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THEY LEFT US A POTTERY chamber pot, a loaf of bread, a pitcher of small beer and some blankets, remarkably clean ones smelling of lavender. I wondered why they should fritter such luxuries on us, but perhaps Cawnton meant it when he said he was a straight dealer. I was glad of the chamber pot, and Tom turned his back like a gentleman and let me go first. I could have done with some water to wash with as well.
At least I had a comb. I found my little necessaire and emptied it. Together Tom and I examined the little silver fruit knife and agreed I should take charge of it in case they searched him once more. I put it at the top of my stocking, under my garter, where it would be easier to get hold of should they tie us up again. There was also a mirror, a comb, a needle, thread, and my keys.
For something to do, I took all my hairpins out and combed my hair. It was unruly at the best of times, now it was so tangled it would take me a long time to put it to rights.
Tom watched, fascinated. “How can you think of your appearance at a time like this?”
“It’s something to do. In any case, I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me at my worst. I want to face them with as much pride as I can muster. And that includes tidy hair.” I drew the comb through the only smooth bit I had managed to make so far.
“You have lovely hair,” said Tom. “I always thought so.”
I looked at him, surprised at the unexpected compliment, but he began to examine the walls of the room, looking for peepholes or weak spots, running his hands over them.
I got on with my hair and Tom examined the room. He came back and sat down glumly by my side. “If we knew where we were, we might stand a sporting chance. We should try to find that out, first. I say, Rose.”
“Yes?” I stopped combing.
“Do you remember when we were children, and you used to sit on my shoulders so we could reach the best apples?”
“Yes.” I began to get his drift.
“Do you think you could do it now? You might be able to see out of one of those chinks up there, where the light is coming from?”
I looked up. It was difficult to judge, but it might be possible. “Let’s try.”
So Tom hunkered down, I sat on his shoulders, after wrapping my skirts around my legs both for modesty, and so Tom could see. Slowly, he stood upright, and he gave a quiet whoop of triumph. “Come on, then.” He walked slowly towards the chinks of light. I held tight until we were there, and then, using the wall to support myself, I stretched up as far as I could.
But it was no use. The light was still far above my head, and stretch as I might, I couldn’t reach it. It was so frustrating. “I’d need to be an acrobat and stand on your shoulders,” I whispered down to Tom.
“You don’t feel you could stand?” he asked eagerly.
“No. If I fell, it would make such a noise they’d come in, and we don’t want to antagonise them. Not yet, anyway.”
He had to see the sense in that. It was one thing being brave but quite another to carry bravery to the point of stupidity. He knelt down and let me off. I stumbled when I stood, and Tom put out his arms to catch me, as he had so often before, but this time it was different.
Instead of releasing me when I regained my balance, he drew me to him and kissed me—not a friendly kiss. It held a passion I’d not been aware of in him before. His tongue probed at my lips and I almost opened, but it felt wrong. It wasn’t Richard.
Appalled, I pushed him away. He opened his eyes and stared at me, his eyes filled with horror. “Oh, Rose, I’m sorry, I never meant—oh, God.” He turned away, his hand to his head, and I realised he had let something slip, something he’d never meant me to see.
“Oh, Tom, no! Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Before you went away, you mean?” He turned back to me, but I couldn’t see his face properly in the gloom, so I moved closer. He made an instinctive gesture, not wanting me to come close, but I took his hand and we sat. He wouldn’t look at me. He stared at the floor. “I didn’t know myself. It was only when you were away, and I missed you so much I realised I felt more for you than mere friendship, and then you came back betrothed—it was all so quick, maybe you hadn’t thought it through, I’d give you time. I don’t know,” he continued, miserably staring at the planked floor. “And then I saw him, your betrothed, and I knew I couldn’t compete with all that, so I decided to keep it to myself.”
“Oh, Tom, if this had been two years ago, a year ago even, I would have been so pleased.” He looked up at me, hope in his eyes. It broke my heart.
I couldn’t let him think there was any hope. I had to explain. I tried to keep my voice steady. I thought if I started to cry he might too. “Although I never loved you in that way, I was always fond of you. We could have had a successful partnership. Love grows between people who marry for other reasons. We’ve seen it.” I kept watching him, willing the misery I saw in his eyes to fade. “But when I met Richard my world changed. Like you, I didn’t think I had a hope. You never saw Julia Cartwright, did you?” He shook his head dumbly. “She was so perfect—beautiful, perfectly dressed, rich. I never had a chance, or so I thought. But she turned out to be empty inside and she would have driven Richard mad within a twelvemonth. Still, I tried hard not to think of him until the accident. Then I had no time to think properly, you see, and when he was hauled out of that coach, covered with blood, I thought he might die. All I could think of was to stop the flow and try to save him.”
