“This is madness.”
He turned her fingers over in his and looked at them. Then he raised them to his lips and kissed the back of her knuckles, courteously, gently, yet with a thrumming of underlying tension that shook her to the core.
“Yes, I know it is,” he said. “I did not plan to tell you, and I demand that you not answer me, but I’m in love with you. I’m damned sorry.”
Prudence snatched back her hand. She felt lost, devoid of direction.
“Why sorry?”
He ran both hands back through his black hair.
“Because I cannot ask you to marry me when I don’t know who I am. I should not in honor have declared myself, for you are left without any possible response. Therefore, don’t reply! Just know that I care for you, that I shan’t let any harm befall you, and that you can trust me. Isn’t that good enough?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say nothing.” He smiled with that warm, irrepressible humor, but a dark shadow lay beneath it. “Perhaps many years from now, when you are sitting at your hearth with that bold fellow with the double-barreled gun beside you, and your children snug in their beds upstairs, you will tell him about me and laugh a little over it. ‘I kissed a fellow who came from the sea,’ you will say, ‘for he was a madman and I was sorry for him. It seemed to be a bit of a risk, but indeed it was no risk at all.’”
“How can you say there was no risk?”
“Because you were never in danger.”
“I wasn’t a person to know much about risk or danger, until I met you.”
He broke into sudden laughter, as if truly delighted.
“Thus says the lady who flees Scotland alone with her five-year-old pupil, though a sinister one-eyed man tails her, and a marquess wants the lad dead. Yet you think of yourself as so staid, don’t you? For God’s sake, you have a natural talent to discover and devour the world, angel.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Seize the day! This is your chance to try the delights of new ventures, before the real world crowds back in with its constricting demands and expectations of propriety. We have another day, right now, and have wasted three. Let us seize this one! What else have you always longed to do, other than really kiss a man, but never dared, Miss Drake?”
“I don’t know. Please, don’t do this! I don’t want to try new things.”
“But new things are God’s gift to our dreary days. And it is devilish warm here, trapped beneath these trees. Let’s swim, Miss Drake! You can trust me, and you can also trust the water. There’s no danger.”
“I should be afraid.”
“You said you had suffered from too much sun. Come, this beneficent liquid will cool you, and it’s not even deep. You can trust me. I have proved it, haven’t I?”
Prudence closed her eyes. Oh, dear Lord! When she had been guilty of the most dreadful perfidy! Although she had not told Admiral Rafter where she and Hal were heading, it was possible that she had put Hal in mortal danger just by sending his coded note to London.
Perhaps she deserved to be punished? Without question, she must demonstrate to Hal that she trusted him—with her life, if necessary. She must make amends for what she had done. Because, after all, whoever he was, she loved him with a desperation that was threatening to destroy her.
“How can I go in the water in my gown?” she asked, ashamed that her voice was close to a whisper.
“It doesn’t matter. It will dry.”
Hal dropped down to stand beside her. In a few rapid movements he stripped off his shirt and boots, and stood before her naked from the waist up—magnificent, beautiful, and far too inviting.
“Come!” He held out his hands.
Prudence put her fingers into his, and he helped her to sit on the rail.
In absolute silence, he knelt at her feet and began to unbutton her boots. It was disturbingly intimate. She reached down a hand to stop him, and did it herself.
Hal smiled once, as if in understanding, and dropped over the rail into the water.
She reached up under her skirts to peel off her stockings. She dropped her little jacket next to her boots on the deck, and stood, clothed only in her thin muslin dress, her arms bare to the bright air, and watched him.
He ducked and turned over in the water like a seal, then he held up his hands to her.
“Don’t jump. Just sit on the rail and slide into the canal. I will catch you.”
The water brushed over her bare feet like cool, damp silk. Hal reached up both hands to catch her by the waist, and eased her into the canal beside him.
It was colder than she expected. She gasped as an icy clutch of fear made her grasp at his shoulders. Tears sprang to her eyes, purely from panic.
“It’s all right, angel. Hold onto me as much as you like, but I won’t let you go.”
His strong arm held her firmly around her waist. His legs moved rhythmically in the water. She clasped both hands about his neck. His firm, muscled shoulders felt slick and cool against her bare arms. Her skirts swirled up around her legs. She bit hard at her lip to prevent herself from crying out.
But Hal did not let her go, and he did not let the water touch her face, though his own hair streamed darkly over his shoulders.
Slowly she allowed herself to feel the wonder of it. The soft water and the hard strength of the man who supported her.
“Now, angel, let go of my neck and lie back. I shall take care of you.”
She called on all of her courage and slipped her hands away. Hal supported her easily as she lay back against him in the water.
“I can’t!” she gasped.
“Yes, you can. Arch your back, tuck in your chin, and float. I have you safe. I shan’t let go.”
Prudence did as she was told, her breath coming in short, nervous gasps, but Hal’s arms supported her easily. She began to relax.
“There,” he said. “It’s easy. You are weightless like the mermaids on the sea foam . . . and it’s cool . . . and nothing can harm you . . .”
Prudence closed her eyes, lest he should see the tears of wonder suddenly welling up in them. She was floating.
