Captain Harry Beck made his deliberate way up the steep, narrow street of Bocka Morrow in a vain attempt to escape the chilly, cheerless confines of his rooms at Castle Keyvnor and the endless childish bickering of his siblings. Harry was too weary for childishness—the omnipresent ache of his leg was a constant reminder that he’d left his childhood far behind.
He’d come out with the vague aim of reacquainting himself with the village where he had once spent a year under the tutelage of the Reverend Mr. Teague.
But no one spoke to him. Nary a soul.
He ought not to have worn his uniform, of course. Cornwall was a strange place, full of open secrets, covert alliances and unspoken agreements, and after twelve years, he was a stranger to them—a stranger in a navy uniform that made him not only conspicuous, but a damned object of derision.
He ought not have come to Cornwall at all. But his father the marquess had insisted upon his company. And when his father insisted, Harry—always the dutiful son—complied.
So here he was, in his weather-beaten blue sea coat, being shunned.
He turned at some slight sound to find two women in close conversation—a mother and daughter, he surmised—coming up the cobbles behind him. But no sooner had he raised his hat in polite greeting, than the older woman hauled to larboard up a side lane, towing the younger woman after her like a ship’s boat on a loose painter.
But the younger woman—a girl as tall and lathy as a bowsprit—was looking at him over her shoulder with a strangely stunned look on her expressive face, a hint of a hopeful smile on her wide lips. As if he weren’t a pariah. As if he were something altogether finer.
Nessa. Nessa Teague.
The name fell into his mind, rippling through his memory like a clear polished stone plunked into a well. Nessa Teague, the Reverend Schoolmaster Teague’s daughter. The lass who had let him copy her Latin grammar and trigonometric projection exercises. The lass whose laugh had made him feel more at home in a stranger’s household, whose rambles and explorations in the sailing dory in the bay had filled his days with sunshine and adventure. She had one of those distinctly Cornish faces—all wide, pixie-dashed blue eyes under dark, uncompromising brows. How could he ever have forgotten?
She raised her hand as if she would greet him. But she was already gone, towed around a corner and out of sight behind the barge of her mother, leaving Harry to make his way to the Crown & Anchor, a low public house along the quay, in a slightly more hopeful state of mind, if not of body.
Damn, but his leg ached something fierce.
It had been over six months since the cutting end of a French chain-shot had ripped through the mizzenmast of his frigate and wrecked its bloody way through his thigh. The resulting broken bone had been nigh unto healed when he’d taken a second peppering of canister shot in action a month ago, weakening the break, forcing him to be put ashore and sent home to Suffolk to convalesce. Within a day, Harry had thought he would go mad with inaction.
“Come with me to Cornwall,” his father had suggested when Harry had clawed his stiff, painful way downwind to his father’s library on his first morning home. “The trip will take your mind from your unpleasantness.”
Unpleasantness. What a ridiculous euphemism for the injury that had damn near cost him his life, not to mention his leg. Or the years of service that had cost him his youth. Or any of the hardships he had endured in the name of family, King and country.
But his father was right—he did need some temporary occupation to take his mind off his injury. So he had agreed to accompany his family, complete with his brothers—Anthony, the Viscount Redgrave and their father’s heir, and Michael, the spare’s spare—as well as his younger sister, Charlotte, to Castle Keyvnor where they had come to hear the will of Harry’s late great uncle, the Earl of Banfield.
But Harry had no desire to be closeted away in the allegedly haunted and frankly gloomy castle where the Banfield will could have no interest or advantage to him—the dead earl not being known for leaving naval preferments or promotions to junior relations. And after twelve long years’ absence at sea, during which he had received only intermittent letters from his family, and almost none from his brothers, Harry hardly knew them. They were all but strangers.
Which was why he found himself entering the shadowy confines of the public house well before noon. The place still held the dank salt stink of last night’s spilled ale, but at least it wasn’t crowded. A couple of drovers gulped down brown ale for elevenses, while a lone fisherman slouched in the corner—a fisherman who wasn’t a fisherman at all.
He was Captain Matthew Kent of the Royal Navy, whom Harry had known for years, serving together as lieutenants in one ship or another. “Kent! What are you doing here?”