I paused, glancing away, but I forced myself to meet Tom’s eyes again. “Then he opened his eyes and looked at me. He said later he fell in love with me the first time he saw me, but I didn’t fall for him until that moment.” I was quiet then, as I thought of that moment, my despair, my stoical promise to myself to put those thoughts away, and I could imagine how Tom felt—except it probably hadn’t been as cataclysmic with him.
“You’re in love?” Tom asked, despair etching his voice. “He loves you?”
“Yes. It made me do some stupid things, but here I am, and if we get out of this, next week I’ll be Lady Strang, sailing the high seas.”
Tom stared at me, puzzled. At least it had made him forget his melancholy. I forced a smile. “He has a yacht, silly.”
His face cleared. “Oh, Rose, are you sure he’s for you? He’s from another world you might not like. You belong here, in Devonshire.”
“With the smugglers?” I said scornfully. “No, I belong with him now. Your mother said much the same thing when she first met him, you know, then she spoke with Martha. I let her see a side of him he doesn’t usually let people see.”
“My mother still has her doubts. Rose, he could hurt you. He’s done some things in the past which I don’t think you’d quite like.”
“I know. I read all about them, and he’s told me some of the less disreputable episodes himself. Many of them were exaggerated, but he never excuses himself, or says he had a lot to contend with.”
“Like a privileged life, women throwing themselves at him?”
I heard his bitter tone, but I smiled. “No, Tom, like having a brother so close he’s almost you, and then seeing him leave for more than ten years, disgraced. Richard was left to bear the whole scandal on his own. That scandal could have broken him, and did make him try to outdo Gervase in outrageous behaviour. But we all grow up one day. He told me he’d done that just before he met me. He was ready for me when I arrived, although he didn’t know it.”
“Do you know,” said Tom thoughtfully, “there’s something queer about all that. Why should Mr. Kerre’s elopement have caused so much disgrace? Ten years’ worth?”
I frowned, and tried to smooth my hair back. It still hung loose, and was beginning to tangle again. “There is something more, but I can’t tell you, Tom. It was told me in confidence, and it’s not my secret to tell.”
He nodded. “Yes, I thought as much. I won’t pry. You know what you’ve told me? About falling in love?”
“Yes.” I began to pin my hair back up into place again, as best I could without a mirror.
“Are you sure it isn’t infatuation? Are you sure it won’t last six months, and then you’ll find yourself with a husband you hardly know, who might use you terribly?”
“I know I love him now,” I said, despite my mouth full of hairpins, “and I like him, too.” I put the last pins in place. “He keeps his promises, he’s loyal to his friends, good to his servants, and he will make the best kind of husband. On the other side, he has a terrible temper, mostly under control, he doesn’t suffer fools at all and he has a disinclination to let anyone into his life, even his parents. Only two people know him properly—Gervase and myself. He seems unable to let anyone else in.” I found it helped to talk about Richard, think about the good things in my life. When I thought ahead there was only a black void. I felt, somewhere deep inside, we weren’t meant to get out of this alive.
“It must have been lonely for him,” said Tom sardonically.
Having let his guard down so disastrously, we spent a long time trying to get back to normal, as much as we could in this place, but we achieved it by the end of the day. We talked about our childhood, and went over again any plans we might have to get out of this place unhurt.
Tom was every inch a squire’s son. His sense of obligation was absolute and his desire for the status quo never to change as entrenched as any other countryman’s. The changes in our lives would affect him, too, even if only that he had grander neighbours, but that in itself would bring change to our part of Devonshire. Perhaps his desire to keep everything normal persuaded him to try to keep one thing normal—our relationship. But he couldn’t have that. Tom would have to live with it. I hoped it was just a passing fancy, that he’d find someone to care for one day, but I’d always been sure it wouldn’t be me. I didn’t think I was wrong now. Tom hated change, and I suspected his impulse to keep me had something to do with that. I’d have accepted him gladly, though, had I not met someone else, and I was sure we’d have had a good and productive life together, but I couldn’t be sorry now.
We ate the bread and drank the beer, and when the light faded, wrapped ourselves in the blankets and tried to sleep, no nearer a solution than when we had first been brought here. I knew Sir George Skerrit and Richard would do everything they could to find us. I prayed it would be soon.
In the morning, Tom’s headache had gone, and he seemed none the worse for the bump. Someone brought us bread, beer and cheese, and dealt with the chamber pot, and when I asked for it, they brought some water in a bowl. I sacrificed one of my petticoats to make a washcloth and towel, and we managed well, considering our miserable situation. I helped Tom rub away some of the thick crust of blood on his head after we’d washed ourselves. Underneath, it wasn’t a large wound, and was beginning to heal, which put my mind at ease about that at least.
