April 1815
Brighton, England
“Promise me,” Alastair insisted and faced the young woman he had loved since he was twelve. “I must hear you say it.”
The wind off the Channel tore at Belinda’s hat, whipping tendrils of her black hair around her pristine heart-shaped face. He brushed the strands from her large sky blue eyes and tucked her curls beneath the broad brim of her pink straw bonnet.
“I will carry it with me.” Her grandfather’s old French pistol was her best defense against the smuggler and his aristocratic accomplice whom she’d accidentally discovered on this beach hauling ashore his contraband.
“Everywhere,” he demanded.
She flattened her hands against the red coat of his Royal Dragoon uniform.
“Say it, Bee.”
“Everywhere. Yes. I promise.”
“And no more solitary rides at dawn.”
She pouted. “You are mean.”
“Practical! Your aunt’s groom obliges you too much.” He lifted her chin and peered at her with harsh intent. “You mustn’t come here at any time of day, either.”
“Another promise? Oh, Alastair. I must find him.”
“No. You mustn’t.”
“His Majesty’s Customs offer a reward of three hundred pounds for his capture. Think of that! That’s enough money to—”
“To do what, Bee? Put you and your sisters in a rented house for a year? Your aunt and her step-son, Griff Harlinger, are happy to support you.”
“They may be. But I’m not.” She frowned at the waves crashing on the stony shore. Her father’s death and loss of his estate and good name shamed her. Alastair had comforted her soon after the man’s death. She’d mourned not only for the loss of her sire and her home, but also for the insult by two of her friends who had snubbed her in public. “Ask no more of me, Alastair. I’ve just promised to carry my pistol and you know I’m a good shot!”
He gripped her shoulders. “Good, if a bit too eager to save the day.”
“Oh, please don’t remind me how I hurt that poor tenant. I am plagued by guilt.”
“My dear, you saw him from afar and thought he was a poacher. Didn’t you tell me he understands and forgives you?”
“Oh, he’s just being kind, Alastair.”
“Kind or diplomatic. The incident is done. He’s alive—”
“With less of his ear!”
“Nonetheless, you won’t go riding at dawn and you won’t come here and you will carry your weapon. We don’t want you brought up to the Old Bailey accused of murder.”
She gave a sad laugh. “They wouldn’t.”
In the secluded nook of the fisherman’s stall, he did what he’d never been so bold to do in all the years he’d known Miss Belinda Craymore. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her closer to him. From this vantage point, her maid Mary above on the cliff could not see them.
Bee came into his arms easily, willingly and he smiled at her. “You’ve done enough to identify this thief. It’s his high-stepping friend we must be wary of. Men like him protect smugglers, my dear. They make the deals with merchants and take their cut. You’ve not just threatened the profits of a gang of smugglers, you’ve set the Shoreham Revenue officers on the nob who set him in business. You don’t know who he is or who his friends are.”
“I wish I’d seen more of him, but all I spied in the dawn was his bull nose and his belly in his fine pink satin waistcoat.”
“That was enough. Too much, in fact.” Alastair pointed toward the beach. “We don’t see him here today. But he will clear the way for his gang to return. They’ll try to run this coast again. We just don’t know when. Take comfort you did your duty as a citizen. You identified him.”
“Not so well that the revenuers could catch him,” she complained. He heard her worry that the leader of the band of smugglers was still not captured two months after she’d spotted him here with his gang.
“The Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs are not known for failure, Bee.” He curled her close and she nestled her face into the shelter of his shoulder. “So promise me, Bee. One more thing.”
She sniffed, testy because she wasn’t getting her way. “Another promise? You’re becoming aggressive, Captain Demerest.”
“I am.” He stroked her back. His leave short, he was to return to his troop in a few days for the campaign against Napoleon. But before he left he was determined to carry with him into battle the assurance that Belinda Craymore would be safe.
“I’ve already said I would not come. I so wanted to catch them and restore my sisters and me from my father’s disgrace.”
“I know you did. You gave Customs the best information they’ve had in months about those thieves and they value it. But it’s too dangerous for you to come here. You’d expose your interest. Customs patrol the coast. Leave this investigation to them. I don’t want you coming here looking for them. Promise me.”
She gulped. “I did.”
“Good.” He raised her chin with a gentle touch. “Now the last.”
“Very well.” She put her nose in the air, tolerant but teasing him. “What?”
“All these years, Bee, you and I have been friends.”
She parted her full pink lips in a mischievous smile. “Yes. From that day when you were fourteen and I fished you from your father’s lake.”
“I couldn’t swim,” he said with a helpless shrug. “I would have drowned.”
