Chapter Twenty
The low roofed tavern was busy with travelers when Robert made his way to it. He paused in the bustling courtyard and tried to clear his mind.
Having journeyed to the edge of Lyme, he had set about trying to leave.
He told himself he was all business now, but his mind betrayed him.
Returning again and again to the memory of Abigail: the taste of her sweet skin, the way her eye brightened when they discussed her ambitions, the chin he’d thought imperfect when it was in fact the only thing he wanted, the delight he took in listening to her speak and explain her passions and how he would never hear that again.
“Aye, that’s right sir.” A man Robert didn’t know was chatting casually with a gentleman close by, “Hired already to the little lady.”
Robert hung back, listening to catch the stray part of conversation.
Besides, it seemed the visiting gentleman had called on this travelling tavern for the same reason Robert had—the hiring of a speedy form of transport but that seemed gone already.
Comfort would therefore need to be damned, and Robert reasoned he would have to simply pump for a horse, as the best means of reaching London.
Of course, that limited him to only being able to travel in fits and starts, covering at most fifty miles a day.
“And they’ve already set off?” The gentleman turned and Robert saw it was Mr. Monaghan, whose smooth blond handsomeness he’d never liked.
Mr. Monaghan was frowning in annoyance. Robert pretended to be fascinated in the woodwork of the stable support structure as he waited for the two of them to end their talk.
With a nod, the coaching inn owner smiled. “With all speed, they left.”
“Judy likes her trips to London,” Mr. Monaghan murmured. “And she left no word for me?”
“No, I’m afraid not, sir.”
Growing bored and reasoning this had little to do with practicalities and more to do with Mr. Monaghan’s romantic pursuits, Robert stepped closer. “The coach is hired out, and off you say?”
The coaching owner turned and surveyed Robert, “That’s right sir. The Fossey girls took it an hour ago.”
A dim little noise sounded at the back of Robert’s head, a connection he had not made before, sounding and echoing but the much louder racket was the information that Abigail had left.
She was gone. It landed rather like a gut punch, pushing out hope and the fragile dream of winning her back.
She had departed from the sphere where he knew her, and any scheme he’d imagined where he’d won her mother or sister over to his side and been able to marry her, slipped further and further away from him.
What if there were relatives who might shelter her, with a distant cousin or a nearby rector who might like the eccentricity of his Abigail, and offered an honest union?
“Sir?” The tavern owner and indeed Mr. Monaghan were both watching him most curiously. Again, a nagging sense clawed at the back of his head, something about what Mr. Monaghan had said…but he could not pin it down.
“In that case, I will need to hire a horse, as I must make for London, too.”
“In fast pursuit of your little lovebird?” Mr. Monaghan laughed, and Robert shot him a dirty look, conveying his full distaste of the man.
“No different from you, sir, and whoever your Judy is.”
“Lord, no I wouldn’t consider the oldest Miss Fossey in that light, a shrewish virago if ever one lived and breathed.
” Mr. Monaghan mimicked a shudder, and slapped the tavern owner on the shoulder.
“I shall see myself out, and see if my uncle can be persuaded in giving me use of his carriage instead.”
The connective tissue that Robert had failed to bridge earlier, slot into place, and with such sharp clarity, he felt anger blossom through him that he had not seen it earlier.
“Judy is Miss Fossey, the elder Miss Fossey?” he had never thought to ask the older woman’s name, never pressed Abigail for the full Christian name of her eldest sister.
It had not occurred to him. In fact, if he thought about it, for some reason he had told himself, he had imagined Miss Fossey as a Mary or a Laura perhaps. But now, the calculations, the occasional snatched bits of gossip fell into place—she was Judith.
Then it hit him, and might well have staggered him, if he were not surrounded by people.
Punch and Judy of course. Could a simpler and more obvious name for such a woman be ‘Punch?’ The blasted woman Montacute had sent him to find—the bootlegger who ran the smuggling gang the Pinhayers—was his lover’s sister.
“I mean I wouldn’t go around referring to her in that manner, sir, but that is her Christian name.” The tavern owner looked uncomfortable, shifted whilst scratching his whiskers, and then said, “You’ll be Mr. O’Sullivan that’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes.” Robert’s mind was not with him, but halfway up the road toward London, chasing after the woman he should have sought in the first place. All the while he had been falling in love with the culprit’s sister.
