The Foundling Bride. Helen Dickson

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СКАЧАТЬ When she looked again the man had gone. Her gaze scanned the blackness all around her, but there was no sight of him. Not wanting to wait a moment longer, she turned and headed for home. Moving swiftly along the path, she felt her foot stumble against a stone and only just managed to keep herself from falling.

      Straightening herself, she came face to face with a tall figure in the uniform of a soldier. A dragoon—he had to be a dragoon. At the sudden appearance of this ghostly apparition, looming large and menacing, she trembled with fear. A bolt of terror shot through her and she stood rooted to the spot, unable to move or to speak. When he stepped closer to her she pulled herself together, and with no thought other than to escape turned to run. But the man caught her arm in a vice-like grip.

      ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he growled. ‘Stay where you are.’

      Stunned and stricken dumb, Lowena heard that low, deep voice and thought she was in some kind of nightmare. She spun back, her eyes wide, staring up at him through the tangled mass of her hair. Her heart was beating hard and seemed to roar in her ears. The man towered over her, and in the darkness she could just make out his face.

      She felt herself drawn to him, as if by some overwhelming magnetic force, and for an instant something stirred inside her. She experienced a feeling of strange, slinking unease—the unease of shadowy familiarity—and she shivered with a sense of deep foreboding.

      The blood drained from her face. Recognition hit her and she gasped, thunderstruck.

      It was Mr Marcus, back from the Americas. At least it looked like him.

      With her hair strewn across her face and in the dim light she prayed he hadn’t recognised her—not now, not when she must look a frightful sight and was breaking the law. Struggling fiercely to release herself from his grip, closing her ears to the low curses he uttered, she succeeded in freeing herself and fled.

      On reaching the back of the house at Tregarrick she let herself in, breathing a huge sigh of relief that he hadn’t recognised her or followed her. In her room, high in the eaves, she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, her body taut, her head in a whirl. She tried not to think of Mr Marcus, wondering if perhaps it hadn’t been him who had taken hold of her, if she had been mistaken and it had been one of the dragoons from the barracks at Bodmin who had accosted her.

      After a while she heard a dog bark in the stables and the whinny of horses. Voices sounded outside and she knew the men had returned from their night’s work in the cove. She froze, her desire to flee this house overwhelmingly strong.

      Covering her face she began to sob, and great tears oozed from her eyes. ‘Oh, Izzy,’ she moaned, with a wretchedness that came straight from her heart. ‘Why did you have to die? Why did you have to leave me?’

      There was no help for her.

      * * *

      Two hours later, when the two half-brothers finally faced each other across the drawing room at Tregarrick, the air about them had turned cold, lapping around them like a winter sea. It held the two of them in its deathly chill.

      Edward took judicious note of the taut set of his brother’s jaw, and the small lines of ruthlessness around his mouth, and could see he was a youth no longer. Marcus presented a towering, masculine, imposing figure. An aura of authority and power seemed to surround him. It was etched in every line of his lean, taut frame, and he possessed a haughty reserve that was not inviting.

      Edward mentally despised the implacable authority and strength in Marcus’s manner and bearing, which no doubt stemmed from his military training and the ensuing years fighting the war in America.

      ‘Ah,’ Edward said, his eyes cold. ‘You survived the war, I see... So the soldier condescends to return home? Good of you, Marcus. Better late than never, I suppose.’

      Marcus’s lips curled in derision. ‘I am the sort who clings to life, Edward, as you should know. I was sorry to hear about Isabel,’ he said, his tone flat as he referred to Edward’s wife.

      Edward’s face hardened and became closed, but not before Marcus had seen a hidden pain cloud his eyes.

      ‘Mother told me it was a riding accident that killed her.’

      ‘These things happen,’ was all Edward said, clearly irritated that his brother should remind him of that time in his life when he had been at his most vulnerable. ‘I am surprised to find you here at this late hour. You must forgive my absence. I have been occupied with other matters tonight.’

      ‘I saw.’

      Edward smiled thinly, pouring himself a drink. Dropping into a leather chair by the fire, he stretched out his long booted legs. ‘As long as you were the only one who saw then I am not concerned.’

      Before Marcus had left for America he had known that Edward had become the leader of a well-organised smuggling ring operating hereabouts. It would seem nothing had changed.

      ‘I had thought you would have put the trade behind you with your new position. Even the cleverest smuggler will make a mistake eventually—and then he will be either arrested or dead.’

      Edward’s brows lifted imperturbably. ‘I and more than half the population in Cornwall do not see smuggling as a crime. Those involved in various ways either buy, sell, or drink—respectable ministers of the church, doctors, lawyers, and...oh, yes...even magistrates and excise men. They all look the other way for a drop of fine French brandy or a bolt of silk or lace for their ladies.’

      ‘You are good at impressing people, aren’t you, Edward? People who don’t know that beneath your fine clothes and affectations you are in possession of a ruthlessness and cruelty which will stop at nothing to possess or destroy what you cannot possess. But there are those who are law-abiding and will not turn a blind eye to your activities for ever. You would do well to remember that you are not beyond reach of the law.’

      Marcus had spoken quietly—too quietly for Edward’s comfort—and there was a judgemental expression in the cold, pale eyes assessing him.

      ‘The law can go to hell,’ Edward bit back, with apparently righteous indignation. ‘The various schemes I devise with those across the Channel for our mutual profit will continue until I call a halt. I shall continue to land contraband in that cursed cove until I can no longer elude the Revenue men and the dragoons.’

      ‘Nevertheless it is still a crime, and should you get caught your title will not save you.’

      ‘So you imagine I might be arrested?’ Edward said, tilting his head to one side and peering at his brother through narrowed eyes. ‘Perhaps you may propose to do something yourself.’

      Marcus shrugged. ‘What can I do that the excise men can’t? I can’t forbid you to cross the land to the cove, since you own it. But you will not escape without retribution—and if you were not my brother it would be all the sweeter if it were by my own hand. I know you, Edward. The methods you use for disposing of those who get in your way are not mine. I am first and foremost the King’s servant. Eventually you will be caught, and you will have to stand trial and suffer the ultimate penalty for your crime—and when you do you will ask yourself if it was worth it.’

      Edward laughed lightly, unconcerned by his brother’s argument. ‘The men who work for me are as audacious and cunning as I am. We are not such amateurs that we would leave contraband lying around for the excise men to find.’

      ‘And СКАЧАТЬ