Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (21 page)

Pamela nodded, her eyes swimming in tears. “I was already two months along, and we were going to be married within days. When Bernard died, I … I lost my mind for a while. I moved to this remote cottage, with Marcus’s help, had Edward, found Mrs. Gorse, then … I … I floundered, Anne. I felt like I was drowning in sorrow. It was then, in the depths of my sorrow and illness, that Marcus came to me; I think he was worried that I would destroy myself, if not purposely, then through neglect. He sent me to you,
made
me go to Harecross Hall, for my own good, he said. And for Edward.”

Anne’s heart ached for all she hadn’t known. She reached over and touched Pamela’s slender hand. “You should have told me the truth! We could have had Edward and Mrs. Gorse with us.”

“No, that was impossible. Mrs. Gorse was already comfortable here, in this cottage. She was a widow before her baby was born, and she cared for Edward so well, I can never thank her adequately. It’s a miracle that Edward still knows I am his mother, she’s been so good to him.”

“But you should have
told
me,” Anne insisted. “We could have talked, I would have known more how to help.” Fanny toddled up to Anne again and put up her arms. “What does she want?” Anne asked, staring down into the little girl’s huge, round blue eyes.

“She wants you to pick her up,” Pam said, gently, cradling Edward in her arms. The little boy played with her necklace and contentedly patted her cheek.

Anne lifted the child to sit on her lap, and Fanny, in some mysterious baby way, taught Edward to play pat-a-cake. “So this is where you disappeared to so often,” Anne said, of the many times in the last weeks when Pam would be gone all day. She glanced around at the tidy cottage, small, humble, but neat and clean. “And this is what you need money for.”

Pam nodded. “I’ve almost got enough. Edward will be weaned soon, and needs a home, and eventually require schooling. I could have him stay with people until he’s old enough to go to school, but I’ll not lose him like that!” she said, her voice trembling. “He’s all I’ve got. I’m going to go away with him, maybe to Canada. Somewhere where I will not have to explain my life to people, somewhere where nobody knows us, and I can be a widow. Now that Marcus is gone, I have no reason to stay in England, no family at all.”

“Does that mean you intend to go on with the smuggling trade?” Anne asked, horrified.

Pamela nodded. “Just one more successful run, and I’ll have enough. Just one more!”

Her tone sounded almost pleading, and Anne wondered what she was being asked to do … turn a blind eye, certainly, but was there more?

“For Edward,” Pam said, caressing her boy’s silken hair, brushing it off his high forehead and kissing it once. “I’ll not let my son do without.”

“If you’re unsuccessful, Edward may have to do without his mother!” Anne stated, her tone acid. It was one thing for Pam to risk her own life, but knowing she had a dependent, a child who would be left in a foundling home if she died … it seemed selfish. “What if you’re caught? You could be hanged, or transported. Pam, really!”

“I have to risk it,” she said, and hugged her boy close. “I
have
to.”

Troubled, Anne watched them together, and at long last decided she could not judge Pam harshly. Her own life was so easy, she had no right to take her friend to task for making hard decisions and difficult choices.

A few hours later, after having a midday meal with Edward, they had to leave. Anne was moved to tears by how fiercely the little boy clung to his mother, tears coursing down his chubby face when she said goodbye. But they had to go back to St. Wyllow, and then to Cliff House.

“What I don’t understand,” Pamela said, idly, as they traveled back the way they had come, “is why Puddicombe raided us that night. He was to let us unload our goods in peace that night.”

“Tell me about your arrangement with the man. I cannot imagine what kind of scalawag would take a bribe to turn a blind eye to illegal activity!”

Pamela quickly concealed a smile. “You are such an innocent, my dear Anne, and such an idealist. All men in office are corrupt, one just needs to find what they want.” Her smile turned bitter. “We thought Puddicombe was satisfied with money, but lately …” She turned her face away to the window.

“Lately what? What else did he want, Pam?”

“That foul creature wanted me!
Me!
He thought I’d become his … his mistress. After all, I’m a fallen woman because I don’t live with the protection of a chaperone.”

“I’m so sorry, my dear!” Anne said. “I’ve often wondered why, for my consequence and protection as a delicate lady, the presence of my darling, daft, dotty Lolly is considered necessary when Mary, my very own Scottish wyvern, who would tear the throat from anyone who threatened me with dishonor, is not thought sufficient. An older lady, spinster in her own right, is more fit to protect me when my fiercely loyal papist maid supposedly cannot?”

