“What is it Emory?” Florence’s anxious voice cut through the smoke and haze. “What is wrong?”
He opened his eyes. He was on his knees and Annaleah was beside him, her arm stretched out across the front of his shoulders preventing him from pitching forward onto the floor. Her face was only inches from his and without thinking, he reached out and took it in his hands, staring at it, focussing on her eyes, the soft bow of her mouth.
“Emory?”
He heard Florence’s voice, but he dared not take his eyes off Anna’s face, dared not lose his only link with reality.
“Guns,” he rasped. “I saw heavy guns. Cannon. We were on board a ship, we were firing full broadsides over and over. My hands--” he briefly eased his grip on Anna in order to verify the thick calluses on his palms-- “they were scalded. Burned from the heat of the barrel. There were men screaming and shouting all around me, but I couldn’t see through the smoke, it was too thick. Something was on fire...something behind me. We had been struck. A shot had hit some powder cartridges and exploded.”
He stopped and swallowed hard, choking back the words that would have described the bloody horror of the man crushed to death on the deck beside him. That was why he had been manning the gun: because one of his crew had fallen. One of his crew. On his ship. He had stepped in, as he done before, to take the place of a man wounded or killed. And Seamus had been right beside him...
“Seamus?”
Startled, Emory looked into Anna’s clear blue eyes. “What?”
“You said the name...Seamus.”
The burning scent of gunpowder grew less pungent, the acrid white clouds of smoke blew away, and the screams faded until they were only a distant echo. Emory turned his head to try to catch the image before it dissolved completely, but he was too late. The brilliant light was gone, leaving only a strident throb behind his eyes.
“What the devil is happening to me?” he whispered.
“I suspect it was something I said,” Florence offered. “It must have triggered a memory.”
“You said...I helped Bonaparte escape?” He braced himself, expecting another violent rush of images, but nothing happened.
“You recognize his name?”
“Bonaparte is...was the emperor of France,” he muttered. “The Duke of Wellington fought him at Waterloo. And won.”
“How positively extraordinary,” Florence mused. “You can remember that, yet you do not remember your own name.”
Emory seemed to become aware that he was still holding fast to Anna, still cradling her face between his hands. He eased his grip, not really wanting to let go, but he could see that he had frightened her. Hell, he had frightened himself.
“I am sorry, I...” He faltered in his effort at an apology, and once again it was her eyes that saved him. They drew him in, held him, calmed him like a cool hand on a fevered brow, and for one wildly irrational moment, he wanted just to drag her forward, wrap his arms around her, and hold her until neither one of them had to fear anything again.
“Let me help you up,” she murmured.
Feeling as weak and foolish as a child, he was grateful for her support as she assisted him. Only when she was certain he could stand on his own, did she ease her arms away and put a few discreet steps between them.
For Annaleah, a few hundred steps would not have been enough. The heat of Emory Althorpe’s body, the scent of his skin, even the faint tang of cider that clung to his breath had affected her senses, had tightened the skin everywhere on her body and made her feel, for a few seconds at least, she had been as helpless on her knees as he had been. Even worse, he had not been the one able to read thoughts this time. She had read his enough to know he was floundering. He was lost, confused. He was like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline...
CHAPTER 7
It was foolish. Completely and unconscionable foolish to be standing there flushing like a schoolgirl over a man she did not know, and should probably not want to risk knowing. But the awful truth was that Anna could still feel the imprint of his hands where they had cradled her face and she had not wanted him to let go. Her skin was glowing, her knees were wobbling enough to make the folds of her dress tremble and she was grateful for her aunt’s presence; she was not certain what might have happened had Florence not been there to carry on the conversation.
“Do you think you are strong enough to venture down the stairs to the parlor?” she was asking.
“If I had boots and a horse,” Althorpe answered quietly, “I would ride away from Widdicombe House and spare you any further trouble.”
“In your present condition, I doubt you would get more than a mile. As for sparing us trouble, we will hear no more of it. This is the safest place to keep you for the time being. Now then, Anna dear, if your feet have not grown roots into the floor, you may offer me your arm and escort me as far as my bedchamber. I should like to lie down for an hour or so.”
“Are you not feeling well?”
“My dear child, I am seventy-seven years old. I no longer enjoy the luxury of a full night’s uninterrupted sleep. I must snatch it in what increments I may, lest I fall into my cabbage at suppertime. While I am resting, however, perhaps you can use the time to reacquaint Rory with the house and grounds.”
Anna curled her lower lip between her teeth and avoided glancing at Althorpe. “If you think it would help, of course I should be happy to do so.”
“We do not know what will help, do we? But staying in this wretched little room all day can only hurt. I will speak to Willerkins about moving you again. Somewhere you might feel less confined. I believe there is a larger room across from Annaleah that might be more to your liking. No bats, I promise you. Well, not recently anyway.”
Florence’s bedchamber was located directly at the top of the main staircase, and, after descending the narrow passage from the attic rooms, they followed the wide central hallway until they arrived at her door. There, where Anna would have accompanied her inside to see her settled, she shooed the pair of them away with a sleepy yawn.
