‘Here. Drink this,’ Zan ordered.

The girl sighed, accepted the glass, then sipped.

Zan tossed back a glass of brandy himself before he turned to her. To his amazement his temper heated, rapid and out of control, then bubbled up to spill out in hard words. ‘What were you thinking, madam, getting yourself trapped by an incoming tide? Did you not see what was happening?’

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

She had spirit. He’d give her that. Zan raised his brows as his irritation began to ebb. ‘Now what do I do with you?’

‘You do nothing with me.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘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.’

Zan 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.

Rake Beyond Redemption
Anne O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ANNE O’BRIEN was born and has lived for most of her life in Yorkshire. There she taught history, before deciding to fulfil a lifetime ambition to write romantic historical fiction. She won a number of short story competitions until published for the first time by Mills & Boon. As well as writing, she finds time to enjoy gardening, cooking and watercolour painting. She now lives with her husband in an eighteenth-century cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches.

You can find out about Anne’s books and more at her website: www.anneobrien.co.uk

Recent novels by the same author:

THE DISGRACED MARCHIONESS*

THE OUTRAGEOUS DEBUTANTE*

THE ENIGMATIC RAKE*

CONQUERING KNIGHT, CAPTIVE LADY

CHOSEN FOR THE MARRIAGE BED

COMPROMISED MISS†

and in MIRA® Books:

VIRGIN WIDOW

To George, as ever, with love.

AUTHOR NOTE

COMPROMISED MISS ended with Luke and Harriette finding true happiness together. But two of the characters in COMPROMISED MISS, both of them dear to my heart, were left under a dark cloud. Marie-Claude de la Roche from France, young, unhappy, widowed with a small child to raise, might have been rescued from physical danger, but was now dependent on an unknown family in a new country. And then there was Alexander Ellerdine, unscrupulous rake and smuggler, his character ruined beyond redemption, guilty by his own admission of any number of terrible sins and cast off by his family.

Both were alone and, for different reasons, without hope.

Were they to remain so? I decided I could not abandon them, and RAKE BEYOND REDEMPTION came to be written. Marie-Claude needed a new life, and the chance of love to replace the one she had lost. Could it be with the disreputable rake Alexander Ellerdine? It would seem to be completely beyond belief with a man of Alexander’s black and vicious reputation. How could the immoral villain of COMPROMISED MISS possibly be reinstated into Polite Society?

But perhaps…

Read on to discover how Alexander and Marie-Claude find their destiny together against all the odds. I’m certain you will love the grief and passion, the pain and the eventual fulfilment in their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Chapter One

June 1818—Lydyard’s Pride, a rambling manor house on the cliffs above the smuggling village of Old Wincomlee, Sussex

‘How can you not be happy? What more can you possibly want from life than what you have? Considering everything, you should be deliriously content!’

Alone in her bedchamber overlooking the cliff top and endless succession of sprightly waves, Marie-Claude Hallaston, her French accent more pronounced than usual, raised her chin at her own sharp reprimand and continued to draw patterns with her fingertip on the grimy, salt-encrusted pane. Leaves and scrolls bloomed around her artistically executed initials, becoming more flamboyant as she replied with a cross frown, ‘I really don’t know what I want. I’ve no idea what’s sunk my spirits, that’s the problem.’ She added another swirl of vegetation to the pattern on the glass, before regarding her begrimed finger with distaste.

Perhaps it was the remnants of the fever that had laid her low in the spring months and had robbed her of all her spirits, the reason she was now here at Lydyard’s Pride, to enjoy the benefits of sea air and restore her to health. Perhaps. Or, Marie-Claude added with a sigh, ‘Perhaps it’s because I see myself as a widow for the rest of my life, wearing black, high-collared gowns and lace caps!’

And Marie-Claude breathed on the glass to obliterate the leaves before, rather wistfully, drawing the outline of a little heart.

Then impatiently swiped the heart away with the heel of her hand.

This was no good. Rather than simply standing at the window and looking at the view, wallowing in wretched self-pity, she’d go and walk off her megrims. At least here at Lydyard’s Pride she had no need to take a maid or one of the servants to escort her. No one knew her here. No one would think her immodest or in need of a chaperon. Besides, as a widow of long standing—six years!—she had earned the right to do as she pleased.

