Free The Moonless Night by Joan Smith

had no idea Sanford was coming to you? It was not arranged in advance?”
    “No, I heard nothing of it.”
    “I was afraid he meant to give me some competition,” Mr. Benson said with a rallying little smile that set Marie’s heart racing.
    She looked at him with large, surprised eyes, holding a question. Biddy had said he had come to court her, implied it, and she blushed as it dawned on her that their spy might have two reasons in coming. “He is very disagreeable, is he not?” she asked.
    “I find him so, as he is so much more eligible than myself. But then Sir Henry Boltwood’s daughter is not the vulgar sort to be dangling after a title, I trust.”
    “Oh, no!” she assured him at once, with a ravishing smile.
    Unfortunately, Lord Sanford chose that moment to draw his mount to a halt and await the others. David came up to Benson to point out to him the excellent view they were approaching. They continued four abreast towards the telescope.
    “This is too far from the Hall to be of any use,” Sanford said, looking behind him down the hill to the Hall. “How do you communicate if your man happens to spot anything suspicious?”
    “The lookout runs down the hill,” David told him.
    “Where is his horse?”
    “He doesn’t have a horse. He runs down on foot,” David answered, hardly able to keep a civil tongue in his head. Then he dismounted, as did they all, and with a pointed look at Sanford, he offered Benson first look out of the telescope.
    Benson shut his eye to it and looked out to sea, where the Bellerophon was visible, surrounded by many smaller craft. Behind him, Sanford looked around the point. “Those bushes there offer excellent concealment for anyone wishing to knock out your guard,” he said to David. “You ought to have set it up in a clear spot.”
    “Pity you hadn’t been here to tell us how to go about it,” David answered.
    “It certainly is. It will have to be moved.”
    “It isn’t being moved. It took us three hours to get it up, and it’s staying right here,” David said, in much the voice of his father.
    “Cut down the bushes then,” Sanford advised him.
    With roughly an acre of brambles and thorn bushes to be done away with, this speech was taken for pure ill humor. David turned away before he could utter some unforgivable rudeness. Benson, turning from the telescope remarked, “I make it over a hundred boats there, out on the water. Plenty of chance for mischief.”
    “The very number ensures safety,” Sanford contradicted.
    “No one would be foolish enough to attempt a rescue with a hundred witnesses standing by.”
    “They most of them leave at night, and naturally the rescue will be attempted at night. Anyone should know that much,” David said curtly.
    “Very likely,” Sanford agreed, to everyone’s surprise, till he added, “when your father has called off his watchmen.” Then he walked forward and looked into the glass. “They’re kept at a good distance, I see.”
    “A hundred yards,” David informed him—really Mr. Benson, though Sanford, of course, heard it as well.
    “Too close,” the latter said.
    “Admiral Keith doesn’t seem to think so,” David said at once, not to let the meddler get away with anything.
    “I don’t see how any of those little boats could hope to effect a rescue,” Sanford said next. “We’ll have to run into Plymouth and get a better look. Your father said the Fury was ready to launch, Mr. Boltwood. We could hack into Plymouth and back before lunch. Shall we go now, and take Fury out this afternoon?”
    “That’s up to Mr. Benson,” David answered, liking the suggestion nearly as much as he disliked the speaker.
    “Excellent,” Mr. Benson agreed, and the men turned away, but Marie had not had a look yet, and went to the telescope. There was little enough to be seen. Even with the powerful telescope, one could not hope to actually recognize a face aboard Bellerophon . There were men there, but if one of them