Shameless

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “About the size of sixpence. Oh, water is gushing in now!”

  “’Tis a regular fountain!”

  “And cold! ’Tis cold!”

  “Stick something in the hole to plug it up,” Beth recommended in as steady a tone as she could muster. Water was sloshing past the rear seat, and would in only a matter of moments reach her and the others in the bow, she feared.

  “Use this! Use this!” several voices chorused at once, as various items were produced for possible use.

  Beth could not see precisely what was jammed into the hole, but from Alyce’s actions it was clear that something was.

  “Did that stop the water?” Neil asked, very calm.

  Alyce looked up. She was so frightened that the whites of her eyes showed.

  “It slowed it some, but some be still seeping through.” Her voice shook. Beth felt an icy gush of water around her legs and looked down: the thinnest layer of black water was washing toward the bow.

  “Put your hand over the plug and hold it there.” His gaze swept the group. “The rest of you, bail.”

  Thus adjured, they all started bailing with a will. The water was almost half an inch deep around Beth now, and the depth in the stern was much worse. Her legs and bottom were now soaked to the skin and freezing cold, but she barely noticed. The boat was riding ever lower, and it seemed that every other wave showered them with spray. Along with the other women, she used her cupped hands to fling the sea back where it belonged in a frantic rhythm, and prayed that they would reach the narrow, rocky beach that provided egress to the mainland before the craft completely sank beneath them. But as a long, cold shadow fell over the boat, a questioning glance around to find its cause showed her that they were no longer in line to land where she had supposed they must. From the force of the wind or a strong current or for some other reason she couldn’t immediately fathom, they’d been swept around past the promontory that marked the end of the beach. They were now heading straight toward the black granite cliffs that towered some fifty feet high and marked the little bay’s convergence with the sea. With the waves driving them on, unless a change of course was made they must be dashed against the rocks within minutes.

  Beth’s eyes widened with horror. Was Neil so intent on his rowing that he had not realized? Did he not know they were now wide of the mark and on the brink of disaster?

  “We’ve missed the beach!” she cried. But as soon as they left her mouth her words were caught and flung away by the wind that had risen precipitously, and it seemed neither he nor anyone else had heard. More spray pelted her. The cold drops stung, and she could taste their salt on her lips. Abandoning bailing, she put a desperate hand on his thigh and shook it to get his attention. Rowing with what now seemed to be fierce determination, he looked a question at her.

  “We’ve missed the beach!”

  But even as she screamed it at him it was too late. A wave caught them up and sent them hurtling straight toward the sheer face of the cliff.

  Chapter Fifteen

  GASPING, BETH GRABBED the cold, wet nankeen of Neil’s pantaloons with one hand and the edge of the seat in front of her with the other in simultaneous death grips. Twisted away from her now, he, too, stared at the cliff.

  The boat will be smashed like an egg, and we’ll be the first to hit.

  But she didn’t say it, or anything else, because she was suddenly so terrified she couldn’t make a sound. The waves immediately preceding the one that had caught them up crashed into the looming wall of smooth vertical stone with roars and boiling explosions of seething white foam. With no possibility of turning aside, they flew inevitably toward the same fate.

  Please, God, please . . .

  At the last minute, as the boat hurtled like a thrown javelin toward the towering wall of granite now immediately before them, the others saw their danger and loosed a chorus of screams. Those sounds, too, were caught up by the wind until they were barely audible over the booming of the waves.

  “Hold fast,” Neil yelled, rowing manfully as the wave crested. With their boat riding atop it like a cork in a maelstrom, frozen with terror as she realized that they must within seconds be dashed to their deaths against the rocks, Beth did as he said—and found herself looking in astonishment at a narrow opening in the cliff face. Seconds after she saw it, the boat sailed through the fissure with the slimmest of margins, only to plummet downward like a kite falling from the sky and wash up seconds later in a churning, ink black pool.

  There was a long moment of dead silence as Beth, at least, processed the fact that she was still alive.

  “Scared me near witless, that did. I thought I’d be cockin’ up me toes for certain sure.” Mary was the first to recover her voice as Neil once again began to row, but with much less urgency now.

  “’Tis a bloomin’ miracle,” Peg said devoutly, looking back at the opening. They all followed her gaze. With its bottom edge some twenty feet over their heads, the jagged crack allowed them a view of the slenderest slice of the star-studded sky. Then a wave hit the outside of the cliff with a muffled roar and echoing boom, and a torrent of water cascaded down toward the pool. They were too far away to be hit by it, but it helped drive their now badly listing boat on toward shore.

  “You were absolutely smashing.” All admiration, Dolly once again directed her words to Neil. “To find that crack in the cliff and get us through like you did! You saved us all!”

  As the others echoed that sentiment in their various ways, Jane burst into noisy tears and buried her face in her hands.

  “Oh my God.” Neil’s disgusted response was just loud enough to be heard by Beth. She fixed him with a censorious look while the ones who could reach Jane and were so inclined comforted her with pats and reassuring words.