On which note of defiance, Marie-Claude tied the satin ribbons of a plain straw bonnet—very suitable for a walk along the cliffs—and put on a dark blue velvet spencer over her gown of celestial-blue silk with its intricate knots of ribbon and ruched hem—not suitable at all for striding along the beach, but what matter. She exchanged her silk pumps for a pair of ankle boots, stalwart but still elegant on her narrow feet, and set off down the steep path to the cove and the village of Old Wincomlee. The light breeze was gentle, the sun dipping towards the sea, glowing on an enticing patch of shingle at the base of the cliff where the inlet narrowed to the first row of cottages, turning the stones a soft pink in the light. Little waves, lace-edged, frilled on to the pebbles. That’s where she would go with no one to please but herself.

Alone. Always alone, the voice whispered in her mind. The little racing waves repeated the phrase as they shushed on the pebbles. Alone.

Marie-Claude’s hands stilled on the ivory handle of her parasol as she prepared to snap open the delicate silk and lace. Would she go to her grave, never again knowing the nearness of a man who was more than brother or friend to her? Would she never have a lover? It swept through her, a driving need, an intense heat that raced over her skin. Suddenly her throat was desert dry with a longing, a longing so strong to feel the touch of a man’s hard mouth against hers. To shiver under the determined caress of experienced fingers. To know the slide of naked flesh against hers, slick and hot with desire. To know the possession of a man’s urgent body…

Well! Marie-Claude swallowed. Her breathing was shallow, her cheeks flushed as she finally snapped the parasol open. Such wanton thoughts. She should be ashamed—but found it difficult to be so. Why should she not imagine a perfection of male beauty if she wished to? Even if she was a widow with a five-year-old son. With a little laugh at her impossible dreaming, she twirled the lace parasol so that the fringe danced, and as the sea and shingle beckoned, Marie-Claude strode out down the cliff path, well-worn and distinct for a lady who was neat of foot. Something would happen. Surely there was something in fate’s hand waiting for her.

At the brisk pace she set herself, Marie-Claude was soon stepping on to the beach. The scrunch of shingle was loud beneath her feet, and made for heavy going, but she persisted until she was at the water’s edge, where she lifted her face to the kiss of sun and salty air. Her hair would curl outrageously but she did not care, her mood revived. How Raoul, her son, at present with Luke and Harriette at The Venmore, would love this. One day she must bring him here. Picking up one of the flat pebbles, she threw it far out, dusting the sand from her fingers, momentarily wishing for a man at her side to teach her son such skills as stone-skimming—perhaps even her mythical lover, she thought wryly—but she would do it just as well.

Her mind more at ease with the pretty scene, Marie-Claude walked slowly along the water’s edge, stepping back as the waves encroached and retreated, encroached again. The tide had turned, she realised. Not that she knew anything about tides.

‘You don’t know much about anything really,’ Marie-Claude commented waspishly, then laughed as a pair of gulls wheeled and screamed overhead as if in reply. ‘And you are undoubtedly a foolish woman!’

But her optimism had returned.

The sun was descending rapidly now towards the horizon, reminding Marie-Claude of the need to retrace her steps. She turned on her heel.

And froze with a little gasp of surprise. And trepidation. In front of her, between her feet and the cliff with its steep track, a fast-flowing channel of water had appeared. How careless she had been. Why had she not had the sense to take note of the path of the incoming sea? Any woman of wit would have done so! But it was no great matter after all. She spun round towards the village itself. So she would have to make her way up the inlet and into Old Wincomlee, past the old inn, the Silver Boat, then walk around the path on the top of the cliff. A long way, she sighed, but the evening was still fair, the light good.

Her optimism was short-lived. A thread of anxiety encircled her heart, and tightened at what she saw. An expanse of water, little waves chasing one after the other, stretched before her as well as at her side, fast running now, growing deeper by the second. Behind her the first little wave lapped at her boots.

Surrounded!

