“God, you hit me,” Stephen growled. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“You were threatening, Robbie,” Prudence gasped.
She stared at him with wide eyes, slightly awe struck at the speed in which he had gotten the upper hand. Silence fell over them as they studied each other. Her heart pounded in her chest and she suddenly became aware of his warm weight above her but she couldn’t focus her thoughts on anything.
He was even more handsome up close, she thought with a sigh. That was enough to snap her out of her daze but, before she could speak, a thin trickle of blood began to meander out of his hairline and down the side of his face.
“I was trying to help you,” he whispered. If there were such a thing as angels in heaven, he knew that this woman was one of them. The feel of her feminine softness beneath him felt so indescribably perfect that he could have remained where he was, headache and all, for the remainder of his days and been a happy man. “Prudence,” he whispered.
“You know my name,” Prudence gasped. She wasn’t sure whether to be shocked, delighted or horrified. So many emotions swirled through her that she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to make sense of them.
Stephen merely smiled. His gaze was slightly fogged around the edges but he knew that he wasn’t too badly injured. “I know a lot about you.” He wished he hadn’t spoken when he saw wariness sweep over her face. “I won’t hurt you, you know,” he drawled in the most charming voice he could manage given their situation.
“You are one of Levant’s men,” she accused. It was by far the strangest encounter she had ever had in her entire life. His voice was rich and slightly husky, and had a strange West Country drawl to it that held her captivated.
“There is much more that you don’t understand, Prudence,” Stephen sighed. He wasn’t sure if he would ever get another chance, and couldn’t resist knowing what it was like. “I am sorry, Prudence, I just have to know.”
“Know what?” Her startled gasp was captured by the warmth of his mouth. The gentle pressure was enough to assure her that she couldn’t break away, but it wasn’t hard enough to threaten or intimidate her in any way. She trembled and placed her hands on his shoulders to push him away only to find that the warmth of his solid flesh beneath her fingers held her captive. The strange feel of his mouth on hers was mesmerising and, despite the fact that this man was one of her enemies, she couldn’t bring herself to turn away.
Stephen didn’t deepen the kiss. His head pounded and he wasn’t in any fit state to compromise any lady any more than he already had, especially this one. Unprofessionally, he wanted to tell her everything, just so she understood that she didn’t need to be fearful of him, but knew that he would have to wait until another day. He slowly lifted his head to stare into her stunned gaze.
“I apologise. I just wanted to know,” he whispered. His stomach roiled at the severity of the pain in his head and he wondered for a moment if he was going to unman himself by being as sick as baby right there and then.
“Know what?” Prudence sighed. She wondered if he wasn’t making sense because of his head injury, or whether her mind had just been scrambled.
“What it was like to kiss an angel,” he replied with a gentle smile.
He opened his mouth to say something else when pain exploded in his head for the second time that night.
“Prudence, are you alright?” Eloisa demanded as she dropped the same piece of driftwood Prudence had used to hit him on the head the first time round. “Talk to me,” she demanded. “What was that bounder about to do to you?”
Prudence couldn’t have spoken for the life of her. She watched his face disappear and lay staring up at the stars for a moment, before Eloisa’s concerned face broke her line of vision. The handsome stranger’s weight was so heavy that she could barely breathe, and she was left to wave her arm aimlessly toward him in the valiant hope that they would get the message and lift his dead weight off her. It felt scandalously intimate to have him lying almost completely over her, with his head buried between her neck and her shoulder. While he had been talking to her he had taken most of his weight onto his arms. Unconscious, he drove the breath out of her until she began to see stars again; or was that the night sky?
The ladies rolled the handsome stranger onto his back and helped Prudence to her feet. She stood for a moment and tried to get her breath back while she attempted to ignore the slightly bereft feeling that unnerved her.
“Prudence? Who is that?” Maddie demanded in a voice that quivered with fear.
“Mr Simpson,” Robbie replied dourly. “I don’t touch dead men.” His declaration was met with startled gasps.
“Is he -?”
“Of course he is,” Prudence snapped. “Why do you think he is staring at the skies like that; because he likes star gazing?”
She was more shaken by the events of the last few minutes than she cared to admit and, although she was glad that the cavalry had arrived to help her, she wished Eloisa hadn’t hit him on the ahead again. She touched her tingling lips with fingers that trembled with fear and cold and was suddenly very sorry that she had sent Robbie to the house to fetch help.
“Mr Simpson is dead. Unfortunately, if we leave him here, his body is going to be get swept out to sea.”
“How did he die?”
Prudence shook her head and held her hands out. “I have no idea. Right now, I don’t think that it is a wise idea that any of us stand out here and try to find out. First thing in the morning we can send for Rufus. Even if Mr Simpson does get washed out to sea, we can at least inform Rufus of what we have seen.” She hated to admit it but she didn’t want to handle the dead body either, no matter how necessary it was.
“Let’s drag him up there,” she pointed to the cliffs and winced at the weight of Mr Simpson’s leg. She glared at her siblings in turn until they each, reluctantly, picked up a limb. Together, they half-carried, half-dragged the corpse up the beach to the driest sand. They were panting heavily by the time they got there and had to wait a moment to catch their breaths.
