Only a Kiss (24 page)

“I never did find a man I could both love and admire, Imogen,” she said. “I have always been convinced that such a man did not exist, though I never knew your Richard except once or twice perhaps when he was just a lad. Until very recently I would have said Lord Hardford was among the most worthless of them all. I am changing my mind about him even if he
does
have an air of carelessness about him and is too handsome for his own good. I think if I were your age, I might fall in love with him too.” She laughed, a deep bass rumble that Imogen could not remember hearing ever before.

“Oh, but I am not in love with him,” she protested.

They were approaching the head of the stairs and the drawing room.

“Then you have no excuse for dallying with him,” Cousin Adelaide said firmly. “Or would have no excuse if you were telling the truth. I never thought I would tell any girl to go with her heart, but that is what I am telling you.”

Cousin Adelaide had been living here for some time. Imogen had never disliked her, but it had never occurred to her to
love
Cousin Adelaide. Not until now.

“Thank you,” she said, “for coming down and offering your chaperonage.”

“Chaperonage?”
Cousin Adelaide laughed again. “I came because I was burning with curiosity.”

And it was Imogen’s turn not to believe.

One of the twins was sitting in the old lady’s chair when they went into the drawing room, and the girl immediately jumped to her feet and moved away. Cousin Adelaide looked her old self by the time she was seated and supposed out loud and with obvious displeasure that the tea was probably stone cold in the pot.

Everyone looked expectantly at Imogen, and she made a hasty decision. She told them everything—omitting the one detail in the letter that had referred to Percy as her lover.

Almost before the ladies had stopped exclaiming and Mrs. Hayes had hurried over to sit beside Imogen and take both her hands in her own, the men returned to the room—all except Percy, that was. Everyone buzzed with the shock and outrage while fresh tea was brought in and another plate of cake.

Then, amazingly, the rest of the day proceeded with near normality except for the fact that Imogen was back in her room upstairs, almost as if the dower house was still without its roof. A truckle bed was set up in her small dressing room for Mrs. Hayes’s own maid. Imogen did not question the choice of that particular maid, but she guessed that whoever had made the decision was afraid to trust any of the servants from the hall, including her own Mrs. Primrose.

Privacy, of course, was out of the question. Everywhere she went, someone went with her, usually more than one person, including at least one gentleman except within the confines of her own rooms. It was all very well done, of course. There was never a sense of being hedged about by guards.

The evening was spent around the pianoforte in the drawing room or seated about two card tables. The following morning, Sunday, they all went off to church, Imogen squeezed inside a closed carriage with two of Percy’s uncles and two aunts. She was seated between the same couples on a church pew with family both in front of them and behind. She was flanked by Mr. Welby and Mr. Cyril Eldridge when they all stepped outside the church and stood for a while in the churchyard exchanging news and pleasantries with neighbors. Mr. Eldridge handed her back into the carriage for the return journey, and she squeezed her way between the aunts.

It was all quite ghastly, perhaps the more so because the whole family remained as cheerful as ever, as though nothing had happened, as though they had not all just made the discovery that they were living among a gang of ruthless smugglers and that her life was in danger if she could not persuade Percy,
her lover,
to go away and forget about his campaign to rid his land of the scourge. She had no doubt that everyone knew she had been accused of being his lover, even though she had not told the ladies and was quite sure Cousin Adelaide would not have done so. Perhaps none of the gentlemen had said anything to the ladies either, but they were not stupid. The letter had threatened her harm if she did not get him to leave. Why her? The answer must surely be obvious.

And through it all Imogen missed him dreadfully. There was no way, of course, that their affair could continue while she remained at the hall. But even if she was able to return home within the next few days, some of the new situation would not change. Everyone now
knew
or suspected. It would be sordid to continue. It had not seemed sordid before, even though perhaps it had been.

Their affair, her little vacation from her life, was over. It had ended quite abruptly and long before she was ready. But perhaps it was as well. She had been enjoying it far too much. And her feelings had become far too deeply involved. It was as well that it end now before she became even more deeply entangled.

But oh, the pain of it.

