Revenge of the Barbary Ghost (33 page)

Rolling over her in waves came a longing to see her father, the dearest man in the world and the center of her universe. He was her guidepost in every conversation she had with herself over morality and common sense. She may dismiss him in her mind occasionally as easy prey to daughterly persuasion, too lax when it came to letting her do exactly what she wanted, but he had raised her to have strong feelings, strong convictions, and a strong backbone. Her mother despised such things, feeling that it behooved every girl of Anne’s stature to grasp as high a mate as she could possibly manage and then let her husband do everything for her after that. What use was learning, logic, deep thought, when those things could not get a young lady a husband?

Darkefell, a marquess, was beyond even her mother and grandmother’s ambition for her, which was why they had sent Lolly to Cornwall. In her conversations with Lolly over the last week, it had become clear to Anne that her companion was trying to do justice to the Countess of Harecross and the Viscountess of Everingham’s wishes, while being a true friend to Anne. It was an untenable position for the poor woman to be in, and Anne did not blame her for her muddled unhappiness of the last few days.

Darkefell knew that Anne was thinking deeply, but he was torn as to whether he wanted her to do that or not. He leaned down in the silvering dawn, put one finger under her chin, and kissed her lips. “Kiss me again, Anne, my sweet?”

“Mmm.” She kissed him, deeply and thoroughly. But then she broke away from his lips, saying, “Tony, you’ve told me you love me. Why?”

He chuckled. “Because it happens to be true.”

“No, Tony, I don’t mean why did you tell me, I mean why do you love me?” She pulled away from him and wrapped her arms around herself, standing close to the edge of the bluff.

He watched her, how the gray of her eyes picked up the silver dawn and the color of the ocean. “Honestly? I am a difficult man, Anne. Difficult to love, difficult to get close to; moody, austere, cold.
Difficult
. Women have always told me they couldn’t guess what I was thinking, and it made them uneasy, but it never seems to distress you. If I push, you push back. If I’m moody, you don’t seem to allow it to have the slightest effect upon you. You are exactly what I need.”

It wasn’t the right answer. Her eyes grew frosty and her expression perturbed. Did she need hearts and flowers after all? Did she need to be told she was beautiful, and have poetry spouted at her? He opened his mouth to say some untruth, to say anything to bring the warmth back to her gaze, but then he closed it again. She had serious doubts about him, and he didn’t blame her, but she must make a decision about him. “What is it, Anne? Why do you doubt me?”

“I don’t doubt you at all, I doubt
me
.” She turned away from him and stared out to sea. “I don’t know if I ever want to get married, Tony. I’m not formed for marriage. I’m as moody as you, maybe more. I can be austere, cold, difficult, too. How would we ever get along?”

“Anne, my dearest one, you’re also warm, passionate, intelligent, reasonable. More reasonable than I.”

She smiled faintly, glancing back at him. “Is it reasonable for a woman to dread that which comes with marriage? I refer not to the marriage bed,” she said, blushing and looking down at the ground. “Nor to the childbirth bed. Though that thought has given me pause for reflection.” She met his eyes again. “But I fear that separation which is inevitable; a woman must forsake all that she holds dear, her home, her family, her roots, to pick them up and transplant, like a good potted plant, to the native soil of her husband. And her freedom. She gives up whatever measure of freedom she owns.”

“I understand all of that, Anne, but ours will not be a simple marriage of some miller to a maid. With such power and wealth as I have, I may grant whatever leave a wife should want, to travel to Kent, if it is there you wish to go, or Bath.” He gazed at her hopefully, but felt a coldness clutch him, as cold as the sea breeze that stiffened, rushing in from the ocean. She looked
more
perturbed, not less.

“Ah, and there is that,” she said, sadly. “Your language, my lord, reveals you to be a true man of your position. You would ‘grant’ your wife ‘leave.’ What kind of freedom is that?”

“I didn’t mean it that way, Anne,” he said, becoming irritated. “You take every word and dissect it.”

“What else do I have but words?” she said, her tone filled with exasperation. “What does any woman have before marriage but
words
?”

He took two strides, grasped her to him and kissed her hard, all of his fury and irritation finding an outlet. “You have
this
!” he said.

