My Lord Deceived
Authors: Rebecca King
Tags: #romance, #romantic suspense, #suspense, #historical fiction, #thrillers, #historical romance, #mysteries, #romantic mysteries, #historical mysteries
DECEIVED
Elite
Book Six
King
My Lord Deceived
Rebecca King
Copyright 2014 by
Rebecca King
Smashwords Edition
© Rebecca King 2014
Cover Design by Melody Simmons of eBookindiecovers
CONTENTS
“Heads up!”
The busy hustle
and bustle around the harbour paused for one brief moment as the
warning echoed around the houses. Within seconds everyone burst
into a flurry of activity that left the streets empty within the
blink of an eye. Shutters were slammed closed. Washing lines were
gathered in. Children who were joyfully playing in the street were
picked up bodily by their mothers and swept inside. Doors were
locked and bolted, and shops were shut by anxious shop keepers who
hastily trapped some unfortunate customers inside.
Silence
descended upon the small fishing port of Bentney on Sea, while
everyone waited with nervous anticipation.
Catherine ‘Kat’
Baird hurried the last few feet to her front door. Her mind ran
frantically over the problems within the fisherman’s cottage she
called home. She closed the door quietly behind her and took a
deep, fortifying breath. Although she couldn’t see the excise men,
she could hear them call to each other as they began their
inspection of the village. She closed out the sound of the heavy
pounding on the first door further up the hill and began to
pray.
She hated the
excise officers and everything they stood for. Especially Mr
Harrison, the Chief Excise Officer for the area. The man was
arrogant and smarmy. He knew that he made her uncomfortable, and
seemed to enjoy it. He usually took great delight in sweeping his
cold, dispassionate blue eyes over her and it made Kat immediately
want to go and wash. She didn’t need to be able to see him to
recognise that snobbish drawl of his as he ordered his men to leave
no stone unturned in their search for smuggled goods.
Kat sighed, and
wondered why the man had suddenly started to focus so much on
Bentney on Sea. It was a relatively small fishing port, and had
nothing going for it except for a few well-run boozing
establishments and the fishing boats. There was certainly nothing
about it that should draw the interest of the officials. Well,
except for a little bit of smuggling, but then everyone in these
coastal parts of Cornwall did it, didn’t they?
Her thoughts
immediately turned to Hester, who lived across the narrow cobbled
street, and she wondered if her friend had managed to hide her
stash safely. She wondered if Hester had managed to keep the
youngest kids out of the way while she hid the goods so that they
wouldn’t give the game away.
“Kat, come and
help me,” Billy gasped as he pushed the large stone across the
floor with all of his might. At ten years old, her brother was a
thin, wiry boy who was only just big enough to shove the heavy
millstone a few inches. With a sigh, Kat moved across the room and
bent down to help heave the large millstone into place in the
corner of the room. Moments later she stood back to allow her
mother to rub at the scratch marks off the floor. Billy added some
soot to cover the tell-tale marks on the floor that revealed one of
their secret hiding places.
“Was that all
of it?” Kat asked. She shot her mother a worried glance.
“No, we have
the bolts over there,” Agnes replied, and nodded toward two bolts
of cloth propped up against the wall.
“Quick, Billy,”
Kat snapped. She hurried over to the large rolls of cloth and
shoved one of the bolts at her brother. She picked up the other and
followed him across the sitting room to the fireplace. Once there,
she hefted her brother up the chimney where he lodged both bolts
onto a secret shelf hidden half way up the inside of the chimney
breast. He secured them into position with several bricks Kat
passed up to him before he dropped back down.
Anyone who
happened to look up the chimney wouldn’t see anything amiss.
However, if they didn’t do something about the state of Billy now
that he was covered in soot, the excise men would know exactly
where to start to look for the smuggled goods that Kat had helped
bring ashore that very same morning.
She strongly
suspected that someone in the village had turned traitor, and had
started to tip off Harrison and his men with details of when the
shipments were due to arrive. This was the second time in recent
weeks that the village had received cargo, and the second time the
excise men had arrived in the village to conduct a search later the
very same morning.
Nobody was able
to prevent the excise officer’s access to their houses and places
of business. The excise men had legal authority to carry out
official business after all. The penalty for trying to block their
entry into whatever property they wanted to search was a long stay
in jail; something that none of the smugglers were prepared to
risk. As a result, everyone had been forced to invent some very
creative places to hide their goods while the officials were in the
area. Kat hated to think that any one of the villagers would turn
against their own, and quickly turned her thoughts away from the
possibility that she lived amongst someone who willingly placed the
entire village in danger of being arrested.
