Chapter Two
A smuggler’s hideaway
Near Portsmouth, England
Zephora scrambled away from Rafe, around the two other passengers who stumbled down the gangway off the creaky old packet.
Never had she been a good sailor—and she certainly had not been on that teacup of a boat.
It was dark, after midnight, the stars twinkling in the sky, and she saw only wild shadows outlining the docks, but she had a violent need to reach land.
She didn’t hear Rafe call her back. Thank God.
He was a liberal sort of fellow in his devotion to her care.
Of course, he would let her go, let her run to dry and stable land, let her indulge herself in the illusion that she could go far…
and go far without him. Smart man. Still, she was too ill, her innards too queasy, her need to feel dirt and rock beneath her flimsy shoes too urgent.
But the dock was rough. The planks uneven.
She stumbled.
“Chouchou,” Durham whispered as he caught her arm before she landed flat on her face. “You are not yet ready to run.”
Can I ever be? She glanced up at his dear face. How did he tolerate her infernal weaknesses?
She did not care to probe too deeply into her dependence on Rafe.
She had fought herself not to cower from the deckhands on the packet from St. Nazaire.
She had smiled and done her best acting when the two other passengers had to assemble on the deck for air or their daily walk.
She had swallowed her screams—and kept her eyes on Rafe and her hand in his.
“Right you are,” she said in her low whiskey voice that never seemed to improve to its former, higher range. Holding on to Durham for dear life seemed to be the way she must live for now. She did not object. For now. How could she?
“Don’t worry.” He patted her hand, as he was wont to do. “You’ll get used to the crowds.”
The lump in her throat proclaimed she did not agree.
Since Rafe had swept her from the lower depths of the Conciergerie, she had changed, improved, even.
At first when standing near a man she did not know, she melted away from him.
With Rafe’s insistence on his technique of breathing, she had learned to control her body’s rigid stance.
To allow fresh air to circulate into her blood and in her mind.
Seeing her reluctance all through their sojourn in France, south out of Paris, then up the coast from Bordeaux to St. Nazaire, Rafe repeated the lessons of his technique and insisted that her shyness around others was to be expected.
She took his word as gospel. After all, he was the only man who had ever saved her from disaster.
So, head high, she walked with him like a lady with her man. Yes, she even strolled with him to the hack that idled near the square.
“Where do we go?” She had asked him that early this morning when the captain had declared that, after twelve days of torture on rough seas, they would land.
“The captain says east of Portsmouth. Ever been there?” His bright eyes had danced at the prospect.
“My father and I landed there when we came to Britain. I do remember a peaceful-looking town. But that is all. I was young.”
“Portsmouth is full of the Royal Navy now. After Trafalgar, they have more than doubled in numbers.”
She had shaken her head. He had told her tales of what had happened in the past year in the conflict between Britain and France.
Down in her cell, she had gotten little water or gruel, let alone news of great victories by Britain.
Though news of Bonaparte’s genius at his victory at the Battle of Austerlitz had readily reached the farthest cells of the Conciergerie.
“Why no guards for our captain of the packet?” she asked him now as they waited for the man in front of them in the queue to finish hiring a cab.
She thought it odd that their scruffy, mean-looking smuggler had landed so easily upon British soil.
Years ago, she had learned the rules of bringing in contraband to a port from her father.
In addition to his tobacco plantations, her father had been the owner of the largest shipping company south of Baltimore.
She had grown up not only along the banks of the Rappahannock River on their plantation, but also on the docks of Alexandria, Virginia.
She knew sailing ships of every size and purpose, from schooners to gunboats.
It shamed her that she had been so ill on their sail crossing the Channel. She had always wished for good sea legs, but had never gained them. Now, she had other weaknesses of body, voice, and mind because the French guards had bullied her, beaten her, and raped her.
One day, all that they stole will be mine again. She had vowed it often, voicing it to Rafe.
He shook his head. “Our captain must have friends among the revenuers.”
“Revenuers?”
“Those who collect taxes from importers. And who catch smugglers and their illegal goods.”
