The Cornish Heiress Page 4

  As soon as she made the sign for All’s well and smiled at John, his trembling stopped and he sat down on a big chair reserved for him in the corner. Partridge shook his head. All the trouble had faded from John’s face. He was as happy as—as happy as a clam, and just about as sensible. It was too bad that Megaera’s emotional wounds could not be healed so easily. In one sense she was rid of Devoran, but in another she might never be rid of him.

  “What will you do now, Meg?” the doctor asked.

  She looked at him, much startled, wondering whether Edward could have told the doctor about the debts—Partridge was everyone’s confidant. Then she realized he was again gently suggesting that she should go away as he had recommended many times recently. No one knew that she couldn’t afford to leave Bolliet and might not even be able to continue to afford to live there. If her father had any idea of what he had signed all those years ago, he certainly had no recollection of it now. He would probably miss Edward. Megaera had never told him the truth. What good would it have done?

  “I can’t leave Papa,” she said. There was nothing Dr. Partridge could do for her, so there was no sense in telling him her troubles.

  “Don’t be silly, Meg,” Partridge said sharply. “There isn’t anything you can do for him that the servants can’t. And I‘ll look in twice a week as I always do. If he should take a turn for the worse, I would let you know. It’s no life for you here.”

  “He would miss me,” Megaera protested.

  “Whenever he happened to notice you weren’t there,” the doctor remarked dryly, “but since he probably wouldn’t remember the last time he saw you… You aren’t looking well, Meg. I’ve been worried about you for months.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said with a tired smile.

  Actually, Partridge might get what he wanted, if not the way he wanted it, she thought after the doctor left. She might have to leave Bolliet. There was not much left in the jewel box, and the interest was due at the end of the quarter. She went back to racking her brains for a new source of income, but she had been up and down that path many, many times. It was worn into ruts so deep that Megaera doubted she could see over them even if there were new fields to plow. She had hoped that Edward’s death might open a road that had been blocked before, but if one existed, she could not find it.

  In due course Edward was buried and Megaera was free to resume her normal occupations within the bounds of mourning. On the first day that it was proper for her to ride out, John made known to her that he would like to go up to the hut. He went there three or four times a year to air it, sweep out the dust, and make sure the place was watertight as well as to tend Goody’s grave. Megaera had tried to explain to him that he could bring the bits of furniture and crockery to Bolliet Manor and she would give him a room in which to keep his treasures, but John either could not or would not understand her. Perhaps the cottage was some kind of shrine to his mother.

  That was a new thing to worry about. If she could not stay at Bolliet, what would happen to John? Usually Megaera sent him to the cottage alone, but this day, with the odor of the funeral wreaths still cloying the air in the house she decided to ride up and see the condition of the place for herself. Perhaps if she were there she could explain to John about bringing his things home with him.

  Her mind was busy with trying to formulate a set of signs that would get her point across, when John entered the cottage. An instant later there was the soft gobbling, which was the only sound John could make, and a shot rang out, followed by a shriek of pain. Megaera slid from her horse, but there was no place immediately available to tie the creature. She dragged it forward to the doorway of the cottage, just in time to see John lift a man off the bed and throw him heavily to the floor. He was half stunned but still struggling to reach a weapon in his boot top when John put a foot on him.

  Fortunately John was near enough to the door for Megaera to reach him without dropping the reins. She signed Stop before both hand and leg were splintered. “You had better be perfectly still,” she said to the man. “John can and will kill you without hesitation.”

  “He attacked me,” the man groaned, “came into my house—”

  “It’s not your house,” Megaera interrupted coldly. “I know it’s John’s.”

  Technically, of course, it was her father’s house, but Megaera had no intention of identifying herself at the moment. As the man lay, it was impossible for him to see her. A quick glance around the cottage had told a clear tale. A bowl of dirty water and cloths with bloodstains on them bespoke an injury the man was afraid to have treated. The way he had struggled to reach his weapon and the fact that he had several in odd places about his person spoke of a criminal. Obviously he was a fugitive from justice.

