Gaz choked. The raw gin scalded his lungs and he had to muffle his wheezing. Two of the new men glanced over and then turned away.

“Bloody hell,” Gaz croaked.

He glanced up again, and what he saw set his heart racing. In a top floor window, the white figure glowed like a selkie, tall, unmistakably feminine, shimmering hair streaming.

He’d seen her ladyship more than once, as a boy, delivering his mam’s eggs. The lady used to come to the kitchen door herself when she was in residence, many a time. It was her. He dropped his gaze. Always kind, she’d been. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.

“Bloody hell, ’tis where someone is going,” Davy said, darkly. “We shouldn’t—”

“Shush, man.” He needed to think. He needed to get them through this night in one piece, and shutting Davy up was first. “’Tis the new tenant’s woman, is all.”

“Nay. He’s but one man alone by hisself.” Davy leaned close, blowing gin-breath at him. “Came alone, he did. An’ he’ll run, soon as she shows herself to him. That earl can’t keep a tenant. She drives them all off.”

Gaz didn’t believe in ghosts. Not really.

Still…his jaw ached from the punch he’d caught earlier that day. Bloody Scruggs was on edge. The Dutchman was coming back. The town was too leery even to whisper.

If she’d come back for revenge, almost he’d be willing to help her.

“Oh, God.” Air whooshed from Davy.

“What.”

“The maid too. Oh, God, Gaz. She’s back too.”

“And I suppose all that’s lacking is the bloody coachman,” he said, trying to bring some humor. “I suppose he’ll be lurking here somewhere, dressed all in black.”

“’Tisn’t funny.”

The boat was nearing, and one of the new men was beckoning.

“Here.” Gaz handed Davy the flask. “Pour this down your maw and stop talkin’.”

Perry and Jenny moved downstairs, choosing to wait in the dark in the house’s main parlor with its tall French windows and view of the sea. If the village used this inlet for its smuggling, then the residents of this cottage had been able to see everything. Mother’s grandfather had been in trade and then banking—likely his mercantile career had begun on this Yorkshire coast where he’d had strong connections.

Free trading, she realized, must have been part of it. Perhaps her grandfather had stood on that balcony observing the proper dispersal of goods.

Or—no. Like her own father, he would have been down in the thick of it. Which was where she wanted to be, and it was fair enough since the blood of smugglers and spies ran in her veins.

She was still accommodating the idea that Fox was a spy. Yes, during his long months at Cransdall ten years ago, he had produced portraits of all the family but Bink and her father, who had both been, presumably, on the Peninsula in different capacities supporting Wellington.

Besides the portraits, why had Fox been at the Earl of Shaldon’s home? Was he spying for France or America? Or was he somehow helping her father?

Mother had displayed a high regard for Fox, and if she’d asked him to accompany her here, she’d trusted him.

And then he’d disappeared until last winter, when she’d found his painting and recognized the scenery, the folly on the lake at Cransdall at sunset, streaks of light coloring the scene like a magical fairy world.

She’d run into him by that lake one boring evening, long ago, when she was angry and frustrated with Bakeley. Fox had teased her out of her foul mood.

“Where are they, do you think?” Jenny asked.

She shook off the memories. “Down there somewhere with the shadows.” The smugglers had their lanterns turned to the dimmest of lights.

“Do you suppose someone else might be watching from high up like us?”

A pang of guilt went through her, and to be honest, jealousy. She should have thought of that. Jenny, a servant, was more astute, more practical, more level-headed than she. The daughter of a spy should have realized the free traders had lookout men, and yet, she’d stupidly exposed the light in the upper floor window.

“A very good point. That’s entirely likely.”

“Good that our two men have vanished into the night.”

Fox was good at vanishing, as he’d done after Bakeley’s wedding ball. No one knew to where. Except possibly her father, and if she’d asked him, he’d never have told her anyway.

The hair on her neck prickled. She’d found Fox again, even though she hadn’t been looking for him, even though her father had not thrown them together.

He was here, she was here. He was, perhaps, the one for her, the one to help her launch her new life.

If he wanted to kiss her and lie to her, well, she might as well accept the dishonesty and see if it led to seduction.

Seduction…yes, she hadn’t a clue how a woman went about seducing a man, but Fox certainly knew how to draw her out. Even when she’d hated him, it had been his teasing, goading, infuriating voice she’d wanted to hear. She’d stay to see where things led.

And then there was the matter of Carvelle. He’d mistreated Charley’s wife, and he’d escaped Father’s net. What he had done, besides acting with Father’s enemies, she didn’t know. But she would help Fox to capture him. And when Father came swooping in, she would try her own luck at vanishing. On the other side of that water lay the lowlands, and beyond that, France.

Fox took the spyglass back from MacEwen.

“Might be him,” MacEwen barely whispered the words.

He’d moved noiselessly behind Fox, skirting the lookout the gang had placed on the crest of the cliff. Fox had found a snug spot to watch both the watcher and the action below.