Emory had said nothing along the way, and he said nothing now as they descended the wide central staircase to the second floor. Enormous life size portraits of ancestors were hung in gilt frames on the walls, and Anna imagined their shocked eyes following her, their glowering silence attesting to the impropriety of her keeping company with a known brigand.
“I presume you have no burning need to see the kitchens or the pantry or the great dining hall, do you?”
“Not if you feel I can survive in ignorance.”
She faltered a bit at his gentle mockery, but saw no point in challenging it or in taking him to the lower floor, where most of the rooms, with the exception of the utility areas, had been boarded up for the past half century or more.
“You might remember the library,” she said, putting on her best touring voice as she led the way toward a large set of double oak doors. “Auntie said you used to spend a great deal of time here.”
She swung the doors open and stood to one side to let Althorpe pass through. The windows were hung with heavy velvet draperies, closed against the air and sunlight. The twenty-foot high walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves, the shelves filled with row upon row of leather bound volumes that added their own peculiar musk to the gloomy room. There were chairs and settees placed in ghostly groupings, and against one wall, an enormous fireplace with its grate stacked with wood that had gone unlit for so long there were cobwebs linking the iron arms. Set in front of one windowed alcove was a desk and chair, before the other a scrolled brass music stand.
Althorpe walked to the middle of the room and made one complete, slow turn before meeting Anna’s eyes. She did not have to ask. He recognized nothing.
He was about to rejoin her by the doorway when he apparently glimpsed something that caught his attention. He veered over to Anna’s left and, when she edged further inside to see what he was looking at, she could once again feel her heart slowing to a dull thud
in her chest.
It was a gun case. Glass-fronted and crisscrossed with a diamond pattern of leaded panes, it contained several long-snouted muskets and a shelf displaying half a dozen assorted pistols nestled in pockets of green baize. The cabinet boasted a stout lock cut in the design of two rearing griffons, but the purpose was rendered moot by the presence of the key jutting from one of the beast’s mouths.
Annaleah said nothing as Emory turned the key and opened one of the doors. She stared, not knowing quite what do think when he reached inside and picked up one of the flintlock pistols, testing its weight and balance in his palm, checking the condition of the firing mechanism. He did not miss a step breaking open the large S shaped cock to see if there was flint inside, or in sliding open the frizzen to see if there was powder in the pan. An agile thumb pulled the hammer into half cock, then full cock position while the finger he curled around the trigger squeezed to release the mainspring.
Anna jumped when she heard the distinct click of the striker hitting the pan. Her father and brother were avid hunters and she was familiar enough with weaponry of many kinds to know how to load and prime a full charge. She was definitely not comfortable with Emory Althorpe’s obvious expertise, nor with the glance he cast over her shoulder when he heard her gasp.
“They are not loaded,” he assured her. “In excellent working order, however and exceptionally well-kept compared to the rest of the contents of these shelves.” He raised the gun to his nose and took a delicate sniff. “Cleaned regularly, I would guess.”
“Willerkins,” she said, clearing her throat to remove her heart. “He is a fine shot. An expert huntsman.”
Though she could not be absolutely certain, she thought she saw a wry twinkle in his dark eyes as he carefully returned the gun to its compartment. He closed the door again and turned the key in the lock, removing it after a moment’s hesitation and presenting it to Annaleah when he joined her at the doorway.
“Careless habit, leaving keys in locks.”
He bowed casually to indicate she was free to continue the tour, and when he straightened, his eyes held hers for a long, dragging moment.
“You have remembered something else, have you not?”
“Not really,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “It is more like small flickers of lightning that cut through the darkness for a split second... 'and doth cease to be ere one can say it lightens.’”
Her eyebrow quirked upward. “You can quote Shakespeare?”
“Can I?”
“Romeo and Juliet. I have read it a hundred times.”
“A hundred times?” he smiled. “You enjoy reading about doomed lovers?”
“They were victims of cruel circumstance,” she whispered, conscious of her belly starting to make the slow downward slide into the region of her feet. He was standing close--too close, really. Almost touching her. If there had been a wall behind her, she would have gladly leaned on it to prevent the rest of her body melting into a hapless puddle at his feet.
If he was aware of her discomfort, he did nothing to alleviate it. His gaze, in fact, drifted down to her mouth, which she was in the process of moistening. Seeing where his attention was focussed, her tongue froze halfway across her bottom lip, then curled slowly inward leaving a moist shine behind.
He looked up into her eyes again and tipped his head slightly to one side as if he was contemplating exactly what her reaction would be if he drew her into his arms there and then and kissed her.
“Sh-shall we try another room?” she stammered.
He bowed again, obligingly, and moved slightly to allow her room to pass through the doorway. She felt like running, but she managed a regal enough walk to the next set of double oak doors which opened into a huge drawing room.
