The Cornish Heiress Read Free

he had assumed his father had tried to spare him
the embarrassment of asking for money yet again. Philip had found this
generosity even more acutely painful, and Roger’s prompt and surprised
denial—which made it plain that his stepmother had been the culprit—caused him
even greater anguish.
    “I will not touch it,” he had raged. “Leonie has no right—”
    At which point Roger’s long patience had snapped and he had
gotten to his feet so quickly that the chair he had been sitting on crashed to
the floor. “If you say one word or do one thing to hurt Leonie,” he roared, “I
will give you the hiding you have well deserved for these past six months. Now
get the devil out of here! Take yourself and your petty vapors down to
Dymchurch and stay there until you can say ‘Thank you’ to your stepmother with
becoming gratitude. And don’t show either of us that sullen face again. Get
out !”
    Roger’s lips tightened as he thought of the scene, and
Leonie relaxed her grip on his hand and sighed. “He was angry about the money.
No, he was quite right to be angry. I see now it was a stupid thing to do. I
did not think—only that a young man would be careless and take it gladly and
say nothing. I should have realized he is too much like you—too honest. I will
tell him I am sorry when he comes today. You know he stops in almost every
day.”
    “You will do nothing of the sort,” Roger said sharply.
“Nasty, ungrateful whelp that he is. And don’t think he’s angry with you —because
he won’t come today. I sent him off to Dymchurch with a flea in his ear.”
    Leonie said nothing for a moment, looking down at her hand
held tight in her husband’s clasp. In ways she knew Philip better than Roger
did. She understood his fury. It was the natural outlet for a child’s
frustration, but Philip was no child. Leonie understood that he would be
sickened by his own behavior as soon as he recognized it. In retribution he
would meekly pay his debts and stay at his father’s estate until he was
released—but that was no solution to the problem. In fact, it would only make
it worse.
    “We must do something,” she said in a constricted voice. “If
he felt he were part of a real effort in the war, he would be willing to take
orders. Why cannot one join the navy as a man? Philippe knows well how to sail.
All summer he is in that boat of his, and he used to go with Pierre. Do they
not need men who know how to sail?” Her beautiful eyes dimmed. “I would be
afraid for him, bien sûr , but—but I am growing afraid more and more of
what will happen if he does not find—find—whatever it is for which he seeks.”
    “I, too,” Roger agreed, “but the navy is not the answer.”
    “Pierre!” Leonie exclaimed suddenly. In her desperate
attempt to find a solution, she suggested Roger should ask Pierre Restoir to
tell Philip he needed help aboard the Bonne Lucie . Pierre was a Breton
smuggler, an old friend of Roger’s, who had been responsible for getting Roger
and Leonie out of France in the days when the guillotine was claiming its daily
victims. He had saved their lives; perhaps, Leonie was thinking he could save
Philip’s.
    “I can’t go to Pierre,” Roger replied. “Don’t think I haven’t
considered it myself. The trouble is that if Pierre gets caught he’d only be
interned as a prisoner of war—and I could probably get him paroled into my
custody. If Philip got caught they’d hang him as a traitor. Well, maybe I could
save him from that, but he’d be ruined for good, Leonie.”
    Still the idea lingered in Roger’s mind. Although Pierre was
nearly sixty now, and a rich man from the years of successful smuggling, he
still engaged with enthusiasm in his illegal trade. He had weathered the Terror
by moving his base of operations to the Low Countries, and during those years
he and Roger met frequently. Though Pierre was not a spy, he would bring Roger
what information he heard, particularly any new word