A Warriner To Seduce Her. Virginia Heath
heavy feet he trudged back towards the house and tried to fill his head with happy thoughts instead. Purposefully light and cheerful things which he would one day enjoy, but which did not exist in his miserable childhood. Parties, balls, dancing ladies in beautiful gowns, rowing boats and sunny picnics...
Instead of fetching his father he sat down to daydream, waiting long enough to ensure she believed his lie that dear Papa couldn’t be woken. Another habit which earned him censure from both his parents. Sometimes that worked and she would march back to the house in a temper to give him what for. Other times, she scowled at Jake and called him useless like his father, then ordered him straight back, but at least he had delayed the inevitable.
It was always inevitable.
With a sigh he stood and headed back to where he’d left her. As soon as he emerged from around the trees she turned and smiled, then promptly launched herself off the bank into the swirling water.
At first he stood frozen to the spot, but then realised the gravity of the situation. She had carried out her threat and he’d failed to fetch his father. His father might well be a roaring drunk, but he was a strong one and could save her. Now all she had was Jake, the smallest and most useless Warriner.
He sprinted towards the river bank calling to her, dropping to his belly at the edge and stretching out his arm. ‘Mama! Grab my hand!’ But she was too far away from his childish arms to reach, clinging to overhanging branches of the bare weeping willow as the river foamed and rolled around her, coughing violently as water splattered into her lungs.
He ran to the tree, screaming for help. ‘Jack! Jamie! Come quick!’
His elder brothers were in the field somewhere, working because most of the labourers had left long ago. He had no idea where Joe was, but willed him here, too. Joe was cleverer than Jake and his quick brain would find the solution, although anyone else would be better than just him. In desperation, he clung to the sturdy trunk and leaned out as far as he dared, knowing that if he tumbled in then the raging river would take him and they would both be dead.
‘You need to grab my hand, Mama!’ Hot tears were streaming down his face. Tears of guilt and terror, of shame at not being good enough and too selfish to sacrifice himself. ‘Please!’
Her heavy winter coat and long skirts were weighing her down like an anchor. Jake could see that as well as he could see the fear in his mother’s eyes just before her head plunged beneath the water. It bobbed up, but barely. Only her face was visible as she gulped for air, but her eyes locked with his and beneath her fear he saw the disappointment that he had failed her just as his father had so many times. In that moment, he realised she had never meant to die.
‘Grab my hand...please!’ Her chilled fingers were losing their grip on the slippery fronds, the fast current was greedily flowing around her, each new surge ebbing higher and higher as she struggled to stay afloat. Soon her fingers, then her face disappeared beneath the water and all Jake could see was the tangled whirl of her green skirts trailing like river weed among the branches of the willow.
He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the dreadful sight, even for the thumping sound of racing feet behind him, watching powerless as his two eldest brothers selflessly risked their own lives to correct his mistake. Joe arrived soon after and was stood frozen behind, his face white and terrified. Like a statue, he was so still.
In his daze, the tragedy unfolded.
Jack, his eldest brother, waist deep in the water, holding Jamie’s hand tightly on the bank as he tried to grasp her.
Jack carrying his mother’s limp and bedraggled body towards the bank.
Jamie laying her out on the ground, pumping her chest. The eerie gurgle of water trickling from her mouth with each push. Painful minutes ticking by before pressing his ear to her chest. Shaking his head.
Joe’s pleading voice. ‘We have to save her. There must be something we can do?’
His eldest brother’s arms went around his shoulder. He didn’t offer platitudes or false hope, simply his strength, and Jake leaned on him.
‘This is all my fault.’
‘No, it isn’t. You did all you could.’
Which was never enough.
His mother’s lifeless eyes as she gazed up from the mud. That final cold, dead stare out to nothingness. Disappointed for evermore.
Lord Fennimore’s Mayfair study, on a very wet night in February 1820
Thanks to the splendid port, the cosy heat from the fire and a distinct lack of sleep the night before Jake would soon need a pair of matchsticks to prop open his eyes. Viscount Linford was droning on about the latest numbers of confiscated barrels of brandy in every coastal county the length and breadth of the entire British Isles, or at least he had been before Jake’s mind had wandered off to greener pastures while listening to the man’s soporific voice.
As always, the Viscount measured success in numbers, seemingly oblivious to the fact it made no difference how many cargoes the blockade men had seized this month compared to last. Those dull statistics were a drop in the ocean—albeit the English Channel—compared to the massive cargoes which slipped past them daily. For a small pile of coin, most people could be relied upon to be resourceful. But smugglers weren’t most people, the piles they wanted weren’t small and their resources far outstripped those of the rag-tag disorganisation of the Board of Excise. Whoever the mysterious Boss was, his toxic network was proving near impossible to infiltrate. Crowbars wouldn’t budge the terrified sealed lips of the few crews they had arrested and for every ship they seized another twenty sailed right past.
‘All well and good, but can we trace any of those barrels back to Crispin Rowley?’ Lord Fennimore’s curt tone suggested he was as bored by the Viscount’s bean-counting as Jake was.
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly? What sort of an answer is that? Either we have a traceable link to the bounder or we don’t.’
Viscount Linford began to blink at the challenge. ‘We know that a substantial amount of those barrels were destined for the capital.’
‘And?’ Fennimore was losing patience. ‘We are in the midst of the Season, when I dare say London consumes more than its fair share of brandy. Are Rowley or any of his associates transporting the goods further afield or selling the stuff in the capital?’
‘Not that we can find. He’s covered his tracks well. However, we all know he is the source.’
‘Knowing it and proving it are two very different things. The Attorney General will sign no warrant for the man’s arrest unless he has tangible evidence of Rowley’s involvement.’ Something they had failed to get in the six months since Crispin Rowley had come under the suspicion of the King’s Elite, a small but highly skilled band of covert operatives created to infiltrate and take down the powerful, organised smuggling rings which threatened Britain’s ailing economy.
Rowley was linked to a ring that they believed was funding the loyal last remnants of Napoleon’s army, which was a great cause for concern. This group was intent on stealing the former French leader from his island prison and returning him to power, using funds raised from smuggled brandy on the shores of the very enemy that had brought him down, and at the helm was one man: the faceless, untraceable and powerful man known only as the Boss. As much as ten thousand gallons a month were finding their way into the public’s glasses in the south-east, no duty paid and all profits heading directly back to the French rebels.
But this smuggling ring was not only supplying the capital. Every major city, the length and breadth of the British Isles, was benefitting from cheap spirits to such an extent the bottom had practically dropped out of the legitimate market. Most worrying was the persistent intelligence that hinted the group’s tentacles were firmly embedded among the