Chapter Eight

J ack strode down the track towards Bessie’s kiddley, the rain, sluicing in sheets in front of him, rendering visibility at a minimum. At least the wind had diminished a bit. The cliffs to his right hid the cove’s tiny anchorage and the rain effectively shrouded anything more than a few hundred yards out to sea in a dull gray curtain.

He turned his collar up and hunched his broad shoulders. What on earth had possessed him to offer to take the boy out in The Fly ? And young Yves Treloar as well? As if one boy to take care of wasn’t enough. On the spur of the moment, it had seemed a good idea to involve their new neighbor’s son and thus render it impossible for her to peach on them. But now? Had it been entirely wise to allow himself to make such an irrational offer? Had her extraordinary looks, and that wistful, hunted air blunted his customary wisdom and turned him into an idiot?

He rounded the bend and the kiddley came into view, the smoke from the chimney pooling in the wet air and hanging over the surrounding trees like a tatty shawl. That woman had him foxed. How could someone with two children that age still be the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on? And he’d be the first to concede that he’d laid eyes on a lot of parts of a lot of women in his thirty years. Not as a boy, of course, but since he’d turned fifteen and had first gone to sea with Will, finding willing women had never posed any difficulty. In fact, women had been part of his initiation into the smuggling life, and still remained an enjoyable part of it now. Although, oddly, not a single face came to mind right now from the many he’d associated with. All he could see was Mrs. Harriet Penhallow’s wary visage in front of his eyes.

She was different. She didn’t want him and wasn’t susceptible to his charms. In fact, he’d had the impression she didn’t like men at all and was perhaps a little afraid of him. He’d felt it oozing from every pore of her rigid body even as she’d allowed him to steady her in the wind on the way down from Rosudgeon. It had been clear that only common sense had allowed her to accept his help. At least, however, that must mean she could be classed as sensible. He couldn’t abide a woman who wasn’t. Heaven help their enterprise if she were to turn out not to be.

So, why on earth was he affected by her at such a deep and intrusive level? Was it because she looked so in need of protection? His mother had certainly picked up on that. He huffed a deep breath. His physical reaction to her in the kitchen had been hard to hide and he’d been glad to be sitting down. Damn it. He needed to stop thinking about her. She was off limits and had made it clear.

He reached the door of the kiddley, its blue paintwork excoriated by wind, sun and rain to a mere hint of the color it had once been, and the wood beneath bleached pale and smooth. Why had he set out to charm her elderly servant? Because he wanted to charm the mistress, and he wanted to do that because he saw her as a challenge to his manhood. That was why. Capture the servant, the daughter and the son, and he might find a way to the woman herself. With a grunt, he pushed open the door and went inside.

On the opposite side of the smoking fire to where Bessie sat, puffing on her pipe, Will occupied one of the tables working on his books, his half-moon glasses on the end of his nose. No sense being a smuggler without keeping your books neat and up to date. Will wasn’t just a smuggling sea captain but also an astute businessman like his late father-in-law, and, between them, they’d taught Jack well. Better than the rather hit and miss nature of smuggling west of Penzance, on Cornwall’s rocky tip.

A few years back, there’d been raids over that way, with several men killed or transported for their so-called crimes. Kit Carlyon, one of Jack’s smuggling friends, who’d narrowly escaped with his life, had retreated back to his seat in Wiltshire to resume his role as the proper, law-abiding Viscount Ormonde, having gained himself a wife who’d by now presented him with several children.

Lovey Bussow rose from a seat behind the plank bar, smoothing her apron down and smiling a close-lipped welcome. So long as she didn’t open her mouth to reveal the state of her teeth, she could be considered a pretty young woman and a draw for the kiddley. “Mornin’ Cap’n Jack. Tot o’ brandy for you?”

Jack shook his head. “Ale if you have it, thank you, Lovey.”

She poured him a tankard of ale and brought it over to Will’s table, where Jack had taken a seat.

Will looked up at him over the top of his glasses, in appearance every inch someone’s diligent clerk instead of the most successful smuggler in Cornwall. “What’re you doin’ out in this weather? You not got the sense you were born with?”

Jack took off his coat and hung it over the back of his chair to dry. “Doing my mother and our new neighbor a favor.”

“Our new neighbor? You mean the lass what’s taken Keynvor Cottage? I hear she’s a widow-woman, so no man around to bother us but with a pair o’ likely children. You seen her already? And your ma’s poked her nose in, has she?”

Jack nodded. “You have it spot on the nose, Will. My mother saw her arrive on the carrier’s cart and couldn’t resist interfering. As is her habit.” He took a swig of his ale. “In the event, it turns out her help was much needed as no one’s been near the cottage since old Brewinney fell over the cliff.” He leaned back in his seat and stretched his wet legs towards the fire. “I fear it might have been better to have left her to get on with things by herself. Then she might have decided not to stay. As it is, my mother, having made free of my furniture and my food supplies, not to mention my brandy and my servants, has managed to make the cottage like home for her. She’s staying indefinitely.”

Will set down his pen on the table with careful precision. “Ah. That might be a problem.”

Jack nodded again. “You can say that again.”

From her chair, Bessie snorted and spat a wad of phlegm into the flame, making them hiss. “Wimmin like her allus be a problem. You mark my words. She do need a man to tek her in hand.”

Will tipped her a salute. “It’ll take a bit o’ thinking round. The next run we do should be at night, just in case. Yesterday was risky even with no customs cutter likely to be about.”

This made Jack laugh, and the old brindled dog sleeping on the rag rug by the fire lifted its head in curiosity for a moment before deciding Jack had meant him no harm and resuming its peaceful sleep as only an old dog can. “We’re not likely to get one down here, not with the influential backers we have.”

