The Pursuit of Pleasure (30 page)

She smiled to herself, for the first time in what felt like forever. A genuine smile of happiness. It was a true accomplishment, conquering her fear and her panic. She was becoming independent. Even if she had to surround herself with people to do so.

It was then she saw movement ahead on the path. The flare of a coattail. A man. Was someone watching her? Had he seenher under the cliff? And suddenly her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking, just as they had the night she shot Dan Pike. And just as she had the night she shot Dan Pike, she look a deep breath, and pulled back the lock on the gun.

She edged forward along the side of the path cautiously, close to the trees and undergrowth, trying to get a better look.

It was a man, dressed in plain work clothes of the country, walking down the lane towards the cottages and the house. His back was silhouetted by the sun, and his walk was a bit careless, what she might have described as jaunty and optimistic.

Familiar.

And there was that same strange feeling of tight pain in her chest, the one where she could feel the hole open up in her heart and the blood leak out into her body. She felt it when they’d told her he was dead. And now, she felt it because Jamie was alive and he was walking, cocksure as you please, up her lane.

God damn him.

She tore after him.

She wanted to call out his name but somehow she couldn’t, like in a dream when one opens one’s mouth to scream and nothing ever comes out. But she could run, as fast as her feet would carry her, moving as silently as she could manage, but when she turned the corner near the orchard, he was gone. Then another flash—the flare of his coattail again as he turned around the corner of the kitchen garden. Just a glimpse of his dun brown coat before he disappeared behind the wall.

She went pelting into the garden after him.

And straight into Hugh McAlden. Just as she reached the corner and would have gone through the gate, the big, blond groundsman came loping along in the opposite direction, blocking her way with his sheer bulk.

“Ma’am.” He tugged respectfully at his knit cap, but remained lodged firmly in the center of the path. “Were you looking for me, ma’am?”

“No. Damn your eyes. Get out of my way. Allow me to pass.” She darted under his elbow, into the walled garden and down the nearest path between the desultory rows of vegetables. The garden was empty. She wheeled back on McAlden. “Where did he go?”

“Who, ma’am?” McAlden showed her a carefully blank, bland face.

“The man who just came in here. My husband. Where is he?”

“No one here but I, ma’am.” He shrugged.

“Good Lord. Just how stupid do you think I am,
Lieutenant
McAlden? I saw him. He was here! And I wonder how your superiors at the Admiralty will feel when they learn about the sneaking little smuggling ken their veterans have got going here.”

Oh, that got his attention, the use of his rank. He may have been a useful, successful naval officer, but he was no card player. His absolute horror at her discovery showed clearly in his face.

And then it hit her. Another powerful, painful thought slammed into her brain. My God. The elusive groundsman. Jamie. His tall silhouette, walking down the lane. And the tall silhouette of the groundsman, lurking at the shadows of the doorway the night she’d shot Dan Pike. Lizzie turned to look back down the lane and picture him again in her mind’s eye.

Jamie. He’d been there the whole time. The whole time, when he’d kissed her good-bye and said he was off to sail to the other end of the world, he’d stayed here. He’d never left. The whole time he was supposed to be dead, he’d been here. The whole time she’d been in gaol, threatened with hanging for his death, he’d been larking about the lanes of Glass Cottage. Right bloody here.

When she turned back, McAlden had disappeared as quickly as Jamie.

“Oh bloody, holy, damned … son of a bitch!” She didn’t even have adequate vocabulary to express the rancid thoughts and anger towards her husband. “No account, low-down dog of a sneaking, lying, bloody bastard!”

She
was
going to kill him.

C
HAPTER 18

“I
s she gone?” Marlowe had caught a glimpse of Lizzie on the beach and turned back to avoid her, as he’d done every time he’d spotted her over the past week. It was growing tiresome. And frustrating, in more ways than one. She kept popping up in the damnedest places—and always with that gun of her father’s. He’d recognized it straight off. But he didn’t know she’d followed him until he’d heard the rapid footsteps behind him in the lane.

“Yes. For now.” McAlden didn’t look pleased.

“That was close. What the hell was she doing down on the beach? She just came out of nowhere.”

