The Pirate and the Pagan Read Free Page B

wetting they had secured the contraband, lined it up in the cave in front of the entrance to the passage, and they now stood in the cavernous cellar waiting for high tide and the indraft to float it all “home.”
    Later that morning, as always, Cat, mounted on Ebony, greeted the golden dawn. Today, however, she expected to have company on the lonely stretch of sand. She sat alert, watching the distance, then as two tiny figures became visible around the far headland she urged the black horse faster and faster until the blood of both surged recklessly. The tide was still high enough to cover the horse up to its hocks and she deliberately splashed the two men who were obviously looking for something.
    “G’day, m’lady,” they muttered, abashed to be caught there so blatantly.
    She nodded aloofly and waited. One of the men finally spoke. “Did ye see aught up the beach, m’lady?”
    Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not wreckers, are you?” she asked boldly, allowing a hint of loathing to sound in her voice.
    Quickly they denied it vehemently. “Nay, nay, lady. Engaged in a spot of honest smuggling, that’s all, I swear it.”
    “If I thought you were connected to wreckers, I’d turn you over to the militia instantly!” she warned again.
    “Nay, nay,” said the younger man, “my dad here’s the tavern keeper at Mawnan. We were expectin’ a delivery o’ brandy.”
    “I’ve ridden for miles this morning; the beach is empty, I’m afraid.” She smiled. “Well, you can’t trust the French, y’know.”
    “No, m’lady,” they muttered, and knew she lied.
    She touched her heel to her horse’s side, then as if she had second thoughts stopped and said, “If you’ve the money, I could let you have four kegs of brandy and say, fifty bottles of French wine from my father’s cellars.”
    They looked at each other shrewdly, wondering how St. Catherine’s wench had managed to locate and secure the stuff before theyhad. They shrugged. There was nothing they could do, for she’d have the militia on them as soon as look at them.
    “Bring a wagon to Roseland this afternoon and I’ll have one of the servants fetch it up from the cellars,” she said airily as she turned the black Barbary and took off like the wind.

L ord Randal St. Catherine could smell his own sweat for the first time in his life and it smelled of fear! His luck had been all bad lately until he was reduced to one elegant satin suit and his well-sprung coach. He knew that tomorrow he would have to leave for Roseland. Then his luck seemed to change and it turned out to be a fateful night for him. It went by many names, but luck, fate, or destiny chose to stand at his shoulder this night as he sat at a gaming table at the Groom Porter’s Lodge.
    Early in the evening he had begun by dealing from the bottom whenever it was his turn, but as the night wore on he found he need not slur and knap to win, for the right cards seemed to be falling into his hands by divine power. It was as if he had made a pact with the devil. Whatever cards he needed to win, he turned up.
    When his winnings reached four thousand pounds, he had enough sense to quit the table. He ordered a double brandy, giving silent thanks that he’d not had enough money in his pocket to buy it before he’d begun to play as he usually did.
    As he stepped out onto the cobblestone street he found it unusually deserted. Stripped bare of humanity, the buildings looked ugly and decayed. Centuries of rottenness, overcrowding, and greedmade London a stinking cesspool of corruption and he knew he was as much a part of it as the open sewage kennels which ran along the sides of the streets.
    The upper stories of the houses and buildings overhung one another, shutting out the light and the air and cloaking the night with a sinister pall.
    “A pox on all coachmen!” he muttered as his eyes darted up and down the street, trying to decide in which pub he would find his man. He walked to the corner and