“Of course, it has nothing to do with the real situation, it’s all how things
look
,” Pam said, bitterly. “Marcus would have killed anyone who did that to me. He would have …” She trailed off, her face pallid, all the color she had gained from seeing her son drained away.

“What is it, Pam?”

“Do you think …? No. No, it’s not possible.”

“Are you asking if I think Puddicombe could have killed Marcus? That perhaps they clashed over you?”

Pam nodded.

Anne thought about it, staring out the window at the gloomy, overcast sky. “Did you tell Marcus what the man was doing, trying to force you into an affair?”

“No! I would never tell Marcus that, for he would certainly have done Puddicombe some damage.”

“Then that’s one thing we ought to investigate. We need to find out how much Marcus truly knew of Puddicombe’s treatment of you. It could explain why your brother went back down to the beach that night.”

Pam, with tears standing in her eyes, reached out for Anne’s hand and said, “Will you help me find out who killed poor Marcus?”

“If it is possible to find out, I will,” Anne said, patting her hand and releasing it. “But I think we ought to bring Darkefell into this, Pam, for he’s resourceful and intelligent, and—”

“No. Oh, no!” Pam gasped. “He and Marcus didn’t get along, and I couldn’t bear if the marquess knew about … about everything. Please, don’t tell him about my smuggling, and Edward and … and everything.”

“But Pam—”

“No!
Please
, Anne, don’t,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Let’s figure this out on our own.”

“All right,” Anne agreed, reluctantly.

St. Wyllow was quiet, except for an unusual number of red-coated army officers. Anne and Pam got down from the carriage and Sanderson took the horses to be fed and lodged, for Anne said she and Pam could walk back to Cliff House. She did not want her carriage standing outside of the Barbary Ghost Inn if they needed to stop there to speak with Darkefell. She had promised him they would, but now she wasn’t sure what to do, with Pam’s injunction on telling him anything.

They strolled about St. Wyllow, while Anne thought things through. There were a few questions she needed to ask, she realized. “Pam,” she said, glancing sideways, “did St. James have a … a lover?”

Pam smiled. “I think so. He was very mysterious about it, but there was a lady in town he would visit.”

Anne thought back to market day, and the look exchanged between St. James and the lady she later learned was Miss Julia Lovell’s chaperone. It seemed a complicated affair, for the young man, Netherton, had apparently attacked St. James at the ball, too, though she hadn’t seen it happen. She stopped walking, and Pam looked back at her, a question in her eyes.

“What is it?”

Anne told her what she was thinking, and Pam agreed it was a promising lead that they could follow up. In the complicated triangle that was St. James, Julia Lovell and John Netherton on one hand, and St. James, Julia Lovell and Julia’s chaperone on the other, there was a situation rife with potential for violence, as that Netherton had already shown toward St. James.

Loud voices broke into their conversation, and Anne glanced around. “It’s coming from the livery stable,” she said. “Whatever is going on?”

The quarrel, for such it proved to be, spilled out from an alleyway beyond the livery to the open green, and Anne, horrified, could see Darkefell at the center of it. Three red-coated officers followed as he stalked away from them.

“C’mon, you coward,” one of the red-coated officers, a fleshy, red-face fellow, cried. “You could attack St. James, why not take us on? We won’t gang up on ye, just one at a time.”

“I will not fight a man with whom I have no quarrel!” Darkefell said, striding across the green.

Anne hurried toward the confrontation, as Darkefell turned to face his tormentors. “Leave him alone,” she cried. “He’s done nothing to you!”

A tall lanky officer laughed out loud. “He’s got a petticoat defender!”

Darkefell’s face turned brick red and his hands balled into fists. He glared over at Anne. “My lady, retreat, if you will.”

Pamela had followed Anne, and she said, aloud, “Gentlemen, I’m ashamed to see you thus! St. James would not countenance you taking the law into your hands.”

“We beg your pardon, Miss St. James,” the portly officer said. “But we have reason to believe this fellow murdered your brother,” he continued, pointing at Darkefell. “You would not wish us to let him go, would you?”

“I would have you observe the rule of law, please,” she said, her tone crisp.