“God’s balls,” Kent griped under his breath as he hunched over a tankard. “Are you trying to get me killed? Don’t come near me in that bloody uniform.”
Instantly on his guard, Harry dropped his voice. “Surely you exaggerate. This is Cornwall, not Copenhagen.”
“Gutted and left out to bleach like a bleeding pilchard,” Kent avowed. “It’s still a bloody battle, Becks.” He took a long, seemingly disinterested draw from his tankard. “Heave to and stand off a bit, and tell me what in hell you’re doing in this reeking place.”
Harry moved off a pace or two and angled his shoulders as if he were watching the harbor out the window. “Family business.”
Kent sent him a long look out of the corner of his eye. “Family business being the trade?”
The “trade” being a euphemism for smuggling—a highly profitable and entirely illegal endeavor that encompassed most of the coast and nearly all of the local residents. “No, an inheritance that may have some advantage for my father. But what of the trade? It’s been going on here for years—a little brandy and a little lace, and everyone in the village lives a little better.” Harry was too much of a pragmatist to let a little illegal activity get under his skin.
“Brandy and lace is one thing,” Kent growled. “Secrets and munitions are entirely another.”
Harry felt a cold fury slide under his skin and settle into his chest like an icy fog. Secrets and munitions were another thing entirely—secrets and munitions were treason. “Well, damn my eyes. From any other man, I might not believe it to be true.”
Kent shrugged off the complimentary assessment of his character with a weary sort of skepticism. “The Admiralty have traced a long-standing leak in their bilge wash of information to this coast. I’ve been here nearly seven months and narrowed it to this particular village.” He shied another sharp look around the room to make sure they were not being observed. “Where are you staying?”
“Castle Keyvnor.” It was a dark, medieval hulk that loomed from the cliffs above the village like a glowering troll. After years spent in dank, dark ships, the castle held little of the terror that seemed to frighten some of the other, more susceptible guests, but still, Harry wouldn’t mind an excuse to get out.
“I don’t think there’s any smuggling up there—their caves are old, but locked and empty,” Kent mused. “How well do you know the village?”
“Not well. I spent some time here many years ago, taking tuition from the local vicar before I took my place as a midshipman.” His father had chosen the Reverend Teague to tutor Harry—who had not been the best of schoolroom students—on the advice of his cousin the late Earl Banfield.
“You’ve been away too long.”
“Too long for what?” Harry asked. “There must be a reason you’re out of uniform and reeking like a haddock.”
“Not now. Not here.” Kent didn’t meet his eye, but kept his gaze resolutely out the window even as he spoke in a voice too low for the drovers to hear. “But I could use your help.”
A fist of excitement landed a well-aimed blow to Harry’s mid-beam. This was what he craved the way a sot wanted rum—purpose. “How?”
“There’s a fête of sorts in a few days—the Feast of Saint Allan. Allantide they call it hereabouts.”
Harry vaguely remembered the festival from his youth—a week of celebration in the name of a local saint that culminated in bonfires at All Hallows’ Eve, followed by the far less pagan counterpoint of the Christian All Saints’ Day. Such diversions had been one of the things he had missed most when he had been sent off to the harsher life at sea—a memory from what now seemed a carefree, golden youth. “Aye?”
“Come make merry and make yourself known, casual-like. Make free to buy a pint or two and invite folk to a bit of talk.”
“Which folk?”
“Any and all—squires to squid rakers.”
“And you?”
“I’ll find you.” Kent tipped up his tankard. “Casual-like. But for shite’s sake, don’t wear that damned blue coat.”
Harry wanted to object—he rather liked the damned old salt-stained sea coat. He was uncomfortable not wearing it. It was his armor and shield—his very identity. Take him out of his uniform coat and he was just another invalid—worthless and without a profession.
But Kent was just like him—a navy man born and bred. And Matthew Kent wouldn’t ask such a thing of him unless it were bloody-well important. “Aye,” he finally agreed.
It was not the first time Harry and Kent had navigated the treacherous waters between the Devil and the deep blue sea. And it wasn’t like to be the last.
Kent knocked back the last of his bitters and rose. “And Becks?”
“Aye?”
“You’re a sight for damned sore eyes.”