The Pursuit of Pleasure (8 page)

“This will do quite nicely.” What extraordinary fortune, that a house she had gotten quite by chance should be everything she could have desired. She was giddy with happiness and relief. That was it exactly—relief. As if she’d been holding her breath for years and years, waiting and looking for something to happen. For this to happen. Finally.

“You may make up the room for me and have my things put away here when they arrive, Mrs. Tupper.”

“You’re not staying!” Jamie smiled and frowned at the same time. “Lizzie, you can’t. I’ve bespoken rooms for us at the Red Harte.” He sounded rather like her father, when he was working himself into an argument. So she did the only thing she could do. The thing she always did. She turned and walked away.

“Mr. and Mrs. Tupper don’t even stay here. They live in the steward’s cottage down the lane. The house is completely shut up at night. I’ve only stayed here a few weeks, but you can’t possibly stay here alone. I simply won’t allow it.”

He regretted the words before they were even out of his mouth. It was absolutely, unequivocally the wrong thing to say to Lizzie. Especially after the travesty of a morning they had endured. And after everything he knew of her, he had still managed to say the one thing guaranteed to send her sailing off into the wind, quietly, ruthlessly determined to have her own way.

But clearly, he was just as used to having his own way. Undoubtedly more so. He’d had years of training with entire ships, lieutenants, masters, and men who jumped to do his bidding at the snap of his fingers. He’d grown more than accustomed—he’d grown to rely upon it.

Damn his eyes. He’d shown more finesse outwitting the French than he had with Lizzie. She was already sauntering away.

“Don’t be such an old woman, Jamie. I’m hardly helpless. I never have been.”

There was that negligent flick of the wrist in dismissal as she strolled out of the room. He shouldn’t have needed reminding.

“Captain?”

He took a deep, calming breath and turned to the housekeeper. “Not to worry, Mrs. Tupper. Everything will still proceed according to plan. My wife will not be moving into Glass Cottage. But do you think you might manage a pot of tea, or something from your cottage, for us?”

“Yes, sir. Straightaway.”

He didn’t bother to call Lizzie back. He followed her out, to see where she’d gone to slough off his words.

She had wandered back out the front door, into the garden. He let her roam the flower borders in peace, giving her as much sea room as she wanted. They meandered down toward the cliff top and the viewpoint out over the water, where he turned a weather eye upon the Channel. Experience told him there would be rain again, and soon. Late afternoon clouds were gathering along the edge of the sea, piling up into a threatening blanket of gray. There wasn’t even enough time to get back to Dartmouth. They would be trapped at the Cottage by the weather for as long as the storm lasted.

Although he was quite used to being as wet as a fish, he doubted Lizzie was. The flat light threw her pale, fine-boned, porcelain skin and vivid hair into greater relief. She looked like a china ornament, so delicate and fragile, despite all her resolute assurances.

Devil take it, he had no business bringing her out here. He must be getting sentimental, damn it. It had seemed such an easy thing to give her the pleasure of the visit after the casual cruelty of her father’s words, but now, as he looked back at the neglected cottage, framed by the blowing trees in the eerie, flat light, he could feel the palpable danger of the place.

A danger he was going to orchestrate.

But he couldn’t tell her that, no matter the stray worm of guilt boring its way into his conscience. His duty could not be changed. Nor put off much longer.

He satisfied himself by catching hold of her soft, slender fingers. “Lizzie, truly. I don’t like the idea of you being out here all alone in that wreck of a house.”

An elegant turn of her wrist, and her fingers slipped away.

“A wreck of a house, is it now? Jamie, really, when day before yesterday it was ‘so lovely and covered with roses’? Why did you tell me about it and bring me all the way out here if you didn’t want me to stay? You must have known I’d be charmed.”

He had wanted her to be charmed by
him
and not just by the bloody house. He’d simply used the means at hand. Even if he hadn’t thought about it, he had known deep down she wouldn’t be able to resist Glass Cottage—she would do it justice and see its possibilities.

Yet he couldn’t push too hard, couldn’t insist or she’d dig in her heels as she was doing now. But if there was anything he had learned in the past ten long years it was patience and diligence. He would be both patient and diligent, and he would carry the day with Lizzie.

