The Cornish Heiress (3 page)

In fact, although Addington confirmed the great necessity for
accurate information and went so far as to summon the Secretary of War, who
further confirmed this opinion and added other details, it was far more the
memory of Philip’s face and behavior over the past months that convinced Roger.
It was true Philip might be caught and killed, but Roger trusted his son’s
brains and “Frenchness” and Pierre’s help. Pierre had never been caught, and he
would watch over Philip as carefully as if he were his own son. Most significant
of all, Roger felt that if he could not soon find something Philip could
do—that Philip felt was worth doing—his son would sink deeper and deeper into self-destructive
habits until he would, perhaps, be better off dead.

Tentatively Roger agreed to put the question to Philip and,
torn first by one fear and then another, decided to post out to Dymchurch House
that very day. He could not bear to face Leonie and tell her what he had done.
If Philip refused, as he had refused every other suggestion Roger had made concerning
ways to occupy himself, Leonie would not need to be worried. He sent a note to
tell her he was going to Dymchurch to speak to Philip, promised he would not
quarrel with his son again, and said he would be home the following evening.

There was no trouble in traveling. The road from London to
Dover had many posting houses with excellent teams of horses for hire. In his
eagerness to leave, Roger had not even wanted to wait while his own phaeton was
brought round from the house. Besides, he was afraid he might find Leonie in the
carriage if he sent for it. His wife was highly intelligent and not the most
docile and biddable woman in the world. She would certainly suspect that
something more was going on than he had told her. Ordinarily Leonie would never
interfere between Roger and Philip, but In view of their less than amicable
parting, she might feel any discussion between them would be improved in
civility by her presence. Thus, Roger hired a post chaise.

He was very sorry before they had covered half the distance.
There was no fault to be found with the progress they were making, but without
the necessity of driving himself, Roger had nothing to do but think. He began
to wonder whether he was lying to himself whether he was sending Philip off to
be killed because he was so selfish that he didn’t want to put up with his son’s
bad temper. By nine-thirty, when the chaise drawn by the last team of smoking horses
came up the long drive and stopped in front of Dymchurch House, Roger would
have turned around and started back to London if he had not known that the horses
and postilion were too done up for another stage.

The condition in which he found Philip rapidly reversed the
opinion of himself as a deliberate murderer on which he had been brooding
during the long drive. Philip was not dead drunk, but he certainly was not sober
and he looked like death warmed over.

“Could you not trust me to come here?” he asked
belligerently as soon as Roger walked in.

“I have something serious to talk to you about,” Roger said,
ignoring his son’s remark. “Are you sober enough to listen?”

“Now what have I done?” Philip snarled.

“Nothing sensible for months, if you want the truth,” Roger
snapped, “but I have a proposition to make to you. There is a piece of work for
which you are suited. It is not nice work, and it is very dangerous, but it
will be of infinite benefit to our nation if you can stay alive long enough to
do it.”

“I thought you had given up discovering petty tail-chasing
occupations,” Philip began, but his voice drifted off as the pain and fatigue on
his father’s face finally pierced through the alcoholic fog in his brain.

“Do you want to wait until morning?” Roger asked.

“No.” Philip got to his feet, wavering only slightly. “Give
me twenty minutes, sir, and I will be ready for you.”

The twenty-four sturdy ponies strung together made
surprisingly little noise as they trotted docilely down beside the narrow
stream toward the sea. The path was well defined but that did not bother the
lead rider. People from the village were encouraged to beach their boats in the
cove and eke out their thin crops by fishing. There were plenty of reasons for
a path to be trodden flat leading to Lamorna Cove. The reason the ponies hooves
were muffled was to keep the sound of steel striking stone from echoing off the
naked cliffs that rose on each side of the narrow valley the stream had cut.

That sound might have been what betrayed to a revenue cutter
the smugglers who had used Treen Cove, or it might have been an information
laid. That was what the gang had thought, and it had led to murder; but the
gang had been broken, although about half of its members and its leader had
escaped. Since the war had started up again, there were fewer Customs men
around. They and their ships had more important duties than watching for a
boatload of wine and brandy that would not pay duty. On the other hand, naval
patrols were frequent, and sound carries a long distance over water. It would
be stupid to take the chance that such sounds as ponies trotting through the
night should be heard and reported. Many things were said of the new leader who
had reorganized the scattered smugglers, but never that she was stupid.

The ponies emerged into the open area of the cove. Shadows
stirred in the darkest place against the cliffs, resolved themselves into men
who came forward and led the ponies into the concealment they had come from.
The lead rider dismounted, and from the end of the string of ponies a giant
trotted forward to loom over the small, slender woman. The breeches she wore
were no attempt to conceal her sex, merely a concession to the security of
riding astride.

If any of the men looked at her with sexual interest, he did
so only from the concealment of the dark. One man had been knocked senseless
for making a suggestive remark, another had an arm broken for touching her. Now
all were very careful.

