The Smuggler's Escape Read online

  “I don’t see a single moth.” Her persecutor made a show of looking about. “Surely you remember that November is too cold for flying insects.”

  “Some kinds of moth thrive in cool weather.” None that she knew of, though. She picked up speed, hurrying past the dovecote. Her feet were killing her, and she shivered in the thin wrapper.

  Hale stepped in front of her, blocking her way, and whipped the net from her hand. “But what use is a butterfly net if it doesn’t reach the light where the supposed moths will congregate?” He returned to the dovecote and extended his arm with the net on its pole at the end. “Even I cannot reach that high.” He chuckled. “I’m so sorry, Mademoiselle de Vallon.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, there is a ladder,” she said, but evidently he didn’t believe a word of her story. “You know nothing of insect collecting,” she added weakly, choosing and discarding alternative explanations that made little or no sense. It seemed she had finally been caught.

  Fortunately, she had a plan for that as well. One didn’t succeed at smuggling without making plenty of plans. She’d just hoped she would never have to use this one.

  Hale grinned evilly. “These men of mine were stationed behind the garden. They saw you signaling with the lantern. Your pretty little goose is cooked, and if you think your uncle’s influence will save you, think again.”

  Uncle Matthew wouldn’t want to save her once she put her alternate plan into action. That was the beauty of it: given the anti-French sentiments of most Englishmen, including Hale, and Uncle Matthew’s dislike of Noelle, they might actually enjoy believing the worst of her. There would be a dreadful scene, but at least she wouldn’t be arrested.

  If she could convince them she was telling the truth. “God help me,” she said in a pathetic half-whisper. “I am utterly undone.”

  “Indeed, you are.” The lieutenant sounded far too pleased with himself. “If you come peaceably, mademoiselle, perhaps I shall—”

  “I see that I must confess,” Noelle interrupted, clasping her hands over her heart. “My aunt and uncle will be so upset. I had hoped to spare them.”

  “You should have thought of that earlier,” Hale said, one heavy hand about to descend on her shoulder. “Come along now.”

  Noelle ducked and backed away. “I am a collector, as was my dear father, but this evening that was merely an excuse. You are quite right about the moths.” She paused for effect. “I came here to meet my lover.”

  “What?” The word burst from Lieutenant Hale. Behind him, one of the men let out a crude oath, and the other sniggered. Clearly, both of them believed her, just as she’d expected. She had laid the groundwork well for this particular plan.

  Hale recovered himself. “In that case, where is this precious lover of yours?”

  “He saw my signal and went away.”

  Hale huffed. “No, mademoiselle, he didn’t, because he wasn’t here to start with.”

  “That is possible.” She hugged the wrapper around herself, shivering. It didn’t take much to sound forlorn. “He was already quite late. I fear he has jilted me.” She headed toward the house. “I shall go indoors now and forget about him forever.”

  Hale followed. “What I meant, mademoiselle, is that there was no lover, and that you are going to the lockup, where you belong.” Hard fingers circled her arm. “Unless you wish to disclose the name of your lover and have him vouch for you?”

  “Let me go!” she cried, squirming in his grasp. She might have to resort to the last plan of all—her disaster plan. She cringed at the prospect and tried shrieking instead. “Stop! You’re hurting me!”

  From the dovecote came a flurry of wings and startled coos. A tall, elegantly-dressed man emerged, brushing feathers from his coat sleeves.

  Hale gasped and let go, stumbling in his haste to back away.

  “Mademoiselle de Vallon,” Richard, the new Lord Boltwood, said in a soft, smooth voice that stirred Noelle’s blood—just as it had from the first day they’d met. He swept her a mocking bow. “Jilt my own sweet Noelle? How can you think such a thing of me?”

  A wave of unutterable longing swept over her. She froze, unable to think or speak. He took her cold, resistless hands in his warm ones and raised them to his lips.

