The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne (38 page)

“It could be a long wait. They will be out to sea, close enough to see the light on the cliff, but far enough to run if they must.”

“Yes, I know. You have explained this many times, Darius. When the man from the boat is brought to me, I will say that I am sure someone was following me back. I will make sure they conclude it is not safe to stay with me and that they must change their plans.”

“I will be up above. If there is any threat to you, if one of these blackguards even looks at you oddly, you are to—”

“I will cry out, so you know you are needed.” She raised her head and kissed him. “I will feel perfectly safe, knowing you are there.”

He slid his arm around her and embraced her. His hold proved a balm to her nerves, which were more unsettled than she revealed.

It had been kind of Ambury and Kendale to allow her this brief time alone with Darius. She heard the horse hooves hitting the ground alongside. Not only two horses made the sounds. Three others had come while Viscount Kendale spoke to her. Gentlemen all, she assumed they had been called from properties nearby.

“I told Kendale about my brother,” she said. “I gave him a description of Robert, so if anyone on this boat claimed that identity, he might know if it were true. He said he would be there with Tarrington, to take the boat after the spy left the coastline.”

Darius said nothing to that. She knew he did not think Robert would ever be released. He still thought Robert was dead, and Stupid Man and his master had taken advantage of hers and Papa’s refusal to accept the truth.

“When they leave the cottage, what then?” She had been told her role, but little else. She doubted Lord Kendale trusted her enough for that. He probably had guessed that Darius had physically prevented her from becoming a traitor.

“You will be out of this, finally,” he muttered.

“I mean what will happen with them?”

“They will be followed. The hope is to have the new man lead us to the ones who have the information. It is why he is here. Hodgson—the man whom you met and know—will be
taken when they separate. He expects it. He agreed to betray his mission, and
you
, to save his neck, but he will not go free.”

“Maybe he also has a relative that he sought to redeem.”

“He did it for money, Emma. Most do.”

The curtains were closed on the carriage, but she knew they were approaching the cottage even without being able to see the passing land. Darius must have too. His embrace became all-encompassing and he gave her a kiss so sweet that her love tore at her heart.

“When this is over, you and I need to come to a right understanding about some things, Miss Fairbourne.”

“I expect we do.” She wished she could think he was being flirtatious or teasing. Only he did not speak lightly, but most seriously.

She did not expect that right understanding to be pleasant. When this was over, he would calculate the costs to his honor of loving her. She did not expect to fare well in that judgment.

The horse slowed. The carriage came to a stop. She turned in his arms and kissed him. She put the future out of her mind while she did, and filled her head and heart with memories of the last two days together, and the beauty she had known sharing passion with a man she loved.

Then the carriage door opened and they were awash in the waning light of the evening. She and Darius walked to her father’s cottage while the carriage and five gentlemen on horseback peeled away.

E
mma waited in the small library of the cottage. She kept candles burning, and remained in a chair where she could be seen from the window should anyone peer inside. She sat in that chair for three hours with no sign of Stupid Man Hodgson or a spy or anyone else.

The part she had played on the cliff path had been easy compared to this. Not a soul had been in sight. While waiting for night to fall, she had tried to determine where Lord Kendale lurked. He had been so invisible that she would
have doubted he was there, except he was the sort of man one did not dare doubt in any way.

She could move about down here, she supposed. She did not have to remain immobile like this. Darius was not making a sound up above, though, so she would not either. Perhaps he listened at the window, so he would know when someone approached.

It had been a hard parting before he walked up those stairs, loaded pistols in hand. He did not like that she was here, and a scowl never left his face. Except at the very end when, halfway up, he turned and glanced at her. Her breath had caught at his expression of love and worry and anger.

What if they did not come? The sea was calm, but there were other reasons why they might not. She might have to do all of this again tomorrow night, and the night after. She wondered whether Darius would permit that.

The candle in the lantern began to fade. She looked to the window where it sat, to see if it was going to go out. Two eyes moved behind the wavy glass panes, startling her badly. Her heart jumped and began beating fast. She had to force herself not to look up at the ceiling, to where Darius waited.

The door opened. Boot steps and murmurs approached. Hodgson entered and looked around, then gestured. A tall, thin man with dark hair and a military bearing appeared.

She waited to hear yet one more pair of boots, her heart in her throat. No one else came in. These two were alone.

Disappointment drenched her as if a wave of it had broken inside her head. She wanted to both weep and scream. What a fool she had been. She glared at Hodgson, and forced herself to swallow the words of fury and betrayal shouting in her head.

“This here is my friend,” Hodgson said. “He’ll be needing that chamber I talked to you about. This is Miss Fairbourne, Jacques.”

“Joseph,”
he said with a scowl. “My name is Joseph.”

Joseph spoke with distressingly good English. He would leave here and just disappear, with English that natural sounding.

“The chamber is ready, as required,” Emma said. “However, I fear that you use it at your peril.”

“How so?” Joseph asked sharply.

“I was not alone the whole time I was making the signal. If you noticed the light not move for a spell, that is why. A man walked by, and took interest in my movements. It might be nothing, of course, but—” Her chaotic emotions caused the words to come out in fits and starts. She hoped they would attribute that to fear.

“Merde.”

Hodgson looked dismayed. “I am sure it is nothing.”

“How can you be sure?” Joseph snapped.

Hodgson’s eyes widened. Emma thought he appeared guilty, obviously so. He heard a challenge that was not there because of his intended betrayal.

“I do not want you found here. I was promised secrecy and safety,” she said.

“I promised you nothing,” Joseph said. He went to the window, gutted the lantern’s candle, and peered into the night.

Hodgson became nervous and agitated. Worry marked his expression. He kept turning to her with questioning eyes, as if he hoped she knew why this change in plans had happened.

