Chapter Eight
For Grant, the matter had been annoying but hardly urgent. From the lieutenant’s answers, he gathered Cornelius had not yet been found, so Grant’s best plan was clearly to talk to the authorities and set their minds at rest. While Kate would, hopefully, send word to warn Cornelius to lie low. In fact, just as soon as he was strong enough, Cornelius should go home to their father. Loathe as Grant was to admit it, in this matter, Lord Boulton was Cornelius’s best protection.
Providing the vindictive old bastard didn’t disown him.
Those were his thoughts as he left the house, right up until he waited, kicking his heels, for the lieutenant to arrange the disposal of his men, which they could have quite easily worked out for themselves. But the debate gave him time to look around. Without those moments, he’d never have seen the figure lurking beyond the horse’s heads, leaning against a garden gate and watching proceedings with interest. It was a disreputable figure to be hanging around a quiet, residential crescent, a grubby individual with dank hair hanging down from a hat pulled too far down over his face.
But even as Grant watched him, the man lifted his head, poked his hat further up with one finger, and grinned with blatant triumph. One of the men who’d attacked Kate. His heart surged in sudden fear and understanding. Somehow the man had discovered Cornelius and sent the soldiers after Grant. Not simply for revenge, surely, but to get him out of the way.
Kate. Oh, dear God, Kate!
He couldn’t shout a warning to her, couldn’t bolt back into the house and explain before the soldiers hauled him off again. As quick as thought, he darted past the pointlessly arguing soldiers and leapt on the horse’s back, yelling and slapping to make them bolt, and they did.
Clinging on with his knees, he grasped the horse’s mane as they thundered around the crescent, guiding them as best he could. Two ladies out for an evening stroll pressed themselves back into a garden hedge gawping at him as he hurtled by. God knew what they made of the soldiers in pursuit. Sadly, the curate’s reputation was about to move beyond the merely eccentric.
Some of the soldiers had run back along the crescent to cut him off as he emerged from the other end of it, but he charged through the middle of them, swerving around the corner toward coast road. Behind him, the carriage swayed and bumped, as if it was on two wheels and about to fall over, but he couldn’t have slowed the horses if he tried.
The town rushed past him at full tilt, people and dogs scattering out of his way. One elderly gentleman waved his stick at him. Stray dogs and lap dogs on leads united in barking at him. It was a fine cacophony of chaos, and in spite of everything, Grant began to laugh.
*
Kate rushed out of the house with Gillie, Bernard, and Wickenden in time to see the carriage charge between the pursuing soldiers and career around the corner on two wheels.
Wickenden began to laugh. “Damned if I know what he’s up to, but I’d have been sorry if he’d changed!”
“You mean this is normal behavior for our curate?” Bernard asked, apparently impressed. “Think I might cultivate the fellow. Certainly, he’s nothing like old Hoag.”
“What changed his mind?” Kate murmured, frowning. Ahead, two small boys were standing at the corner and pointing after the bolting carriage. “I could have sworn he meant to go with them quietly.”
Wickenden glanced at her. “Come, let’s go back. There’s nothing more to see. Kate, is Grant in serious trouble of some kind?”
Kate shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Not really. But someone else could be. He’s looking out for him. I think.” She frowned. Surely that had been taken care of with his silent request? He knew she would warn Cornelius, and she meant to. Though she could hardly go charging around to the vicarage right now, with the soldiers hanging around this house and no doubt watching the vicarage, too.
Since they reentered the house at that point, Wickenden asked no more.
Kate refused to stay late, insisting the family must want time free of guests. Bernard at once leapt up to escort her, and for once, Kate didn’t have her set-down ready to prevent him. Her mind was already torn between keeping up civil conversation and anxiety about Grant.
Unexpectedly, Gillie said, “No, David and I will walk with you. We were going for a walk in any case.” As if she understood how and why Kate might not want her brother’s escort.
So, while Wickenden was dispatched for Gillie’s pelisse and bonnet, Kate made her thanks and farewells to Mrs. and Miss Muir, then walked out into the hall with Gillie, anxious to be gone.
