The Cornish Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page A

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for those things, only once or twice for a burning.
    There was another flicker of light from the sea, this time
only one short blink. Red Meg turned her head toward the men waiting in the
shadow and said, “Go.”
    They hurried forward and began to run the villagers’ small
boats into the water. If there was sun the next day, the boats would be dry and
the villagers would never know they had been used. If there was no sun, damp
might well linger in the bottoms of the boats. However, no one would remark on
it, just as no one would turn a head or get out of bed to look when the ponies
passed through the town, as they sometimes did. It was much, much safer to
notice nothing. Curiosity resulted in inexplicable damage to one’s crops, in a
house burnt to the ground.
    The squire’s daughter, Mrs. Edward Devoran, had made good
the loss but there was no guarantee that she would do it again, and thus it was
an adequate warning for them all. Next time it might be a killing, and even
Mrs. Devoran would not be able to cure that. So when the soft thud of many
hooves passed in the night, those with windows by the bed turned their faces to
the blank wall. There had been some angry muttering before acceptance was
forced on them, but it was no distaste for smuggling that caused it. Quite the
contrary, the men from the village were angry because they were never employed
in the lucrative work.
    As time passed the villagers grew resigned, particularly
since a few coins were periodically found in the boats left in the cove. It was
better to profit from the smuggling that way. Mrs. Devoran was kind, but she
was a great stickler for obeying the law, and she hated smugglers. This wasn’t
surprising, because it was rumored that a smuggler had shot and killed her
husband. The village women looked at each other whenever the subject of the
late Edward Devoran came up He was surely no loss to his wife, whether or not
she knew it.
    Oddly enough, Red Meg was thinking almost identical thoughts
to those of the village women. She thought of Edward every time she came out to
meet Pierre’s ship. Edward’s death and the events that followed it had restored
Megaera Devoran’s faith in God. She grinned in the dark when she thought of the
vicar’s horror if he knew the source of both her faith and her generous
contribution to St. Buryan’s. But really, seven years as Edward’s wife had just
about made an atheist of Megaera. She had had to become Red Meg to believe
again. It hadn’t been to so easy to believe in the goodness of God before that,
either. After her mother had died her father had disintegrated rapidly. He had never
been a very strong person. He was sweet and kind but always sadly addicted to the
bottle and the gaming table. Lady Bolliet had ruled her husband, and her
daughter was also strong-willed, but Megaera had been too young to take control
when her mother died.
    Then, somewhere, Lord Bolliet had met Edward Devoran and
fallen so deeply in debt to him by gambling that he could not pay. How the two
men had come to the decision that Megaera’s hand in marriage would clear the
debt, she never discovered. When she asked her father, he burst into tears,
when she asked Edward, he laughed. Now, Megaera knew, she should simply have
refused, but then she had been only fifteen. With her father weeping and
babbling of ruin, utter ruin, and Edward, handsome and soft spoken, assuring
her that it was her beauty that had driven him to using such underhanded methods,
Megaera had agreed to the marriage.
    She had lived to regret it bitterly. Within weeks of the
ceremony Edward was after the servant girls. When Megaera, not so much hurt as
outraged, had told him in no uncertain terms that he was to leave the girls
alone, he had tried to beat her. He had learned swiftly not to do that. Megaera
had defended herself with furniture, teeth, and nails. Edward had ended more
bruised than she. Then, to enforce the lesson, she had set John on him. He