Read Online Lace for Milady by Joan Smith - Free Book Online Page A

he pointed out, and indeed sentries were to be seen in their highly visible red jackets, parading back and forth before the grey stone cylindrical towers that spanned the coast at regular intervals. “Behind the slits of the windows, glasses are trained on the sea twenty-four hours a day,” he added.
    “There is little enough to see.”
    “Best to be prepared. Boney might think this is an excellent time for a surprise attack on us, when we assume he is busy at Prussia. Of course, he is fighting there, and doing pretty well, too, winning at Lutzen, but there is no saying he hasn’t an army preparing at Calais or Boulogne to slip across La Manche one foggy night and attack us. I know I keep my blunderbuss loaded and have my men trained up as well as ever they were in Papa’s day, when invasion was considered imminent.”
    At Wilton, a safe hundred and fifty miles from this attack-prone coast, no mention of invasion from Bonaparte had been made for years; but, of course, he was feared, dreaded, and those round stone towers brought forcibly home the reality that he was still a powerful foe. I felt a little icy finger of fear creep up my spine at this talk. This was more likely to put me off with my new home than any talk of smugglers or floods. Odd Clavering hadn’t thought to mention this particular menace to me. I brought up the subject of smugglers, just to gauge the sentiments of an objective, sensible person like McMaster. Clearly Clavering had been trying to frighten me, but possibly Officer Smith painted a rosier picture than was true. He was in charge and would like to give the impression he had things under control.
    “Oh, yes, they are still active,” he told me, without a moment’s hesitation.
    “I have heard that in wartime they do less smuggling because France is not safe for them.”
    “Ever since Boney went to Prussia, it has been going on much as it used to. Englishmen don’t stop drinking brandy and buying silk only because of a war.”
    “The majority of it comes ashore at Romney, I understand.”
    “Most of it, for the landing is easier there, and concealment, too, but from Margate to Bournemouth there are men engaged in it. We have some right here in Pevensey.”
    “Officer Smith keeps a close eye on them, I should think.”
    “He does what he can, but he’s no Argus with a hundred eyes. He took a boatload a week or so ago, but there is collusion between them, of course.”
    “The revenuemen let them through for a price, you mean?”
    “They have clamped down pretty heavily on that. There was some scandal of one fellow, Lazy Louie they call him, who had the revenuemen from Romney to Pevensey on the take, and they dismissed the officers. It amazes me that Lazy Louie walks the streets a free man this day. Bribed the judge, I suppose,” he said, laughing.
    “What did you mean by collusion, then, if the practice has been stopped?”
    “You must know the smugglers are in an excellent position to do a little spying for England. Who but they would know if Boney is assembling a flotilla at Boulogne? Some of them are spies as well as smugglers, with a gentleman’s agreement that they will not be caught, I think. They do a great deal of good in their former capacity and little enough harm in the latter if you don’t bother them. The government is taxing us to death. Ten percent on our income wasn’t enough, they had to raise it for the war, and a guinea a head for male servants, a tax on our carriages and our windows and I don’t know what else. They could at least let a man have a glass of brandy without paying through the nose for it. I don’t buy smuggled brandy myself, but I drink it. A little, I mean—I don’t blink an eye if a friend offers me a glass of brandy. I know it is smuggled, but I don’t resent it, and it is no secret every inch of silk at Peters’ Drapery Shop is smuggled.”
    My mind flew to my green silk gown, and I felt that I, too, was an unwitting accessory to the