  A moment later, with a gritty sound, the bow slid up onto what a quick glance around showed Beth to be a narrow eyebrow of pale sand surrounded by a line of tumbled rocks. Like the cave beneath the castle, this one was a cathedral-like stone hollow, only the water it sheltered was more properly a small salt lake rather than a cove. Inside the cave it was dark and shadowy, but not quite pitch-black thanks to the moonlight streaming in, and quiet save for the sound of the sea, which continued to burst, roaring and spewing froth through the fissure that had just admitted them.

  “Saints be praised, we’ve made it to dry land at last,” Peg said in a shaky voice as Neil pitched his boots and the oars away from him onto the sand, then rolled out into foaming black water that was scarcely higher than knee-deep now and pushed the boat the rest of the way in.

  “Aye, but where be we?” Mary asked darkly, glancing around. “’Tis not Lunnon, that’s one thing sure.”

  “’Tis another cave,” Nan said.

  “Any rate, ’tis a sight better than where we were,” Alyce pointed out.

  “I was mortal afraid we was done for.” Jane’s head was up now, and her sobs had deteriorated into the occasional hiccuping gasp. “I’m that sorry I cried.” Her tone was apologetic. Alyce patted her consolingly on the back.

  “We were all afraid,” Beth said. “But we’re safe now.”

  I hope. But she wasn’t about to voice any doubts.

  “Everybody out,” Neil ordered. Having made sure the boat was more or less securely lodged on the beach, he held it still as he waited for the women to disembark.

  Getting rather awkwardly to her feet, Beth clambered out last. Her toes were so cold she could barely feel them, and water sloshed uncomfortably inside the poor bedraggled half boots that had once been so cunning. Her legs felt about as solid as jelly, and she wasn’t surprised to discover that her knees shook. Stopping to take a deep breath once she was on solid ground, she tried to get a better look at her surroundings, but it was too dark to see anything beyond the beach area, so she gave it up. She was soaking wet from almost the waist down and freezing with it, her throat hurt, and her heart was still beating like a scared rabbit’s. But she was alive and relatively unharmed; they all were. A
nd that was what mattered.

  There were murmurs of exhausted conversation as the others staggered toward the nearest rocks and sank down upon them, but she was too far away to make sense of anything that was said. Following in their wake, leaving a dripping trail like some just-emerged sea creature, she stopped to untie the strings of the wet domino, which was dragging from its own weight. Wringing it out, she draped it over her arm, then got sidetracked by Neil. He had been dragging the boat farther up onto the sand, and dropped it with a soft thud just a couple of feet away.

  “You knew that opening in the cliff was there, didn’t you.” Her tone made it more of a statement than a question as she joined him. In retrospect, it was obvious that he’d been maneuvering the boat toward it when she’d been speechless with terror from thinking they were about to crash into the solid granite wall and die.

  “I knew it used to be there.” He picked up the oars and tossed them into the boat, where they landed with a clatter. Then he went to retrieve his boots, which lay on their sides in the sand.

  Gathering up her sodden skirts in both hands and wringing them out as she went, she followed. “How?”

  “Credit a misspent youth.” Boots in hand, he stopped to look at her.

  “Did you grow up around here, then?” She stopped, too, and they stood facing each other as she continued to wring streams of briny water from her skirts.

  “What is that saying about curiosity?”

  “It’s obvious to me that the cave beneath the castle, and this one, are used for illicit activity. Probably smuggling.”

  “Recollect, if you will, what happened to that curious cat.” He moved past her toward the rocks.

  Beth’s lips firmed in aggravation as she followed.

  “I could not care less whether or not you are, or were, involved in smuggling. What I am asking is, are we safe here?”

  “Probably not, or at least not for very long. For tonight, it seems we are. At least, I see no signs of anyone else around save ourselves.”

  “What about those men from the castle who are at this moment undoubtedly riding over the top of these very cliffs hunting us?”

  “As we had no light, I doubt that they ever even saw the boat once it left the cove under the castle, so unless we’re very unlucky, they should have no idea where we went. In any case, as far as this place is concerned, there are only two ways in. One is the way we just came, and as you’ve experienced for yourself, making use of it is damned tricky. The other—I doubt they will risk the other.”

  “It’s more dangerous than what we just did? What does it involve, slaying a host of fire-breathing dragons?”

  He laughed, but broke off abruptly, the sudden change in his expression making Beth frown. Then, having reached one of the clusters of stumplike rocks that ringed the sand, he sat down on the nearest available surface.

  Or, more properly, dropped his boots in the sand and sank down on it as if he badly felt the need to sit.

  Beth remembered her conviction that he had been shot.

  “Does it hurt very much?” she asked, with what she considered truly commendable cunning.

  “’Tis the sting of the salt that’s the worst of it, I think,” he answered, then caught himself up as he realized what he had been tricked into admitting, and looked up at her so warily that despite his size and style, he reminded her of nothing so much as a guilty small boy.

  “Are you just going to sit there and bleed, or do you want me to take a look?” Her tone was tart. From the way he was sitting, and the long, questing hand that he pressed to the area not far above his right armpit, it wasn’t all that difficult for Beth to guess the location of the wound. She tried to see if she could discern the wet blackness of blood on his damp black coat, but it was impossible to make that kind of distinction in the shadowy gloom.

