“Naught but once. I did see him hand over a packet, one time.”
“Letters?”
“Something like that. Most often, though, he just talked.”
“Speaking of talking…” Shep and Seth exchanged glances, then Shep continued, “That other one—the new lordling up to the Hall. He’s been asking after much the same, wanting to know who Master Granville used to deal with hereabouts. Who took him to sea.”
“Did you tell him what you’ve just told us?” Charles asked.
Seth blinked. “ ’Course not. He’s not one of us, is he? We couldn’t rightly figure why he needed to know.” Seth ducked his head at Penny. “Didn’t feel it was our place, what with the young master being dead and all.”
Penny smiled. “That was well-done of you. There’s no reason for the gentleman to know anything about Granville’s business.”
“Aye.” Shep nodded. “So we thought.”
Charles asked the last question he could think of. “Do you know if Granville ever went out with any of the other gangs?”
“Oh, aye!” Shep and Seth both grinned widely. “A real lad for the life, was Master Granville. Don’t reckon there was a gang anywhere about the estuary he didn’t run with at least a time or two.”
Penny smiled, albeit weakly. Charles treated Seth and Shep to another round of ale; with good wishes all around, he rose, tugged Penny to her feet, and steered her outside.
“I can’t believe it!” She and Charles, once more mounted, were trotting out of Polruan. “It sounds like we’re going to have to speak with every single smuggling gang.” After a moment, she observed, “That might not be a bad thing—surely someone must know more than the Polruan crew.”
“I wouldn’t wager on it.” Charles glanced at her. “The operation seems to have been well organized, and don’t forget, the procedures must have been set up by your father long before Granville got involved.”
He purposely hadn’t asked if the previous earl had been known to join the smuggling gangs; none knew better than he that those of the local aristocracy who ran with the gentlemen as lads had only to ask to be accommodated. On both occasions he’d had to rush home, the Fowey Gallants had answered his call with an alacrity he’d found disarming. They’d risked the might of the French navy to pick him up, and then later return him to Brittany, purely because they considered him one of their own and he’d asked. None of which he needed to explain to Penny; she nodded and trotted on.
Once they were past the last cottages, he urged Domino into a canter. On her mare, Penny kept pace.
They’d covered just over a mile when he slowed. Penny followed suit, glancing at him inquiringly; he signaled her to silence, and to follow as he turned off the lane onto a narrow track. A little way along, he veered into a clearing, halted, and dismounted. Stopping her mare, Penny kicked free of her stirrups, swung her leg over the pommel, and slid to the ground. She led the mare over to the tree to which he was tying Domino’s reins.
“Where are we?” she whispered, glancing around as she secured the mare alongside.
He looked at her. Instinct insisted he leave her with the horses, but he wasn’t sure that was safe—at least not any safer than taking her with him. On top of that, it was likely the reservations of the Polruan crew over speaking of the dead would surface there, too.
It hadn’t occurred to him, but her presence had loosened tongues far faster than his own persuasions would have.
He mentally sighed and reached for her hand. “We’re near the Bodinnick smugglers’ meeting place.” Bodinnick was a hamlet and didn’t boast a tavern; the fishermen made do with an establishement of their own. “I hadn’t intended stopping here, but as we apparently have to interview all the gangs, then as we’re down this way…”
Turning, he strode back to the track, slowing when she hissed at him.
She came up close, just behind his shoulder; her proximity made him feel a fraction easier on one hand, rather more tense on the other. Gritting his teeth, he grasped her hand more firmly and led her on to the crude hut almost hidden by bushes that the Bodinnick smugglers had built.
He marched directly to the plank door and rapped, a complicated succession of taps and pauses. The instant he’d finished, the door was opened; a ruddy-looking seaman stared out at them.
“My lord! Why, we’re honored! And who…” Johnny’s eyes widened.
“Never mind, Johnny—just let us in, and you’ll learn all soon enough.”
Johnny stepped back, waving them in with a flourish, his gaze riveted on Penny as she followed Charles across the threshold.
He scanned the faces that turned to stare at them. Many were familiar; the Bodinnick gang was one of the smaller crews in the area, but he’d sailed with them often enough in his reckless youth.
The procedure was the same as in Polruan; he donated generously to their drinking fund, accepted a mug, then told them of his mission. They, too, recognized Penny; bobbing their heads deferentially, they answered his questions in much the same way.
Yes, Granville had on occasion asked them to take him out to meet with a specific lugger that had stood well out in the Channel. The tale was the same; he’d always rowed out to meet a man who had rowed out from the lugger. In their case, no one could recall Granville handing any item over.
They also confirmed that Nicholas had contacted them in much the same way he had the Polruan crew.
