Louisa Rawlings by Promise of Summer Page A

traverse this gauntlet again to reach it.
    “Damn,” muttered Martin.
    Lucien shrugged. “I warned you.” He looked at Topaze. “How does your courage now?”
    She smiled. “Stiffened with iron. Bring on your scurvy villains!”
    His eyes were unexpectedly warm. “Good girl.”
    Two doors away from the Three Dogs was another tavern. Martin led Topaze there; Lucien would join them when he’d concluded his business with Captain Foure. Topaze ignored the leers of the patrons as she and Martin entered, and sat with her back to the door, her full cloak shielding her from curious eyes.
    “Rot and damnation,” she said. “Did you and Lucien come from Guadeloupe for this ? A rendezvous with a villain?”
    Martin looked offended. “Name of God, no! We came for loans for the plantation. Before he died, my father had given me letters to several old friends of his. Bankers and investors. In case we should ever have need of them. Indigo is profitable, you understand. But they’ve begun to grow tobacco on Martinique and ship it back to France. We thought, Lucien and I, if we could pick up another piece of land, it might be worth our while.”
    “But the banker in La Rochelle refused you?”
    Martin signaled the slatternly barmaid for a pitcher of cider, and brushed a crust from the filthy table. “Sweet Jesus, I don’t know why I let Lucien talk me into this. The banker from La Rochelle was three years dead. We were ready to leave for Bordeaux, and seek the banker there. Then we overheard Captain Foure at a tavern. He was quite drunk. And very unhappy. From his talk we surmised that he had found a lace seller who was not above supplying good French lace for the English trade.”
    “Isn’t that against the law here in La Rochelle?” she asked in surprise. “It is in Bordeaux.”
    “The English don’t mind, when they’re wearing it.” He laughed sharply. “Name of God, I even begin to sound like Lucien, talking of smuggling as though I were born to it!” He fell silent as the girl served their cider, then resumed his story. “It was soon clear that Foure needed money to buy the lace in the first place. We agreed to help finance the purchase.”
    “It doesn’t sound too dishonest. Just a slightly shady investment.” Not nearly as wicked as picking pockets.
    “Yes.” Martin smiled uneasily and took a drink of his cider. “At any rate, Lucien met Foure alone the following night. At the Three Dogs. And they made their arrangements.”
    “Why is he meeting with Foure now?”
    “That was nearly three weeks ago. The good captain should be back from England by now, his pockets filled with our gold. A great deal of gold.”
    “Merely for helping to pay for the lace?”
    “But you see there was another problem. Foure’s contact in England had been arrested. He had the ship and crew, the means to transport the lace in coffins, books, whatever was necessary. But no one to receive the goods.” Martin looked faintly embarrassed. “Lucien…ah…knew a man in England. A baker by trade, on the Cornish coast. He was eager to buy lace. He wanted it”—he squirmed uncomfortably—“delivered to him in hollowed-out loaves of bread.”
    “Hellfire! How did Lucien know such a man?”
    “I think he lived in England for a time.”
    “A smuggler as well as a pirate?” she asked sarcastically. She didn’t know how long the two men had been friends, but it was clear to her that Lucien had humbugged Martin with wild and fanciful tales of his past! “And so Foure is paying handsomely just for the name of a baker?”
    “Oh, it was more than that. Lucien supplied the captain with a letter of introduction for the baker, directions to a hidden cove off the coast. And there were certain signals, lantern flashes, before they put a rowboat ashore.”
    Topaze clicked her tongue. “Ave Maria, but it begins to sound as though Lucien really was a smuggler.”
    “I don’t know. It’s possible.”
    She snorted. “Your partner in