  There were, of course, many reasons for evading the law, but Edward’s death and the raid on the smugglers’ hideout were prominent in Megaera’s mind. By now she knew that some of the smugglers had escaped. Naturally she associated this escaped criminal with the smugglers. She associated something else. Megaera had been through Edward’s possessions since his death and had found several interesting things—first, a list of names and places matched with quantities of different types of liquor, but there was also money, jewelry, and clothing that had been purchased quite recently. Since Edward had not had a penny from the estate and no one would lend to him or allow him to buy on credit, he had found a substantial source of income—and that source of income must have been the customers listed.

  John’s eyes flicked back and forth between the man he had subdued and his mistress, so that Megaera did not need to touch him again before she signed Tie him up. That caused some confusion. John knew tie up, but such an order had never been applied to a person. Megaera had to show him, hands crossed behind her back and then pointing to her ankles. She stepped back as soon as she was sure John understood, to find a place to hitch her horse. That did not take long, but Megaera did not reenter the cottage. She needed time to think.

  Before John’s slow mind came to grips with the fact that his mistress had not come back and he came stumbling out to seek her. Several decisions had been made. The first was that Megaera intended to transfer Edward’s source of income to the payment of the mortgages on Bolliet Manor if it was humanly possible. The second was that to do that, one had to avoid getting caught, not only by the Customs men but, also by the smugglers themselves who, if they discovered a weakness anywhere, were bound to exploit it to their own advantage. The third was that she would let the man go whether or not he could help her make contact with the smuggling ring. The chief of the gang had killed Edward, and Megaera was grateful.

  However, decisions two and three required permanent concealment of who she was. Since Megaera did not believe in honor among gentlemen—the only real examples she had had were Edward and her father—she certainly did not believe in honor among thieves. She expected no gratitude. Who had ever shown her any, except poor John, who was not a man and was too stupid to think for himself. What she did expect was that, if she let this man go and he guessed who she was, he would try to extort money from her for not turning him in to the law. Naturally the situation would become even more acute if he could help her embark on a career as a smuggler.

  A shadow fell over Megaera and she jumped, but it was only John. When he saw her look at him, he signed Done. Megaera bit her lip. She wanted to talk to the man but did not want him to see her. She was certainly not the only woman with red hair in the locality, but that characteristic would narrow the field enough to make identification possible. She looked up at John. Cover his eyes. Then come here, she signed, but had to show him how to make a blindfold out of a piece of cloth.

  In a few minutes John was out again. Megaera took a deep breath and stepped into the cottage. “You’re one of the escaped smugglers,” she said. “I don’t care,” she added as he shook his head vehemently. “It’s none of my business. I’ve no love for the law, and nothing against you.”

&nbs
p; As she spoke she looked the man over. His clothing, although bloodstained and dirty, had been of reasonably good quality and had a crude, flashy style to it. Megaera’s eyes widened. Was this the head of the gang? The man who had shot Edward?

  “Then why the hell did your dummy tie me up?” Black Bart whined. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”

  “You shot at him. Call that nothing?” Megaera countered. “You broke into his house.”

  “No one don’t live here. I been by a hundred times and it’s been empty. What harm did I do to take a lay down when I was hurt?”

  “No harm in that, maybe, but John doesn’t like people picking his lock and using his house without his say-so. When he came in, you shot at him too. Lucky you missed. Take more than a bullet to stop John—and you’d have been dead, the hard way. He’d tear you apart piece by piece. Then you tried to get at your other pistol. Why blame John for tying you up? It was the only reasonable thing to do.”

  “What’re you goin’ to do wif me?” he asked fearfully.

  “I told you—nothing. If you’re one of the smugglers and we can reach an agreement, you can stay here. If not, John will carry you a few miles away, take away those pistols of yours, and let you go. Either way we don’t turn you in—that I swear.”

