M.A. Lee: The Dangers to Hearts / First Chapter

Introducing protagonists ~ former smuggler Jess Carter and farm owner Agatha Helmes

Chapter 1 ~ Ipswich

“Stay here.” Jess handed the reins to his mother and hopped down from the wagon.

Mrs. Carter eyed the building. The back façade had boarded-up windows and dingy paint, far different from the street-facing front. “Jess, what is this place?”

The evening gloom lent a criminal darkness to the building. The back lane they were on hadn’t pleased her when he turned the wagon onto it. Were she to know the place warehoused smuggled goods, she would be all for leaving and starting from scratch somewhere far away. “Just a building, Ma. I know the man who owns it. He might direct me to a job.”

She nodded. Since they’d packed the cottage and left it as the sunrise lightened the sky, she hadn’t asked many questions. A week past, and she still hadn’t asked him the reason they had packed up and abandoned their home, not after he told her Palmer was dead. She had never asked about the smuggling he did with Palmer and Jem Webb. She had never asked about the freight he hauled regular to Ipswich, even though the Naze had never generated enough product to fill his wagon on such a regular basis.

She wrapped her heavy cloak closer. “I’ll stay.”

He entered the building without knocking.

The warehouse had never hived with activity. Today, though, it seemed empty of folk. A single light gave him the direction to the front. His bootsteps echoed as he wove between crates and barrels.

The lantern that guided Jess to the front swung from a hook in the center of the anteroom. More shutters covered the two windows. Off to one side of the narrow room was the man who fenced for the smugglers. He sat behind a big desk, positioned off to one side rather than directly across from the front door. A bottle of whiskey sat to his left. An inkwell with its quill sat before him. The room was barren of other furniture except for a handful of chairs, as nicked and scarred as the desk. When Jess emerged from the door to the warehouse, the man growled, “Far enough. State your business.”

“It’s Jess Carter, Mr. Helmes.”

“Carter, is it?” The man lifted his hand from his lap. A gunmetal pistol remained pointed at Jess’ gut. “Who else?”

The pistol confirmed everything he had ever thought about Dick Helmes. “Nobody,” and he had the wits to add, “I got somebody waiting for me outside, in my wagon.” He didn’t name the person as his mother. Better not to tell the fence that he’d brought someone bone-honest to his warehouse.

“Ah. Another one of you who escaped the soldiers?”

“Yes.” Who else had escaped? He had heard that the soldiers had arrested everyone at the Hawthorn Inn. He had slipped through the net because he hadn’t returned to the inn. Nor had he waited around to hear the gossip before he got himself and his mother rolling with the dawn.

The pistol lifted. The lever released back into place with a click. “Come forward then. Let’s see how you’ve survived the past weeks.”

Jess dragged off his slouch-brimmed hat as he stepped forward. He dodged the lantern by cocking his head over. Helmes peered at him then nodded. He placed the pistol on papers scattered over the desk then rested his hand beside the grip.

“So, you escaped. Anyone else you know about?”

“Palmer died. Far as I know, everyone else was arrested, including Marthy Gilson.”

“Ol’ Marthy.” Helmes grinned, revealing his gold-capped right eyetooth. He picked up the whiskey and drank from the bottle. Then he set it back down with a thud. “They’ll be hanging the men and transporting Marthy and the boy, so I would think. Why are you here?”

“I need work.”

“I’ll not hire you. No one here in Ipswich knows my connection to Palmer and the rest of you. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“So would I. I got out by the slimmest chance.” He didn’t add that the slimmest chance had amounted to saving Captain Farraday after Palmer had fallen to his death. No sense letting Helmes know that Jess had worked a deal to save his own skin. “I ain’t looking to toss that chance away. I got nothing to tie me back to the inn, and the others will keep their mouths shut. I’m out of work since the arrests.”

“And?”

The man wanted him to spell it out. Well, Jess had learned to read earlier than most. “You got a warehouse. I’ve got my freight wagon. I can haul for you, wherever you need, legit work, however you want it. Right now, I ain’t even got a roof over my head.”

“My need for haulage is greatly reduced, due to certain arrests.”

“Fair enough,” Jess allowed. He started to back out of the office. “We’ll try farther north.”

“Wait.”

He stopped, hopeful. “You thought of something?”

“Maybe. I need to think on it.” He picked up the bottle, eyed the amber liquid, then swirled it. Without looking directly at Jess, he asked, “What are you willing to do? You willing to work hard? Like on a farm?”

“I’m willing.”

“I need to think on it,” Helmes repeated. “Come back early tomorrow.”

“I can do that. I can stable the horses where I always do.”

“Do that. Bright and early in the morning.” He saluted Jess with the bottle. “To new ventures,” and he drank again.