The end of her affair felt in some ways more dreadful than the terrible threat of that letter, even though it had revealed that someone
knew
and was prepared to use that knowledge quite ruthlessly. It was even worse to know that there was some connection between now and
then
. Those events of ten years ago had seemed only very sad at the time, but they might well have been horribly sinister. Ten years was a long time. But she was as sure as she could be that the person who had written
this
letter had also written
those
earlier ones.

She was badly frightened. Not just for herself—she was being very closely protected—but for Percy, who was pursuing the matter quite aggressively. She was terrified for him. They had killed Dicky’s valet. She was convinced of that now, though it had never occurred to her at the time.
But why?
And they had broken Colin Bains’s legs.

And yet, all mingled in with the terror, perhaps even surpassing it, was the pain of the abrupt ending of a love affair.

A
nger became a permanent state for Percy, though he kept it under control as he continued to mingle with his family and friends. He avoided being alone with Imogen. He had asked his uncles and his friends to keep an eye on her, and they did. Not that they had needed telling. Neither had the aunts and female cousins and younger male cousins, who had been informed about the situation, though they had not been shown the letter. They closed about her, the lot of them, like the petals about the core of a rosebud.

The bulk of Percy’s anger was directed against himself. He had put Imogen at risk in more ways than one when he had been self-indulgent enough to begin an affair with her. And making an open declaration of war against smuggling on his property had no doubt been rash and ill considered.

He deserved to be horsewhipped.

Unfortunately, he could not go back. One never could. He could not relive the past three weeks and make different decisions. Neither could he relive the past ten years. He could only move forward.

He missed Imogen with an ache of longing that was almost welcome. He deserved every pang and worse.

His determination to get to the bottom of things in response to that letter had met with some frustration. James Mawgan had a cottage up behind the stables, in a little cluster of such houses. He had not been home when Percy called there with Knorr on the Saturday afternoon. It was Mr. Mawgan’s half day, a neighbor had explained after curtsying to Percy, and he sometimes went to see his mam.

He was not there on Sunday either, a full day off for most of the outdoor workers. And on Monday he rode off early with another of the gardeners to see about getting some new bulbs and seedlings for the flower beds and kitchen gardens.

“Finally,” Knorr commented dryly, “the man is doing something to earn his salary. I’ll collar him when he gets back, my lord.”

After luncheon, Percy and a group of the younger cousins, including Meredith and Geoffrey, climbed to the top of the rocks behind the house, where they were rewarded with a brisk wind and scudding clouds across a blue expanse of sky and a magnificent view in all four directions. It would not have surprised Percy if someone had told him that on a really clear day one could see Wales to the north and Ireland to the west and France to the south.

And it had grabbed at something in him.
His heart?
Should it not be turning his knees to jelly?

Geoffrey was running along the top, his arms stretched to the sides, a racing yacht screeching into the wind. Gregory was in hot pursuit.

Evil could not be allowed to continue thriving here, Percy thought, like a cancerous growth upon the body of his own people. It
would
not be allowed.

Mr. Knorr was awaiting him in the visitors’ salon, Crutchley informed him when they returned to the house.

Mawgan was in there too.

“Ah,” Percy said as the butler closed the door behind him, “I trust you will soon have the flower beds blazing with splendor, Mawgan?”

“It is my plan, my lord,” Mawgan said.

“Good,” Percy said. “I shall look forward to seeing it through spring and summer and autumn.”

There! That was a gauntlet flung down between them. Whether he really would stay was uncertain. But it was as well that those who wanted him gone believe that he was planning to stay, that his resolve had not been shaken by any threat.

“Tell me, Mawgan,” Percy said, “Are you a strong swimmer?”

The man looked a bit mystified. “You have to be if you are a fisherman,” he said.

“But you could not save one man who fell overboard?” Percy asked. “I do not imagine the sea was particularly rough. As an experienced fisherman you would not have been out if it had been, would you? Certainly not with an inexperienced guest.”

“He fought me,” Mawgan said. “The silly bugger. He panicked.”

Knorr cleared his throat.

“And then he went under the boat, and hit his head,” Mawgan added.

“I thought that was you.” Percy looked closely at him.

“We both did,” Mawgan said. “I was trying to get him.”

“Who else was in the boat?” Percy asked him.