  “Then why the wipe over my face?” The voice was less whining, but not any more pleasant.

  Megaera laughed. “Because I don’t want you to turn us in either.”

  “You! You’re a lady, ain’t you?”

  How could he have guessed that, Megaera wondered, and in the next moment realized it had to be her speech. She had tried to model her sentence structure on his, but her accent was different. Megaera’s mind whirled. She had gotten herself into bad trouble. Then suddenly the saw a path to safety. One group of servants spoke nearly with the same accent as their masters—gentlemen’s gentlemen and ladies’ maids. She laughed again.

  “Sure, I speak pretty so I’m a lady, am I? You remember that, that I’m a lady. John doesn’t like it when I’m not treated with respect. Never you mind what I am. I came a long way to get in on the smuggling lay, and then I heard it was finished here. Is it true?”

  Black Bart began to curse. Megaera listened calmly, although she found his language more original than Edward’s. He kept going for a long time saving his choicest epithets for her late husband, who he believed—quite correctly—had betrayed them. Megaera treasured up a few remarks about Edward that she wished she had learned earlier so that she could have said them to his face.

  “You’re beginning to repeat yourself,” Megaera remarked after a while. “I understand that the cargo and the depot are gone I don’t care about that. What I want to know is whether the smuggler’s ship was taken or whether he was scared away for good. If not, I’ll find the money to pay for a new run, and I have a new and better place to hide the stuff.”

  There was a long silence. “This ain’t a trap?” The whine was back in the voice.

  “Ever hear of a lady Customs officer? Don’t be a fool. Anyway, you don’t have to tell me anything now. I’ve business elsewhere. John and I will be back here tomorrow night after moonrise. If you want to do business, we can talk about it then. If you don’t, just be gone and don’t come back.”

  As she said it, she signed Hold him to John. When he was helpless in the giant’s grip, she went over him carefully, extracting from various places two more pistols, two knives, and a lead weight in a piece of cloth. She then searched the cottage carefully but could find nothing besides the gun he had dropped when John had first seized him. Having removed all the weapons, she signed that John should come out and lift her to her saddle. When she was mounted, she indicated that the prisoner should be turned loose, and left. John was not very willing, and Megaera had to assure him that the man would go away soon.

  After she was safely home, Megaera considered what she had done. She thought the remainder of her jewelry plus Edward’s would bring in enough to pay for the smugglers’ cargo and that the cave that opened on the opposite side of the hill from the site of Bolliet Manor would serve perfectly to hide the smuggled goods until they could be delivered—not all in one night but a little at a time. The cave would serve her better than the smugglers because there were several interlocking passages behind it. One of the passages led right to Bolliet Manor and two others to smaller caves and, eventually, to other exits in the hill.

  In fact, the cave had many advantages. She could reach it without ever apparently leaving her house. In addition, either the local people had forgotten the caves and passages existed or they were so terrified of them that they would neither speak of them nor go near them. Megaera herself had only learned of their existence because some antiquarian gentlemen had come from London to investigate them, having found references to them in letters written during the Civil War. Apparently the Cavaliers had hidden from the Roundheads there at some time. Perhaps that was when the legend of their fearsomeness had begun, because there was nothing there—except the danger of getting lost if one did not know one’s way around. Megaera’s father had uninterestedly given permission for exploration, and Megaera had been curious enough to follow the scholars around until the whole complex was familiar to her.

  That was the easy part. The hard part was going to be to keeping her identity secret. After all, there was no way to blindfold a whole smuggling crew. First Megaera thought of disguises—a wig, a mask—but she soon realized that such things would be worse than nothing. They would draw attention to the fact that she had some reason to hide her identity. She needed to be a different person, recognizable as a definite individual.

  Thus was born Red Meg—a stranger to the district, a lady’s maid on the run for stealing her mistress’s jewels. That explained the money and the speech. John was no problem. Although his disability and his size were distinctive, no one except the people immediately connected to Bolliet Manor—and Dr. Partridge, of course, who was as good as mute—knew him. Like John’s mother, Megaera never let him leave the grounds of the manor, except to go to the lonely cottage. Now he would have to go with her, of course, but she was sure she could control him.