She hoped he worried a lot. She was glad he would not go free. He had lied to her, and she had come close to doing something so terrible and dishonorable that even the thought would be considered unforgivable by many people.

“Where is my brother?” she demanded. “You said he would be with you.”

“He, uh—I sent him to that village a bit inland. He didn’t know you would be here—I thought you might like to explain that yourself—and he didn’t see no point in staying with us, once that boat hit English sand. You go to the village in the morning and you’ll find him there.”

Her heart ached to believe him. She sought every excuse to do so. “You are lying. He did not come. I think it was all lies, and even that letter was a forgery.

Joseph looked over his shoulder. “It was no forgery. He wrote it. I saw him do it.”

“Then why is he not here?” she cried. “If you think that I will do this over and over on the vain hope that one day he will walk in that door too, I will not.”

Joseph looked at her calmly. Blankly. “Yes, you will.” He then addressed Hodgson. “We will go now.”

“Now? ’Tis dark. If anyone is lying in wait, we won’t see them until—”

“If we do not see them, they do not see us.”

“You go if you want. I’m thinking to stay right here.”

“You are coming. You were paid to get me to London, and you will do it.”

Hodgson sweated. Emma guessed that having been surprised by the change in plans, he now worried about a much bigger change waiting out there.

When he took too long to agree, Joseph touched the hilt of a knife strapped and sheathed at his waist. Emma held her breath while the threat filled the library.

With a sick expression, Hodgson nodded. He gave Emma a suspicious glare as he passed her. Emma counted their boot steps as they retreated to the front door, and exhaled only when the door closed behind them.

She sat down, to wait some more, until her guests were well on their way. And while she waited she finally succumbed to fear, humiliation, and sorrow. She wept with sobs that pained her, and buried her face in her hands to muffle the sound. She mourned the death of her hope and accepted that Darius had been right. Robert would never come home.

“E
mma.” Darius called her name softly down the stairwell a half hour after Hodgson had left.

She came to the stairs and looked up at him.

“Snuff the candles and come up here. It will be hours before anyone arrives to tell us how it all ends.”

She put out the candles, then mounted the stairs. He pulled her into an embrace and pressed his lips to her head
while he held her. He had prayed during the last ten hours and he did now once again.

She sank into him, as if standing were too much effort. “I feel as though I have been walking on top of a fence for days, all tight as I managed my balance.”

“Come and get some sleep. You have had little enough of that recently.”

She resisted his attempt to guide her away from the stairs. She sniffed, and he knew then that she had been weeping and still was distraught.

“As you predicted, my brother was not brought home to me.” She buried her face in his coat and began weeping, hard. “I am so ashamed,” she muttered with harsh fury between swells of crying.

He held her while deep, angry sobs wracked her. He caressed her shoulder and arm, hoping to reassure her. “Emma, you saw a duty to your family. Your decision was one that everyone could understand.”

“You are just being kind.” Her voice sounded muffled, broken, and tight. “You would never have considered such a thing, no matter what the coercion.”

“I am glad you are so certain. I am not. There are those for whom I might make the same decision. My sister. You.”

She looked up at him. She appeared touched that he included her. “You might contemplate it, but in the end you would not do it. You would refuse to buy us with treason. You would never agree to be a pawn, nor would you depend on the honesty of criminals either. You would do something noble and brave instead. You would execute a daring rescue of us, like men are wont to do.”

But which women are not wont to do, because the skill and strength are not available to them.

“Come to sleep, Emma. It is finished now.”

I
t was finished now. No, not quite yet, but it would be very soon.

He did not speak of their passion and love, but that was
all she thought about at that moment. How this embrace would not be there for her in the days ahead. How the comfort of his warmth would disappear. She had never been suitable, not even as a mistress, and after what she had done that was even more true.

His friends knew she had agreed to help Hodgson. Soon others in the government would know too. How else would they all explain tonight’s adventure? Miss Fairbourne may have redeemed herself in the end, but that did not cleanse the stain of the sin.

“I am not sleepy,” she said.

“Then just rest in my arms. This will be a long night still.”

“That would be very nice, but it would be a waste to spend the time just resting, don’t you think?”

His kiss said that he understood her well enough. He was a man, after all. She was grateful that he did not act as if she were too fragile right now for such a thing.

“I so love it when you are forthright, Miss Fairbourne. I would have played the chaste knight with you if necessary, but that is not where my blood is.”

She giggled softly into his coat. The sound instantly lightened the mood, and put the day’s dangerous events off to one side, so its shadow touched her only a little instead of owning her completely.

She squirmed out of his embrace and strolled to her bedchamber. A lone candle burned there. She used it to light another near the looking glass. The way the glass reflected the dancing flame reminded her of a ballroom and a candelabra and a magnificent chandelier.

He had his coats off by the time he was across the threshold. He went to work on her dress. “Ambury scolded me for forcing you to make do with this old dress and those boots today.”

“Did you explain they were the first clothes I had worn in more than a day, and that you had most rudely torn my one dress in a fit of impatience?”

“A fit of passion, not impatience. I think of myself as a citadel of patience when it is warranted.”

She insisted on carefully folding and stacking each of the garments. They might be poor but they were not hers. As soon as she was finished, he pulled her to him and laid her down.

She made herself comfortable. She looked around the chamber. “If Papa’s ghost is here, it does not seem to mind.”

“That is not a thought to encourage passion, Emma.” He looked around too. “Do you sense it here? Not that I believe in such nonsense, of course.”

“No. I did before you abducted me—”

“It was not really an abduction, Emma.”

“
Before you abducted me
, the night before, it was like it had been on my last visit. But today when we arrived, no longer.” She pushed down the shoulders of her chemise and bared her breasts. She joined her hands behind her head so her breasts rose high. “Now, do your worst.”