On a smothered cry, she spun away from the beach. Alastair Demerest was lost to her. Had been for months. Since the battle at Waterloo in June, he'd been classified first as wounded, days later as missing. She dreamed of him constantly and heard him calling her name, yet she knew in her heart he lived.
But where? And how?
A sob filled her throat. She'd loved him, never told him and now he would never know she missed him. Adored him. Would go to her own grave with the fact of her failure. Her new vow was that those she loved would always know she cared for them.
"Ohh, enough searching for the invisible! Wanting the impossible." She yanked up her skirts, avoided the curious looks of the fishwives in their stalls and headed for the wooden stairs up the cliff to the Steyne. At the top, her maid Mary paced to and fro, waiting for her. She'd be only too happy to leave her post. Hating the freezing weather, the servant nonetheless relished these strolls to the coastline. To keep her promise to Alastair, Bee had given up her morning rides along the cliffs. Instead, she came during the afternoons. Her maid, as life-long friend, had pressed Bee for an explanation of their purpose here. Bee had given in and Mary became an eager partner in Bee's investigations, happy to enliven her dull existence and keep her mistress's secrets.
"Well, there are fewer and fewer of those," Bee grumbled as she climbed the rickety stairs. "But Blue Hawker, I will find you."
The smuggler king was a nasty bit of work. Short, stocky, foul-mouthed, he carried a knife and ugly words for the two fishwives from whom Bee bought most of her oysters and crab. Long before she'd spied him carting his contraband ashore at dawn, she had caught him hitting Sally Wish. Bee had promptly pulled her pistol on him. He'd snarled at Bee and backed away, hands up. And though he pulled his grubby grey tricorn down over his face, Bee had memorized his features. Quite unforgettable he was. Whatever his real name, she'd dubbed him Blue Hawker for his bulbous blue-veined nose and his uncouth snorting and spitting.
She'd seen him again twice in May. Blue Hawker was unmistakable, but his fancy friend with him was not so unique in stature or looks. How she'd spied them that first day together was surprising. They should have kept to the shadows instead of out on the stones, careless as could be for anyone to spy them. Even the revenuers. Why hadn’t they caught them?
She grunted her displeasure. She shouldn't be surprised. After the battle of Waterloo June 18, the whole world revolved in new ways.
"Bonaparte," Bee grumbled. "He giveth and he taketh away."
"Miss Craymore, oh, I'm glad you're done 'ere." Mary shivered as she huddled into her brown woolen cape, her chestnut hair spilling from her old linen mob cap. "I spied Miss Marjorie, I did, across the road a minute or more ago."
Bee checked the street. From their vantage point, the town of Brighton spread north along the fashionable Steyne, past the Lanes filled with tiny shops and the Prince Regent's sprawling Pavilion to their aunt's grand home on the edge of town. "She's gone. We're safe."
"I hid my face, but she's wise, your sister."
Don't I know.Marjorie was one year younger than Bee.With secrets as disreputable if not as dangerous as mine.
"I wish you wouldn't come 'ere, Miss. Captain Demerest wouldn't like you coming to the sea."
Bee had made the mistake to tell her of Alastair's request she not come here. A maid in Bee's parents' home since she'd been ten, Mary had known Alastair Demerest nearly as many years as Bee. "He was always very protective."
"Aye. Oh, but 'e's dead, ain't he? I know you won't say it, but—”
"No." They'd seen his name on one casualty list in theLondon GazetteJuly 3, but since then not a word. If his commanding officer had sent a notice to a distant relative of his that he was declared dead, they’d heard nothing of it. Only this void. This hole of despair. "He's alive."I know he is."Come along, Mary. I'll hail a chair. Hurry. It's cold."
Finding all the sedan chairmen fully employed along the Steyne, Bee led the way toward her aunt's fashionable mansion. Only once had she imagined her tall, blond, dashing, ever-earnest Alastair Demerest bleeding, mangled, dying on a blood-stained battlefield and calling her name. She'd run for the chamber pot. That day, she'd vowed to never envision such again. But for months, she'd heard his voice, his appeals to wait for him.Wait.Though as months wore on, with no confirmation of his passing nor his name on revised casualty lists, Bee had only instinct to tell her he might have survived.
"He was so kind, so handsome." Mary brought up the subject once more. "His mother loved him so."
Bee choked on the memories. Lady Dorothy Demerest had been like a mother to Bee, her two sisters and brother George since the passing of their own mother twelve years ago. A neighbor, whose home was on the opposite bank of the Thames, the Viscountess Lowell had visited almost daily and brought her two sons with her to play with the Craymores. If she were still alive, that dear lady would cry her eyes out that not only her oldest William was gone, killed at Toulouse alongside George, but also that her youngest Alastair might have given his life for king and country.
But he didn't. He's alive.
"Even James is gone," said the maid, tears filling her words.
Mary had held atendrefor one of the footmen who'd left their Aunt Gertrude's service last winter to join the Army and fight Bonaparte. Killed on the Belgian field, he'd not returned to them and Mary mourned him every day.
"We've lost too many we loved," Bee said, and put a comforting hand to the maid's. Bee choked up at the list of family and friends lost in these wars. "Let's not speak of the dead again."
"But Blue Hawker? For fair, we can hope he's dead."
"Dead, yes." The smuggler of French goods whom Bee had discovered running goods aground upon the Brighton shore on winter mornings had disappeared. His fancy friend too. She'd told Alastair about them both when he'd been home to settle his older brother's affairs. Alastair had introduced her to the Navy captain in Brighton whose responsibility it was to work with the Customs officers to keep the coast clear of such criminals. Days later, Alastair had told her that revenuers had caught two shipments that had drifted upon the shore. Crates of opium and twenty-two tubs of French cognac was the catch. Sadly, Blue Hawker had escaped the trap and hadn't returned with any contraband since then.
"Means he won't be looking for us," Mary said with relief as she ambled along beside Bee. "Or any o' his men."
She tried to smile at her pretty maid. "They're probably caught."
Mary frowned. "And transported. Because if they come back, they won't live long."
"Oh? Why do you say?"
