Moon Love Read Online Free Page A

Obie Hanks, from the blacksmith shop, had been after the job for a year now, and if her papa couldn’t do it, the family would be destitute. No one must know he was unwell. The pay was good, half a crown a day while waiting, and a guinea a night when actively engaged.
    Amy had arranged for George, the brightest and strongest of the footmen, to masquerade as Jed, but he had come down with the flu on the crucial night and was incapable of either speech or standing when the time came. With only minutes to make a decision, Amy had said, “Don’t cry, Mary, I’ll do it myself. But you mustn’t tell a soul!”
    “Oh Miss, you can’t! It’s too dangerous!”
    “What is the danger? They’ll be landing not a half mile from Bratty Hall. All I have to do is make sure the Revenueman is not about, give three flashes from the dark lantern, and leave.”
    “Oh no, Miss. You can’t leave. You have to stay around and keep watching till the brandy’s landed, in case Rankin is lurking behind a bush.”
    “But I don’t have to talk to anyone?”
    “No, miss. Our own lads would never lay a hand on you, and the Frenchies only come ashore for a few minutes.”
    “The Frenchies actually come ashore? Is that how it’s done? I thought our Gentlemen went to France, or met the Frenchies in the Channel.”
    “It’s done all different ways along the coast, Miss, but our lads just buy what the Frenchies bring in.”
    “Why do the Frenchies come ashore at all?”
    “To get paid, Miss. Cocker, he’s the Gentleman in charge, he picks a barrel at random and breaches it to make sure the stuff is good before he pays them. He started that after he got a load that was diluted with caramel water. But Da has nothing to do with that. He just watches to see Rankin ain’t on hand. And if he is, he don’t flash the lantern. That’s the signal not to land. I’d do it myself, only Da says I haven’t the wits.”
    Mary was given to fits of hysterics. A mouse was enough to set her off. Amy borrowed an old hacking jacket and hat of her father’s, a pair of boots from a footman, and went to hold the lantern for the Gentlemen.
    She had enjoyed the adventure. There was really very little likelihood that Rankin, the Revenueman, would be about. Other Gentlemen had the job of making sure he was not, and they were very good at their job.
    Mary’s papa had a bad spell over the summer, and Amy had filled in for him a few times. It was on the second night that she overheard the two Frenchies talking between themselves in French. They appeared to be complaining of the amount of money they were paid, but their complaint wasn’t with the Gentlemen. They had said they were fools to be carrying brandy when their lugger could as easily hold paper.
    This made no sense to Amy, until rumors of forged banknotes began to surface in Easton. She got hold of one of the notes and enclosed it in a letter to Sir George, explaining her suspicions. To lend credence to her report, she had used the Cougar’s seal. On another night, she had overheard the Frenchies name “Alphonse” as the Frenchman who was carrying “paper” into England at great profit. This, too, she had reported to Sir George, who had immediately dispatched Mr. Bransom to Easton to discover who was receiving the “paper” on the English side. Cocker, a patriotic Englishman even if he was a smuggler, had agreed to let Bransom pose as his cousin and join his gang when the situation was explained to him under oath of silence.
    At eleven o’clock, Amy donned her disguise, took up the dark lantern, and went out into the night to watch for any sign of the Revenueman. The rain had stopped and the wind subsided, but the grass was wet and the air chilly. She knew that Larry West, a local yeoman farmer who raised donkeys, would be waiting nearby with his eight donkeys to haul the brandy to various hiding spots. Ditches, pig styes, haystacks and any abandoned buildings were used for temporary concealment, when