The giant made a soft, gobbling noise, and the woman turned
to him and took the lantern he handed her. Kneeling, she struck flint, lighted
a spill from the tinder, and lit the lamp. There was only a faint back-glow,
for three sides were blackened and dark wings, which the woman had opened when
she lit the lantern, shielded the front. It would not be possible to see the
light anywhere but from a ship on a direct line from the cove. The little light
that reflected upward and from a scratch or two in the blackened surfaces was
blocked by the woman’s body.

In that dim light her features were remarkably fine. Close
examination would have showed her eyes to be a quite astonishing violet color,
distinctive and unmistakable, but no one in the smuggling group ever got very
close. In the dark her eyes looked black at a few feet. A straight nose, just
barely tip-tilted, and an adorable full-lipped mouth were made less appetizing
by streaks and smudges of dirt and a mass of tangled, stringy, seemingly filthy
red hair. Occasionally the delivery men wondered why Red Meg stayed so coarse
and dirty. She must be making plenty of money on the smuggling lay, but she
hadn’t changed her clothes, or apparently, washed her face, in the year they
had known her. Such thoughts, when they came, were usually suppressed quickly.
Red Meg didn’t like questions—and the dummy made sure none were asked.

Almost as soon as the lantern was directed seaward a light
flashed back from beyond the low breakers. It went out, and then flashed twice,
then once again. Red Meg worked the wings of the lantern in some response
pattern. The men did not bother watching. The pattern from the ship seemed to
change each time, and probably the reply changed also. There was no chance of
slumming that arch doxy. She was up in every suit. There was no sense in it anyway.
She paid fair. It was just the fact that she was a woman that some resented—that
and that she was dead set against any trouble in the local villages. No
robbery. No fooling with the women except on order—and there was never an order
for those things, only once or twice for a burning.

There was another flicker of light from the sea, this time
only one short blink. Red Meg turned her head toward the men waiting in the
shadow and said, “Go.”

They hurried forward and began to run the villagers’ small
boats into the water. If there was sun the next day, the boats would be dry and
the villagers would never know they had been used. If there was no sun, damp
might well linger in the bottoms of the boats. However, no one would remark on
it, just as no one would turn a head or get out of bed to look when the ponies
passed through the town, as they sometimes did. It was much, much safer to
notice nothing. Curiosity resulted in inexplicable damage to one’s crops, in a
house burnt to the ground.

The squire’s daughter, Mrs. Edward Devoran, had made good
the loss but there was no guarantee that she would do it again, and thus it was
an adequate warning for them all. Next time it might be a killing, and even
Mrs. Devoran would not be able to cure that. So when the soft thud of many
hooves passed in the night, those with windows by the bed turned their faces to
the blank wall. There had been some angry muttering before acceptance was
forced on them, but it was no distaste for smuggling that caused it. Quite the
contrary, the men from the village were angry because they were never employed
in the lucrative work.

As time passed the villagers grew resigned, particularly
since a few coins were periodically found in the boats left in the cove. It was
better to profit from the smuggling that way. Mrs. Devoran was kind, but she
was a great stickler for obeying the law, and she hated smugglers. This wasn’t
surprising, because it was rumored that a smuggler had shot and killed her
husband. The village women looked at each other whenever the subject of the
late Edward Devoran came up He was surely no loss to his wife, whether or not
she knew it.

Oddly enough, Red Meg was thinking almost identical thoughts
to those of the village women. She thought of Edward every time she came out to
meet Pierre’s ship. Edward’s death and the events that followed it had restored
Megaera Devoran’s faith in God. She grinned in the dark when she thought of the
vicar’s horror if he knew the source of both her faith and her generous
contribution to St. Buryan’s. But really, seven years as Edward’s wife had just
about made an atheist of Megaera. She had had to become Red Meg to believe
again. It hadn’t been to so easy to believe in the goodness of God before that,
either. After her mother had died her father had disintegrated rapidly. He had never
been a very strong person. He was sweet and kind but always sadly addicted to the
bottle and the gaming table. Lady Bolliet had ruled her husband, and her
daughter was also strong-willed, but Megaera had been too young to take control
when her mother died.

Then, somewhere, Lord Bolliet had met Edward Devoran and
fallen so deeply in debt to him by gambling that he could not pay. How the two
men had come to the decision that Megaera’s hand in marriage would clear the
debt, she never discovered. When she asked her father, he burst into tears,
when she asked Edward, he laughed. Now, Megaera knew, she should simply have
refused, but then she had been only fifteen. With her father weeping and
babbling of ruin, utter ruin, and Edward, handsome and soft spoken, assuring
her that it was her beauty that had driven him to using such underhanded methods,
Megaera had agreed to the marriage.

She had lived to regret it bitterly. Within weeks of the
ceremony Edward was after the servant girls. When Megaera, not so much hurt as
outraged, had told him in no uncertain terms that he was to leave the girls
alone, he had tried to beat her. He had learned swiftly not to do that. Megaera
had defended herself with furniture, teeth, and nails. Edward had ended more
bruised than she. Then, to enforce the lesson, she had set John on him. He had
been beaten so soundly by the giant deaf-mute that he was in bed for several
weeks He had no recourse because he had already made himself so obnoxious to
everyone in the house that with one voice they would have perjured themselves
about the cause of his injuries.