She kissed him back with equal fury and they sank to the thick, damp grass on the bluff, finding release in powerful emotion. He felt her soften, passion warming her, and the idea flashed across him: if she lay with him, she would marry him, he knew it to the depth of his core. As outré as she seemed, beneath her external outrageousness was a woman who valued herself, and he felt sure if he could make her see how much he could give her within marriage, she would submit.

He fumbled at her skirt and lifted, it, stroking her leg, finding his way above the stocking to naked flesh. She moaned against his mouth and opened her lips, letting him surge in and thrust into her mouth. He hardened, the thought of making love to her all the aphrodisiac he would ever need. “Anne, I want you,” he whispered against her lips. “Please!”

She stilled, and rolled away from him. She struggled to her feet, her face red in the glow of the morning sun that rose beyond the horizon. “I can’t, Tony. I just can’t! Not out here, not in such a quick and frenzied fashion. I must go … I must go and see to my friends.” She turned and fled, racing away from him toward the house. He was left alone, to cool the flames of his ardor, dousing them with the coldness of reality.

She had so much self-control. He wished she possessed the qualities some men of learning claimed as women’s frailty. If only she
was
impetuous enough to make love to him, trusting enough to marry him, fragile enough to need him. And weak enough to submit to him. He hammered the earth and swore. Damn her independence!

Anne stumbled back to the back door of Cliff House, emotion blurring her vision. Furious and sobbing, she couldn’t think of anything but Darkefell. She paused, not wanting to enter the house in such a state, and slumped down on a bench on the terrace. Trying to master her emotions, she swallowed and gulped in several breaths of misty night air.

“Damn you,” she muttered, hammering her fist on the bench. Her voice was clogged with tears, and she wasn’t sure if she referred to her would-be lover or to herself and her wild tumult of sense and emotion. Darkefell had a way of setting her off-kilter with seductive kisses, taking her to the brink of fleshly submission, only to spoil it all the next moment with some idiotic attempt to impose his will on her.

But she would not be some Niobe, streaming copious tears, though at least Niobe had a good excuse for her weepiness. Anne did not. Being loved by an irritating man did not constitute a reason to cry.

Wiping the dampness from her cheeks, she sighed, rising. “At least this is over,” she said aloud, testing her voice, clearing it of unshed tears. “Those dreadful men are stopped. Pamela and her little Edward will live in peace.”

Weary to the bone, she started toward the back door, stealthily, intending to slink in and up the stairs. But she was jerked from her lassitude by a callused hand clapped over her mouth and a muscular arm around her body.

“Filty slut,” a voice growled in her ear, the feel of hard bristly whiskers and the sour stench of reeking breath overcoming her. “I’ll not be beggared by the likes o’ you!”

She struggled, but the bulky man was too strong and too angry. It was Micklethwaite! She tried to scream, hoping Darkefell would be near, but the sea captain’s hand over her mouth gagged her. She struggled and kicked, but he hauled her away.

“You’re a’comin’ wit me,” he chortled in her ear. “I’ll hide ya away and get that markwis to give me money to see you again. He seems to value yer bony arse.” He dragged her away from the terrace.

She bit his finger, and when he yelped and pulled his hand away, she shrieked, “Let me go! Help! Hel—”

He clapped his hand back over her mouth, grunting in pain. With his free hand he slammed his fist on her skull and her vision blurred, hot tears from the stinging blow welling in her eyes. Her knees buckled from the pain.

“Shut yer chatterer,” he growled and began dragging her away from the house. “If ya had yer way, I’d be caught by the magistrate, but I never was gonna be out there with those slugs I hired fer this job. D’ya think I’m a fool? T’was my job to make sure the slut was caught right an’ tight, so’s Puddicombe an’ me could form a proper gang wiv no breech-clad wimmin involved!”

If there was ever a time when she needed to control her emotion, Anne reeling from pain but furious, knew this was that moment. She slumped, making herself a dead weight, and the captain grunted. She would not be taken by surprise, like the last time she had almost died.

“Stand, damn yer hide! Stand an’ walk!”

Micklethwaite was huffing and puffing, his foul breath becoming more labored as she resolutely dug her heels in, making her body harder to carry or drag. To struggle would have invited violence, but resistance through passivity left him baffled, albeit still furious.

