Endure My Heart (25 page)

To return to my cargo, still left without a hiding place! Actually the foregoing is fairly typical of my thoughts at that time. I could not concentrate on one thing without another’s intruding itself. Despite the difficulty of thinking straight, I finally had an inspiration. I chanced to be speaking one day to Mrs. Everett, the purchaser of Fern Bank. She was always hailing me up on the street to complain of a leak or a draft, a spot of mildew or wood rot—always a complaint. Her threnody reached its zenith that day.

“Well, it’s finally happened,” she proclaimed in a loud, injured, accusing and withal thoroughly satisfied voice. “The roof has fallen in on our heads. It only missed suffocating Jerome and myself in our beds by the good quality of the new canopy I had put on a month ago. ‘Thank God,’ says I to Jerome, ‘I replaced that old frayed rag Miss Anderson had on, or we’d not be alive this day to tell the tale.’ Not a square inch of plaster remains on the ceiling—and half the hallway the same. The attics all awash and two bats nesting in them. Jerome is having a new roof put on. It is costing us a fortune, to say nothing of the expense of putting up at the inn while it is being done, for I will not tolerate the noise and racket of the infernal hammering all day long. But that is what happens when you buy an old wreck of a place.”

“You only get what you pay for,” I pointed out. I alit on the news that Fern Bank was untenanted, and inquired to see whether the servants remained. “They are given a holiday. Jerome’s valet and my dresser are at the inn with us. I could not do without my dresser.”

She had done without one till about two months ago. “Yes, you are dressing very elegantly lately, Mrs. Everett.”

She took this for a compliment. “The girls are all gone home for a week,” she went on, “but that butler you left behind is still there, to keep an eye on things during the day.”

“He stays at night as well, does he?”

“To be sure he does.”

One butler was not likely to be out patrolling the grounds at night, and in the worst case, I could confess to Hackley. He would never turn in Magistrate Anderson’s daughter, whom he still called Miss Mabel, from having known me from the cradle.

My intention, of course, was to have the brandy landed at Fern Bank. The secret hut in the woods, the poachers’ hut where Andrew and I used to play smugglers and revenuemen, was ideal for it. There was good landing too at the cove, and Fern Bank was far enough removed from all the regular landing spots that I did not believe it was included on Wicklow’s route.

Jem confirmed this. One small difficulty arose in that Jem did not know the hut I spoke of. Fern Bank was never part of his higgling rounds, and poaching there was poor as my father allowed his friends to hunt the place naked. The hut was well concealed too, so that I was by no means sure Jemmie could find it, and there must be no uncertainties at this crucial time. I would have to go with him and show him the spot, but could not do so in broad daylight. It was set up we would go together after dark, a few hours before the shipment came in.

As darkness came on that night, I sat uneasily waiting for nine bells to chime, our hour of departure. Who must take into their heads to come and plant themselves in our saloon that night but the Everetts. Putting up at the inn brought them too close for her to resist coming to lodge more complaints. This turned out to be a mixed blessing, for while it made my departure impossible, I learned one item of importance. After a long dissertation on the evils of buying an old barn of a place—“no saving in the long run—quite the contrary”—the news came forth. “We had to have the stone drywall restacked, six yards of it tumbled down, what a mess! And then there was that old hut in the spinney inviting tramps or smugglers to come in and make themselves at home. That is torn down, and a nice little walkway made through the spinney by chopping down half the trees, so I can see from the window what is afoot. With this Miss Sage character running the town, no one is safe.”

She was lucky Miss Sage did not brain her on the spot. My eyes flew to Edna. Andrew, it is hardly necessary to say, had slipped over to the church to play the organ as soon as the front knocker sounded. I arose and made an excuse to leave the room. I scribbled off a note for Jemmie telling him to wait for me—Important—and left it at the back door. It was close to eleven before that pest of a woman and her husband finally left us, with the hour so far advanced there was nothing for it but to don my disguise and go with Jemmie to find an alternative storage spot for our cargo.

