“Devil take it, no.” The denial was out of Harry’s mouth before Miss Gannettt’s high, excited voice had faded from hearing. And then there was silence—ominous silence as the crowd of men drew back as one.
“You sayin’ you din’t pick my girl’s apple?” The words fell from the squire’s lips like stones.
“No.” Harry straightened his spine, consciously taking the stance he adopted on the quarterdeck of a ship—head high, eyes blazing. “I am not disputing my actions, only your very kind daughter’s interpretation of them. I meant no disrespect—I mean none now—but I did not mean to offer marriage.”
“Everyone knows what picking an Allantide apple means.” The squire was adamant.
“Not everyone.” Harry didn’t. Or if he once had, he’d forgotten. Another casualty of living in harm’s way for twelve long years—his memories were too crowded with dangerous episodes to admit more than a glimpse or two at the golden, tranquil years he’d had before.
Funny that his only memory of Allantide had been of solemn, earnest Nessa.
“Elly sez yer good as engaged, means yer engaged.” The squire jutted his bulldog jaw close to Harry’s. “If’n I decide to give mine approval.”
Harry most devoutly hoped the squire would not give his approval. And since Harry was not the sort of man to simply sit and wait for the squire to withhold his approval, he began immediately to work to bring about such a profitable conclusion, though Harry wasn’t one to lie, or act dishonorably, or allow himself to utter unkind things about the lady—who seemed to be taking his conversation with her father quite placidly, as if she had no doubt of their marriage coming to pass. “My father’s approval would also be necessary.”
It was not quite a lie—although Harry was only a spare son and, therefore, of lesser importance, he doubted his father would delight in allying himself with this blunt-spoken, potentially traitorous, country squire.
Who eyed Harry with the same animal inspection he might give his prized pig. “We’ll see about that.”
Harry promptly changed tack. “I don’t suppose you’ll want a crippled younger son without any influence or career prospects as a future son-in-law. I’ve done with the navy, you see.” He held up the cane. “Invalided out. Nothing to do now but drink my way across the countryside.” He smiled encouragingly to the fellow manning the cider tap.
“Don’t want no drunk as mine son-in-law.” The squire cast a quelling eye over both Harry and the tap man.
“No,” Harry agreed cheerfully. “It seems no one does.”
At that, the squire took up his daughter’s arm and hustled her away like a prize heifer—or perhaps something more delicate, like a tender veal calf—and the squire’s cronies suddenly found other things that required their attention, carefully taking the cider keg with them.
Pretend drunkenness had its drawbacks as well as its benefits.
Harry took up his cane and wandered indirectly in Matthew Kent’s direction, beneath the shelter of a huge beech tree shading the sloping town common.
“You seem to be having an interesting morning,” Kent observed when Harry moored up a few feet away from him against the stone fence ringing the common.
“Aye,” Harry answered. “I seem to have shoaled myself rather badly on this rock coast of yours.”
“Have a glass of ale and tell me your tale of woe.”
“Good man.” Harry accepted the pint Kent handed him. “It seems I’ve gone and gotten myself engaged, or some fool thing, without rightly knowing how.”
“Well, if you don’t know how it’s done—” Kent’s mouth twisted up in a wry smile. “But let me be the first to wish you happy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t possibly marry the girl. I didn’t offer for her—I don’t even know her. It’s some fool thing to do with the apples—Allan apples. I’d forgotten.”
“You’ve been away too long,” Kent repeated.
“Aye.” In more ways than he knew.
“So who’s the lucky lass?” Kent asked between sips at his own tankard. “Bound to be Nessa Teague, I reckon, or her alarmingly piquant sister.”
“Nessa Teague?” The point of something perilously close to alarm harpooned its way through his chest, propelling him to his feet. “Why would you say that?”
“Saw you talking to her,” Kent reasoned. “A family of only girls, opening a school to take in only boys. The vicar has to be mad. Or have something else in mind.” Kent squinted at the clergyman in question, who was holding forth next to the cake tent. “But if not one of the Teague sisters, then whom?”
“My intended? Miss Elowen Gannettt.”
Kent let out a low whistle that ended on a chuckle. “Should’ha warned you about that one. Gormless but lethal, that girl. A pigeon ripe for the plucking, our Elly.”
“Then why do I feel like the one who is in danger of being plucked?”
“Because you’re not stupid. What did you think of the squire?”
“He’s a blunt instrument,” was Harry’s opinion.
“I’d like you to find out more about him.” Kent’s gaze constantly roved over the assemblage, like a sailing master squinting his weather eye to the sky in expectation of rain.
Harry followed Kent’s example, keeping his eyes on the common, even with unease clawing its way up his throat. “Is there no one else who knows the village and countryside, not to mention the coast, better than I?”
“No one else is at present engaged to the squire’s daughter. You can be a blameless cipher coming round, asking your nosy questions for the purpose of the marriage settlements.”
Harry’s cravat strangled up as tight as a noose. “You can’t think that I’ll need to go so far as marriage settlements?”
“I hope not, for your sake.” Harry could hear the smile in Kent’s voice, even while he watched the common. “I don’t imagine your father, the marquess, will take kindly to the squire, and vice versa.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I am,” Kent agreed. “And I’ll enjoy it more when you find out everything you can about Squire Gannettt, his business and his friends.”
“You think he’s your traitor?”
“Don’t rightly know.” Kent shifted, checking that their conversation wasn’t being overheard. “And I don’t rightly know how the treason plays in with the smuggling. The problem is that everyone is in on the trade, from the squire up the coast, down to the dimwitted mute who lives below the dock, and back up to the vicar’s manse upon the village hill.”
“Surely not the vicar?” What sort of man of God would be mixed up in a smuggling ring?
“The Reverend Mr. Teague likes his brandy.”
True. Harry remembered the Reverend Teague retreating to his study for a medicinal snifter or two while his pupils had been meant to be conjugating their Latin and Greek verbs. Harry had always sought Nessa’s help, and once the work had been done, the two of them had bolted for the outdoors. “So what is to be done?”
“About the brandy? Nothing.”
“And the treason?”
“Reacquaint yourself with the countryside, make friends in the village and with the squire—at least as much as you can bear. You tend to the land while I tend to the sea. I’ve a lugger at the quay—I’m a pilchard fisherman.”
“How very Cornish.”
“Don’t let the quaintness blind you, Becks. It may look as pretty as a picture, but underneath all this whitewashed charm lie deadly serious secrets.” Kent stood and downed the last of his beer. “Mind your back.”