* * *
Lord Belham had to repeat the command. “Come!”
A young face, remarkably well scrubbed, and with a starched collar framing red cheeks, peered respectfully at him from the doorway.
“Glad to find you at home, my lord. I trust I don’t disturb you? I’ve been sent with an urgent task from the Admiralty.”
It was young Wilson, one of the lads who ran messages for the ministers.
“I am all ears, sir. Pray sit. Would you care for brandy?”
Wilson colored up to his eyebrows. “I could hardly presume so far, my lord.”
“Nonsense.” Lord Belham smiled. “Here. It’s excellent brandy. It will teach you to develop an educated palate. Now, what charming assignment do you have for me this time?”
“Admiral Rafter received an odd note, my lord, from a young lady. She said her brother Angus—he’s in the navy—had mentioned him kindly, and she didn’t know where else to turn. She believed she was in possession of a coded message sent from France, and enclosed it for Admiral Rafter’s perusal.”
“And how did she come by the note, Mr. Wilson?”
“She found it hidden in a man’s clothes, my lord.”
Lord Belham raised a brow, but a quirk of clear amusement appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“And Admiral Rafter sends this note to me to decipher?”
The lad looked at the fearsome marquess in astonishment. He had rarely seen him display humor when confronted with this kind of work.
“Yes, my lord, as usual. Here it is.”
It took only one glance for Lord Belham to recognize what was on the slip of paper, although it would take considerable work to uncover the entire import of it, and know how vital it was to British interests.
Young Wilson shifted uncomfortably on his seat, his untouched brandy
still clutched in his hand. The marquess stared thoughtfully across the room for a moment.
“Do we know anything of the young man who was carrying this?”
“Yes, my lord. The lady sent a description. He’s a black-haired fellow found washed up on a beach in Argyleshire—thought to have been lost from a French ship.”
The Marquess of Belham threw back his head and roared with laughter. To his horror, Mr. Wilson lost his grip on the brandy glass and saw the liquor splash over his knees.
“Oh, dear, sweet, beneficent heaven!” Belham gasped at last. “And the lady’s name, sir?”
“Miss Prudence Drake, my lord, but she sent no address. Is it important?”
“Oh, yes,” the marquess said, recovering with visible effort. “Very important! But there is no clue to her whereabouts?”
In an agony of embarrassment Mr. Wilson mopped at his breeches with his pocket-handkerchief and shook his head.
“Then,” the Marquess of Belham said, rising and striding to the fireplace, “the most important thing now is to find out who the hell this French spy really is and track him down, don’t you think?”
Chapter 8
The next day as The White Lady came into Oxford, Hal’s growing suspicion became a certainty. He knew this country. He had lived here.
Shipton-on-Cherwell, Kidlington, Wolvercote, the names resounded in his head like a tocsin. Past that rolling swell lay the Evenlode. Over there ran the River Ray. All the bright waters bubbling between their green banks to swell the upper reaches of that great flow of water known as the Thames.
Hal had ridden by these banks and galloped a blood horse through these villages. He knew the interiors of the inns, and the bawdyhouses, and the great houses of the local gentry. He had hunted here and fished, for both game and women.
Oxford, with its multitude of graceful, honey-colored spires had been his home.
Yet the images were blurred around the edges, as if he had pursued all these activities three sheets to the wind. The strain of trying to remember gave him a blinding headache.
It didn’t help that this was the end of his journey with Prudence and Bobby. What possible excuse could he make to stay with them any longer? Prudence would send a message to her sister in Wiltshire, whose carriage would come to fetch them. Hal had done as he had promised, and delivered them both safely out of Scotland.
After this, the wicked marquess, his one-eyed servant, and their small quarry and his governess, were none of his business.
It was a painful and heart-wrenching knowledge.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Dear God, the look on her face when she had finally overcome her fear of the water and begun to float! Those severe features had shone with such vivid pleasure and delight.
She had laughed up at him, her small, cold hand clutching his shoulder. Her pale, silvery hair, escaping from its knot, had floated about them both in the water. She had been free and bold and enchanting, like the Lorelei.
He could still feel the place where her hand had touched him, and the place in his heart that had contracted with longing as she had given him her trust. He had wanted with every fiber of his being to hold her wet face to his and kiss away all of her troubles and her rectitude and her doubt.
So, of course, he had not done so.
Prudence had said with the clear innocence of a child, “Oh, good gracious! Hal, I’m floating! It feels like magic.”
Damnation! If he could only stay with her to bring that brightness back into her face every day! There was so much of the world he wanted to show her.
Had Prudence ever been up in a balloon? Or ridden at a gallop over the downs? Or danced a waltz in the wee hours until she was dizzy?
He wanted to see her face alight with joy and wonder and surprise again. And he wanted, with a desperate and unnerving passion, to see her on fire with that happiness because of him—because he had brought her to ecstasy in his bed.
* * *
The White Lady tied up at last beside the warehouses of Oxford, and Sam set about arranging the unloading of the crates of teapots and cups and jugs they had brought from Josiah Wedgwood’s potteries in Stoke-on-Trent.