No wonder Montacute warned the men in his service to avoid the parson’s mousetrap, such things lead you to miss the most obvious of connections.
What a bloody fool he had been not to see how infinitely better suited Miss Judith Fossey was to the business of smuggling, than Abigail.
The woman he loved could be trusted, was sharp and clever but she was not precisely practical—Abigail would rather lose herself in the world of study, than remember to bring lunch with them on an adventure.
Whereas Miss Judith, he recalled her shrewd pale eyes summing him up at the local assembly—perhaps she had even marked him out as a navy man.
Robert forced himself to speak. “When can I expect a fast horse? I must go to London posthaste. Urgent business calls me to Town.” He surveyed the tavern owner.
He had met the man before, at some point over the month and a half.
Desperately he tried to remember his list of names, before alighting on the right one.
“It was Forester. That is right, isn’t it? ”
Forester smiled, “Tis, sir. Listen there’s not much to be had here, but the public coach is due in.” He blew his cheeks out as he worked out the times. “Within the hour, you wait for it here, and I’ll ensure you a seat.”
Clapping Forester’s back, Robert passed over several coins and then made his way inside the tavern to wait.
A small, slight girl who might be Forester’s daughter or niece, since they shared a similarly harried expression and darkly curling hair, accepted a coin for an order of ale, and Robert sat into the nearest squab.
An awareness settled on him as he sank into a chair, he had discovered the woman.
Finally. The female smuggler. The leader of the Pinhayers, the woman he had been sent to find.
It was Miss Judith Fossey. A woman who he’d assumed disliked him for his association with her younger sister.
Now she had a genuine reason to loathe him.
Robert waited for the familiar deep-rooted satisfaction that should have been his, yet it could not be mustered. It was after all the reason he had first come to Dorset, had left his men and uprooted his life to find this bloody woman.
Judith Fossey. That is who he should have been focused on. But all he could see, and think and fret about was Abigail.
Instead, his eyes raked over the inhabitants of the tavern, the ones he could make out.
Taking in the shabby wooden structure, the dusty glasses, the grime on the window cases, as well as the mismatch of chairs and jumble of tables, and the collection of faces some of whom he recognized and knew him as ‘Mr. O’Sullivan’ and others of whom he didn’t.
At present they were friendly, the buoyancy of the Lyme Regis’s recent law breaking having spread to the outcrop of buildings too it seemed, but how many of them knew the truth about Judith Fossey, knew her as Punch, and would be prepared to murder Robert before he left Dorset.
Leaning closer to his tankard, he forced his breath to remain steady as he slowly slipped the ale, exchanging the occasional smile or nod with the passing traveler.
To his own personal distaste, Mr. Monaghan had been called inside and sat lolling in a sublime ease, and chatting animatedly to his neighbors, just a few seats away from Robert.
“Quite a find,” Mr. Monaghan was saying.
It was a common enough term Robert knew for booty and goods taken in, during nighttime smuggling activity.
To Robert it came as no surprise to hear that Mr. Monaghan was guilty.
In his mind, he tried to imagine the handsome man cajoling Judith Fossey along with a plan or scheme of his own, but then the sharpness of her flinty eyes recalled him to himself, and he rejected the notion.
Judith Fossey was entirely responsible for herself of that Robert had no doubt. Why had he not seen it before?
Mr. Monaghan’s neighbor laughed in response to him.
The amused chuckle had a rich, hearty strength to it, and Robert forced himself not to look up, and discover who was likewise engaged in the smuggling ring.
The list he had created of suspects which had included Abigail’s cook, Maria Schillers, had not gone the way of the letter, and lay concealed in his coat pocket.
Were the two or three men seated behind him to turn around and snatch him up, divest him of his jacket and search the pockets, he would be dead.
Despite Forester’s good cheer and friendliness, Robert had his doubts that the tavern owner wasn’t all too aware of what went on around these parts.
Robert forced himself to continue slipping his ale.
It was so bitter it stung, but he swallowed it down.
“I’ve a fancy to some new nags,” Mr. Monaghan said merrily. “Forester doesn’t have anything right at present, and I am heartily tired of begging for uncle’s scraps. Don’t you think I would be quite the sight in a barouche?”