Lady Anne 02 - Revenge of the Barbary Ghost, page 24
Both men hunkered down close to the cliff in the shadow of a jutting rock outcropping that sprung from the beach. The plash of oars got louder. A group of fellows—Johnny Quintrell was among them, but if things got dangerous he was dedicated to assisting Darkefell and Osei—silently emerged from the shadows near the tunnel entrance. The figure in front, illuminated by a lantern on a rock outcropping, was garbed in dashing array and waving a cutlass with debonair abandon.
“Now, men,” the smuggler said, cultured voice strong, “Unload the goods swiftly, carry them to the base of the cliff and hand them up to the fellows above. Ropes are only for the heaviest crates. Work quickly, be diligent, and there will be an extra reward for you all!”
“That must be Lord Brag,” Darkefell murmured. “If I’m right, it is Miss St. James in her brother’s clothes.”
“The figure is slight enough to be the lady,” Osei agreed.
The carriers got to work by lantern light. Another rowboat slid ashore, piled with more goods. It was going smoothly. Darkefell wondered if he had been vigilant for naught. Had he worried about Anne, only to find she did not need him? The rowboats returned to the water, as another came in to shore. It was a large shipment, and Darkefell thought the tunnel must be stuffed with goods by now. They could not move all of that out of the tunnel in one night, certainly, and would need several nights of cover to do so.
He heard rustling behind him and turned, still hunched down between the rock outcropping and the cliff face. He stiffened. Movement. He dug his elbow in Osei’s ribs and his secretary turned, too, and drew in his breath quickly, quietly.
This new band of men creeping toward the smugglers was either a rival smuggling gang or the excise officers. Darkefell had cast about for information among locals who were willing to talk and found out that rival gangs often raided each other’s stashes. All-out war was not uncommon. The St. Wyllow Whips gang had been fortunate so far, but Darkefell knew that was because they had Puddicombe, the excise officer, in their pocket, his silence bought with exorbitant bribes. But who was this, and why were they sneaking up on the smugglers?
He indicated to Osei to follow him, tugging on his wrist, and the two men slipped along the cliff face, keeping pace with the stealthy movements of the band of men creeping toward the landing site. One of the smugglers shouted out suddenly, and the lot of them looked up from their tasks.
The group of men approaching suddenly rose and began to run down the beach toward the smugglers, but their progress was cut short, very suddenly, and very violently. Above, something swung out from the cliff and a loud pop echoed, while an explosion of sparks showered down. Then an explosion among the raiding party scattered them. Voices cried out, one calling, “Mr. Puddicombe, what’re we ta do?”
Some of the smugglers, meanwhile, hastened to push the rowboats back out to sea, while others, faintly visible by the light of lanterns, dispersed.
Darkefell looked above; lit by a flare, a gruesome specter hovered off the edge of the cliff, a ragged piratical form. A hideous moaning wailed, echoing down in the cut and around them. Something dropped a few feet from his hiding place and exploded in a shower of sparks, and the group of men huddling together, some of them crying out to each other questions about what was going on, leaped and yelled at the explosion. Smoke drifted around, and confusion reigned. Who belonged to what group? Who could tell?
The specter above burst into flames, accompanied by shrieks and howls so frightening some of the men just beyond cried out and retreated. More huddled together, but when ragged bits of flaming cloth fell in a shower of red sparks, and embers landed on the wet beach, sizzling and popping, they scattered. The stench of gunpowder and kerosene filled the air, and more explosions blasted the sand around them.
Under cover of the yells and percussion of explosions, Darkefell said to Osei, “Let’s go to the tunnel.”
They ran, while other explosions rocketed around them. His mind tumbling, he wondered what was going on. What was that specter? The infamous Barbary Ghost? If so, who was wielding it? And where were the explosions coming from?
He would find out once he got to the tunnel and found Johnny Quintrell.
***
“Damn them, damn them!” Pamela cried, her back to the tunnel wall. She pulled off her black mask, sweat gleaming on her face in the dim lantern light. “Who double-crossed me?”
