She dangled her lantern over the opening. A set of steps that appeared to be carved into the natural bedrock led down to an earthen floor. Sophie’s pulse leaped. A tunnel leading out to the sea?
‘‘Chad? Please answer if you can hear me.’’
Her words echoed back at her, ending on a hollow, far off note. Did the rumble she’d felt upstairs mean he had been hurt? With the lantern clutched in one hand she gathered her skirts and climbed down into a colder, damper, exceedingly darker place than even the cellars had been. Goose bumps peppered her arms. The floor sloped sharply downward.
After several minutes of picking her way along a narrow passage, she suspected she could no longer be beneath the house, but somewhere under the gardens, under the trees and grass and earth and rock.
Like a grave.
The tunnel tapered, became cramped. Loose stones slid out from beneath her feet, and the sounds of sliding earth and dripping water echoed around her. Her ankle turned on the uneven ground, and she stumbled across a pile of stones. Pressing a palm to the wet wall, she caught her balance and steadied the lantern. A few feet farther on, a wall of rock and broken timbers blocked her way. She raised the lantern. Gouged ridges of earth that had once been the tunnel’s ceiling disappeared into blackness.
Her thrashing heart froze. Then she filled her lungs and shouted his name, until a new fear silenced her. She gaped at the earth above her head. Could loud sounds bring down more of the tunnel’s ceiling? She’d have to take that chance. Feeling about she found a stone small enough to wrap her fingers around. With a little prayer that she wasn’t making a terrible mistake, she tapped the stone against another, larger one.
After several moments she stopped. Her heart and the whole of her insides went still as she listened. And then, as if from a great distance, a faint knocking sounded. A cry tearing from her lungs, she rapped her stone again, harder. Three beats, then a pause, followed by three more beats.
She heard the pattern repeated, muffled and weak, from the other side of the cave-in. In her excitement she forgot about being careful and scrambled over the boulders, pressing herself up against the dividing rubble.
‘‘Chad, it’s Sophie. Can you hear me? Are you hurt?’’
‘‘No . . . don’t think so . . .’’ Clenching his teeth, Chad pulled himself to a sitting position. Wooziness rolled through him. Sophie called his name again, and he realized his response had been too weak for her to hear. He drew a breath. ‘‘I’m all right.’’
He wasn’t. Pain stabbed his right ankle. Stones bit into the backs of his legs. He touched his fingertips to his temple and winced. How long had he been out?
A memory flashed in his brain, and revulsion sent him shoving up against the rock wall beside him. Earlier he had come upon the cave-in and judged it to have occurred long ago. But he had discovered a gap preserved by the fallen cross timbers and had heaved himself through. Lantern in hand, he had maneuvered only three-quarters of the way when sediment began raining down. He’d only just managed to pull himself clear before the gap closed. If he had moved any slower he might have been crushed.
He had landed headfirst on the cavern floor. His lantern had toppled over with a crash, but not before a harrowing sight greeted him. Though he couldn’t see them now in the dark, he keenly felt the presence of the two skeletons lying a few feet away.
‘‘Sophie,’’ he called. ‘‘Shine your lantern as close to the wall as you can. Try to find a gap.’’
When she did, spears of light pierced the cavern. A metallic object glinted on the ground close by. He reached, closing his hand around the hilt of a sword. He pulled it close, a shock of recognition running through him as he examined the hilt. The weapon seemed to vibrate with a cold current against his palms, or was it merely his own reaction to the find?
‘‘I think I’ve found a way through,’’ she shouted. ‘‘Do you see it? I’ll reach through. Try to clasp my hand.’’
He lowered the sword to his side. ‘‘No, Sophie. Just set the lantern down and back away.’’
‘‘Don’t be ridiculous. Can you make out where I am?’’
Realizing she wasn’t going to listen to him, he searched the fissures penetrated by her light, and crouched beside the largest one. He stretched his arm through until his shoulder stuck the edge of the opening. His fingertips came up against softness, warmth, hope. Her fingers hooked around his, and for one giddy moment he thought she might magically pull him through. He couldn’t see her, yet a vision of her filled him—her face, her smile, her wide, earnest eyes. A sense of purpose and empowerment surged through him.