  “I’ve no need of a ministering angel, thank you very much.”

  “That’s fortunate, because I have no wish to be one. However, you must see that if you were to bleed to death or some such thing, the rest of us would be left in a pretty fix. We don’t know the way out.”

  The smallest of smiles just touched his mouth.

  “And here I was thinking you were worried about me.”

  “Devil a bit,” Beth replied with far more cheer than she actually felt. “However, I have no wish at all to be trapped forever in this cave, which I fear we might be if you were to die.”

  That brief shadow of a smile appeared again.

  “I won’t die, I assure you. It’s the merest flesh wound”—with that he seemed to read something in her expression that caused his voice to become more forceful—“which I will see to myself when it suits me.”

  “You may certainly do as you please, of course.”

  Dropping his hand, he looked down at it. Beth followed his gaze to discover a dark stain that was certainly blood on his broad palm. He glanced up as if he felt her gaze on him, frowned as he met her eyes, and wiped his palm on the rock.

  “Perhaps this would be a good time to ask if you have any idea who bears enough of a grudge against you to have arranged to have had you kidnapped?”

  Beth folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve been thinking about that, believe me. The only possibility I can come up with is William. Lord Rosen.”

  “Ah, your forcefully dispatched suitor. He certainly has to be a strong candidate. Tell me, are there many others who bear you a similar grudge?”

  Beth’s eyes narrowed at him. “As I don’t usually go about knocking men unconscious, the answer would be no.”

  “William stays at the head of the list, then.”

  “Are you sure you don’t wish me to do something to try to stanch the bleeding? It seems foolish to do nothing.”

  “Nonetheless, nothing is what you will do.”

  Clearly, there was no more to be said.

  “Fine.” She glanced around. “Shouldn’t we be moving on, then? Please tell me we don’t have to get back in that benighted boat to get out of here.”

  “No, we must walk out, which should take about four or five hours. But for what remains of the night, while the hunt for us is white-hot above ground, I think we are best off staying where we are. We can get some rest and move on in the morning, in the hopes that by the time we’re topside again, the search will have died down.”

  “Would you mind just pointing in the direction in which we are to go, in case you should be insensible when the time comes?” Her voice was dry.

  “Head due west, away from the sea, and keep bearing right.”

  “Thank you. I am now much easier in my mind.”

  “You shouldn’t be. Without me, you have no chance of finding the way out.”

  Her expression must have been something to see, because he laughed, only to break off with a wince, which Beth found worrisome, although nothing would have induced her to admit it. Another thought had been troubling her, and though she was almost sure she knew the unhappy answer, she posed the question to him.

  “Is there the least hope of getting help back to those poor girls still imprisoned in that terrible place?”

  “Information can be laid with a magistrate and a constable can be sent back to do what he can. Of course, that’s after we reach some place that has a magistrate. We have no chance of going back that way ourselves, and I wouldn’t do it if I could.” Once again he must have been able to read the expression on Beth’s face, because his own tightened impatiently. “Don’t tease yourself about it, for God’s sake. Without your intervention, none of this lot would have escaped. I’d no notion of rescuing a bevy of troublesome females when I came after you, believe me.”

  “You . . . came after me?” Beth looked at him in wary astonishment. Their eyes met. His mouth twisted. Once again he looked guilty, like a small boy caught out in a misdeed.

  “I did, yes.” He must have seen the question in her face, because he continued after only the shortest of pauses, “Remember the payment you promised me for the signal serv
ice I performed for you in regards to the villainous William? Though I was admittedly a few days late, I appeared in Green Park at the appointed hour to collect. I encountered your maid, who was screeching to the four winds about your having been abducted. As I had just seen a carriage bowling away at a surprisingly fast clip, I made the connection and followed it. After a long and arduous journey, the details of which I don’t propose to bore you with, I found the castle, and you. I was just waiting to liberate you with the least amount of commotion when you”—he hesitated and gave her another of those faint smiles—“precipitated events, as it were.”

  “And just how were you planning to ‘liberate’ me?”

  “By that time, I had secured enough funds to be fairly confident that I could cover your purchase price.”

  “You were going to buy me?” For a moment additional words failed her. She thought of how frightened she had been, of what she had endured, of what she still would have had to endure once she’d been forced onto that stage. The ultimate horror might have been spared her, but . . .

  “It seemed easiest.” His tone was apologetic.

  “Not for me!”

  “Possibly not.”

  Beth had been doing more thinking. “So you were not there to . . . to . . . ?” Words failed her again.

  “Despoil some unfortunate girl?” he supplied. When she nodded, he shook his head. “No, I was not.”

  Beth frowned. “You went to a prodigious amount of trouble, and put yourself in extreme danger besides, to rescue me. Why did you not just immediately inform my family and have done?”

  “Surely, if you will cast your mind back to how we met, you will appreciate why I might have been reluctant to approach your family. Making myself known to all and sundry is really not conducive to what I do.”