“Look!” Maddie gasped as she turned around and caught sight of the surf snatching at the handsome stranger’s legs.
“We can’t leave him on the beach until morning, he could die,” Eloisa gasped, as she hurried down to the man she had hit with the wood. She hated the thought of him being anywhere near the house, but they simply couldn’t leave an injured man to fend for himself, especially when it was her who had caused the man’s problems.
“We cannot take him to the house,” Georgiana protested. “He is one of Levant’s men. If he catches sight of Mama, he will know for certain what is wrong with her. What then? Levant will never let it rest until one of us is married to him and he has rendered us homeless.” The panic in her voice echoed the fear in her eyes.
“We just have to keep him until we know he is safe and well, and then we can get Rufus to escort him home. After all, he is on our beach, in the dark, with a dead man. I think he has some explaining to do, don’t you? You are right, we shouldn’t take him to the house, but we cannot leave him here, and there really is nowhere else we can put him. We cannot go to fetch Rufus at this time of night. Even if he is at home, there is little he could do to help right now. We have to get out of this rain,” Prudence gasped as the heavens suddenly opened and pelted them with a relentless deluge that soaked them all to the skin in record time.
“We have to take him inside and find out if he is going to last until morning,” Robbie declared with a little too much glee.
“He is bleeding,” Eloisa gasped. “What if he dies?” Her thoughts turned to Rufus. He was a magistrate and would have to arrest her if she had killed a man, even one of Levant’s men.
“Let’s get him to the spare room. We can then take a proper look at his head and see how bad his injuries are. If he dies, we will just have to deal with it.” Prudence hated to sound so harsh but she couldn’t see what else they could do. If the man did pass away, and sh
e hated the thought that he would on a much more feminine than vengeful level, then they would have to decide what to do to ensure that neither she, nor Eloisa, went to prison for murder.
As with Mr Simpson, they each took a limb and began to half-drag, half-carry the handsome stranger up the beach toward the house. They heaved and shoved, pushed and slid, until they struggled to move him another inch.
“We aren’t going to make it,” Madeline gasped as she wiped rain water out of her eyes.
“We have to,” Prudence shouted. “We cannot leave him here.” Over the last few minutes a strong wind had accompanied the heavy rainfall until even breathing became extremely difficult. With renewed determination, and desperate to get out of the weather, they staggered with their heavy burden toward the house.
By the time they reached the top of the cliff path, the place where the man had fallen had been swallowed by the sea completely. Prudence flicked one last glance at Mr Simpson’s body and sent a silent prayer for forgiveness. It seemed an unnecessarily harsh thing to do to leave him on the beach, but they couldn’t manage to drag two bodies up the cliff path; they were exhausted enough as it was.
They eventually reached the bottom of the stairs in the house, soaked to the skin and gasping for breath. Robbie collapsed onto his knees in the middle of the floor and began to cry while Eloisa leaned against the wall and dripped water steadily onto the tiled floor. Upstairs, their mother could be heard wailing and bashing at the door with almost fervent determination.
“Go and see what she wants,” Eloisa ordered Georgiana quietly. “We will deal with him.”
“How do we get him up there?” Madeline nodded toward the stairs. “I don’t think I can pull him another inch, let alone all the way up the flight of stairs.”
“Well, we cannot leave him here, now can we?” Prudence snapped.
Rage suddenly flowed through her veins like molten lava and she physically shook with the urge to rant at the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t bad enough that they were under continual threat from Levant; they now had a dead body on their hands and a badly injured man and one, if not two of them, could be facing a prison sentence in the morning. It all seemed so hideously unfair.
She took a moment to steady herself before she hauled Robbie to his feet. “Now dry your eyes, Robbie. I am sure that he will be fine. He is going to be even better when he is upstairs where it is warm and dry, and we can take a good look at his injuries. Let’s give it one last go and get him up there. Then we can all call it a night. I don’t know about you, but I have had more than enough for one day.”
She knew that even once he was upstairs and in bed, it was going to be a long, sleepless night for her. She had no idea what to do with a man who had injured his head, but her conscience, and her sense of duty, wouldn’t allow her to leave his side for long. As she bent down to grab his arm, she sent a silent prayer heavenward that he wouldn’t need the services of the doctor because they didn’t have any money with which to pay one.
CHAPTER SIX
It took them nearly an hour to get the man up the stairs and into the room next to the stairs without causing him any further injuries. It was Prudence’s room, but she didn’t raise objection given that nobody had the energy to drag the man’s heavy weight any further. She wished he would wake up and at least help them but, from the trail of blood they had left behind on the stairs, it was going to be some time yet before he returned to full consciousness – if ever. She quickly blanked that thought out and pulled the sheets back off the bed before they hefted him onto the crisp sheets.
Once the man was on the bed, Robbie flopped onto his back on the floor and lay staring at the ceiling, while Madeline collapsed into the chair beside the bed and began to fan herself. They were so wet that they all squelched when they walked, and would have to clean the water and blood off the floor before they went to bed, but that was of little consequence given how pale and unresponsive the man was.
