The Professor and the Smuggler Page 8

  He wanted to turn around and press a quick, hard kiss to the professor’s mouth. What would it feel like? How would his lips be different from a woman’s, and how would they be the same? What would he taste like? Stale alcohol, most likely, Carne reminded himself. But, more important than the physical sensations, what would kissing signify? It would be another step. Carne didn’t want Phillip to imagine there could be anything deep between them, and a kiss…well, a kiss represented entirely too much.

  Carne shook his head. “I’m sorry, truly, but I don’t think I can do that.” He got off the bed and hurried toward the door, where he paused. He felt cowardly running off. That couldn’t be the last word spoken between them. “As I said, don’t worry about rising early. We can view whatever sights you wish tomorrow, and I can introduce you to the oldest woman in Par Gwynear. Mavis’ll have some tales to tell. Good night.”

  Carne closed the door behind him, then stood there, allowing all the conflicting feelings to wash over him. He was far too drawn to Phillip Singleton and too eager for more experimentation. If he didn’t take care, his common sense would be lost, washed away as if by a storm.

  He needed to plant his feet on solid ground and live up to the name his parents had given him. Carne. Rock. An immoveable thing that even Phillip Singleton couldn’t manage to put off balance and tip over.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rumbling in Phillip’s stomach woke him the next day. He felt as cavernous as the spot he and Carne had visited at the cove. And no wonder, as he hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast. They’d been too busy at the shore to think about lunch, and in the tavern, the hearty stout had unfortunately taken the place of both teatime and supper. Ale that he’d lost to the ditch, so yes, his poor stomach had every right to grumble.

  But that wasn’t the only reasoned he felt so unsettled and empty. His encounter with Carne the previous night had fulfilled Phillip yet left him wanting so very much more. All too well he recognized the signs of his heart softening, and that mustn’t happen. He’d barely survived the two times he’d fallen head over heels in love.

  One had been Gavin, the stableman he’d been too young to understand was merely having a good time with him. The other was a university colleague Phillip had carried on with for more than a year before the man had sworn to change his nature and devote himself to the woman he planned to marry. After spending countless precious hours together, he’d walked away from Phillip as if their affair had meant nothing and never communicated with him again.

  After that, Phillip refused to allow himself to confuse sex with love. He and Geoffrey had been friends and only occasional lovers. Other dalliances were of an even briefer nature. He must school himself to think of Carne the same way, for absolutely nothing was going to come of this experimentation. It was an adventure for Carne, no more, no less. Something he’d refuse to remember as soon as Phillip had gone.

  Phillip threw back the covers and forced himself to stop thinking about what had taken place beneath the blankets last night. This was a new day, with a chance to meet someone with tales to share. He hopped out of bed, grabbed hold of the post while his dizzy head straightened, then went to wash, dress, and find Carne.

  The man was gone. Not just out of the house, but completely gone from the premises. He’d left a note explaining he had business to take care of and would be back shortly. Phillip scrounged up something to eat, then sat and read the battered copy of Gulliver’s Travels while he waited.

  At midday, Carne arrived. Phillip spotted him from the window, walking up the path with that long swaggering stride of his. He truly looked like a sailor, wearing a navy peacoat with the collar turned up.

  Phillip went to the door to greet him. Carne didn’t quite meet his gaze as he said good morning.

  “Sorry to be so long. I had a cold frame to repair for someone, and Bea needed me to fix her door.”

  Phillip nodded. The phrase seemed ripe with sexual innuendo, but likely that was because Phillip disliked the idea of Bea putting her hands on Carne.

  “With the fishing so scarce, I’ve taken to repair work around the village to make ends meet.” Carne snorted. “Not that I get paid in anything but vegetables and more fish.”

  “Ah, the ubiquitous fish, both your bounty and your curse around here. One must get quite tired of eating fishy dishes,” Phillip teased as he followed his host back into the house. “So, tell me more about this old woman I’m going to meet today.”