Gillie lowered her voice. “Does Bernard bother you?”
“It’s a passing phase,” Kate said dismissively. “He thinks I’m exotic and wise, God help him. But if he’s serious about the young Smallwood girl, he shouldn’t neglect her. Her mother wants to sell her young to the highest bidder.”
“I know. She even tried to snare David for her …but that’s a long story,” Gillie said hastily. “Jenny was swithering between Bernard and Kit Grantham the last time I saw her, but I suppose now that Kit’s gone back to the Peninsula, she only has Bernard to save her! If you ask me, they’re both far too young for marriage.”
“The trouble is, no one will ask you,” Kate observed. “Or Jenny.”
Gillie threw her a too-perceptive glance, and Kate remembered the other reason she’d chosen to accept the dinner invitation. She had to do it quickly before Wickenden joined them.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she said abruptly.
Gillie blinked. “I didn’t suppose you were.”
“Didn’t you?” Kate said with a faint twist of her lip. “It must have crossed your mind when I chose this place of all others to escape from my latest scandal.”
Gillie’s eyes fell. “I thought you might have needed a friend.”
“Perhaps I did. I had a fond memory of Blackhaven and it had, besides, the added advantage of not being suggested by either my father or my late husband’s family. I am, you must know, a perverse creature. But I wander from the point.” She drew a deep breath. “Which is that I have no designs upon your husband. And if I did, he would not look at me. Our day, such as it was, past many years ago.”
Gillie’s eyes flew back to Kate, widening in surprise.
Kate gave her a sardonic smile. “I saw how you looked at me when I stayed at the castle. But you never had anything to fear.”
Gillie was an open creature. Clearly she wanted to believe Kate, and yet there was a hint of skepticism in the twitch of her eyebrow.
“Didn’t I?” Gillie asked lightly, echoing Kate’s earlier words.
Kate shook her head. “I’ll not deny that I went to Braithwaite Castle in the belief that Wickenden and I could make each other happy by being lovers at last. I even suggested it, if you want the truth, but he was already too deeply in love with you.”
Gillie flushed at this revelation, but held Kate’s gaze. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I value his friendship,” Kate said frankly. “And yours.”
Gillie’s eyes widened further, but perhaps fortunately, Wickenden came bounding downstairs with his hat and his wife’s bonnet and pelisse, putting an end to further confidences of this nature.
Clearly, she’d given Gillie food for thought for the younger woman was unusually quiet as they walked around the crescent toward High Street. It was possible Kate had shot herself in the foot, metaphorically speaking, with her openness, which would be a pity considering what it had cost her to say the words. But she had too many other things on her mind to worry about that right now. She’d used a spare moment to try and do the right thing, but her chief focus was on Tristram Grant and Cornelius.
“Enough, Kate,” Wickenden said at last. “What is going on? What is Tris Grant’s connection to this escaped French prisoner?”
“He isn’t French,” Kate blurted. “He’s English but couldn’t admit it in front of his fellow prisoners for his own safety.” She glanced around to be sure there was no one else within hearing distance and lowered her voice even further. “Tris—Mr. Grant—hid him at the vicarage. I need to warn him and get him away, somehow, which is difficult when he’s injured, but hopefully the soldiers will be so busy chasing Tris that they won’t notice Cornelius being driven off in the opposite direction.”
To her annoyance, Gillie and Wickenden looked at each other. Kate supposed they were comparing silent notes on her levels of gullibility, until Gillie released her husband’s arm and slipped around to Kate’s other side.
“It so happens,” Gillie murmured, “that we can hide him until he’s well enough.”
“And Tris, too, until we can sort this mess out,” Wickenden added. His eyes gleamed. “Bring them to Blackhaven Cove after dark.”
Kate stared at him. “There’s no hiding place there!”
“Au contraire,” Wickenden said distractedly. He turned suddenly, looking behind him. “Do you know, I believe someone is following us.”
“Following me,” Kate corrected. “I don’t believe the new Baron Crowmore trusts me.”
“What, does he think you’re going to run off with the family silver?”
