The woman’s eyes flickered. “Christopher Thomas, is it?”
“My friends call me Kit. And you are?”
“Grace Alden.” Her eyes lowered to the wound on his arm as she began to clean it.
“Grace,” he murmured. A beautiful name and, from watching her closely as she’d moved about the cottage earlier, an apt one. Even when she’d been wielding a poker she’d revealed an innate elegance he never would have associated with a woman living in a fishing village.
She arched a brow. “And my friends call me Mrs. Alden.”
Cheeky chit. But there was no husband here. A quick glance revealed a pair of boy’s boots, a small jacket, and school books. A child lived here, but there was nothing that signified a man’s presence.
“Where’s your husband, Mrs. Alden?” When she began to answer, he interrupted, “And don’t tell me that he’s due home at any moment, because you and I both know that’s a damn lie.”
She froze with the towel against his arm in a heartbeat’s pause, during which that sharp mind of hers calculated her options and weighed the best. “My husband is dead,” she answered softly. From the pained timbre in her voice, she was telling the truth.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” The swipes of the towel against the cut gentled beneath his sympathy.
She was much friendlier when she spoke of her husband, so he pressed his advantage. “Was he a sailor?”
Another pause, as if gauging how much she should reveal. “Yes.”
The hair at his nape prickled. She’d just lied to him. He could read it in the way she kept her face lowered, her eyes averted. In the way her fingers trembled when she rinsed out the cloth. But why would she lie about that?
“How did he die?” A gentleman would never have asked such a thing, but tonight he was no gentleman. And there was more to the woman in front of him than a simple fisherman’s widow. He sensed it the way old sailors felt changes in the weather. In his bones.
“He was lost at sea.” She shoved the jug across the table toward him. “You’ll want this.”
He uncorked it and sniffed. Whiskey. Judging from the sharp odor that bit his nose, not expensive single malt. He handed it back. “No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” She snatched up the bottle and poured it into his wound.
“Christ!” The pain splintered his insides. Through clenched teeth, he panted down the burn, if not the fierce pounding in his head like an iron hammer, until the sickening nausea in his stomach subsided and the sharp pain mellowed into a dull ache. But the throbbing at his temples remained strong and relentless. “Warn me next time before you do that.”
She set the jug down and shot him a look of pure vengeance. “Will you warn the next woman you attack?”
He gritted his teeth against his headache. “You were less trouble when you were armed with the poker.”
“And you were less trouble when you were outside in the storm.” Her chin rose icily with all the haughtiness of an old governess. “Would you care to leave? And we can end this madness right now.”
Madness. His situation was certainly that. “I cannot.”
“Then tell me why you were out in that storm tonight.” Not a request but a demand for information. “Why are you hiding here?”
Oh no. He had no intention of answering that.
He shoved away from the table and snatched up the square of white cloth. Taking it between his teeth, he ripped off a two-inch wide strip. Her eyes widened when he tore off a second piece, then dropped the rest to the floor. He wrapped the first strip around his bicep, covering the wound.
“It doesn’t need stitches,” he told her when she continued to gape at him. And thanks to her, there was enough whiskey inside the cut to prevent any infection from taking hold. For the rest of his life.
He’d gotten enough wounds over the years, first at Eton and later during a two-year stint in the army, to know the difference between those which threatened a man’s life and those which simply hurt like hell. However, the sharp pain that came from the cut on his left thigh might just prove him wrong. Even now he limped as he stepped back, tying off the second strip of bandage with his teeth.
But he was still alive, that’s what the pain meant. And he was damned lucky to be.
“I’m here to be out of the storm.” He placed a hand on the fireplace mantel to steady himself against the swaying that his exhaustion started in him. “That’s all you need to know.”
“How were you hurt? Can you at least tell me that?”
He rubbed his forehead and the pounding headache. Damnation! Wouldn’t the woman give him peace? “No.”
“This is my house. You’ve barged in here like a criminal.” Her voice rose in anger, nearly as loud as the storm raging around them. “I deserve answers.”
The headache was blinding now, and he gritted his teeth. “I cannot tell you.”
“Why not? I deserve to—”
“Because they’ll kill you!” His patience snapped, and he wheeled on her, fisting his hands at his sides. “If they find me here, if they suspect you’ve helped me—you’re as good as dead. And I will not have another death on my head.”
She froze, her eyes wide at his outburst. Even in the flickering shadows of the firelight, he saw the blood drain from her face.
Guilt assaulted him for frightening her. He raked his fingers through his damp hair and dragged in a breath. For God’s sake, was this really what his life had come to? Forcing his way into a woman’s house and yelling at her simply because she wanted answers?
In stealing those documents from the British ambassador, he’d lost himself. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to find his way back.
“I’m sorry.” He turned toward the fire. “But the less you know, the better.”
His heart pounded frantically now, the rush of blood through his body searing like liquid flames. He squeezed his eyes closed and focused on calming his breathing, which only increased his swaying. Sheer exhaustion ached in every muscle, burned at his throat which was raw from hours spent gulping salt water as he fought the waves to stay alive, throbbed in the bruises from being slammed against the rocks when he finally reached shore.