“Setting hisself up as Master Granville’s replacement, insistent about it, too. Not that we’ve any contacts to give him, o’course, nor likely to have. ’Twas Master Granville himself always had things set up.”
They left having ensured Nicholas would learn nothing, but also having learned that there was nothing more to know.
Once they’d remounted, Penny using a fallen log to clamber up into her saddle, Charles headed for the Abbey. He was barely conscious of the fields they passed, his mind revolving about one simple fact.
They clattered into his stable yard in the dead of night. His stableman looked out; Charles called a greeting and waved him back to bed. Pausing to light a lamp left hanging beside the stable door, he led Domino into the stable; Penny followed, leading her mare.
The horses were housed in neighboring stalls; Charles set the lamp on a hook dangling from a roof beam, and they set to work. Penny unsaddled, as adept as he, but when she hefted her saddle onto the dividing wall between the stalls, she paused and caught his eye.
“How was it organized? Granville went out with the smuggling gangs, and the lugger was waiting. How did it know to be there?”
He held her gaze, then nodded. It was precisely the question he’d been wrestling with. “There has to be someone—someone who carried a message, or some way, some manner, some route through which Granville communicated with the French. We haven’t found it yet.”
Grabbing a handful of fresh straw, Penny turned away to brush down the mare. “So we’ll have to keep looking.”
He hesitated, but then said, “Yes.” He wasn’t going to stomach her “we,” but he’d fight that battle when he came to it.
They finished with their mounts. He went to help her shut the stall door. She headed out of the stall; the mare shifted, catching Penny with her rump, propelling her forward—into his arms. Into him.
He caught her against him, body to body, saw in the lamplight her eyes flare wide. Heard the hitch as her breathing suspended. Sensed surprise drown beneath a wave of sensual awareness so acute she quivered.
Her shoulder was angled to his chest, his left hand spread over her back, fingers curving around her side, his right splayed over her waist. He only had to juggle her and she would be in his arms, knew that if he did, she’d look up—and their lips would be only inches apart.
He hauled in a breath and found it almost painful. Gritting his teeth, jaw clenched, he steadied her on her feet and forced his hands from her, forced himself to set her aside and give his attention to securing the stall door.
He didn’t
—couldn’t—risk meeting her eyes. With any other woman, he’d have made some rakish comment, turned the whole off with a wicked smile. With her, he was too busy subduing his own reaction, quelling his own impulses, to worry about soothing hers.
Not in the stable. That would be far too reminiscent, too foolhardily dangerous. If he wanted to persuade her to look his way again, that was precisely the sort of misstep he didn’t need.
With the door safely shut, he reached up and unhooked the lamp; she’d already turned and was ahead of him, walking out of the stable. He followed, dousing the lamp and replacing it. Crossing to the well in the middle of the yard, he took the pump handle she yielded without a word and wielded it so she could wash her hands.
He did the same, then they set off once more to walk side by side up the grassed slope to the house.
Except it was after midnight.
Except he’d kissed her the last time they’d walked this way under the spreading branches of the oaks.
She strode briskly along, sparing not a glance for him.
He walked alongside and said nothing; he didn’t even try to take her hand.
Penny noted that last and told herself she was glad. Indeed, now she thought of it, she couldn’t imagine why she’d allowed him to claim her hand over the past days, although of course he never asked. Far better they preserve a reasonable distance—witness that heart-stopping moment in the stable. She really didn’t need to dwell on how it felt to be in his arms, or her apparently ineradicable desire to experience such moments.
When it came to Charles, her senses were beyond her control. They had been for over a decade, and demonstrably still were, no matter how much she’d convinced herself otherwise. The best she could hope for was to starve them into submission, or if not that, then at least into a weakened state.
The oaks neared, the shadows beneath them dense.
It wasn’t the darkness that tightened her nerves.
She walked steadily on, no suggestive hitch in her stride, her senses at full stretch…but he made not the slightest move to reach for her, to halt her.
He didn’t even speak.
As they emerged from the shadows and approached the garden door, she quietly exhaled. Relaxed at least as far as she was able with him by her side. Just because he’d kissed her, almost certainly impelled by some typical male notion over seeing what it would be like after all these years, that didn’t mean he’d want to kiss her again. Her senses might be alive, her nerves taut with expectation, but he, thankfully, couldn’t know that.
He opened the door, held it for her, then followed her in.
The house had many long windows; most were left uncurtained, spilling swaths of moonlight across corridors and into halls. Even the wide staircase was awash in shimmering light, tinted here and there by the stained glass of the central window.
Peace and solidity enfolded her, unraveling her knotted nerves, soothing away her tension. Reaching the top of the stairs, she stepped into the long gallery. She walked a few paces, then halted in a patch of moonlight fractured into shifting splashes of shadow and light by a tree beyond the window. The master suite lay in the central wing; Charles and she should part company. She turned to face him.
