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back!”
    “How delightful,” Millie cooed. “I had thought, from what your dear mama let fall, that you were quite fixed in London for the Season.”
    Charles smiled, shook their hands, and deflected their questions. Penny heaved a sigh of relief. Now if only Nicholas would grab his chance and escape.
    She was turning to nudge him along, when Julia gaily said, “You both must join us for luncheon—it’s gone one o’clock. If I know anything of gentlemen, you must be ravenous, and the Pelican has the best food in Fowey.”
    “Oh, yes!” Millie’s eyes shone. “We’ve booked a private parlor—do join us.”
    Charles glanced at Penny, then at Nicholas. “Indeed, why not?” His smile as he gazed at Nicholas was distinctly predatory. “What say you, Arbry? I can’t see any reason not to take advantage of such an invitation from such delightful company.”
    Millie and Julia preened. They turned shining eyes on Nicholas.
    Penny inwardly swore. Nicholas couldn’t do anything but agree.
    With Julia, Millie, and Charles providing most of the conversation, the five of them walked the short distance to the Pelican Inn. As the landlord, all delighted gratification, bowed them into his best parlor, Penny hoped Nicholas understood that he was walking into a lion’s den, with a lion with very sharp teeth and even sharper wits beside him.
     
    She was nursing an incipient headache by the time lunch ended. Predictably, Millie and Julia had filled the hour with bright conversation, retelling all the repeatable local gossip for Charles’s edification. He’d encouraged them, leaving him able to direct the occasional unexpected and unpredictable query at Nicholas, not that he’d learned anything from the exercise.
    Nicholas was clearly on his guard, his attention focused on Charles, his attitude to everyone as it usually was, reserved and rather standoffish. She’d clung to the cool demeanor she always adopted around him; most put it down to understandable distance over his father’s assumption of her father’s estates.
    Little did they know.
    As they all rose and together quit the parlor, it occurred to her that, with Charles now present to draw his attention, Nicholas might lower his guard with her. She’d never given him reason to think she suspected him of anything; he had no idea she knew of the questions he’d asked the Wallingham grooms and gardeners, or of his visits to the local smugglers. He certainly didn’t know she’d been following him.
    She raised her head as they emerged into the bright sunshine. Charles appeared beside her as she went down the steps into the inn yard. An ostler was holding her mare; she was about to wave him to the mounting block when Charles touched her back.
    “I’ll lift you up.”
    She would have frozen, stopped dead, simply refused, but he was walking half-behind her; if she stopped, he’d walk into her.
    They reached the mare’s side. Charles’s hands were already sliding around her waist as she halted and turned.
    Lungs locked, she glanced into his face as he gripped and effortlessly hoisted her up. But he wasn’t even looking at her, much less noticing her embarrassing reaction; his gaze was locked on Nicholas, helping Millie and Julia into their gig.
    “How long has he been here?”
    Slipping her boot into the stirrup he’d caught and positioned for her, she managed to breathe enough to murmur, “He arrived yesterday.”
    That brought Charles’s dark gaze to her face, but an ostler appeared with his horse, and he turned away.
    Nicholas had also asked for his horse—one of Granville’s hacks—to be brought out. He, too, mounted. Without actually discussing the matter, the five of them clopped out of the inn yard together, Nicholas riding attentively beside the gig, she and Charles bringing up the rear.
    She watched Nicholas’s attempts to be sociable. Millie and Julia were thrilled, their day crowned by being able to claim they’d spent time conversing with both