“My father, a few others,” Mawgan said vaguely. “I can’t remember.”

“I would have thought,” Percy said, “that every detail concerning that tragic incident would be seared upon your memory.”

“I hit my head,” Mawgan said.

“And while you were recovering,” Percy said, “Colin Bains volunteered to take the valet’s place and his father was first puffed up with pride at the prospect of having a son as batman to a viscount, heir to an earldom, and then suddenly, in a peculiar reversal of attitude, flatly refused to allow his son to go.”

“I don’t know nothing about that,” Mawgan said.

“Then Mr. Ratchett got you the job,” Percy said.

“He spoke for me,” Mawgan replied. “And Lord Barclay come to see me.”

“And when you returned from the Peninsula,” Percy said, “you were rewarded for your service with your present senior position on my outdoor staff.”

“It weren’t my fault, what happened to his lordship,” Mawgan said.

“Was it not?” Percy asked softly, and the man’s eyes met his for the first time. “Or were you sent to make sure that somehow, by fair means or foul, Viscount Barclay did not come home?”

And there went another gauntlet. There was really no going back now, was there?

They stared at each other. Percy expected incredulity, shock, outrage,
some
look of strong denial. Instead he got only the squinted stare, which finally slid away from him, and then the oldest answer known to man.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said. “My lord.”

“I am not at all sure
how
it was done,” Percy told him, “but I
am
sure that it
was
done. You were given your orders and you followed them. Someone must have had a great deal of trust in you. It was an important mission, was it not, but not an impossibly difficult one—far away from home, a war that was killing thousands of both high and low degree, no wind of blame to blow upon this particular part of Cornwall. The odds were high that it would happen anyway without any intervention on your part. But you
had
been there longer than a year, I understand. You must have been growing impatient and a bit anxious.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Mawgan said again. “If you think I killed him, then you had better ask your— You had better ask Lady Barclay. The French took him and killed him. She was there. She will tell you.”

Your—?
Lover, perhaps? It was the closest he had come to a slip of the tongue.

“Your orders came, I suppose,” Percy said, “from your uncle. But tell me, Mawgan, was he acting merely as an agent for someone above him? The head man, maybe, the leader of the gang, the kingpin? Or was he acting for
himself
?”

It seemed impossible, incredible, laughable—that dusty, shambling old man, surrounded by the estate books, forever writing in them in his meticulous, perfect handwriting, almost never leaving his study. But what other books and accounts did he work on in there? And he had not always been old, had he?

Paul Knorr had not moved since Percy came into the room. The clock on the mantelpiece, which Percy had not noticed until now, ticked loudly.

Was one allowed a third gauntlet? If so, he had flung that too.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Mawgan said. “My lord.”

“In that case,” Percy said, “you had better return to your house. Mr. Knorr, will you ask Mimms, my personal groom, to accompany Mr. Mawgan, if you please, and remain with him? I have spoken to him—he will know what you are asking.”

When they were gone, Percy stared glumly into the unlit fire for a minute or so and then took himself off with firm step to the steward’s office. He probably should have summoned revenue officers, he thought. But how could one summon them for the mere whiff of an idea without even a shred of real evidence? He would be the laughingstock.

He supposed everyone concerned realized—or had been told—that if no one said any more than
I don’t know what you are talking about
in answer to any question on the topic, they were all perfectly safe. There was no evidence against anyone.

The only real error made so far was that letter to Imogen. For someone who was obviously very intelligent, it had been a stupid mistake. But it was not evidence.

He opened the office door without first tapping upon it.

The estate books were piled neatly on shelves and tabletops and upon one side of the desk. But surely half their usual number was missing.

So was the steward.

He had better not ever think of applying for a position as an investigator with the Bow Street Runners, Percy thought. He had been signaling his suspicions ever since Saturday afternoon, when he had gone knocking upon Mawgan’s door.

Ratchett was gone, and so were all the books and ledgers that were, presumably,
not
estate records.

*   *   *

They were down on the beach again, a large party of them, on a gloriously sunny afternoon that felt more like full spring than very early March. And everyone was merry after all the tensions of the day before.