“Good enough,” the lanky fellow said, in an insinuating tone. “We’ll take ’im to the colonel.”

“Can’t do that, boys,” another man sneered, “for our new colonel is in this fellow’s pocket, simply because he’s a ‘milord.’”

“This behavior is unbecoming an officer,” Anne said.

Darkefell rolled his eyes. “Fellows,” he said, admirably calm. “I did not kill St. James. To make such an accusation is to leave yourself open to the law. But I will not go to law; if you insist, I will gladly fight each one of you, anywhere you wish, but not in front of the ladies!”

“Well and good,” the lanky one said. “We’ll name the time and place, then, my lord; tomorrow, after the funeral, in St. Ives. Now, excuse us, ladies,” he said, his gaze swiveling to the sight of a superior officer strolling the green with a lady on his arm, “we really must be going.”

Thirteen

“You both should have stayed out of it,” Darkefell muttered to Anne, watching as the red-coated officers strode away, up a lane toward the livery stable. “I was perfectly capable of handling those red-coated simpletons.”

His delicate manliness was injured, Anne thought, dismissing his irritation with a shake of her head as Pamela drifted ahead of them, pausing to speak with the vicar’s wife, who was guiding a couple of well-dressed, mannerly children toward the church.

The officers’ invitation to fight was troubling, but not surprising, Anne figured. She knew how, in a closed society like the military, gossip became fact, fact became insult, and insult became a call to action. Those men probably didn’t even know St. James, and Anne told Darkefell so. “I certainly did not recognize any one of them as St. James’s particular friends.”

“I know that,” the marquess said, his tone annoyed, “but I will fight each one anyway.”

Anne huffed, following Pamela. “Men! You are incomprehensible creatures, and yet you insist that you are simple to understand.”

When the three met on the high street near the millinery shop, Darkefell offered to walk them back to Cliff House, but Anne was not ready to quit the village yet, so she instead suggested tea at the only suitable place for a lady in the village, the coffee room of the post-house inn. He agreed, though he appeared reluctant, to Anne.

When they were seated at a table and served, while townsfolk watched them and whispered, he said, “I went to church this morning, then visited the vicar after.”

Pamela paled. Perhaps fearing that his conversation was in reference to her brother’s funeral, and unable to face the awful finality, she turned away to the window and stayed silent.

“Miss St. James,” he said, gently, “I have to ask this: Did you know that your brother had seen Vicar Barkley about posting the banns for himself and Miss Julia Lovell?”

She turned a stricken face to him and cried, “No! He has never said … I mean, I knew he was
considering
offering, but … no, I didn’t know he had seen Mr. Barkley about it.”

“He hadn’t actually requested the banns, but was going to ask Miss Lovell’s father for her hand within days, the vicar understood. It was all but settled.”

“Why wouldn’t he have told me?”

“Did you disapprove the match?” Anne asked.

Pam sighed and absently played with the lace on the edge of her sleeve. “I have nothing against the girl, but I felt Marcus was rushing things. And for perhaps the wrong reasons.”

Anne understood her; she thought Marcus was considering wedlock to provide security for his sister. With access to the girl’s dowry, he could have supported Pam and her illegitimate son, without her having to leave England. But there was a rival for Julia’s hand, and Marcus knew it. How did the girl feel? Anne wondered. Which of her beaux did she prefer, Netherton or St. James? Or did she even have a choice? She glanced at Darkefell. “Do you think young Mr. Netherton is someone we ought to be looking at, in our search for Marcus’s murderer?”

“I do. He is passionate about Miss Lovell, and murder is a passionate crime.”

Anne shivered. He didn’t seem to see that the motive he was ascribing to John Netherton could just as easily be attributed to him. She watched him for a moment, his face in three-quarter profile, light where it was turned toward the dull gleam of shrouded sun through the window, and shadow where the light did not fall.

They had already spent many more hours together than she had ever spent with her late fiancé, Reginald Moore, and yet she had so many questions about the marquess. He’d followed her all the way from Yorkshire and gotten in a violent fight with St. James. But would he kill the man in the middle of the night? She thought, given what she knew of Darkefell’s character, if he had fought Marcus and killed him, he would have carried the body up to Cliff House and explained himself like a man, rather than leaving the body to be washed about on the tide for them to find later.