She toyed with the gold braid across his coat. “You taught me to ride astride.”
“So unflattering,” he chuckled. “And now you ride at dawn that way and get yourself in trouble. It’s one thing to mistakenly shoot a harmless tenant, my dear, but discovering smugglers and their conspirators is more dangerous work.”
“But riding at dawn is the best fun. No one is about. The way the sun splits the darkness and spreads like sweet butter over a meadow. The way birds chirp and put joy in your soul.” She dug her fingernails into the fabric of his coat, the way she’d nestled her way into his heart. “Oh, Alastair, you’ve brought me joy the same way.”
He caught one ebony curl that escaped her coif. He tipped his head, his new helmet precariously top-heavy. “That is the finest compliment you’ve ever paid me, Bee.”
“Is it?” she asked, her fair blue eyes clouded with distress. “You must have it now, Alastair, before you return to France. All these years, you’ve been safe in Spain in the worst of battles. Never a wound. Never an illness.”
The rule never to speak of how lucky one was in battle prohibited him from commenting. But they’d never spoken of a future together, either. He’d never had anything to offer her. A second son, he’d had to beg his father not only for funds to buy his commission but also for his uniforms, boots and sometimes even to buy another horse, his other shot out from under him. For more than nine years, he’d collected his army pay and found it bought little more than his rations and his meager enjoyments. Only with the victories of Wellington’s army had he earned hope of prize money that might afford him a life that might include a wife.
She was the only one he’d ever wanted by his side, in his arms, in his bed. He’d had nothing, not even hope he might survive the gory battlefields he’d trod. Now, close to the end of these wars, determined to finish off the nemesis that was Napoleon Bonaparte, he vowed to himself he’d live to see the end of all the suffering and conflict. But he heard her fear for him and sought to share his own optimism. “I will return, Bee.”
“Come home, please, Alastair. We’ll ride together at dawn.”
“Oh, Bee.” He wanted nothing more than peace and rest from the endless killing that left him sleepless, restless and often helplessly irritable. “After we rout Bonaparte in Europe, I’ll have a promotion. In July, I’ll have served seven years as captain, two as lieutenant. I’m due to become colonel. That will mean a raise in pay.” His older brother’s death ten months ago on the field in Toulouse meant he was now Viscount Lowell. But that title brought land long neglected. He hoped he might revive the estate’s production so that it might sponsor a decent living for him and the woman he adored. But his duty was to remain in the Army until Bonaparte’s defeat—or perhaps even afterward to ensure peace.
She put two fingers to his lips. “Speak no more of this.”
“I must.” Frustrated that she’d stop him from declaring for her after all these years of silently loving her, he crushed her closer. She fit him, body, mind, soul. “I will return and when I do, I’ll ask your aunt for her permission for your hand.”
She watched him, her brows wide in wonder. “Alastair—”
He cupped her cheeks. “Tell me you’re not surprised.”
“But I—” Her lower lip quivered.
“Tell me that you’ll agree to marry me because I lo—”
She put two fingers to his lips.
He kissed them. “You’ve always wanted me, Bee, as I have you.”
Her blue eyes grew fierce with outrage.
Shock rang through him like the boom of canon. She’d refuse him? He urged her closer.
“No, Alastair. No.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“But I am. I am! Don’t you see? I have no money. No dowry. My sisters and I live on Aunt Gertrude’s charity. Griff’s too. I’d bring you nothing.”
“I don’t want money, Bee. I want only you.”
Tears formed on her elegant lashes. “It’s not merely money that prohibits us from marrying.”
He knew her objection and her sorrow. “I don’t care about your father.”
“I do! How would it look that the new colonel’s wife was the daughter of a notorious gambler and drunk? A bankrupt? No one would associate with you.”
“My darling, Bee. This is His Majesty’s Army where merit wins the day.”
“Character, too.”
“My character,” he added. “And yours. And yours is sterling.”
She shook her head.
“It is. Look what you’ve done to catch this Blue Hawker.”
She shrugged. “He deserves to go to prison. Or be transported.”
“You have a fine sense of justice, my dear. And I applaud it. But what your father did has no bearing on how I value you. I want you as my wife, Belinda Craymore. So promise to wait for me.”
“I will wait. But you must do your part and promise me to come home.”
He swung her up into his arms and whirled her about. For the first time in all their lives, he kissed her luscious mouth. “I promise you, darling.”
Only two days later, as he boarded the packet to take him across the Channel did it occur to him that she hadn’t agreed to his proposal of marriage. “You will marry me, Bee. You will.”
