The Pursuit of Pleasure (23 page)

Mrs. Tupper bustled about brewing up a pot of blissfully hot coffee and milk, and set out a loaf of bread, jam, and the remains of a cold meat pie. “There’s ham as well, if you’ve a mind for it.”

“That would do nicely, Mrs. Tupper. Just the thing to counter a ‘lark.’ ”

“Lark, mine Aunt Fanny,” Mrs. Tupper growled.

“Why, Mrs. Tupper.” Lizzie could not stop her smile. She’d never expected such a piece of cant out of straitlaced Mrs. Tupper. But here the dear lady was fair bristling with indignation. And after all, she was married to Mr. Tupper.

“Not right that a man of the law shouldn’t do something about a man breaking into a house in the dead of night and threatening a lady like that. Not right. It’s one thing for these men… here, dear.” She passed Lizzie a wet cloth. “You’ve got a big smudge of black powder all along your cheek.”

From firing the gun, no doubt. No wonder Sir Ralston had looked so askance at her. She must look a pirate with her strange combination of clothes and her blackened face.

“Yes, well, you are correct, of course. It’s
not
right, but I’m afraid it’s the way of things here on the south coast. I daresay you haven’t been here long enough to understand.”

“I understand a defenseless woman shouldn’t be attacked in her own home—”

“Hardly defenseless, Mrs. Tupper,” Lizzie interjected mildly.

“Well, just because you’ve the good sense God gave you to know the business end of that gun from the other, doesn’t excuse his mischief.”

“And ‘mischief’ is all the explanation we’re like to get. Free traders’ mischief.”

Mrs. Tupper ceased being indignant. “Free traders?”

“Smuggling,” Lizzie added for clarity’s sake. “I’m sorry if I shock you, but everyone within three counties must know Dan Pike and his brother Dicky are up to their red eyeballs in the smuggling, and I’d wager this house that our Lord Magistrate, Sir Ralston is as well.”

“Sir Ralston?”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. The coast’s riddled with smuggling gangs, but what I want to know is why they were inside my house and how they got in, with all the doors locked. Of course I do reckon now it was for the smuggling. They’ve probably used the house for years as it’s been sitting here conveniently vacant—at least for most of Captain Marlowe’s tenure.” Lizzie let her brain ramble over the questions in her mind. “But why they couldn’t just ask me to come to some sort of civilized gentlemen’s agreement about the matter, in the usual manner, is beyond me.”

Lizzie got up and began to stroll back and forth before the great stone hearth. It was always so much easier to think when she was moving. And her agitation, she hoped, might inspire Mrs. Tupper’s confidence. If it didn’t, there was always brandy.

“Well, Mr. Tupper does say that the house is meant to be closed. Perhaps they thought so too?”

“Mmm,” Lizzie agreed. “Or perhaps there was a prior agreement? Do you know, Mrs. Tupper, if anyone tried to contact Captain Marlowe, or any of the other men, here at the house? Did anyone come to Glass Cottage or perhaps try to tip the wink to Mr. Tupper at a public house with a discreet word about the free trade?”

“No, ma’am.” Mrs. Tupper looked acutely uncomfortable, but firm in her denial. Curious.

“Would you check with Mr. Tupper just to be sure, please? Although perhaps this incident has more to do with Captain Marlowe’s former profession. I can only imagine His Majesty’s Royal Navy doesn’t exactly see eye to eye with the Free Trade on most matters.”

“No, ma’am.” There was some vehemence in that statement. Very heartfelt. Again, curious. Just what part exactly did the Tuppers play in this little drama?

And then there was that mole, McAlden. The one who might or might not be a smuggler himself. The one Jamie had been so cozy with. The one every instinct she possessed told her to be wary of. But he had also been in the Navy, like Jamie and Mr. Tupper.

“I say, Mrs. Tupper, is it generally known in the neighborhood Mr. Tupper was a sailor in the Navy before he came here? Is it generally known that he and Captain Marlowe sailed together?”

“Well, no, I don’t rightly …” Mrs. Tupper pulled back visibly, her face tightening and closing as if she were battening down for a gale.

“Oh, it’s quite all right, Mrs. Tupper. I’m just puzzling things out. You see, if it were well known that Mr. Tupper came from one of Captain Marlowe’s ships, it might explain their, the free traders’, reluctance to parlay with us, as it were. Do you see?”