He’d prowled in her wake; he halted with a bare foot between them.
She raised her eyes to his face, intending to issue a cool, calm, controlled “good night.” Instead, her eyes locked with his, dark, impossible to read in the shadows, yet not impossible to know. To feel.
To realize that as she often did, often had, she’d misread him.
He did want to kiss her again—fully intended to kiss her again.
She knew it beyond doubt when his gaze lowered to her lips.
Knew when hers lowered to his that she should protest.
She knew when his hands rose, slowly, unhurriedly—giving her plenty of time to react if she wished—just what he was going to do.
Knew it wasn’t wise. Knew she shouldn’t allow it.
Yet she did nothing beyond catch her breath when his hands touched, so achingly gentle for such powerful hands, then cradled her face. Slowly raising it, tipping it up so he could lower his head and close his lips over hers.
From the first touch, she was lost. She didn’t want, yet she did. She told herself it was confusion that made her hesitate, held her back from calling a halt to this madness.
All lies.
It was fascination, plain and simple, a fascination she’d never grown out of, and perhaps, God help her, never would.
His lips moved on hers, bold, wickedly sure; her lips parted, by her command or his she didn’t know. Didn’t care. His tongue surged over hers, and she shivered. Her hand touched the back of one of his; she wasn’t even aware she’d raised it.
Was barely aware when he angled his head, deepening the kiss, and one hand drifted from her face to slide around her waist and draw her—slowly, deliberately—to him.
She went, hungry and wanting, while some distant remnant of sanity cursed and swore. Yet it was she who was cursed, condemned always to feel this madness, this welling tide of unquenchable desire that he and only he evoked, and that he and only he, it seemed, had any ability to slake.
Only with him did she feel this way, did her senses whirl, her wits melt away. Only with him did her bones turn to water while heat rose and beat under her skin.
And he knew.
She would have given a great deal to keep the knowledge from him, but even as the remaining vestige of her consciousness noted that his skills had developed considerably over the years, she was aware that behind his controlled hunger, behind the skillfully woven net of desire he cast over her, he was watchful and intent.
He’d known thirteen years ago that she had been his; as his hands slid beneath her coat and fastened about her waist, and he drew her flush against him, it was abundantly clear he knew she still was.
Her breath was long gone; arms twined about his neck, she clung to their kiss as her breasts pressed against the hard planes of his chest, as his long fingers curved about her hips and brought them flush against his thighs.
He moved against her, suggestive, seductive. The feel of his body against hers, all masculine strength, reined passion, and wickedly flagrant desire, flung open a door she’d closed, bolted, and thought rusted shut years ago.
A living ache flooded her, deeper than she recalled, more powerful, more compelling.
She’d been so young then, just sixteeen; what she’d then deemed frighteningly urgent was, she now realized, a mere cipher compared to the compulsion she was capable of feeling, of the sheer wanting that rose and raged through her now.
Oh, God! She tried to pull back, to at least catch her breath—to think.
Only to discover he’d backed her against the wall. With lips and tongue he’d captured her mouth; he pressed deeper and feasted, lured her further, swept her into deeper waters until she had to cling to him to survive. Until her very life seemed to depend on it.
Until nothing else mattered. Until there was no life beyond the circle of their arms.
She felt unbearably grateful, unbearably eager when she felt his hand between them slipping free the buttons that closed her shirt. Then he pushed the halves apart, with practiced flicks of his long fingers stripped away her chemise and set his palm to her naked breast.
Her senses swooned. Her knees buckled.
His other hand slid lower, cupping her bottom, supporting her. Absently fondling as with knowing fingers he caressed her breast, captured her nipple, gently rolled, tweaked, then soothed.
Within seconds, her senses had totally fractured, unable to fix, to focus on anything, overwhelmed by the sensations of his mouth steadily plundering hers, heated and commanding, of his hand and fingers artfully pleasuring her breasts, already swollen and aching, of his other hand subtly exploring, molding her to him, of the heady, even more potent reality of his hard, heavy, aroused body against hers, surrounding hers.
Making her feel fr
agile, defenseless—so achingly vulnerable.
No—not again.
She dropped her hands to his shoulders, sank her fingers in, pushed back, and pushed him away.
He acquiesced, letting her break from the kiss. Letting her put a few inches between their lips, enough for her to drag in a breath and gasp, “Charles—no.”
For five heartbeats, he said nothing, his eyes midnight pools behind his long lashes. She realized they were both breathing quickly, her breasts rising and falling; his chest swelled against them.
“Why?”
Charles watched her struggle to summon her wits, felt considerable satisfaction in watching how much effort it cost her. Almost as much as it was costing him to rein in his raging need.