Oh, dear God, she thought. Dear Lord. They were coming for him already. In a few minutes’ time theywould be rowing him back to the ship and he wouldbe gone. And yet his lady was coming. Dinah wasquite sure that that was what her gesture at the windowand her sudden disappearance had meant.
She was about to hurl herself down the path in a desperate bid to stop him in time when she realizedthat the direction the little boat was taking would notbring it to the beach below. It was rowing off to herleft. He must, then, be on his way down the less steeppath. That was why she had not seen his horse. Hecould not have taken his horse down this path. It wastoo steep.
Dinah turned blindly and dashed across the clifftop toward the path that Edgar had indicated the previousmorning. And stopped dead at the top of it.
There were two men on the path, neither one of them the dark rider. They were both crouched downbehind rocks and coarse grass, and both staring sointently downward that they were unaware of her presence above them. If they were ghosts, of course, theywould remain unaware. But she knew they were notghosts.
Smugglers? Were they waiting for the boat to arrive at the beach so that they could go down to unload theforbidden cargo? Dinah felt terror at the thought, andher first instinct was to turn and run back the way shehad come, back to the safety of Malvern. The darkrider was forgotten for the moment and she was fullyaware of the peril of her situation. Edgar, she thought,would be furious with her if he ever knew.
But there was something strange about the two men. If they were awaiting the arrival of the boat, why werethey not down on the beach so that they might helpunload whatever was in it as quickly as possible? Whywere they holding back? One of the men, she couldsee, had a long gun lying on the path beside him.
There was still the urge to run. But there was also curiosity and the strange feeling that somehow she wasneeded. By whom she did not know. She moved overto the face of the cliff on the inside of the path andbegan to edge her way downward, keeping her backagainst the cliff and knowing that even if the menlooked back they would very probably not see heragainst the dark and rough wall of rock.
She did not have to go down very far. After turning an almost imperceptible bend she could at last seedown onto the beach itself. And she could see moremen down there. She counted them. Two standingclose together at the water’s edge, both dressed in longblack cloaks, and three standing a little behind them,their eyes searching the beach and the cliff path. Butthey would not be able to see either her or the two mencrouched behind rocks.
One of the cloaked men was Edgar. She knew it as surely as if she were close enough to see his features.He was part of a smuggling gang and he was about tobe caught red-handed by the coastal patrol. The littleboat was almost at the beach. She hated him in thatmoment. And felt a knee-weakening need to save him.But it was too late to save him. She tried to rememberwhat happened to convicted smugglers. Years in jail?Transportation? Hanging? She swallowed awkwardlyand fought the sudden urge to cough.
And then her eyes widened in horror and her hands clawed at the rock on either side of her. The man withthe gun was picking it up and lifting it to his shoulder and taking careful aim at the figures below. At one figure. At Edgar.
Dinah could no longer think of clever and impossible ways to save him. She stepped out into the path and cupped her hands about her mouth and shrieked.
“E-D-G-A-R!”
She saw, as if it all happened in slow motion, Edgar and the others wheel about and crouch down at thesame time. She heard the deafening roar of a gun firing. She saw the boat arrive at the beach and one ofthe oarsmen leap out. And she saw Edgar push theother cloaked figure toward the boat and heard himyell something before racing up the beach toward thepath. It must have all happened in seconds, for almostbefore his full name passed her lips she was beingseized in an iron grasp and a hand was clamping overher mouth—too late.
“Goddamn it, I missed him!” the man with the gun hissed—in French. Dinah scarcely realized that she hadtranslated the words in her head. “Damned wench!”And he rose to his feet, gun in hand, and began to rundown the path. The man who held Dinah followed him,urging her ahead of him with his knee.
“Out of my road!” the gunman roared as the two parties drew together on the path, and Dinah moanedin terror against the hand over her mouth as he raisedhis gun to his shoulder again. But she was almost gladof the hand a moment later as Edgar’s arm appearedfrom beneath his cloak holding a pistol and there wasa loud crack and the gunman pitched forward on hisface. The hand over her mouth stopped her fromscreeching. The arm clamped about her waist prevented her from falling in a heap to the path.
The sight of the little boat pulling away from shore seemed almost an irrelevance. And yet, one part ofher mind told her, a customs officer was dead and nosmuggled goods had been landed.
“Careful,monsieur,”Dinah’s captor said. “I have this wench before my body. And will perhaps slice herpretty throat if you do not immediately hail that boatand recall it to shore.”
Her mouth was suddenly freed and a moment later the hand returned to hold the blade of a knife againsther throat. She pressed her head back against hisshoulder.
She met Edgar’s eyes for what seemed an endless moment. They were totally inscrutable. He loweredthe pistol to his side.
“Now,monsieur!”her captor snapped, and the knife pressed inward a little. Dinah breathed shallowlyso that she would not move.
Edgar muttered something to the man immediately behind him, and only then did Dinah notice throughthe redness of terror that the man also had a gun,trained directly on her. And then Edgar turned, cuppedhis hands about his mouth, and yelled, stepping wellforward as he did so.
“Fournier,” he shouted, “keep going! All well here!”
But the last words were drowned out in the roaring of the gun and Dinah slumped forward, unaware formany moments that someone had caught her beforeshe reached the ground and held her tightly enoughalmost to accomplish what the bullet had not done.She nearly suffocated.
“He is dead,” she heard a voice say through the buzzing in her ears. He spoke in a quite unemotionaland matter-of-fact way, much as he might speak if hewere a hunter and had shot down a bird. “We will take care of these two, sir, shall we? I don’t believethere can be any others or they would be here by now. ”
“No,” another voice said, the voice of the man who held her. Edgar’s voice. “This was just the regularguard. They were not expecting us for four morenights. Yes, bury them, Trevor. And then get home asfast as you can, the three of you.”
Dinah did not want to open her eyes. She did not want to have to deal with any of the events of the pastseveral minutes or with the new knowledge they hadbrought her. She did not want to think about the twopoor members of the coastal patrol who had lost theirlives this night in the pursuit of duty. One of them bya bullet from Edgar’s gun. If she had the choice, shewould choose never to open her eyes or think again.
Edgar slid an arm beneath her knees and stood up with her. She lay limply in his arms, her head againsthis shoulder. She wanted to wake up in her own bedand find that it had all been a nightmare. Please, dearGod, let me wake up in my own bed, she prayed silently. But the dream—or the reality—continued. Sheknew that he was carrying her down the path towardthe beach and then along the beach. His boots madeno sound, and she knew they were on sand.
She was limp in his arms. She must have fainted. He did not know quite where he was going with herexcept that he felt he had to be beneath the safe shelterof the cliffs. He was unaware of the small boat approaching the ship and of the ship preparing to hoistsail for France. He felt no exultation at the success ofthe night’s work and no horror at the ugliness of it.Not yet. He was not even thinking of those things yet.
He could only see in his mind’s eye Dinah held captive against that ruffian’s body, his knife arching her neck back and almost nicking the skin. Dinah frightened and helpless yet unhysterical. And the man wouldhave killed her too without a thought. Lord Asquithfelt an unpleasant churning in his stomach when hethought of the quick decision he had made to haveTrevor shoot the man, though there was little enoughto aim at without having to go through Dinah. Hisdecision to trust Trevor’s marksmanship might haveended her life. His stomach churned again.
They were close to the cliffs, out of sight of the path. Safe. Though safe from what he did not know.The night’s business was over. He went down carefullyon one knee, cradling her in his arms, keeping themabout her as he set her down, resting her against hisinner thigh. Her cloak fell partly open to reveal hernightgown. It reminded him again of how helpless shehad been.