Mon Dieu! Marie-Claude took a breath and swallowed hard against the first leap of real fear. No point in being afraid. She’d lived through worse dangers than this in her life. She’d just have to brave the water. It wasn’t too deep yet. No point at all in standing here, frozen in indecision.

Closing the parasol with fingers that did not quite tremble and tucking it beneath her arm, Marie-Claude hitched her skirts and stepped into the water, pushing herself forwards as it suddenly grew far deeper than she could have imagined. For a moment she considered retreating to the little island of shingle, but she knew she must not. Summoning all her courage, she forced herself to take another step and then another. Around her the waves were swirling, overlapping each other. Her boots, her skirts and petticoats were soaked and heavy. The stones beneath her feet sucked and slid, making progress slow and difficult. How had the sunny evening suddenly become so menacing, so threatening? Grasping her skirts tighter, Marie-Claude had to fight to stop panic anchoring her in her tracks.

The cottages of Old Wincomlee and the roof of the Silver Boat suddenly seemed an impossibly long way distant.

Ellerdine Manor: a manor house on the cliff top, a mile west of the smuggling village of Old Wincomlee

A cold sensation trickled through his chest. Alexander Ellerdine, at some half-seen, half-heard command, raised his head, pushed himself upright, hands tightening over the carved arms of his chair, then, with an impatient shrug and a flex of his fingers, allowed himself to settle back. The spaniel at his side subsided with a sigh.

‘Just a goose walking over my grave, Bess.’ The gentleman’s voice was heavily sardonic as he stretched to run a light caress over the dog’s ears. ‘Nothing new in that!’

Shadows began to lengthen in the room as afternoon dipped into early evening. There were still long hours of daylight left to be enjoyed, but the corners of the shabby library in Ellerdine Manor where the sun no longer reached on this June evening were dark and sombre with neglect. Alexander Ellerdine sprawled in a well-worn Chippendale Windsor chair, booted feet crossed at the ankle on the desktop. Before him, leaving careless rings of liquid on a mess of scattered papers, stood a half-empty decanter of superior French brandy, courtesy of the Brotherhood of the Free Traders. In his hand was a half-empty glass of the deep amber liquor. Clearly the focus of his mind was far distant. He did not see the unkempt surroundings. The threadbare carpet, the faded curtains at the windows, the worn upholstery on a once-elegant set of spindle-legged chairs, the undusted leatherbound books that looked as if they had not been taken down from the shelves any time in the past decade—he did not notice them. Perhaps he was too used to the deficiencies of his library to note the depredations of time and lack of money. And of lack of interest.

Alexander Ellerdine. Gentleman, landowner, expert smuggler.

Wrecker.

A man with blood on his hands.

A man of ruthless energies and dangerous reputation.

Despite the dust and the worn furnishings, he made a striking impression. His home might be shabby, but he was not. Here was a man who had a care for appearances. His topboots were highly polished, his breeches well cut, his white shirt of good quality linen. If there was any carelessness it was the lack of a cravat, his shirt worn casually open at the neck to show his strong throat and the firm flesh of his chest. His hair, dark as to be almost black, was longer than was fashionable, curling against his collar, and disordered from the attentions of restless fingers. His eyes, set beneath similarly dark brows, were the deep blue of an angry, storm-whipped sea, hawk-like in their intensity. Even slouched as he was, it was clear that he was tall and rangy, not heavily built, but with a wiry athleticism that told of a life of action and strenuous activity. The hand gripped around the stem of the old glass was well moulded, fine-boned with long fingers, nails neatly pared. His face would have been formidably handsome, if it were not set in such sombre lines.

Suddenly, again, he turned his head, sharply, eyes and features arrested, at the echo of footsteps in the entrance hall. It was a breathtaking transformation. There was the dark glamour. The breathtaking allure of wild good looks fired with animation. But then the gleam of anticipation was quenched, hooded beneath heavy lids as the sounds died away. Only his housekeeper, Mrs Shaw…Not the man he was half-expecting, Rackham or one of the other vicious minions of Captain D’Acre, commander of the smuggling gang out of Rottingdean. Not one of the Fly-By-Nights whose hold on the Free Trade along the Sussex coast was becoming more brutal by the month.

