O'Roarke's Destiny (Cornish Rogues Book 1) Read online

  “Is this some kind of a joke?" As the two men grabbed hold of her, Divers forcibly restrained what surged through him like a high tide. The pleasure that rose in his gut as her throat tightened, her eyes lost what little mark they had and the color drained from her cheeks, was the most he'd felt in weeks. Perhaps the most since he’d been beaten senseless and left for dead by this crew. “Because if it is … Me brother, my brother---”

  “You think Orwell did this?” Divers asked.

  Drinking the barrels certainly but that was it. It had to be her. Nice to see the rat flushed out of hiding, even if that same rat had just ratted on its fellow rat. The salted mouth rat who’d helped drive …

  Rose …

  Christ. Rose, right there in his head, turning the

  bright day to ashes with her ghost’s breath cold on the lawn. When here he was doing his best to avenge her. His sort of anyway. When she wasn’t there at all. Just the thought of her as she’d once stood on this lawn in a gown to match her name, her chestnut hair tumbling in the breeze. The day before she'd swallowed hemlock.

  Destiny Rhodes gulped.

  “He … He … ”

  Divers stove to fix on his most concerned expression. If Rose would get out of his head he'd do it with bells on. “I’ll find him for you.” Provided he looked. “Don’t worry I’m sure you’ll be out in a day or two.”

  “Not if it’s down to him. I won’t ever be free. How can I be? And, as for you looking? Do you think me head has buttons up the back and I'm going to win first prize in —"

  “Enough!” Lyon snarled. “Now let’s go.”

  “What? Are you meaning along the highway like a common thief?”

  “Why not, when it’s what you are?”

  “Do you have any idea of the Rhodes’ standing hereabouts?”

  “Is that amongst smugglers and their ilk, wreckers, Miss Rhodes?"

  "Oh, there's some here would know about --"

  "I said, enough. Don’t think to make things worse for yourself than they already are. Now ... Bring her."

  Funny that. Destiny Rhodes didn’t just like being the talk of the village, she dined on being the talk of Cornwall, so why baulk like a stallion at a gate it couldn’t jump, now? Were some bridges just too far to cross?

  Was the bit he saw here a kind of manufactured self that wanted the world to think she was worse than she was? When if it wasn’t for Rose, for what Rose said she’d done …? He swallowed. Believe that and he’d believe anything. Here? Now? Suicide.

  Besides, there wasn’t a heap of ashes Destiny Rhodes couldn’t rise from.

  He dragged his wandering gaze in about. What if Lyon really wanted a meeting with him though? And Rose, bless the patient, long suffering saint that she was, the one who knew in her heart and soul, his bitter loathing for the Rhodes family, wanted to remind him? This wasn’t about Destiny Rhodes getting her come-uppance. This was about riding alongside Lyon the same as always. Especially if Gil had gone to him. The children? After all, maybe, now he considered it, not the best move on his part?

  “Wait.”

  Lyon jerked to a halt, his gaze sneaking sideways. Was it wrong to think he was waiting, like a cat for the mouse to lie down and die? “You said something, Mr.--? Mr.--?”

  “O’Roarke.” Divers stepped forward. “Yes. It happens I did.”

  “Something of interest, was it?”

  “That depends.”

  “What on?”

  “On the fact Miss Rhodes knows nothing. She is not who you want here.”

  “Think very carefully, Mr. O’Roarke. Who do I want here if not Miss Rhodes?”

  Divers glanced at Destiny, her face whiter than snow, her mouth a pink slash. To land Orwell in it? Or not? That was the only question to answer here. Christ, he’d never played the role but he certainly felt like bloody Hamlet. Christ, if only he could walk away. From here, from this, from everything. He shrugged.

  “I don’t like to say.”

  Lyon turned fully. “And why is that? Didn’t you say you just won--?”

  “What I can tell you is Miss Rhodes is a visitor here. So whoever these barrels belong to it’s not her. You’re wasting your valuable smuggler-chasing time arresting her. I am willing to come along with you if that helps. Answer any questions you may have.”