‘‘Sophie, move away. I’ve an idea I can try from my side.’’
Gripping the sword hilt in both hands, he rammed the weapon into the gap. The steel rang out, sending a jolting vibration up his arm. But he felt the slightest of shifts, and sediment and pebbles clattered to the ground.
‘‘Do it again,’’ she urged.
The grinding of the steel reverberated through the cavern. By agonizing increments he dug away at earth and stone, widening the gap. As he worked, his insides ran cold at the thought of another cave-in, of Sophie being hurt, but he had little choice. Without a lantern of his own he’d have virtually no chance of making his way to the other end of the tunnel. In such utter darkness he’d be stumbling blindly, perhaps into another wall of debris, or a chasm in the ground, or he could miss a turn and wander into an impossible maze.
‘‘I can see you!’’ Sophie’s triumphant cry echoed from the other side of the wall. ‘‘Try to slip through.’’
‘‘Stand back.’’ Sword in hand, he squeezed into the opening, which was barely wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. His shirt tore. His skin stung as the jagged stone scraped him raw. Contorting, twisting, he pushed on toward Sophie’s light, her encouraging voice.
His momentum stopped. He was stuck. Wedged in tight. Trapped in a wall of rock that threatened to crush him, he could budge neither his arms nor his legs. Couldn’t move ahead or go back the way he’d come. Hopelessness filled him until a force from behind, like a shove, thrust him forward.
Chapter 16
‘‘Chad, have you hurt yourself? Can you reach out your hand to me?’’
Sophie’s throat closed around a sudden terror. Why had he stopped? Her arms ached to hold him, to save him as he had saved her last night.
A glimmer of golden hair winked in the lamplight, and surging relief made her giddy. His shoulder came next. Then an arm extended beyond his head, dragging an object toward her. Metal clanged, scraped. Chad grunted. What was he holding?
The answer came as he thrust the basket hilt of a rapier at her. Mystified, she took the weapon and placed it on the ground.
‘‘Grab my hands.’’ He sounded drained, his energy nearly spent, ‘‘and pull.’’
Sophie did. Pulled as though her life, his, everything she held dear depended on it, drawing on the same borrowed strength that had gotten her to the top of a seaside cliff and across a moor when men were chasing them.
Pulling him through seemed akin to the birth process as Sophie imagined it might be. Pain. Difficulty. Fear. The sheer sweat of effort. Little by little, with her help, he maneuvered his body past flesh-scraping stone until his head and shoulders cleared the opening on her side. With a final heave he fell out, his arms wrapping her waist and his weight propelling her off balance.
Together they toppled among the rocks in a tangle of arms and legs. She was half on him, half under him, with the rocks biting into her thigh, his solid torso snug against the rest of her and the fingers of her hand fisted in a shank of his hair.
Tears streamed down her face, sopping his shoulder where her cheek pressed it. She didn’t know why she was crying. Despite a bevy of minor injuries he seemed well enough. So was she. Truly, this had been nothing compared to fleeing armed brigands in the black of night. But the tears flowed regardless, riding upon hiccupping sobs.
His breath came in hot puffs against he
r neck. ‘‘Are you all right?’’
Frenzied laughter bubbled in her throat. She buried her face in his shirtfront and held on tight until the trembling subsided, though which of them shook more she couldn’t say. Gently he unfolded his length from around her, eased to his feet and helped her up.
Holding her face in his hands, he peered intently at her and smiled. ‘‘You look and sound the way I felt last night when I realized you hadn’t been shot.’’
She responded with weepy laughter, a fresh surge of tears. He wiped them from her cheeks with his palms.
She gestured toward the rock slide. ‘‘Is this a smugglers’ tunnel?’’
‘‘If it was, it hasn’t been used in a long time.’’ With the toe of his boot he nudged a loose stone. ‘‘I didn’t cause this cave-in; I only roused its anger.’’ He shook his head and rolled his left shoulder. ‘‘Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we, and then I’ll explain.’’