“She knows.”

“Knows what?”

“She
knows.
She called me Lieutenant McAlden, and she said she knew you. That you were her husband.”

Marlowe let fly a colorful invective. His day of reckoning with Lizzie had finally come. And frankly, it was a relief. It had been killing him, having her back at Glass Cottage, wanting and needing to protect her and being reduced to watching from a distance. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out, peering up at her windows, waiting into the wee small hours for her candle to go out and for her to fall asleep, so he could lie himself down on the floor of her hallway, guarding her door. Her presence, so close and yet always out of reach, had become his well-deserved, continual penance.

McAlden let out a mirthless chuckle. “You have similar taste in oaths, you and your wife. She let loose some remarkable Billingsgate language. Almost have to admire her for it.”

Marlowe nodded wearily. “Oh, yes. I’m familiar with it.”

“I saw her from the house, running up the lane, just after you went by. I thought she was still just being bloody-minded about the ‘groundsman.’ And then she called me Lieutenant.”

Marlowe swore again. “Points to Lizzie for accuracy.”

“How much do you think she knows?”

“Enough. But the more pertinent point is, how did she find out, and with whom is she sharing her information? That Maguire chap she’s installed in the stables
was
running a gang out of this coast when I was a kid, as we suspected. Everyone knows him. But everything Palmer found out, and everything I’ve heard, indicates he’s been out of the game for years. Or was, until he got hired on by Lizzie.”

“And maybe he wants back into the game?”

“He’s definitely a possibility.”

“And what about your wife?”

“What do you mean? What about her?”

“It seems everyone on this coast, from the fishmonger to the magistrate, is running with a gang. Why not her? How well do you really know her? By your own account, before you married her, you hadn’t seen her in years. Ten years. She’s what, three and twenty, maybe four?”

“Two. Two and twenty.”

“Old enough. And who’s to say she isn’t part of or even the one heading this gang? She’s certainly clever enough. And she’s been remarkably stubborn about the house. Insisting on staying here in the face of all opposition. Bloody-minded, even.”

“Then why was Dan Pike shooting at her?”

“She shot Dan Pike, not the other way round. Because she and Maguire are expanding their lay? Because the free traders think Maguire wants back into the game? Because she’s one of the Corresponding Society members who’s working with the smugglers to move the weapons, and the locals want out? You tell me.”

Every single question, Marlowe had already asked himself. And dismissed.

No, Lizzie still had no idea she was nearly up to her neck in this business. A lovely, white neck the Prime Minister would have no qualms about seeing stretched on a gibbet, hanged until dead. And Marlowe was not going to allow that to happen. Absolutely not. No matter what else happened on this mission, he would see to her safety. Whether she wanted him to or not. His girl might think she was independent and worldly, but she was only idealistic. She had too little practical experience of the world, and certainly not nearly enough to coolly fool all of Dartmouth and run a gang of cutthroat thieves out of her house. She was clever enough, but her fright and her devastation had been all too real.

“She’s not.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive, Lieutenant. Get a move on. We still need to get the dory out to
Defiant
and make for the islands. Maybe this will be the shipment we need, and we can finally pin something on somebody other than bloody Dan Pike and his minders.”

Whoever they were.

She waited for hours. She’d come to check on the height of the tide as she’d planned, seen the dory was gone, and drawn her own conclusions. It had been difficult to try and track them in the dark, but now that she knew where they’d gone, she also knew they would be back. Jamie had done too much, told too many lies to keep himself at Redlap to abandon it just because she had chased him down the lane.

Lizzie settled herself in the underbrush, schooled her eyes upon the beach, and waited for them to reappear.

As the hours stretched on, she fell into fitful dozes, awakening suddenly a half dozen times before she finally saw them: two men rowing silently and smoothly across the dark, glassy water. They stashed their empty dory high on the beach, above the tidemark, and then moved back up the lane towards her, their dark, worn clothing absorbing the play of moonlight flickering off the water of the cove.

They looked exactly like what they must be. Bloody smugglers. And traitors.

She stepped into the lane behind them and cocked the hammer on her gun.

