Rake Beyond Redemption

Alexander drove the mare on. Not the best of animals for this—he’d rather have chosen one of his sturdy cobs—but she’d do the job well enough as long as the girl kept her nerve and didn’t panic. The knot of fear began to ease.

He saw the moment she became aware of him. The moment she began to strive towards him, his fears flared once again into life.

‘Stay there!’ he shouted above the hush and slither of the shingle. ‘Don’t move! There’s a deep channel in front of you. Just keep your footing. I’ll come and get you.’

She froze.

At least, he acknowledged caustically, she had the sense to obey him.

Taking the path he knew to avoid the channel, Alexander manoeuvred the mare, conscious all the time that the water was fast rising above the girl’s knees. Increasingly difficult to keep her footing, she swayed, almost overbalanced and in staggering abandoned the parasol, which was immediately swamped and sucked down into a watery grave. The seconds stretched out into what seemed endless minutes as the mare made headway. But then he was at her side—and not before time.

‘Take my hand.’ He leaned down, hand outstretched.

A brief impression of blue eyes, dark and wide with fear, fastened on his, lips white and tense, parting as she gasped for breath. Cheekbones stark under taut skin. Still the girl obeyed readily enough.

‘Put your foot on mine and I’ll lift you.’

‘I can’t…’ A hint of panic.

‘No choice. I can’t lift you without some help from you. Not in this sea.’ A rogue wave, higher than the rest, slapped against her, driving her against the mare’s shoulder. He felt her nails dig into his hand. There was no time to be lost or they’d both be in difficulties. He could dismount and push her bodily into the saddle—if the mare could be guaranteed to stay still. Not the best idea…

Alexander tightened his hold around the girl’s wrist, leaned to fix her eyes with his as if he would make her obey him through sheer strength of will. ‘Lift your foot on to mine in the stirrup,’ he ordered again forcefully. ‘It’s either that or drown. No place for misguided maidenly modesty here. Lift your foot, girl!’

A cold dose of common sense should do it.

It did. The girl grasped her skirts in one hand, placed her foot on his boot—‘Now push up as I pull’—and he lifted her, catching her within his arm, turning her to sit before him, his arm around her waist to hold her secure. He turned the mare back to shore.

The girl sat quietly, rigidly in his arms. She shivered as the evening breeze cooled and her hands clenched, fingers digging into his forearms. Water dripped from her skirts to soak his breeches and boots. As the mare staggered momentarily, he heard her breath hitch, felt her muscles tense against him.

‘Relax. You’re safe now,’ he said, concentrating on encouraging their mount. ‘You’ll not drown and I don’t bite.’

He felt rather than saw her turn and lift her head to look up at his face. Her reply, sharp with an edge of authority, was not what he had expected.

‘I never thought you would! Just get me to dry land.’

Where should he take her? Surprised by the edged reply, repressing a grin at the lack of thanks for saving the girl’s life, Alexander considered the options. Not many really. He grimaced. Unless he wished to take advantage of the limitations of the Gadie household, it would have to be the Silver Boat. Not the place he would have chosen, for as an inn its hospitality had a finite quality. No comfort, no welcoming warmth, and even less sympathy to be found from Sam Babbercombe. But his rescued mermaid, skirts plastered to her legs, was now trembling from the breeze and her sodden garments and from shock. The Silver Boat it would have to be.

The mare ploughed on through the waves and shingle, the pull of the tide growing easier now with every step, and was soon on dry land. The spaniel greeted them with fuss and fierce barking. And Alexander was able at last to exhale slowly. For the first time since it had struck home like a punch of a fist, when he had been raising the glass of brandy in a toast to his professional liaison with Captain D’Acre of the Fly-By-Nights, he waited for the sharp apprehension to drain away. And leave him in peace.

He was irritated when it failed to do so; rather, the jittery awareness intensified.

