‘‘That’s right. I’d have drowned without help, but apparently I’m needed alive for now.’’
‘‘And that day at Edgecombe . . . and the other night, when I heard you calling me from the beach . . .’’ Indecision raged a stormy battle in her gray eyes. Silent questions formed on her lips—tempting lips he wanted more than anything to kiss. But then they stiffened with stubborn resolve. ‘‘It can’t be true—it cannot. There are no such things as ghosts.’’
‘‘If you can’t believe what I’m telling you,’’ he said, ‘‘then believe this.’’
No longer able to resist the temptation he drew her against him, wrapping her tight in his arms and holding on until her struggles became less insistent. Soon the fight flowed out of her on a long sigh. Her body yielded against his, and a fierce and primal need roared through him. He dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers as if to devour them, devour her.
Through their clothing, their hearts pounded one against the other in unison. Her breath filled him, and the sweet sound of her whimpers traveled through their joined mouths to echo inside him.
The taste of salt permeated their kisses. Tears—both hers and his. A single word reverberated through him, the force of it causing him to stagger backward in the sand while still holding fast to Sophie, still kissing her.
‘‘Irrevocable,’’ he said against her lips. ‘‘It isn’t over between us.’’
Her mouth came away as she tilted her head to look up at him. For an instant bewilderment shimmered in her eyes. Then her hands slid from around his neck and shoved at his chest.
‘‘No.’’
Without releasing her, he held her at arm’s length. ‘‘You know it’s true.’’
She wiped her tears away with her palms. ‘‘I don’t wish it to be true.’’
‘‘You cannot change the truth by wishing.’’
‘‘Release me. I cannot think with you so near. I cannot breathe.’’
‘‘Am I holding you against your will?’’
That drew a frown, a glare of resentment. But when she didn’t stir he pulled her close again, pressing his lips to her brow, dragging them across her cheek. She didn’t fight him, remained utterly still but for the heavy rise and fall of her bosom and the trembling of her body in his embrace.
‘‘Let me go.’’ It was a tear-choked plea, little more than a breath against his ear. Still she made no move to escape him, as if she couldn’t find the strength to do what her will demanded. ‘‘Don’t you see? Without trust there cannot be love. It is over.’’
Feeling as though she had wrenched his heart from his chest, he forced his arms to open and stepped back. ‘‘Go for now, then, Sophie. But know that someday, when I am free, you and I will meet again.’’
She made no reply. Raising her hems, she strode past him, then came to an abrupt halt between the dunes, her back still to him. ‘‘When you go after those men . . . be careful. Don’t get yourself killed.’’
Then she continued her trek back up to the house.
Less than an hour later Chad moved across the rain-soaked moor, fingers gone numb around the steel butt of the pistol he’d borrowed from Gordon. Though he couldn’t see the others, he knew he wasn’t alone. Reese’s bald head and Barnaby’s shaggy one had disappeared only moments ago beyond the rise to the west. Ian had circled around to make his approach from the south. Chad waited to the north, while, to the east, the moorland bog closed the noose they formed around the farmstead.
When the edge of the cottage’s thatched roof came into view, he crouched among the vegetation to await Gordon’s signal. The plan called for the farmer to approach the shack first, confirm that Diggs and Wiley were there, and devise some way to separate them from their weapons before giving the whoop that would bring the others running.
Chad didn’t relish sending Barnaby Gordon to do the job he felt should have been his. His task and his risk, one he would take on willingly and deservedly. But Gordon knew the brigands, and his appearance would not immediately put the bastards on their guard.
As on the beach earlier, brooding clouds huddled over the moors, scattering occasional bursts of rain. Chad settled in to wait, trying to ignore the vague queasiness that lingered from last night.
Instead, Sophie filled his thoughts.
She had been so adamant in her refusal to believe his claims about the little ghost, not that he could blame her. His assertion demanded a complete suspension of her belief system, and how could she be expected to do that for a man who had just confessed to the very crimes they had been investigating?
Yet her denials had brimmed with hesitation, as if she too had experienced bizarre visions. What had she said, that she had heard him calling out to her from the beach?
