England! Cordelia stood at the rail, staring. What need had she of Mama’s advice? In no time now she would have a father to rely upon.
The sails came down. The
Alouette
rocked like a cradle on the gently heaving waves, glassy-green in the golden evening light.
“
Je regrette, mademoiselle,
but I must ask you to go below. We have a rendezvous with my English colleagues, and they are naturally wary of strangers.”
“Of course, Captain.” With a last glance at the English coast, she went below.
James awaited her in the cabin. His face was rather pale and his knuckles were white where he gripped the arms of the chair. “I should have asked them to rig my hammock in here,” he muttered, swallowing visibly.
“Go and ask them. The captain has been very friendly but he just might turn nasty if we don’t pay him for our passage, so I need privacy to extract a diamond.”
“I was told not to set foot out of the cabin. Don’t worry, you could strip naked and do a belly-dance and I wouldn’t be interested just now.” He swallowed again.
Cordelia stuck her head out of the door and called, “
Holà!”
There was no response. Everyone must be up on deck preparing for the meeting with the Cornish smugglers.
James’s face was now tinged with green. She grabbed the wash-basin and shoved it under his chin just in time.
The worst over, she made him as comfortable as possible on her bed. He lay with closed eyes, spent after the paroxysms of retching. Her back to him, Cordelia put on her Greek cloak and under its cover raised her skirts. The French peasant gown was shabbier than ever after daily washing in sea-water and hanging to dry overnight, and the petticoat and chemise bought new in Dubrovnik were not much better. She unwound the diamond cloth, frayed at the edges. The stitches held firm, a testament to Aisha’s needlework.
“Bother!”
“What’s wrong?” James asked in a feeble voice.
“No scissors. Why on earth did I leave my reticule in the cabin on the
Badger
?”
“We left in rather a hurry,” he reminded her wryly.
“I wonder where she is now, whether the French ships caught up with her. I hope she got away, except that I shouldn’t mind a bit if that horrid Lieutenant Duff was hit by a cannonball.” As she spoke, she went to the captain’s writing table. In a drawer she found a penknife. “Do you think one diamond will satisfy him? I haven’t many left.”
“We are nearly home.”
“Not quite there yet, though.” Putting the extracted diamond in the drawer with the knife for safety, she went through all the gyrations necessary to wrap the cloth about her middle again while preserving decency. “I suppose they mean to transfer us along with the contraband to the Cornish ship. It’s going to be difficult with you sick as a dog.”
She turned, to find him watching her. His cheeks were no longer green but tinted very faintly pink.
“Oh, I’m feeling much better.” He grinned. “I kept hoping the cloak would fall. An absorbing interest is a great antidote against seasickness.”
Cordelia glared at him. “You have absolutely no sense of propriety,” she said bitingly.
“Not much.”
Before she could utter a quashing retort, Gaspard came in. “Blindfolds,” he said, waving a couple of kerchiefs. “I’m to tell you, if you take these off, you go overboard.”
For some time they sat blindfolded in the cabin, listening to thumps and splashes and shouts in French and English. At least they were not tied up, but there was something horridly discomforting about being unable to see. Cordelia was glad when James found her hand and held it. To her relief he still felt quite well.
Then the captain and another man came in and spoke together in the thick Cornish accent she could barely understand. Papers rustled. She thought money changed hands.
“Ah, monsieur, mademoiselle, I find here your payment, for which I thank you. This gentleman will convey you the rest of the way. I wish you
bon voyage.”
“We’ll drop off the cargo,” said the other, “and then zail you into Plymouth as bold as you please.”
The transfer to a boat and then to the fishy-smelling Cornish lugger, guided by invisible hands, was smooth if frightening. James and Cordelia were left blindfolded and warned that if they spoke above a whisper they would be gagged. Seated side by side on a coil of rope, they felt the changing motion as the lugger’s sails were raised and she turned homeward.
She sailed in an eery hush, the only sounds the creak of rigging, the slap of water on the hull and bare feet on the deck, seagulls crying above. Like gunshots, voices carried across water, Cordelia thought.
At first a little fading daylight leaked beneath the blindfolds, but very soon it was pitch dark. Though her cloak kept out the chill of the breeze, Cordelia shivered.
James put his arm around her shoulders. “Frightened?” he asked softly. “Don’t be. If they meant us any harm they have had plenty of time for it. We’re nearly home!”