The night was dark and cold, the wind piercing, but I hardly noticed. Between looking over my shoulder for a follower and trying to set on some hiding place, I was not much bothered by the other minor discomforts. I dickered between stables and icehouse, summer pavilion and fuel house, rejecting each for one reason or another—too small, too open, etc. We arrived half an hour before the lugger, time enough for Jemmie to stay at the prearranged spot to meet them while I scouted and set on the pinery as our spot.

Our pinery at Fern Bank was an elaborate affair, Grecian in design, and every bit as elegant as the main home. When Mrs. Everett spoke of tearing it down, she was showing me how little impressed she was with it, but she had of course not touched a single stone in it. She had let the orange trees and pineapples wilt away, just as she said she had. They stood like desiccated corpses still in their planting boxes, the leaves of the trees rustling in the draft when I opened the door. Those lovely tropical scents that had used to greet one here were all gone, with only a dusty, unpleasant odor from a few fruits not removed before the place was abandoned. There was ample storage room, and good concealment from the dead foliage.

The landing went well enough. I caught a glimpse of the lugger as it hoisted sails to depart. Jemmie and I remained behind and breached a barrel together, then he saw me home. Wicklow was just coming out of the school, to hop astride his mount. I could not suppress a smile to think how frustrated he must feel.

I was smiling on the other side of my face Monday morning when I received a summons to the rear door to meet the higgler at the ungodly hour of six-thirty. It was fortunate it was myself who heard his knocking.

“An accident, miss. Don’t tell me I should not have come, for I know it, but I wasn’t followed. A barrel fell off the tranter’s wagon just at the gateway to Fern Bank. The smell is something awful. We tried to lower it with water, but daylight was coming on, and we dared not linger.”

“Get a load of manure up there at once, Jem, and drop it. We don’t want to draw attention to our new spot. Thank God it’s Saturday. If I had to go to work today I could not do it.”

“It’s too late, miss. The milk carrier was not far behind us. He’ll have spread the tale around town as sure as God made apples.”

“Very likely. Well, Fern Bank was never meant to be a regular spot, and so long as Phillips is safely on his way to London, we’ll not complain. It leaves us without a single safe spot for landing. I’m afraid we must take a holiday for a few weeks.”

“Pettigrew won’t like it. And it’s the good stuff too, from Cognac. Our gentlemen won’t like missing out on that.”

“They wouldn’t like hanging either. We’re not far from it.”

The accident brought another call from Mrs. Everett down on my head, for some general complaining, the nature of it being that if the roof had not fallen, she would not have been obliged to vacate her home, and the smugglers would not have used her property. It took some sophistry for her to lay the blame on my shoulders, but as that was precisely where it belonged, I did not give her her customary argument.

Throughout this entire interval, Wicklow kept calling, making as much love as usual. “Miss Sage becomes desperate,” he crowed on this occasion. “I have driven him as far north as Fern Bank—your old home, Mab. Half a mile farther and he is backed into Felixstone territory. If a couple of the smuggling rings can be put at each other’s necks, we revenuemen can retire. It is the fact of the Everetts not being home that caused it, of course: I thought my hinting to Mrs. Everett she should rip down the poachers' hut and thin out her spinney would be sufficient to keep Miss Sage away. They used the pinery, I fancy.”

“You’ll drive him out of business entirely,” I answered, trying to control my rising anger, but noticing too how accurate his guess was. His mind worked so much like my own.

“I hope not. It would be a shame to do that, and miss out on catching him, after all my work. He will only set up business again as soon as I am gone. But he won’t stop. He is too bold, too conceited to think I’ll catch him. I’ll drive him to the wall yet. Oh, by the way—did I tell you I must take a run to London?”

London was irrevocably linked in my mind with Lady Lucy. Would he go to see her? So precarious was our relationship that I never revealed to him any knowledge of his affair with Lucy, though I could have claimed my aunt as the source of it easily enough. “Will you go to see Lord Hadley?” was the closest I came to it.

“Yes, it is a business trip,” he answered. Yet surely a baronet did not require to dance attendance on his patron. “Don’t mention to anyone when I return. I’ll be gone from Wednesday through Saturday, but have not said so or Miss Sage will land a load at the main dock in town during my absence. He becomes brazen enough for anything. Still, I am gaining ground. He had to dump the second last load. If another comes in by
that
method he wont like it. It is troublesome for him. And me. It would require the dragoons to catch them at that stunt.”

