon, he noticed something different about her, an air of suppressed excitement, an absent-minded preoccupation. She seemed not to hear what was said to her or, if she did, to forget to respond.

Lord Rutherford could think of only one explanation. It had been just over a month since that night of his arrival on the cliff road. Was there to be another run tonight? If so, would there be another ambush? He remembered hearing her say that they had been warned of the last one, and, from what Bart had said, they had walked deliberately into the trap. Surely she would not take such a risk again? She had promised Bart, had she not? He could not help the thought, though, that perhaps Meredith treated promises with the same insouciance that she treated the truth. Having twice seen how much pleasure the danger afforded her, Rutherford had developed the shrewd suspicion that the excitement of smuggling, combined with the mischievous amusement she took in hoodwinking her neighbors, was the breath of life for Merrie, the only compensations for an imprisonment that such a free spirit could not help but find intolerable.

He was waiting on the cliff top when she emerged from the cave beneath just before midnight. She was alone, and tonight there was no whistling tune, no skipping dance. She moved along the path with the stealth of a hunter—or of the hunted—and, even from that distance, he could sense the tension in the wire-sprung frame.

Damian followed at a considerable distance, having the conviction that even a conventionally safe gap would be too close for those sharp ears, the senses alerted to a hint of anything out of the ordinary. At one point she halted, standing motionless, staring into the darkness ahead. After a minute he saw it too. A light flashing so briefly and intermittently that it would escape a casual watcher. As far as he could deduce, it came from the spot on the headland known as Devil's Point for the treacherous reef of jagged rock below.