Only a few
weeks ago, poor Hester’s husband, Andrew, had been caught with
smuggled cargo ashore further along the coast. Although he had been
handed a fairly lenient sentence, much to the disgust of the excise
men, the few weeks that he was away in jail were far too long for
his wife Hester, who had no income with which to feed their
children. Everyone in the village was helping to provide her with
food and staples she needed to keep her head above water until
Andrew returned, but Kat knew that Hester was deeply upset by the
precariousness of her situation. But would that really mean that
Hester would turn against everyone? Kat hated to even consider the
notion. There were far too many people involved in the smuggling
operation. It was impossible to identify anyone who may be a
traitor. Still, there was something decidedly odd going on.
She bent down
and shoved three boxes of sugar into the secret hole behind the
skirting board, and pushed the dresser in front of it before she
turned toward the boxes of tea mother held out to her. Kat snatched
them off her and raced upstairs. Having unscrewed the false back
off her chest of drawers, she quickly secreted the several boxes of
tea and hastily began to secure the back panel that hid the false
compartment. Thanks to the inventiveness of Andrew, who had made a
larger top and sides to the drawers, they had been able to create a
wide enough space to accommodate several boxes.
She shoved the
drawers back against the wall with a grunt and rubbed at the
scratch marks on the wooden floor with her foot. She roughly pushed
Billy out of the room before her and together they raced downstairs
with a mixture of urgency and nervous dread that heightened the
tension within the house to breaking point.
Once in the
kitchen, Kat sighed and pushed a wash bowl at Billy. She waved him
out into the yard to wash while she helped Agnes tidy the house.
She replaced the stone that hid the secret compartment that
contained their life savings. On her way back to the kitchen, she
nudged a piece of skirting board back into place and ensured it
covered all trace of the small packets of sugar hidden in the small
recess before she blocked the area with a small cupboard. Satisfied
that they had done all they could for now, she shared a look with
her mother, Agnes, before she went to answer the loud thumps on the
door.
She pulled the
door open with a sigh and stood back to allow Harrison and his men
inside. The sight of another group of excise men going into
Hester’s house across the street was worrying and she sent a silent
prayer that Hester’s youngest children wouldn’t give the game away
by pointing to Hester’s hiding places and shouting ‘peek-a-boo’.
Kat closed the door and turned to look at her mother and Billy, who
stood by the kitchen door.
“I take it you
don’t have anything you shouldn’t have today either?” Mr Harrison
drawled contemptuously, and swept his nonchalant gaze over Kat in a
lascivious manner that made her shudder with revulsion.
Kat merely
stared at him. “We tell you every time you invade our home that we
are not smugglers, but you don’t seem to be able to hear us.”
Agnes moved to
Billy’s side and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. She knew
he would cry as soon as the excise men had left, he always did. He
held his emotions at bay while the men were in the house but fell
apart once they had gone. She could feel her son tremble with
nerves and wondered whether all of this stress and worry was worth
the money they made from the smuggling.
By day, Kat
worked as a bar maid at the Shipwright Inn down in the harbour.
Billy helped one of the fishermen out, and Agnes herself ran a
market stall that sold fruit and vegetables. Together they made
enough money to survive without the need to be involved in the
smuggling but, over the past eighteen months, they had built up a
small side business and sold the smuggled goods. It made them all a
tidy profit that eased their way through life considerably. They
now had an established group of customers from all walks of life,
who purchased the luxurious bounty of tea, sugar, lace and brandy,
and Agnes really felt that she couldn’t let them down.
Despite their
protested innocence, Kat felt tension within the house increase
tenfold as the men began to search. She stood back and watched as
the men moved the furniture, pushed against the stone floor while
they looked for loose tiles, and searched every room within the
two-storey fisherman’s cottage before they moved outside to scour
the yard and gardens.
When the men
began to upend the crates that were stacked in the far corner of
the yard and scattered vegetables everywhere, Kat’s fury began to
burn.
“Hey, that’s
our livelihood!” she protested. “Take a look, but don’t damage
that. We have to sell it.” Kat snatched an empty crate off one of
the men, and glared hatefully at him. She scowled down at the mess.
She began to carefully repack the box and threw Harrison a filthy
glare as she did so. “I don’t care how hard you search this house,
you will find nothing. What I won’t stand for is you destroying our
livelihood with your heavy handedness?”
She hastily
shoved the box on top of the others. Her heart hammered in her
throat and she worked hard to keep her face mutinous. She
studiously kept her gaze averted from the boxes tucked away at the
bottom of pile. They held six valuable barrels of finest French
brandy. On previous searches, the excise men had not bothered to
come out to the yard and, on the one occasion when one of them had
ventured as far as the kitchen door, he had studied the boxes
crammed full of vegetables and fruit from the doorway. Today’s
search had been close; very close. Why they had chosen today to
search the vegetables was anyone’s guess.
She watched as
the excise man studied the untouched boxes in the yard before he
turned away with a shake of his head.