The casks were offloaded, counted, and parceled off to the six men on shore. The oarsmen helped with the offloading, then climbed back into the boat. Their passenger came ashore and stood to the side talking to a seventh man who appeared, a burly man who fumbled his hat in his hands.

“Scruggs.” Fox whispered.

“Aye.”

The passenger had the advantage of height, but not bulk. Yet in spite of his wiry frame he commanded the other man’s obeisance. Surely this was Carvelle.

He should send MacEwen back on the fresh gelding with a message, and himself follow the man to his destination. Likely, Scruggs would take him to the inn, and it was too late in these parts for a man to stop in for a tankard without arousing suspicion.

And he had Perry to think about. If he went to the inn, and MacEwen went with a message, Perry would be alone and unprotected.

Already she’d put a tall slender cog into her father’s spy works.

The boat pulled away and the men started up the trail to the road, passing them not ten yards distant. Fox counted six men passing. Scruggs was one of them, as was the intimidating passenger. MacEwen took the glass and eyed the lookout man until he too had left.

When the others had cleared, he handed the glass back and whispered “Message?”

Fox shook his head. “Follow him,” he said, breathing the words. He signaled that there were two men left below, and he would watch them.

MacEwen departed in utter silence. A skilled operative, he needed no more instruction than that. No matter the watchers or followers, MacEwen would find a way.

The two below were weighting and sinking the excess casks in a tidal pool trapped by the rocks. Fox picked his way nearer.

They muttered and grunted as they worked and he heard snippets of words over the sound of the surf. “Shut up,” the bigger one kept saying, but the other continued to mutter as they ran the casks down on lines. Though hidden from view of the sea or the shore, it was a shoddy job of concealment. A man could pull up those casks without so much as getting his boots wet.

So it was when a gang of smugglers had both the Riding Officer and the local Justice of the Peace in their pockets. The only reason they bothered with the sinking was to conceal the booty from the likes of him.

When the men finished their task, they hoisted their own casks, and headed straight for him. He slid into the shadows and held his breath.

“I tell you, Gaz, it was her. She’s come back for revenge.”

His nerves stood on edge, sharpening his hearing. They were almost upon him.

“Shush with it. No such thing as ghosts.”

“You saw it.”

“Will you shut it?”

They stopped right in front of him, voices so clear he could but whisper and join the conversation.

“I saw a woman, all in white. The tenant’s got hisself a girl, is all. Snuck her in, he did when all the busybodies weren’t looking.”

“An’ I says he’ll be gone soon enough, just like the other tenants, and we be using that stable again.” This one slurred his words. “Ain’t no regular woman, Gaz. She’s back to get the ones as threw her over that cliff, is she. I tell you—”

“Listen.” A cask dropped. A shuffle. Someone gasped. The man called Gaz had resorted to force. “Listen. You yammer this to anyone else, it’ll get to Scruggs. He’ll know we know, and how long till he sets his man on us? Ya bleedin’ idiot. You want to live, Davy?” More shuffling, grunting, and panting. “Then shut your trap. No more. No more to me, either, Davy, ’cause we don’t know who’s listening, and we don’t know who to trust, ’ceptin’ no one.”

“We can leave.”

“And how is Mam to live? What’ll happen to the girls? What about yer boy?”

“I’ll go and take Pip.”

“And leave me with Scruggs asking why?” More shuffling. “C’mon.”

Fox waited while they passed and their footsteps grew distant, and finally breathed again, blood pounding fiercely on every nerve.

In spite of all of his instructions, Perry had lit a lamp and stood in a window.

His skin rippled and a smile fought its way out. It was one of her acts of defiance and a damned brilliant mistake. Davy and Gaz believed her to be the ghost of Lady Shaldon, who it seemed had a history of driving tenants away from this cottage and limiting the smugglers’ squatting to the stable and sheds.

More importantly, Davy and Gaz knew more about Lady Shaldon’s death. Shaldon would want the particulars, and Fox would get them and to his lordship, all in good time. He tamped down his nerves and watched the retreating shadows.

Maybe Perry could make herself useful. She’d dug in her heels anyway to the point that a twenty-four pounder wouldn’t blast her out of that cottage. To keep her safe, he’d have to stay close. Her presence now had a reason besides the obvious one banging around in his breeches, the one he could never give in to.

Once Davy and Gaz crested the road, he stowed the glass and picked his way down to the water.

Tap-tap-tap. Perry raised her head from the deal table in the kitchen.

Good God. She’d fallen asleep, and only the coals glowed in the oversized hearth. Across the table from her, Jenny was curled over two chairs, fast asleep.

Tap-tap-tap.

“Let me in,” a man said gruffly.

She leaned against the door. That was Fox’s voice, wasn’t it?

“Who’s there?”

He muttered the password and she slid the lock open.

Fox was a shadow wreathed in shadows. He was good at this business of being almost invisible. Perhaps that was another skill he could teach her.

His lip quirked up. “Let me in?”

She pulled the door wider, and wider still when she saw the tubs he had tucked under each arm.

