Page 1

Chapter 1

Lower Tilbury, Kent 1782

The slight rustle of a straw mattress filled the quiet bedchamber.

“Lizzie?”

At the sound of her mother’s weak voice, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth rose from the rocking chair and crossed the small room in three steps. Leaning over the bed, she reached out to grasp the suffering woman’s work-worn hand.

“I’m here.”

Mary Doyle’s eyes fluttered open, and she turned, struggling to focus on Elizabeth’s face in the dim candlelight. “It’s time,” she whispered. “You must take the purse.”

Elizabeth swallowed hard. There was nothing in her mother’s purse. The parsimonious sum her father allotted them for food was gone, spent on the small bottle of tonic Doctor Goddard had given her to ease her mother’s racking cough. “Your purse is already safely in my keeping,” she said, mustering a smile.

Mary shook her head and gripped Elizabeth’s hand more tightly. “Not my purse, but yours.”

Elizabeth frowned. “My purse?”

“In . . . in the corner.” Another fit of coughing seized her mother, and Elizabeth slid an arm beneath her shoulders and raised her slightly, holding her as she fought for breath.

“The corner,” Mary gasped. “It’s hidden there.”

Perplexed, Elizabeth glanced around. Other than the rickety bed, the only other furniture in the room was the wooden rocking chair where she’d been sitting. A washbasin and jug lay upon an upturned barrel, and a solitary poker leaned against the fireplace. Nothing was visible in any corner.

She waited until her mother’s coughing subsided before pressing a cup of water to her lips. Mary took one sip before turning her face away. Battling a wave of discouragement and exhaustion, Elizabeth placed the cup on the floor and gently lowered her mother back to the bed. Despite the cold compresses Elizabeth had been administering around the clock, her mother’s condition continued to worsen. The heat permeating her coarse linen shift spoke of the fever she’d been fighting for days, and now it seemed that delirium had set in.

“There is no other purse,” she said.

“Yes,” Mary gasped again. “Beneath the floor.”

Beneath the floor? Elizabeth met her mother’s pale-blue eyes. Surely the look she bore was more desperate than glazed. But what could she possibly mean?

“Find it, Lizzie.” Mary’s voice was weakening. “Before he comes.”

Elizabeth glanced at the door, listening for any sound that warned of the return of her father and the foul men in his company. She’d seen the lamp glowing in the inn’s front window when she’d gone to fetch fresh water for her mother, and she knew all too well what that meant. “The smugglers are at work tonight. I daresay Father will be occupied for some time yet.”

Although her words were intended to be reassuring, they did nothing to settle Mary’s growing agitation.

“Fetch it now,” she whispered. “I beg you.”

Giving her mother a worried glance, Elizabeth rose to her feet and studied the wooden floorboards running across the length of the room. Years of wear had worn them to a smooth shine, and although some of them creaked as she walked, they seemed sturdy enough.

Reaching the nearest corner, she bent low, raising her candlestick to better see behind the rocking chair. A large brown spider scuttled out of the pale circle of light, and Elizabeth shuddered before quickly moving past the fireplace to the next corner. Here the floor was fully exposed, and when she pressed her toe to the boards, there was no sound and no movement.

The upturned barrel that served as a table blocked the third corner. Stifling a sigh, she placed the candle at her feet and carefully lowered the washbasin and jug of water to the floor beside it. Placing her hands on either side of the barrel, she wiggled it back and forth until she’d inched it far enough from the wall to see what lay behind. She picked up the candle and peered into the darkness. The floorboards reached all the way to the wall, but one of the boards appeared to have a deep nick along its edge.

From somewhere outside, a dog barked, and Elizabeth tensed. Her mother’s ragged breathing filled the silence, but no other sound reached her from the courtyard or the inn. Shoving the barrel another few inches to her left, Elizabeth squeezed around it. Dropping to her knees, she examined the notch in the floorboard. It was about the width of her thumb and looked to have been gouged out of the wood by a knife. She hooked her forefinger into the indentation and pulled. With a click, a small piece of wood lifted off the floor, leaving a narrow gap in the floorboards.

Stunned, Elizabeth set the piece of wood beside her and stared at the hole. Did it truly contain a purse? Or was it more likely the home of a mouse? Or worse, a rat?

“Lizzie.”

The urgency in her mother’s rasping voice pushed Elizabeth to action. Closing her eyes, she slid her hand into the hole and felt the fabric immediately. Grasping it between two fingers, she withdrew it from its hiding place and pulled it into the candlelight. The small drawstring bag was made of linen. It was not heavy, but there was something hard—a rounded flat disk—within its folds.

Her thoughts awhirl, Elizabeth stood and hurried to her mother’s side. Mary’s eyes fluttered open at her approach.

“The p . . . purse?”