She shook her head. “Never.”
He sighed as he came down to join her on the beach. “It’s easy. See those little air bubbles on the sand?”
She squinted as she looked down by her feet. “Where?”
He leaned in closer, trying to ignore the soft scent of her skin, the warmth that came from her body. He pointed to the tiny bubble in the sand. “See?”
Her eyes lit up. “Yes. What is that?”
“A clam,” he explained. “It’s an air hole. If you dig…” He punctuated the word by driving his hand into the sand and pulling out a few handfuls before he caught the tubular creature and tossed it out onto the flat sand.
“Oh!” she cried, glancing in his direction in wonder.
“Do you like clams?” he asked. “They make a fine supper with a wine broth.”
She nodded. “I do. Would you like me to dig for them like you did?”
“Yes. If it isn’t too unladylike for you.”
She snorted out a laugh. “I don’t think I have any way to argue for ladylike behavior given what I’ve done the last week of my life. And I need to wash some of my clothes anyway, so I suppose this is the time to get sandy and salty.”
His mouth went dry at the mention of her flavor. “G-Good. I’ll get you a bucket and leave it on the bluff. Give the clams some seawater in it to keep them alive so they don’t spoil,” he explained.
She was quiet a moment, and then she nodded. “Yes. I’ll do that.”
“And I’ll leave some things up at the cottage so you can wash up later. Do you know how to do that?”
“No,” she admitted with a shrug. “But I suppose I can learn a great many things.”
She turned away then, focusing her attention on the bubbles in the sand. He walked up the beach as she drove her hand into the dirt, digging down to find the escaping clam beneath. She squealed with what was clearly joy as she caught it, and he turned. She was tossing the tube on to the sand. Her face was lit up with triumph and she stared at the clam with a wide smile.
Then she backed up to the bluff and surprised him by lifting her skirt up. His throat closed as she rolled her stockings down and kicked them away, along with her slippers. She tied her skirts up her calf a little, then strode back toward the water, free to get wet without ruining her shoes.
He shifted at the uncomfortable hardness in his trousers, hating himself yet again for what he coveted. Then he walked away to the music of her hoots and hollers of success as she dug again for her supper.
He was not going to like her, he reminded himself. He certainly wasn’t going to want her. He just had to keep himself in control a little longer and pray that Ellis would come back soon and take her away.
Chapter 5
Anne swung her bucket at her side as she whistled a triumphant tune. She was grimy and her nails were worn down and dirtied by work, but she’d never felt more useful in her life. Her bucket was brimming with clams she’d dug out from the beach and with mussels she’d found clinging to the underside of a rock on the cove. She and Rook would have quite the feast tonight and she couldn’t wait to show him her bounty.
She stopped in the path and wrinkled her brow at that errant thought. She shouldn’t care what Rook, a man whose given name she didn’t even know, thought of what she did or didn’t accomplish. She was just being foolish, probably because she was tired.
That didn’t seem like the answer, but she ignored any questioning that lingered in her heart and continued up a path to the cottage. This was a different route than the one she’d taken from the dock a few days prior, but then she was learning that Rook’s island was full of paths. All of them seemed to lead home, as if he always wanted a way to get to the little house on the hill above.
She turned and twisted through the wooded beauty around her as the rain began to fall at last. It was a light rain, but steady, and she picked up her pace so she wouldn’t be utterly soaked before she reached the house. Scottish rain was cold no matter the season, and she didn’t want to freeze while she attempted to wash out her things.
She saw a building in the distance and hurried toward it as the wind picked up and stirred her now-wet hair. But as she reached it, she realized it wasn’t the cottage, which she could see beyond through the fog another few hundred yards, but some kind of outbuilding. The door to the place was cracked an inch and she stepped up and pushed inside for a moment’s respite from the rain.
She caught her breath as her eyes adjusted to the darkness within, for there was no fire in the small hearth and the light from the windows was dim and gray. It was a small space with a large table in the middle. The ground and tabletop were covered with wood shavings and dust. Knives were mounted by leather straps to the walls and there were dozens of intricately carved pieces on the table and shelves and floor.
She set her bucket by the door and eased up to one shelf to take a closer look. A little carved squirrel caught her attention, his face so perfectly sculpted that she might have believed he would come to life with the right words spoken. Another was a rose, delicately detailed with even a drop of dew on the wooden petals. Each piece was lovelier than the next. She was stunned by it.
These couldn’t have been carved by Rook. That hulk of a man who grunted more than he spoke? At least normally. Could he be so delicate with his hands as to create these magical pieces?
It had to be him who had done it. There was no one else on the island.
She shook her head at this revelation.
There was a sound at the door and she pivoted in surprise. She found the man himself standing there, staring at her. The light behind him framed him mostly in shadow, but she saw a hint of a frown on his handsome face, a shift in his posture that told her how uncomfortable he was that she had pried into his art.
He said nothing, even as she moved toward him. She opened her mouth to speak, but the light caught his face in that moment and her breath was stolen. His expression wasn’t one of anger or embarrassment as she’d first thought. It was something different.
