Merely the Groom (Free Fellows League 2)

“No more than you saved me, Gillian.”

“When you danced with me at Lady Harralson’s, you knew who I was and what I’d done.” Gillian looked down at her lap and began pleating little folds into the paper on her lap.

“No,” Colin told her. “I had no idea who you were until I met with your father. All I knew was that I felt guilty for leaving you behind when you asked me to take you with me.” Colin shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t take you with me, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving you behind and at the mercy of the innkeeper and his wife. I did what I could.”

She drew a shaky breath and tackled the question uppermost in her mind. “Are you planning to use my father’s ships to smuggle French contraband?”

“No,” he answered honestly.

“Then what’s this about?” She waved the pleated paper on which the Davies shipping schedules and trade routes were written beneath his nose.

“We think that someone else is using your father’s ships for that purpose.”

“We?”

Colin groaned. He considered it a sign of just how dangerous she was for his peace of mind and how comfortable he had become in Gillian’s presence, that he, who never blundered or fell prey to foolish slips of the tongue where the Free Fellows were concerned, had made several in front of Gillian. He had fallen asleep over a stack of coded messages. At the rate he was going, Colin would be lucky if she didn’t know all of his intimate secrets by morning.

He took a deep breath, then exhaled and decided to tell her as much of the truth as possible.

“He lied, didn’t he?” Gillian asked before he had a chance to answer her. “He lied about being an agent for our government and working against the French. He lied about all of it.” She looked at Colin. “He used your name because you are everything he wanted to be, but was not. Our meeting. Our wedding. All of it was arranged, wasn’t it? Even before we met. We were like marionettes, and he has been pulling the strings. Please, tell me the truth. Because none of this is coincidence.”

“No, not coincidence, Gilly, my love.” He lowered his voice to that husky Scottish burr that always sent shivers of awareness up and down her spine. “Fate. It was fate. Because we belong together.” He stared into her eyes. “And everything I’ve told you is the truth. Or as much of it as I can safely divulge. I work with the government in the War Office. These messages were intercepted from French agents and sent to me because my new father-in-law’s—your father’s—name is occurring far too frequently for comfort.”

“Does your work for the government involve smuggling?”

“It has upon occasion,” he admitted. “And it’s also involved the apprehension of smugglers. Why do you ask?”

“The innkeeper’s wife at the Blue Bottle called you ‘the smuggler.’”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” he said. “Mistress Douglas has reason to suspect that I am a smuggler, and I prefer that she and her husband continue to think it.”

“I have reason to suspect you’re a smuggler as well,” Gillian reminded him.

“Do you believe me when I tell you that I don’t intend to use your father’s ships for that purpose or for any purpose?”

Gillian stared into Colin’s eyes and read the truth in them, then lowered her gaze and studied the pattern in the carpet.

“Gillian? Do you?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer, for it had suddenly become more important than the air he breathed.

“Yes,” she whispered, praying that her faith in him wouldn’t be betrayed simply because she wanted so badly to believe him.

Colin reached out and tilted her chin up so he could see her expression. “Are you certain?”

She nodded. “And I can prove it.”

He managed a tender smile. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“Maybe not,” she allowed, “but if you intend to help Papa instead of harm him, you need to know that the information on this sheet of paper and the letters on some of the cryptographical puzzles are wrong.”

“What?”

Gillian pointed to the trade route Colin had deciphered. “This is wrong. The Lady Dee has a port of call in the Firth of Forth in Edinburgh, but The Diamond Princess doesn’t sail those waters. She sails from the Mediterranean to the southern coast of Africa. The Pearl Princess sails the Orient, and The Lady Royal sails the Caribbean and has a port of call in Port Royal.” She looked at Colin. “This schedule, or whatever it is, has them sailing the wrong routes and calling at the wrong ports. None of Papa’s ships are sailing in Calais or any other French ports.”

“You’re certain?”

“Of course, I’m certain,” Gillian told him. “We named them that way. Each of our ships is named for the trade route it sails. It’s our company’s practice. The Dee is a river in Scotland, so The Lady Dee sails to Scottish ports. Diamonds come from Africa, so The Diamond Princess plies her trade in ports of call in Africa. Pearls come from the Orient, and Port Royal is in the Caribbean Sea, and so forth.”

“All twenty-four ships are named in this manner?”