“Or that I’ll produce the family an alternative heir.”
Wickenden’s gaze returned to her. “Is that likely?”
“He doesn’t know. But he really doesn’t want me palming off Vernon’s bastard as Crowmore’s son to displace him.”
Gillie wrinkled her nose in distaste. “What horrid people they must be.”
“There I have to agree with you,” Kate replied. “Though, of course, I am prejudiced and no angel besides. Look, there’s another, lounging by the coffee house. The town is full of his people.” All waiting their moment to attack her, although she’d never involve Wickenden and Gillie by telling them so.
“Perhaps,” Gillie said doubtfully. “But I’m sure he at least is not working for Crowmore. He was in my father’s troop and would never spy for a civilian.”
As if bearing her out, the burly man by the coffee shop, grinned and doffed his hat. “Evening, Miss Gillie!”
“Well,” Kate murmured, faintly amused. “You are clearly worth cultivating! So … midnight?” she suggested. “Supposing I can find them.”
“Why don’t you let me find them?” Wickenden suggested. “I don’t want you running into trouble.”
“I won’t. We shall both look and hope one of us turns up with them!”
*
Gillie and Wickenden returned home via the vicarage, which was in darkness with no obvious signs of observers, and the harbor, which was quiet and peaceful enough to cause them to pause by the rail, overlooking the bobbing boats tied up there and the sea beyond.
Wickenden said idly, “No sign of any soldiers in the town. They must have all returned to barracks.”
“Hopefully without Mr. Grant. Though for his own sake, he shouldn’t have run.”
“I suspect he’s staying free to help this prisoner,” Wickenden said. “Whoever he is.”
“Do you believe that he isn’t French?” Gillie asked.
“I believe Grant’s capable of telling the difference.”
“And telling Kate the truth?”
“Trust me, Grant was always devastatingly honest,” Wickenden said dryly. “I can’t imagine his new calling has made a liar out of him.”
Gillie rested one hand on the rail beside his. “What was the late Lord Crowmore like?” she asked reluctantly.
Wickenden shrugged, “Never cared for him. But then I knew he made Kate unhappy.”
“In what way?”
“Being her husband,” Wickenden said dryly. “She knew she made a mistake a long time ago, but it was too late. She was trapped with him.”
“Then it was no more than that?”
“What do you mean?” He frowned down at her and she knew he didn’t really want to think about other people’s marital difficulties.
She took his hand, bringing it to her cheek. “I mean … did he … hurt her?”
“Christ, no,” David said in disgust. He scowled. “That is, he’d better not have.” He gazed at Gillie. “I wouldn’t know, would I? I’d be the last person she’d tell. But knowing Kate, she’d have told no one. Whatever gave you such an idea?”
“I don’t know,” Gillie said restlessly, pulling him onward. “She just seems … different. As if widowhood has freed her somehow. And she isn’t playing the game, is she? She isn’t bowing to convention and pretending to mourn to please convention. She’s all but shouting that she doesn’t care. As if she had enough lying when he was alive and now she’s embracing the truth with a vengeance. I know she’ll never say why, but it seems to be she’s thumbing her nose at him, and at everyone who ever pressured her into this marriage.”
David was silent, though he dragged her hand to his arm and held it there too tightly.
“I always thought she was surviving,” he said, low. “She behaved badly, just like me, though always with just enough discretion to avoid notoriety. Until this last scandal, at least. I knew she was escaping. I just never understood what. I hope you’re wrong, Gillie.”
“So do I.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “But we can help her to help Mr. Grant, can’t we?”
“Providing we’re not aiding the enemy.”
*
On leaving Gillie and Wickenden at the hotel door, Kate went straight to her rooms with the intention of changing into much less distinctive garments before it grew dark. She would then leave the hotel incognito and go to the vicarage in search of Cornelius. She suspected she would find Grant there, too, if only he’d managed to shake off the soldiers.
She used her key to open the door to her room. “Little? Light the candles, would you,” she called, stripping off her gloves.
“Little isn’t here,” said a quite different voice, causing Kate to start and swing around.
