A Game of Secrets (Hearts in Hazard Book 1) Read online

  “And they don’t believe in field-honed instincts, do they?”

  “You’ve listened through one of their meetings. Long enumerations of battle losses and longer discussions of strategies and supplies. They don’t know how to report instinct. War to them is boxes and arrows on a map, not blood and gore and men screaming, the shudder of cannon-fire and blinding smoke so thick you can’t breathe.”

  “And you would trade a year with them for one hour on the battlefields of Spain and Portugal.”

  Hargreaves stopped. He leaned heavily on his cane. His answer bypassed Tony’s remark. “If they would stop second-guessing their objective for this mission, we might achieve it. The spy won’t trust his information to a lackey; it’s too important. Find your smugglers, and we can close the net and snare our spy. When can you give me a list of the gang?”

  “I can’t say. I’m close, maybe too close. Maybe you should send another man in. We don’t want them becoming suspicious.”

  “What story are you telling for cover?”

  “Buying brandy on the cheap and walking the beach to strengthen the leg I injured in a riding accident.”

  “That’s close enough to the truth to stand. You will have to stay in position. A new man would only kindle the very suspicions we don’t want.”

  Tony sighed. His mission thus far had entailed sleeping late and riding the inland waters while he walked the headland. None of it had presented any danger. He would welcome a lovely distraction. “What are my new orders?”

  “That hasn’t changed. We want the man himself.”

  “Or the woman,” he retorted. “A Delilah who seduces one of our Samsons.” Hargreaves’ pace faltered, and Tony checked a hoot of derision. “Those brains at the War Office haven’t even considered a woman, have they?”

  “We argued the émigré question—.” He whistled tunelessly. “That will give an interesting twist to the debate.”

  “So we’ll take that back up as well?”

  Hargreaves’ smirk answered for him, but his voice stayed bland as milk toast. “I’ll use my day in London ahead of you to gather more information. Man or woman, the spy must be found. You are certain the smugglers we want are working from the headland?”

  “You said our Paris agent reported that the spy returned with a load of brandy and silks. You gave me the clues. The saltings have dozens of places to lose the revenue cutters, to hole up for the day, to hide their cargo. Napoleon brandy a little too cheap, jacquards in the shops, and quick access to London. Grandfather’s expensive thirst for brandy did the rest.”

  Hargreaves stumbled on the cobbles, but Tony didn’t make the mistake of helping him. “I’ll be satisfied only when you can tell me names, smugglers and spy. The spy, most of all.”

  “Trust me; I have found where they launch. Smugglers don’t like their territory invaded, yet they let those Frogs sail away. I’m an outsider, and I still picked that up. We’ll have your precious cargo soon enough. Or do you have a new worry? Are you distrusting your Paris agent now? Or has something vital gone missing?”

  “No, nothing like that. I trust our man in Paris. I picked him myself. His information I do trust. Coupled with your information about the French fishermen putting in twice, it has to be that headland. But we have to stop that spy.”

  They reached High Street and stopped to survey the bustle. A coach rattled over the cobbles, and Tony wondered where the lovely distraction had gone.

  “You’ll have to return to your lurking bit.”

  Waiting upon the Lord had never been his strong point, but he didn’t share that with Hargreaves. “I know the drill. When I see or hear someone out of place, I’ll send for you.”

  “And you’re certain that your return won’t rouse suspicions?”

  “God willing, it won’t. I can’t be there constantly, but I’ve got a man in place. You remember Sergeant Ranley. Between the two of us, we’ll find your spy.”

  “Your grandfather will have the best stocked cellar in England before this is over.”

  “You should meet him. You should meet the man striving to turn an Army whelp into a polished gentleman worthy of his title.”

  “If he succeeds, he has my compliments. You said you had to return to Melton Hall. Is Lord Melton not well?”

  “He claims that seeing me venture to London parties gives him new life, but our last visit fatigued him. I cannot convince him to moderate his activities. He won’t refuse invitations that he believes will advance me. He aged this summer, much more than I realized.”

  “He has his heir to launch before he’s forced to give up the reins.”

