There aren’t really pirates, are there? Somehow the family already knew about the smuggling runs? They would have saved me a mountain of trouble if someone had bothered to get a message to me.”
“If you’ll excuse me for pointing this out, I am the message.”
Zoé hadn’t been paying much heed to the noise still coming to them across the dark distance, or to anything but her own perilous position, and how every second that passed was taking Anton further from her reach. But Max had her attention now.
“There’s even more to this beyond a smuggling run? I should have known, with Anton aboard,” she said.
Max looked at her rather curiously, as if she’d just spoken in Greek or some such thing. “Richard, since the women are here, may I assume my brothers are the cause of that commotion we’re hearing?”
“Currently occupied on the far side of that impressive pile of rocks, yes, by now undoubtedly just finishing up their business. Oh, and there may be a few, um, gentlemen of the skull and crossbones persuasion in attendance at the party, as well, but we don’t ask questions, as it concerns a private arrangement between the marquis and his secretive friend.”
Max lifted a hand to his head once more and then took it away, looking curiously at the dark wet stain on his palm. “We’ll leave that for now, whatever in holy hell that meant, or who this marquis is. Tariq, what do you say we all make our way up the path. From there, we can look down on the beach on the other side of the jetty. It’s safest you remain with me, and I wouldn’t be averse to a helping hand.”
“No need for climbing,” Richard told him. “Follow me.”
Zoé didn’t resist as Richard let go of her arm and took hold of her hand instead as he walked her toward the jetty, grateful for his assistance over the slippery mix of sand and shingle as she attempted yet again to marshal her thoughts. Max was in some sort of trouble? His beloved family was in some sort of trouble? If he wasn’t going to immediately turn her over to the authorities in Dover to be measured for her hanging chains, perhaps she could convince him to let her help, prove she could be trusted.
No. Thanks to Anton, it was too late for that.
“Give me a minute, if you please. It’s here somewhere,” Richard said, letting go of Zoé as he used his fingertips to probe at the edges of the solid rock wall now in front of them while Tariq took hold of her shoulders, anchoring her gently but firmly where she stood. “There’s one on either side. I don’t know how he discovered them, but I watched carefully as Simon showed me. Perhaps it’s too dark to— Ah, there’s the handholds.”
He stepped back as Zoé heard the scrape of rock against rock and a section of the stone in front of her somehow turned into a door that swung open as the man called Richard held out one arm in a flourish and took a bow. “Metal hinges replacing brittle, ancient leather, and liberally greased. Repeated at the other end. Amazing, isn’t it, considering it’s probably old as Caesar’s war horse.”
“A passageway through the rocks? I’ll be damned,” Max said from behind her. “I’ve fished from these beaches all of my life.... Where does it lead?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Zoé said, taking the initiative, pushing her fear of dark places behind her determination to save herself. After all, what did she have to lose? And once Max was surrounded by his family, she might find a way to gain a pistol and make her escape. She hadn’t precisely given her word she wouldn’t try.
As Tariq released his grip and she stepped through the narrow opening, she deftly gathered up her mane of betraying blond hair and twisted it into a knot, then slipped a black toque out of her trouser pocket and covered her head with it. There was a small torch burning against the wall to her right as she moved forward in what must be a cave hollowed out of the mass of jumbled rocks by the tides. The cave seemed to be heading uphill. If she just kept her head, became as inconspicuous as possible, and then slowly melted away from the others and back into the tunnel...
“Ah, I think not, Zoé,” Max growled, grabbing her arm. “For some strange reason, I’d prefer you alive for the moment, and the best way to accomplish that is for you to let me go first.”
“Perhaps I want to die, because you hate me so,” she said, shrugging her shoulders in a purely Gallic gesture she already knew would bounce off him like a dried pea dropped on a drumhead. She needed to keep him more angry than interested.
“While you love me so,” he bit out, proving her point, and then rudely shoved her behind him while Richard and Tariq forged ahead.
“You don’t know the meaning of love. And neither did I. Young and reckless, the pair of us, believing ourselves invincible. But no longer. Have you ever been in a Paris cell, Max? Have you ever been so cold and hungry you’d do most anything for a blanket and a crust of stale bread? Most anything.”
Max very nearly winced, but he’d never so betray himself, she knew that. “You knew what you were doing. That things didn’t work out the way you’d planned isn’t any concern of mine.”
“How very English of you.”
“Now’s not the time or place for this conversation.”
“Yet I’ll dare one thing more. Until I stepped on that blasted boat and saw you, I believed you dead.”
Now he was forced to look at her. “Boucher? You were following Anton? Why?”
She’d said enough to, hopefully, make him suspicious. Keep him alive. “That’s a question you might want to ask him, while you let me be on my way, which would probably bother your conscience less than turning me over to the Crown. Now, as it would seem whatever battle was raging is over, it’s time your family gets to welcome the prodigal home. Do you think they’ll all be there? Gideon, Valentine and perhaps even your darling, daring Kate? Yes, I remember all their names. How delighted they will be. Or are we to stay here in this strange damp passageway until we all drown?”
Max looked down at his booted feet and the seawater sloshing around his ankles. “Damn. Tide’s coming in. The whole other side of the beach will be underwater in an hour. Let’s go.”
“Brilliant suggestion. Do you perhaps have a white handkerchief hidden in that mass of rags you’re wearing? It would be highly embarrassing, wouldn’t it, if one of your own brothers mistook you for the enemy and shot you.”
“That won’t happen.” As if to prove his point, Max took a few more steps, and then put two fingers to his mouth and whistled. The sound seemed to bounce off the stone walls.
The same melancholy birdsong of a whistle he’d taught her, the one the two of them had employed many times in the past. She instantly remembered the lessons in whistling, and the kisses they’d shared as he showed her how to pucker her lips just so.
Maybe she did want to die. Seeing him again, knowing what she’d gambled and lost, was so bloody hard.
There was a short silence, and then an answering whistle, closely followed by a shout. “Max? Max, you son of a hound! Where are you? Everyone—weapons down. My brother’s out here somewhere, damn him!”
“That’s big brother Gideon. This could prove interesting. He’ll either hug me or knock me down. Perhaps both. Richard, Tariq—you two watch her if you please, until I call the all clear. She’s rather anxious to leave us,” Max warned before running a hand through his wet, unkempt hair, and then sloshing off downhill against the rising tide, toward the end of the tunnel.
“Forgive me for overhearing, but it was rather impossible not to catch at least a few words. Echos, you understand. More than a lovers’ spat between the two of you, clearly,” Richard said, stepping forward to pull Zoé’s arm through his.
“Nonsense, sir, we’re the best of good chums, as you English say it,” she responded dully.
Behind her, Tariq chuckled softly.
“Much more than that at one time, I would