A faint rumble of thunder rolled through the clouds, and a dull cramp pinched his gut. Damn. He thought the illness had left him. Clenching his teeth, he tried to breathe through the pain as he thought back on what he had eaten yesterday and this morning. He couldn’t think of much, despite Mrs. Gordon’s attempts to ply him with tea and oatcakes. How could he have eaten, knowing Sophie’s plate had gone untouched, that she had fled the house rather than have to face him?
The ache pressed again, accompanied by a thudding in his temple. Perhaps he should have asked the vicar for one of his herbal cures, like the infusion in his tea that warded off colds—
The vicar’s vile-tasting tea. Hall had insisted he drink it. The man and his herbs . . .
The late Lord Wycliffe often came by for tea and chess in the afternoons. The vicar had told him that. The vicar had also claimed to be away when Franklin Rutherford died.
His father was said to have been drunk the night the fire took his life . . . but Chad had never seen his father more than slightly flushed from liquor, and rarely at that. Why would he suddenly take to overindulging?
Chad’s encounters with Tobias Hall raced through his mind. The man had seemed interested in how long Chad might stay in Penhollow. . . .
A possibility sent him staggering to his feet. Could the vicar find Chad’s presence at Edgecombe an inconvenience . . . as perhaps he had found Franklin’s presence there equally inopportune?
Tobias Hall, with his soft-spoken manners and his carefully tended herbs, was even now driving away from Penhollow with Sophie and her cousin.
Clutching the pistol, Chad traced a wide arc through the damp moor grasses to avoid being seen from the farmstead. Dizziness, whether from illness or sheer panic, dogged his steps, but he gritted his teeth and pumped his legs harder. From behind an outcropping Reese craned his neck and gaped at Chad’s frantic approach.
‘‘What the devil are ye doing?’’
Barnaby was a dozen or so yards away, heading toward the farm. ‘‘Gordon,’’ Chad hissed. ‘‘Stop!’’
The farmer didn’t hear him and kept walking. Beefy hands tightening around his rifle, Reese strode out from behind the crag. ‘‘Have ye taken leave of your senses, my lord?’’
Without halting his charge, Chad swerved and headed for Gordon. Reese barreled after him. The man hit Chad from behind and took him down with a soggy crash that soaked him to the skin and sent stars dancing before his eyes.
‘‘Ye’ll get us all killed.’’
‘‘Get off me. I’ve got to stop him. His daughter and niece may be in danger.’’
‘‘What the devil’s going on?’’ To Chad’s enormous relief, Gordon had circled back and stood glowering down at both him and Reese. ‘‘Are ye daft? I was almost in sight of the shack. What if they’d seen me, and heard you?’’
Chad scrambled out from under the barkeep’s tree-trunk legs and pushed to his feet. ‘‘Those brigands can wait. Sophie and Rachel might be in danger.’’
‘‘They’re with the vicar.’’
‘‘Yes, and I just realized it might be the vicar we’re after.’’
Reese sat up, rubbing wet grass and grit from his bald head. ‘‘Tobias? Bah! The man’s afraid of his own shadow.’’
&
nbsp; Gordon echoed the sentiment.
‘‘Is he? Or is that what he wishes everyone to think? I believe it’s possible he used his herbs to poison my father before setting Edgecombe on fire.’’
The two men exchanged incredulous looks. Skepticism grated in Barnaby’s throat. ‘‘What in God’s creation would make ye think a thing like that?’’
‘‘Because he tried to poison me as well. Last night. Made me a cup of his lethal tea and insisted I drink it. I didn’t ingest enough to kill me, but it’s made me ill.’’
‘‘Could be illness is putting wild thoughts in your head.’’
‘‘Are you willing to take the chance? You daughter and niece are with Tobias at this moment.’’
That set them in motion. Within minutes they collected a dumbfounded Ian and raced back across the moors.
Chapter 23
The vicar’s curricle jostled like a boat in a storm as it clambered down the muddy road. Beside Sophie on the narrow seat, Rachel clutched the door handle to steady herself. On her other side Mr. Hall gripped the hand strap.
Rachel stared out the window at the drenched countryside streaming by. ‘‘Are we right to leave, Sophie?’’