“You never know,” Bessie opined, nodding her grizzled, mob-capped head with all the sagacity of her eighty-odd years and smacking her lips together over her toothless jaws. “Stranger things’ve happened, I can tell’ee.”

Will pulled a disbelieving face. “Not a one of our backers’d want to lose their duty-free brandy. But still, daylight runs aren’t the safest to make, even if the tide’s in our favor. Could get an unexpected navy sloop down here, outta Plymouth, waitin’ to creep up on an unwary free trader. I prefer to make my runs at night, as you know, and I think you’re going to have to do the same, my lad. Don’t want the widow-woman noticing what goes on right here on her doorstep, do we now?” He paused. “What did you find out about her? All I’ve gleaned is that she’s got no man with her, which has to be good. We can always try frightening her into silence.”

Did Jack want her frightened enough to prevent her peaching on them? There’d been such an air of vulnerability about her, leavened with a streak of iron determination, so maybe not. Any woman left alone in the world as she’d been, who’d decided to bring her children to a location like this would have to be strong, despite her nervous demeanor. Or she’d buckle. It might take a lot to truly frighten someone who looked as though she lived with daily fear.

He shook his head. “We don’t operate like that. You know we don’t. People don’t peach on us because they like us, not because we scare them. They keep their mouths shut because we help them. Because we’re part of their community. I’d say our best bet is to make her part of all that, so she feels loyalty to us. Make it worth her while to keep her mouth shut, same as everyone else.” He drummed on the table with his fingers. “She’s got a boy, about the age of young Yves Treloar. He’s a likeable lad with a love for the sea in his blood. They’re Cornish, all of them, so why wouldn’t the sea be calling him? He asked to come and see The Fly . I said yes. If his mother thinks he’s become a part of our undertaking, she’ll not say a word for worrying what might happen to him if we’re caught. Then when she feels the benefit, she’ll keep silent out of loyalty. Like everyone else.”

“Good idea. Work on the boy and the woman will follow.”

Jack sighed. That might not be quite as easy as it sounded. “There’s a girl as well, though, older than the lad. Pretty as her mother and with a look in her eye of rebellion, if I’m not mistaken. She doesn’t like it here. She might be a problem. In fact, she’s just at the age where problems start with girls.”

This made Will laugh. “Said with all the sagacity of a single man with no daughters and no sisters. What makes you the expert on daughters, all of a sudden?”

“You don’t have to have daughters or sisters to know girls. I’ve been with enough of other men’s sisters and daughters since I was fifteen to know what a troublesome one looks like. And that one reeks of trouble. She’s missing a father who was always off soldiering, as well as her old home in a big city. And now her mother’s dragged her down to the wilds of Cornwall and she resents it, and her mother. She won’t be blaming the father, who died in heavy debt, mark my words. It’ll all be her mother’s fault and she’s ready to stand up on her hind legs and argue.”

Will sighed. “Girls. I’m mighty glad I only have the one boy. Never could get my head around girls. Not even the wife.”

“And you’d best watch your boy around that girl.” Jack meant young Harry, twenty years old, good-looking in a rather wild way, and already popular with the womenfolk on both sides of the channel.

Will grimaced. “That boy’d chase anything in a skirt with a pretty face. Maybe wouldn’t even need to have a pretty face.”

Bessie let out a guffaw of laughter. “You could dress that table in a skirt and he’d run after it.”

Jack’s turn to laugh. “I rest my case. I can’t see our widow-woman being best pleased to have a sailor boy coming sniffing round her daughter. Not one with no respectable intentions, that’s for sure.”

Will huffed in mock umbrage. “A girl with nothing to bring to a union could do no better than to look to my Harry. One day he’ll have all of Porth en Alls and Prussia Cove and be a rich man.”

“I doubt her mother’d see it that way. And since when was he the marrying kind?”

“Well, it’s not happened yet, so I’m not about to start worrying about it. Harry’s round to Penzance right now with The Fly , in harbor, I hope, if Daniel Bussow’s got the sense he were born with. When they’ve taken a cargo down to Plymouth, you can take Harry on your next run with you across to Roscoff and keep him out o’ harm’s way. He do lack a lot in the caution department where girls is concerned, that I’ll allow.”

Jack nodded. “Wise move.”

“And the little lad?”

“He can come aboard when we’ve done the run, and everything’s stowed away neat and tidy where no one’ll ever think to look. I’ll leave The Fly at anchor until morning then take him and young Yves aboard together. Time young Sir Yves got his sea legs now he’s growing. Nat’ll be happy for me to do it. He told me the boy’s itching for adventure.” He rolled his shoulders to ease the muscles. “You know that last year the boy set off exploring the mines under Wheal Jenny through that old adit on the beach? Fell in a water-filled mineshaft and had to be rescued by Nat and his wife, before she was his wife, that is. None the worse for the adventure, so Nat told me. By the look of this other boy, they’ll hit it off well.”

Will shrugged. “Let’s hope they do then.” He rubbed his temples as though the effort of bookkeeping had tired him. “It’ll be good to have a couple of lads aboard for a jaunt. Take us back to our own young days, eh? Not that yours are too long gone.” He reached out and ruffled Jack’s hair, much as he’d done when Jack was a boy eager to curry favor. “You need a haircut, lad, if you’re goin’ a-courting.”

Jack opened his mouth to speak but no words came out for a moment. He cleared his throat. “I most certainly am not going courting.”

Will’s blue eyes twinkled. “You think not? ’Tis written all over your face, lad. She’s got you smitten.”