A Wager to Tempt the Runaway
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Bronwyn Scott
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Chapter One
Wildness born of midnight and madness coursed through Josefina, filling her with the hot, exhilarating thrill of a mission accomplished, and beneath a full moon no less! She threw back her head and howled in victory at that bright moon as the last of the crates were offloaded from the boats on to the discreet beach of Shucker’s Cove.
Padraig O’Malley, the smuggling captain, laughed and tossed her a bag. ‘Josefina, catch.’
Josefina hefted the little washed leather bag in her hand with an appraising glee. One could never have too much money. A year on the road, painting from town to town, had taught her that. She tested the weight of the coins within. Enough. There was enough inside to make a nice addition to the stash of coins she had hidden beneath her mattress back at the art school.
‘Well, Fina, is it enough? Do you want to count it out in front of me?’ Padraig the Irishman chuckled at her obvious assessment of the payment. He flung a casual arm about her and took a swig from his flask. He was in high humour; the shipment had come in easily and without trouble. ‘You’ll notice the other boys, Fina. They take their payment without question.’ He laughed.
‘Well, I’m not one of the boys, now am I?’ Josefina gave her hair a coy toss over her shoulder, flirting. Padraig was the leader of the Seasalter gang. He decided what shipments they took and when. He also decided how they were dispersed, what they were sold for and who got what share of the take. It paid to be friendly to him.
‘No, you’re certainly not.’ He passed her the flask and she took a healthy swallow. ‘Although you can drink like them.’
Josefina shoved the flask back at him against the hard breadth of his chest. Padraig was all muscle and brawn, a burly man. ‘You like that about me,’ she flirted, dancing away from him. She was aware there was a great deal more he liked about her. It was best to keep him at arm’s length when he was flush with drink and success. Nights like tonight, men like Padraig thought themselves kings of the world and all those in it. She knew how to handle such men, but she’d prefer not to have to.
Josefina ducked away into the night, losing herself among the dispersing crew members. ‘Goodnight, Charlie, goodnight, Thomas, goodnight, Ned,’ she called until she was out of sight, alone on the Faversham Road leading to the art school, where her bed waited for her. She had her very own room and three warm meals a day until May and all she had to do was paint one picture.
Josefina tossed the little bag in her hand, listening to the coins clink. How satisfying to have money of her own, a roof over her head and food for the winter, all provided by her own efforts. And how different. Her life was not the one she’d led a year ago. Life was simpler now, freer. She was her own master. She went where she chose and stayed as long as she chose. She ate, she drank, she painted what she chose. She saw the world in all of its raw beauty, not the rose-filtered version she’d been raised on. She was twenty-four, a child no more. No one told her what to do, although there were plenty of people from her past life who had tried, who would still try. Men like Signor Bartolli. Only no one knew where she was.
She liked it that way. Liked it enough to have walked away from the luxury of her father’s villa and all the comforts provided by his wealth and fame. His death had freed her and she’d fled the moment the cage door was open. If she’d learned anything from her father’s life, it was that gilded cages were still cages. He’d spent his life kowtowing to patrons, painting what they desired in order to secure his wealth and reputation. He lived where they lived. He did not get to travel as he desired and had never seen the places of his own dreams: the pyramids of Egypt, the tropical islands of the Caribbean, the painted natives of the Americas. But she would. She would see it all, paint it all for him. Just as she’d promised him before he died.
Josefina looked to the stars, indulging in the fantasy that her father looked down on her from the lofty heavens. What would he think if he really could see her now? Would he applaud her decision to disappear, to seize and shape her own destiny? Would he be appalled that she’d walked out on the luxury he’d spent his life providing to live the life of a vagabond, wandering the dirt roads of a backwater like Seasalter at midnight, her worldly wealth clutched in her hand?
She hoped not. She hoped he would understand her choice. She’d chosen to keep her promise to him and to herself. She was never going back, even if it meant she had fewer dresses to wear and none so fine as the ones left behind in her wardrobe. Even if it meant she had to count her pennies and join smuggling rings, working her way through her adventures from place to place. She didn’t want to be the pampered daughter or wife of a rich man, a princess in a tower. She wanted to be free.