Lord Vernon sat in the comfortable armchair, reading the newspaper she’d left on the table beside it. Over the top of it, he smiled in what he clearly imagined was a disarming manner.
“Where is Little?” she asked in a carefully calm voice.
“You gave her the evening off, remember? She’s stepped out with one of the hotel staff. Very smart young man with shiny shoes.”
Hiding her relief, Kate said, “How did you get in here?”
“I spoke nicely to the chamber maid.”
“I hope you’ll find her another position when she loses this one.”
“Don’t be like that, Kate, I need to see you.”
“Your needs are not my concern. Get out, Vernon, before I ring and have you ejected.”
“What, and set all those tongues wagging?”
Kate laughed, though it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “At this stage in my life, do you really expect that to weigh with me?”
“I thought that was why you left London,” Vernon said, frowning with incomprehension. “To get away from gossip.”
“Vernon, you have no idea why I left London.” For the simple reason, he hadn’t been around to find out.
“Tell me,” he invited.
“I’ve told you all I’m going to,” Kate said, moving toward the silken bell rope.
“No, wait,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Please, Kate, hear me out, and then, if you still want me to, I’ll go.”
“Then hurry up,” she snapped. “I have an engagement.”
He scowled. “At this time of night?”
Kate laid her hand on the bell rope.
He threw up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right! Look, I came to see you so that we could reach an understanding. You know I adore you, Kate. Why don’t we get married? Then all this fuss will die down.”
She had to allow him that one. Finally, he had truly surprised her.
She blinked at him. “Married?”
“Married.” His eyes twinkled in a way which had once beguiled her, even knowing there was no substance behind the mischief. “What do you say?”
“What I was taught to,” Kate replied. “While being sensible of the honor et cetera, et cetera, I thank you but no. Now, it is past time for you to go.”
“You didn’t even think about it,” Vernon said indignantly.
“I’ve thought about it and rejected it every day since my first marriage.”
“Not with me!”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “I’ve given you the civil answer. Don’t make me add the uncivil one.”
“Kate!” he expostulated. “Can’t you see it’s the perfect solution? Even your father agrees.”
Kate, who’d begun to walk to the door, paused. “My father? My father sent you up here to offer me marriage?”
“Not exactly.” Vernon shifted his feet, then came toward her. “But he approves.”
“Goodbye, Vernon,” Kate said firmly, opening the door to the passage.
He had little choice, so he tried to make it as dignified as possible. “I know you’re mine, Kate,” he said as he passed her.
Kate closed the door behind him and shut her eyes. She wanted to scream.
Then she remembered she had more important things to do.
*
Grant, having abandoned the military carriage on the Carlisle road, fortuitously beside the tracks of another carriage which had recently travelled in the same direction, had doubled back to town through the woods and made his way to the hotel via the back streets.
His need to protect Kate was powerful, over-riding even his care for Cornelius who could be captured, trapped, or injured. Possibly because he was the one who’d asked her, however silently, to take care of his brother. But that was before he’d realized that the villains who’d first attacked her were not still in Blackhaven after all but had also worked to get him out of the way—presumably so they could have another shot at Kate.
He slipped into the hotel the same way he’d sent Kate a couple of days before—via the kitchen garden—lifting an amiable finger to his lips to anyone who saw him. He was the curate, and most of them came to church at least once a month. They just smiled and nodded, and he made his way through the kitchen to the main part of the hotel. He knew from some amusing tale she’d told over dinner that her rooms were on the first floor, at the front of the hotel. He resolved to lurk in the passage and wait until either she or the maid appeared.
There was a chair and a table at the end of the passage, so he sat with relief and stretched out his legs. It had been a hard, crazy ride followed by a long walk, and he was glad of the rest.
He didn’t have long to wait before the sound of her voice jerked him fully alert. He couldn’t make out the words, just the timbre of her voice, inducing electric tingles that seemed to roll out to his toes. Then the door half way along the passage opened and of all people, his half-brother Vernon stepped out.
“I know you’re mine, Kate,” Vernon said throbbingly and sauntered off along the passage.