But he couldn’t stop now, not when he was so close to destroying the inner circle of the Court of St James’s, those Englishmen working in France who had pledged their loyalty to the British ambassador. Not when he could still feel the blood on his hands from the murder of Sir Henry Jacobs.
That was what had kept him ceaselessly plotting during the past year. What had driven him to steal the documents and sent him on the run, hiding from both the French and the British. What had kept him alive for hours in the Channel, tossed and battered by the storm, before he crawled up from the beach and found this cottage, with the dim light of its fire shining through the cracks of the shutters and promising rest and warmth.
Five years ago, if anyone had asked him what he wanted most, he wouldn’t have hesitated to say an ambassadorship. It was what he’d always wanted. But that was before his parents died, before he’d discovered his brother Kit’s role with the Home Office. Before he was responsible for Sir Henry’s body lying in a pool of blood, his throat slit from ear to ear. Before he’d committed treason.
Now he wanted nothing more than to rain vengeance down upon the heads of the men responsible for destroying everything he’d believed in.
But first, he had to get to London.
He glanced at the woman, still sitting at the table, gaping at him.
Get to London? He bit back a laugh. First, he had to survive the night!
“So you didn’t come here to seek shelter from the storm.” Her voice was barely loud enough for him to hear over the driving rain. “You’re here because you’re hiding.”
“I’m hiding from the storm.” Not entirely a lie. Although at that moment, the immorality of lying was the least of his worries.
“You’re being hunted.”
His head sna
pped up. He narrowed his gaze on her.
“That’s why you were out in the storm.” She tilted her head as she studied him. “A man like you, I bet you have plenty of money at hand to afford a room at an inn while you wait out the weather.”
He repeated in an amused drawl, “A man like me?” He shrugged a shoulder, but he was so exhausted and weak that even that small movement set him swaying and unleashed fresh pounding in his head. “I’m no one important.”
“Important enough that whoever is after you might just kill me because of something you’ve done.”
“I won’t let that happen.” The cottage began to roll and pitch around him, and he grabbed once more for the mantelpiece to keep his balance. “You can trust that.”
She rose slowly to her feet. Her soft voice joined the spinning in his head. “What did you do?”
He smiled grimly. “Defended my country.”
She carefully stepped toward him, taking slow but deliberate steps. “Are you a criminal?”
“That depends on who you ask.” He shook his head but couldn’t clear away the light-headedness. But at least the wound in his arm and leg were turning numb. Thank God for that.
She drew closer, but her voice reached him as if through a tunnel. “Did you break the law?”
In two countries. In both, hanging offenses. “Yes,” he murmured. That single word took such concentration to utter that he couldn’t be bothered with finding his full voice. The room grew dark around him, the shadows closing in upon him. Even the howling of the raging storm grew muted. Distant. He felt himself swaying widely now.
“What did you do?” Through his fogged mind he saw her approach, like a ghost through the shadows. Or an angel bringing light to the darkness. “Did you hurt someone?”
Her beautiful face danced before his darkening vision. “Yes…” Murder.
Both hands gripped at the mantelpiece now. Swaying, spinning…shadows closing in, his body turning numb…He fought to remain conscious.
“Who’s after you?”
“Everyone.” Then the darkness claimed him.
Chapter 3
No! Grace lunged to catch him as he sank toward the floor.
But he was tall and broad, solid muscle, and heavy. Oh so very heavy! She gasped as his full weight fell against her and struggled to keep him from collapsing. If he fell, she’d never have enough strength to lift him.
Staggering as she slipped his arm around her shoulders, she half-dragged him across the cottage to her bedroom and brought him to the side of her bed. With a loud groan of exertion, she shoved him forward. He collapsed over the mattress, his face buried in the counterpane and his body lying lifeless, half off the small bed.
She pressed her fingers against his neck, offering a silent prayer of mercy. It was bad enough that a peer had forced his way into her cottage tonight. But God help her if he died here.
His pulse beat strong against her fingertips.
Thank God. She heaved out a sigh of relief and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead.
Her eyes trailed over him. Dear lord, what was she supposed to do? He couldn’t be a gentleman and leave when she’d asked. Or even when she’d demanded it. Oh no. Now the troublesome man was lying all akimbo in bed. In her bed. And not a very big one at that, which now looked impossibly smaller beneath his large body.
She wrung her hands. He was hiding from someone who wanted him dead. But he was the son of a peer, for God’s sake! Peers didn’t have people wanting them dead, apart from their own family sometimes. Peers had people envying them for their lands and fortunes, hating them because they’d won or lost too much money at White’s, loathing them because they had the better horse or hound. Because they were pompous, arrogant, lazy, paunchy, self-entitled—
But they didn’t hunt them through hurricanes in order to kill them.
Yet from the looks of him, someone had already tried. And very nearly succeeded.