The very idea of anyone who was an enforcer of laws or crimes had her clinging to Rafe’s arm. The ones she had known had not been ethical. “I am sorry I asked.”
“Never be, chouchou. In those pale golden eyes of yours, I see your promise to yourself to become stronger. It will happen in all your tomorrows. Today is filled with beef and potatoes and—”
“Whiskey!” she added. She had often entertained him with her bravado.
He chuckled, as he always did, at her boldness. His humor was the other quality of Rafe Durham, the bear, that kept her oriented toward improvement and survival.
“I will hire this next hack.” And off he trotted to the skinny fellow talking to his draft horse.
She watched him go. Her bear was elegant despite his bulk. She had never met a man like him. Giving, kind. Hard. Where and how he had grown to become such a person, she often wondered. He’d declined to tell her.
“A boring tale.” He would wave a hand and dismiss her curiosity.
But she recalled in the gray shadows of her mind the night that Rafe Durham had come to her with another man.
They murmured to each other. They walked about on cats’ feet.
Somehow—one day, she must make him tell her—they subdued the guards and opened her cell to free her and her cellmate, a young man named Luc Bechard.
Then Rafe had picked her up like so much dust and carried her away to the cool, fresh night air and to a small batteau floating on the Seine.
There sat one woman who had kissed her cheek, whispered words of encouragement, and embraced her briefly that fateful night, then had given her back to the strong hold of Rafe Durham.
She was Inès Bechard, sister to Luc. The other gentleman, whom Zeph had learned later was Inès’s new husband, the Earl of Halsey, had been quick, urging and prodding the others to act.
The three of them had come to rescue Luc, the man in prison who had sheltered Zeph from guards who had come the previous night to rape her like two others had.
By accident or plan—she did not know—they had rescued her as well.
“Let’s climb in,” Rafe told her now with a hand to help her up the coach’s step.
In a moment, they were sitting in the carriage.
He cradled her back against his chest, his usual mode of comfort for her in the rough circumstances of their escape from everyone who would take her away.
Like this, she had known his embrace, tender and kind.
If she could term his embrace nonchalant, she might counter that with the knowledge that he had done everything so vital to her survival, some of it shockingly intimate, and by that, she knew he cared for her.
His attentions had been toward her, as a lady to be tended to, revived, renewed. Perhaps as a friend. No more.
And she was grateful.
“Go to sleep, chouchou. I will wake you when we arrive.”
“Where?” She tipped her head back into the crook of his arm and, in the dim moonlight, admired the cut of his square jaw and the high arch of his black brows.
“Brighton.”
She stiffened at the name of that fashionable town. “We won’t—?”
“Go in Society? No, we won’t. But we will get you dressed properly and introduce you to one or two kind people.”
She shivered. “No. I am not ready.”
“What do you say to seeing the lady who helped rescue you?”
“Inès Bechard? I barely remember her,” she said, hoping that would convince Rafe not to press her on the matter. For she knew if she accepted one, he would want her to try to meet another.
“But you met her once at the Countess Nugent’s home in Paris.”
“I do not remember. Sadly, I don’t.” She could find fault with herself, of course she could! She had been so diseased that she did not recognize one she had met? She suppressed a shudder and hugged him close. “Tell me again about how we parted from Luc, his sister, and her husband.”
“We parted from the others south of Paris, two days after your escape. It was best to split up. The others could travel more quickly. You were not in good health. I don’t expect you to recall much of anything.”
“But there was Luc. You saved him.”
“Yes, we got him out too.”
“He deserved to be free. He saved me from more abuse by the guards.”
“I know.” Rafe pressed her close and kissed her forehead.
“And so the other man? I have only vague recollections of him. That man was Inès’s husband, yes?”
He nodded. “The Earl of Halsey. A good man.”
“Among other good men,” she said with a soft smile to add to her compliment. She frowned, frustrated at her poor memories of her rescue. “I do want to see Inès. Both of them. I am grateful to them. I have not thought much of them since that first night, and I should have.”
Rafe pushed strands of hair from her brow. “I wish you would not criticize yourself. You have been through a terrible ordeal.”
“Are Inès and Halsey in Brighton, do you think? And Luc?”