Even from the back view he had, Grant knew his brother was smirking. He always smirked at the thought of conquest.
Grant wanted to run at him, smash the chair he was sitting in over Vernon’s head. But in truth, he felt as if his very bones were crumbling in misery and loss. He couldn’t move.
He didn’t care about her past. He never had. Whatever the truths and motives, he’d always known that none of it could damage her in his eyes. It was part of who she was. What he hadn’t bargained on was that it would spill into her present, her present with him.
That he knew he was being ridiculous didn’t help.
He staggered to his feet and shook himself, much like a dog. Vernon’s presence changed nothing important. He still had to warn Kate of her danger, and then he had to get Cornelius to safety.
The arrival of an elderly lady and a young companion making their slow way to the room across the passage from Kate’s, held him back. He stood gazing down at the magazine on the little table, his back to them, until the door closed behind them. Then he walked to Kate’s door, raised his hand and took a deep breath.
The door flew open and Kate gasped. In a modest black dress with a matching veil drawn over her face and a dark cloak around her shoulders, she was almost unrecognizable. Apart from her amazing eyes shining through the veil. They could only be Kate’s eyes.
“Tristram,” she whispered. “Oh, thank God.” She seized his hand in a grip that hurt and yet it soothed Grant’s pain as words could not. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head.
“And Cornelius?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m on my way to find him. Listen, you must keep indoors until I can deal with this. Our friends from the other night are still in Blackhaven, and it’s my belief they were behind tonight’s little theatre.”
She frowned. “They set the soldiers on you?”
“To get me out of the way. I’m sure of it. They must have been watching both of us. One was certainly smirking in the street when the soldiers arrested me,”
“That was why you ran!” As if suddenly aware of her powerful, almost desperate grip on his hand, she released it. Her breath caught in something close to laughter. “I didn’t know whether to laugh or scold you, for in truth it was ridiculously funny.”
He allowed himself a quick grin. “Bizarrely fun, too, though I suspect getting out of it won’t be. I have to go.”
“I know,” she said in surprise, stepping out and closing the door behind her.
“Kate—”
“We have a perfect solution,” she confided, locking the door. “I’ll tell you as we go.”
“Kate, it’s best if you stay here.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said flatly. “You may protect me if necessary.”
With some idea of blocking her departure, he stood his ground, which brought her far too close to him as she turned from the door. At once vital and vulnerable, she gazed up at him, and his mouth went dry. Even veiled, she was so damnably lovely. Her body just grazed his at breast and hip, setting his pulse afire. He wanted to seize her in his arms, push her back into her room. He wanted her naked under him while he made wild love to her, obliterating everything and everyone else from her mind.
Behind the veil, he imagined her eyes darkened. She had to be aware of his lust, for her breathing had quickened, whether with fear or desire he had no idea. Or time to find out.
Besides, he wanted her with him. Whatever her relationship with Vernon, he wanted to have adventures with her, just be with her, looking out for her.
He swallowed. “Come then.” Forcing his heavy body to move, he stepped back and walked with difficulty toward the staircase. Every nerve in his body screamed for her. Her presence at his side, so close and so untouchable, was pleasure and pain, a torture he never wanted to forego.
The foyer was quiet. The clerk at the reception desk barely looked up. Kate drew the hood of her cloak up over her hair like a cowl. She even hunched her shoulders slightly and it came to Grant that she looked at last like a grieving widow.
“Did you practice that in front of a mirror?” he breathed.
“For years.”
“And then decided not to bother?”
Her gaze flickered up to him. “Exactly.”
Sparrow came inside as they crossed the foyer. He barely glanced at Kate, but murmured to Grant, “Soldiers gone back to barracks. They won’t know you’re here. Regiment here’s gone to hell since the colonel went to war.”
“Thank you,” Grant murmured, touched to have the grizzled old soldier on his side. He liked Blackhaven and would be sorry to leave.
Sparrow cast a quick glance around, then dragged Grant behind the pillar nearest the door, “Here,” he said gruffly, handing him a coat and hat just like his own. “Put this on if you want to remain incognito.”
