So she focused her attention on the gash that sliced across his thigh and set to cleaning and sewing it. “A knife did this to you.”
The cut was too smooth, too clean to be anything else. She’d tended to the wounds of enough sailors over the years when she’d helped Alice at the apothecary shop to recognize the slash of a blade when she saw one. Her hands trembled, not from each unconscious flinch he gave when the needle popped sickeningly through the skin and the thread pulled through after, but in fearful worry. Why had someone done this to him? They’d meant to hurt. Possibly even to kill.
Dear God, what had he gotten himself into?
She finished her gruesome sewing and sat back with a ragged sigh of relief that it was over. Then her gaze dropped to the cast off trousers on the floor.
Well, there was no way to put those back on. Not as wet as they were, not over damp skin. And certainly not as large and unwieldy as his muscular body was. So she picked up the throw from the back of her rocking chair and spread it over him. Faint disappointment panged inside her that his beautiful body was now covered.
“The worst is over.” She sat on the side of the bed and frowned guiltily at the beads of sweat that had blossomed across his forehead at her handiwork. “Should I distract you from the pain the same way I distract Ethan whenever he skins a knee, with a spoonful of sugar?”
She wiped gently at his forehead with the towel, careful to avoid the small cuts and bruises at his brow and cheek. Those marks had been made by fists, as had the bruises on his chest and ribs. “Perhaps you’d prefer to change your mind and accept that jug of whiskey after all?”
After several ragged breaths that moved his bare chest up and down in small spasms, she saw his brow relax as the pain eased from him. His heavy body seemed to soften into the mattress, and his breathing grew deep and steady. Finally calm.
Asleep like this, quiet and still, he seemed almost harmless. She reached to touch his face, to delicately trace her fingertips along the soft curve of each brow, carefully skirting the cut at the edge of the left one.
Good God, what had he been through? To be this badly beaten, so exhausted and weak that he’d collapsed…Why?
“Ah, but you are a Carlisle. Bare-knuckled fights are your family’s forte, from what I understand.”
So were their handsome looks. This one, even battered and bruised, owned that trait in spades.
With a faint smile, she traced her fingertip along his jaw. She couldn’t stop touching him. No matter how slight the connection, he was still a link to her old life and to the woman she’d once been. A young woman who’d once had so much promise, shining like a diamond—
A lie. That wasn’t why she couldn’t tear her hands away from his body or her eyes away from his sandy blond curls and sculpted face.
She couldn’t stop because she simply enjoyed it too much.
Twelve years since she last saw him…Ross had just entered the army after finishing at Oxford. He’d been so dashing in his red uniform, with sparkling blue eyes and a commanding presence that claimed the attention of every room he entered. Now, age had mellowed his brashness, but he was still handsome. The years had been good to him, maturing him into a man in his prime, and not one bit of the lanky young man she remembered remained beneath the strength he exuded, even while asleep.
Her hand trailed down to his chest. Dear God, it had been so long since she’d touched a man! Even so innocently as this. How could she have forgotten the warmth of male skin, the steely firmness of muscles beneath soft flesh? Or the delicious solidity of him, a feeling so tantalizing that even now she ached from remembering the pleasures of joined bodies, of welcoming a man’s hardness inside her softness—
She squeezed her eyes shut against the stinging that suddenly sprung up in them. She’d forgotten because the loneliness had consumed her.
At first, she’d mourned David’s memory. Then her full attention had been on Ethan, a tiny babe who needed her undivided devotion. There had been no time to consider her own selfish needs as a woman. The years stretched on after that, filled with busy days and long nights. Of course, there had been offers of intimacy from the sailors at the docks and the men in the village. A few had even been bold enough to propose marriage. But she knew better than to let any of them into her life, and certainly not into her heart. The risk was simply too great.
“You’re the first man who’s been in my bed since my husband died. Just my luck that you would be a Carlisle.” She was unable to keep her lips from twisting in amused irony. “And unconscious.”
He slept on, replying with a faint snore.
Chapter 4
Ross opened his eyes.
A blinding pain gripped his forehead and temples so hard that he winced and squeezed his eyes shut. He sucked in a deep breath and waited for the throbbing to subside before attempting to slowly open them again as he struggled to sort through the fog dulling his mind and to remember where he was. And how he’d gotten here.
He lifted his arm to scour a hand over his face—
His arm jerked to a stop. Ropes tightened at his wrists, keeping his hands fastened to the side rail of the bed frame. He couldn’t move them. Or his legs, with his ankles tied to the footboard. Christ. With gritted teeth, he yanked his arms to break through the thin rope.
“There’s no point in struggling,” a soft voice assured him. “You’ve been tied up.”
“Obviously.” His eyes narrowed on the expertly knotted ropes, before turning to the woman sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, who’d most likely done the tying. The same woman whose cottage he’d forced his way into last night, seeking shelter. He remembered that much, if not clearly. “Is this really necessary?”
“I think so.” She didn’t move to stand, her feet remaining tucked beneath her as if she’d spent the entire night right there, keeping guard. “I used sailors’ knots, too, so the more you struggle, the tighter the ropes become.”
