Swept Away

by Marsha Canham

  With a polite smile, she thanked the obliging young man and handed back the scope. Her amused expression remained in place for several moments after the gentleman had bowed and moved away, but when her glance flickered back to a nearby tree, her heartbeat slowed to a dull thud, and her breath was suddenly coming out in a long, dry rasp through parted lips.

  There was, indeed, a single flaming eye looking straight into hers but it was not red; it was a deep, dark brown. And its mate was hidden under a swath of white bandaging that was wrapped on an angle across the face of the last man on earth she expected to see standing less than ten paces away.

  Emory Althorpe spared a quick glance in the direction of the black berline before he left the shelter of the tree. He was wearing a multi-collared greatcoat draped over his shoulders, the sides of which flared like batwings when he walked toward her. He had a rucksack slung over one arm, and when the coat flapped open--before a prudent hand held it close to his body again--she caught a glimpse of a pistol barrel stuck into his belt.

  Anna’s mouth dropped open wider with each step that brought him closer. Her skin turned the color of cold ashes and she was genuinely in danger of fainting when he reached her side and quickly took hold of her arm. Without saying a word, he lifted the edge of the bandage and showed her his other eye, as perfectly whole and dark and cocoa brown as the other.

  “What--” her breath came out in a rush and she raised a hand, pressing it over her breast to keep her heart from bursting out of her chest. “What on earth--?”

  “A necessary ruse, I am afraid,” he explained in a low voice. “I was not half a mile from Widdicombe House when I discovered that there are warrant sheets tacked to every post and pillar along the side of the road, not only detailing my crimes and proffering the handsome reward for my capture, but bearing a rather strikingly accurate sketch of my face. A bandage was the only thing I could think of upon the instant.”

  Annaleah shook her head through a fresh flush of surprise, supposing neither she nor her aunt had mentioned the posters Ramsey had shown them earlier.

  “But...what are you doing here?” she managed to gasp. “How did you find me?”

  “I did not find you,” he said. “I followed you.”

  “You followed me?”

  At a curious glance from one of the pedestrians, he took hold of her arm and hooked it through his then started walking casually along the boardwalk, leading her back beneath the canopy of trees.

  “Actually, I followed your fiancé’s coach. It was not very difficult with all the crowds, and it is a rather impressive conveyance.”

  “You are mad,” she declared. “You should have been a hundred miles away by now.”

  “In truth, I was no more than two when I was forced to turn back.”

  Annaleah tilted her head in amazement as she looked at him. “But why? Why would you turn back?”

  “Because someone took a shot at me.”

  Anna stopped abruptly. “Someone shot at you!”

  Emory’s one dark eye warned her to guard the level of her voice as he urged her into walking again. “It was just the act of an overzealous guardsman, but he was clutching a copy of the warrant when he went running back into the toll house for reinforcements. I circled around for a while to lose them and kept to the trees, not exactly sure where to go next when I saw the berline rolling by in the distance.”

  “So you followed us...expecting what? That Barrimore might offer you a ride to London?”

  Her dry wit won a smile, but it was hardly the devastating, breathtaking kind of expression that had affected her sensibilities the previous afternoon and evening. It was a thin flat line that was as ominous as the steely glare in his eye; unnerving enough to make Annaleah twist around and glance back over her shoulder.

  The hotel was no longer visible through the trees, neither was the berline.

  “I dare not go too far or my brother will come looking for me.”

  Althorpe kept walking. If anything, his pace increased.

  “The other thing is, I have been remembering things. The flashes of lightning I told you about? Well, they have been coming closer together; sometimes it is more like a burst of light behind my eyes, and other times, I just look at something--like the spyglass you were holding just now--and I remember what my own looked like, where I kept it, the gold initials on the case.”

  “Then your memory is coming back?”

  “Not fast enough,” he said grimly. “There are still enormous gaps, and I have visions I do not understand, but some of them I do and I am not too full of myself to say that they alarm me.”

  “Alarm you in what way?”

  “Having no easy way to say it, Miss Fairchilde, you must bear with my bluntness, but I believe I was indeed responsible for Napoleon’s escape from Elba, and that my services were bought and paid for by the Bonapartists working to arrange his freedom.”

  “Dear God, you are admitting--!”

  “I am admitting nothing. Not when I keep seeing myself bound by my wrists to a ceiling beam, being cut with a hundred stripes while someone is asking me what I know, what I saw, what I suspect. Does that sound like the treatment they would give to someone who is working on their behalf?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I am convinced it has something to do with our guest out in the harbor.”

  Anna bit her lip. “Colonel Ramsey is convinced you are here to arrange another escape. Perhaps he has learned there is a plan afoot to rescue him.”

  “Perhaps so. But I was tortured in France, by a member of Bonaparte’s inner circle.”

  “How can you be so sure, if you cannot remember--”

  “I remember the knife. I kept thinking of the knife, kept seeing the knife. And then it came to me that it wasn’t a thing I was seeing and remembering at all, but a name. The Knife. Le Couteau. He is an assassin, a man by the name of Cipriani, and if he was cutting me, asking me questions, torturing me for information, then I sure as hell was not working for Napoleon Bonaparte.”