His beautiful, intelligent, defiant wife.

He came up close behind her. Her hair was fashionably loose and down, a riot of gingery waves cascading over her shoulders, hiding that lovely slide of skin at the back of her neck and the singularly vulnerable tendon that ran down the side. He pushed the heavy locks aside so his breath could whisper along her nape.

“I’m charmed as well. But not by the house.”

He drew the backs of his fingertips up along the exquisitely pale side of her neck behind her ear. A shiver skittered alongthe surface of her skin. Very nice. Very responsive. She leaned her neck to the side, all boneless concession. Until she jumped.

“Jamie, someone’s there.”

“Where?”

She flung out her arm. “There was a man. Standing below on the path, staring up at us.” She started forward to follow.

He drew her firmly away as he looked over the rim of the path. It was McAlden, making his way down to the small beach in the cove where they’d stashed a dory.

“Groundsman, I think. Lizzie.” He turned her attention back up to his face. “It’s going to rain any moment now. Why don’t you go in? I’ll just speak to the man about seeing to the horses. You go on back up. Mrs. Tupper will have pulled together a tea, or something, by now.”

He pushed her firmly in the direction of the house and headed down the path before she could object. McAlden waited out of sight below.

Hugh McAlden was the kind of friend and comrade one could trust with one’s life. Marlowe had done so, on several occasions. Just as McAlden had trusted him with his life.

Perhaps it was their shared Scots heritage that had originally brought them together as midshipmen and later, brother officers and friends. It was about all they had in common—they were opposites in body and in spirit.

Where Marlowe was long and lean, Hugh McAlden was powerfully built. Marlowe was dark-haired and pale, and McAlden was a ruddy-faced blond. And where Marlowe didn’t mind sailing by dead reckoning and the feel of the waves, McAlden was a man who liked to plan out every possible ramification of each move and pore over his charts. Together they made a strong team.

“Sorry I broke up your cozy moment. Is it done then?”

“It is. You see before you a happily married man.”

McAlden made a guttural sound of disbelief. “Seems an awful lot of trouble to go through just to secure things.”

“You only think so because you’ve nothing to secure.”

“Of course I do. Only I keep it safe and sound in the five percents, not lording it about on great big houses.”

“Boring. And besides this will work much better for our plans. This way the house is really secure. But you’ll have to shift your berth for the time being.”

“Shift? What about our plan? What about—”

“Changed for the time being. Today, no more. Needs must …”

“… when the devil drives?” McAlden finished. “And where am I to go? There’s a storm blowing in.”

“I don’t know. There’s a loft over the stables with empty rooms for the lads. Take the largest—whatever has a fireplace.”

McAlden scoffed. “You’ll forgive me for saying you’ve shite for brains, Captain. There’s no fireplace in a stables. It would be like having an oven next to the powder locker on a ship.”

“Damn. Hadn’t thought of that.” He pulled his mouth sideways at the wry admission.

“And that’s why you shouldn’t be lording it about in great country houses. You’re a sailor, not a squire.”

“I’ve got to be both for the time being. Take the gardener’s cottage, since that’s what you’re meant to be anyway. I’ve told her you’re a groundsman.”

That got a grudging laugh out of the man. “And me caught out in my smuggler’s kit. I’ll be sure to get dirt under my fingernails.”

Marlowe smiled in return. “You’ll do as you are. Just be sure to stay out of sight until we’re gone.”

“Right,” McAlden nodded in concession. “And you?”

“I’m trying to get her back down to the Red Harte, but she’s proving fractious.”

“Your plan was for the house to be empty.”

“As soon as I leave, it will be.” Marlowe shoved his handsthrough his hair. “Though she’s making ridiculous noises about moving out here.”

McAlden made a sour face. “I did tell you she’d be nothing but trouble.”

“She’s not nothing but. Besides, I couldn’t take the chance of the place being sold out from under me. The house and estate are protected in the marriage settlement. She can’t sell, and I’ll take her back into town. All will be well.”