  “This heir can do without all the dances. The harvest’s coming in. I should be there. You’ll owe me for this one, Hargreaves.”

  “Have you become reconciled to becoming a landed gentleman? You don’t sound like the line officer I knew, the one who volunteered for dangerous assignments. You weren’t well enough to protest when your grandfather bought out your commission, but I never would have thought an old soldier like you would take to the quiet peace of the country.”

  Tony didn’t speak of his impotent anger, lying in bed at Melton Hall and realizing his Army career was over. He didn’t speak of the days that he’d refused to see his grandfather until Sgt. Ranley stumped in and forced him to face the future. He didn’t speak of the long season needed to bring himself back to health. He didn’t speak of the boredom that started his education in farming, the boredom that had miraculously transformed into curiosity when his grandfather described his methods and experiments. In those long months God had taught him patience. His reward came as a slower battle with the land that gave him more satisfaction than he had anticipated. Hargreaves had a similar transformation before him; he just hadn’t accepted it.

  “I’ll never be a line officer again, Hargreaves, not with this leg. It still doesn’t stand up to a day’s ride or a long walk. And I can’t do your job, butting heads with the pencil-pushers in the War Office. This mission suited me when you proposed it, but I’m discovering that it interferes with my life.” For one, he would have pursued a lovely distraction if Hargreaves hadn’t had prior claim.

  “Farraday, you were born and bred to the drum. How do you tolerate the country quiet?”

  “Better than I thought. I’d gotten sick of war, of its noise and smell and death. My battles now are with late frosts and drenching rain, stubborn cattle and stupid sheep. I’ve discovered I can live that life. I like it.” Especially if he found a lovely distraction to kiss.

  “I never would have pictured you as a country squire.”

  “I will grow whiskers and get gout. After I catch your spy.”

  Chapter 2

  When Kate encountered Anthony Farraday a week later, at first she hoped that he wouldn’t recognize her. Then she hoped he would.

  The Ipswich coach had journeyed to the sea. It rolled to a stop at the newly constructed Black Boar. The village that stretched between it and the choppy Channel was only a few years older. From listening to the passengers, Kate gathered that the encroaching sea had claimed the old village. Each year the sea took more inches of land, but the proximity to the clean salt air and the rich fishing kept the community from abandoning the headland.

  She was not the only passenger to arrive at the Black Boar, but her request for employment was obviously the first that the host had received from a coach passenger. He shook his head. “What’s that you’re wanting?”

  “I seek employment, sir. Yours is a fine and prospering inn. I am willing to serve as a maid in the chambers or in the kitchen or—.”

  “The kitchen?” He looked her up and down. “You’re gentry class, Miss. You wouldn’t be wanting the kind of work that needs doing.”

  “I am willing to do any work, good sir. You will not find me laggard in any duty.”

  “We’re not hiring,” he said flatly. “You’re welcome to hire a room till you find the work you want.”

  Kate lifted her valise. “
I thank you, but that is beyond my funds. Would you know of any shopkeepers who need assistance? I can clerk as well as many other duties.”

  He listed a few and gave her directions, “although you’ll not get lost in the new town. Follow the coach road. That will take you to the remains of the old village on the cliff. Sea took it, some years back. Don’t be walking along the cliff,” he warned, as if she were a tourist. “The sea eats away at the cliffs. The edge will crumple away with you.”

  “And will I find another inn there, where the village once was?”

  Mouth pursed, the innkeeper eyed her then shook his head. “Not one I would recommend to a lady.”

  Kate heard similar refusals, firm but polite, for the rest of the afternoon. Her valise weighed heavier and heavier, and her hand cramped from gripping it. After exhausting the good host’s list, she began to ask in every shop for work. Her options growing short and the sun sinking toward the horizon, she wiggled information about the inn from a haberdasher. Following his directions, she walked away from the heart of the new town, along an old road that crossed the headland proper, between harvested fields and open pastures, with tangled hedges for windbreaks. She passed cottages crowded around an old oak twisted by the salt-stinging wind.