Carefully, she straightened his body on the mattress, rolling him over onto his back and stretching out his arms and legs to make him more comfortable. She stepped back and bit her lip. What was she going to do with him now? Tie him up, that was a certainty. But then what? The last thing she could do was go to the authorities. He was the son of an earl, and claiming that he’d attacked her would draw far too much attention. Her description would run in all the papers, and she might have to testify before a magistrate. Vincent would surely hear of it and recognize her, would realize what she’d done all those years ago—
“Damn you, Ross Carlisle.” Her eyes burned with hot tears of anger and exasperation. “Damn you to hell for coming here.”
She couldn’t even run away. Even if she hid until he left, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t be found by the authorities, give up her name, and implicate her in his mess, if only as an innocent victim. The very last thing she needed was to have any attention at all brought down upon her.
He had no idea that he possessed the power to end her. And her son.
She would never let that happen.
With resolve, she left the bedroom. “I’ll be right back.” Then she tossed wryly over her shoulder at his unconscious form, “Don’t go anywhere!”
When she returned a few minutes later, she carried everything needed to patch him up—cloth for bandages, hot water, scissors, needle and thread. Because it wasn’t enough to let him remain until the storm broke. In the condition he was in, he wouldn’t make it very far down the road before he collapsed again, and she had to make certain that he could get as far away as possible.
The cut on his arm needed stitches, no doubt of that. But the wound on his leg worried her more. A long deep slash, most likely from a sharp knife. Had he gotten into a bar fight? Had he cheated at cards or attempted to trick a group of local sailors—was that what he’d meant when he’d said he’d committed a crime?
No. Gentlemen didn’t gamble with sailors, and they certainly didn’t appear out of the dark of night in Sea Haven. It wasn’t a bar fight; neither was it an attack by a footpad. He wouldn’t be hiding from either of those, or have so many harsh cuts and bruises.
A chill spiraled down her spine. Something worse had brought him here.
“Got yourself into a mess, did you?” She sat on the edge of the bed and eyed him grimly. “Now you’ve left it to me to clean up.”
Her eyes darted to sneak a glance at his chest. But she certainly didn’t need a reminder of how broad and muscular it was, how the dusting of hair trailed over the hard ridges of his abdomen and disappeared beneath his waistband. Or that she couldn’t very well sew up his leg with his trousers in the way.
“Well, you’re already half naked.” As she looked once more at his left leg, she gathered her nerve and reached for the fall of his trousers. “And you’ve nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Despite that reassurance to herself, her hands shook as she unbuttoned his trousers, then wiggled them down, careful not to jostle his leg and make it bleed more. She averted her eyes as she stripped off the wet material. Down over his hips, along his hard thighs, over muscular calves, and off, to drop them onto the floor.
Thunk.
She glanced at the pile of wet material and saw a small bulge sewn into the left cuff. Tiny, not much bigger than her thumb, yet definitely not part of any tailor’s handiwork she’d ever seen. Frowning with curiosity, she reached—
An unconscious groan came from him.
Straightening, she glanced at him and gasped, unprepared for the sight of him, lying sprawled across her bed. Completely naked.
She rolled her eyes and blew out a mouthful of air. Just her luck. Of all the men she should finally have naked in her bed after nearly a decade of chaste widowhood, it would have to be him. A Carlisle. Not just any Carlisle, either, but the one who’d claimed her first-ever society waltz, only to have it stolen away by the man who very shortly afterward became her husband.
Ross hadn’t remembered her, but then, why would he? The ball had been
a masquerade and only her second society outing, and at sixteen, she was unknown to the rest of the ton, even without her mask. They’d not spoken more than a handful of words when he requested the waltz, then none ever again after David took her into his arms and whirled her around the floor, stealing both the waltz and her future.
Moreover, she certainly wasn’t the same person now as before. During the past decade, she’d gone from being London’s Incomparable to a widowed mother in a fishing village. Whatever aspects of her previous life that her new identity, time, and age hadn’t managed to hide, the scar on her cheek successfully concealed.
She repeated in an unconvincing mutter as her gaze traveled over him, “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Her face heated when her gaze strayed beneath his waist. Well, she might have seen something like that before…but apparently there were things the cold rain didn’t shrink.
As she let herself take a good long look, the heat in her cheeks changed from embarrassment to something intense, something unexpected that tickled at the backs of her knees and stirred in her core. Hot and achy. Oddly urgent. She couldn’t help but stare.
He was beautiful. The strangeness of that realization struck her, that a man could be beautiful. But he was. She’d seen naked men before, had been married for nearly two years. Yet she’d never seen one like him. The sculpted panes of his chest that gave way to the chiseled muscles of his abdomen, the long and graceful stretch of muscles in his thighs…He reminded her of a Greek sculpture, one of those gods from Lord Elgin’s marbles, except fashioned in warm flesh and blood that had her longing to run her hands over him, to touch him and prove he was real. To simply feel him.
Her hand reached toward him of its own volition—
No. She snatched it back. What on God’s earth was she thinking, losing her control like that? And losing of her mind, too, apparently. She simply couldn’t touch him beyond tending to his wounds. Could not! A whole new ocean of trouble would drown her if she did.
How the Earl Entices Page 3