It seemed an interminable time, but as she suspected he would, he finally paused and took his grimy paw away from her mouth to wipe the sweat from his brow. She looked up and saw that he had hauled her toward the cliff; swiftly, summoning every ounce of energy and courage, she gave one quick kick backward to his knees with a loud yell. He buckled and she sprinted away from him, but her damnable skirts tangled, and she tripped, seeing, in that moment, Darkefell striding away from her on the bluff on the other side of the cut.

“Darkefell!” she cried, but the breeze whipped the word back at her with blowing sand, in a mockery of the danger she was in.

“Shut yer trap,” Micklethwaite grunted, charging after her and grabbing her arm, hauling her to her feet. “Everything went wrong ’cause o’ you, girlie, an’ you’re gonna pay. Wimmin ain’t got the right t’interfere wiv men.”

But Anne would not be taken so easily now that she was aware. She struggled and they staggered sideways, coming close to the cliff. The tide washed in below, and Anne knew, if she fell into the ocean, she would be pulled under by her skirts and drown. No one would get to her in time.

Twenty-one

Darkefell, fury slashing through him, strode back toward the inn after climbing across the cut and clambering back up to the grassy bluff. He had come to Cornwall sure of his suit, knowing he had all a woman could want and that Anne’s ultimate capitulation was a foregone conclusion. But now, he no longer knew how it would all end.

She could not mean to live as a spinster forever. That was madness! No woman he had ever met had wanted such a life, wandering in the nebulous world between unformed girl and respectable wife. Spinsters were those poor souls for whom no mate was available. They were eyed with pity and lived in shame. It was not a choice, but a fate. Superstition and cant tongue doomed them to lead apes in hell after death.

He stopped. It was all true, he thought, but why? The wind tugged at his hair, and he impatiently brushed it back. A noise floated on the breeze, perhaps a seagull’s mournful cry.

Why was a woman alone a pitiable thing? Anne was not pitiable; she would
never
be pitiable.

He turned, determined to go back to her and demand she listen to him yet again, but he froze, horrified. At such a distance, to witness Anne, teetering on the brink of oblivion, wrestling with Micklethwaite! The smuggling captain was throttling her and they were on the edge of the cliff. He bolted into action, but even as he began to run, he knew it was too late; he’d never get there in time. Pain ripped through his chest. His own humiliated anger had sent her away from him to danger.

Anne wobbled on the precipice, lights dancing in front of her as the captain squeezed her throat. The moment came, blackness beckoning, the grave yawning as inevitable before her, as close as the cliff edge.

“No!” she screamed, but it came out a gurgling caw. Struggling with her skirts, she raised her right knee and kicked back, connecting with the vulnerable male parts concealed beneath his breeches. The captain, his black eyes wide with surprise and horror, thankfully released her throat and she twisted away from him, teetering on the edge of the cliff. The next events occurred in seconds, but somehow it seemed as if it were all slower, the world whirling at a reduced spin. Micklethwaite’s ancient frock coat, shiny from long wear, flew open; he staggered, and shouted as he went down. She wobbled to the edge and saw him, facedown, the tidewater catching him and lashing waves driving him under.

He was dead. This time, unlike with Hiram Grover, there was no uncertainty about the murderer’s wretched fate. And once again Anne had cheated death.

Strong hands caught her from behind and pulled her back. Darkefell! She turned in his arms and buried her face in his neck, sobbing with relief. She was alive!

***

Two days had passed. Anne stood on the bluff overlooking the ocean, the wind tugging at her bonnet and skirts, clouds scudding overhead. Irusan was hunting rodents or a snake in the long grass.

Poor Marcus, gone forever. One of the young men who had been there on the night of the failed raid, the night Marcus had died, had witnessed what had happened and come forward, finally, when assured he would be safe by Puddicombe’s arrest and Micklethwaite’s death. He had come back to the site of the raid looking for the knife he had been carrying but dropped along the way, and he overheard everything.

Marcus and Puddicombe argued, the lad said, the subject being the officer’s sister, Pamela, and threats Puddicombe had made toward her. Marcus threatened to beat Puddicombe to within an inch of his life, and the excise man, with one swift motion, had slashed his throat. The murderer had made an interesting statement as his victim died at his feet, saying aloud that Marcus had gone the way of Bernard, Pamela’s fiancé, for both had crossed Puddicombe and both had paid.