  "Really?"

  “Divers, you don’t have to—” As expected her eyes nearly swallowed her face. But maybe he should face the fact she’d rather go with Lyon than be in any debt to him? “I mean it's … ”

  “But I do. So?” He jumped in before she could add, more than I can stand. Ignoring the sweat coating his palms, he turned to Lyon. “I am happy to accompany you and answer any questions you may have. But I’d prefer it if we left this lady out of it.”

  Lyon cocked his head. “Fine. Leave her. Take Mr. O’Roarke instead.”

  “But—” Destiny Rhodes’ throat fluttered. “Divers I really—”

  Divers cinched his lips. “Don’t want them to take me?”

  “Oh, what do you think? Take the words out me mouth, why don't you? I just--"

  He tried to cinch his lips, anyway. Well at least she didn’t lie through her teeth about how good it was of him to take her place.

  "I didn't know you thought I could take words out of your mouth."

  Yes. All fine, when, if she did but know it, it wasn't--good of him to take her place that was. Only think of what she'd be giving him when he came back. And not her body either. In the meantime, the last laugh was about to be on her.

  “Let me sort this out. No. I swear I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, why don’t you see to the children?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “So?” Lyon eased down into the wooden chair on the other side of the desk, his voice low as the bottom of the sea. “Would you like to tell me what the hell that was all about back there?”

  Not particularly. Now Divers thought about it, he’d sooner dig his grave with a soggy piece of paper than admit he’d had Gil round up some children to get Destiny Rhodes to give him a name which he could have got from the servants he’d stupidly dismissed because he was failing at his job. Or just maybe he wasn’t able to chuck Destiny Rhodes out? Because of Rose, or whatever. Complicated, wasn’t it?

  With Lyon, confessions weren’t an option, neither was hanging by the neck until he was dead. He sat forward.

  “Funny that. I was going to ask you the same thing. What the hell do you think you were doing arriving on my back lawn like that, unless you need to know something and this is how we are going to meet? I have this in hand.”

  “Not what Wryson says.”

  “Really? What about?"

  “You tell me. Let us be clear, he’s your man, not ours. And as your man, I felt obliged to listen to him on the subject of that woman.”

  “Woman? What woman?” Divers drew a breath of fetid, salty air. Penvellyn jail held the rancid odor of a salt flat at low tide, even if this was an office not a cell. It was damn chilly too. The walls were damp as if the sea had beaten on them so often, it now washed right though the crumbling, grey brick.

  “He said there’s unfinished business.”

  “And that’s why you haled up on my back lawn because you believed him? When the man can’t even remember his real name? Who he is? Where he’s from? Anything?”

  “He has always had your best interests to heart.”

  “Really? Well, he’s all wrong about this one.”

  “Is he?”

  The silence ticked by like a slow clock, carefully in time with the nerve ticking in Lyon’s jaw. Imagine? Silence was Divers' favourite thing but if he didn’t break it his gut said he was finished. He couldn’t be finished. Over her? Gil doing this either. But fortunately he was master of this game.

  “Destiny Rhodes and I go back a long way.”

  “So long you didn’t seem to know what she’d stashed in your summerhouse.”

  “Any more than I know who put them there, that is true. W
ho she’s hiding them for in other words.”

  “So you admit she is hiding them?”

  “It’s unlikely it’s her brother. He’s much more likely to drink them. Still, I’m glad you came round. I don’t know what kind of results you are expecting after forty eight hours—”

  “The usual ones. London is eager.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “They want names, Divers.”

  “And they will have them. Christ, when have I ever let them down? You either."

  “What were the children doing there?”

  “A front. Destiny Rhodes—. Well, she--”

  “Won’t leave? Is that it?” Lyon’s gaze fastened on him, as if he knew about Eirwin, that Divers hadn’t walked away from that as he should have. Now he struggled to stay off that path, when he didn’t.

  “Knows something. Obviously she does, or that stash wouldn’t have been in the summerhouse. She also mentioned the Cleanser. But she’s difficult. Always was. The whole family are.”