That’s what she told herself late at night in her warm dormitory room when the doubts crept in. She wanted to be free. Freedom was her choice. Only lately, it didn’t seem to be enough. She tossed the bag again. She had shelter, food, the chance to make some money. In exchange, come May, she was free to go, free to set sail for the Americas. She had everything she desired. What more was there? She had enough. More than enough.
He had seen enough. The little fool thought to compound a crime against the Crown with walking home alone at midnight. Owen Gann didn’t need a telescope to see the stupidity in that, not even from the distance of the widow’s walk atop his Seasalter manor house situated along the marshy Kent coast. Tonight, he stood atop the walk and kept his own discreet vigil as Padraig O’Malley’s free-traders unloaded their monthly shipment, his telescope never leaving the deep pocket of his greatcoat.
He had no quarrel with smuggling. Growing up in Seasalter, he understood intrinsically that for many it was a necessity in order to make ends meet. Once, he’d been one of them. These days, he preferred to make his money honestly by daylight and without fear of criminal repercussions. Apparently, that was just one of the many differences between him and her. He was full of caution and restraint. She was without either.
From the cove, her laughter carried up to him, proof that she lacked all caution, all fear. The moonlight caught her in profile, her head thrown back to the evening light, her silhouette lithe and dark, dressed in trousers that flattered her figure even at a distance, her identity unmistakable against the moon: Josefina Ricci, the Italian protégée of Seasalter’s leading artist, Artemisia Stansfield, the Lady St Helier. Damn and double damn. She was the last person who needed to be on the beach tonight engaged in illegal transactions beneath a full moon for all to see, excisemen and riding officers included.
Josefina Ricci was a thrill seeker, that had been clear about her from the start. But Owen had not thought she’d go as far, however, as to embrace crime. He might be understanding of smuggling, but the Crown was not. He reached into his pocket for the telescope, sweeping the beach once more to be sure the smugglers were safe. The cove was hidden and there were no excisemen on duty in this part of Kent at present. He knew the smugglers’ informants must have reported that no trouble was expected, but still, one couldn’t be too careful. And someone did have to be careful on Josefina’s behalf if she wouldn’t be careful on her own. That person wasn’t going to be Padraig O’Malley. O’Malley was notorious for his daring, although ‘daring’ wasn’t what Owen called it—he called it recklessness. He looked to the sky and swore again. Padraig should have known better. The night was too bright for any but the most intrepid of free-traders or the most desperate.
Given that it was January and seas were rough, the Seasalter smuggling company surely fit the latter if not the former. Winter was slow for free-traders, the Channel a chancy proposition, storm ridden for months with dangerous gales, one of the two main sources of income for Seasalter families. Oysters were the other. While oysters could be harvested in January if the seas cooperated, the lack of reliable winter smuggling income—also weather dependent—made for long, empty stretches around here, broken up only by the art school’s annual Christmas party and his own ‘Oyster Ball’ in February to provide the folks with enough gaiety to get through the final phase of winter.
Assured the beach was secure, Owen put away the telescope. Safe beach or not, it didn’t change his opinion. The landing tonight was too dangerous, but then, he had the luxury of such an opinion. O’Malley did not. Owen remembered the days when he didn’t have the luxury either, of the long winters growing up when his family struggled through the cold harvesting months, October to April, augmenting the off-season of spring and summer with smuggling and some fishing, and then the years when support for his family had fallen singly on his own young shoulders.
In those days, the fraternity of smugglers had been the saving of his family. He would not turn his back on them now that he had money of his own and no need of their services. They had been there for him and he’d be there for them. Those men out there on the beach tonight might not have a choice, but she did. He’d like to know what possessed Josefina Ricci to be out there howling at the moon—an action as incautious as the landing itself.
And the sight of her doing so called to him, deep down in his bones.
Even though he didn’t want to admit it.
Even though part of him was angered by her recklessness in joining O’Malley—how dare she take such a chance after all Artemisia had done in bringing her here?—the other part of him revelled, albeit cautiously, in it. The part of him that had made a habit of taking to his widow’s walk with his telescope on smuggling nights to protect the gangs from a distance. He liked to tell himself he’d adopted the ritual because he owed the smugglers, because he had a reckless younger brother whom he’d nearly lost. But he suspected there was more to his increased recent vigilance than that.