So, he considered, thoroughly put out, directing the mare towards the inn, was this the cause of his strange premonition that something was wrong, that had demanded his immediate action? An unknown woman who had come to grief in the rising tide? But if it was, he felt no better for the problem being resolved. The danger was over, but his heart was thudding within his ribcage as if he had just unloaded a dozen barrels from the Black Spectre in a high sea. She was rescued and he would see that she was delivered safely to wherever she was staying—end of the problem—but he was conscious of every inch of her, the hard grip of her hands on his forearms, the fact that she had not relaxed at all, but sat as rigid and upright as if on a dining-room chair. Her hair blown into curls, brushed against his cheek. A momentary sensation. But every inch of his skin felt alive, sensitive. Aware of her.

Frowning, Alexander glanced down at the curve of her cheek, the fan of dark lashes. She was nothing to him. Simply a silly girl visiting the area, getting into difficulties because she hadn’t the sense she was born with.

‘You can let go of my sleeves now,’ he remarked brusquely.

The girl shuddered, and did so, but remained as tense as before.

For the second time within the hour Alexander dismounted in the courtyard of the Silver Boat. He looked up, raising his arms.

‘Slide down—you won’t fall.’

He caught her as she obeyed and lifted her into his arms.

‘I can walk. I am quite capable of…’ Her voice caught on an intake of breath and she shuddered again, hard against him.

‘I’m sure you can. But humour me.’

She was light enough. Alexander strode into the inn, shouldered open the door into an empty parlour. Drab, cold, dusty, but empty. He thought she would not want an audience of local fishermen when they returned from their expedition. Once inside, he stood her gently on her feet, then strode back to the door, raising his voice to echo down the corridor.

‘Sal…bring some clean towels, if you will. And a bottle of brandy. Also bring—’

‘I would prefer a cup of tea,’ the voice behind him interrupted. Neat, precise, faintly accented.

‘Not at the Silver Boat you wouldn’t,’ he replied, closing the door. ‘There’s been no tea brewed within these four walls in the past decade to my knowledge, although plenty’s been hidden in the rafters over the years.’ He saw a shiver run through her again. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’

‘I’ve lost my parasol,’ she remarked inconsequentially, regarding her empty hands in some surprise.

‘It’s not the end of the world. I’ll buy you another one. Sit down,’ he repeated.

When she sank into one of the two chairs in the room, Alexander came to kneel before her.

‘What…?’ She didn’t quite recoil from him, but not far off.

He didn’t reply, curbing his impatience, but simply raised the hem of her ruined skirt. Ignoring when he felt her stiffen, he grasped her ankle and removed her ruined boot, first one foot, then the other. ‘There, you need to dry your feet when the towels get here.’ Then, catching her anxious glance, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve no designs on your virtue.’

‘Oh…’

The inquisitive spaniel muscled in to sniff and lick the girl’s feet. When she flinched back, Alexander nudged Bess away.

‘Sorry. She’s nosy, but won’t harm you.’

For the first time a glimmer of a smile answered him. ‘I don’t mind dogs. It’s just that—’

The door opened and brandy and towels arrived in the hands of a curious Sal. Alexander cast a glance at the girl he had just rescued, her hands clenched white fingered in her lap, and made a decision.

‘Can you manage to make a pot of tea, Sal?’

‘I’ll try, Mr Ellerdine, sir.’

‘And put these by the fire to dry, will you?’ He handed over the girl’s boots.

Although he had no real hope for the tea, he smiled encouragingly at Sal before shutting her and the spaniel out of the room. He considered the wisdom of drying the girl’s feet for her. Then, after a close inspection of her, changed his mind. He handed her the grey, threadbare towel, liberally stained but the best the Silver Boat could manage.

‘Here. Dry your feet.’ It would give her something to do to occupy her mind and her hands, to remove the glassy terror that still glazed her eyes. Then he changed his mind again as she eyed the linen askance and seemed incapable of carrying out the simple task. He supposed he must take charge. Once more he knelt at her feet.

‘Hold out your foot.’

