realizing she’d stumbled onto a conversation she wouldn’t be invited to join.
“True enough, Jacko,” Ainsley agreed, “but we must also deal with this now, or else face the same problem again. Jack?”
Eleanor’s eyes went wide. Jack? Her breathing became shallow, faster, and she pressed her hands to her chest. He was here? She hadn’t known he was here. He must have arranged for a rendezvous with the Respite off Calais, then sailed home with them.
Jack Eastwood’s voice, quiet, with hints of gravel in its cultured tones, sent a small frisson down Eleanor’s spine. “Ainsley’s right, Jacko. Someone got to these people, and if they did it once, they can do it again. Two men dead on their side of the Channel, most probably as an example to the others, and the rest now understandably too frightened to deal with us. My connections on this side of the Channel are also shutting the door on me, on us. This is the last haul we’ll get, the last we can deliver anyway. Much as I want to keep the goods running—and I can do that, I know of other connections I can cultivate—I want to find out who did this to us, who discovered and compromised our current connections.”
“And eliminate them,” Ainsley said, his voice low, so that Eleanor had to strain to hear. She could picture him, sitting behind his desk, his brow furrowed, his right hand working the small, round glass paperweight she’d given him this past Christmas. “I thought we were done with bloodshed when we rousted the Red Men Gang from Romney Marsh.”
Eleanor heard the creak of the leather couch, and knew Jacko had sat forward, shifting his large, muscular frame. “You think it’s them, Cap’n? It’s been two years since we trounced them, sent them on their way. You really think they’re back?”
“Who else could it be? Perhaps its time to put a halt to all of this.”
“Cap’n, you don’t mean that.” The leather couch protested again, and Eleanor stepped back farther into the shadows as Jacko’s large frame passed in front of the open door.
She’d known Jacko since the moment he’d discovered their hiding place, his wide smile and booming laugh so frightening. Julia, Chance’s wife, had once confided that her first thought when she’d seen Jacko was that the man would smile amiably even as he cut your beating heart from your chest, and Eleanor knew Julia’s description was not an exaggeration.
But Jacko was loyal to Ainsley. Fiercely so. And if Eleanor hadn’t learned to love the man, she had learned to trust his loyalty if not always his judgment, even when the memories had begun rolling back to her….
Ainsley was speaking again. “I do mean it, Jacko. We only began this to help the people here, protect them from the Red Men Gang. A laudable reason, but no one of us suspected the enterprise to grow as it has. We’re bringing attention to ourselves, from London, and most probably from the Red Men again. Moving some wool and coming back with tea and brandy, helping these people survive. That was the plan, remember? Now we control most of the Marsh. Someone was bound to notice.”
“So you withdraw our protection, leave everyone to find their own suppliers, their own landsmen, their own distributors in London? You watch as they run up against the Red Men on their own, and then bury a few more bodies, add a few more widows and fatherless children to the Marsh. Is that what you’re saying, Cap’n?”
Eleanor held her breath. If Ainsley put a stop to the Black Ghost Gang they’d all be safe…but Jack Eastwood would never visit Becket Hall again.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying, Jacko. It’s what I’m hoping. A selfish return to our quiet existence for my sons, our men and, yes, for myself. But we all know that isn’t possible, at least not until the war is over and wool prices eventually climb again. Jack? Tell me more of your idea.”
Eleanor stepped closer, not wishing to miss a word.
“All right. As I said, someone is trying to cut off both our head and our feet—our contacts both around London and in France. After this last shipment, I have no one lined up to buy our people’s wool, and no one to sell the goods we, well, that we import.”
“You’ve been sloppy? How else would anyone know your contacts?”
Eleanor heard the hint of distaste in Jack’s tone. “No, Jacko, I don’t think I’ve been…sloppy. I think someone else has been very smart. Why confront us here on the Marsh, on the Black Ghost’s home ground, when cutting off our head and feet is so much easier than hitting at our well-protected and well-armed belly? And I think it all begins in London, not France. This hasn’t happened overnight, our sources have been shrinking for some time now. I’ve been watching, and I have some ideas, which is why I traveled to France, and why I’m here now.”
As Eleanor listened, Jack further explained his conclusions, and his plan.
No one in France had any reason to stop the flow of contraband either into or out of that country. To the French, profit was profit, and they’d deal with the Red Men, the Black Ghost, the devil himself, as long as that profit was maintained, often with much of that profit going directly into Napoleon’s war chest. If the French were nothing else, they were always eminently practical.
Which left London. More specifically, Mayfair, the very heart of the ton. Bankers and wealthy cits, industrialists, were also suspected of acting as financial backers to the smugglers, but it was common if unspoken knowledge that many an impecunious peer had staked his last monies on a smuggling run and then suddenly found his pockets deep again.
And Jack had an idea where in the ton he should look to find the people who had the most to gain if the Black Ghost Gang was rendered impotent.
“I’ve narrowed my search down to a trio of men,” he said. “Three gentlemen friends who have had happy and yet inexplicable reversals of fortune in the past few years. We all know the major profits from smuggling go to people at the very top of society.”
“People with the money to put up to buy contraband goods in order to resell them at ten times the price, yes,” Ainsley interrupted. “But these men you speak of? You said they’ve had reversals of fortune, which is not the same as having amassed a fortune the likes of which we know can be gotten. That would put them somewhere in the middle, wouldn’t it? High-placed minions, the slightly more public face of the true leaders, but still minions.”
“True, none of them certainly is another Golden Ball, but there is money there now, where there had been only debts. If we can get to them, hopefully we can get to the person or persons at the very top,” Jack said. “And I’m willing to wager that whoever that is, he’s also the brains behind the Red Men Gang. They may not be here in Romney Marsh anymore, but they’re everywhere else, like a large red stain spreading over the countryside these past years. No one makes a move without them, and if anyone dares, they’re mercilessly crushed. You, Ainsley, you and your sons and Romney Marsh? You are all that stand between the Red Men Gang and complete domination of the smuggling trade in the south of England. The Marsh is too tricky, navigation too dangerous for them to work this area without the cooperation of the local inhabitants.”
Jacko spoke up. “All very well, Eastwood, and you’ve made your point with that pretty speech. But we are here, not about to budge, and you’re only one man. Let’s hear more of this grand plan of yours.”
“I’m getting there, Jacko. You know I’ve bought a house in Portland Square, to go along very nicely with my estate in Sussex. I’m a fairly wealthy man, thanks to you, Ainsley, and you aren’t the only one who sees the merits in planning for a more…conventional future, a life after we’re done with our adventure.