‘‘Of course we are,’’ Sophie replied with more bravado than conviction. She clutched her hands in her lap. Since her confrontation with Chad, her fingers had not stopped shaking. Nor had a single word ceased winding through her thoughts: irrevocable.
Had she, through her heart and body, bound herself to Chad irrevocably?
The part of her still clinging to her outrage rejected the notion. But the rest of her trembled with need and with anticipation.
You and I will meet again.
How long before that happened? Long enough for the wounds to heal? Would they ever heal sufficiently for her to be able to trust him?
Yet as the distance stretched between her and Penhollow, it wasn’t the deception or the lies or the crimes he’d committed that filled her mind. Not anger or indignation or even the relief of finally escaping him that quivered through her.
Rather, her mind’s eye conjured the tenderness, the repeated kindnesses, the courage it had taken for him to risk his life, more than once, to save hers. She remembered too the thrilling passage of his body into hers, the glorious pain of becoming his. It was those things, and the desperate plea burning in his eyes and trembling in his voice as he had formed those parting words, that haunted her now.
As they stood together on the beach she had believed his lies would always stand between them. Now she couldn’t be sure. Had he lied? Or simply not been able to speak the truth to her? How did one, after all, admit such things to another individual, things that made one cringe to acknowledge silently?
On the heels of that question came another: Had she already begun to forgive him?
The voices on either side of her brought her hurtling back to the present, to the close confines of a north-bound curricle.
‘‘There is no doubt you are both doing the correct thing,’’ Mr. Hall assured them. ‘‘The only sensible thing.’’
‘‘I don’t like this scheme Father and Lord Wycliffe concocted, stealing off to confront those men.’’ Rachel frowned. ‘‘When I think of what those monsters did to Dominic . . .’’
Sophie squeezed her hand. ‘‘They’ll be fine. They will have Ian and Reese with them. That makes four against two, and they are four rather formidable men at that.’’
Again sheer bravado fueled her assurances, along with a pang of guilt. She couldn’t help suspecting that, in part, Chad’s eagerness to apprehend the smugglers lay in a desire to prove his worthiness to her. However angry she might be, however hurt by his deception, she didn’t wish him to risk his life again. Not for her. Not at all.
The curricle hit a rock in the road, tossing Sophie into the vicar’s side and Rachel against the vehicle’s door. The window beside her dropped open a few inches, letting in a splatter of rain and a shriek of wind.
Sophie.
She started and looked about. ‘‘Mr. Hall, did you say something?’’
‘‘Not I, Miss St. Clair. Is everyone quite all right?’’
‘‘Fine, Mr. Hall, thank you.’’ Rachel turned the crank and raised the window. The glass sealed out the whipping wind, but not the murmur in Sophie’s ear.
He needs you.
Her heart leaped to her throat. ‘‘Did either of you hear that?’’
‘‘Hear what, Sophie?’’ Rachel peered into her face. ‘‘A growl of thunder, perhaps?’’
Sophie strained to listen, hands braced against the seat. Were her senses playing tricks on her, as they had that morning when she had trespassed into Edgecombe’s gardens, and again the night she heard Chad calling to her in her bedroom at Aunt Louisa’s?
Through her glove a tickling sensation traced its way across the back of her hand. The answers are at Edgecombe. He needs you there.
She went rigid. Who spoke to her? Her conscience? Her heart?
‘‘What is it, Sophie, dear?’’ Rachel’s hand closed over her wrist. ‘‘Why, you’re trembling. And you’re pale as a ghost.’’
‘‘I’m sorry, I thought I heard . . .’’
He’ll fight for you, Sophie. A current of energy traveled up her arms, standing the hair at her nape on end.
She gaped at her cousin. ‘‘You had to have heard that.’’
‘‘I hear nothing, Sophie, beyond the rain and the rumble of the carriage wheels.’’
For himself alone he won’t battle hard enough. Without you he may die.
A gasp rose to choke her, but instead of a sputter a command broke from her lips. ‘‘Turn the curricle around.’’
‘‘Miss St. Clair?’’
‘‘Have your driver turn around at once, Mr. Hall. I am going back to Penhollow.’’