  “Bea’s great-grandmother, Mavis Purdy. She often forgets what she’s doing and who she’s talking to, but her memory of the past is sharp as can be.”

  “I look forward to meeting her.” And to spending another day with you. Phillip kept up his jolly inconsequential chatter to help set Carne at ease, and soon the man was able to meet his gaze again.

  Rather than harness the horse to the cart, Phillip and Carne between them carried the camera equipment to a house at the edge of the village.

  Mavis Purdy, probably never a large woman, had shriveled with age until she resembled nothing so much as the shrunken heads from Borneo at the Natural History Museum. Her wrinkles had wrinkles, but her eyes, buried deep in their folds, were bright and sparkling. She welcomed them inside, and after Carne introduced Phillip as Professor Singleton, she proceeded to call him Isaac for the duration of their visit.

  “Aye, indeed I do recall those days,” she answered Carne’s question. “Of course I do. Me father was an important man everyone relied on. He and his crew outwitted the customs agents more than once.” She scowled at the term customs agents, and Phillip thought she might spit on the floor for emphasis.

  “What did your father and his crew trade?” Phillip bit the tiniest corner off the stale biscuit she’d given him and leaned in to listen.

  “He exported wool for local shepherds—to avoid the taxes, y’see. And brought in all manner of things; china, silk and cotton from the orient, brandy from France. They used to say brandy flowed like water through Par Gwynear to all of Britain.” She squinted at Phillip. “Would you like some tea to dunk your biscuit, Isaac?”

  “Don’t bother, Mrs. Purdy. I’m much more interested in hearing about your father’s adventures.”

  “One time my tas and his men set up cannons on the cliffs, fired down on a revenue cutter patrolling the area, and drove her off. Another time, he and his crew boarded that same ship and fought with muskets and knives to reclaim the cargo those king’s men had took from ’em.”

  “A real pirate,” Phillip said.

  “A free agent,” Mavis corrected.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She went on to tell a tale of how her father’s crew had hidden loot on a nearby island before selling it, and of a particularly relentless revenue agent who’d disappeared, never to be seen again.

  Then she rose from her chair and showed Phillip a few items around her little dwelling that had come from those long-ago ships. A picture of an oriental garden with peacocks embroidered in satin thread hung on one wall. A brass urn resting on an elephant’s back stood beside the front door and held a cane and several umbrellas.

  “Treasures from the east.” Mavis smiled, displaying her few remaining teeth. “But as for those gold coins, I never seen ’em.”

  “Gold coins?” Phillip asked.

  “Me mam swore my tas be holding back. Never said why she thought it, but whenever he be gone, she’d search for the gold.”

  After that, Mavis’s conversation began to ramble into odd directions, and Carne suggested it was time they leave so she could rest. Phillip got Mavis to pose for a photograph, a nimbus of light shining through her scanty white hair and the complex patina of age upon her face. He though it would turn out to be remarkable.

  Once outside the cottage, Carne said, “Ignore the part about the hidden gold. Mavis’s mother was a bit loony toward the end and imagined all manner of things.”

  Phillip said, “Um, that story about firing the cannons down onto the revenue cutter. I
believe I’ve read before. The Carter family in Prussia Cove. The eldest son, John, set up a battery of cannons to fire on the revenue cutter Faery.”

  Carne smiled. “Aye. I promised Mavis would share a lot of tales. Didn’t say they’d all be strictly true. She confuses her family’s history with other local stories. Wouldn’t have surprised me if she threw a piskie or two into the stew.”

  Phillip laughed and then pushed Carne gently on more current events to see if his answers would change.

  “I’ve read that during the Peninsular War, when smuggling was at its peak, entire villages of people would be involved. Fishing and smuggling were Cornwall’s two main sources of revenue.” He waited for Carne to grow nervous again, but the man gave a half nod. “With tax regulations easing, the need for free traders ceased. But tell me honestly, Carne. Has it died out completely?”

  Carne’s face could have been carved in stone as he allowed not a flicker of expression to cross it. “I’m not sure it has in other villages. But you’d have to ask them.”