‘‘Not a moment too soon for me.’’
Sophie took the lantern. Chad carried the sword, looking like an embattled warrior in his torn and bloodied shirt. His sleeve had nearly ripped away from his left shoulder, revealing zigzagging abrasions that scored the muscle beneath. The soldier image carried over to his face in the stony set of his features and the brutal exhaustion in his eyes. He limped as well, favoring his right ankle.
A brief glimpse down at her muslin dress revealed dark blotches gleaming wet in the lamplight. Chad’s blood. Far from being repulsed by the sight, she pressed her free hand over one of the stains and experienced an odd sense that his blood forever connected them with a bond that surpassed anything the future might hold.
Her stomach turned an unsettling flip-flop. A connection to Chad, to the man who scaled cliffs, outran bullets, defied cave-ins . . . and who awakened in her startling, exhilarating sensations. Yes, the notion of being with that man filled her with an elation as bright and glorious as the hair on his head.
But that man also harbored another side, one swathed in secrecy and darkness, hidden behind walls he would not allow her to breach, no matter how hard she tried. And she was not the sort of woman to cease trying, to be content with the limited, incomplete part of himself he offered.
Then again, he had offered nothing. No matter what they had been through together, what they had shared, she must not forget that he had made her no promises. He’d made no mention of a mutual future of any kind. It was just that sometimes, because of the intimacy they had shared after so short an acquaintance, she felt as if he had.
Her gaze pinned with regret on the broad sweep of his shoulders and, yes, the tight arc of his rear, she followed him through the tunnel and up the steps. After offering an arm to help her safely into the wine cellar, he stopped to examine the bottles ranged along the nearest shelf.
Still clutching the sword in one hand, he grabbed a bottle and continued on. Before they reached the doorway, he tossed her a rueful look, tucked the bottle in the crook of his elbow and snatched another.
‘‘Are you going to tell me about that thing?’’ She gestured at the weapon.
‘‘After I get a good measure of this wine in me.’’
They both blinked in the comparatively bright light of the kitchen. Sophie cringed at the amount of blood smearing Chad’s linen shirt. ‘‘I’ll tend to your injuries.’’ She opened a drawer at random, hoping to find dishcloths.
His hand came down on her wrist. With his hip he pushed the drawer closed. ‘‘Later. It’ll sting less after a bit of wine.’’
He rummaged through the cupboards for glasses and a corkscrew. These he handed to her, retrieved the bottles, grabbed the sword and half limped, half sauntered into an adjoining room. The long oak table and its flanking benches declared this to be the former servants’ dining hall. Chad straddled the end of a bench and plunked the bottles and sword on the table.
‘‘Hand me that corkscrew.’’ He dragged out the ladder-back chair at the head of the table and patted its seat. ‘‘Get comfortable. We may be here for a while.’’
Hunching over the table, he said nothing more until he’d consumed the whole of two glasses of claret and poured a third. Sophie nursed hers carefully until her first glass became two-thirds empty. Then she found herself nearly matching him swallow for swallow. A headache that had been threatening since the tunnel now began to fade. Her body felt lighter, her mind calmer. For the first time in weeks her soul felt freer.
Chin propped on her palm, she watched him tip the glass to his lips, following the path of the wine as his throat constricted, the sharp peak of his Adam’s apple twitching beneath the skin. His torn and bloodied sleeves were shoved to the elbows, displaying bruises on his forearms.
Her gaze darted back to the chiseled features—the intelligent curve of his brow, the strong length of his nose, and his mouth, that single, devastating hint of tenderness borne with such unthinking confidence, such poise. Her insides stirred. He was so beautiful. So male. So perfect.
Why couldn’t she have a relationship with this man? After several more sips of wine she couldn’t quite remember the reasons.
At the clunk of his glass hitting the tabletop, those reasons came hurtling back. She flinched as her reflections scattered, and felt ashamed to have lost herself in such inappropriate yearnings when she should have been focused on his welfare.
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and pinned her with a glare. ‘‘On one hand I’m grateful as the dickens you happened by today, and on the other I’d like to wring your lovely neck.’’