Grant’s breath caught. He didn’t know if it was laughter or gratitude. Both probably. But this should get him out of the hotel if anyone was watching.
“Don’t let the lady leave without me,” he breathed to Sparrow, dragging off his own coat.
A few moment later, he emerged from the pillar wearing the doorman’s ill-fitting spare coat, with his own carelessly crumpled over his arm, and his hat hidden beneath it. Ignoring him, Kate walked through the front door behind Sparrow, who tipped his hat to her politely.
Grant clapped Sparrow’s hat on his head, tipping it low, and sauntered out. “Thanks for this, Sparrow. I’ll bring it back.” Hopefully to any watchers, it would look like a comradely goodnight. But as he spoke, he glanced around the street, taking in the coffee house where one of his own watchers still lurked, and the few respectable passersby.
Although it was dark, this part of High Street was well lit from the hotel and coffee house, as well as by several street lamps. A carriage rumbled harmlessly by. A loafer leaned in a doorway, picking his teeth … a loafer who was not the man Grant had seen in Cliff Crescent but who looked very like one of the other men who’d attacked Kate.
The man didn’t seem to notice either Kate or himself. Neither did Grant’s own watchers. None of them followed her; her disguise was too good. Grant swaggered up High Street behind her. Only when he turned into the darker town square did he shrug off the borrowed coat and hat, and don his own, while Kate waited, apparently supporting herself with one black-gloved hand on the back of a wooden bench.
“I could like you as a doorman,” she murmured as they walked on, side by side. “The uniform suits you.”
“I’d say the widow’s weeds suit you too, but I’d be lying.”
“The doorman could lie,” she said severely. “The clergyman may not.”
Still quartering the ground constantly, Grant walked with her around the square toward the church and the vicarage behind it. No one followed.
Kate confessed taking Wickenden and Gillie into her confidence, at least to some extent, and told him about their offer to hide Grant and Cornelius.
“Hide us where?” Grant asked, baffled. “If we’re found in their house—”
“I don’t believe they mean the house. We have to go to Blackhaven Cove.”
He glanced at her. “They’re going to send us away on a smuggling vessel?”
“What an adventure that would be. I might join you.”
He didn’t want to think about being alone with Kate at sea for several days. But the idea hovered around the edges of his imagination as he focused on the work in hand.
The vicarage was still in darkness. They approached it from the churchyard, looking for any signs of soldiers or watchers of any other kind. Shadows seemed to move among the tombstones. It might have been the small animals Grant could hear scuttling in the undergrowth. But when he heard a distinctly human voice, he snatched Kate to his side, dragging her backward behind the large Braithwaite grave stone, pressing them both into the covering shadows.
Her heart drummed against his, her breasts rising and falling with her quickened breath.
Someone was definitely moving along the path close by. A male voice rumbled quietly, growing nearer. But surely, it was only one set of footsteps shuffling along. And he knew the voice. Old Pat, a one-time soldier who had a tiny hut up toward the abbey, but who spent most of the summer months sleeping rough wherever he dropped. More often than not, that was here in the churchyard.
In relief, Grant put his mouth next to Kate’s ear. It was easy to find since her hood had fallen back when he’d grabbed her. She smelled delicious, like orange blossom and vanilla. Expensive, exotic perfume, and yet beneath it, something all her own. Just Kate.
“He’s harmless,” he breathed. “We’ll just let him pass.”
She shivered, perhaps in response to his breath in her ear. He wanted to touch the lobe with his tongue, even through the fine, gauze veil. To avoid temptation, he shifted his head slightly, but that only brought her jaw and her mouth more easily within his reach.
By the light of the moon, her eyes glowed behind the veil, watching him intently. He didn’t know if it was anticipation or fear. Or both. His body burned at the proximity of hers, hardened with every rise and fall of her breasts. Vernon had come for her, had been admitted to her bedchamber. God help him, he didn’t care.
Old Pat shuffled past, singing softly to himself. The moment was almost past. Grant couldn’t help it. He dipped his head the last inch and covered her veiled mouth with his.