  “Then you should have brought in a wife for that.”

  “Obviously.”

  “The option was there. Is there some reason you didn't take it?”

  “Destiny Rhodes would find out. She’s the kind.”

  “All the more reason to get rid of her then, don’t you think? Before she finds out you’re neither successful designer, nor smuggler,” Lyon continued. “That everything that’s said about you is, in fact, a lie. And then, then you have no cover here.”

  “Fine.” He shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

  Because he would. Taken her place hadn't he? So getting rid of her now would present no problem.

  Lyon scraped his chair back. “Two days, which is very generous of me. Then I expect to find her gone. See to it. Results, Divers, are what I want to see. Results.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “So what do you want, Divers? About you being back here, that is? A medal?”

  She'd thought about it, winning first prize in the most sociable girl in Cornwall competition, that was, by greeting him with a glass of wine and the offer of whatever she could offer. But it was not quite how it came out now a ball flung by the Chaunchell boy nearly knocked her flat on her backside on the lawn. And then again, in her defence, her hopes that he'd be packed off to London for trial had just been dashed. And really, this was a very conflicted situation that way.

  "Not exactly.” Divers O’Roarke climbed down from the cart. "Think I'd wait forever for that."

  He would too. But then again, her stash had been discovered and she’d nearly been arrested. What else could she do but demonstrate her eternal thanks to the man who had ensured she was standing here. Him not being up to his neck in smuggling and that. Hard to bear but there it was.

  “So?” She bent down, grasped the ball, heaved it back at Emory Chaunchell. “I entertained the children just as you requested.”

  “So I see.” The grey eyes glittered like diamonds in frost. “An onerous task for you too, I can tell.”

  “Oh," she gasped. "You have no idea."

  Because he didn’t. Or that she was so out of condition she could hardly tug a breath into her frozen lungs. Maybe it had been sunnier earlier. Earlier wasn't now. Even going in for her coat and scarf hadn't stopped her shivering.

  But, if she said so herself, even he could not fail to miss the way she'd got these children finally throwing the ball and not at her lavender bushes either. In her face maybe but not at those.

  “We need to talk, Destiny.”

  "Talk?" Her throat dried. That was a pity. "Right."

  “Not out here.”

  “I see. But what about the children?”

  “The barrels are what we will be discussing. Now."

  When she was doing her best here too, despite her shocking lack of breath and the fact she'd planned on sewing cushion covers? Getting that wassail bowl out too. How could he? And so bossily.

  "Right." She edged a breath. "Then, let’s go indoors where it’s private. I’d have said so a moment ago but that Chaunchell urchin has ears all over the place.”

  “Really? A lot of urchins do. It’s something they share in common with the rest of the human race. Anyway, who says I’m the one with something to hide?”

  “Fine then. Then why don’t we stay out here?”

  His aura of command was undiminished by the casualness of the step he took towards her, just as she caught the ball too. “By all means, if you want the fact you’re plainly a smuggler discussed out here in the open and being broadcast from the church tower in Penvellyn by nine o’clock tonight, let’s do just that.”

  What kind way was this to carry on? Certainly not in a way that made her feel she would give her arms and teeth to call his bluff. Not when she couldn't shy away from the fact that her being put out of Doom Bar Hall might be being broadcast by ten minutes past nine because he thought that the barrels being discovered made her a very dangerous person to know. And maybe, what with his design business and that, he could do with not knowing her, either?

  Her gaze clouded. Oh, she had fallen low indeed, down a cliff face at that, when all it took was a set of barrels being wheeled onto a path to hammer home the indisputable fact Ennis wasn't here to save her. So up had leapt sodding Divers O'Roarke instead. What was she trying to win? First place in the pathetic widows competition?

  She was never going to get out of not giving a name, when she’d only gone and painted such a nice picture of domesticity too. Well, Tom Berryman, husband, father, grandfather, was someone she couldn’t give up, not if she was thrown to ten packs of rabid hound dogs, each dog with ten inch fangs. She’d be lynched. Then? Well then, she'd be dead. Was it any wonder she hadn’t really wanted Divers O’Roarke back there doing what he did? And despite him saving her and that, it would have been much easier if he’d been packed off for trial. But he hadn’t. So what else could she do but jerk up her chin? Look innocent about it too?