The interior was similarly steeped in gloom and neglect. It had never, in all of Anna’s memory been opened to guests or used for entertaining. The furniture, though dusted and polished on an irregular basis, was in the same general condition and appearance as she imagined it had been in her great-grandfather’s time. There were no guns, no books, no lazy streamers of sunlight stirring the dust motes to offer distractions and Althorpe dismissed the ghostly elegance with another nonchalant shrug.
The only remaining room of any consequence on this floor was the conservatory, another sadly mouldering chamber that, as a child, Anna had thought to be the most beautiful, awe-inspiring place in all the world. One entire wall was a glittering array of stained glass. Row upon row of tall colored windows reached up to a gilded ceiling painted with cupids and fairies and beautiful women with long flowing hair. The floor was marble, and with the noon light pouring through the squares of red, blue, green, and yellow glass, it created a kaleidoscope pattern on the stone, on the sheer white muslin of Anna’s dress, and on the front of Emory’s shirt.
Tall french doors led out onto a wide terrace that overlooked the slope leading down to the cliffs. Althorpe opened them and walked outside, but Annaleah did not immediately follow; she stood in the doorway and just watched his reactions.
As always, the pounding of the surf was a low rumble of thunder in the background. The breeze, blowing in off the ocean, carried the faint tang of salt and wet sand and brought the sound of gulls crying in the distance. An ornate stone balustrade fronted the terrace, with open stairs at either end leading down to paths and little gardens, but here too, everything was choked with ivy and weeds that had gone wild.
Althorpe went to edge of the terrace and braced his hands on the stone rail. “It is a shame this place has gone to ruin. It must have been quite magnificent at one time.”
Seeing he was not in any haste to return to the musty smell of the interior rooms, Anna stepped outside. “If it is any consolation to you, sir, I do not remember Widdicombe House looking any other way. It was always big and empty and unused, and as a child, I was convinced there were ghosts lurking around every corner. My brother, in fact, used to hide in my bedroom and wait until I was almost asleep, then he would rustle the curtains and make dreadful, low moaning sounds.”
“He sounds like an amiable fellow.”
“I did think of giving him poison a time or two over the years,” she confessed.
Althorpe turned his head slightly and offered a half smile.
Even that much charity was unsettling, and Anna felt the goose bumps rise along her arms. His profile reminded her of a statue of a Roman centurion, powerful and clean. Wisps of his hair were slowly working their way free of the ribbon. Strands of it curled against his nape, the ends black as paint strokes over the collar of his shirt, and she had a sudden, preposterous urge to free the rest of it and run her fingers through the inky waves.
Giving herself a little inward shake, she turned to gaze out across the sea. The sun was nearly straight overhead, a colorless ball in a bleached sky, the distant horizon distorted by a gray haze.
“There’s a storm coming our way,” he predicted. “We will have heavy rain before the day is through.”
Anna scanned the horizon as far as she could see, but there was not a single cloud anywhere. She turned to say as much but the words died in her throat. He was looking at her. Not just looking, but looking, as if he had not had the chance to do so before. His eyes travelled slowly along her hairline, touching on her cheek, her mouth, her chin, eventually following the spiral of a dark curl where it trailed over her shoulder and lay against the gentle swell of her breast. The end of the curl held his attention for the length of two stilted breaths, then he was looking into her eyes again, with an intimacy more shocking than any pressing of flesh against flesh could have been.
“How badly do I frighten you, Miss Fairchilde?”
“You do not frighten me at all,” she said on a whisper. “Well, perhaps a little. Should I not be frightened of you?”
“That would depend,” he said widening his smile, “on how loudly you can scream, and how safe you would feel walking with me to the cliffs.”
“The cliffs?”
“Yes. I would like to see exactly where you found me, if it would not be too great of an imposition.”
Annaleah glanced hesitantly over her shoulder at the open doors to the conservatory. His allusion to how loudly she could scream was another mockery, for she doubted a volley of gunshots would carry up from the beach. Once again he was putting her in the awkward position of having to bend the accepted rules of conduct, for it was simply not done that an unmarried woman should walk anywhere with a man unchaperoned.
On the other hand, it was ludicrous to keep applying accepted rules of behavior to the situation with Emory Althorpe. He was a man without a memory. A man struggling to regain his identity and she should be doing what she could to help him instead of worrying what a few singularly peculiar servants might think if they saw her out walking along the cliffs without a maid and a parasol.
“We can go this way,” she said, pointing to one of the wide staircases.
Emory fell easily into step beside her, adjusting his long strides to her smaller, more compact ones. They walked in sunlight and silence across the lawns and along the worn path Anna had taken on her early morning excursions to the shore. She had not ventured down to the cove since the morning she had found Althorpe lying in the sand, nor was she particularly eager, when they reached the end of the path and stood looking out over the escarpment, to do so now.
“There,” she said, indicating the cluster of rocks near the midpoint of the shingled crescent. “That was where I found you. The other side of those large boulders.”
He nodded. “Wait here. I will only be a few minutes.”
“There was nothing else washed ashore with you,” she assured him. “Broom went back and made a very thorough search of the entire cove.”
Swept Away Page 9