  Sunset had flamed the horizon when she reached the old inn. An old farmhouse, it stood sentinel against the empty fields and the rising heath and the greedy sea beyond.

  The land’s features merged in the twilight. A gust from the white-capped sea tore at her summer pelisse. Terns hovered in the deepening sky. They called to each other before seeking their roosts for the cold dark. One star twinkled overhead. Kate turned from the sea and stared at the farmhouse. An overgrown bush obscured the weathered sign. It swung in the wind, and she could not read the faded lettering until she was a few yards away.

  The Hawthorn Inn.

  This inn did not have the sparkling windows and fresh paint that announced the Black Boar’s reputation. In the fading light the sand-colored brick added to its drabness. Grime-clouded windows reduced the interior lamp-glow to a haze. Dead leaves and clots of mud littered the front steps. The door yielded to a touch, silent on its well-oiled hinges. The warmth in the dim hall kept her from fleeing. The weight of her valise added its persuasion that she should enter. And she could see the work that needed doing. Windows to wash. Flagstones to scrub. Paneled walls to dust. Spider webs to sweep.

  She ventured to the public room and wanted to open its windows to vent the accumulated odors of cooking and old fish and unwashed bodies. Yet Kate had encountered much worse on campaigns with her father. The fire burning merrily in the hearth heartened her. Those well-oiled hinges spoke of a good caretaker with a bit too much work. She walked to the long bar that was merely boards set onto upright casks.

  Neither her approach nor her request discomfited the tapster. He shifted his pipe and answered around it. “Mrs. Gilson’s the innkeeper. She does the hiring.”

  “Where may I find Mrs. Gilson?”

  “She’s in the kitchen. She can do with another pair of hands.” He cocked an eyebrow at her and added gruffly, “If you’re willing to work.”

  “I am, and I thank you, sir.”

  He puffed smoke. “Palmer’s my name. We don’t take to ‘sirs’ and ‘madams’ here.”

  Mrs. Gilson looked at her askance when Kate requested a job. Before the woman could utter the refusal Kate had heard all afternoon, she hurriedly said, “I am willing to work. I am not afraid of hard work, ma’am.”

  For some reason the woman smiled at her words. Her cherub cheeks glowed from her work by the hearth. “Why didn’t you try the Black Boar?”

  “I did.”

  “You’ll not be wanting to soil those lily-white hands.”

  “I will do whatever task you assign me, ma’am. When my father was on campaign in Portugal, I often cooked and cleaned for him.”

  “You mean that you told his batman what to do.”

  “No, ma’am. I cooked meals and scrubbed pots and kept the place clean when his batman wasn’t there—and that was often.”

  Mrs. Gilson’s black eyes narrowed. “Where’s your father now? And your mother?”

  “I am an orphan, Mrs. Gilson. And I need employment.”

  “You’ll do what I tell you?” When Kate rashly agreed, the woman handed her an apron. “Then you can start now.”

  In the next few days Kate became grateful for small favors. Up at dawn, she was sometimes the last abed. Mrs. Gilson commanded, and she worked, whether in the kitchen or the scullery or the taproom or the chambers let to a few guests. She fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. She watched her lily-white hands roughen and redden from work. She grew tired from going up and down the steps several times in an hour.

  She remained grateful for the work.

  In ways she never considered she revealed her gentler class. For the first few days the tapster Mr. Palmer had to explain the men’s dialect to her. She quickly discovered that compliments and thanks from army officers were the same as those from fishermen and farmers, few in number until their bellies were full. Her polished speech caused many a laugh. Mrs. Gilson claimed that Kate’s day dresses were too fine for work; Kate bought woolens with coins she now counted dear. She did not often have time for chats with the inn’s two other employees, the maid Magsie and the ostler Tom. Mrs. Gilson expected work from her new maid, and Kate needed the means to support herself over the next few months. Her few fanciful thoughts about a blue-eyed knight riding to her rescue were consigned to her dreams.

  With an extra maid for the work, Mrs. Gilson decided to scrub the inn top to bottom. After days of washing windows, re-stuffing mattresses, waxing oak, and polishing brass, Kate was scouring the flagstones when she heard the voice that had haunted her for a week.