  "Fine."

  Never mind Penvellyn Fair, never mind the county, or indeed the country, she’d need to win the world's fastest thinker award, by finding herself some other name. And she'd need to do it within the next five minutes too.

  ***

  “Tom Berryman.”

  "Tom Berryman?"

  Oh, all right the notion that she couldn’t give the name up was vastly overrated. Did people really think she wouldn’t and Divers O'Roarke would have to apply pliers to her teeth? When what she wanted was to get sewing her cushion covers and that?

  Besides, with a bit of luck, people round here might think he’d given Berryman’s name. Get himself lynched and that would certainly put paid to his plans for Divers O'Roarke Hall. She nodded.

  "Yes."

  "I see. And he is …?”

  "Griffin St. Gerren's uncle."

  If he thought he was getting any more he wasn't. Not right now anyway. She’d thrown herself in with the house after all. It wasn’t exactly edifying knowing all Divers O’Roarke wanted was the name of her supplier. When he was widowed too with no wife, who was not for discussion too? Nah. The thing was to dangle a certain amount of bait.

  “Well, Destiny, I’m so glad you’ve finally decided to see sense.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised at what I’ve finally decided to see, frankly.”

  She had. But maybe he was surprised and that was why the noise of the leaded decanter, the one that always caught the sunlight in its frosted clasp, slowly emptying, stopped? A pity. Much more of that bounce, bounce, sodding bounce, being all there was to listen to and she’d personally stuff that ball places where the sun didn’t shine on that Chaunchell brat, given the flowerbeds she was having to sit gallantly not thinking about here. The lavender borders too.

  Face it, the leaded decanter wouldn’t be making any noise at all, would it though, unless her overall amenability deserved a celebration?

  “I see.” The smile carved generous grooves in his cheeks. He shrugged and resumed pouring. “Such is
the thanks a man gets for saving a pretty pair of heels from dangling? Is that it?”

  “Now Divers." She clasped the glass he offered. “Don’t push your luck. Right now anyway.”

  “I’m glad you think I’ve any luck. Much less that I’d push it. But what you really mean is, even if you did know more, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  "Says who?"

  She did. But when he’d probably only gone and promised the Moon to that exciseman and was now going to have to come up with the goods, she was hardly going to say so, was she?

  He could sink into Grandfather Austell's armchair and set his booted feet on the small table as much as he liked—she didn’t like, but that wasn’t the point—radiate as much confidence and command from the toes of these same boots to the dark lock of hair that lay across his brow, via everything in between, as he liked too. The point was keeping control of her finest cards, concerning Mr. Berryman and his barrels, till she could trust him.

  And right now what with that bounce, bounce, bounce of the ball on the lawn outside proper doing her head in, now was the time to ignore the affront to her mother’s table and keep offering her warmest, earthiest smile and most obliging manner. Because it stood to reason that if that bounce, bounce, bounce, reminded her of the countless times she, Chancery and Orwell would have swallowed swords rather than pass it to him and Rose, then it must remind him.

  To think she’d planned on sewing her cushion covers this afternoon instead of setting her face in gaping chasms. But that was all right. Guaranteeing the roof over their heads was far more important. She’d started well if she said so herself. At least she hoped so.

  "Well, here's the thing." He sat back, tweaking his coattails so she was even more aware of everything in between. Or maybe he just liked to fidget? "I do."

  "You do what?"

  "Say. Because I think you know more."

  "Hmm." Wasn't he the clever one? Not a quarter as much as her though, now she'd hit her stride. Trying to anyway. "Well, maybe I do? But, from where I'm sitting, I'm asking myself why you upped and galloped after that exciseman faster than if you’d wheels and rockets tied to your boots. I mean, let's face it, it's not as if you like me. Or wouldn't like me out of here. Now is it? And don't say, says who? Because I do."