“Smugglers’ booty,” she said. “Left behind? Or did you have to fight someone for it?”

His smirk grew into a full smile. “There’s more of these submerged in that cove down below. Too much for the men to carry. Let’s see what we have here.” He went to the pantry, came back with a kitchen knife, and began to work the lid.

One did not use one’s good stabbing dagger for such tasks, she guessed. “Will they be back tomorrow, do you think?”

“They won’t want to wait long.”

Jenny stirred, sat up, and rubbed her eyes. Her cap had slipped off and hair tumbled over her wary eyes. For but a moment she was that child again, waking up in a doorway, an eye out for the flesh peddlers.

Perry wished anew some happiness for the girl.

And that reminded her. “Where’s MacEwen?”

The lid came off and Perry leaned closer to sniff. She turned away to sneeze, waving her hand in front of her nose.

Fox laughed. “It’s gin.”

“Dreadful gin.” Though in truth, she had never smelled the stuff.

He dipped a finger in and tasted it. “It needs letting down. I wished for brandy.” He walked away and came back with the bucket of water, a ladle and a cup.

Jenny was fully awake now, watching intently. “Is Mr. MacEwen coming back?”

“He’ll be along in a bit.” He dipped out spirits and added water.

Jenny moved closer. “You’re watering the gin?”

“It’s brought in over proof,” Perry said. Years ago, her brothers had discussed the free trade practices over some badly mixed brandy. They’d discussed who of their peers with Kentish estates could fetch them a cask of pure spirits so they could add good water from Cransdall’s well.

Fox glanced at her, his eyes warm with humor. “Know a bit about the free trade, do you?”

“More than a bit.” Conversations came to her, talks between Bakeley and her mother. Charley had gone off to school about the time Bakeley’s formal education ended and he came home to learn his life’s work from Mother. The three of them were seldom in London during those long years of war. Quiet country nights had been filled with discussions of history and current affairs as well as farming and horses and commerce. Her education had not been as thorough as Bakeley’s, but she would never need a husband to run an estate for her.

She smiled back at him watching him spoon spirits and water, stirring and sniffing.

“That should do it.” He passed her the cup.

“I’ve never had gin. How will I know if it’s right?” She sniffed. “It smells like…” She sniffed again. “It smells like the green glen near the lake at Cransdall.”

She looked up into Fox’s eyes, swimming in a darkness that sent tingles through her.

Perhaps he remembered the lake, and the night she’d run into him. He’d teased her without mercy that night.

The corner of his mouth quirked up again, in a way that made her grow very warm.

She cast her gaze down at the clear liquid and sipped. The zing of the alcohol burning the back of her throat was bearable, the taste was not. “I don’t like it.”

“I’ve tasted gin,” Jenny said, not very subtly. “Used to have a nip now and then when Ma…” She stopped and bit her lip. Jenny had been one of the older girls taken off the streets by Perry’s friend, Lady Hackwell, back when the lady was plain Miss Harris.

“Then you’re our second expert.” She handed Jenny the cup.

The girl drank and let the spirits sit on her tongue, like a lord they’d hosted at a dinner last spring. The high-in-the-instep fellow had taken the glass of wine, sniffed and swirled and smacked his lips until Charley had chortled and joked about wine connoisseurs loud enough for the fribble to be rattled.

Charley’s fun-making had indeed rattled the man right off his high horse and into some parliamentary plot of Father’s. God save her from her devious relations.

“What do you think?” Fox asked.

“It’s good. A bit weak. You mixed it two parts to one?”

He took the cup back and drank it down. “More like three to one. Yes. Too weak.”

He dipped out more, diluted it again, and shared it with Jenny.

“Better,” she said. Is the barrel pure alcohol, do you think, sir?”

“I’ve heard sailors mix a bit with their gunpowder to test the proof,” Perry said. “If the proof is too low, it takes the life out of the powder and it won’t blow.”

Oh, drat. She sounded like a pedantic bluestocking.

Jenny’s face lit. “I’ve heard that, miss.”

Her heart eased a bit. Like her, Jenny had picked up knowledge where she could.

“No need to fire up the cottage, though. We know it’s pure.” Perry went to get another cup and handed it to Fox. “You and Jenny have a nightcap and then up to bed. It’s almost dawn. I’ll have tea and wait up for MacEwen.”

“Oh, no, miss—”

“You can take the next watch, Jenny. Do you think the gang will be looking for their missing tubs, Fox?”

He smiled up at her from his mixing. “I’m counting on it.”

That smile started up a great buzzing inside her. She turned away and busied herself heating water and spooning tea leaves. Fox had a plan. And he hadn’t said anything more about sending her away.

Every nerve in her body sprang to life, tingling warmth igniting a blaze in her like his smile was two hundred proof spirits and she’d been packed with black powder. This was why her sisters-in-law went all moon-eyed around her brothers. This was why women did foolish things for men. This was it.

Please, God, before this was over, she would be very foolish.