Shock rang through him like the boom of canon. She’d refuse him? He urged her closer.
“No, Alastair. No.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“But I am. I am! Don’t you see? I have no money. No dowry. My sisters and I live on Aunt Gertrude's charity. Griff’s too. I'd bring you nothing."
"I don't want money, Bee. I want only you."
Tears formed on her elegant lashes. "It's not merely money that prohibits us from marrying."
He knew her objection and her sorrow. "I don't care about your father."
"I do! How would it look that the new colonel's wife was the daughter of a notorious gambler and drunk? A bankrupt? No one would associate with you."
"My darling, Bee. This is His Majesty's Army where merit wins the day."
"Character, too."
"My character," he added. "And yours. And yours is sterling."
She shook her head.
"It is. Look what you've done to catch this Blue Hawker."
She shrugged. "He deserves to go to prison. Or be transported."
"You have a fine sense of justice, my dear. And I applaud it. But what your father did has no bearing on how I value you. I want you as my wife, Belinda Craymore. So promise to wait for me."
"I will wait. But you must do your part and promise me to come home."
He swung her up into his arms and whirled her about. For the first time in all their lives, he kissed her luscious mouth. "I promise you, darling."
Only two days later, as he boarded the packet to take him across the Channel did it occur to him that she hadn't agreed to his proposal of marriage. "You will marry me, Bee. You will."
Chapter 1
Thursday, November 2, 1815
Brighton, England
“Why, oh, why can no man be dependable?" No sloops, no skiffs sailed the Channel today. No pudgy smuggler or his pale, corpulent extravagantly-dressed friend appeared on the beach.
Belinda Craymore shivered in the cold, pulling the collar of her red wool pelisse higher against the wind off the coast. Still, the hair on the back of her neck bristled. Did someone watch her?
She scanned the beach. No one loitered. No one caught her attention.
She clutched her arms. But this was not the first time she'd felt eyes upon her.
Slowly, she surveyed the brown stony shore again. No one.No one.
She was simply a lady, a basket in hand, shopping for fish for the evening meal. That was all.
Standing taller, she strode around the corner of a fishmonger's tumbledown hut. The gusts off the coast whipped her black hair into her eyes. Her pins in the wind, she frowned at their loss. For her disarray, her aunt would scold her. For her continued insistence to do the day's shopping, her younger sister Marjorie would again lift her brow in suspicion. Delphine, their youngest sister, would notice nothing at all. Del noticed only men.
But one more glance of the coast and Bee accepted the lack. She'd not found any hint of Blue Hawker here. Not his rich pasty-faced, paunchy accomplice, either.
A stab of regret pierced her. She wasn't true to her promise to Alastair to stay away from here. But then, Alastair hadn't kept his promise either. He'd not come home.