“Of course you did,” he muttered as he stole another glance at the knots, then lay still. Although, if truth be told, he wasn’t feeling up to struggling, despite the sleep he’d finally gotten after days on the run. And apparently, he’d been asleep long enough that a glance at the window told him it was morning and that the storm had spent itself. Despite still being shuttered, gray light shined dimly around the window’s edges, and rain now fell over the cottage in a steady drizzle instead of the driving hurricane gale of last night.
“I also took the liberty of sewing up your wounds and applying salve to the cuts.” She mentioned that as casually as if she were a hostess chatting over tea instead of the woman who had turned the tables on him and gone from captive to captor. Complete with slipknots that would have made Horatio Nelson proud.
“Why bother, if you’re going to send for the authorities to have me arrested?” To think he’d survived flinging himself into the ice-cold Channel to escape the French, only to end up caught by a widow—his brother Kit would have a grand laugh over this, if his situation weren’t so deadly. After all, if a wisp of a woman could capture him, how little would it take for one of the Frenchmen to slit his throat if they found him?
“I’m not turning you over. I’m holding you to your word that you’ll leave without harming me.” Her eyes flickered as she added, “The word of a gentleman must be worth something.”
“No gentleman I’ve ever known,” he muttered, only half facetiously. “So untie me, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.” She nodded toward the window. “You arrived under the cover of darkness. That’s the same way you’ll leave.”
Interesting…if not for the fierce pounding in his head that had him desperate to close his eyes again and fall back into sleep’s sweet oblivion. She wanted to keep him from being seen. Good. At least they agreed on that. “So we’re to wait until sundown before you release me?”
“Before I place a pocket knife in your hand,” she explained calmly, as if discussing nothi
ng more distressing than the weather. “Then I’ll leave and let you cut yourself free. The rope is loose enough for you to maneuver the blade beneath and fairly thin. You should have yourself out in no more than twenty minutes, and by then I’ll be safely away.”
So that he couldn’t change his mind and do her harm after all. “Very clever.”
She shrugged a slender shoulder. “A widow lives on her wits.”
She was no more a fisherman’s widow than he was the king. Her plan for him proved that. Only a woman who had been harmed by a man would think to go to such extremes to ensure she couldn’t be hurt again. Was that how she’d gotten that scar? A permanent reminder to always be cautious?
“So you plan on spending the day together like this? Making pleasant conversation, with me lying here.” He glanced at the pile of his clothes folded neatly on top of the dresser and grimaced. “Naked.”
“I had to undress you. I couldn’t sew up your wounds through your clothes. Besides, you’ve nothing I haven’t seen before.” But she glanced away, a faint pink staining her cheeks. “And yes, I plan on you lying there all day.”
“And if I have to relieve myself?” he challenged impudently.
She snatched an empty pitcher from the washstand and set it on the bed next to his hip. “Don’t miss.”
He narrowed his eyes on her. Damnable woman.
She returned to her chair. “So you’ll stay right there, tied up. Unless you tell me the truth about who you are and how you ended up here.”
“You first,” he dared. “You’re no fisherman’s widow.”
To her credit, her expression never changed, although he saw a darkness cloud her eyes. The Home Office was recruiting its operatives in the wrong places. They should have been looking in fishing villages.
He continued, “We can end by you telling me why you don’t want me to be seen leaving. Or why you’ve not already sounded the alarm for the villagers to raise their pitchforks against me.”
“I would never ask the villagers to raise pitchforks.” With faint indignation, she reached casually for a cup of tea resting on a small tray on the dresser. “We’re a fishing village. They would raise oars.”
Not moving her gaze from his over the rim of her cup, she lifted it to her lips and took a small sip. His stomach rumbled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and watching her partake of something even as unsubstantial as tea made him ravenous.
She asked softly, “What’s your real reason for being here?”
He closed his eyes and tried to relax, to make the best of a brutally bad situation. If he hadn’t been so desperate to leave France, he would have been able to take better care of himself, and he wouldn’t have let his guard slip to the point that she’d been able to tie him up. “First, you’ll have to tell me where here is.”
“Sea Haven Village on Winchelsea Bay.” Her bewilderment rang out loudly in her pause. “How could you disembark at the dock and not know where you are?”
“Because I didn’t disembark.” His lips curled in foolish pride at his own perilous behavior. At least this part of the story Kit would love. “I jumped overboard.”
“In that storm? I don’t believe you.”
“Good. It makes it easier for a man to hide his secrets when a woman won’t believe the truth.”
He heard the soft rustle of her skirts as she stood. “Why on earth would you do something like that? It was tantamount to suicide.” Her voice grew closer as she stepped toward the bed. “Was the boat sinking?”
“Perfectly good boat. I simply preferred to be off it.” To die by drowning rather than torture. With his kneecaps intact.
He felt the bed sink beneath her light weight as she sat beside him, and he opened his eyes to see her reach forward to set the little tray on the bedside table. In the faint gray morning light that filtered in around the edges of the shutters, she was just as pretty as he remembered from last night. Beautiful, in fact, with a delicately pretty face and hair a shade he would have called toffee. An apt description, as it so perfectly complimented the chocolate brown of her eyes.