Josefina reminded him of his brother, Simon. She, too, was a free spirit, a breath of fresh air in any room she entered. Like Simon, she was reckless. She simply couldn’t help it. Recklessness was part of who she was. Even the circumstances surrounding her arrival had been reckless—her presence in Seasalter the result of a wager Artemisia Stansfield, the art academy’s headmistress, had made with her arch nemesis, Sir Aldred Gray, over female talent when it came to painting.
The tale was Artemisia and her sister, Adelaide, had plucked Josefina at random from among the Covent Garden street artists for rehabilitation, for redemption, and for revenge after Sir Aldred had remarked a woman couldn’t paint as well as a man—and a woman certainly couldn’t instruct another to paint as well as a man could. It had been meant as a slur against Artemisia’s academy and Artemisia had reacted immediately, wagering Sir Aldred on the spot that she could take an itinerant artist from the market and turn them into an artist capable of winning a prize at the Academy’s spring show. A hundred pounds was on the line, but Owen knew it was about more than money. Pride and reputation were on the line, as well.
Watching Josefina tonight, Owen wondered, though, if the redoubtable Artemisia had finally bitten off more than she could proverbially chew. Did she know that her new protégée was running with Padraig O’Malley’s smuggling gang? Looking back, perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised. Certainly, the signs of wildness had been there since her arrival.
The first night he’d seen her had been at the school’s welcome-back-from-the-holiday gathering. She’d been a veritable spark, the heart of the party. Everywhere he’d looked, she was there, the red of her dress always catching the corner of his eye, her laughter bright and clear, cutting across myriad conversations to reach his ears. He’d stood up with her for a few of the informal country dances that night after furniture had been pushed back and carpet rolled up.
She’d been a laughing, living flame that night, igniting anything in her path and she’d done it every day since. It was rumoured she’d drunk freely at a local gathering at the Crown, Seasalter’s only inn, after a successful smuggling run, danced on the tables with Padraig O’Malley and even let the smuggling captain kiss her. It had been a public kiss surrounded by laughter, nothing a man ought to be jealous of, yet it had stirred him. Owen wanted to be the one dancing on scarred tables with her, the one sharing a flask of cheap spirits with her, the one kissing her at midnight. He knew it was not well done of him, but there it was. He was jealous of her, of Padraig. He was likely ten years her senior; he didn’t swig from flasks and take chances beneath a full moon. But sometimes when the moon was full like tonight and the heft of his burdens weighed upon him, he wished he could.
What would it be like to be that young again? That free? No one counting on you? Able to go where you wanted, when you wanted? To howl at the moon and not care what anyone thought? These days he was closer to forty than he was thirty. He ran an oyster empire that shipped shellfish to London and the Hapsburg Court. He had a string of oyster factories along the Kent coast: Seasalter, Whitstable, Haversham.
He’d come a long way from the boy who’d run with smugglers at fifteen so he could buy medicines for his sick mother, harvesting the Gann family oyster beds at sixteen alongside his father and taking on the responsibility of raising his brother at seventeen when his father died. He spent his twenties enacting the possibilities he saw around him, adding another link to the heavy chain of responsibilities he already carried.
He was no longer Owen Gann, the Oyster Man, but Owen Gann, the Oyster King of Seasalter, of all of Kent—a title he’d worked his life for so that no one under his care would ever suffer for the lack of money as his mother had suffered. But even noble goals had their price. That goal had cost him—a price he was reminded of when he looked at Josefina Ricci and his blood began to sing and his mind began to hum with yearning. Not for days gone by to be repeated, but for the days ahead to be different—less ledger work and more...something else. Something he couldn’t put a name to, something the wild Josefina Ricci had come to embody.
A cloud crossed the moon, blocking his view of the smugglers below, Josefina’s vibrant flame lost from sight as she took to the road leading to the art school a full two miles away. Owen stood awhile longer in the dark, debating his options, although he was already sure of his conclusion. He would not rest easy while Artemisia’s protégée was abroad in the night. He ought to be working. He had an enormous investment underway to complete a process of vertical acquisitions that had been years in the making, but his ledgers would get nothing from him until she was safely home. He would not be able to live with his conscience otherwise.
Owen turned and made his way down the steps. If he was quick, he could intercept her at the Faversham fork. Surely his ledgers could survive one night without him. Evening accounting was what rich men did, he’d come to learn. They counted their money and then figured out how to make more. He wished the prospect of that still stirred him the way it used to. But at some point, maybe a man had enough and maybe he’d reached it.