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

Helmesford

Agatha wrapped her cloak tighter.

When she came in after sunset, Aunt Sally would cluck about the cold and the dark. Agatha, though, knew the farm to her bones. She would never get lost on her own land.

The sinking sun had painted brilliant colors, gold and pink, coral and orange. Not for the first time she wished she could capture the radiance on a canvas. She had neither the talent nor the skill. Her mother, may she rest in well-earned peace, had had both talent and skill, even though she’d been raised to a life of leisure. Her watercolors still graced the house. Agatha could only paint with the seeds she sowed and the harvests she reaped.

When there was a harvest.

The farm had struggled this year. When she had finally admitted that the workers wouldn’t take orders from a woman—orders they hadn’t hesitated to take from her as long as her bed-ridden stepfather was alive—she had hired a steward. And then another. And then a third. The first was a drunk. The second wasn’t work-brickle. And the third—.

What could she say about O’Malley? She had yet to find a local lass who would claim the Irishman had forced her. Four had just giggled. The fifth had rolled her eyes and returned to her work. Agatha feared a crop of babies would fill the village next spring, and O’Malley would continue spreading his seed far and wide.

He’d tried nothing with her, but his obedience to orders was just a tad too ingratiating. He had a look that said he would plot to overthrow her authority, although he never challenged her directly. His mobile mouth often smirked with a hidden joke.

He had come to Helmesford with a recommendation from her cousin Richard in Ipswich. She suspected more than a recommendation between Richard and O’Malley. She had hesitated to hire the man—but she needed a steward the workers would listen to. The early fields were coming to harvest. More fields than she liked had never made it to sowing because the field men had refused to listen to her for the first time in years. Without her stepfather to back up her words, they just laughed and returned to their cider. She had pleaded. She pointed out their need for pay. She was ignored by the majority.

Oh, a few had come to work, or she would have no early fields at all. Her first steward Mr. Hurst stayed sober long enough to get many of the other fields plowed. The second steward Mr. Garner gradually saw to the planting of the plowed fields. And the third steward Mr. O’Malley steered them from first to last harvest. Yet Agatha had had to correct him several times on the order of the harvest. Surely the man could see when fields were ripened? Old Denny had shaken his head every time she had to repeat her orders to O’Malley.

She had pleaded several times this year for Denny to be her steward. The elderly man, however, wouldn’t take the job that his knowledge deserved. He wouldn’t give orders to his fellows.

The sunset colors faded. She needed to get off this hill and around the woods before the pitchblack night descended. But what am I going to do?

She took a last look over the farm then turned her back and headed down. Helmes House stood beyond the wood, its ground-floor windows lit against the deepening twilight. Aunt Sally would scold. Mrs. Cabot would threaten to quit again because she had to keep dinner waiting. If she could avoid Mr. O’Malley, then one thing might go right this evening.

Twilight turned to night as she skirted the woods. The path showed a lighter color, and she sped along, stirring up the masses of leaves. She stumbled a few times. She had stumbled so many times this past year, but not as much and not as seriously as in the year after her mother’s death.

Full dark had descended when she left the wood’s edge and ventured toward the farm buildings nearer the house. Old Denny’s new pup barked as she passed his cottage. The fowls squawked and fluttered before settling back on their roosts. A cow lowed in the distant pasture.

She reached the kitchen garden. A dark shape separated from the bricked wall, and Agatha stumbled to a halt.

“Out past dark, Miss Helmes?”

“Mr. O’Malley. You startled me. Did Mrs. Cabot not send over your dinner?”

“I’ve had it. I’m looking for dessert.”

“Dessert? Do you need to speak with me this evening, or can it wait till morning?”

He chuckled. “Always dodging back to the farm, aren’t you?”

She had her feet under her again. “Well, Mr. O’Malley, you are the farm’s steward.”

“I’m surprised you managed a love affair at all, then, unless his talk of plowing got you excited. Was that it? You like your men to talk of plowing your furrows?”

She blushed and was fiercely glad the darkness hid it. “Have you been drinking?”

“Just cider. Not the fine stuff you keep in the house. I’m sure you shared that one or two times. At least once. Had to be, from what I’ve heard. Got your field seeded, then off he went, leaving you to face it all.”

“What are you talking about?” Then she knew he’d heard about her two heartaches, lost love and lost child, and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “How many fields are left to harvest, Mr. O’Malley?”

“You should know. You were up there counting them.”

“If the weather holds fine—.”

“If the weather holds, we got no problems.”

“We should talk about the fields that lay fallow this year. We’ve never tried over-wintering here. My stepfather was intrigued by the idea—.”

“We get the last feed in, I’m off to see your cousin in Ipswich.”