She did so. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not usually so helpless…’

‘It’s shock, that’s all. Don’t flinch—I’m going to remove your stockings.’ He continued to talk inconsequentially, matter of factly as he began to perform the intimate task with impersonal fingers. ‘You need to dry your feet, Madame Mermaid. My mother swore that damp feet brought on the ague. I don’t know if she was ever proved right, but we’ll not take it to chance. Lift your foot again…’

He doubted that his mother had ever expressed such practical advice in all her life, but that did not matter. He felt the muscles of the girl’s feet and calves under his hands tense once more, but he unfastened her garters and rolled her stockings discreetly down to her ankles, drawing them from her feet, placing the sodden items neatly beside her. Her skin, he noted, was fine and soft against the calluses on his own palms, her feet slender and beautifully arched. She owned an elegant pair of ankles too, he thought with pure male appreciation. He forced himself to resist drawing his fingers from heel to instep to toes as he ignored the increased beat of his pulse in his throat when she flexed her foot in his grip. Instead, briskly, he applied the linen until her feet were dry and the colour returning.

‘There. It’s done.’

He raised his eyes to find her watching his every move. Somewhere in his deliberately businesslike ministrations, her fear had gone and her eyes were as clear and blue as the sea on a summer’s day. Remarkable. It crossed his mind with an almost casual acceptance that he could fall and drown in them with no difficulty at all.

He had no wish to do any such thing.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are kind…’

‘I don’t need your thanks.’

More abrupt than he had intended, disturbed by his reaction to her, Alexander pushed himself upright, picking up the jug to pour brandy with a heavy hand into the smeared glass. ‘Here. Drink this.’

‘I don’t like brandy.’

‘I don’t care whether you like it or not. It will steady your nerves.’

The girl sighed, accepted the glass, sipped once, twice, wincing at the burn of the liquor, then placed the glass on the table at her elbow whilst she untied the satin strings of her bonnet. Alexander tossed back a glass of brandy himself before he turned foursquare to look down at the girl—the lady, for certainly from her clothes and bearing she was of good family. To his amazement temper heated, rapid and out of control. A surge of anger that she should have endangered her life so wantonly. That she might have been swept to her death before he had even known her. For some inexplicable reason the thought balled into fury that he could not contain.

‘What were you thinking, madam, getting yourself trapped by an incoming tide? You could have been swept out to sea if you’d fallen into one of the channels. The undertow of the tide is strong enough to drag you under. It’s happened before to an unwary visitor. Did you not see what was happening?’

The soft summer-blue of her gaze sharpened, glints of fire, as did her voice. ‘No, I did not see. Or I would not have been trapped, would I?’

‘If I hadn’t ridden into the village by chance, George Gadie would have been fishing your dead body out of the bay to deliver it to your grieving family.’ The heat in his words shook him. How could he have been drying her feet one minute and berating her with unreasonable fury the next? She did not deserve it.

‘But thanks to you I’m not dead,’ she snapped, matching temper with temper. ‘Thank you for your help. I’m sorry to have been an inconvenience to you. I’ll make sure it never happens again.’

‘Then it will be a good lesson learned if you’re to stay in this part of the world for long!’

‘I’ll heed your advice, sir.’

She had spirit, he’d give her that. Intrigued by her sharp defence, by the definite accent when under stress, Alexander raised his brows as his irritation began to ebb. The lady did not appear grateful at all. He felt the need to suppress a smile at the heat that had replaced the frozen terror.

‘So we are in agreement, it seems. Now what do I do with you?’

‘You do nothing with me.’ Her eyes actually seemed to flash in the dim room. ‘I am very grateful that you rescued me, of course, but I am perfectly capable of returning home on my own. You are at liberty to ride on your way about your own concerns. Now if you will give me back my shoes, which appear to have vanished in the direction of the kitchen…’

Alexander Ellerdine simply stood and looked at her, torn between amusement and frustration.

She sat and looked back at him, mutiny in her face.

And there it was. The sword of Damocles fell.

Chapter Two

Alexander looked, really looked at the girl—no, the woman, he realised—for the first time.

And he could not look away. His heart stopped for a breathless moment, before resuming with the heavy thump of a military drum.

Not as young as he had first thought, certainly older than her twentieth year, even if not by too many years; her slender figure and compact stature gave her a youthful air. She was extraordinarily pretty with fair hair now in a riot of curls from the wind and the damp, and those astonishing blue eyes. The blur of panic had definitely gone from them. They sparkled like sunlight on waves in a morning sea. Not classically beautiful, he noted dispassionately—her brows were too dark, her nose formidably straight and her chin had a hint of the masterful. Perhaps her lips were a little wide for her heart-shaped face—but that was not to her detriment. Now parted in what could only be a moment of baffled consternation to mirror his own, Alexander felt a precise urge to kiss those lips, to press his mouth against that exact spot where a charming indentation might hover in her cheek if she smiled.

