Mina gazed up at him uncertainly. “I’m not sure I follow,” she faltered, drawing her knees up to her chest.
“Pass that blanket here, Reuben. For she’s trembling, either from the shock or the cold, one or the other.”
“Damned if I will!” retorted Reuben angrily. “Where’s the sense, when the plan is to throw her off the headland in any case?”
Mina’s heart contracted as Gus sent the younger man a reproachful look. “There’s no need to be churlish, Reuben! And nightfall’s not for a few hours yet.” He reached across for a green plaid blanket and draped it about Mina’s shoulders. “How’s that, my dear?”
“Yes, much better, thank you.” She squinted at the dim light thrown out by a single hurricane lamp on the floor. It looked like they were in a subterraneous cavern of some sort. “I don’t understand. Where are we?” she repeated, her mouth felt dry and dusty and when she reached a tentative hand to the back of her head she could feel a matted patch of hair that was likely dried blood and a throbbing bump from where she had been struck.
Noticing her discomfort Gus looked about. “Where’s that flask?” he asked Reuben who glared back at him. “Not the whisky, you needn’t worry. I mean the water.”
“I still say we shouldn’t waste it on her,” Reuben muttered.
Gus gave an exclamation and stooped to pick something up. “Here, take a drop of this, Mina. It’ll clear your head for certain.”
She took it from him but was unable to unscrew it, so weak did she feel.
Gus took it back from her. “Stupid fellow that I am!” he reproached himself. “Here now, I’ve removed the cap for you.”
She took a sip of the water, then another, before easing back against a packing case and taking a third. It refreshed her, and she clutched it to her chest as Gus removed a hip flask from his coat and took a pull of spirits. He held it out for Reuben who scowled and shook his head.
“Why am I here?” she asked in a rusty voice. “How long have I been here?”
“Only a couple of hours,” Gus said soothingly. “Reuben bundled you in the back of a passing cart and he bought you here.” He winked at her. “‘Course, the carter was an associate of ours, if you know what I mean.” He tapped his nose and laughed uproariously.
Reuben twitched with annoyance. “Keep your voice down you fool! Do you want the Tavistocks to hear you?” he asked in a furious undertone.
For a second, Mina thought she saw a spurt of annoyance pass over Gus’s features, then almost immediately it was gone, and his face settled back into its habitually amiable expression.
“Nay, lad don’t be daft. I never could resist a pretty woman, they’ve been my downfall all my life,” said Gus wistfully. “I misdoubt I’ll be cured of that in my advanced years.”
“Old fool,” Reuben muttered. “A pretty pass if the guvnor hears you’ve been spilling your guts to the likes of her!”
Mina watched a sudden expression of cunning steal over Gus’s face and it horrified her. It contorted his round cherubic countenance into something quite different and full of malice. For some reason, Reuben’s words filled him with an unholy sort of amusement. It seemed to be some sort of private joke, for when Reuben glanced back at him again, Gus’s face relaxed back into his usual semblance of geniality.
It didn’t make sense to Mina, but it frightened her all the same. Reuben was half Gus’s age and of a stout, strong build. But Gus was far from scared of him. Her head hurt too much for her to fathom what was going on, but she felt all the same that Gus was the real threat for all Reuben’s apparent menace.
“Have I been kidnapped?” she asked hollowly.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Gus agreed cautiously. He stroked his fluffy sideburns. “Though, we’re not holding you to ransom. Not but what I expect that man of yours would pay any price for your safe return!” He chuckled. “He’s that smitten with you. It would be funny how hard Nye’s fallen, if it weren’t so damned inconvenient.”
Mina winced, trying to piece his meaning together through the fog of her head. “Inconvenient?”
Gus sighed, and plunked himself down on a nearby barrel. “We’re land smugglers, you see Mina. When the boats deliver the goods, we collect and distribute the booty all around hereabouts. We’re a tidy organized bunch, a goodly number, and none of us know above one or two other members by name.”
“Except the guvnor,” Reuben growled.
“Oh-ho yes!” said Gus richly. “Save for the guvnor, who is the mastermind of our little group, so to speak.”
“And Nye? He’s one of your number?” Mina asked with a gulp.
“Oh, yes. A most valuable member.”
“Leastways, he was,” Reuben interrupted, an ugly expression spreading over his face.
Gus sighed. “Until you got your clutches into him, my dear Minerva and gave him a yearning for respectability.”
Mina stared up at Gus. “Nye?” she could not help but clarify. “Nye hankers after respectability? It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” she managed with a burst of her usual spirit.
He nodded back at her ruefully. “For your sake, he has determined to throw off all ties with our disreputable company. It is the most lamentable business. Really, most lamentable.”
“Which is why you’re going to have an accident,” Reuben told her harshly. His mouth tightened into a thin line. “Tonight.”
“Without you, he will have no incentive to clean up his act, do you see?” Gus pointed out gently with a regretful sigh. He walked over to one side and beckoned Reuben. They exchanged a few low spoken words and Gus retreated out of sight. Mina listened to his footsteps echo over the cold stone floor and was surprised to count a good dozen steps before she had to crane her ears. Wherever they were concealed was not a small space but extended at least a few feet.
Cold crept over Mina as it sunk in that they weren’t holding her to ransom or the promise of her return over Nye’s head. They genuinely thought to find her husband more manageable with her out of the way. Up until a certain point, she had had the vague idea of throwing herself on Gus’s mercy, but after she saw that wicked expression on his face, she had banished that notion completely. For all his bluff, Gus was clearly senior to Reuben in the smuggler’s chain of command
She pulled the woolen blanket closer about her, as her mind groped for some way out of her predicament. Now why was it that Gus had looked so irritated with Reuben for a moment, she tried to recall. Reuben had appealed for him to quieten his voice in case the Tavistocks heard, she thought slowly. The Tavistocks. Now where had she heard that name before?
She wracked her brain and took another gulp of the water Gus had left with her. Suddenly it came to her. Nye telling her about Vance House, the reason he had married her in the first place. A fine Queen Anne residence he’d said, with ten acres and its own private beach. His father the fourth viscount had left it to him on his deathbed but had not included it in his will. Jeremy had only made the deeds over to him when he had married her. The Tavistocks he had mentioned were the elderly current tenants.
Keep your voice down you fool! Do you want the Tavistocks to hear you? What else could Reuben have meant other than they were somehow concealed somewhere at Vance House. She frowned. Could this be the cellar? But no, it looked far too roughhewn for that. Perhaps a cave on the private beach, she conjectured. But if that were so, why would the Tavistocks overhear them, unless they happened to be on the beach itself?