Christmas Wedding Belles: The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride. Miranda Jarrett

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      Lucinda knew all about Making Do too. In her youth her looks had been no more than tolerable—dark blonde hair and cool blue eyes had been unfashionable at the time—and her parents, an indigent vicar and his social climbing wife, had been delighted when she had become engaged straight from the schoolroom. But then the plan had gone awry.

      She had been betrothed for four years to her childhood sweetheart—a man who, humiliatingly, appeared to have forgotten her existence as soon as she was out of his sight, a man with dash and brilliance and the prospect of a glittering naval career. Eventually the most appalling of news had filtered its way back to her, conveyed by the gossips and scandalmongers who made it their business to upset as many people as possible. Her betrothed was a criminal. He had abandoned his promising naval career and had taken up instead as—whisper it—a pirate.

      That was the moment Lucinda’s heart had broken. So she had married the first man who asked, had been widowed two years later, and now here she was, at nine and twenty, earning her own living and putting youthful folly firmly where it belonged—in the past.

      Lucinda spotted a moth that was coming dangerously close to the candle flame. She trapped it gently in her cupped palms and released it out of the window, worrying as soon as it was gone that the night would be too cold for it and it would perish.

      As she turned to close the casement a flicker of movement caught her eye, away on the edge of the woods that bordered the garden at Kestrel Court. She stopped, staring into the shadows. The leaves rustled in the slight breeze and the scent of pine mingled with the fresher, salty smell of the sea and the crispness of the frosty night. Lucinda paused, her hand on the window latch. There was no one there. The skipping shadows and her imagination were playing tricks.

      At least she hoped so.

      But a nasty suspicion had lodged in her mind and would not be shifted. What if it was Stacey, making an assignation with a young man? What if—perish the thought—Stacey was planning an elopement?

      Before the dull but rich Mr Leytonstone had proposed, a certain Mr Owen Chance, the Riding Officer stationed in Woodbridge to catch smugglers, had asked Mrs Saltire’s permission to pay his addresses to Stacey. Mrs Saltire had refused graciously, politely, but very finally. She had pointed out elegantly that Mr Chance had good birth but no money, and precious little prospect of making any in a backwater like Midwinter. But Owen Chance was a good-looking man, with a charm to match, and, being fair, Lucinda could see that he quite eclipsed poor Mr Leytonstone. One could not imagine Mr Chance in a flannel vest. In fact Lucinda could tell that Stacey had imagined Mr Chance more as a knight on a white charger, and her mother’s refusal to countenance his suit made him all the more attractive.

      There had been tears when Mrs Saltire had pointed out the financial realities of their situation to her daughter, and then Mr Leytonstone had proposed and been accepted. Stacey had gone very quiet and suspiciously biddable, but Lucinda was not convinced…

      If Stacey was regretting her betrothal and making midnight assignations with the dashing Mr Chance…Well…Lucinda shook her head. It would be very foolish because, apart from any issues of propriety, she would catch her death of cold out on a night like this.

      It was past twelve and time for bed. Lucinda heard the clock at the bottom of the stairs chime the quarter-hour. Mrs Saltire would be asleep by now, tucked up with her laudanum, and Stacey, whom Lucinda had caught reading Ivanhoe earlier in the day, was probably dreaming of romantic heroes, not creeping out into the grounds of Kestrel Court to meet one.

      Nothing ever happens here…

      Lucinda put up a hand to pull the curtains shut, then paused as the flicker of movement caught her eye again. A man on horseback was riding very slowly down the track that bordered the gardens of Kestrel Court. Lucinda could see his outline in the moonlight. It looked disturbingly like Mr Chance, on the raking bay mare upon which he had caught Stacey’s eye in the first place.

      A floorboard creaked on the landing, and then there was the sound of a step on the stair. With a sharp sigh Lucinda snatched her cloak from the chairback where she had left it earlier, and flung it about her shoulders. She grabbed the candle from beside her bed, and hurried out into the corridor. It was not the first time that her role as governess had involved her in counselling against an improvident love affair. She did not want Stacey to ruin herself in a foolish elopement and then rue it for the rest of her days when the love was gone and there was no money on which to live.

      The house was silent. A lamp burned in the porch, but the night porter was not at his post, though the front door was unlocked. Deploring such laxity on the part of the servants, Lucinda turned the handle and went outside, down the steps and onto the gravel sweep. Her candle flickered and went out, doused by the sharp sea breeze. For a moment she blinked in the sudden darkness, but then her eyes adjusted to the moonlight and she could see a figure slipping between the trees in the lee of the park wall. At the same time she heard the sound of hooves on the frosty ground. Could that be Mr Chance, coming to carry off his bride? Lucinda screwed up her face as she imagined Mrs Saltire’s hysterics when she discovered that her little ewe lamb had thrown herself away on a pauper.

      She hastened after the fleeing figure, but Stacey—if it were she—had already lost herself amongst the trees that bordered the park. The night was quiet now. Suspiciously so. Lucinda held her breath, straining to hear any sound that might give her quarry away, but there was nothing except the wind in the top of the pines and the distant beat of the waves on the shore.

      Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps Stacey really was tucked up in bed. It was a servant she had heard on the stair and she was out here chasing shadows. The cold was eating deep into her bones now. It was no night for an elopement. Feeling foolish, Lucinda turned to go back to the house.

      The moon went behind a cloud, but in the moment before it disappeared Lucinda clearly saw a man crouching in the lee of the park gates—and in the same instant she saw what he could not: the menacing shadow of the Riding Officer moving silently along the wall, coming closer all the time. She caught her breath on a gasp, and the hidden man turned his head at the sound. With a shock of recognition Lucinda knew him.

      Terror and amazement jolted through her. Past and present collided violently. Lucinda started to tremble. She could see that the man had spotted her and was about to speak; she saw too that Owen Chance was urging his horse forward silently, every sense alert for the slightest sound.

      Lucinda acted on instinct. She raised a finger to her lips in a beseeching gesture and saw the fugitive pause, and then she was beside him in one silent move, clapping her hand over his mouth. She pulled him deeper into the shadow of the gate and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

      ‘Be silent! There is an excise man on the other side of the wall.’

      Touching him as she was, she could feel the tension that ripped through his body at her words. Every muscle he possessed was taut and ready for flight—or fight. He moved slightly, silently, to grasp the pistol in his belt.

      Lucinda eased her hand from his mouth and rested it warningly on his shoulder. They were both utterly still. She could not even hear his breathing. But she was more aware of him than she had ever been of any other person in her life. She was pressed against the unyielding lines of his back. She could feel the warmth of his skin and she could smell him, a scent of fresh air and salt and leather that went straight to her head and made her senses spin, and also made her wonder, quite outrageously, if he tasted of the sea as well.

      The tension spun tight as a web and seemed to last for ever, and then there was a chink of harness. She heard Owen Chance swear softly, and the horse snorted as he pulled on the rein. The shadows СКАЧАТЬ