Despite their exhaustion, Eloisa and Prudence turned their trying to establish how much damage they had caused. Prudence leaned over the man and peered at the sticky patch of hair on the back of his head. When she turned his head gently to one side so she could part his hair to see his scalp, he groaned.
“Great, now he decides to wake up,” Robbie snorted in disgust.
Prudence shared a relieved smile with Eloisa and turned her gaze back to the man. She could see only one cut on the back of his head, and it wasn’t too deep, but it was covered with hair that would have to be washed before he could be bandaged.
Up close, his hair wasn’t as long as she had first thought, and he hadn’t got it tied back at his nape at all, it was just unfashionably longer than most and brushed the collar of his shirt, but it seemed to suit him regardless.
“I will go and get some water,” Eloisa murmured and nudged Robbie with her toe as she passed him. “Come and give me a hand.” She ignored his low groan and continued to badger him until he followed her down the stairs.
“He is soaked,” Maggie sighed as she plucked at the sodden sheets beneath him. “We have to change the sheets.”
“There is no point changing the sheets while he is so wet. We need to get him out of those clothes.”
This caused Maggie to yelp in alarm. “We can’t take the man’s clothes off, Prudence!”
“What do you want us to do?” Prudence demanded matter-of-factly. “We can hardly ask Robbie to do it and, if we leave him like this, he is likely to die of influenza even if he does survive the head injury.” She hated the idea of undressing him, but the thought that he might actually die from cold forced her to put her own feelings aside for the sake of his life.
“I am not doing it,” Maggie retorted as she defiantly crossed her arms.
“Margaret Freestone, you are going to help me and that is final.” Prudence rarely used her pompous tone with Maggie, but was left with no choice. She saw the brief moment of hesitation in Maggie’s eyes before she sighed and gave in.
“What do you want me to do?”
Prudence had absolutely no idea. She had never undressed a man before and, when they had to dress mother, she had always been awake and able to help them by at least moving her arm about. This man was a heavy weight and as uncooperative as anyone could be.
They were blushing furiously and trying hard not to stare when they dragged his breeches off beneath the sheet they used to protect his modesty. As they tugged his sodden material off, the sheet slowly crept downward and revealed a large expanse of chest that was liberally smattered with a thick patch of dark hair.
“Oh Lord,” Maggie whispered, her mouth agape at the sight his tanned skin made against the whiteness of the sheet.
Prudence echoed the sentiment. The sight of that tanned flesh covered in white shirt and rainwater had been startling enough, but to see him now, bathed in the golden glow from the fire and the candles, he looked dangerous yet vulnerable at the same time. She gave Maggie a nudge.
“We shouldn’t be staring at him like this,” she whispered and watched Eloisa return to the room with a bowl of water and some strips of cloth.
In spite of her statement, she was aware that Maggie made no attempt to leave and merely stood to watch Eloisa and Prudence bathe his hair and wash the blood off his face and shoulders. They rolled him this way and that while they changed the sheets before they stood back to study him.
“He looks a bit more settled.”
“He is very pale.”
“He is going to be very angry when he wakes up,” Georgiana whispered from the doorway. They all turned to stare at her.
Until now, they had all been concerned with the nature of his injuries, and getting him warm and dry so they could see how much harm they had caused him. Nobody had considered the possible consequences should he wake up.
“We cannot just leave him. We don’t know if he was the one who killed Mr Simpson,” Eloisa sighed.
“She is right about that. He is wonderful to look at, but we h
ave caused his injuries. We cannot forget his connection to Levant,” Madeline sighed. “What was he doing down on our beach in the first place?”
That question made them all pause, and they turned to look at each other.
“Tie him up,” Robbie declared with a little too much enthusiasm. “I mean, we need to keep him in here so that he doesn’t stumble upon mother.”
Her initial urge to scold him for his suggestion was thwarted by his logic. Prudence sighed deeply. “I hate to do it, but I think that we have no choice but to tie him to the bed.”
“What with, though? I mean, we don’t have any reins or anything.”
“He isn’t a horse, Eloisa,” Georgiana snapped.
“I know, but what else is there? We can hardly use undergarments, now can we?”
“I saw a couple of father’s old scarves up in the attics yesterday. We can use those,” Prudence suggested. She was chilled to the bone, and her fingers were already numb from cold. The thought of having to back up to the cold attics and rummage around in dusty clothing made her stomach clench, but someone had to do it.
Half an hour later, she returned to the room with three scarves and a shirt. Although she was fairly certain the shirt wouldn’t fit the considerably larger man on the bed, they could use it to clean the wound because, unless she was much mistaken, Eloisa had already torn up the last remaining table cloth they owned.
Fog swirled around his ankles and gave the woods around him an eerie glow. Through the trees, the mist cleared enough for him to see Prudence smiling at him as she stood in the middle of a sun-lit glade. He wanted to go toward her, but his feet wouldn’t move. He frowned, desperate to try to warn the danger away from her but couldn’t call out; his voice was locked in his throat. Fear began to build and panic urged him to do something to protect her. If only he could get to her, he could warn her; tell her that she was in incredible danger. He could help her, if only she would let him.
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