Virtue's Reward (25 page)

He threw his case on the dresser and began to unpack it.

“Don’t look so full of dismay, Helena. I can’t bear it,” he said suddenly. “Will this room be satisfactory for tonight? There’s no better inn close enough to Trethaerin.”

She sat down in the one hard chair and schooled her features.

“Of course. I know the Anchor quite well, after all. It’s a clean and honorable hostelry, even if the Quality don’t usually stay here.”

Richard pulled out some dark clothes. He had worn the same garments the night he had climbed the ivy to her room, when his hair had also been like pitch.

“I shan’t be here to find out for myself,” he continued. “Your cousin’s servants are unlikely to allow me entrance in his absence, so I must use baser means of entry. I want you to describe to me the layout of the house.”

“I can do better, Richard,” she said, her heart in her mouth. “I can show you.”

He looked up in surprise. “Helena, God knows what I shall find there!”

“If you go stumbling about in the dark, probably a bullet in the back. What do you expect to find? You think my cousin has been engaging in criminal activity?”

“I hope he has,” he said with sudden passion.

“Then take me with you. There’s a secret way in from the beach by way of the old smugglers’ tunnels. I doubt if Garthwood even knows of its existence.”

“Helena, I can’t possibly take you.”

“You can’t possibly leave me behind. I shall follow you. If you think to lock me in this room, the landlord will let me out. I have known the man since I was a child. He’ll not gainsay me, whatever you promise him.”

Richard came and took her hands. “Helena, what do you take me for? I’m not a monster.”

“I never thought for a moment that you were. But although you are hiding it very well, something quite desperate is going on, isn’t it? You have shrugged off attempts on your own life, but you can’t ignore what happened to John. I don’t know what lies between you and Harry, but I know that my cousin is involved. God knows why he should wish to harm you, but you have an idea, don’t you?”

“Actually, dear wife, I do not.”

“Yet you believe you will find something here that may tell you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then I have a right to be involved, don’t you see? I am your wife, Richard, and Garthwood is my cousin. What can be so dreadful that I must be kept in the dark?”

Richard turned and walked away from her. He had no idea what the connection could be between Garthwood, the Paris affair, and the attempts on his life. But Trethaerin must hold the key. And if he was to search Trethaerin House successfully, only Helena could tell him what he needed to know. The place was as familiar to her as her own voice: every hallway, every entrance, and every hiding place.

If Helena truly was innocent of involvement in the plots against him, there could be no harm. They were far away from Garthwood in London, and even if death waited here in the owner’s absence, no attempt had ever been made against Helena.

If she was guilty, then he could keep her under his eye, where she could do no harm.

Or was his reason really something quite different? With a painful honesty he faced the fact that he wanted her with him because he couldn’t bear to be parted from her any longer. If she would betray him, then failure—or even death—didn’t matter much, did it? He had nothing to lose by letting Helena come with him to her old home. If the adventure unfolded as planned, there could be no danger at all.

“You will have to ride a horse in the dark and the cold. I am going late tonight. Can you keep up?”

“If you will show a modicum of self-restraint, I shall. I’ll be left behind instantly, if you’re going to ride as if you carried a message for Wellington.”

He laughed. “No, indeed, we shall travel most discreetly. You must dress as warmly as you can, in something dark.”

“I have my indigo cloak. And if you like, I’ll black my face with soot.”

“I don’t think that’ll be required.” He felt a sudden merriment, totally out of place. “I plan a perfectly quiet evening’s entertainment. And if I’m wrong, I only hope I live to tell Charles de Dagonet about this.”

* * *

The hedgerows above their stone banks were brittle with frost as Richard and Helena trotted along the familiar road to Trethaerin. She led the way by a tiny path up onto the headland where she had once shown Friarswell to Captain Acton, friend of her lost fiancé, Sir Edward Blake. It seemed a lifetime ago.

They turned down between the gorse bushes and tied their hired horses in the trees. Then Helena took a small track that began to drop down to the beach.