  Megaera collected clothing here and there, a groom’s breeches, a boy’s shirt, a jacket old and patched and too large. She collected the appurtenances a person would need to make life moderately comfortable in the cave—an old bed and mattresses, blankets, braziers, other old furniture from the attics. John spent the whole day carrying the things into the cave. When it was all set up, Megaera dredged dirt through her hair, dirtied her face and hands thoroughly, smeared mud and soot on the old clothes. Finally she and John set out on the long tramp to the cottage.

  It was not cold, but Megaera shivered all the way there. She recognized the chill as fear, but she was not sure whether she feared the smuggler would be gone and her last chance to save her home gone with him, or whether he would be there and she would be involved in an enterprise that could ruin her. That thought made her laugh in the midst of her fear. She could not be ruined any more thoroughly than she had been by her loving father and unloving husband. She could not even marry for money. Convention dictated a year of “mourning”, and by then Bolliet would be in the hands of the moneylenders.

  He was not gone, although Megaera had thought he was at first. She would not enter the cottage, fearing an attack even though she had taken his weapons. But he would not come out either, also fearing a trap. At last, knowing he could not remain forever in the cottage and believing that she would send the brute in after him, he emerged. It was the first contest of wills between them, and Megaera had won it. She was quick to follow up the advantage.

  “Since you’re here, you want to do business,” she said briskly. “What do I call you?”

  “Black Bart, but my name’s Bertram Woods,” he answered, scowling. “What’s yours?”

  “Margret,” Megaera replied readily. She had that all planned and was delighted it was going her way. She had even stopped
shivering. “Some call me Red Meg,” she went on.

  “Margaret what?” Black Bart asked.

  She laughed at him. “Love children don’t have double names. Red Meg’s good enough for you. Now where and when do we meet the smuggler?”

  ‘‘Not so fast. Did you bring the money?”

  Megaera laughed again, contempt clear in the sound. “Not a penny, nor will you see a halfpenny of it until I’ve collected from my customers. Then you’ll get your cut—just like everyone else. You can get more if you get the men together and manage them, but I’ll hold the clinkers and I’ll deal with the Frenchy. No argument—take or leave.”

  Bart reasoned and pleaded, insisting that no smuggler would have anything to do with a woman. Megaera’s heart sank because that was certainly possible, but she knew that if she did not control the money and the deliveries, she might as well give up the enterprise completely. She held out stubbornly, refusing to discuss the matter at all. Her way or not at all—and in the end it was her way, all her way.

  Black Bart had given Megaera an ugly feeling from the moment she first laid eyes him. Pierre Restoir, the smuggler, had an exactly opposite effect. He was a big man, his bald head and wrinkles betraying his age; however, his body was still strong and lithe and his bright dark eyes showed a spirit as young and lively as a boy’s. Megaera liked and trusted him on sight, and, although he was obviously startled at having to deal with a woman, soon it was clear he was delighted with the arrangement. He was fair and reasonable in his demands. Megaera bargained hard because she had to wring every coin she could out of the deal, but they soon came to terms.

  After their first transaction was complete, Pierre drew her aside and told her to meet him at The Mousehole to arrange future deliveries and payment. “For you, Mees Meg, eet will be better, and I do not like to come ashore when cargo ees deliver’,” he said, speaking in his heavily accented English because he thought Meg did not understand French. “If eet become for me necessary to run, I should be on my ship. That other one, I would not trust ‘im with the name of a place friendly to me. ‘E ees not ‘onest, that one. ‘E would betray a frien’ and enjoy eet. But you, petite Megotta la rouge, you would not. Also, eet ees not wise that those others,” he glanced at the men who had fetched the cargo and were loading it on the ponies, “should ‘ear too much.”