That had ended any open contest and any marital relationship
between Edward and Megaera. Unfortunately Edward was clever and Megaera was
innocent. Edward had his revenge. Over the next five years he had encouraged
his father-in-law’s weaknesses. Lord Bolliet sank deeper and deeper into
alcoholism. Megaera did what she could, but it was impossible to watch her
father day and night, and she could not bear to set a keeper over him; in spite
of everything she loved him. That, and not recognizing Edward’s part in her
father’s decay, was a serious mistake. Somehow, over the years, Edward had
forced or deceived Lord Bolliet into mortgaging his properties. By the time
Megaera discovered what was going on, the debt was very large compared to the
value of the lands. Over the next two years she had paid the interest and a bit
of the principal by selling her mother’s jewels. There was no need to set a
watch on her father to be sure he signed no more papers. No banker or even
usurer would lend a penny more on the Bolliet estates. Megaera pared expenses
to the bone, but there was no way to pay off the debt out of income. She
watched her resources dwindle with helpless terror. There would soon come a time
when she and her father would be thrust penniless out of their home.

Naturally enough, the first restriction on expenses was the
allowance that had been paid Edward. Nor could he take anything from the house
to sell or pawn. All the servants watched him eagerly, and he knew Megaera
would either set John on him again or would go further and endure the scandal
of accusing her husband of stealing, for the advantage of being rid of him. The
only reason his presence was suffered at all was that he had not destroyed Lord
Bolliet’s notes of hand, as he had promised he would when Megaera married him.
If he were pushed out, he threatened, he would present those to be paid—and he
had arranged them to look like legal debts rather than gambling losses.

Ever inventive, Edward discovered a new way to turn a
dishonest penny. He made contact with a group of smugglers. This was not
difficult, as he had been an avid customer for duty-free brandy for some time.
Edward himself drank only socially and seldom enough to interfere with the
devious workings of his brain; however, he had fed his father-in-law’s desire
for oblivion until the profit in it ended. Now he offered to arrange direct
deliveries to the houses of the gentry for a split in the profit.

Although Edward did not know it, Black Bart was not a man who
could be overawed by his new “partner’s” exalted connection. Edward collected
the price of the wine and brandy Black Bart delivered, and the split was not
honest. It took a little time for Black Bart to discover this. He had his own
blind spots. Most of his men and the local farmers were so afraid of him that
they would not dream of cheating him. It was several months before he realized
that Edward did not share the caution of his other employees. When he did
discover it, his action was direct. He shot Edward dead.

In fact, Bart was glad of the excuse Edward had offered. He
had been considering getting rid of his partner for a week or two. Once Edward
had established the delivery route, he was really unnecessary to the scheme.
Unfortunately for Black Bart, he and Edward had very similar things in mind; Edward,
however, acted less directly. Feeling that Black Bart was unnecessary now that
he knew the “French” smuggler, Edward had betrayed the group to the Customs
officers. Only a few hours after his own death a raid on the barn, in which the
smugglers had gathered to divide and distribute the cargo Pierre had delivered,
gave Edward a posthumous revenge.

The revenge was not complete because his murderer escaped
only lightly wounded. Not realizing at first that the most important malefactor
had slipped through their hands, the Customs men rounded up about half the men
and all the cargo and were quite content. Then Edward’s body was discovered.
Soon there was no doubt of either the reason for his death or who had committed
the crime. A search was instituted for Black Bart, but it was rather cursory.
It was assumed that he would be very far out of the district or hidden in one
of the numerous caves in the area, of which an adequate examination was
impossible and very dangerous.

This assumption did not take into consideration the fact
that the wound Bart had sustained, although not deadly, was in a spot that made
both walking and riding very painful. In addition, he hated the caves. They
generated in him a nameless terror that could reduce him to a whimpering jelly.
This combination forced him into an abandoned hut about halfway between Bolliet
and Treen. He had slept there a few times in the past and knew no one ever
visited the spot but a gigantic deaf-mute named John, who came to tend his
mother’s grave.

When news of Edward’s death and the reason for it came to
Megaera, she had been frozen with surprise—and relief. Respectful of her
seeming shocked grief, the sympathetic Justice of the Peace had encouraged her
to retire to recover herself. Kind neighbors had arranged the funeral and kept
her father from disgracing himself in public. If any of them had known what
Megaera was thinking those few days she kept to her room, people would have
recommended she be confined to a straitjacket. However, the thoughts did not show
in her remarkable violet eyes, bitter thoughts, at first only about the debts
that would soon complete Edward’s revenge even though he was dead.

If only she had known what he was doing, it occurred to
Megaera later, she could have got the money away from him. She could have
prevented him from betraying the gang so that the money, whatever it was, could
be used to pay the debts. Megaera had wept long and bitterly, and everyone felt
deep sympathy for her, believing she had loved her worthless husband in spite
of or in ignorance of, his faults. Sweet and innocent, most of them thought her,
and marveled at how she had found the strength to manage the estates and her
father without collapsing under the burden. This was the last straw, they
surmised.