Imogen still felt a bit numb with shock. Mr. Ratchett! Not only was he involved in the smuggling ring that had plagued their part of the coast for years, but it also seemed very possible that he was the leader, the ruthless organizer and beneficiary of the trade, the man who ruled his subordinates with a fist of iron but whose identity very few even of his own men knew or suspected. There was no proof that would stand up in a court of law, but the fact that he had disappeared and that he had apparently taken with him half the contents of the steward’s office was strong corroborative evidence.

He had been living among them for years and years, a seemingly harmless eccentric.

Imogen wondered if her father-in-law had had any inkling.

It was no wonder they had tried to get Percy to leave almost as soon as he had arrived. It was no wonder they had resorted to threats when he had not only refused to budge but had also declared war on the trade on his land.

Oh, how they had had everything their own way for the past two years, with only two unsuspecting women living in the main house and one at the dower house!

And it seemed more than probable that Mr. Mawgan had drowned Dicky’s valet. But what had upset Imogen more than anything else and kept her awake through much of last night, listening to the light snoring of Mrs. Hayes’s maid, was the equally unproven theory that James Mawgan was a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Ratchett’s army, perhaps even his heir apparent, and that it had been carefully arranged that he accompany Dicky to the Peninsula to ensure that he did not return.

But . . . it was a French scouting party that had come upon them in the Portuguese hills and captured them. James Mawgan could not have had anything to do with that. Could he?

He had been put briefly under house arrest yesterday. But with the disappearance of Mr. Ratchett there had been no grounds upon which to hold him, and Percy’s groom, who had been guarding his cottage, had been called off.

James Mawgan had also disappeared by the time Sir Matthew Quentin had sent for him later in the evening to question him further in his capacity as the local magistrate.

Percy had sent for him, and Sir Matthew in his turn had summoned a customs officer, who had arrived late in the evening. The three of them, as well as Mr. Knorr, had conferred well into the night. Meanwhile Elizabeth, who had come with her husband, had sat in the drawing room holding one of Imogen’s hands and listening to the story being told and retold and told again by everyone else who was gathered there.

The four men had spent the morning together again, conducting interviews both at the house and in Porthmare. The ladies, with a male escort, had buzzed about in what Imogen deemed pointless preparations for the ball in four days’ time. The servants had the mammoth cleaning chores well under way, and the cook had the menu fully organized.

Now this afternoon, at last, they were relaxing. Mr. Wenzel and Tilly had arrived at the house soon after luncheon, full of concern over the news. The three Soames sisters arrived soon after with their brother to see if the young people cared to walk with them. Mr. Alden Alton came on their heels, escorting Elizabeth, who had come to be with Imogen since Sir Matthew had not been able to deliver any very comforting news at luncheon. And everyone in the house was bursting for air and exercise. At least, the younger element was. The older people seemed quite thankful to watch Imogen being borne away, safely surrounded by a large body of exuberant youngsters as well as Mr. Welby, Viscount Marwood, Mr. Cyril Eldridge, and Percy.

A number of possible destinations had been suggested, but almost inevitably they had ended up descending the path to the beach like a long, slow-moving snake and then frolicking on the sand. Parasols were raised above bonnets while their owners chatted and giggled and flirted. Tall hats were pressed more firmly upon heads though there was not much of a wind, and their owners looked ruefully down upon boots quickly losing their shine beneath a thin coating of sand. Hector, with so many people wanting to throw items for him to chase, ended up chasing his stunted tail.

And yet, Imogen noticed, the scene was not quite as carefree as it might have appeared to a stranger. She walked for a while with her two friends, one on either side of her, each with an arm linked through her own. But a number of the gentlemen, without making it at all obvious, formed a loose ring about her and directed frequent glances to the top of the cliffs.

Mr. Wenzel, Imogen was interested to note, after showing her all due concern up at the house, was walking arm in arm with Meredith, a little apart from everyone else.

And then, almost as though the move had been orchestrated, both Elizabeth and Tilly moved away to talk with other members of the group, everyone else moved back a little so that the circle about Imogen became larger, and she found herself walking beside Percy. He did not offer his arm, and she clasped her hands firmly behind her back. They seemed suddenly isolated in a little cocoon of near privacy.