  “Then...who were you working for?”

  “Damned if I know. But listen--” he stopped walking a moment and faced her. “When you found me on the beach, you said I spoke to you. I mumbled something.”

  “Yes. You said something like: ‘They have to know the truth before it is too late.’”

  “That was it, that was all I said?”

  “That was all I heard.”

  He stared past her shoulder, at a sliver of blue water visible through a break in the trees. Something about the Bellerophon had been bothering him since his first glimpse of the ship in the harbor and it was there again now, an elusive shadow of a memory hovering just out of reach. Naturally, when he wanted the damned flashes, they would not come. When he did not want them, they came with sudden, debilitating fury.

  “If you said ‘they have to know the truth’ and you claim the French were the ones who bound you and tortured you for information...it would suggest to me that perhaps you were not working for them at all,” Anna said thoughtfully. “It might even suggest...”

  The single dark eye came slashing back and his grip tightened almost painfully on her arm. “Suggest what?”

  “That this knife person had discovered you were actually working against them?” she offered hesitantly. “That perhaps you had seen something, or heard something you should not have seen or heard and they wanted to know exactly what it was before they killed you. I mean...is that not why they torture people? To find out what they know, or who else they might have told?”

  Emory’s eye seemed to go out of focus for a moment as he considered her words. In the next, he reached up slowly and fished beneath the edge of his coat. His hand emerged with the iron key, which he stared at for another dozen heartbeats before curling his fingers tightly around it in a fist.

  “It was my ship that took him off Elba,” he whispered tautly, nodding his head slowly as he did. “But I did so
on orders from Whitehall.”

  “Whitehall?”

  “The foreign office...” he looked down at the harbor again. “Wessex.”

  “Are you suggesting Lord Geoffrey Peterson, the Earl of Wessex ordered you to help Bonaparte escape prison?”

  A muscle shivered in his cheek. “I am suggesting I was acting with the full knowledge--even the full approval--of someone inside the British Naval Offices.”

  “You mean...like a spy? An agent working secretly for the government? For our government?”

  He heard the scepticism in her voice and his mouth pressed into a thin line. He turned and started walking again, taking one long stride to each of her two.

  “If that was the case,” she said, “why has someone not come forward to clear your name? Why is half of England looking for you?”

  “If I knew that, I would not need your help.”

  “My help? What can I possibly do to help?”

  “I have to get to London. The answer, the explanation is there.”

  “London! You just said you could not get two miles out of Brixham without being shot at.”

  “Yes, well, I did not have a trump card then, did I?”

  “Trump card? What do you mean, trump card?”

  When he did not answer right away, she glanced back and saw that even the trees had been left far behind. They were no longer on the boardwalk either. He had led her into a narrow alleyway and Anna had been too distracted to notice. He was turning into another, taking her further and further away from the hotel with every hurried step.

  “Wait,” she cried. “Wait! Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”

  “Just a little ways further, we’re almost there.”

  “Almost where?” She tried to slow down, to pull back on his arm, but despite a second tug and a second protest, there was no visible break in his long stride. “I have to go back! Anthony and Barrimore will notice any moment that I am missing and they will come after me!”

  “No doubt they will, which is why I would appreciate it if you hasten your steps a little.”

  “Not until I know where you are taking me!” she insisted.

  When he started down yet another dark, evil smelling lane instead, she dug her heels into the ground and yanked with all her strength. Her wrist slipped enough that she almost succeeded in wrenching herself free, but in the next instant she was recaptured, swung around hard, and pushed into the recessed niche of a doorway with Althorpe’s big body planted across the opening to block any chance of escape.

  “Listen to me please,” he said in a chillingly low voice. “I do not wish to make a scene, or force you to do anything you do not wish to do, but at the same time, I am insisting that you come with me. I promise I will explain everything when we get to the inn, but at the moment, we are a little pressed for time.”

  “Inn? What inn?” she demanded.

  “I will know it when I see it, and I have not seen it yet, so I would appreciate it if you would keep moving.”

  “I am not going one step further!” Anna’s eyes widened. “Have you completely lost your senses, sir? Apart from the sheer impropriety of accompanying you to an inn of any kind, for any reason, the mere presumption of even imagining that I would do so is...is...”

  He leaned closer and turned up the edge of the bandage so that she felt the full impact of both foreboding brown eyes. “I have no doubt you can think of a hundred terms to apply to my character, and perhaps there is some merit to all of them, but regardless of the impropriety or presumption, you are coming with me.”

  Anna’s hand flew up and lay trembling against the base of her throat. “Are you kidnapping me?”

  “I prefer to think of it as taking advantage of an opportunity,” he explained gently. “I am sorry, but I need to get out of Torquay, and I cannot do it without your help.”

  “Well, you will not get my help this way, sir,” she said through her teeth. “Moreover, I shall make a poor hostage when I scream at the top of my lungs--which I am about to do at any moment.”

  The dark eyes narrowed. “I would not suggest you do anything half so foolish, Miss Fairchilde. For reasons you are undoubtedly aware of, I had little sleep last night and my head is pounding like the very devil. I am hungry, thirsty, and rapidly running out of patience, so unless you agree to come quickly and quietly by my side, you will leave me no choice but render you speechless here and now, then pick you up and carry you over my shoulder like a sack of grain.”