There was a possessiveness to his expression as he stared at her, their eyes locked. Something intimate and heated that made her legs clench against each other and her hands shake at her sides. She knew that feeling. She sometimes felt it at night in her bed when her hands slipped between her legs. She’d felt it when she and her sister Juliana had found a hidden book in her father’s study back in London that contained pictures of men and women doing shocking things together.
Now she felt it as she stood frozen in the circle of Rook Maitland’s regard. She swallowed.
“I—” she began on a shaky breath.
He turned his face and stooped to take the bucket she’d left by the door. He was silent as he stepped away, leaving her alone, gaping after him. She watched through the window as he lumbered toward the house at a fast clip. He never looked back.
She staggered away, leaning both hands on his worktable as her heart raced and she panted out the breath she had been holding since the moment she saw him standing at the door.
What was wrong with her? What kind of a person was she? A few months before, she had been resigned to marrying the Earl of Harcourt, loveless as that union would have been. A month before, she had told herself she was beginning to have feelings for Ellis Maitland. She had thrown away everything to be with him.
And now she was staying alone on a deserted island with Rook and feeling a powerful sensation of longing through every part of her body when she looked at him.
What did that make her?
She knew what people would call her if they saw what was in her heart. A wanton. A scarlet woman who was so mad with desire that she would covet any man who crossed her path. In novels she was written as the villainess, a woman who would grasp for men, not caring about the consequences to anyone around her.
She rubbed her eyes as she tried to find purchase again. Her whole life she’d known she was viewed as the wild one of the Shelley Triplets, the omnibus name that she and h
er sisters were called by to their faces and behind their backs, along with worse ones. She supposed she might also be called the “bad” triplet. Her father sometimes said that.
She’d never believed that to be true. Even now, when she could see how wrong her thoughts were, she couldn’t accept that she was a villain. But then again, most villains never did.
“Everyone is the hero of their own story,” she mused.
She pondered the troubling thoughts for a while, sitting in the discomfort they gave her. At last the tangle cleared. It wasn’t that she was bad, she decided as she smoothed her skirts and sucked in a few long breaths. It was just that she was questioning everything. How could she not when she had been abandoned by the man she’d sacrificed so much to be with? It made her uncertain and of course she clung to anything solid.
Rook was definitely that.
She pushed the thought away and left his workshop, closing the door firmly behind her as she made toward the house. This time she hardly noticed the cold rain as she trudged up the slope to the cottage.
Tomorrow Ellis would come. He had to. And once he was there, she wouldn’t have these questions anymore. Once he was there, her path would be clear again and she wouldn’t think about Rook Maitland ever again.
Rook lay staring at the ceiling, filtered moonlight casting a sliver of light on the floor beside the settee that pointed toward his dying fire. It was late, after midnight, but he couldn’t sleep. It had been too trying a day.
He and Anne hadn’t shared the supper of her bounty of clams and mussels. She’d locked herself away in his room to wash her clothing and had taken her bowl of food with her because she’d told him they’d have to dry by the fire.
Which had only left him with thoughts of her naked in his bed.
He shifted on the settee as his hard cock screamed with sensation. Damn these thoughts. Damn these needs for a woman he couldn’t have. Shouldn’t have. Would never have.
And yet he had those thoughts. Thoughts of how her pupils had dilated with telling desire when he found her in his workshop. The way her breath had caught. The way her nipples had grown hard, outlined under her damp gown that had clung to her curves.
And now she was five paces away, through a thin door he could rip off the hinges if he wanted to, and fantasy was impossible to deny. Fantasy of what would have happened if he had come into the workshop like he’d so wanted to do, instead of walked away in silence. What if he had shut the door behind himself? What if he had kissed her?
What would she taste like if he claimed her lips? What would it have felt like molding her body to his? Would she have resisted if he lifted her up onto the edge of his worktable, pushed her legs wide and tasted her there, too?
He let his hand slide beneath the blanket and found his naked cock there. Already rock hard thanks to those wicked thoughts, he stroked himself. Once, twice. Pleasure lurched through his body. A pleasure he couldn’t deny. If he allowed it, maybe the tension would fade a little. Maybe he could control himself just a tiny bit.
He removed his hand and spit on it for lubrication before he returned to stroke again, this time harder, faster as he pictured tearing that damp, flimsy dress from Anne’s shoulders. Of cupping her bare ass as he ground against her and then delved deep inside of her as she sank her fingernails into his shoulders and rode him.
He could almost feel the hot, wet grip of her body around him, hear her soft moans of pleasure. He stroked faster and faster, wishing it was her he was driving deep inside, that the ripples of her orgasm were milking him rather than the stroke of his own fingers.
He stiffened as the pleasure arced through his body, sensation so taut and focused that it bordered on pain. His balls tightened and he came with a soft grunt. He rested back on the thin pillow and stared up at the ceiling as he panted with release and pleasure…and a tiny bit of guilt that he’d imagined doing such lewd things to a woman who claimed to wish to marry his cousin.