Lizzie took the opportunity of Mrs. Tupper’s shocked silence and resolutely turned back to liberally lash the coffee with brandy. Her mother would have called it “French cream.” But it would do her, as well as Mrs. Tupper, the world of good. It might help to rid her of the last of the cold knot of fear still firmly lodged in her throat.

The brew went down a treat. And a few unguarded sips were warming Mrs. Tupper as well. Her face was beginning to take on a decidedly rosy cast.

“Jamie, Captain Marlowe, told me they served together, in the navy, he and Mr. Tupper?”

“He did, ma’am. That he did. The
Resolute
it were and then
Swallow.
Captain Marlowe’s first command.”

“Of course.” Lizzie smiled to herself. “And how long were they together? It seems it must have been a great friendship for Captain Marlowe to offer him a home and a position after his injury.”

Mrs. Tupper, that bastion of straitlaced morality, was rapidly loosening her stays. Lizzie kept the brandy to hand and would have poured her a deep dish without the coffee to keep the flow of words, but as Mrs. Tupper warmed to her subject, it became apparent that any more would be extraneous. The laced brew was doing its job quite well, without need of any further assistance.

“Lost his fin at Toulon. Bloody mess that were, but the Captain, he were First Lieutenant then, pulled Tupper out right and tight. Eight years we sailed together with the Captain, all in all.”

“We?”

“Oh, aye. My man and me. Ne’er been apart in all of six and twenty years of marriage.”

“And you lived on his ships, the whole time?” Lizzie thought her eyes must be round as saucers. She did know her mouth was gaping open like a seal’s.

“Bless me, yes. Nowhere else for me to live.”

“I’d no idea.” She had no idea women went off to war at sea with their men. It did account for Mrs. Tupper being as stouthearted as any tar. Lizzie wondered if the Navy itself knew. Or admitted it. “Well, we’ll canvass that entire topic, for I’m sure I’ve a hundred questions to ask of you, at another time. But, to get back to my point, does anyone else hereabouts know that Mr. Tupper is, or was, navy?”

“Well …”

Mrs. Tupper was hedging.

“Have you kept it a secret?”

“Not a secret exactly. Just keep our business to ourselves. No need for anyone to know or care about our business. Tupper knows what he’s doing—raised on a farm out to the west. No one can say he doesn’t know how to manage things for Captain Marlowe.”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt.” Lizzie only wanted information, not retribution. But it just might account for why the free traders would try such a hamfisted approach the way they did. “Well, there’s nothing for it. We shall have to get in touch with them.”

“With the free traders? The smugglers? Hadn’t you best let the authorities deal with all that?”

“The authorities? Come, Mrs. Tupper. What happened to ‘Lark, mine Aunt Fanny’? You heard Sir Ralston. The magistrate won’t do a damned thing. It’s all my eye and Betty Martin. No, if we’re to get any answers we’ll have to ask the questions ourselves.”

Mrs. Tupper looked decidedly uneasy. As if she had suddenly become seasick.

“Don’t you worry. I know exactly what to do.” Lizzie smiled. “I’ll make a call to Old Maguire.”

C
HAPTER 14

“Y
ou’re awfully tetchy this morning.”

Marlowe shot a venomous, if weary, look at his companion. He was too tired for a proper sneer. “Dan Pike bloody well shot at my wife last night.”

“No, I believe it was the other way round. Your wife shot at Dan Pike. And hit him. Almost makes me want to admire her.”

“Don’t.” Marlowe grunted in response and gave the dory another shove across the sand towards the water.

McAlden continued along as if Marlowe hadn’t said a word. “Don’t admire her, or don’t tell you I admire her? In fact, I think I’m beginning to like her. I begin to see why you married her. Apart from the obvious.”

“Shut your bloody mouth before I shut it for you, Lieutenant,” he grunted.

McAlden grinned into the gunwale and put his back into it. The dory slid the last few feet until it was suddenly weightless and riding gently on the water. The two of them jumped fluidly over the rail and fell quickly to work, Marlowe at the tiller and McAlden in the sheets, hauling up the sail. Another moment, a push of ocean air, a turn across the wind, and the potbellied canvas billowed out before them.

They worked in perfect silence and harmony until they were comfortably under way for Plymouth, riding west on the tide.

“Well, you did say the house needed to be empty,” McAlden commented casually as he squinted up at the sail, checking its trim.