“I would bet on Micklethwaite,” Anne said, out of breath. The grenades and smoke bombs she created from Marcus’s provisions were almost gone, but fireworks exploded above, and the effigy was still aflame, thanks to Mary’s timely effort. This was the Barbary Ghost’s revenge, reprisal for the tragic wrong that had been done to poor Marcus St. James. Anne could only hope that the rest of Pamela’s helpers had scattered, and that they could get all of the goods down the tunnel and behind the locked door before whomever was on the beach figured out they were out of explosives.
“Micklethwaite? Why?”
“Later,” Anne said, lifting a crate and lugging it down the tunnel. She was only supposed to open the tunnel door, but she had always intended to do much more. Pamela was too trusting. Anne had suspected from the start that there was betrayal afoot. As she returned to her friend, she continued, “Right now, let’s just get this task finished.”
There were only a couple of the most trusted of the young men left to help them, and Anne shouted to them to move the last of the ankers of gin and crates of goods down the tunnel just beyond the plank door. If she and Pam could manage that, and send the young fellows up through the house and out—she prayed to God that Cliff House was not surrounded by prevention men—then they may yet escape harm or charges. Mary had done her part above on the cliff, swinging the effigy of the Barbary Ghost out, setting the fireworks and flares alight, and letting the stuffed pirate blaze, dropping bits of stinking, flaming cloth all over the raiders, whomever they were. Her banshee wail had been a bit of inspired theatrics Anne silently blessed her for.
Speed was vital right that moment. Anne firmly believed their assailants were locals hired by the excise man, Puddicombe, in a plot to blame all of the latest events on Pamela and Marcus. But she still thought it was possible that Micklethwaite was somehow involved, too.
She heard yells and confusion beyond the mouth of the cave. Good! She hoped they were running about in the dark in confusion. Of all things, Pam and her gang needed a few more minutes to get the goods in and lock the door, then delay any search of Cliff House until the goods could be moved inland.
Tubs, kegs, crates, oilcloth bundles: all were shifted swiftly, though they only had two of the most trusted fellows helping. Two? Why, Anne wondered, did there seem to be double that? Her stomach dropped. Could a couple of the prevention men have joined Pamela’s crew, thinking to get in and get evidence that way?
She uncapped her light directly in the face of one of their helpers. “Mr. Boatin!” she gasped.
He put one finger over his lips. “Hush, my lady! Hush. We are here to help only.”
“We?”
He pushed her hand, swinging the lantern around to shine on Darkefell’s soot-smudged, streaky face. A bubble of laughter welled up in her and burst out.
“You look like a Welsh miner!” she whispered, giggling.
“Watch your tongue,” he growled. “Or I’ll smudge your face too!” He grabbed her arm, pulled her close and kissed her, full on the lips. “There, now you’re thoroughly besmirched. Let’s keep moving!”
Nineteen
Seeing Anne safe, knowing she was working just yards away from him, lightened Darkefell’s temper, especially seeing her laugh at him, and feeling her lips against his. But their night was not done and they had to hurry. The prevention men would not be stopped for long. While he helped shift goods along the tunnel to beyond the plank door, he muttered what he had seen to Anne. In turn, she told him her part of the night’s happenings. Her maid, Mary, had performed her part to perfection, hoisting the Barbary Ghost manikin and setting it ablaze. Anne had constructed the manikin from St. James’s ghost costume and flour sacks, then stuffed handmade fireworks in the arms; that was the source of some of the crackling and display of light, she told him.
“I also made grenades,” Anne further explained, pausing for a moment in her work, panting at the heavy toting. “I lit them from the lantern and threw them. They didn’t have a lot of charge. Mostly they were smoke bombs, with some chemicals to make sound and light. The idea was to frighten the invaders, not hurt them.”
“You made grenades,” he said, staring at her in the gleaming light of the lamp.
“I had a lot of extra time in the last two days,” she said, primly, chin up. Her gaze did not waver from his.
“Time in which you would not see me!” he growled, narrowing his eyes.
“I was angry. I will not be told what to do, nor when, nor how. That part of my life ended the moment Reginald died.”