As he moved to flop an arm over his eyes, he caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He glanced over to find Anne’s door shutting softly. His eyes went wide. Had she seen him jerking his cock?
“Fuck,” he muttered, even as that same cock got a little hard again in response to the idea.
It seemed that the longer Anne Shelley was in his life, the more he caused himself problems. And all he could do now was hope that Ellis would come back before Rook did something none of them could take back. Something that would change everything forever.
Rook felt a strong sense of circumstances repeating themselves as he entered the cottage the next day for his midday meal. It was as if they’d gone back in time to the first few days Anne had been there. She was nowhere to be found. She hadn’t joined him for breakfast, so he’d left her a tray beside the door. She wasn’t out for lunch, either.
And he couldn’t help but wonder, yet again, if she’d seen him pleasure himself last night. A woman like that? Proper, protected? If she had seen him, she must hate him and be terrified of his intentions all over again. She would be doubly so if she knew his heated thoughts of her.
He sighed and set his gloves aside on the table beside the door. He’d been working on clearing a patch of heavy tree roots that morning, trying to make way for a place for a larger dock. If he ever had the money to build it. He had to be careful now, for he was spending the funds he’d saved and had no plans to bring more in though ill-gotten gains.
He sighed and was about to go into the kitchen to find himself food when he heard a sound from his bedroom. Banging. Loud banging. And the occasional sound of a musical voice. Like Anne was muttering to herself. Or talking to someone else.
God, was it possible Ellis had returned without stopping to find Rook? That he’d come in here and now he and Anne were…
He pushed the thought away and the streak of jealous heat that went with it. He would have seen Ellis if he’d come to the island. There was only one path from the sea he could have taken.
The banging came again and this time it was accompanied by a loud gasp of “Ouch!”
He moved to the door in a few long steps and knocked.
There was no response, just more of the banging and muttering, which he could now hear more clearly through the door, though the specifics of what she was saying were less clear.
He knocked again. “Miss Shelley?” he asked. There was no ceasing of the banging, and so he pounded a bit harder. “Anne!”
She stopped doing whatever she was doing then and there was a long pause. Then he heard her soft footfalls and she cracked the door. Her cheeks were pink, he wasn’t sure if that was from exertion or embarrassment. Perhaps both, if the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes was any indication.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
He arched a brow. “Who else would it be?”
She turned away in a huff and he pushed the door open wider to look into the room. Her little bag was on the bed and her clothing was strewn about in piles, some in the bag, some out.
“What are you doing?” he asked, trying not to look at the thin pink silk chemise draped over a chair by the fire to dry. Trying not to picture it draped across Anne’s body. Or on the floor after he removed it.
“Packing,” she snapped without looking at him, as if that should have been obvious by the state of her chamber. “I’m packing.”
“I see,” he said. “Have you had some indication that Ellis will return today?”
She froze in what she was doing and glanced at him over her shoulder. Her green gaze held desperation. He knew it far too well not to recognize it.
“He must come, mustn’t he?” she said, not really asking despite the question she spoke. “He will come. It’s been almost six days. He must come today.”
He bent his head and stared at the ground beneath his boots. He’d been waiting for the same thing, the return of his cousin, but knowing more than Anne did about the reality of the situation. The reality of Ellis Maitland and his life and character.
Still, Rook had hoped for better for her. Almost from the first moment he met her. But now he had to address this.
“Anne—” he began.
She jolted, perhaps at his tone, perhaps at the improper use of her given name, perhaps both. She pivoted to face him fully and lifted a hand to silence him. As if that would change things. “No,” she interrupted.
He took a long step closer, too close in the small chamber. “Anne,” he repeated.
She shook her head. “No. No.”
He was silent then, but he refused to back away. He stood there, a foot away from her, and he held her stare to show her what she would not allow him to say. They held gazes as they had in the workshop the previous day, only this time there was no heat between them. At least, the heat wasn’t the prominent exchange in that moment.
They looked at each other and her shoulders rolled forward with the truth she had to see.
“He—” she began, her voice so soft it almost didn’t carry in the quiet room. She swallowed hard and clasped her hands before her. “He isn’t coming back, is he?”
“No,” Rook said softly, firmly, he hoped gently. “Probably not.”
He waited then for the howl of pain, for the possibility that she would faint with great drama or burst into hysterics. But she didn’t do any of those things. She stood there, stock still for what felt like a lifetime. Then she pivoted and grabbed the closest thing to her, a small clock on his mantel, and threw it with all her might, shattering it against the back wall of the room.
Chapter 6
The moment Anne released the clock for its final flight into the wall, she regretted it. It wasn’t her clock, for one, and when it broke she realized the man who did own it could easily be enraged she would disregard his personal effects so rudely. But oh, the sound that clock made when it shattered against the wall.
It was just the tiniest release of tension, of anger, of heartbreak, of humiliation. And she wanted to clear the room of everything, smashing it all as she screamed out the tangle of feelings that resided in her chest.
A Reckless Runaway Page 6