Alexander Ellerdine reached for the decanter to refill the glass as the house settled heavily around him, silent except for the creak of old timbers and the rattle of a loose pane of glass in the stiff breeze off the sea. Except that something—that same something—no more than a shiver of awareness, but still impossible to ignore, traced an uneasy path down his spine.

Irritated, Alexander lifted the decanter to pour another glass.

And froze, perfectly still. Hand outstretched. Listening. All senses suddenly stretched. Almost sniffing the air. Or sifting through the vibrations of some…What was it? That same slither of cold, now from his chest into his belly. A warning? Some presentiment of danger? There was the finger again—now of ice—scratching between his shoulder blades so that he inhaled sharply.

The spaniel at his side sat up.

‘What is it, Bess?’

He stilled her with his hand, but the foreboding did not go away, rather an uncomfortable breath of misgiving tripped across his skin, settled in the marrow of his bones. As he would have been the first to admit, he was not a man given to anxieties over the unseen and the unknown. Alexander Ellerdine was not a superstitious man, but one who lived by his wits and his own resources. Confident and assured of his own skills, he had no truck with the smugglers’ fears of long-drowned sailors come back to haunt them or the ghosts of murdered excise-men roaming the cliffs. Captain Rodmell, the Preventives’ efficient and oh-so-capable Riding Officer and very much alive, was the greatest of his worries. But now in this empty room his flesh shivered. No idea what or why, Alexander tried to shrug it off, lifting the brandy to his lips.

But there was some thing that demanded his attention. Something was amiss. An urge to go and see for himself could not be shaken off and the longer he sat and debated, the stronger, more urgent the strange sense of fear grew…

That was it. Fear. A sense of mounting terror. As Alexander recognised the unusual emotion that jabbed beneath his ribs, he tossed back the rest of the brandy in the glass and pushed himself to his feet. Snatching up a well-cut riding-coat, he shrugged into it with casual but careless elegance. No doubt he was completely misguided and would find no reward for his efforts, but he’d saddle his mare and ride down to the harbour. Probably just a body of opportunistic excise-men lurking on the cliff on the unlikely off chance of tripping over a run of contraband. Alexander grinned with a feral show of teeth. No chance of that tonight, a night that would have a full moon and an abnormally high tide. Or perhaps Captain Rodmell of the Preventives was paying a passing visit to the inn, the Silver Boat, in Old Wincomlee. Nothing dangerous, nothing unusual in either occurrence. And yet…

He collected hat and riding whip, resigned to his journey. If there was nothing to warrant this irritating sense of danger, well, there was nothing lost, and besides…A faint smile curved his mouth. If he was in the mood he might chance a flirtation with Sally, who dispensed the ale with a provocative swing of her hips and a sharp tongue.

‘What do you think, Bess? Should I tempt Sal into parting with a kiss or two? She’s a lovely girl and not unwilling. And since no respectable woman would choose to tangle with the likes of me…’

The spaniel whined and licked his hand.

‘Quite right, Bess. I’m beyond redemption. And what use do I have for a respectable woman? I’ve a tarnished name, no legitimate money and no prospects but the hangman’s noose if I ever fall into Preventive Officer Rodmell’s clutches with a cutter-load of contraband in my hands. Let’s go and waste an hour looking for some danger that doesn’t exist. And if she’s of a mind, sample Sal’s pretty lips.’

But a ripple of unease stirred the hairs on his forearms and made him shiver. As if some invisible sword of Damocles hovered over his life.

Alexander pushed his mare into an energetic walk along the cliff top, curbing her playful habits but letting her have enough of her head to make good progress. Skittish she might be, as were all females in his opinion, but she was sure-footed, allowing him to scan the scene before him. No one on the cliff path. No excise-men in sight. He, the horse and dog and the gulls seemed to be the only living creatures.