The sky was a deep velvety black. There was no moon, only the faint glimmer of the whitecaps on the sea and a dim gleam at the horizon. When she heard Richard stumble into the sharp spines of some gorse behind her, Helena held out her hand and he took it.

She had spent her entire childhood on these headlands and beaches. If necessary, she could have found her way about blindfolded.

“This is the place,” she whispered at last.

They had walked across the sand and climbed back up onto a shelf of rock. An old boathouse clung like an untidy bird’s nest near the base of the cliff.

Helena pushed at the rotten door and went in.

“When we were children, Edward and I would hide down here sometimes. My father thought he had closed off the smugglers’ route, but this was our own shortcut.”

She pulled aside some old nets and half-rotten sails, then went down on her hands and knees on the floor. Moments later she had tugged at a section of salt-stained boards to reveal the hidden trapdoor that lay underneath.

“Trethaerin Cove is too treacherous to land a boat in any weather, especially one laden with French silk or brandy, so the revenue men never came to this beach. Instead, they would swarm over the sands at Friarswell and wait in vain. Meanwhile, there’s a narrow seaway in beneath the cliffs of the headland that leads straight to a cave beneath the house.”

“Is this the only exit?”

“No, this is just for emergency use. A wider passage leads out beyond the home wood, and that’s where the goods were usually taken. Should the king’s officers raid the house, they would find nothing. Even if they discovered the pack train on its way to the other passage, the contraband could be left hidden in this cave and never be found, while the men escaped out this way to disappear over the headland.”

They climbed down a set of rickety steps that soon turned into a narrow natural passage in the solid rock, carved out long ago, then abandoned, by the sea.

“We shall have to risk a light,” Richard said.

“Not really much risk. No one can be about. Not even a smuggler would venture out this time of year, surely?”

“It may be cold, but it’s calm enough. I’ve spent enough time on boats to know that. I only hope you are right.”

He dropped to one knee to bend over a small lantern that he had carried from the Anchor.

A flame flared, sending the planes of his face into sharp relief. Then he closed the shutter until only a finger of light lit their way.

For several minutes they walked over a sandy floor until the passage opened up and they were looking down into a large cave. Small waves slapped against the rock in a constant reverberating echo, carrying with it the strong smell of brine and fish.

A channel of seawater bisected the rocky floor below them.

“The boats could be brought up here,” Helena said. “Good Lord! Is that brandy? Richard! Is this what you expected to find? Garthwood has been smuggling?”

With a certain grim satisfaction Richard helped Helena climb down into the cave and they walked over to the piled casks that lay against the far wall. He turned to her with a grin.

“Thank God!” he said. “This is very much against the law.”

A little further on another exit yawned in the rock wall of the cave above a short flight of stone steps. Helena led Richard up to it and into another set of rocky passages. She chose the tunnel that would take them up toward the house. After they had climbed several hundred feet, she stopped.

“We’re right beneath the study,” she whispered. “Just up there is a door that leads into it.”

“And the opening we passed a few minutes ago?”

“Would have put us in the cellars. That’s how the brandy could be brought into the house, if necessary. Another tunnel leads up from the cellars to come out beyond the home wood—on the other side from where we started—onto the tracks that ponies could handle. Father locked those entrances with iron grilles years ago. I wonder why there’s any brandy left in the cave now?”

“Perhaps your cousin left home in a hurry?”

They climbed up to the secret entrance to the study and Richard doused the lantern.

Helena listened for some minutes at the door. It was well past midnight. If there was no one in the house but servants, they should be long asleep and well out of earshot.

With the sound of her heart pounding like the sea in her ears, she pushed at the catch and opened the door. Her father’s old study lay dark, silent, and deserted before them.

Richard lit the lantern.

“What are we looking for?” Helena asked softly.

“I have no idea. Records, perhaps. Letters. Where would he hide such things?”

Helena led Richard to the desk and she tried the top drawer. It was locked.

“No,” he said. “That’s too obvious.”

