The Dubious Miss Dalrymple. Kasey Michaels

you? Good.”

      Alastair, the tattered blanket wrapped about his muscular frame like a toga, moved slowly toward the small window—doing his utmost not to make any disaster-causing sudden movements. “I’m Alastair Lowell, by the by,” he said, making what he hoped was idle conversation as he unfolded the paper. “I’m the Earl of Hythe—which should not be too far from here, unless I somehow ended up on the wrong side of the Channel. Parlez vous français, friend ogre? No? Well, that’s some small relief. All right, let me see what this says.”

      He read for a few moments, then looked up at the giant, who was hovering just a mite too close for comfort. “Hugo, is it?”

      The giant nodded vigorously, a large smile cracking his face to expose a childish, gap-toothed grin. He slammed one hamlike fist against his barrel chest and growled low in his throat as if repeating his name.

      “Uh-huh,” Alastair said dryly. “Obviously Hugo. And this letter was written by your mother—dictated from her deathbed, actually, to someone who wrote it for her. How touching.” He lowered his head to read the remainder of the short note. “Good God!” he exclaimed, looking up at Hugo, then down at the note once more. “Cut out your tongue? I can’t believe it. Why in bloody hell would anybody want to—”

      Hugo’s left hand came down heavily on Alastair’s shoulder, nearly buckling the Earl’s knees. “Aaarrgh,” the giant groaned, opening his cavernous mouth to let Alastair view the damage for himself.

      “Yes, indeed,” the Earl concluded quickly, trying not to gag, “it’s gone, all right. My condolences. Your mother says you’re a good boy, Hugo, and that I should be nice to you. You’re seven feet tall if you’re an inch, old man. I’d like to meet the fellow who wouldn’t be nice to you. Besides, unless I miss my guess, you saved my life.”

      Nodding his head several times, Hugo stepped back to begin an elaborate pantomime Alastair believed was meant to depict Hugo’s daring rescue at sea. As the performance took some time, and the Earl was beginning to feel slightly giddy from being on his feet so long, it wasn’t too many minutes before Alastair could feel the small room begin to swirl in front of his eyes.

      The giant, apparently sensing Alastair’s imminent collapse, broke off his performance to scoop the smaller man into his arms and lay him gently on the cot. His movements swift and economical, he had a meal of meat, thin broth, and boiled potatoes in front of Alastair before another ten minutes had passed, and he fed this to the patient from his own spoon, grumbling compliments for every bite of stringy meat Alastair swallowed.

      Later, after watching Hugo wash the plates in a bucket of seawater he had carried into the cottage, and while the spit dog hungrily wolfed down the remnants of the meal, Alastair, his strength at last beginning to return, began a fact-finding conversation with his nurse-savior.

      “How long have I been here, Hugo?” he asked as the giant unearthed the Earl’s clothing from a small chest near the hearth.

      Hugo held up three fingers.

      “Three days? No, my beard is too long for that. Three weeks?” Hugo nodded his head in agreement. “Good God—the whole world must think me dead! Hugo—do you have a newspaper?”

      The giant looked puzzled for a moment, then removed one gigantic wooden clog and pulled out the folded layers of newspaper that served as a cushion for his feet. Alastair accepted it gingerly, unfolding it with the tips of his fingers to see that the newspaper was six months out-of-date.

      “Thank you, friend, but I fear I need something more recent than this,” he said politely, quickly returning the paper, which Hugo replaced inside the clog. “We’ll need money. Did I have any money with me? I should have—I was a big winner, as I recall, and hadn’t as yet gone to my cabin to change out of my evening dress. But no, doubtless the man who hit me made sure to empty my pockets before dumping me overboard—why else would he bother with the exercise at all? I should have known that at least one of them would prove to be a poor loser. Good Lord, Hugo, I think I’m babbling.”

      Within moments Hugo had laid a considerable sum of money in Alastair’s lap, amazing the Earl with his honesty. The man couldn’t have spent so much as a single copper on himself the whole time the Earl was unconscious. But, relieved as he was to see the money, it also seemed to eliminate his disgruntled gambling companions as possible suspects in his “murder.”

      Counting out a hundred pounds, Alastair handed it to Hugo, who refused to take it. “Here, here, man, don’t be silly. I owe you my life. Besides, I want you to go into the nearest town and buy every newspaper you can find. Where am I anyway, Hugo? East or west of Folkestone? West? Good. That means I can’t be more than a stone’s toss from Hythe—and Seashadow. That fits my plan exactly—did I fail to mention that I have a small plan building in my head? Tell me, my large friend, would you like to be a part of it?”

      “Aaarrgh!” Hugo agreed, clapping his hands.

      “Good for you, Hugo, and welcome aboard! All right, let’s get down to cases. I’ll need some clothes—nothing too fancy, just a shirt and breeches, and perhaps a vest and hat. Oh, yes, I’ll need smallclothes and shoes as well. The salt water has made my own clothes unwearable, even if you were so kind as to wash them. Do you think you can take care of that for me? Of course you can. You’re very intelligent, aren’t you, Hugo? Your mother said you are.”

      Hugo’s gap-toothed grin was curiously touching.

      “I’ll need paper, and pen and ink, of course,” Alastair added, thinking aloud. “I should think I’ll want to get word to that Captain Wiggins fellow in the War Office that I’m still alive. He may prove useful. But I don’t think I would wish the knowledge of my survival to go beyond him for the moment.” He looked across the room at Hugo, then smiled. “Not much fear of that, is there?” he joked darkly, and Hugo’s grin appeared once more.

      “Yes,” Alastair said, smiling genuinely for the first time since waking to find himself in the cottage, “this could prove to be extremely interesting.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE KENTISH COAST had long been considered the gateway to England, an island empire whose six thousand miles of coastline were its best defense as well as its greatest weakness.

      The Romans had landed along the Kentish coast, followed by the Germanic tribes that were united under Egbert, the “First King of the English.” Alfred the Great, England’s first great patron of learning, was sandwiched somewhere between Egbert and William the Conqueror, followed by the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts, the terrible, tiresome, homegrown Cromwell, and finally, the House of Hanover and its current monarch, George III.

      The king, blind and most decidedly mad, was not aware that his profligate, pleasure-seeking son had been named Regent, which was probably a good thing, for the knowledge just might have proven to be the death of poor “Farmer George”—but that is another story. More important was the fact that another adventurous soul was once again contemplating the Kentish coast with hungry eyes.

      Napoleon Bonaparte, ruler of all Europe, had amassed the Grande Armée, his forces surpassing the ancient armies of Alexander, Caesar, Darius, and even Attila. He had set his greedy sights on England early in his campaign to conquer the world, although pressing matters on the Peninsula and to the east (where the Russians and their beastly winter had proved disastrous to the Little Colonel) had kept him tolerably busy and unable to launch his ships across the Channel. This did not mean that the English became complacent, believing themselves invincible to attack from the French coast.

      Quite the contrary.

      Martello Towers, an ambitious string of lookout posts built on high ground from Hythe to Eastbourne, were still kept munitioned and manned by vigilant soldiers of His Majesty’s forces. Dressed in their fine red jackets, the soldiers stood at the high, slitted windows of the grey stone cylindrical towers, their glasses trained on the sea twenty-four stupefying hours a day. In their zeal to protect their shores, the English had even dug the Royal Military Canal between Rye and Appledore, optimistically