“Nessa?” Tressa burst into their shared bedchamber well after one o’clock in the afternoon. “Nessa, he’s here.”
There was only one person Nessa could imagine as he—she had cried herself to sleep over him. But she also had not seen her sister all morning—when Nessa had awoken before dawn, Tressa’s side of the bed had been empty and cold. “Where have you been?”
“Not now.” Tressa dismissed her absence with an impatient wave. “Lord Harry is here. He’s come for you.”
“Come for me?” She had left him yesterday to escape his questions about the trade and had been taxing herself with how on earth she was to seek him out to do as her father bade. Tressa had none of her sister’s trepidation. “Come to call upon you! I heard him in at the door—Miss Teague, he asked for. But Papa has taken him into his book room and closed the door. It can only mean one thing!”
Nessa was not nearly so sanguine. “It can mean many things.” Harry was not above subterfuge and might have called to see her father, who had also been absent at breakfast—like Tressa’s bed, her father’s book room had been cold and empty.
“Hadn’t you better go down and find out?”
Nessa pushed aside the unease that sat like cold porridge in her belly and ventured down the creaking stairs to find the door to the book room closed. But if Harry was not above subterfuge, neither was she. She put her ear to the door.
“So, Lord Harry.” There was a pause where her father seemed to be settling himself behind his desk. “What brings you to our door after all these years?”
“It has been a long time since I was last here, hasn’t it?”
“Indeed. But you’ve been in Bocka Morrow some days now, for I understand you’re staying up at Castle Keyvnor?”
If Harry had not understood that there was little privacy in a village, he knew it now. “Yes, Reverend Teague. And I did speak to your daughter at the Allantide fête.”
“Nessa. Yes.” Her father paused as if gathering his thoughts. “Did you enjoy your sail the other day?”
To his credit—or to his experience with facing calmly irate fathers—Harry answered straightaway. “Yes, sir. My injury makes prolonged exercise difficult, but as a navy man I much prefer being out of doors. So the dory was a marvelous respite. I do so miss the sea.”
Nessa shifted to try and hear better, but the door creaked loudly under her weight.
“Come,” her father called. “Ah, Nessa. There you are,” he said in the same tone of mild surprise he used every time he saw her.
Harry stood at her entrance. “Good morning, Miss Teague.”
All her awkwardness returned at the mere sight of his overwhelming handsomeness—Nessa made a graceless curtsey. “Good morning, Captain Beck.”
He rewarded her with a quick flash of a smile. “I had come to ask if I might borrow your sailing dory this afternoon. You were kind enough to indulge an invalid navy man yesterday, but I dare not trespass upon your time again today.”
“Oh, Nessa will be happy to take you out,” he father answered. “She has nothing better to do.”
This was her father making sure that she had not forgot what she was supposed to do—keep Harry “out of the way”. Still, her father’s assertion that she had nothing better to do rankled. As did the question of why he wanted Harry out of the way.
“There is some very interesting scenery to the south, very good sailing, that will interest Lord Harry.” Her father was already waving them off and turning back to his books. Already dismissing Nessa from his mind. “There’s a good girl.”
Well then. “I’ll just get my cloak.”
Harry followed her out into the corridor and touched her elbow, as if he were about to speak, when Cods the ill-timed curate clomped into the passage. After their last exchange, Nessa was still in no mood for pleasantries. Apparently, neither was Cods—he ignored her.
“Good morning, Lord Henry. We have not been properly introduced”—this was accompanied by a shifting glance at her—“but I am James Coddington, curate of the parish.”
Despite the breach of civility in introducing himself to a man of superior rank and standing, Cods was met with a polite and immediate bow from Harry. “Mr. Coddington. Good morning.”
“It’s Captain Beck, actually, Mr. Coddington,” Nessa corrected, if for no other reason than she was tired of being ignored or taken for granted.
Cods continued to ignore her, focusing all his condescension on Harry. “It must have been you I happened to see as I made my way from an ailing parishioner’s cottage on the Gannett farmstead last night, my lord. I hope you had a pleasant dinner there?”
If Nessa had not realized Cods had a cruel streak, she knew it now by the blistering ache that blossomed in her chest—she had so conveniently forgotten Elowen Gannett and her claim on Harry. Harry’s kisses had made her forget.
“Indeed, sir.” Harry had none of her embarrassment. “Very pleasant. I hope your work for the parish does not often take you away from the church and manse at inhospitable hours?”
“I go where I am bid upon the Lord’s work,” Cods said, eager to impress his piety upon a potential patron—perhaps he had his eye upon a living in the Marquess of Halesworth’s gift.