  “That comely shape never belonged to Martha Gilson.”

  She froze. Coincidence surely had not brought Anthony Farraday to the Hawthorn Inn. She couldn’t believe it. She refused to believe it. She scraped her brush harder on the flagstones. It wasn’t Anthony Farraday. It couldn’t be.

  He chuckled. “Stubborn? Or shy? What other surprises did Mrs. Gilson add while I was away?”

  Six steps—she counted them—then the man stopped just beyond the reach of her scrub-brush. Straw from the stable clung to his gleaming boots. She scowled. Her knees ached after long hours on the flagstones. The hall ran the width of the inn, and she did not want to scrub it again. “A gentleman does not say such things, sir, and I will thank you to scrape your boots before you traipse more dirt over my clean floor.”

  “A temper as well,” the man drawled in Anthony Farraday’s voice. “Where did Mrs. Gilson find such a feisty package?”

  Tone and words implied that she was a loose baggage. Kate stopped in mid-sweep with her brush. She sat on her heels. With a shaking arm she swiped straggling hair out of her face. She intended a sharp set-down for his rudeness.

  He inhaled sharply. “You’re the runaway.”

  She looked up a great height to the square-cut face memorable only for his vivid eyes. Even in the dark hallway Anthony Farraday’s eyes were as blue as the limitless heavens. Her heart sank then leapt to faster life.

  Providence had played an ironic trick. It had so worked circumstances that here only had she found employment. Then it dropped Anthony Farraday here and laughed up its sleeve by reuniting them when she was grimy and haggish. She wanted to hide and couldn’t. She dropped the brush into the bucket and twisted her reddened hands into her soiled apron.

  He squatted to peer more closely. “It is you,” he whispered. “You did escape? Or did the man chasing you send you here as punishment?”

  “How did you—?” The words echoed along the hall. She stopped, caught her breath, then pitched her voice as low as his. “I came here from Ipswich on the mail coach. Mrs. Gilson was kind enough to hire me when no one else would.”

  “As her scullery maid?” He plucked her hands from the shielding cl
oth.

  Kate flushed as he examined them. The strong soap had reddened them, the sharp flagstones had scraped them, and a week of such work had ruined them.

  He looked up, those blue eyes inches from hers. “This work is too hard for you.”

  His concern unfurled warm pleasure in her stomach. For too long no one had cared about her. Yet five minutes on a street in Ipswich did not turn a stranger into a friend. She tugged her hands free. “This is honest work, Major Farraday.”

  Those blue eyes narrowed. He shot a glance down the hall, toward the public room and the kitchen. “Don’t use my rank here. I’m Mr. Farraday. Only Mr. Farraday. Look, I must trust you. Can we meet somewhere away from the inn?”

  “I do not understand.”

  “We need to meet privately so I can explain. Just—promise to call me ‘Mr. Farraday’.”

  His vehement whisper enticed her agreement. Only after she nodded and received the reward of his smile did she consider that any subterfuge might add to her troubles. She already bore a double-yoked burden, and the Hawthorn Inn had had its unexpected thorns.

  Anthony Farraday had taken her nod for more than her willing silence about his military rank. “Do you know the path that follows the cliff? And the cairn? Meet me there. Tonight, after moonrise.”

  “Mrs. Gilson requires that I serve the dinner. And I must help in the scullery."

  “Come after everyone’s abed. I’ll wait beside the cairn for you.”

  He stood abruptly. Kate retrieved her scrub-brush. Yet he didn’t move. She looked up, once again aware of her grime next to his polish.

  “You’ll come?”

  “Yes, Mr. Farraday.”

  He nodded then turned on his heel with field-ground precision. His walk to the stairs revealed a limp that hobbled one leg. And Kate realized that he was Mrs. Gilson’s absentee lodger, gone for ten days. The maid Magsie had explained that Mr. Farraday walked the sands to help his recovery from a riding accident. A riding accident that was more likely a war injury. She remembered Lord Hargreaves in his regimentals and their talk of spies.