At this moment, to his regret, she looked as if she had no intention of ever smiling at him.

He blinked, mentally ordering his thoughts back into line. To no avail. She was quite lovely and Alexander felt the pull of some intense, deep-seated connection between them. A bond that linked him to her whether he wished it or not. Fancifully he considered its existence, ephemeral but solid in his awareness. Like an arc of light that had managed to seep through the grime-caked windows. Or a tightening of a fist to take up the tension in a rope. Perhaps it was an invisible skein woven from the dusty air in the drab little room. He did not know. What he did know was that it was there between them. An entity that he could not shake off.

It was, the thought crept into his mind to overwhelm it with its novelty, as if he had been waiting for this moment, for this particular woman, all his life.

Again it took his breath and his heart stumbled on a beat.

Whilst Marie-Claude simply sat with her bonnet in her lap, her stockings at her feet, and surveyed the man who stood before her. An even greater shock to her than the threat of the incoming tide had been was that he seemed to be in the same grip of the same blinding discovery as she. It whispered over her skin. This man touched her heart, her mind. Her soul. How could this be? How could she feel this link to a complete stranger?

She took a difficult breath. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room so that she must struggle to fill her lungs. And yet there was a strange stillness, as in the eye of a storm. Still, silent, as if waiting for some momentous revelation.

Marie-Claude touched her tongue to her dry lips and raised her eyes to his, amazed at her boldness, only to see that he was looking at her as if she were a prize he would snatch up and carry off for his own possession. She would be his possession. It unnerved her, but did not distress her. Not at all.

She could not bear the silence that had fallen between them. ‘Sir?’

‘Tell me your name,’ Alexander demanded softly.

‘Marie-Claude.’

‘Marie-Claude,’ he repeated as if he had no choice but to do so. It was a sigh, a soft caress even to his own ears.

Nor did the lady show any sign of objecting to his crass lack of formality.

‘Are you French?’ he asked, searching for something to say. Unnecessary, you fool, he admonished. Of course she was, with her attractive accent.

‘Yes, I am. But I have lived here in England for more than five years now.’

Her eyes were direct, forthright. She had recovered from her ordeal and delicate colour returned to her cheeks and lips. Those lips now curved beautifully, revealing the little hollow in her cheek. Alexander swallowed against the sudden power of heat in his blood, a treacherous warmth in his groin.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘My name is Alexander. People who know me call me Zan. You can do so if you wish.’

‘Zan.’ Could she believe this? Here she was, sitting without her shoes or her stockings in an inn parlour, alone with a man she had known but an hour, and she had agreed to call him by his given name? Ridiculous! Indiscreet! She had actually allowed him to remove her stockings! Marie-Claude felt her cheeks flush—but was compelled to use his name again.

‘Zan—Mr Ellerdine, I think the girl called you.’

‘Yes.’

With no timidity and considerable pleasure, she allowed her eyes to travel over his face and figure. Far taller than she, he had a rangy, graceful stance that masked a degree of strength. She recalled how he had lifted her with ease, carried her. How he had controlled the mare when the animal had fought for her head in the waves. Encircled by his arms she had, even in her fear, been aware of the sleek muscles beneath the sleeve of his coat, the powerful thighs that had held her firm and safe.

Whilst his face…An arresting face. Strong features, all flat planes and stark edges, lean cheeks. As for age—some years over thirty, she considered. A handsome man even if he was intimidating. Patience would not come easily to a man with that proud nose, that firm jaw. His mouth was uncompromisingly stern. His eyes fierce under well-marked brows. And his hair—dark, longer than she was used to seeing in the fashionable haunts of Bond Street, falling into disordered waves. Her fingers itched to touch it. He was nothing like the smooth, fashionable, London gentlemen with nothing in his thoughts but the cut of his coat and the polished shine of his boots. There was an energy about him—a spiritedness—that lit the room. And also a distinct law-lessness in him…His speculative appraisal of her face and figure, a caress in itself, made her shiver.