She had successfully diverted his innuendoes and insinuations. She only needed confirmation that Cousin Richard had sent him for more than a single job. “And for what reason do you need to see him, Mr. O’Malley? You do not report to him, do you?”

He backed up a step. “Evening, Miss Helmes.” And he walked away.

Agatha felt glee at the confirmation that his avoided answer meant ... only to be dumped into gloom. She couldn’t fire him. Not yet. Not until the last field was harvested.

What am I going to do?

. ~ . ~ . ~ .

16 November 1811 ~ Ipswich

Jess pulled the wagon up in the same spot as yesterday. The early morning had not given any freshness to the back lane with its dingy buildings.

“Jess, I do not like this place.”

“Nobody’ll bother you, Ma, not this early.”

“This man—he was part of the smuggling, wasn’t he? It’s the reason you don’t go in the front door.”

“That’s over, Ma. You know that.”

“I don’t want you ruining the chance that Miss Katie gave you.”

“It’ll be Mrs. Farraday by now, Ma. Mrs. Farraday of Melton Hall.”

“She gave you a chance, a good one. She kept you from rotting in gaol.”

“I’m taking that chance, ain’t I? But the world’s a little closed when you don’t know where to go.”

“Melton Hall—.”

“No,” he said flatly and jumped down.

The warehouse’s back door opened. Dick Helmes appeared. He hadn’t shaved. His shirt-front under his jacket looked as stained as last night’s. The smuggler’s fence stared up at Mrs. Carter while Jess tried to crowd him back into the warehouse.

“Who’s that?”

“No one you need to worry about.”

“Wife? Girl you’re plowing? She looks old for you.”

“My ma,” Jess said tightly, “and you’ll treat her with respect. Even Jem Webb did.”

Helmes laughed. “Mrs. Carter,” he called and swept her a bow that conveyed mockery through its deepness.

Jess wanted to plant the man a facer, but he controlled it. “I’m here, early like you said. Did you come up with other work?”

He grinned, that gold tooth shining, and Jess wanted to hit him again. Whatever the scheme was, it would only benefit Helmes. “You said you’ll work on a farm.”

“Anything that’s honest work.”

“Now you’re qualifying it.”

“I don’t do murder. I don’t steal.”

“Just smuggling.”

He gave a clipped nod and didn’t argue that those days were over. His ma had the right of it. Hard as it had been to find any work all the way to London and back, it was better than giving this man a hold over him.

“Happens that I know of a farm. Helmes House at Helmesford. Not much, just a manor and the acreage around it. Several fields, some pastures. A pretty situation that I want to keep an eye on. My cousin runs it.”

“Harvest is nearly over.”

“She’ll take you on.”

A woman in charge? He remembered the tight ship that Martha Gilson had kept at Hawthorn Inn. He reckoned Helmes’ age and figured an old spinster in her fifties would be particular about the people she hired and the jobs they did. But he was out of options. Winter was coming on. His mother needed a stable place, warm and safe. “She’ll hire me at your word?”

“At my word.” He produced a sealed letter and a loose sheet. Jess glanced down and saw a list of directions. “I got a man there,” Helmes added. “The steward. Reece O’Malley. Make yourself known to him as my man. He’ll set you and—your mother into a good place.”

He reckoned he shouldn’t bloody the nose of the man offering him a job. “My thanks.”

“Oh, it’s a tit for tat. I’ll get what I need from you soon enough. For now, O’Malley’s a womanizer. My cousin’s a hard-headed woman. He’ll have kept his paws to himself for a time. She’s no looker. But with winter coming on, he’ll be thinking of sticking it closer to home. You see that don’t happen. You keep his hands off my cousin.”

Jess winced at the crudity. “O’Malley ain’t going to like my interference.”

“Then he can go jump. It’s my farm, soon as I marry Agatha and get rid of that trustee of hers. I don’t plan to do that for another few years. You just get there, get connected to him, and settle in. I’ll likely come for Christmas. It’s traditional. And you’ll be there making sure things fall my way, not his. You might even give them a push to help them fall my way.”

“Yes, Mr. Helmes.”

“Any questions?”

He had dozens, but none that this man wanted to hear. “No, sir.”

“Directions clear?” When Jess nodded, Helmes said, “I’m surprised you can read.”

“Ma taught me. I’ll be on my way, sir, if there’s nothing else.”

“There isn’t, Carter. You do what I said, and you got a place for life.”

Jess turned away. The warehouse door slammed behind him.

As he climbed up to the wagon seat, he reckoned that Helmes offered the same thing that Jess had thought to have with the smugglers on the Naze—a place for life. But smuggling had led only to death.

What would this venture lead to?