Kicking the mare into a trot, Bess following at his heels, he was soon at the edge of the village and slowed to wind through the lanes between the cottages. Quiet here too. A few children playing, voices raised in shouts and laughter. George Gadie’s stout wife unpegging a line of washing. George, he presumed, with his son Gabriel, would be out with one of the fishing boats. He greeted Mistress Gadie with a lift of his hand and a preoccupied smile, but moved on. Dismounting in the courtyard, he looked in at the Silver Boat. Quiet as the grave. No one sampling the excellent stock of contraband. No Captain Rodmell sniffing out evidence of lawbreaking. Even Sam Babbercombe, the entirely sly and ruthless innkeeper who never passed up an opportunity to bring money into his pockets, was nowhere to be seen. Most likely sleeping off the effects of the last glass of brandy before emerging to fleece his evening customers.

Back outside, Alexander remounted. And frowned in indecision. There was nothing here to raise his hackles. So why did a hand still grip his heart? What made his belly churn, his throat dry? Clear sky, calm sea, the only boats in the bay the fishing smacks of the inhabitants of Old Wincomlee engaged in their legitimate business. Nothing to disturb him. No threat, no danger.

Down to the cove, the little harbour. There was Venmore’s Prize anchored in the bay, sails neatly rolled and stashed. His cousin Harriette’s vessel, not used as much now as she might once have been. A pity. A fine cutter even if not of the same quality as the ill-fated Lydyard’s Ghost, fired by the Preventives in revenge for a successful contraband run that they failed to apprehend. Five years ago now, a night he did not care to think about.

Alexander’s narrow-eyed scrutiny moved on. Next to the Prize was his own cutter. For a brief moment of sheer pleasure Alexander simply sat to admire her lines. The Black Spectre. Not the most cheerful of names, he thought with a wry amusement, but it had suited his mood at the time. She was a masterly vessel, riding the waves with spectacular ease, as swift and invisible on a dark night as the spectre he had named her. No outlay of money spared here, where a fast cutter to outrun the Preventives could be a matter of life or death.

He cast an experienced eye over the inlet and cove. High tide tonight, the water already racing in as it did through the deep channels worn over the years between the shingle. Not as an innocuous scene as might appear to the unwary or foolish who did not know they could be outflanked and surrounded within minutes. He looked lazily towards the distant headland where the first wave-edged inflow would now be showing.

And then he saw.

His heart gave a single heavy bound. His breath backed up in his lungs so that he had to drag in air.

A woman. Clearly in danger. Floundering through the water, skirts held ineffectually to try to prevent the drag of them in the rapidly rising swirl. She was already cut off from dry land. Soon she would be out of her depth entirely and overbalanced by the undertow. What the devil was she thinking? He cursed viciously, silently. This went far beyond foolish. This was suicidal!

Alexander did not hesitate. ‘Stay!’ he ordered the spaniel who promptly sank, chin to paws. And Alexander nudged the mare forwards into the water.

With hands and heels, keeping a tight hold on his own fear, Alexander persuaded the reluctant mare into the waves, urging her through the shallows, out on to the rapidly disappearing shingle until the water swirled knee-deep. The mare jibbed, but Alexander soothed with hands and voice, all the time keeping an eye on the floundering figure, skirts bunched in her hands, pressing determinedly forwards. She was not yet in any real danger, he estimated, but was having increasing difficulty in keeping her feet. Five minutes later and it would have been a different matter.

Not a woman, he decided as he took stock of the slight figure bracing herself against a larger wave. A mere girl, and a witless one at that! Didn’t she know any better? Chancy tides were a matter of course at this time of year with the June surge, filling deep troughs and channels, leaving islands of shingle cut off from the shore, to be inundated when the only chance to escape from them was to swim. He’d wager his gold hunter that the girl—some empty-headed town girl in her fashionable gown and ribboned bonnet, even a damned parasol tucked beneath her arm!—couldn’t swim.

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.’

They stood and looked at each other, unable to look away, his eyes dark and stormy, hers shadowed with uncertainty.

How could she have dared to say that? Surely so forward, so presumptuous a female would put any well-bred man to flight. Or at least earn herself a damning put-down. Marie-Claude saw how the muscles in Zan’s jaw tightened under some rigidly applied control. How austere he looked, how frighteningly stern. How could she have displayed her feelings so obviously? Suddenly swamped by doubt, Marie-Claude turned her face away. ‘How immodest I seem to have become. How brazen you must think me…’ Her words crumbled to dust as she felt her face flame once more, this time with embarrassment.