“I’m not frightened. I simply cannot believe I shall soon be safe on English soil.”
An hour passed, perhaps two. Cordelia’s excitement faded and she began to drowse, leaning against James.
He shook her awake. “We have stopped,” he hissed in her ear. “They must be going to unload the goods. Listen.”
An expectant stillness enveloped the lugger. Nearby, waves broke on a beach, each muted roar followed by the rattle of pebbles on the ebb. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. An owl hooted thrice.
And from close at hand, on the ship itself, came a response:
Tu-whoo...tu-whoo...tu-whoo.
At once the smugglers sprang into action. To Cordelia, unable to see, the thuds and creaks, the rumble of rolling barrels, splashes and low-voiced curses and oars squeaking in rowlocks seemed shockingly loud.
A thunderclap cracked open the night. A red glow seeped beneath the cloth over her eyes, then a white glare.
“Oh hell!” James swore. “A signal rocket.”
As he ripped off her blindfold, from seaward boomed a voice amplified by a speaking trumpet: “Halt, in the King’s name!”
“Revenuers!” someone yelled.
Already on his feet, James jerked Cordelia up and hurried her across the deck. By the rocket’s fading light, she saw two men in dark clothes, with blackened faces, clambering over the side.
“Wait!” called James.
A moment later he dropped her into the midst of a huddle of smugglers. The boat was already moving off as he swung down beside her. Six men rowing like the very devil, they made for the line of glimmering surf.
As the keel grounded on the beach, another voice boomed—from landward: “Halt, in the King’s name!”
“The Riding Officer!”
“He’ll have dragoons wi’ un.”
The smugglers jumped out of the boat and ran, scattering, dimly visible against the pale beach by the paler light of the crescent moon. James hauled Cordelia out into ankle-deep water.
“Come on!”
“But we’re not smugglers.”
“Do you want to explain that to the dragoons? I don’t. Come on!”
A ragged volley of shots rang out. He took her hand and they set off at a stumbling run across the sand.
Chapter 31
Cordelia awoke to a buzzing noise and a heavy, over-sweet fragrance. She opened her eyes. Beside her James lay on his back, his hands linked behind his head, gazing up with a contented smile at a canopy of bright yellow flowers beset with wicked grey-green thorns. Bees zipped from blossom to blossom.
He turned his head to look at her. “Welcome to England,” he said.
“Safe at last on English soil? Bah!”
“I can think of few things more delightful than lounging in a gorse thicket on a fine, sunny morning in May. Provided you watch out for the prickles,” he added, too late, as Cordelia sat up, yelped, and clapped a hand to her neck.
“Not the prickles, a bee sting. It hurts! Welcome to England, ha!” Cordelia said bitterly.
“Turn around and let me take out the sting. Careful, now, or you will get caught in the gorse. Ah, I see it. Hold still.”
In spite of the burning pain of the sting, his fingers on the back of her neck did strange things to her. Steadfastly she ignored the tendrils of sensation emanating from his light touch.
“It hurts,” she repeated, “and I’m hungry. Do you think it’s safe to leave this delightful spot?”
“My poor dear, you haven’t had quite the best of homecomings, have you?”
“It’s always nice to be greeted with gunfire! I cannot understand how we succeeded in escaping.”
“Oh, that’s easy. To start with our clothes are light-hued so they stood out less against the sand than the smugglers’ black. Then, since both the smugglers and their pursuers knew all the ways off the beach, none of them was so muttonheaded as to enter that blind gully we got stuck in. We were saved by sheer ignorance. There, that’s out.” He kissed the bee-sting, a very wet kiss.
Taken by surprise, Cordelia exclaimed, “Oh!”
“My old nurse always said, if you haven’t got any powder-blue handy, the best remedy for a sting is spit,” James informed her cheerfully. “I didn’t tell you beforehand in case you objected.”
“What is a little spit after all we have been through? Can we go, or do you think the Excisemen are waiting to pounce?”
“Unless you have contraband concealed about your person, they have no grounds to detain us.” He started crawling through the bushes. “Ouch! Mind where you put your hands.”
“They are already scratched from last night.”
They emerged on a hillside overlooking a wide bay. Clumps of pink thrift dotted the sheep-cropped turf, varied here and there with a drift of blue squills. As blue as the squills, the sea spread below. Shading her eyes against the rising sun, Cordelia saw green hills on the far side. Half way across a lighthouse rose from the waves.
