to descend the stairs as noiselessly as I knew how, and exit Wings cottage.
I lifted my trembling eyes to the Cobb's end—but not a gibbet was to be seen. Along the wide beach that fronts The Walk came a parade of toiling men, casks upon their backs; and great wains were drawn up along the shingle, with the horses full in the water to their very flanks’ height. Feeling rather foolish, but nonetheless thoroughly roused, I proceeded along The Walk until I had gained a better view—and espied two galleys, with crews at their oars, bobbing in the very waters where the smugglers’ cargo had been dropped the previous day!
“So they would retrieve it, then, as Captain Fielding asserted,” I said aloud, in some wonderment; and was rewarded by a reply of sorts, and from my very elbow.
“At an hour when most women should dread to be seen abroad, you are lovelier than I might have imagined, Miss Jane Austen of Bath.”
I swifdy turned, in some dismay and confusion, and found Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth on the sand below, seated easily astride a black stallion of fearsome appearance; the animal's nostrils flared as it chuffed at the wind and tossed its powerful head. I stepped backwards involuntarily, and clasped my arms together, shivering somewhat from the morning's chill. In an instant Sidmouth had dismounted and secured the horse; and in another, he had divested himself of his cloak and draped it about my shoulders, so swiftly I had not time to protest.
“The breeze is cold off the water at dawn,” he said, with an indifferent air. “We cannot have you catch your death, however deserved of your impetuous nature. Dag-liesh has enough to do at Wings cottage.”
I swept my eyes the length of his powerful figure, and noted that he was in a similarly-disheveled state. His wine-coloured coat was stained with a dark liquid I could not identify, but took to be spirits; his stock was undone, his jaw unshaven, and his hair decidedly ruffled by long exposure to the wind. He might almost have been abroad the entire night through, and be only now upon his road home, and tarrying by the scene at the water's edge; and with a sudden blush, I imagined the hours of dissipation now put behind him.
“What brings you to the Cobb, sir?” I enquired. “And at such an hour!”
“I might ask the same of you, Miss Jane Austen of Bath.” His voice held too much amusement for my fragile pride.
“I thought to observe another unfortunate fisherman, hanged for the Reverend's sins,” I retorted, “and at the hullabaloo below my window, ran out to offer assistance”
“Singular,” Mr. Sidmouth observed coolly. “Very singular indeed. Most women should faint dead away at the mere prospect. But then, you are always a singular personality, Miss Austen. It was just such a sense of purpose in extremity that drove you to my very door, some few days ago.”
For this, I had no answer; and we were silent, observing the activity below in the fitful light. The sun was not yet up, and the industrious figures flitted like shadows in a graveyard. Sidmouth's eyes were narrowed over the sharp hook of his nose, and his lips compressed; and I wondered, as I stole a glance at him sidelong, whether I stood next to the very Reverend, in the act of overseeing his cargo's landing.
“It is a smuggler's goods,” I said, with the most casual air I could effect; “Captain Fielding and I observed the cutter only yesterday, as it jettisoned those very casks.” For the labouring men were wading through the surf with a massive barrel suspended from each shoulder, and heaving them into the carts drawn up to the water; and despite the weight of the contraband, as evidenced in their bowed backs, their progress was swift indeed. In but a moment, I imagined, the last of the waggons should be filled, and the horses turned towards some safe place of hiding in the midst of the downs—but would they be welcorned by a girl in a sweeping red cloak, her spigot lant-horn5 held high in the dusky dawn?
“Trench brandy.” Sidmouth spoke as though remarking upon the weather. “It shall be turned a proper brown in some hole in the woods, and be on its way to London in a very few days.6 But you look stupefied, Miss Austen—surely you knew that French brandy, like the cheeks of so many French ladies, does not win its colour from Nature?”