Rachel compressed her lips and studied her. ‘‘I believe you should do as she says, Mr. Hall. What is it, Sophie? What’s wrong?’’
‘‘Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything.’’ She didn’t know how to explain without their thinking she’d taken leave of her senses. Perhaps she had. Perhaps she wished so badly to believe in Chad that she was imagining things. But . . .
That day in Edgecombe’s gardens, when she had first seen Chad through the window, she had also heard a voice as she crossed the footbridge, as though he had spoken in her ear. And she had felt the touch of a fingertip across her hand.
Just as she had a moment ago.
Chad . . . He had deceived her. But each time she had needed him, at each threat to her life, he had been there, willing to put himself between her and danger. And now he needed her.
‘‘I can’t explain. All I know is I must go back. To Edgecombe. Immediately.’’
‘‘Edgecombe? Good heavens,’’ the vicar said, ‘‘that would be most unwise, Miss St. Clair.’’
Choosing to ignore him, she rapped on the ceiling to signal to the driver. When the horses lumbered to a halt, she leaned over Rachel, cranked down the window and called out, ‘‘Turn the carriage around. We’re going back.’’
Mr. Hall’s hand closed around her forearm. ‘‘Miss St. Clair, I must insist you stop this foolishness. We are going to Mullion, as we promised Lord Wycliffe, and there’s an end to it.’’
She raised an eyebrow at him, and then turned to her cousin. Though no words passed between them, Rachel nodded. ‘‘Mr. Hall, either order your man to turn around, or Miss St. Clair and I shall get out and walk back to Penhollow on our own.’’
The air clawed Chad’s lungs as the Gordon farm came into view. Louisa Gordon stood at the gate. Even before they crossed the road she waved her arms and yelled to them.
‘‘The vicar’s curricle . . .’’ She pointed with an outstretched arm. ‘‘Went that way.’’
Her husband sprinted the final yards to her. ‘‘They went south?’’
Chad panted to catch his breath. ‘‘How long ago did they pass?’’
‘‘Not ten minutes.’’ Agitatio
n made Louisa’s voice shrill. She pointed in the direction of Edgecombe. ‘‘Did you not see it from the rise?’’
Barnaby wiped a sleeve across his sweating brow. ‘‘God’s teeth, why would they have returned, and why continue on south?’’
Without waiting for an answer, Chad vaulted over the stone border wall and tore across the property to the stable. At his approach Prince stretched his neck over the half door of the stall and gave a reproachful snort.
‘‘Sorry to have left you alone so long.’’ Chad ran a hand down his neck, grabbed the harness hanging from a nail and slipped it over the horse’s head. ‘‘No time for a saddle, old boy. We’re needed at Edgecombe, and fast.’’
As if reading Chad’s mood, the Thoroughbred lurched out of the stall. Outside, Chad swung up onto the broad back, detecting Prince’s restive excitement trembling in his flanks. ‘‘Gordon and Reese, follow me when you can.’’
Ian pressed forward. ‘‘What about me?’’
Chad took in the youth’s urgent expression and the eager way he bounced on the balls of his feet as he awaited Chad’s answer. Chad would rather have sent the lad to safety than involve him further, but as the possibilities of what they might find at Edgecombe pummeled his mind, an idea struck him. ‘‘Most of the fishing vessels will have sailed by now, but can you requisition a boat at the harbor and a crew to man it?’’
Ian glanced at the other two men, then back at Chad. ‘‘I can try, but—’’
‘‘Do it, and make your way down the coast. Look sharp for a narrow, rocky inlet just north of Edgecombe, and put in as close as you can.’’ With that he gave spur to Prince. As the horse shot forward to a gallop, Chad shouted over his shoulder, ‘‘Come armed and ready for a fight.’’
The answers are at Edgecombe. He needs you there.
With Rachel and the vicar following close behind, Sophie pushed open Edgecombe’s front door, cringing at the whine of the hinges. Even from the road, the place conveyed an air of abandonment. As they entered, a profound hush enveloped them, sending them gingerly to their toes as they made their way into the cool darkness of the hall. Rachel’s fingers closed around the hem of Sophie’s carriage jacket, and when Sophie came to a halt near the bottom of the staircase, the other girl bumped up against her back.
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