“How very dedicated.”
Cods barely managed not to preen. “One does one’s best.”
“Indeed.” Harry politely returned his attention to Nessa. “Shall we, Miss Teague?”
There was nothing for it but to allow Harry to take her elbow and steer her not down through the village toward the quay, but in the opposite direction—out through the manse’s orchard and into the wood beyond.
As soon as they were well beyond sight of the house, he came characteristically straight to his point. “First, I should like to first apologize to you. For yesterday. For taking liberties that were not mine to take.”
She was tired of ploys and stratagems and unspoken half-truths. “They may not have been yours to take, Harry, but they were mine to give.”
“Because your father asked you to?”
“No.” She spoke before she could think better of it. Before her father’s will could impose itself upon her one heart’s desire. “I went sailing with you yesterday because I wanted to. For myself, alone.”
He was still wary. “And now?”
Heat and fear built up like hot, unshed tears in her throat. “I don’t know.” She gave him the uncomfortable truth. “I can’t tell if you want to be with me because you like me or if you’re trying to find out more about the trade.”
“Nessa.” He drew close and took hold of her arms. So close she had to tilt her head up to look at him. So close he might have kissed her, right there in the dappled orchard.
Except that he didn’t.
“Nessa.” He touched the side of her face. “I need to tell you the truth.”
She liked him all the more for respecting her enough to tell her the truth—unlike everyone else around her. Even if it made her stomach knot up into a hot, miserable ball.
“I had thought I could do this without involving you.” He shook his head as his voice trailed away. “But I saw your face when your father bid you accompany me. I could see the hurt in your eyes. The betrayal.”
Nessa felt as if her whole body, every piece of skin, every muscle and sinew and organ went still. “No.” She had to make him understand. “It was not you, but the task—he asked me to keep you out of the way, away from the free trade.”
“He suspects me—with good reason.” Harry held her upper arms, steadying her, as if for a blow. “The truth is, I have been tasked by the Admiralty with investigating the free traders, and finding out exactly who is involved—”
“Harry, everyone is.” Surely he knew this. Surely by now, he understood. “The whole village—everyone takes shares in the cargoes.”
The hard look in his eyes stopped her breath. “Does everyone take a share in treason?”
Her hands went cold with shock. “No.” She tried to pull her hands away.
He held on. “More than just French brandy, lace and wine come into Bocka Morrow’s caves, Nessa. Someone in this village has been sending and receiving information and more from the French. Treating with the enemy. And I think that someone is your father.”
“No.” Her knees knocked hard together as if the ground had shifted under her feet. She felt upended and wrong, as if the world could not possibly right itself. “Why would you think that?”
But Nessa was already casting her mind back through the years, when the whole Teague family, including her mother and sisters, and the boys from the school, had all played their part and helped move cargoes as a way to augment her father’s small income from the church living and the school. She was already remembering the reasoning her father had employed to justify breaking the law—it had always been that way. She tallied the effort they had spent expanding the cellars beneath the manse so they might store more of the cargo.
She saw through fresh eyes each and every transgression.
She had turned her eyes from it—she had insulated herself with her wild imaginings and fairy tale-like hopes that Lord Harry Beck would come back and sweep her off her feet and take her away from it all.
And he had come back, only now he was going to sweep the village clean.
“He sent word to Squire Gannett, last night, Nessa. And he wanted you to take me south today, away from whatever is supposed to be going on.”
Nessa pushed aside the thin blade of jealousy that slid under her skin at the mere mention of the Gannett name. She turned a deaf ear to the reminder that as far as the village was concerned, Elowen Gannett and Harry were betrothed. And she completely ignored the fact that she had no idea where either her father or her sister had been last night. “He often goes out into the parish, when he is called.”
“Does he? Or does he go to move sacks of grain and flour in the Gannett’s caves? Grain imported from France. Enough to supply several bakeries.”
“How has that anything to do with my father?” Nessa did not understand. “And the cost of bread is cheaper here than in France.” She still read the newspapers, even if she wasn’t searching for mention of Harry.
“Exactly. And the sacks were old—they had been piling up there for months.”
“But what has it to do with my father?”
“I asked myself the same questions. Elowen Gannett didn’t know why the flour was being stored in her cave either. But she knew it had been put there, unloaded not by her father’s usual crew, but by boys from your father’s school.”
The realization was like a hard slap to her face—full of burning, painful shame and confusion. She didn’t want to see the truth of Harry’s assumptions or acknowledge that it might be possible—her father, the Reverend Teague, the Vicar of Saint David’s Church and pillar of local society, might be a traitor.