‘No, never that,’ Zan replied softly, his tone at odds with the taut desire in his loins. Her self-conscious bewilderment arrowed straight to Zan’s heart. Circling her wrists, he placed her palms together, enfolding them within his own hands where they seemed, inexplicably, to belong. ‘And not brazen at all. If you are immodest, then I seem to have lost all sense of honour as a gentleman. Do you…?’

Do you believe that a man can love a woman from the very first moment he sets his eyes on her? Can a man feel indivisibly bound to a woman he has never met before?

His dark brows snapped together. Well, he could hardly ask her that, could he? Only at the risk of her fleeing the room, no doubt shrieking accusations of seduction and debauchery. Had he in truth lost all sense of reality? Disgusted at his inexplicable lack of finesse, Zan controlled the urge to drag her against him, cover that lovely mouth with his. How had his response to this woman suddenly become so inexplicably complicated? Instead he fell back on brisk practicalities.

‘I expect you’re exhausted after your ordeal. Do you feel sufficiently recovered to go home?’

‘Oh…yes.’ Marie-Claude was perplexed. She could not read this man at all. One moment he looked at her as if he would snatch her up, the next he rejected her as if he found her distasteful. Obviously he regretted that first astonishing admission. Disappointment settled to fill the space around her heart, and she took her lead from him. ‘Of course. I’m quite restored. It’s no distance—an easy walk from here. If you will release my hands…’

Zan saw it, the light quenched from her eyes, her mouth settling in a solemn line, the corners tightly tucked in as if she would express no more confidences. That was not what he had intended at all. He experienced a protective urge to sweep her up and make her laugh. Make her admit again that she had been waiting for him to step into her life. But perhaps this was not the time or the place.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he determined, yet kept possession of her hands. ‘And I’ll come tomorrow to ask if you’re fully recovered. If you will allow it.’

‘Yes. I would like that.’

When her face lit again in a smile, it ignited a flame in his heart. Without thought, without questioning his motives other than it was what he wished to do more than anything on earth, he bent his head and took her lips with his. Soft, inviting, at first the merest whisper of a caress. And the sweetness of her took him aback, flooding through his veins, awakening every male instinct. In reply his mouth changed from gentle invitation to dominant demand.

Marie-Claude knew she should resist, remonstrate—what was she doing?—but could not. The slide of that hard mouth over her lips, with such unexpected delicacy, stirred shivers over her skin. When the pressure deepened, when she felt the forceful sweep of his tongue over her lips, she did not hesitate but, her will shattered, she let them part against his shocking insistence. Her heart fluttered like a trapped bird.

Whilst Zan’s blood raged. His body responded, his need hard against her as he held her fast. Whatever lay in wait for him in the uncertainties of his future, she was his. His mouth ravaged, his tongue tasted, seduced then plunged as her lips failed to withstand his assault. She was his, now, always. No one would stop him…

When he felt her sigh softly against his mouth he raised his head, drawn back into reality. His smile was a little twisted, but his hands still gripped firm.

‘I suppose I must now listen to you condemn me for my ungallant conduct.’

But her eyes were glorious, sparkling with life. Her reply, her reaction, startled him.

‘I liked it.’ A twist of her hand to free it from his and she lifted it to touch his cheek with her fingertips. ‘I should not, I dare say, but I did. My sister would say that no good can come of it. Do you suppose I shall regret it? I doubt it. Unless you are planning to seduce me, to steal my heart and break it.’

So she would flirt with him.

‘You think I would seduce you?’ An audacious lift of a brow. ‘Do you think I am a libertine?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A rake?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘If I was either, you should not be here alone in this room with me. Will you take the risk?’

‘I must.’ Marie-Claude smiled. ‘I seem to have lost my will-power along with my wits.’

Zan inhaled sharply. ‘Many hereabouts would say you’d be foolish to trust me.’