“You felt that his death was a reprieve from a life sentence of certain unhappiness,” he mused, and saw from her expression that he had hit on the truth. He saw what he was up against, then; she would not go lightly into marriage this time, for she had felt the full devastation of having made a grave error in agreeing to marry a man she could never love. But he would not dwell on it that moment. He smiled at her, shaking his head. “What kind of education could a young lady possibly have that would teach her in the art of making grenades and fireworks? I’m amazed, Anne. And alarmed.”
She chuckled, then resumed her task, carrying a crate from the tunnel entrance and handing it to Osei Boatin, who carried it the rest of the way down the tunnel, past the door. “It was all there in Marcus’s little workroom off the cellar. I found the saltpeter, potassium and nitrate, the pottery shells for the grenades, and his extensive notes.” Her tone was more sober when she added, “I think I was just finishing what he had planned, that rout of the excise men.”
“But did you know they would interrupt this landing?”
“I strongly suspected it.” She finished setting one crate upon another and straightened. “Darkefell,” she whispered, the hiss of her voice echoing in the tunnel. She pulled him aside. “I’ve been thinking about this for days; I believe that Micklethwaite is double-crossing Pamela. He’s going to lay the blame on her for the whole thing. That’s why he’s not using his own ship for this landing. I’ve been wondering if he and Puddicombe are in this together. I still don’t know why, and I don’t know if it is linked with Marcus’s murder, but it seems logical to me that those two men are somehow allied.”
He nodded in agreement. “Puddicombe is there, leading the raiding party; I heard one of his men call him by name. Your theory is sound, and I have information that supports it. If you had deigned to speak to me in the last two days, I would have been able to tell you. But we must hurry. Let’s get this done tonight and figure out what to do about the rest later.”
They could hear voices outside the tunnel, and hurriedly worked in silence. Finally, there was nothing left to do, and Darkefell closed the tunnel door and Anne locked it, while Pamela got her boys (as she called the most trusted young men who helped her) out of harm’s way by guiding them along the passage and up through her house. Osei, at the marquess’s insistence, helped her. Anne and Darkefell remained behind, listening and waiting.
The gang of prevention men finally approached the tunnel door and hammered on it. “Damn them t’hell! If they hadn’t tried to blow us up, we’d’ve got ’em,” a gruff voice bellowed.
“Puddicombe, I think,” Darkefell whispered in Anne’s ear.
“Shall we beat the door doon, sir?” a voice beyond the door cried.
Darkefell reacted quickly. “Set the fuse, laddie,” he shouted. “Let ’em beat the door down; they’ll get a mighty blast from Lord Brag!”
At the sound of the excise fellows scampering away down the tunnel, shouting in their haste, Anne fell on the tunnel floor laughing, one hand clapped over her mouth. Darkefell pulled her up and to him in one swift motion, and took her lips in a breathless kiss.
“Not now!” Anne whispered, trying to hide her pleasure at his impulsiveness. She smacked his cheek, then took his hand. “We have to go up through the house.”
She thought they would come up through the cellar to calmness, but it was not to be.
Mary, holding a candle, greeted her at the top of the cellar stairs, saying, “Milady, there’s people outside the door, an’ I don’t know what to do! There are …” She broke off, looking over Anne’s shoulder at Darkefell. “Well, now,” she said, her tone tart, “I saw Mr. Boatin, and now Lord Darkefell.”
“Who is it outside, Mary?” Anne asked, shaking the dust from her skirts.
“I don’t know.”
Anne bustled through the kitchen and up to the sitting room near the front door. Through a window, she tried to see, but the cloaked men were impossible to identify in the dark. Horses and men milled around, and Anne desperately wondered, was this the excise men? Would they storm in, search the house and find the tunnel filled with smuggled goods below? She whispered this question to Darkefell.
He moved to the window and tried to see out, but shook his head. He returned to the two women. “Have they come to the door?” he asked Anne’s maid.
Mary shook her head.
“They seem to be talking,” the marquess said, his brows furrowed. “Conferring on their next move, I’d wager.”