  Phillip suspected this was said to get him to hare off to other parts of the coast. A day or so ago, he would have supposed that Carne wanted him gone because he asked too many questions. Now he thought their grappling in the dark the night before made Carne wish him leave. The way he’d fled afterward might once have embarrassed Phillip. Now it simply made him sad. Carne had been so needy.

  He gazed out over the water. The cry of gulls reached him on the breeze. He could take pictures for weeks and years, interview every old and young person he came across, and he’d never be able to convey the beauty of the scene or the stubborn silence of some of the residents.

  A woman with a basket on her arm caught sight of them and tramped through the tall grass toward them. The buxom Bea Pollard.

  Carne caught Phillip’s gaze, then hurried to her. What did that blank look mean? Stay still? Follow if you must, but don’t tell my lady we’ve groped in the dark?

  Phillip considered drawing near enough to hear their greetings, but he was not so ill bred as to eavesdrop on a conversation that wasn’t about the weather. They seemed entirely serious, as if they might be discussing a grave illness.

  Carne walked back to him. “Mrs. Pollard requires my help with another repair. Would you come with us to the inn?”

  “No, thank you.” He had no desire to watch their intimate manner. He could already imagine Carne’s warm smile directed at Mrs. Pollard, and that was more than enough.

  “You should return to the cottage.”

  Phillip adjusted the strap to the carrying case on his shoulder. “I wonder why you treat me like a small child who can’t be trusted to venture out on his own.”

  Carne’s brows rose. “Do I? Surely not.”

  Phillip decided not to argue. After all, he’d been drunk as a fiddler the night before, so perhaps he had given the impression he needed a keeper. Since he had to haul his equipment anywhere he went, going out on his own wasn’t easy. He gave a nod. “Fine. I’ll return to the cottage and take a look at my notes.”

  “I should return in the next hour or so.”

  “I shall see you then.” Phillip turned and walked off without looking back. He didn’t want to watch those two dark heads bent together, speaking in low voices, as they walked to the inn.

  After he lugged his tripod and cases to Carne’s house, he intended to simply transcribe his notes from the meeting with Mavis and perhaps match her tales to others he’d jotted in his notebook. His memory for details meant he could do a rough sketch of the coastline and perhaps mark the spots they’d described. He had notes from that treasure map he’d not been allowed to remove from the university archives and wished he could see it again—proof positive that at some point in history there’d been real buried treasure in Par Gwynear. He wanted to tell Carne about that map, offer it up like a child eager for approval. A gift to win his gratitude? Bah, not likely.

  Impatience bubbled through him, and Phillip found it difficult to concentrate on the old stories. His beautifully focused aim seemed to have shifted. He pushed back from the table where he worked on the map and walked around the cottage, examining each detail as if hunting for something that would reassure him that his endless preoccupation with Carne wasn’t a waste of his time and energy.

  He didn’t find any sort of reassurance.

  He stood in the doorway of his room and looked at the rumpled, abandoned bed, recalling the details of the late-night session with Carne. That had only been a few minutes in his life. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow a fast, nearly silent interlude to undermine his goals. Carne, with that lopsided smile, seemed to have turned into Phillip’s ideal of physical perfection, but he’d be damned before he’d try to earn Carne’s attention again. He had no interest in anyone who ran away from him once that thirst for release had been quenched. Nor did he want to lie on a bed imagining the touch and gasps and… His breath stuttered, and his hand crept to the band of his trousers.

  No, he would not. Phillip turned away from the room.

  He didn’t want to waste plates on unnecessary photographs, so he’d go now and scout the next batch of pictures. Phillip knew there must be a cave beyond the places Carne had taken him yesterday. Not the site described in the old treasure map from the archives, this other well-described spot Phillip had read about was the scene of a bloody fight between some locals and lawmen trying to arrest a wanted criminal hiding there. Any book about the area should include mention of the spot and a photograph.

