Beyond Seduction (Bastion Club 6)

That was one point where they might stumble. She knew herself too well to imagine she would ever be the sort of female to retreat from a path she was sincerely convinced was right. Regardless of any potential danger to herself…and therein lay the seed for serious discord. Because she knew how he would react. Just as she would if their places were reversed.

He was a warrior, a being raised to protect and defend—but so was she.

That brand of strength, of commitment, ran in his blood, and in hers. It was what had had him risking his life in France for over a decade, what had had her without a blink sacrificing the life most young ladies yearned for to care for and protect her brothers.

He was what he was, and she was who she was, and neither of them could change those fundamental traits. Which raised the vital question: Could they, somehow, find a way to rub along side by side, to live together without constantly abrading each other’s instincts, each other’s pride?

Heaving a long sigh, she gazed at the house, peacefully basking in the sun. Rather than finding answers, the more she thought about marrying Gervase, she only threw up more questions.

Worse, crucial but close-to-impossible-to-answer questions.

Inwardly shaking her head, she rose; still entirely planless and clueless, she started back to the house.

The sun was well past its zenith when Gervase led Crusader off the Helford ferry, swung up to the gray’s back, and set him cantering out of the village south along the road to Coverack and Treleaver Park beyond.

He’d left Falmouth an hour ago having satisfactorily fulfilled his reasons for going there. After the harbormaster’s office, he’d talked to a number of the officers from the revenue cutters bobbing in the harbor, then had ridden on to Pendennis Castle to check with his naval contacts there.

No official had heard so much as a whisper of any ship lost in the last month. No records, no complaints, nothing.

Quitting the castle, he’d ridden back into the town to the dockside taverns to seek the unofficial version. But that, too, had been the same. So if the brooch Madeline’s brothers had found did hail from a recent wreck—one for which someone around might harbor an interest in the cargo—then that wreck had to be some smugglers’ vessel, moreover, one not local.

He was inclining to the belief that the brooch must have come from some wreck of long ago.

That belief had been reinforced by a chance meeting and subsequent discussion with Charles St. Austell, Earl of Lostwithiel, and his wife, Penny; Gervase had stumbled upon Charles in one of the less reputable taverns. His erstwhile comrade-in-arms had been doing much the same as he, keeping up acquaintance with the local sailors he’d developed as contacts over the years.

Charles had been delighted to lay eyes on him. Gervase had found his own mood lifting as they’d shaken hands and clapped each other’s backs. They’d sat down to share a pint, then Charles had hauled him off to the best inn in Falmouth, there to meet Penny.

And Charles’s two hounds. The wolfhounds had inspected him closely before uttering doggy humphs and retreating to slump beside the hearth, allowing him to approach their master’s wife.

Gervase had been impressed; he was seriously considering getting Madeline a similar pair of guardians. Despite Charles’s excuse that he’d brought the hounds to be company for Penny, it was plain—at least to Gervase, and he suspected Penny—that Charles felt much more comfortable having the hounds to guard his wife while he went trawling through the dockside taps.

Thinking of how his and Madeline’s life would be once she moved to the castle—especially if and when any children came along—although he had no intention of leaving her side for any length of time, having two such large and loyal beasts to guard her while he rode out around the estate…he could appreciate Charles’s thinking.

He clattered through Coverack and turned for Treleaver Park. The mystery of the brooch still nagged at him, but when he’d told them the story, Charles and Penny, both of whom, like him, had long experience with local smuggling gangs, had inclined to the same conclusion as he. The brooch was most likely from some ancient wreck.

Indeed, as Penny had pointed out, echoing his own thoughts, it was hard to imagine why smugglers would have been ferrying such a cargo.

Yet that nagging itch between his shoulders persisted. He’d decided to get Harry, Edmond and Ben to show him where they’d uncovered their find, just in case the precise location suggested anything else—any other possibility.

The Treleaver Park gates were perennially set wide; he trotted through and up the drive. The westering sun was lowering over the peninsula when he drew rein in the forecourt.

Dismounting, he waited, then running footsteps heralded a stablelad, who came pelting around the corner to take his reins.

“Sorry, m’lord.” The youth bobbed his head and grasped the reins. “But there’s a right to-do indoors. We was distracted.”

“Oh?” Premonition touched Gervase’s nape, slid coolly down his spine. Unwilling to gossip with the stablelad, he nodded and strode swiftly up the shallow steps and through the open front door.

There was nothing odd about the open front door; most country houses, especially those with younger inhabitants, especially in summer, left their doors wide. What was odd was the absence of Milsom.

/> Gervase halted in the middle of the hall; voices—including Madeline’s—reached him.

He was too far away to make out the words; he followed the sound down the corridor to the office.

Milsom was standing just inside the door, his countenance a medley of shock, concern and helplessness.

Madeline was perched on the front edge of her desk, leaning toward her brothers—Harry and Edmond—both bolt upright in chairs facing her.

One look at her face—at the bleak fear therein—had Gervase striding into the room. “What’s happened?”