  She shook off that stupid, stupid longing and barely stopped herself from sagging with relief. She despised Richard, but he wasn’t as ghastly as her disaster plan. What was more, Hale had no choice but to believe Richard, even to fear him.

  Richard kissed her knuckles, and her palms, and then her fingertips, one by one, while Hale fumed and the other excisemen gaped. He glanced at Noelle from under wicked lashes—exactly as he had done when seducing her years before.

  Hot blood rushed to Noelle’s face. Overwhelmed with mortification, she tried to jerk her hand away, but Richard grinned and held tight. Lieutenant Hale stood rigid with outrage, and one of the excisemen did his best to turn a laugh into a cough.

  “My eager and delectable Noelle,” Richard said, finally letting go. “As you see, I am indeed here, salivating in expectation of our tryst.”

  “You’re revolting!” she hissed at him in French.

  He laughed, running his eyes over her state of undress. She remembered that look. It still melted her insides.

  But now it infuriated her, too. “You are a vile, disgusting pig!” she added, again in French.

  “I suppose I deserve that for subjecting you to the company of these rough, lowly fellows.” He looked her up and down again, the rat, and it shouldn’t have affected her, but it did.

  The flash of his smile in the darkness told her he knew it. “Your delightfully flimsy attire, however suited to stolen moments of passion, will never do in this chilly wind. Shall I loan you my coat? Better yet, let me escort you indoors.” He offered her his arm.

  She made no move to take it. “No, damn you! You must leave!”

  “Damned I undoubtedly shall be,” Richard said, “so I make a practice of enjoying this fleeting life to the fullest.” Before she had a chance to protest, he reached over her head and removed the key on its ribbon. He handed it to the younger exciseman. “Lock the back gate and return the key to me.”

  “To me!” Noelle cried. “The key is mine!”

  “Forgive me,” Richard said with a mocking flourish. “Return the key to Mademoiselle de Vallon.” He ordered the other of Hale’s minions to retrieve the lantern, and turned to the rigidly silent Hale. “Lieutenant, when you speak to Sir Matthew, kindly inform him that mademoiselle and I shall follow shortly.”

  “No, we shan’t!” Noelle said. “Lieutenant Hale must take his men and go. Why should he return to my uncle?”

  “Because I said so,” Richard said, as if it were obvious. Hale glared but knew enough to acknowledge defeat. He stomped toward the house.

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Noelle railed. “It’s ridiculous that everyone obeys you just because of who you are, but if you must order them about, why not just send them away? There will be a horrid scene when my uncle hears about this!”

  “My dear girl, by morning everyone in the village will have heard.” Once again, he offered her his arm. “I agree that speaking with your lamentable uncle is unpleasant under all circumstances, but perhaps we can improve the experience a trifle by giving him some happy news.”

  She frowned up at him. He was talking in riddles. Playing games. Beguiling her, as he had done from the day they’d met.

  Making her want to kill him. “What happy news?”

  “Our betrothal, my love. What else?”

  Chapter 2

  “Betrothal?” she said. “You must be mad. I’m not going to marry you.”

  Richard blinked down at her. Two years and a little more than five months ago—he’d counted the days—she had agreed to marry him. Admittedly, he’d been away from Sussex ever since, so perhaps she’d had second thoughts.

  But she hadn’t wed anyone else, and surely marriage to him was better than going to prison for smuggling—or worse, being hanged for espionage. He didn’t believe that she was spying for France, but he had to admit to himself that he didn’t know her well. He’d fallen head over heels for her when they’d first met and asked her to marry him only a few weeks later.

  And then his irate father had taken him willy-nilly to Amsterdam, where he’d been forced to remain under orders from the Home Office, to serve as a spy.

  Which he’d done unwillingly but to the best of his ability—and rather well, both there and for the last month or two in London. Sir Frederick Darsington had given him one last mission to perform, since he had to return to Sussex to attend his father’s deathbed.