‘You’ve given me no reason not to trust you. I would have been regretful if you hadn’t kissed me. Does that make me too forward again? I’m afraid it does.’

‘It makes you a delight. It makes you all I’ve ever dreamt of in a woman—’ What was he saying? Zan closed his mouth like a trap on any more revelations before the control of his thoughts and words broke entirely. ‘Where are you staying? I presume you are visiting. Where do I take you home?’

‘There’s really no need.’

‘I wish it.’ Once again he pressed his lips to hers, all his senses overpowered by her instant response when she slid her hands around his neck, lacing her fingers in his hair to draw him closer. He groaned softly against her mouth. ‘I don’t want to let you go, but I must. Tell me where…’

‘Not far. Take me to Lydyard’s Pride.’

The Pride!

It was like the echoing clang, discordant and ill fated, of a death knell. The name was like an arctic blast to chill the heat in his blood to ice. Or perhaps it was a searing fire from the depths of hell to blast and destroy the flame of his desire.

Zan encircled Marie-Claude’s wrists and pulled her hands slowly from around his neck, trying to ignore the skittering of her pulse. Why did it feel as if a bottomless black void had appeared before his feet? And equally in his chest where his heart had been?

Whilst Marie-Claude could only marvel at the effect of her words. This man who had kissed her with passion was now regarding her from a distance of his own making, with some species of stark horror.

What had she said?

‘Lydyard’s Pride?’ Zan heard his voice, bleak as the cliffs in a winter’s gale, dreading the reply.

‘Yes. The house on the cliff…’

‘I know where Lydyard’s Pride is. What’s your name—your full name?’

‘I’m Marie-Claude Hallaston. I was Marie-Claude de la Roche before my marriage.’

Hallaston. Marriage.

Why hadn’t he discovered this pertinent piece of information in the first place? It had never crossed his mind. His lips curled in cynical acknowledgement of this unexpected turn of the cards. So the gift from the hand of fate had all been a mischievous charade after all. Well, he had been taught a short hard lesson, had he not? It was as if he had been offered his heart’s desire only to have it snatched away in some malicious game. Zan took a step back, his brows meeting in a black bar.

‘Zan…?’

He took another step. When he could think, memory struck to fill in the gaps.

‘Ah, yes. Of course. I should have known, I suppose. You’re the widow of the noble Earl of Venmore’s brother.’

‘Yes. Captain Marcus Hallaston. He died in Spain.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you know the Hallaston family? And Harriette’s family, the Lydyards? I suppose you must since you are a neighbour.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m staying here for a few weeks.’

‘I see.’

‘Harriette and Luke are at The Venmore, but I—’

‘I must take you home,’ Zan interrupted. ‘I’ve kept you here long enough.’

She was a Hallaston. Of all the families she could have been connected to. Striding to the door, he flung it open, raised his voice in the direction of the kitchen.

‘Sal! Bring the lady’s shoes. Now!’

When they arrived, Sal at a run, he took them with a brief word of thanks, handed them over.

‘Put your shoes on.’

Not understanding, Marie-Claude simply did as she was ordered. What point in attempting an explanation when the man who had first saved her life and then had kissed her into mindless delight had inexplicably decided that he wanted nothing more to do with her? Without a word, spine straight against the humiliation, Marie-Claude took the little boots, then sat, just as rigidly, struggling with the soaked fabric to pull them on. They were, sadly, past redemption.

‘Never mind.’ Impatiently, Zan all but snatched the boots from her, tucking them with her stockings into his capacious pockets. ‘Put your arms around my neck, Madame Mermaid.’ When she obeyed because his sly mockery seemed to rob her of any will to do otherwise, he effortlessly lifted her and carried her out of the parlour.

‘I can walk!’ Flustered, mortified by her response to his nearness, hurt by his rejection of her, Marie-Claude pushed against his chest. ‘There’s no need for this! Put me down.’

‘Not in bare feet you can’t,’ he responded, as cold as January.