She sat down in her father’s old chair, while Richard began quickly and with a frightening thoroughness to search the room. Books were removed from their shelves and replaced, paintings lifted and examined. Nothing was overlooked, yet nothing seemed to be disturbed when he finished.

Helena fought back the tide of emotion that had assailed her since they had first entered the study. She had never expected to sit in this room again. Her father had taught her to read at this very desk. They had made a game out of unlocking the drawers and finding her reader. Each time it would lie in a different spot. Part of the delight had been to go to the chimney and bring out the spare key, which Papa declared was hidden there by the fairies just for his little girl. She closed her eyes against sudden tears.

“I’m damned,” Richard said quietly just behind her, “if I want to break the lock. It would be far more discreet if they didn’t know we’d been here.”

Helena looked up. “Try the chimney piece,” she said faintly. “There’s a little shelf behind the rosettes. It’s entirely hidden unless you know where to look. My father had a spare key.”

“Clever!” Richard he said as he produced the little brass key. “I doubt if Garthwood knew it was there.”

By the dim light of the half-shuttered lantern they began to go through the papers stacked inside the desk. They seemed to consist mostly of household accounts.

“Look, it’s a receipt for my gold chain,” Helena said.

“Which I notice you never wear.”

“I gave it to the parson for charity.”

Richard raised a brow. “Did you? It was quite valuable, it seems. But the snuffbox I was given as my token of the winter solstice is French and came in with the brandy, no doubt. See?”

He picked up a sheaf of papers, quickly scanned the first, and then handed them to Helena. She followed the crabbed writing for several pages. There was nothing terribly incriminating there, simply lists of goods received and sent out. But perhaps Richard was right. Although the snuffbox was listed, other items classed simply as merchandise would very likely be the casks of brandy they had seen stacked below.

“The man has been making a fortune,” Richard said grimly as he went over more papers.

Helena watched him for a while, then, when the last drawer had been emptied and they had found nothing more, Richard stood up. He cursed quietly.

“As I thought, too obvious,” he said.

“You give up too soon,” she said lightly. “There are secret compartments.”

She reached into the back of the second drawer, pressed at a panel, and brought out another handful of papers. “Here, you look at this half.”

“Your cousin is a greedy man, Helena,” Richard said after a moment. “What a scheme!”

“You have found something?”

“Not enough.”

“What’s this?” Helena asked. “It’s just lists of girls’ names, but there are quite large sums listed against them, and another list of figures. Not even Friarswell and Trethaerin combined need that many housemaids.”

Richard took the paper from her and silently read over the lists.

“There’s a Penny there,” Helena said helpfully, “and a date in October. Could that be the chambermaid from the Anchor? There’s a fourteen written by her name. What does it mean?”

“Nothing,” Richard said sharply. “Forget it! Ah, this is what I need! He has kept clear records of his purchases of contraband, after all.”

Helena was already reading another sheet. The handwriting was a beautiful copperplate, and the paper scented. A woman’s hand—and the superscription was an address in Paris.

She looked up at her husband’s face. His golden hair glinted softly in the shaft of light from the lantern.

“Is this what you’ve been hiding from me?” she asked at last. “Who is Madame Relet?”

The midnight eyes met hers and widened.

“She’s not very flattering about you,” Helena said.

Richard dropped into another chair and leaned back. “I can imagine,” he said dryly. “What does she say?”

“It’s in French, but I think I can translate: ‘We have had some minor interference directed by a man whom I discover to be Viscount Lenwood. Why he should take an interest, I can’t imagine. But dismiss him, my friend. He is no more trouble than a fly on the wall and can do us no harm. I do not waste my time thinking about him.’ It doesn’t sound like a conspiracy to murder you. They don’t even consider you dangerous. What’s this word here? My French vocabulary isn’t up to it.”

Richard leaned forward and took the letter from her hand.

“I did not mean for you to know,” he said at last. “But I suppose there’s no way out now, is there? I’m sorry if I offend you, my dear. It means brothel.”

Helena felt the blood drain from her face. “You mean all those girls? Penny from the Anchor?”