James turned south, turned north, turned to look behind him. and gave a satisfied sigh. “I thought so. If I’m not much mistaken that’s the tower of Maker Church. This is Cawsand Bay.” He gestured towards the lighthouse. “And that is Plymouth Sound. If we were just a bit higher, we could see Plymouth to the north of us, across the water.”
“Across the water? How shall we get there?”
“There’s a ferry from Cremyll, a rowboat ferry. A couple of miles walk, at a guess. How lucky we landed somewhere I know.”
“That’s all very well, but a ferryman is not likely to accept a diamond in payment, and we haven’t a penny between us!”
He grinned at her. “Don’t fret, you are safe on English soil. Mount Edgcumbe is even closer than the ferry. Lord Mount Edgcumbe is probably in London at this season, but there is bound to be someone about who knows me and will lend us a shilling.”
“You are acquainted with Lord Mount Edgcumbe?” Cordelia hurried to catch up as he set off.
“We used to visit here often when I was a boy. The earl is as much older than I as Valletort is younger, but—”
“Valletort?”
“Viscount Valletort, the heir. But Edgcumbe is a hospitable fellow and besides, the families are connected somehow. Through my great-aunt, I seem to recall—unless it’s his great-aunt. Anyway, I know Mount Edgcumbe like the back of my hand, and someone is bound to recognize me.”
“But we look like tramps!” she protested.
He stopped and looked her up and down, and laughed. “So we do, or rather, like singularly disreputable French peasants. We’ll see if we can borrow some clothes, too.”
Less sanguine, Cordelia refused to go with him to call at the great Tudor mansion. Since Lady Millicent Halsey called him cousin, perhaps it was true that the earl’s servants knew James, but she was a stranger. Besides, the fewer people who saw them together the better, or she might find herself with no choice but to marry him.
He left her in a circular summerhouse with Grecian pillars—Milton’s Temple, he called it—hidden by spring-green woodland from the house and looking out over the Sound to Plymouth. She had not seen so many ships since leaving Istanbul, fishing smacks, luggers, frigates, men-o’-war, sloops, ketches, merchantmen from every corner of the globe. Beyond, framed by green hills, rose the grey stone citadel and the town, with church towers rising above the roofs.
An English town, she thought, full of English people who spoke English. No struggle to communicate, no brigands, no pirates, no misogynistic monks, no French or Turkish troops—but the bee-sting throbbing on her neck reminded her that she had woken this morning in a gorsebush, hiding from English soldiers—
A hand fell on her shoulder and she sprang to her feet, whirling round.
“James, you startled me! I was just thinking about the dragoons.”
“We’re safe. They have no way of connecting us with the smugglers.”
“I hope you are right.” Her hand to her still-jumping heart, she stared at him and giggled. His wrists protruded from the sleeves of the coat and the breeches sagged.
“His lordship is somewhat shorter and wider than I,” he acknowledged, his lips quirking, “but after all, you have seen me dressed as a Turkish woman, a eunuch, a Greek fisherman, a French peasant, and goodness knows what else in between. Let’s see how you look in Lady Emma’s clothes. I always think of her as a little girl but it seems she’s a grown-up young lady and presently doing the Season.” He handed her a bundle.
“You did not steal them?” she faltered.
“What a low opinion you still have of me! I had hoped to have risen in your estimation by now.” His hurt look made her flush and lower her eyes. Before she could apologize, he went on, “No, I did not steal them. Edgcumbe’s housekeeper gave them to me and assured me they’d not be missed, though of course I shall return them when we reach Town.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I was just come from France after a secret mission for the government, and she must not ask questions nor breathe a word of it.”
“Oh James, did you really?”
He nodded, a glint of amusement in his eye. “I’m afraid I left her with the impression I intended to dress up in Lady Emma’s clothes myself. Put them on, there’s a good girl, and let’s get going.”
Retiring into the trees, Cordelia shed the French peasant garb and donned Lady Emma’s carriage dress. An elegant but serviceable garment of slate grey Circassian cloth, it was ornamented with black velvet ribbon and plaits of black gauze. Like James, she was somewhat taller and slimmer than the original wearer. However, it fitted well enough and a paler grey wrapping cloak would hide most deficiencies, including her hair, which she tucked well back under the hood.