One or two of the young women exchanged glances, eyebrows raised, lips pursed, at this vulgar mention of money. But they are all interested, Meg thought. Money, title, looks. What about the man? What about his character?

‘Well, I think it must be very hard to have to come back after years away in the army and find all your family gone and have to make a fresh start,’ one rather mousy girl said. Meg smiled at her sensitivity and her soft voice, wondering who she was.

‘Not quite all,’ Anne Pengilly remarked, eyes wide with the scandal of it. ‘They do say there’s a boy who looks remarkably—’

‘Come along, girls.’ Lady Pennare swept in. ‘We must not keep our host waiting.’

They streamed out of the room, chattering and laughing, all except for the quiet one with the soft voice who hung back.

‘May I help?’ Meg asked. ‘I am sorry, I am afraid I did not hear your name. Would you like your mama?’

‘Oh, no, thank you. I’m Penelope Hawkins, the vicar’s niece,’ she said with her shy smile. ‘I just…They are a bit overwhelming,’ she added breathlessly. ‘Like a flock of birds all twittering and pecking. Poor Lord Brandon,’ she murmured as she slipped out of the door and followed in their wake.

She would do. Just so long as she isn’t frightened of him.

They are all impossible, Ross thought. He scanned the length of the table while paying smiling attention to Lady Avise Westmoreland, who was regaling him with her opinions on the absolute necessity of visiting London at least four times a year. ‘Otherwise, how is one to dress?’ she enquired. Ross hoped she was not expecting a serious answer to that.

‘Absolutely,’ he agreed. ‘May I help you to some more of the fricassee?’ No, one day—let alone one night—with any of the pretty young things arrayed down the length of his dining table would result in him either strangling his new wife or shooting himself. All except, perhaps, the little brown sparrow halfway down who was, if he remembered correctly, the vicar’s niece. He must have a predilection for the daughters of the church, he thought ruefully, although Miss Hawkins roused no stirring of desire in him. She just looked as though she would be tranquil company and had her fair share of common sense. Which, he was rapidly becoming convinced, Lady Avise singularly lacked.

It seemed an age, but at finally he stood on the front steps and saw off the last of his guests, their carriages clattering away down the drive in the moonlight. Ross rolled his shoulders to release some of the tension and took a cigarillo case out of an inner pocket. One of the footmen brought him a candle to light the thin cylinder. He nodded his thanks as he began to stroll along the terrace. ‘Tell Perrott not to sit up for me, will you?’

The air was still enough to hear the sea and on an impulse he began to make his way along the path that led towards the lane to the bay. He leaned on the gate, savouring the cigarillo, letting his mind wander as he looked down the moonlit lane.

Then, just at the bend before the lane ran on to the beach, there was a flicker of white. Something, or someone, was down there. Tregarne had accused Billy of smuggling. He had put off confronting the old man about it; now he realised that this was a perfect night for landing casks. If he found evidence, then he must act.

Ross pinched out the cigarillo between fingers and thumb and tossed it aside, pulled the lapels of his coat together across the betraying white of his shirt, climbed the gate and trod silently down the lane to the beach.

Chapter Fifteen

Ross kept to the ridge of grass in the centre of the lane, his evening shoes silent on the soft turf. There was no further movement ahead. At the bend before the beach he stopped, listening, but the sound of the surf was too loud to make out any other sound.

Slowly he eased around the corner, the fragrance of bluebells competing with the smell of the sea as he brushed close to the bank. The beach seemed deserted, the sand bleached white and the foam on the small breakers glinting, but even as he studied it in the moonlight he knew he was not alone.

The old instincts refined by years of hunting the enemy, not rabbits, were sending prickles of awareness down his spine. Ross realised he was smiling, teeth bared, as his blood stirred. God, but he had missed this, the frisson of danger, the skill of stalking, the challenge of outwitting the other man. If there was another man out here and it was not just his imagination.

If the other man was Billy Gillan, then it was likely that he was stalking Ross and could have brought him down five minutes ago, if he was so inclined. But although Billy might enjoy teasing his old pupil, he was no danger. It was not the poacher making every one of his senses alert to peril.

Here, now, he was the man he had been trying to hide under the civilised trappings of a country gentleman. He was the killer again, the man with blood on his hands and death in his heart. He shivered, partly appalled at the bone-deep rightness of what he was feeling, partly sliding easily into the skin of his old self. The difference now was that he was defending his own turf, not fighting his country’s enemies.

It was perhaps not the most prudent thing to be searching for an unknown danger unarmed and in evening dress, but it added to the challenge and he was sick of being prudent.

The caves were around the corner. To approach them he would have to leave the cover of the bank and work his way around under the edge of the low cliff, across tumbled rocks and numerous rock pools. He eased off his evening shoes and removed his stockings, his bare feet flexing on the sand as he stripped off all his upper garments. His darkly tanned torso was less likely to show up than the stark white of a shirt he could not completely cover.

Half-naked Ross slid round the corner and headed for the caves. There was a splash, a creak, a sudden flash of light offshore, gone so rapidly that if he had not been alert for just those signs he would have missed them. A boat was rowing in, very cautiously. He crept on a little further to where a jumble of bigger rocks would give him cover.

Someone was humming. Ross flattened himself against the rock as the sound came closer and a figure emerged from the shelter of the rocks.

It was a woman clad only in a shift, her legs visible from the knee down, her arms bare as she walked towards the edge of the sea where the wavelets were breaking in silver foam on the sand. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head and she was humming, it seemed, out of sheer pleasure for she gave a little skip and a low laugh as the first waves touched her toes.

Meg? Here in her shift? Ross straightened up, opened his mouth to shout. If whoever it was in that boat heard him they would turn back, not knowing how many men were waiting for them on the beach. But even as he drew the breath into his lungs Meg ran into the surf to her waist, laughing and gasping with the shock of the cold water. Then she began to swim.

The dark shape of the boat loomed out of the darkness, right on top of her. Meg gave a startled shriek, someone swore and the shutter of a dark lantern opened, revealing six men at the oars and a seventh in the bows holding the lantern. Ross bit back the shout.

‘Shutter that damned light.’ The growled order carried clear over the water.

‘It’s a woman—row harder, boys, catch her.’ The man in the bows held the light up, illuminating Meg’s frantic efforts to swim ashore. She staggered to her feet, still waist deep as Ross reached the water’s edge.

‘Meg, to me!’ She changed direction, floundering towards him as she recognised his voice. ‘Run.’ Up to his thighs in water he grabbed her, pushed her behind him towards the beach and faced the boat.

Tags: Louise Allen Transformation of the Shelley Sisters Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net