Then why did his gut twist into a knot even as he said the words? Glass Cottage was bloody well perfect for what he remembered of Lizzie’s sort of solitary pursuits. But surely she hadn’t been wandering about in hedgerows for the past ten years? She’d been out in society—she must have gone to dinners and balls. She’d been at the assembly room, hadn’t she? Though playing least in sight out the back terrace wasn’t exactly social behavior. He squinted up at the darkening sky. “In the meantime, pray for it to rain.”

“A howling gale off the channel to scare the stays off her?”

“That’ll do. Then I can ‘leave,’ and we can set to the business in peace, with no one the wiser.”

“Not even your little wife?”

“Not even Lizzie.”

“You’re a coldhearted bastard, Captain. No wonder I like you.” McAlden nodded with satisfaction. “Only hard part should be getting you to stick to your plan.”

C
HAPTER 5

R
ain pummeled down upon her. She was as soaking wet as a barnyard mouser and twice as muddy. Her hems were awash in leaf mold and bits of damp moss. All to serve her horribly suspicious mind.
Bloody bother.

Instinct and pique had prompted her to follow Jamie down the path. She wasn’t the kind of person to be set away like a toy he was done playing with. She never had been.

But something else, an almost animal instinct for self-preservation, had her hanging back, hiding low in the shrubbery, out of sight. Unfortunately, distant thunder and the wail of the wind streaking across the water had drowned out most of their words.
Bloody rain.

But one thing had been certain. They had
not
been talking about horses. And they had
not
gone in the direction of the stables.

They had walked to the east, around toward the lane, and nothing about them, not their posture, gestures, nor tone, had indicated speech between a man and his servant. It had been a conversation among equals.

How awfully curious. How damnably suspicious.

Groundsman? What a bouncer.

Bloody damn.
Why did she always expect the worst frompeople? Even as a child, she had been suspicious. And curious and sharp-tongued and managing. But mostly suspicious. It was not a comfortable feeling. Never had been.

And it was doubly uncomfortable to find herself suspicious of Jamie. But her instincts were never wrong. She could always sniff out the gorgers like his cousin Wroxham. But not Jamie. The only person in the world she could ever remember trusting was Jamie. That was probably the truth of why she had married him. That and his wonderfully hungry, knowing smile. Yet, all the relief she had felt upon coming to the house evaporated into the clouds, leaving a clammy sense of unease and disappointment.

Lizzie dragged up her sodden hems, thanked providence she was wearing boots, and set herself back through the underbrush towards the cliff top, cultivating the messy mixture of suspicion and disappointment with each mud-slick step.

What on earth did Jamie think he was about?

There had been something familiar about the man, the groundsman, yet she couldn’t place him. Dartmouth might be a bustling port, but it was still a small provincial town. She had lived there all her life and thought she knew everyone, from the baker’s boy to the Earl’s housemaid. But that man was a stranger. He had the rugged, tanned look of a sailor, much more so than Jamie. Perhaps he was one of the rough, itinerant seamen who frequented the Dartmouth waterfront? But such a man would hardly seek work, or be hired, as a grounds-keeper.

Only two things could explain their familiarity. One, he was someone Jamie had known from the Navy. And it would be very like Jamie to bring one of the less fortunate or less able of his comrades home to a comfortable job after they’d been cast off by the Navy. Loyal and sentimental, and deeply honorable, her Jamie.

The second explanation was much more likely, especially considering their secluded location along the south coast. The man was a smuggler, one of an invisible network of free traders that ran from the lowest levels of society to the highest. One interfered with the free traders to great peril. Jamie would be a fool, a bloody, blundering, trusting fool, to get involved in any of that.

And Jamie was no fool. If she knew anything about the man he had become over the past ten years, it was that. Open and honest, yes. But not gullible. Oh, no. Not with those eyes of his that prowled and saw everything. He knew what he was doing, but what on earth was he up to? And why, why was he lying to her?

How could he, a captain of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, be mixed up in the dirty business of smuggling? The thought overthrew every instinct, every thought she’d ever had of him, of the boy she’d remembered for his honesty and courage, of the man who seemed to speak so openly and honestly. And left her frightened.