It wasn’t only her physical appearance that struck him, but also the way she moved so gracefully, even just to reach for a teacup. She had blue blood coursing through her veins. He would have bet his fortune on it.
“So you jumped overboard.” She carefully brought the teacup to his lips and helped him take a sip. He closed his eyes at the exquisite sensation. The grassy-sweet liquid soothed his parched throat, made raw by swallowing what seemed like half the Atlantic Ocean as he’d struggled in the waves. “And came ashore here at the bay.”
She offered another sip of tea.
Not tea, he now understood, but a reward for confiding in her. He had no choice. He was too famished to deny himself sustenance because of something as malleable as the truth. “Yes.”
She reached for the tray and what looked deliciously like a cinnamon biscuit, then poised it at his lips, just out of bite-reach. “Why were you on a boat in the middle of that storm?”
“Lives were at risk. Mine especially.” He opened his mouth, and she placed the small biscuit on his tongue. He mumbled through his starved chewing, “And now yours, if anyone finds out that you’re helping me.”
He watched her closely, expecting her to pale at that. Instead she remained calm, as if not surprised in the least. He would have found that to be another intriguing facet to her, if she hadn’t tied him up.
“Then they shan’t find out.” She picked up a second biscuit and held it to his lips. “So you were being chased from France.”
He jerked his head back, his eyes narrowing. “I never said that.”
“You implied last night that you were being chased.” She gave him the biscuit, then reached into her skirt pocket to pull out a small sheath of papers.
He froze in mid-chew, his heart stopping.
“And I found these in a little water-tight vial sewn into the leg of your trousers.” She placed the documents on the side table. “They’re in French.”
He choked down the biscuit, no longer hungry.
“They’re nothing,” he lied as she raised the teacup to his lips again. “Just papers I needed for travel.”
Her gaze hardened on him, and she lowered the cup away. “I’m fluent in French.” She reached for a small sandwich on the plate and broke off a corner with her fingers. “Leftover roast beef from yesterday’s dinner. Very tender.” She showed him the bite of food in blatant bribery. “Want to try that again?”
Damnable woman. Despite himself, his eyes fixed on the beef, and his stomach growled. He was starving, and the small biscuit had only whetted his hunger. “You read them. What do you think they are?”
“A letter requesting payment and three lists of names. One list is all in the same handwriting, but the other two…” She eyed him warily. “Something tells me none of those pages are what they seem.”
“Because they’re not.”
“What are they, then?”
He looked at the bite of beef and arched a brow, opening his mouth and refusing to say more. Two could play this bribery game.
She placed the piece of food between his lips. He chewed it slowly, savoring the flavor. Never had beef tasted better in his entire life.
He swallowed. “You cooked that?”
“Yes. But with yesterday being the cook’s day off and the butler and housekeeper both ill, what choice did I have?”
Cheeky wench. “I meant that it’s very good.”
The quiet compliment struck its mark, and she gave him a second piece without preamble. “Thank you.” And another biscuit. “I had to learn to cook when I first came to Sea Haven. It wasn’t pretty.” A self-deprecating smile lit her face, one that warmed him through. When she wasn’t threatening him with an iron poker, she could be quite alluring. “I’m surprised we all didn’t die of food poisoning.”
“Your mother didn’t teach you?”
She stiffened at his question. Her reactio
n was barely perceptible, but he noticed. “My mother died when I was a baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
Not meeting his gaze as she tore off another bite of beef, she shrugged a shoulder. “I have no memories of her, but Papa assured me that she was always kind and loving, intelligent, and beautiful.”
“Like her daughter,” he murmured.
She laughed, the sound soft beneath the faint drone of falling rain. “Flattery won’t make me untie you any sooner.” Yet she smiled faintly as she gave him the bite of food, placing it between his lips. “What were you doing in France?”
He chewed slowly, taking the time to consider what he should tell her. She knew too much as it was, but resisting her gentle interrogation would only result in his starvation. “I was working.”
“At what?” She cut him off with a pointed glance. “Before you attempt to lie and tell me that you’re a fisherman, you should know that I won’t believe you. I live among sailors here, and you’re most definitely not a man who makes his living on the sea.”
“I’m not a sailor.” In reward, he accepted the biscuit she raised to his lips. “I work for King George in the Court of St James’s.”
Her fingers froze as they reached to brush a crumb from his chin. When a slight frown creased her brow, he suspected that he’d just surprised her for the first time since they’d begun talking. “The diplomatic corps?”
“Yes. In Paris.” When her thumb caressed gently over his lip, his gut tightened reflexively. He was used to having women’s hands on him, but certainly not like this. Her innocent caress was…nice.
“What kind of diplomat dons workmen’s clothes?” Her question was a disbelieving challenge, yet her voice held a knowing edge to it. As if she knew more about him than she was letting on. Impossible. She might have figured out on her own that he’d been in disguise when he boarded that ship to England, but she certainly didn’t know who he was. And better that she didn’t.
How the Earl Entices Page 4