He drew Hal to one side and counted out some coins into the palm of his hand.
“Here you are then, lad. A little bonus for the sake of your new wife and the lad. She loves the boy, for all he’s not hers, and that’s a stroke in your favor. She’ll come around, I don’t doubt it. But marriage is a tricky mistress and demands her due in sadness sometimes.”
With a hearty shake of the hand, Sam bid his temporary help good-bye. Prudence and Bobby similarly made their farewells to the kindly boatman and to Davie, his shy son, and to The White Lady, which had brought them safely from Liverpool.
With a final wave, Hal shouldered their luggage and led Prudence and Bobby into Oxford.
“You know where you’re going?” Prudence asked after a moment.
Hal stopped to grin down at her. “Three more streets and there’s an inn called the Golden Goose. You can stay there until your sister arrives.”
“You know Oxford?”
“So it would seem.”
Ready to walk on up the street, Hal shifted the bags. As if from nowhere, the revelation came to him, complete, entire, and without question.
I know that building! And that one! I know the very smell of these streets and the sound of the church bells.
It knocked the breath from his lungs. Dear God! Dear God! He knew who he was, and who his father was, and his brothers, and his sisters, and he knew—heaven help him—the identity of Helena.
“Is something the matter?” Prudence asked.
He dropped their bags onto the pavement and spun about to face her.
“Only that I want to ask you to marry me,” he said.
As she stumbled and almost fell, Prudence released Bobby’s hand. The child ran ahead of her up the street.
She couldn’t decipher the expression on Hal’s face—elation and despair faced each other like fighting cocks. He seemed almost wild enough to be frightening.
“Now! Today! Before it’s too late. Marry me, sweet Prudence. ‘Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand and say,—Harry of England, I am thine!’”
“Have you gone mad, sir?”
“We have been married once at Gretna Green. Let us marry again now, angel, in Oxford, with the blessings of English Church and law, before it’s too late and the real world acts to prevent it.”
Prudence stared up at the fine-boned features and the harebell eyes and the black hair dropping wildly over his forehead. Oh, dear God, how she loved him! She had a unexpected vision of Hal waiting for her at the altar of some ancient church, and herself in a dress of cream lace—plain Prudence Drake magically transformed into a beauty, like the princess of a fairy tale.
But this was some kind of madness.
He gazed back at her with that terrifying uncertainty plain on his face, revealing both hope and dread.
How on earth could she reply? I love you. I would marry you even if you are a traitor to king and country—even if you dream of another woman and don’t love me at all.
She shook her head, feeling helpless and lost.
“You can’t marry me,” she said. “You are a gentleman, aren’t you? Even a lord? Is that what you’ve remembered? I’m still only a doctor’s daughter and a governess. You can’t marry me.”
A shrill scream pierced the air.
Hal spun about.
A man had just stepped out of an alley. He grasped Bobby around the waist and swung the child up into the air, little boots flailing against the man’s brawny shoulder.
Bobby screamed again.
The breath choked in her throat. Prudence ran toward the child as if in a nightmare. But Hal raced ahead of her, his boots eating up the pavement.
The man clutching Bobby turned about and gave him a wide grin.
“So there you
are then, sir!” he cried. “Come home to roost in Oxford?”
A long scar traced down one of the kidnapper’s cheeks beneath a black eye-patch. When he smiled, it distorted his face into something grotesque.
Bobby’s screams died away into great, heart-wrenching sobs of pure terror.
Hal reached into his pocket before he remembered that he had no pistol. He was unarmed and dressed like a laborer. He had no doubts at all that the man with the eye-patch was armed to the teeth and would have no compunction in dispatching him in order to seize the child.
Yet he sped up to the man anyway and forced him up against the wall of a building.
“For God’s sake!” he hissed. “Why frighten the boy?”
As the man with the eye-patch hesitated, Hal tore Bobby out of his arms and thrust the kicking child at Prudence, who had just arrived, panting, behind him.
She reached out frantically, but Bobby slipped through her arms to land face down in a puddle. The sobs became wails of indignation.
Prudence caught him up and hugged him, muddy water soaking the front of her dress.
“That bad man!” the child screamed. “That bad man!”
“It’s all right, Bobby,” Hal said with a deadly calm. “He can’t hurt you.”
“Now, if you’ll just—” the man began, still with that ugly, crooked smile.
Hal drew back his arm and hit him once, cleanly, in the jaw.
The man with the eye-patch dropped onto the pavement and sprawled there, unconscious.
“Come, angel,” Hal said. “Take Bobby and follow me. There may be accomplices.”
He ran back to their luggage and tossed it onto his shoulder. Still carrying Bobby, Prudence hurried after him down a series of twisting alleys and into a small square.
Hal ran up to a pleasant, white-fronted house and hammered at the knocker.
“Pray God he’s at home, and doesn’t have some damned starchy manservant to answer the door!”
The door opened to reveal an extremely starchy manservant, who took one look at the ragged trio and quickly began to close it again. Yet the slightly bleary face of a young man with brown curls appeared behind him. His hair was cut in the fashionable windswept, or possibly he had just arisen from his bed and his hair wasn’t yet combed.
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