He just couldn’t leave well enough alone. “I did, damn your eyes.” His tone was enough to halt all conversation for an hour or so.

In time, McAlden spoke again. “Did you hear what the magistrate said?”

Like him, McAlden had been going over all the evidence, working it all out in his mind.

“Not all. But I got the general impression he’s in it up to his neck.”

“Only about his stomach, I should think.”

That raised a little smile out of him. The magistrate’s involvement was definitely suspect. But so was his own wife. Lizzie and her devilishly quick trigger finger. “And Lizzie’s got it all figured near as sixpence, Mrs. Tupper reports.”

“I told you—nothing but trouble.”

“Not nothing but, but trouble all the same. God damn, but she’s got an unholy talent for mucking things up. Though she may possibly do us some good if we play her right. Mrs. Tupper said she was going to get in touch with someone named Maguire.”

“Ring any bells?”

“There used to be an old fisherman of that name. Saved Lizzie from near drowning once, if I recall, but that was at least fifteen years ago. He’d have to be elderly by now, if he’s still alive.”

“I gather he must be a free trader of some sort. But I think we should see what kind of information she can get. At least she’ll lead us to this Maguire. Mrs. Tupper going to stick on her?”

“I hope so.” No one knew better than he just how damn slippery Lizzie could be. “If Lizzie can figure out half of what’s going on at the first whiff of trouble, how long is it going to be before she’s figured out the rest and sussed us out?” The thought made him acutely uncomfortable. The image of Lizzie with her bloody fowling piece all but smoking rose like a specter before him. She also seemed to have an unholy talent for retribution. It didn’t bear thinking.

“And how long do you think it’ll take the traders to figure out as much as she has?”

“I’ve got to get her out of there before she gets herself killed. They won’t keep their sticks in their pockets next time.”

“They’ll take a page from her book and fire first and ask questions later.” McAlden looked as though the idea amused him.

“We have to get her out of there first.”

“What do you propose? Nothing else seems to have worked.”

“Blast and damn. Maybe I have to go to her, show myself to her, and make her see reason.”

“Don’t like it, Captain. You could end up like Pike. Or worse, like Palmer. We both could. And where would your fine house be then?”

“Lizzie’ll still have it. And they’ll still be after her.” God, he hated to even leave her at all. Marlowe stared back at the retreating coastline. Redlap Cove had long since disappeared astern.

“I still don’t see why you had to involve a woman. She was just bound to muck things up.”

“I wanted to keep the house secure—legally I mean. As you said, it was hard-earned prize money. And the house was supposed to be security for when all these God-damned wars are over and done with. But in the meantime, Lizzie’s my best bet. And we can’t have some other miscreant get it and move in—we’ve got to keep it vacant so the trade will continue.”

And truth was, he couldn’t envision a future for them together without the house as a stage, a backdrop, to her understanding and forgiving him. But if Lizzie could puzzle out the Navy connection, so could those bastards. The magistrate had been near enough to it with his comment about Frank Palmer.

McAlden’s thoughts had been moving just as rapidly along the same lines.

“Did you hear him speak about Frank? Wanted to rip the bastard’s throat out. I near did. But she didn’t give much away though, your wife.”

“No, but they’ve connected Frank to me and then me to Lizzie.…”

McAlden nodded. “We don’t have any more time to lose.”

“Once we get to Plymouth and get the sloop, it may behoove us to split our efforts. You stay aboard the ship, and I’ll continue to try to infiltrate the smugglers.”

“It’d be best if I stayed. She’s already accepted me as one of her staff.”

Marlowe shrugged away the suggestion. He knew it made sense, but he felt compelled to stay near, to keep an eye on her. He changed the subject as he let the boat fall off the wind as they neared the entrance to Plymouth harbor.

“You will appreciate the fact that the Admiralty has given us the sloop we cut out at Toulon.” It was a marvelous joke of fate. The sloop had saved their necks that night, sailing them out of the conflagration. And they had saved it as well, from being burned to a cinder in the harbor. It was much too beautiful, too sleek and yachtlike, to have burned.

Damn their eyes, but they had been lucky that night. Lucky to have made it out alive.

“God, what a night,” McAlden mused morosely. “You’ll tempt fate just to talk about it.” He rubbed his face absently, as if he could still feel the heat and searing flames of that fateful night.

“Who knows, maybe the sloop will be lucky for us again. There she lies.” The vessel was snugged up against the wharf, riding high on the incoming tide.