He reached over, laying his open palm against her collarbone, caressing her throat with his thumb while his long fingers raised tingles at her nape. ‘‘What in bloody hell were you thinking wandering here alone after what happened last night, not to mention venturing into a tunnel where you had no inkling what the conditions might be?’’
‘‘Are you going to berate me for saving your blasted hide?’’
‘‘No.’’ His hand slid to her shoulder. He gave her a gentle shake. ‘‘I’m going to berate you for risking yours.’’
‘‘Ah. That again.’’
‘‘Yes, that.’’ Another shake. ‘‘Can you deny the foolhardiness of your actions?’’
‘‘They were no more foolhardy than yours. What were you thinking, traipsing through that tunnel alone? What if I hadn’t been hell-bent on finding you? Believe me, I entertained several notions of giving up.’’ She shuddered as she remembered the whisper that had spurred her on. So like his voice it had sounded . . . yet it could not have been. ‘‘Do you think your servant would have come looking for you?’’
‘‘Nathaniel? God, no.’’ His hand fell away. He snatched up his glass and took a long swallow. ‘‘But men shot at us last night. Does that not suggest a need for caution? Not to mention the risk you’re taking in testing your uncle’s limits by sneaking away from the farm.’’
‘‘Uncle’s Barnaby’s threats are pure bluster. I realize that now. His association with those men proves he has more to hide than I do, and he daren’t risk attracting my grandfather’s attention, neither by hurting me nor by reporting back on my behavior. Besides, it is because of what happened last night that I came.’’
He lowered his glass so quickly that the scarlet liquid nearly sloshed over the rim. ‘‘You’ve learned something else? Has something more happened?’’
‘‘Nothing like that. But my aunt and uncle left Penhollow immediately after breakfast this morning. They’re riding up to Mullion on business concerning their farm, and won’t return until quite late.’’
‘‘Mullion, you say?’’
‘‘Yes. They might even spend the night.’’ She leaned forward. ‘‘Dominic should be busy with the herds for hours. I thought we might take the opportunity to poke about the farm to see what my uncle might be hiding. I could distract Rachel while you—’’ She broke off and ran a quick gaze over him. ‘‘Oh, but look at you. You’re bleeding and limping. You’ve no business t
raipsing about anywhere, much less sneaking about a farm.’’
‘‘At least not by day.’’ His eyebrows pulled tight as he considered. ‘‘You say they’ll be gone until late. If you could manage to distract both your cousins, I’ll have a look about. Though it’s doubtful Gordon will have anything illegal stashed on his property. That’s what the moorland homestead is used for.’’
‘‘How do you know that? We didn’t—’’
‘‘I did. After I brought you home I doubled back. The barn is filled with cargo. Illegal, undoubtedly, for I can think of no logical reason for legitimate merchandise to be stored anywhere but at the warehouses along Penhollow Harbor.’’
His first statement had snared Sophie’s attention and she barely heard the rest. Her hands snapped to her hips. ‘‘And you call me reckless.’’
At the combative expression gathering on his features, she decided she would gain nothing now by raising an argument. If anything a tender gratitude grew in place of her indignation. Dear man, of course he had returned alone rather than risk her being shot at again. Her thoughts must have shown on her face, for his scowl deepened as he splashed more wine into his glass.
She changed the subject. ‘‘Uncle Barnaby might not have a cache of stolen goods hidden on the farm, but he might very well have the equipment needed for guiding ships away from the harbor at night. I know he had something to do with those shore lights I saw. Last night convinces me all the more.’’
‘‘I’ll concede that you may be right.’’
‘‘Then we should—’’
She flinched as his glass slammed the table. Wine spattered onto his shirt, her dress. His free hand slid into his hair and fisted. ‘‘Can you never let anything rest? We should not do anything.’’
Nothing of tenderness resonated in his outburst, only sharp, prickly anger. Resentful frustration pinched her throat and forestalled any rejoinder she might have made. Seconds passed in taut silence, marked only by the strained rhythm of his breathing. The guarded stranger had returned, and once more she felt pushed away, cut off.
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