Marie-Claude forced another breath into her lungs. ‘Do you live here? In Old Wincomlee?’

‘Nearby.’

‘Then it is my good fortune that you had by chance ridden down to the bay. If you had not—’

‘No…’ Zan broke in. ‘I think it is my good fortune.’

Zan stretched out his hand, palm up, not at all surprised when Marie-Claude instantly placed hers there. He lifted her slender fingers to his lips. Was this it? Was this the premonition, driving him with an urgency that he had not been able to cast aside, to be at the harbour at the exact time that she was in danger? He had been meant to save her. It had been meant that their paths should cross. Even when he had brought her to shore, the strange link had held fast, even when she was perfectly safe, so that he felt the need to carry her into the inn rather than leave her to her own devices. Was this desire to put her beyond all danger, to cherish her—was this driving force how it felt to fall in love?

No! It was a dousing of cold water, as if a wave had just broken over his head. Love was an emotion to be avoided at all costs.

But this woman spoke to him. Called to him. He could not deny it.

‘I had to come down to the bay,’ he admitted as much to himself as to her. ‘I didn’t know why, but now I do.’

Not understanding, Marie-Claude tilted her head, hoping he would continue, accepting when he did not. He did not have to explain. It was enough that he had been there, enough that he was here now with her. Since he still held her hand with no immediate intention of releasing her, Marie-Claude stood. In her bare feet she came only to his shoulder. It sent a jolt of delight through her. She had never felt so safe, so protected. Not that she needed protection, but sometimes a woman liked to feel the power and strength of a man…

He took a handkerchief from his pocket.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing to disturb you.’

Gently he wiped a smear of drying sand from her cheek, from her jaw, and tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. Then couldn’t resist stroking his fingers over that same cheek. Soft, smooth. Alluringly flushed. It took all his control not to kiss a path along the curve from her ear to that inviting mouth. To take those lips with his own. To feel them part and welcome him…

Of course he couldn’t! Hell and damnation! What the devil was he thinking? Here was no tavern wench who would ask for and enjoy his attentions. This was a wellborn lady, alone and unprotected, who deserved respect, courtesy. And here he was touching her face, kissing her hand, thinking—if truth was in it—of nothing but taking her to his bed, stripping away that pretty gown and making her body subject to his.

‘I think you might have saved my life.’ She broke into the private scene that had already driven his body into hard arousal. ‘How can I ever repay you?’

‘You don’t have to.’ It seemed that her being there with him in the inn parlour was all the reward he needed, enough to last him a lifetime. He thought he should tell her that, but all his habitual facility with words had deserted him.

‘I don’t think the tea will come,’ she observed with a glimmer of a smile.

‘No. I don’t think it will.’

‘I was at fault, not watching the tide, and I was not very gracious.’

‘You could not have known. And you were afraid.’ Still he held her hand in his, and Marie-Claude felt no urge to demand its return. She realised he was looking quizzically at her.

‘What is it? More sand? I must look a positive wreck. As for my dress…’ She looked down at the ruined flounces with a grimace.

‘You are beautiful.’

A deliberate pronouncement that took her aback. Cheeks aflame, Marie-Claude managed a soft laugh. ‘You flatter me.’

‘No. I tell you the truth. And if you are going to tell me that no man has ever told you that before, then I would have to say that you lie. Or all the men of your acquaintance have been either witless or blind.’

‘Oh!’ Marie-Claude, lost for words, felt the colour in her cheeks deepen even further.

‘I feel I have known you all my life. Why is that?’ Not wanting to know the answer, voice harsh with disbelief, Zan felt his hand tighten involuntarily around Marie-Claude’s fingers. By God, it was not what he wanted! But he wanted her. He wanted her physically. The heat of awareness throbbed through his blood.

‘Yes. As I have known you all of my life too.’ Marie-Claude’s breath caught at the blatant immodesty of her reply. She did not know this man. An hour ago she had not even met him and all she knew of him now was his name. Astonished at her temerity, Marie-Claude snatched at the moment, speaking the words her heart prompted. ‘I don’t understand it—but I feel as if I have been waiting for you. Waiting for you to step into my life. And here you are.’