From upstairs came a howl of dismay, and outside, the men began to beat on the door and shout to open up. Anne, her hands clapped over her ears to shut out the sudden din, cried out, “What’s going on?”
Thudding in the stairwell informed them they were to be joined momentarily. Lolly, gray hair sticking out in spikes from under a lace bed cap and round face slathered with lanolin cream, stumbled over to Anne, crying, “Men! I heard a noise, and then a young man came into my room. Oh, help!” She stared at Anne in dismay. “Why is your face smudged with black, Anne, dear? What is going on in this madhouse?” She then whirled. “Lord Darkefell!” she squawked, thrusting Anne in front of her. “What are you doing here? And your face, my lord … lampblack … oh, my! Shocking.”
“Lolly, shush! We have to figure out what’s going on.”
A high-pitched inhuman wail echoed down the stairs and Anne could hear Pam shriek, “Irusan, no!”
“Oh, heavens,” Anne said, picking up her skirts and racing up the stairs. What she saw was her cat confronting a young fellow in the dim upstairs hallway. He stood still, his hands up in a defensive gesture, and Pamela appeared halfway between hysterical laughter and tears at the scene.
“I told Johnny that Irusan wouldn’t hurt him,” Pam said, “so the boy leaned down to pet him, but Irusan took offense.”
“Irusan, behave yourself,” Anne said, sternly, then turned to her friend. “Pam, where has the other one of your fellows gone?”
“Out a window. I’m afraid he frightened poor Lolly by stomping through her bedchamber, but that’s the swiftest route to the roof near an overhanging tree, and thus away. Johnny, here, stayed behind to help. I tried to make him go, but he insisted on staying, as did Mr. Boatin!”
Osei, his dark eyes sparkling with excitement, joined them. He stared at Anne’s face but said nothing as she grabbed a doily from a table in the hall and began to scrub her lips and chin before anyone else decided to point out that the lampblack from Darkefell’s face had somehow, miraculously, transferred to surround her mouth.
Darkefell ascended the stairs, likewise busy with a wet cloth, rubbing the lampblack from his face, and said, “Johnny, did you have a look out?”
“Yes, milord,” the young fellow said. “I peered down from the second-floor window. The men outside are not together, I reckon. Puddicombe is out there, but so’s Mr. Twynam; I descry the magistrate from his girth and seat upon t’horse.”
Anne stared at Darkefell, the cloth forgotten in her hand. “You know this fellow?” she asked the marquess, waving her hand at Johnny.
“Yes, he’s the son of my friend, Joseph Quintrell. I told you about Joseph, Anne; he’s the owner of the Barbary Ghost Inn.”
Anne, her mind spinning, saw that Darkefell had been keeping an eye on things using the boy as a spy. But she had no time to think it through, whether to be pleased or offended. The clamor downstairs was intensifying, and she couldn’t leave Lolly to manage alone.
“Let me handle this,” Pam said. She was now in her nightgown, no trace of her Lord Brag outfit in evidence. She said, “Anne, make yourself respectable,” and sailed downstairs.
Darkefell turned to Johnny and said, “Stay up here, lad, out of sight. Are you ready to do what I asked? With Twynam here it may be necessary.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Osei, help him, will you? There’s a good fellow,” he said, clapping his secretary on the shoulder.
Anne and Darkefell descended, consulting each other about the lampblack removal, both finally clean of the black smudges. Darkefell wiped one last spot from her mouth and stole a kiss. Anne, her cheeks burning, didn’t reprimand him.
Lolly, clutching her voluminous wrap around her plump form, was bent over, shouting through a crack in the front door. “Whomever you are, go away. This is a respectable house and we are respectable ladies. Go away!”
“Madam,” came a baritone voice through the door. “This is Magistrate Twynam. We’ve met before. Let me in! I merely wish to confer with Miss St. James.”
“Then come back at a decent hour!” Lolly said, straightening and crossing her arms over her chest.
Anne gently pushed past her companion and stepped toward the door. “Mr. Twynam, this is Lady Anne Addison.”
“Yes, my lady,” he said, his stentorian voice carrying easily through the oak door.