They left us to ourselves all day. With the chinks in the planking anyone could have been listening and watching, so there was no guarantee we were truly alone. The only way we had any privacy was to get close and whisper, and then they would know we were plotting. So we talked the day away in useless chatter, and the occasional murmur. I was glad I wasn’t here alone. I would have given way to despair, but having Tom here meant I had to put up a front of bravery. But I was sorry he was in this mess with me. If he could have got away he might have got help sooner. That went for me, too, but there’d been no chance.
No one came that day, and we were left to manage the night as best we might. It wasn’t cold in that little room, so we managed to sleep well enough again, but now the excitement and terror had diluted, anxiety surfaced once again. I thought I would never sleep, going over in my mind what we could do, what they would do to us, if we’d ever be allowed to leave. There was a heavily armed man left outside the door at all times, and for all we knew, another stationed where we couldn’t see him.
In a deliberate attempt to soothe my agitation, I mentally went over the night Richard and I had spent together. At least we’d had that. I fell asleep as I had done that night, imaginary arms around me, holding me safe.
It was light when we woke up again, as light as it got in that little chamber. When the man came we asked him for light, but he didn’t reply, and we didn’t get it. Perhaps they thought we might try to set fire to the little room, an action I would have strenuously resisted, as it would be tantamount to suicide.
We ate and washed in the fresh water they brought us, and then sat down on the floor again. “What day is it?”
“We’ve slept twice,” Tom replied. “It must be Thursday.”
“It’s my wedding in a week. If I last that long.”
Tom reached over and patted my hand. “Of course you’ll be there. And I’ll be there to dance with you.”
I rested my chin on my knees. “We’re supposed to go for a rehearsal on Saturday,”
“That might be doubtful now,” Tom said with the vestige of a grin. “But you might make the more important appointment.”
“Richard will kill them,” I told him in a conversational tone.
Tom stared at me in surprise and then laughed. “I know you love him, but really, Rose, what can your popinjay do against a vicious gang of smugglers?”
I didn’t want to go into specifics, to tell him about Thompson’s, so I held my tongue. And Tom hadn’t seen Richard fight off the two bullies in the village that day. He had no way of knowing Richard’s fighting prowess.
“I believe Cawnton,” Tom continued. “If it’s Thursday, the run takes place tomorrow night, and we’ll be free on Saturday. He seemed to know what he was about. There is one thing—” He bit off the rest of the sentence, but I couldn’t let him leave it at that.
“What? Tell me, Tom, I have a right to know.”
He bit his lip. “All right. It only occurred to me this morning. The thing is, Rose, we’ve seen Cawnton. We can identify him. Nobody has seen him before, except his most trusted men.”
I thought this over, digesting the uncomfortable implications. “But if he kills us, there’ll be the devil to pay. Richard will let him know he’ll be hunted down and executed when he tries to make terms.”
Tom could agree with that. “He doesn’t seem to be the sort of man who would let an insult pass. Even if he could do little himself, he’d make sure the authorities caught them.”
“An insult?” I echoed and only just remembered to lower my voice, so nobody could overhear us. “If I were taken from him after he’s let me so far in, it could kill him. It would destroy him as a person. He’d never trust anyone again, never let any tenderness in.” I would have cried, had I not been so angry. Not with Tom, but with the thought anyone should hurt Richard to that extent. I remembered what he had told me on that night we spent together; how I would be the last person he lost. I didn’t doubt him. My death would mean his death, too.
No one must know the power they had over Richard by holding me. I’d told Tom, but I don’t think he believed the half of it. I trusted Tom not to tell anyone, but no one else must know.
I wondered what they would do now, what would be the best course to take. “What would you be doing now, Tom, if you were in your father’s shoes?”
Tom had obviously been thinking along the same lines, because he answered me promptly. “I’d alert the authorities, such as they are, get a band of men together and begin to search. It seems the most sensible thing to do. I’ve been hoping they’ll find us, but I’ve heard nothing, and I’ve been listening.” So had I. “I still have no idea where we are, but they must be sure of us. I think we’re in one of those places they use to hide contraband, perhaps in a barn or a cottage.”
I thought hard, frowning. I saw the truth of it. “They won’t know that. They don’t know where we are. I wonder if I’ll get my ring back?”
“I doubt it. They won’t let a ruby like that go. They’ll probably show your family, but keep it. It could pay for a run or two on its own.”
“He said it took him some time to find it. He won’t want to let them have it.”
“I don’t think they’ll give him much choice.”
We had no way of telling the time; they had taken Tom’s watch and I hadn’t been carrying one, but it must have been an hour or two at least before the door opened and someone stood there, silhouetted in the dazzling light outside. It was someone well dressed, someone who stared at us for some time before he stepped inside and took the chair brought in for him. It was Mr. Norrice Terry.