Counting on a Countess. Eva Leigh

Tamsyn said in what she hoped was a confident tone, “I’ve learned a few things after eight years of smuggling—including how to avoid the dangerous end of a pistol.” She aimed a smile at her friend. “Haven’t been shot yet.”

      “There’s a first time for everything,” Nessa replied grimly.

      Tamsyn shook her head. “A fine way to show your encouragement.”

      Nessa attempted to look more cheerful, but the worry never left her eyes. She gently smoothed a hand down Tamsyn’s cheek. “Ah, my bird, forgive my worry. You’ve done so much for Newcombe, ever since you were but a child, and your poor mabmik and tas at God’s table.”

      An old, familiar ache resounded in Tamsyn’s chest, even though it had been ten years. Her parents, Adam and Jane Pearce, had taken their pleasure boat out to sail along the rocky Cornish coast of their home, leaving fourteen-year-old Tamsyn behind to finish her schoolwork. They had not returned alive.

      The barony had passed to Tamsyn’s uncle, Jory. But if the villagers of Newcombe had hoped to find in the new baron the same measure of concern for their welfare as his brother had demonstrated, they were bitterly disappointed. A poor fishing yield and strangling taxes decimated Newcombe’s livelihood. To Tamsyn, orphaned and adrift, there had been one audacious solution to the village’s plight.

      But all that could come to an end if she couldn’t move this sodding shipment of brandy and lace. She’d journeyed all the way to London to help the village and if she failed, she imperiled over four hundred souls depending on her.

      She glanced back into the alleyway. It smelled of copper and standing water, and shadows gathered thickly. Somewhere in that gloom, a tanner named Fuller kept a storefront, but that business was merely a pretense for a much more profitable enterprise.

      “Can we be sure of this bloke?” Nessa pressed, giving words to Tamsyn’s own worries.

      “He’s the best lead we’ve had in a fortnight.” Everyone else had fallen through. “Come on.” She stepped into the alley.

      More than once, Tamsyn had evaded customs officers, running down the beach and hiding in caverns to lose her pursuers. She had learned how to fire a pistol and where to stick a man with her blade so that she dealt a punishing but not fatal wound. Every time a new shipment needed to be offloaded, she faced danger.

      The fear that made her palms sweat had little to do with physical peril. So many relied on her. She couldn’t fail them.

      Nessa’s nervous steps tapped behind her as she strode deeper into the alley, echoing her own rapid heartbeats. But Tamsyn vowed that she would brazen this out just as she’d done with everything else in her life.

      She passed a man sleeping on the ground. He opened one eye as she went by and gave a grunt of surprise. Women of quality didn’t haunt shabby London alleys. Not for the first time, Tamsyn wondered if she ought to have changed her clothes before leaving Lady Daleford’s this morning. Too late to do anything about it now. She had to move forward.

      Fuller’s shop front was little more than an awning-covered table strewn with hides in different stages of tanning. The reek of lime brought tears to Tamsyn’s eyes, and she heard Nessa gag quietly behind her. A jowly man in a heavy apron stood behind the table, warily watching Tamsyn’s approach.

      He said with barely concealed disdain, “Looking for fine leathers, miss?”

      Tamsyn fingered one hide, pretending to contemplate it. “Bill Conyer said you could help us.” In desperation, she’d gone to the docks to look for leads. Conyer, an out-of-work stevedore, had given her Fuller’s name and direction—though he’d had to be financially compensated for the information.

      Fuller scowled. “Conyer don’t send no one to me for leather. Only . . .” His eyes widened. “But you’re a lady. Ladies don’t—”

      “This one does,” Tamsyn interrupted. “Are you interested?”

      “How do I know you ain’t playing?” Fuller demanded. “No ladies in this business.”

      Tamsyn fingered the diaphanous fabric around her neck. “Chantilly lace. Fifty yards of it.” She calmly pulled a flask from her reticule and held it out. “This is a sample of my brandy. Five hundred gallons are sitting in Cornwall this very moment. I’m looking for the right buyer for both.”

      Fuller glared at the flask but didn’t take it.

      “Go on,” Tamsyn urged. She fought to keep her tone calm. It would scare Fuller off if she showed her desperation. “You’ll never taste anything finer.”

      He snatched the container from her hand and took a drink. After wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said with reluctant admiration, “That’s prime fuddle.”

      Her heart rose, all the while she kept her expression calm.

      “But I ain’t going to be your fence,” he added.

      An icicle pierced her chest. “Why not?”

      “On account of I don’t do dealings with gentry morts. Can’t trust ’em.”

      “I assure you, I am most trustworthy. I have been in this line of work for nearly a decade and—”

      “Then why don’t you got a fence?” Fuller demanded. “Why come crawling to me?”

      She opened her mouth, but no words came out. How could she possibly explain? The smuggling operation ran through the family’s ancestral home, Chei Owr. Caverns beneath the house led directly to a cove, which was the perfect location to receive smuggled goods from a ship at anchor. Those same caverns served as the holding place for the brandy and lace, and they sat there until they were purchased by their fence, Ames Edmonds, who distributed the goods both in Cornwall and all over England.

      It was a perfect system. Jory and his wife, Gwen, knew nothing about the smuggling operation, which was precisely how Tamsyn wanted it to stay.

      Everything would have proceeded apace—if Jory hadn’t announced a month ago that he intended to sell the crumbling, neglected Chei Owr. He had every right to: he was Lord Shawe, and the manor house wasn’t entailed. He already had letters to agents in London, though no buyer had yet stepped forward.

      Tamsyn’s horror at losing her home and last connection with her parents was doubled when she had received a hastily scrawled note from Ames stating that, with the possible sale of their base of operations, their partnership was over.

      The latest shipment of brandy and lace had nowhere to go—and the village was in dire need of cash. Tamsyn had hurriedly concocted a plan wherein she and Nessa, acting as her maid, would travel to London under the guise of her finally having a Season. Her parents’ old friend Lady Daleford had offered her a place to stay and entrée into the city’s most elite gatherings. All the while, Tamsyn would undergo a frantic search for a new fence. Balls and soirees in the evening, haunting London’s seediest corners during the day.

      There was one other component to her reason for being in London. But she hadn’t been pursuing it with the same dedication as the hunt for a buyer.

      None of this could be relayed to Fuller, of course. The less he knew about her personally, the safer both of them would be. Hanging was always an option for smugglers. Or, given that she was of gentle birth, she’d likely be transported. Neither option was appealing.

      “I fail to see what difference my motivations make,” Tamsyn answered coolly. “I have top-tier merchandise to move, and I’m giving you the option to buy it. We’ll both make out nicely.”

      Fuller squinted at her as if she were tiny, illegible writing. He spat upon the ground. “If you was a bloke, I’d be singing a different tune. But you’re a mort.”

      “I oversee an operation that successfully collects thousands of pounds’ worth of merchandise, from making connections with the ship’s captain to unloading the goods to its storage and sale,” Tamsyn noted, her words dry.