The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet by Katherine Cowley (the reading list book txt) 📗

“Of course, Miss Bennet.” His mustache twitched. “Would you like me to wait here or to bring the carriage to meet you somewhere?”

“You can wait here. I will not be long.”

She walked a little along the boardwalk. She paused for a moment, watching as several boys threw rocks into the sea, making them skip across the water, and then she turned up the main road into town. Unlike at Castle Durrington, here in Worthing it always smelled of the sea.

After a few blocks, she paused in front of a post office collection box. There were several scattered throughout town where you could deposit letters if you did not want to visit the post office itself. Before taking the letters out of her pocket, she looked at those nearby: young ladies fanning themselves as they spoke to an officer, a mother shepherding five young children down the road, a lad carrying a box of fish. None of them paid her any attention, but a block behind her, on the path she had taken from Madame Dieupart’s house, someone ducked around the corner. She had seen enough of him to be fairly certain that it was Mr. Parker.

Instead of removing the letters, she walked farther up the road. She tried to keep a measured pace and ignore the pounding in her pulse and her sudden impulse to flee. If Mr. Parker was following her, she did not want him to realize that she knew it.

In the distance, she spotted Mr. Withrow, speaking with the new arrival in Worthing, Colonel Radcliffe. She had not known that Withrow was in Worthing today. He did not appear to see her, and she wondered if he had instructed Mr. Parker to follow her.

After several blocks, she stepped into the milliner’s shop. She examined different ribbons in a way that allowed her to see out of the front window from the edge of her vision without directly facing the window.

Within less than a minute, Mr. Parker passed the shop, glancing nonchalantly at her.

Mary bit her lip and was gripped by fear. She did not want to believe that Mr. Parker meant her any harm—Mr. Parker, who had driven her and Lady Trafford so many times, who took such care with the horses. But there had been a ferocity in his eyes that she had not seen before. He was the fox eyeing the enclosure, and she was the hen trapped within.

She could give herself up, let Mr. Parker follow her and simply not mail the letters, or allow him to see her mailing the letters. But her soul rebelled against that thought, rebelled against giving in and giving up to the wishes and plans of others.

Though she had never particularly liked ribbon, she bought a black ribbon and then did her best to speak as her sister Lydia might.

“There is a gentleman down the street outside that I would rather not talk to,” she said. “Do you have another door by which I could leave the shop?”

“We do,” said the milliner, “but it is not designed for ladies like yourself.”

“Oh please,” begged Mary. “He always makes the conversation unpleasant, and speaking to him, alone, by myself, would surely not be proper.”

“Very well,” said the milliner. He led her through the workroom and to a door that opened into a small, dank alleyway, empty of any people.

“Thank you,” said Mary. “Your assistance is much appreciated.”

She followed the back alley away from the road and took a side turn at random. As she walked, she heard voices coming from an alcove ahead, so she slowed. She considered turning back, but instead stepped closer.

“I can guarantee the items would be in Chartres within two weeks.” Mary could not be certain, but it sounded like the voice of Colonel Coates. From the geography book Lady Trafford had assigned her, she knew that Chartres was not terribly far from Paris. How did Colonel Coates intend to get items to France in war time?

Another man replied, “I would prefer it be earlier.”

“If I want to keep my boat unobserved by British and French authorities, it must be on my own timetable. I must do it when the moment is right.”

“Then I want to accompany the goods myself.”

“That is acceptable,” said Colonel Coates. “But the price will be tripled.”

“Tripled?”

“Smuggling goods is one thing, smuggling people is quite another. But you do not need to accompany the items. You can ask anyone—even Mr. Shaffer. I do good work.”

“I will consider it,” said the second voice.

What she had just heard seemed impossible—Colonel Coates, smuggling. Despite the risk, Mary needed to confirm that it truly was him. He was a kind, attentive gentleman, working with Sir Pickering on the murder investigation—it could not possibly be him. Surely there was someone else in Worthing with a similar-sounding voice. And surely he had not just implied that Mr. Shaffer, the clergyman, had used his smuggling services.

Mary peered around the edge of the alcove. It was indeed Colonel Coates, speaking with a merchant she vaguely recognized.

Colonel Coates’s head turned in her direction, and she pulled herself back around the corner, then walked briskly down the alley, certain she would be discovered. She hurried past the back of the milliner’s shop and down a different path that led back to the main road.

Finally, she came out on the main road, into the sunlight. She breathed in and out, almost panting from the exertion. A woman looked at her reproachfully, so Mary smoothed her skirts and smiled, attempting to mask her inner turmoil.

Colonel Coates was a smuggler. He had a secret boat. Mr. Holloway was likely stabbed on a boat before being thrown into the sea. What if Holloway had discovered the smuggling, and Colonel Coates had killed him for it?

There was no evidence that Colonel Coates had killed Holloway—it could have been someone else who owned one of the other seventy-three boats in the area. Yet it was a possibility, and