Free The Pursuit of Pleasure by Elizabeth Essex Page B

Lizzie’s sort of solitary pursuits. But surely she hadn’t been wandering about in hedgerows for the past ten years? She’d been out in society—she must have gone to dinners and balls. She’d been at the assembly room, hadn’t she? Though playing least in sight out the back terrace wasn’t exactly social behavior. He squinted up at the darkening sky. “In the meantime, pray for it to rain.”
    “A howling gale off the channel to scare the stays off her?”
    “That’ll do. Then I can ‘leave,’ and we can set to the business in peace, with no one the wiser.”
    “Not even your little wife?”
    “Not even Lizzie.”
    “You’re a coldhearted bastard, Captain. No wonder I like you.” McAlden nodded with satisfaction. “Only hard part should be getting you to stick to your plan.”

C HAPTER 5
    R ain pummeled down upon her. She was as soaking wet as a barnyard mouser and twice as muddy. Her hems were awash in leaf mold and bits of damp moss. All to serve her horribly suspicious mind. Bloody bother.
    Instinct and pique had prompted her to follow Jamie down the path. She wasn’t the kind of person to be set away like a toy he was done playing with. She never had been.
    But something else, an almost animal instinct for self-preservation, had her hanging back, hiding low in the shrubbery, out of sight. Unfortunately, distant thunder and the wail of the wind streaking across the water had drowned out most of their words. Bloody rain.
    But one thing had been certain. They had not been talking about horses. And they had not gone in the direction of the stables.
    They had walked to the east, around toward the lane, and nothing about them, not their posture, gestures, nor tone, had indicated speech between a man and his servant. It had been a conversation among equals.
    How awfully curious. How damnably suspicious.
    Groundsman? What a bouncer.
    Bloody damn. Why did she always expect the worst frompeople? Even as a child, she had been suspicious. And curious and sharp-tongued and managing. But mostly suspicious. It was not a comfortable feeling. Never had been.
    And it was doubly uncomfortable to find herself suspicious of Jamie. But her instincts were never wrong. She could always sniff out the gorgers like his cousin Wroxham. But not Jamie. The only person in the world she could ever remember trusting was Jamie. That was probably the truth of why she had married him. That and his wonderfully hungry, knowing smile. Yet, all the relief she had felt upon coming to the house evaporated into the clouds, leaving a clammy sense of unease and disappointment.
    Lizzie dragged up her sodden hems, thanked providence she was wearing boots, and set herself back through the underbrush towards the cliff top, cultivating the messy mixture of suspicion and disappointment with each mud-slick step.
    What on earth did Jamie think he was about?
    There had been something familiar about the man, the groundsman, yet she couldn’t place him. Dartmouth might be a bustling port, but it was still a small provincial town. She had lived there all her life and thought she knew everyone, from the baker’s boy to the Earl’s housemaid. But that man was a stranger. He had the rugged, tanned look of a sailor, much more so than Jamie. Perhaps he was one of the rough, itinerant seamen who frequented the Dartmouth waterfront? But such a man would hardly seek work, or be hired, as a grounds-keeper.
    Only two things could explain their familiarity. One, he was someone Jamie had known from the Navy. And it would be very like Jamie to bring one of the less fortunate or less able of his comrades home to a comfortable job after they’d been cast off by the Navy. Loyal and sentimental, and deeply honorable, her Jamie.
    The second explanation was much more likely, especially considering their secluded location along the south coast. The man was a smuggler, one of an invisible network of free traders that ran from the lowest levels of society to the highest.