  “You would not dare!” she exclaimed with breathless disbelief.

  “Please do not test what I would or would not dare. Not now. Not today.”

  He held her gaze a moment longer then lowered the edge of the bandage back over his eye and stepped back into the open lane. Anna remained in the niche until she regained a measure of composure, then gave her chin a small tilt upward and started to follow him. A sharp noise further down the lane startled his gaze away for a split second and without thinking, without pondering the consequences, she gathered up her skirts and darted past him, running as fast as she could back up the street.

  She did not even feel him catch her. One instant she was running, the next her feet were flailing the empty air and she was being lifted, hoisted up and swung around, landing over his shoulder with enough of a jolt to drive all the air out of her lungs.

  For the full ten seconds it took for this appalling new affront to register, she hung with her arms and head dangling halfway down his back. When her wits returned, she tried to scream, but the effort was little more than an outraged splutter, most of it smothered against the wool of his coat. She tried pummelling him with her fists, but her hands became tangled in the long ribbons of her bonnet and by the time she freed them, the bonnet was loose enough to fall off, the steel hairpins began to spring out of the neatly wrapped coil of her hair, and with each long stride he took another thick brown curl tumbled over her eyes.

  From somewhere nearby she heard a shout of laughter and struggled desperately to lift her head, hoping to catch the eye of a gallant who would come to her aid. But the laughter had come from a second storey window, where a woman dressed in an hourglass corset and silk drawers was sitting on the sill swinging a bare leg in the sunlight. To her further horror, Anna saw there were more open windows, more women in various states of undress laughing and pointing. The few men she did see, when she managed to push the straggled curls off her face, were surly, unshaven creatures who leaned on the sides of buildings and grinned when Althorpe passed. One of them even had the audacity to ask if he needed assistance.

  “Dear God,” she gasped. “Where are we?”

  “We are in area of town better suited to a genteel woman’s ignorance,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Will you please put me down!” she hissed, pounding her fist on his back.

  “Will you promise to behave if I do?”

  “No!”

  “Then enjoy the ride.”

  He turned another corner and Anna’s senses swooped with the sickening motion.

  “Oh please. I am going to be ill. I swear I will not make a scene. I swear it on my honor.”

  Althorpe’s steps slowed, then stopped. His hands were hooked over the back of her knees and as he bent forward, they moved up to her hips, then her waist, then came to rest just beneath her arms. Anna wobbled for as long as it took her head to stop spinning, then she batted furiously at his hands until he let her go.

  “How dare you,” she gasped. “How dare you manhandle me in such a beastly way! Is this how you show your gratitude? Is this how you repay my aunt for the faith she had in you, for the risks she took in order to save your life?”

  “Anna, if there was another way--”

  “I have not given you leave to call me Anna!” she cried. The frustration and the sting of unwanted tears caused her to stamp her foot, a childish gesture that she recognized as a childish gesture, and one that resulted in yet another unpleasant surprise: she had lost one of her shoes.<
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  The anger that had fuelled her spirit for battle slowly began to give way to the realization that he did not care. He did not care that she had lost her shoe or her bonnet. He did not care that her brother would be frantic and her aunt would feel horribly betrayed. He did not care that she had also lain awake most of the night tossing and turning, reliving the sensation of his hands on her body, the caress of his mouth on her skin. Nor would he care that until this very instant, when his threats and promises took the choice away from her, she might actually have been willing to help him.

  Slowly, the blaze in her eyes faded. The bloom of indignation in her cheeks turned to a ruddy stain of hurt and disappointment.

  “You may believe me when I say sir,” she said softly, “that I enjoyed your company more when you did not know who or what you were.”

  Unmoved even by the shine of tears in her eyes, he held out a hand, indicating the direction he wished her to proceed. She turned quickly, her heart crushed, and did not see the tremors that forced him to curl his fingers into a tight fist to keep them from shaking.

  CHAPTER 14

  While Emory Althorpe was arranging accommodations in a tawdry, nondescript inn halfway across town, Anthony and Barrimore were searching the length of the boardwalk in both directions. They were not alone in the hunt. Colonel Ramsey had arrived at the hotel moments after Barrimore, and while Anna thought her brother and the marquis were settling their account, they were, in fact, being questioned by the colonel in the presence of a half dozen armed redcoats.

  Neither Anna nor her aunt had allowed for the speed with which Lucille Althorpe had gleefully hastened to Colonel Ramsey with the information that her husband’s brother had been hiding at Widdicombe House. As soon as Stanley had driven her home that morning, she had pleaded a migraine and taken to her bed, insisting she wanted nothing more than darkness and utter quiet. A note had been delivered to the rectory during the night concerning the condition of one of his parishioners and Stanley, having been told by his brother and Florence, and again by a swanning Lucille that the best thing for him to do was to go about his business as usual, he did exactly that. The moment his carriage pulled out of the drive, the fair Lucille had her shawl and bonnet on and was hurrying out the rear door.