A Bride for the Baron

“Gregory?”

When her brother gave her no answer, she glanced at Lord Meriweather. Again his mouth was taut, and furrows had dug back into his face.

He drew his arm out from under her hand and strode to her brother. “Vicar!” His voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip.

Gregory flinched, then turned to look at them. Tears filled his eyes when he saw Vera. She ran, wending her way past the gravestones in the churchyard, and flung her arms around him.

“Do you know what happened?” she asked.

“All I can figure,” her brother said, “is that another section of roof fell in and struck the wood stove. Embers must have fallen out. That set the church on fire.”

Vera shook her head. “Gregory, that can’t be what happened. We didn’t use it anymore.”

“It is the only explanation I have.” His shoulders sagged, and Vera embraced him again.

* * *

Edmund Herriott, Lord Meriweather, stepped away to let Miss Fenwick and her brother comfort each other. He spoke to the men cleaning the site and was glad to see many were his tenants. He thanked them. Was he expected to do more? He had no idea. Now that his cousins Sophia and Catherine were both married and gone, he would need to turn to Lady Meriweather to help him make proper decisions.

Or any decisions at all.

He refrained from grimacing as he walked around the ruined church. How was Meriweather Hall going to function if its baron could not even decide which cravat to wear each morning? Now there was the matter of rebuilding the church and the vicarage. He did not want to burden Lady Meriweather, but he was unsure where else to turn.

His gaze settled on Miss Fenwick. He had suspected, since shortly after his first meeting with the vicar’s sister, that she handled many of the parish responsibilities. Mr. Fenwick was a learned man who made every effort to serve his congregation, but the vicar’s duties often kept him riding from one end of the parish to the other. Would Miss Fenwick help Edmund, too?

Miss Fenwick went with the vicar to examine the damage, and Edmund looked away. He did not want her to discover him staring at her. She was his cousin Catherine’s best friend, but Edmund had to own that he scarcely knew the vicar’s sister. Any time they had spent together prior to the journey back to Sanctuary Bay had included her brother or his cousins, and there had been no time to learn more about her during the days in the carriage because Miss Kightly’s prattle had monopolized the conversation from morn until they stopped at another coaching inn each night.

The sickening reek of wet ashes erupted with each step as Edmund walked around what was left of the church. The roof had burned. The joists supporting the floor had failed, and everything that had not been consumed by the flames had fallen into the cellar.

But there was another odor. Fainter, yet there nonetheless. He sniffed and frowned. Brandy. There must have been a lot of brandy to leave the scent after a fire. That could mean one thing and one thing only.

The rattle of carriage wheels resounded, startling him. He turned as a small carriage rolled to a stop beside his carriage, its wheels crunching on the filthy snow. Edmund recognized it, even before he saw the baronial crest on the door. It was from Meriweather Hall. Who had driven here after them?

When the door opened and Miss Kightly stepped out of the carriage with the help of a footman, Edmund was not surprised that she had been unwilling to remain at Meriweather Hall as he had requested. An astounding beauty with golden hair and perfect features, she was, as always, a pattern-card of style. The crimson pelisse she now wore was the lone bright spot among the ruins. She held on to her ermine-lined bonnet to make sure it was not twisted off by the wind as she hurried to them.

Tears blossomed in her eyes when she placed her fingers lightly on Miss Fenwick’s arm. “I had no idea there would be this much devastation. I know my great-uncle will be willing to help you rebuild.” She gave Edmund a swift smile because she must know that Edmund, like most of the people in North Yorkshire, considered her great-uncle, Sir Nigel Tresting, a very eccentric man. “He likes coming here for services.”

“That is very kind of both of you,” Miss Fenwick said.

“I am sorry this has happened to you.” The blonde flung her arms around Miss Fenwick, giving her and her brother a big hug.

Edmund looked away, feeling as he had too often, like an outsider in this close-knit seaside community. Before the war, his only worries had been how to keep his import and construction businesses profitable. That had changed when he had inherited the title of Lord Meriweather. Now, he had three vital duties. He needed to keep the estate running and make sure its residents saw to their responsibilities. He must attend sessions of Parliament. Last and most important, he had to find a woman to wed and give the baronage an heir, as well as a spare or two.