His mind was all on business. There was no teasing, no flattery, but only a peck on the cheek as he left. This despite the fact we were alone together for half an hour in the saloon. I thought over what he had said, after he left, and had to agree he had run me to a standstill. Ganner, when he dropped by one evening, said as much. “No point taking unnecessary chances. He’ll be gone soon enough, and you can resume operations.”

Dumping was the only means left. Miss Sage would retire, and let Miss Parsley take over eventually. But for the sake of the men, Miss Sage might as well make use of Wicklow’s absence and bring in that profitable load of cognac that fetched such a good price in London.

Chapter Twenty

I have had reason to wonder since if Wicklow was testing me, telling me and no one else he would be gone till Saturday. At the time, my only doubt regarding that gentleman was whether he was going to see Lord Hadley, or his daughter. On Friday night, Crites, ever a load behind in his knowledge, was seen to be centering all his attention on Fern Bank. So it was the Eyrie chosen as our landing spot. I foresaw no likelihood of trouble. I sat in the saloon with Edna, doing some embroidery, when the door knocker sounded at ten o’clock.

Ten is a rather late hour for a social call, yet too early for Jemmie, nor would he come so publicly. The only person I could imagine it to be was Wicklow. My first surge of pleasure had soon turned to fear. He could not be back! He said Saturday!

It was only Ganner, but with such news! “I just thought you might be interested to hear Sir Stamford is back in town. I was on my way home from taking dinner with the Everetts at the inn, and happened to recognize him jogging down the road toward the Eyrie. He told me he would not be back till Saturday.”

“That’s odd. He told me he had put out the story he would be back on Friday, and told only myself he would be here on Saturday. What is he up to, Sir Elwood?”

“A good question. I don’t like the looks of this at all. Why go out of his way to tell the two of us, and no one else, a lie? I believe he has tumbled to it I was involved in the business in the past. Is it possible he knows you have replaced me? I know he has been snooping around at my bank, asking questions that are none of his business. He can prove nothing against me; what we must do is see to protecting you. I suggest very strongly you draw a halt to your work at once. Do you have a load coming in tonight?”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid of that. He hoped you would do it—that’s why he told you he would be away. Is there anything I can do to help you, ma’am? Where is it coming in? It must be burned off.”

“At the Eyrie. If you would be kind enough to drop a note off at the Hesslers’, Sir Elwood...”

“Never mind the note. The Hesslers know all about me. The only ones who do, outside of yourself. Have you another spot in mind, or will you dump it?”

“We’ll have to dump it. Unfortunate, but as Wicklow himself said, it would require the dragoons to catch us when it is being rolled ashore at all hours and in all different places.”

Imagine my chagrin to discover next day the dragoons had been sent down to Salford to trap me! The Prince of Wales’ own regiment, the 10th Light Dragoons. were shipped to Salford for the specific purpose of catching me. The
Sun
brought out a special edition to welcome them, for the
Sun
always printed what was proper and never mind whether they meant it. I daresay Sir Elwood saw some prestige to be gained from their presence. I don’t know in what manner he made his presence felt vis-à-vis the
Sun
, for the proprietor and editor (all the same person) is a Mr. Sandy Blair, who has no known connection with Ganner.

The soldiers were reported to be “on maneuvers,” but for an Army outfit to be executing their maneuvers on the coast in pairs with telescopes lent a very nautical air to the goings-on. No one was fooled, least of all Miss Sage. The only other soul in town who took exception to their presence was Officer Crites. He had not been consulted in the matter. No one ever offered him the help of an entire regiment of dragoons to catch the smugglers. And each of them with one of the prized telescopes! Really I think Wicklow might have got one for Crites while he was about it.

So there we were, with one hundred barrels of the best brandy made in France under salt water, in danger of going bleachy and becoming worthless. It would cost me a fortune, to pay for it and get no return, for of course the French must be paid whether I got my money or not. The only thing I could think of to do was to have Jem notify Phillips there would be no load for London, which is rather like killing a midge when a tiger is about to eat you.