The two men froze. One of them began to slowly turn. Only one.

McAlden, his arms out at his side, palms open and up. At the sight of her, he swore beneath his breath.

“It’s only McAlden, ma’am. No need for the gun.”

“Turn around, completely. Both of you.”

It was a long moment as McAlden looked at the other man and shook his head.

And then the other one spoke.

“Hello, Lizzie. You ought to get more sleep.”

His voice was deep and rough, and poured over her like lye, stinging and burning. She’d expected it, of course. It wasn’t a shock. Her breath wasn’t locked inside her chest. Her hands weren’t trembling. She gripped the stock tighter, forced a deep breath, and sighted the gun on Jamie’s heart.

McAlden made an exasperated sound.

“Your friend—or perhaps the word I’m searching for is
accomplice
—is correct in his assumption.” Her voice was firm and clear, even a little sarcastic. Good. “I do have half a mind to shoot you.”

“What does the other half say, Lizzie?”

God damn, but it was pure Jamie. Slow and cocky enough to warm her from the inside out. Damn him.

“To shoot both of you. Although I’d prefer to shoot just you. I can’t be tried twice for the same murder, can I?”

He acknowledged her point with a rueful nod of his head. “To be fair, you weren’t tried the first time, Lizzie.”

Was he trying to tease her? “No thanks to you. Now, tell me what you and your loblolly boy here are up to.”

He made that sideways wince he always made when he was embarrassed. And even though he tried to smile, his eyes never left hers. They pored over her, searching out all her secrets.

“Do you even know what a loblolly boy is? No, don’t answer. I’m sure your association with Phineas Maguire has furnished you with your colorful vocabulary. Not to mention your stint in …” He shook his head again. “You need to go home and get some sleep. You have bruises under your eyes.”

Lizzie was not about to let Jamie coddle her out of her well-earned anger with his belated concern. She resighted the fowling piece on a spot between his eyes. “Try again.”

“Lizzie, please put that blasted thing down. You’ll be the death of me.”

“Yes, that was the plan, wasn’t it? But if you insist.” She smiled and leveled the weapon at his crotch.

She was satisfied to note his hand flinched down to cover his cods before he got ahold of himself and relaxed into his usual loose-limbed stance.

“This isn’t a game, Lizzie. We have to talk. But this isn’t the time.”

“Oh, and here I was having so much fun playing at going to prison.”

“Lizzie. I am sorry. But please, go home. It’s very late and you’ll catch your death in this damp.”

“I’m not twelve anymore, Jamie. You can’t just send me home when you don’t want to play.”

“And I’m not the rector’s son you can tell off and dismiss as if I were nothing more than a bloody servant.” There was an edge of anger, as sharp as a blade, in his voice before he sheathed it. “Please. This is deadly serious. And I don’t want you hurt any further.”

She was not going to be taken in by him. Nor intimidated. He could be a traitor. She already knew he was a liar. “Then I suggest you give me a deadly serious explanation.”

“Would you two mind,” McAlden asked carefully, “if I opted out of this little family discussion?”

“No,” Jamie growled.

“Yes,” Lizzie countered. “Stay where you are.”

“Go,” Jamie ordered curtly.

McAlden obeyed. He started slowly on towards the cottage. “I’m going to bed. You know where you can find me.”

Jamie watched him walk off before he turned his darkened eyes back to her. “We can’t talk here.” He looked around for a moment before he began to follow McAlden up the lane, checking constantly over his shoulder to see if she followed.

She did, keeping a safe distance, and holding the fowling piece carefully in front of her, aimed in his general direction. His hand kept clenching and opening by his side. It was unsettling. But she followed him cautiously through the fallow walled garden and into a long glass plant shed set against the far sidewall. Moonlight filtered through the dirty slanted panes of the roof glass.

Jamie went down the aisle between empty tables and turned. “Close the door, so we won’t be overheard.”

“There’s no one here but you and I. And the Navy Pensioners Guild you’ve employed to help you with your smuggling game.”

“Lizzie,” Jamie repeated in a quietly stern voice, “I am not a smuggler and this is not a game.”