The Counterfeit Gentleman by Charlotte Louise Dolan

danger alone in my cottage,” he said firmly, “and it would be extremely foolhardy for you to come with us, so I shall not listen to any objections.”
    His crew thought different. For the first time since he had brought them together, they did not immediately ac cede to his wishes. Despite his having made it perfectly clear that the matter was closed, they began trying to per suade him to change his mind. He should have realized that after a year under someone else’s leadership, their unques tioning obedience, which he had once taken for granted, was no longer his to command.
    “It just don’t set right with me to leave the young lady alone here,” Harry said, looking at Jem instead of at Dig ory.
    “Suppose they’ve already discovered that she didn’t drown? Then what?” Big Davey asked.
    “And suppose they come skulking around here while we’re down at the cove and find her alone?” Little Davey added.
    “The chances of that happening are most unlikely,” Dig ory pointed out, holding back his temper only with diffi culty.
    “But not impossible,” Harry said. “Someone may’ve seen the two of you yesterday climbing up the path from the beach, and people gossip, and you can’t say for sure those two villains have been sitting in a pub with nothing more on their minds than their next mug of ale. They may have been nosing around on their own, sniffing out danger ous information.”
    Miss Pepperell chose that moment to leave her post in the doorway and join the group, and seeing the fatuous smiles on his companions’ faces made Digory realize he was only wasting precious time by arguing.
    In fact, given the way they were looking at her, if she even mentioned wishing to marry him, his formerly loyal men would probably fall all over each other in their rush to drag him before the vicar. “Turncoats,” he muttered under his breath, but none of them paid him the slightest atten tion.
    Not daring to meet his eyes, Miss Pepperell smiled sweetly at the others and seated herself at the table. Look ing up at them, she said, “I have been thinking that if I put on my own gown and lay down by the edge of the water, those horrible men would—”
    “No!” came in unison out of five masculine throats.
    “You are not going to be the bait,” Digory said, and this time his men sided firmly with him.
    “A decoy ain’t a bad idea, though,” Harry said. “My wife could take the dress you was drowned in and stuff it with straw and rig it up to look as if it was you.”
    Then another thought relative to Miss Pepperell’s cloth ing popped into Digory’s mind, and he made an even stronger effort to divert that young lady from her purpose. “Speaking of ladies’ gowns, has it occurred to any of you that if those men see a female with us, they may forget their orders to have Miss Pepperell’s death appear an accident and shoot her down on the spot?”
    There was dead silence, as the men, and Miss Pepperell also, recognized the validity of his objection.
    Then Jem spoke up traitorously, “Do you know, she’s about the size of my littlest brother, and wearing a suit of his clothes and with her hair tucked up under a cap, she could easily pass for a boy. Besides, I’m sure she’ll promise to stay out of sight behind the rocks until the fight ing is over.”
    There were murmurs of agreement from the other men, and a rapturous smile from Miss Pepperell for Jem, and Digory realized that if he did not get things under control quickly, someone would next be offering to arm her with a dirk or a brace of pistols.
    Bowing to the inevitable, he finally agreed that Miss Pepperell could accompany them. With a rapturous smile that was enough to break a man’s heart, she hurried to fetch her old dress and give it to Harry.
    With the eagerness of a young lad in the first throes of calf love, Jem promised to drop off a suit of boy’s clothing before dawn, but even with nothing left to discuss, neither he nor the other men made