He had been somewhat successful with the first two, even though he still had much to learn. On the last, he had failed. Oh, he had thought he was on his way to success on the third when he had begun courting Lady Eloisa Parkington after the young woman had shown her interest in him. He had bought her items she admired, and he had escorted her to gatherings where the door might otherwise have been closed to her after her family’s reputation was sullied by her older siblings’ wild behavior. He even, to quiet her pleading, had introduced her to a man he had served with during the war, a man who had recently become a marquess. Edmund had regretted the decision when Lady Eloisa had quickly persuaded the marquess to propose to her.

Introducing them had been the last decision Edmund had made, and it had been as wrong as too many others had been when he had watched men die on the battlefield following his orders. The night he had heard of Lady Eloisa’s betrothal was the night he admitted that he would be a fool to attempt to decide anything else on his own.

He was not going to think about that now. He went back to the hole that once had been the church’s cellar. Kneeling on its edge, he scanned the dusky shadows. Again he sniffed. Again he caught a hint of brandy.

One of his tenants, a man who farmed land west of the manor house, came over. “Excuse me, m’lord, but could you use this?” He held out a lantern.

“Thank you, Sims,” he said as he took it and held it over the side.

A flash of white marked where the stone font had fallen. When he saw several reflections, he guessed the light might be hitting brass candlesticks or pieces of broken glass. Anything made of wood had been burned beyond recognition.

Almost everything.

Edmund held out the lantern at full arm’s length and squinted through the sunlight off the sea. He lowered the lantern into the cellar, hoping to get a better look at what was beneath the joists. He gasped when he saw a black area where the foundation’s stone wall had been broken. From what he could see, the opening looked big enough for a man to walk through. Someone had cut out a section of the wall and, with what he had smelled near the cellar, it was not hard to guess who or why.

The bane of Sanctuary Bay was a gang of smugglers who practiced their illegal trade brazenly. His predecessor had tried to halt them, but had failed. Both of his cousins had been threatened by the smugglers who, he had recently learned, were led by someone they spoke of as his qualityship. That must mean that the leader was of wealth or of the peerage or both. It explained how they had eluded capture for so long and also why they grew bolder with each passing month.

Getting to his feet, he brushed dirt off his buckskin breeches. He handed the lantern back to its owner, then shrugged off his greatcoat. “Sims, can you hold this up while I go down?”

“Go down?” The thin man gulped, his Adam’s apple bouncing like a ball as Edmund took off his coat and tossed it on top of his greatcoat. “Go down there?”

“Hold up the lantern so I can see when I get to the bottom.” He tugged the hem of his wrinkled waistcoat and looked into the cellar.

Sims hesitated, then nodded, “Aye, m’lord, but let me see if I can find a ladder. Someone in the village must have one.”

“No!” He held up his hand to halt Sims. His voice resonated, and everyone stared at him. He must look like a madman standing in the icy wind in his shirtsleeves. But if Sims alerted the villagers to what they were doing, the smugglers who lived among them would hear. He could not risk them coming to halt him now. “I don’t need a ladder. These beams offer me a good path to the bottom.”

Miss Fenwick rushed around the church’s perimeter. Strands of her black hair flapped on her shoulders, and she pushed them impatiently back under her bonnet. Her bright blue eyes were wide. “My lord, what are you doing?”

“I know why the church burned, and I think I know who burned it.” Maybe he should have phrased it differently, Edmund thought, as he saw the faces around him become as pale as milk.

Miss Fenwick stared at him, her eyes widening as understanding dawned. She whispered, “What did you see?”

“I don’t want to say until I am sure of my suspicions.”

“Smugglers?” Her voice remained hushed.

He nodded grimly. “Take a deep breath. What do you smell?”

She did and shivered. “Some sort of distilled spirits.”

“Brandy, I would guess. A lot of it if the odor lingers after the fire.” He let his breath sift past his clenched teeth. “Brandy burns fast and hot.”

“You think someone used it to start a fire in the church?”

“Possibly. I need to check the cellar to see if there is a clue there.” He put his foot on the closest beam. It cracked and tumbled into the cellar with a crash.

Mr. Fenwick stormed toward them and pushed between Edmund and his sister. “My lord, it may not be my place to tell you what you should do, but we lost your predecessor barely a year ago. To have you risk your neck now would be foolhardy.”

“Aye,” chimed the men who had gathered by the cellar.

Miss Kightly, who had followed the vicar, grasped Edmund’s arm with both hands. “My dear Lord Meriweather, there are others who can go down into the cellar in accordance with your directions.”

“You cannot believe,” Miss Fenwick said with a serenity that contrasted with the panic in the other voices, “that Lord Meriweather would ask someone else to do what he himself would not. He is not that sort of man.”