  For which, thank God, he had arrived a few hours too late.

  The Home Office knew somebody was passing information to the French from his charming little Sussex village, and an unnamed source had informed them that Noelle de Vallon was the obvious culprit—a French refugee with revolutionary ideals who was also involved in smuggling.

  Confronted with this appalling news, Richard had hoped his fury didn’t show. “Noelle de Vallon, a spy? That’s nonsense. Her so-called revolutionary views have to do with improving conditions for the poor, educating women, and so on. She wouldn’t serve the bloodthirsty regime that killed her father.”

  “Humph.” Sir Frederick was a spare individual with a deceptively affable mien and a stoop. “You haven’t seen the chit for over two years. People do change, you realize. And if she’s a smuggler, well . . .”

  “Everyone in the village dabbles i
n smuggling,” Richard said.

  “Humph,” Sir Frederick said again, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe. “We’ve been planting false information, and we now know it leaks out by way of Sir William Luttrow. But he’s an old friend of mine, damn it, incapable of treason! Think of the scandal, the effect on England’s morale, if a highly placed government official were found to be a traitor. I’d much rather the girl were a spy.”

  “She’s a well-bred lady, sir, and half English. The aunt with whom she resides is a cousin of some marquess or other. She has no reason to get involved in smuggling.” Unless for the fun of it. That sounded like the lively Noelle he had fallen in love with.

  “Nevertheless, my source says she is.” Sir Frederick waved his pipe at Richard. “Off you go, and don’t let a pretty face turn you from the truth.”

  Certain it wasn’t the truth, Richard had bowed and left, promising to unmask the real malefactor.

  So far, he’d been proven wrong. She was definitely smuggling. But she wasn’t—she couldn’t possibly be—a spy. For now, betrothal to him would give Noelle protection from the excisemen, but he couldn’t protect her from the Home Office for long.

  She dropped her hands to her sides, her fists still clenched and her voice furious. “You don’t want to marry me either, so stop being chivalrous and help me find a way out of this fix.”

  “Much as it pains me to contradict you—”

  She snorted, muttering something Gallic and unladylike under her breath.

  “I don’t have a chivalrous bone in my body,” he continued, letting his eyes roam from her face, framed by a cascade of dark, unleashed curls, down her nightdress, remembering the delights that lay beneath it. “I do exactly as I please.” He’d been forced to do otherwise for the last few years, but now that the old man was dead, he was his own master at last. Or he would be once this final mission was over. “And it would please me very much to have you back in my bed.”

  “I was never in your bed.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, teeth chattering.

  Richard stripped off his coat and placed it around her shoulders. He gripped the lapels and pulled her close, and when she pushed his chest in protest, he tugged her even closer. “Bluebell wood or bedchamber, what difference does it make?” Lord in heaven, she smelled delicious.

  She still shook, whether from cold or anger he couldn’t tell. She might well be upset with him for leaving for so long, but he’d had no choice. He bent and said softly into her ear, “Noelle, don’t be foolish. After what just took place, we have no alternative but to wed.” He breathed in her scent, gave in to temptation and nuzzled her ear, and when she drew back, protesting, he lifted her off her feet and took her mouth instead.

  Her lips were cold but her breath was hot and sweet. Her mouth relaxed briefly beneath his, then she clamped it shut and turned her face away. With a sigh he let her go. Once he got her into his bed—a real bed, this time—she would change her mind. But first he had to get her properly out of this mess.

  God damn it to hell, if she’d really been expecting a lover tonight . . . Once a girl lost her virginity—which he frankly acknowledged to be his fault—it became that much easier for some loose fish to take advantage of her.

  If anyone had so much as touched her, he would kill him.

  Footsteps sounded on the gravel path. Hale’s minions arrived with the lantern and key. Noelle snatched the key and slung it around her neck as if she suspected Richard might even now interfere. He took the lantern, and she thanked the excisemen with a charming smile.