  After a long walk cross country and a slippery clamber down the side of the bluff, Phillip reached the beach. He walked past the fissure and the small cavern Carne had showed him, then around the bend, sloshing through the water in his impatience to get to the cave even before the tide had fully receded.

  There it was! Just as he’d guessed from his reading. A large black mouth of irregular shape, open wide as if ready to swallow him whole. Phillip shivered in eagerness and a little fear as he walked inside.

  The drip, drip of water echoed in the cave, and outside, the hush of the waves grew quieter. He stood, his eyes adjusting to the dark. A gleam of sunlight picked out something in a far corner that looked like wood with writing on it. Heart racing with excitement at the possibility of actually finding something, Phillip made his cautious way over, avoiding stones and saltwater puddles.

  Several broken packing crates lay on the floor, pushed into the far corner, up and away from where the water might enter. The wooden crates looked old, but not decades old. He tilted his head and rubbed a finger over the broken seal on one of the crates. French words he could almost make out if they weren’t so faded and it wasn’t so dark. Phillip cursed himself for foolishly forgetting the miner’s cap in the cottage. What an idiot for coming so ill prepared. He wouldn’t be able to explore very deeply into the cavern. He leaned over and squinted, trying to read the printing on the seal.

  “What the hell be ye doing here?” A large man with a face round and pale as the moon loomed toward him out of the darkness. His glare and scowl were hardly welcoming.

  Phillip’s pulse hammered, but he caught his breath and kept his composure.

  “How do you do? You’re Mr. Mitchell, I believe.” Phillip straightened and held out his hand. “I met your father yesterday, and you look more like brothers than father and son. I’m Mr. Singleton.”

  Mitchell’s face darkened, but he gave Phillip’s hand a brief shake. “You’re the one bought everyone and his cousin drinks last night. Why’d you do that?”

  To get them all to like me and open up about the secrets of this place. “I enjoyed the company. And others joined in buying drinks.” He smiled. “Since you missed it, I’d be glad to stand you a drink—later on, of course.”

  His own stomach twisted in protest, but he wouldn’t be fool enough to touch alcohol at the moment.

  “No,” Mitchell said. “You also took a photograph, I hear.” He might have accused Phillip of stripping off his clothes and dancing on a t
able in the pub. Perhaps he always talked to people as if he were a hellfire preacher condemning a sinner.

  “Yes, and I plan on taking more.” Phillip tried to be as polite and enthusiastic as possible.

  “Ah.” Mitchell adjusted the cap on his head, taking it off and resettling it on his dark, well-greased hair.

  “I’m writing a book, you see. It’ll be about the area and will include pictures of the stone circles I find. And I’m getting some marvelous stories about smugglers.”

  “And I ask again, what the hell be you doing here? Where’s Carne?”

  *

  Bea brought Carne a cup of tea and watched him replace the chair’s leg.

  This was hardly the emergency he’d expected when she’d begged for his help at the inn. There was a laundry list of repairs needed, but none that would keep her from opening that day and he’d already been there once that day to repair the hinges on her front door.

  “Isn’t this cozy? The two of us working together to make the Stoney Ground ready?”

  He dropped the nails he held. “Bea,” he said. “You know I’m supposed to keep my eyes on that visitor of ours. You said you needed a word.” He drew in a long breath and let it out before continuing. “It’s best to get the words said and done so I can go back to guarding the stranger.”

  Coward, he thought. He’d run away from Phillip’s request for a kiss, and now he felt more than ready to flee Bea’s hints, again. Had he always been so lily-livered when it came to affection? He’d grown used to his lonely life, dammit.

  Bea sat down on another chair and heaved a great sigh. “Don’t go all prune-faced, my love. I do have something urgent to discuss. A marriage proposal.”

  “What?” He put down the hammer carefully and then recalled this subject had come up before, as a joke. “Are you talking about Roger Peters’s nephew, Jackie?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “He’s years younger than…” He realized what a hole he might be digging and quickly added, “than I am.”