  “No word of thanks for me?” he asked plaintively as they marched away. “You wouldn’t have liked it in the lockup, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you,” she said in a hard, little voice. “But I still won’t marry you.”

  Striving for patience, he said, “If you don’t marry me, your reputation will be in shreds.”

  Noelle started toward the garden door. “Captain Hale’s opinion means less than nothing to me, and the same goes for his men.”

  “What they report, others will believe. If you don’t care about your reputation, then I will have to care for you.”

  Noelle tossed her head and walked faster. “I am a Daughter of the Revolution. I am above such pettiness as reputations.”

  Good Lord, she was still fixed on that bloody catastrophe of a revolution. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you are no longer in France.” If she were, she would probably be dead, but he’d never get her to admit that. He kept pace with her. “In England one lives or dies by one’s reputation. Your uncle will be justifiably angry when he hears you sneaked out to meet me—”

  “I did not sneak out to meet you!”

  “—while the news of our engagement will go a long way towards placating him.”

  Noelle stormed out of the garden. Richard restrained himself from helping her shut the heavy door. In her recalcitrant mood, gentlemanly behavior would likely inflame her even more.

  She glared at him and pushed the door into place. Damned if you don’t, he thought with a sigh. If she weren’t so bright and beautiful, so fiery and unafraid... No sane man would choose to tie himself to such a tigress.

  Evidently, he wasn’t sane, and even after all this time, he wanted her—needed her—with a yearning that went soul-deep.

  “My uncle doesn’t deserve to be placated.” She took the key from around her neck.

  Across the lawn, one of the tall French doors swung open. Sir Matthew Tifton’s pompous tones, elevated to a bellow, assailed their ears. “I set her waywardness entirely at your door, Lucretia. Why can you not manage that niece of yours?”

  “True,” Richard murmured, “but what about your poor, hapless aunt?” In the light of the lantern, Noelle’s fierce expression dissolved into dismay.

  The bellowing continued. “Clearly, there is a reason you have not been blessed with children. If you cannot manage one girl—” Sir Matthew appeared briefly in the doorway and turned back toward the house, his voice rising in fury. “Do you realize, madam, that your niece went outdoors in her nightdress to meet young Boltwood and advertised her folly to the excisemen? Word will be all over the village by morning. Have you no idea how her behavior affects my standing in the community? All because you cannot control one foolish girl!”

  “That’s so unfair!” Noelle cried. “Even he can’t control me, much less poor Lucretia. I should like to kill him!”

  “Indeed.” Richard seldom felt sympathy for others, but even his indifferent heart suffered a twinge for pretty Lucretia Tifton, barren and at the mercy of a self-righteous, fault-finding windbag.

  Sir Matthew stalked onto the flagstone path. “Come indoors this minute, both of you! By God, Boltwood, if your father were still alive, he would take a birch rod to you.”

  Actually, his father had done far worse. Fortunately, the old villain was dead at last, and Richard intended to think about him as seldom as possible. “In good time, you old coot,” he called. “It’s no fun kissing my future bride under your disapproving nose.” He pulled Noelle close and soundly kissed her, and when she tried to draw away, he kissed her again, while one hand squeezed her firm, round buttock under the flimsy fabric and the other trailed up and down her spine. She shuddered, and he knew it wasn’t from the cold.

  Sir Matthew stomped back into the house, slamming the door behind him. A pane of glass fell and shattered on the stone path.

  And shattered their nicely developing kiss as well.

  Noelle pushed away and pounded him with a clenched fist. “Don’t,” she said in a strangled voice.

  Richard took pity and let go. He had her right where he wanted her, so he could afford to be patient. He watched indulgently while she fitted the key in the lock and struggled to turn it with fingers that must be stiff with cold. It served her right, but he managed to refrain from laughing. “Hurry up, woman, or give me the key. It’s well-nigh freezing out here.” When she finally finished, he took her hand and hustled her toward the house.