Without further comment he carried her outside, where he boosted her into the saddle, then swung up behind her, immediately gathering up the reins and turning the mare’s head in the direction of the Pride. His mouth curved in what was not a smile at this change in plan. Had he not intended to allow the mare to walk as slowly as she wished, to make her own way so that his time with the girl was stretched as far as possible? Now he kicked her into a canter, holding the Hallaston widow before him as impersonally as he might. Trying not to be aware of her warmth and closeness, the subtle perfume from her hair, the brush of her body against his. He clamped his mouth shut. There was nothing more to be said between them.

Thus a tension-filled, uncomfortable journey, until they reached the long drive to the Pride and Zan turned the mare in.

This was no good, Marie-Claude decided, trying to clear her thoughts. Did the baffling Mr Alexander Ellerdine intend to deposit her at the door without another word? Not if she had any influence on the outcome.

‘Do you know Harriette and Luke well?’ she asked against the wall of his silence, lifting her chin so she could see his face.

‘Once I did.’ His eyes were grimly fixed on the approaching house. ‘But no longer. We’re not on visiting terms.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s of no consequence.’

In other words, it’s not your concern. Marie-Claude frowned as silence once more shrouded them. As she had suspected, when they arrived at the front sweep of steps, he swiftly dismounted, beckoned for her to slide down into his arms. Immediately he placed her on her feet on the bottom step. Returned her boots, her stockings into her hands. And without one word of ackowledgement or farewell turned away to remount.

Marie-Claude felt a return of her temper. Was he not going to explain? She would force him to explain!

‘Will you not come in?’ she invited with edged sweetness. A provocative lift of her brows, already knowing the reply. If he could taunt, so could she. ‘Some refreshment, perhaps, after all your efforts on my behalf?’

He looked back over his shoulder, his reins tight in his fist. ‘No.’

‘And are you usually so ill mannered, Mr Ellerdine?’

‘Not ill mannered, Madame Mermaid. Merely mistaken.’

‘So you have decided you have not known me all your life after all.’

‘Yes. So it seems.’

A cold whip of words. It was like fighting through an impenetrable mist. ‘How capricious you have turned out to be, sir,’ she observed, an intense regret cutting through her anger. And watched, startled, as her rebuke caused colour to slash across Zan’s splendid cheekbones.

‘Is Meggie here?’ he demanded unexpectedly, facing her again.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Tell Meggie what happened on the beach. She’ll take care of you. Doubtless she’ll tell you what you need to know about me—and take pleasure in doing so. Don’t tell her you spent time in the Silver Boat with me, unchaperoned. And for God’s sake don’t tell her that I forced my attentions on you. It would be better for you if you did not.’

‘Why should I not tell her? Besides, you didn’t force yourself on me. As I recall, I enjoyed the experience as much as you did. As I thought you did!’

‘Then you were as mistaken as I was.’ And what a flat rebuttal that was; it robbed Marie-Claude of all speech for a moment. ‘A word of advice, Madame Mermaid. You’re far too innocent for your own good.’ The edge in his voice was as keen as hammered steel. ‘You should beware of believing what rakes and libertines in inn parlours tell you. They prey on the innocent and you were the perfect peach, ripe to fall into my hand. You were fortunate not to be further compromised.’

How unfair! How appallingly unfair! ‘I did not choose to be in the inn parlour with you. You took me there, if you recall. And as for innocent! If you know anything of my past, as you seem to do, you would know that I am far from innocent and inexperienced in my knowledge of the evil that can drive some men. I didn’t think you were a man without honour.’

‘Then you lack judgement. You have no idea what sort of man I am.’

Marie-Claude’s eyes flashed fire, her brows rose. It was impossible to believe that he could be so insulting, so deliberately wounding. Something had driven him into this fast retreat, this deliberate attack. Seeing a possible advantage, she pressed on to make the most of it. ‘You didn’t answer my question. Why should I not tell Meggie?’

Zan sneered. ‘I wouldn’t want to ruin your impeccable reputation, would I? If you value your good name, you’ll keep your tongue between your pretty teeth.’

He had already turned back to his mare, gathering the reins. Marie-Claude made a last attempt to restore some normality to this situation, clutching at a final hope. ‘Zan…I don’t know why you would deny what was between us. Or lash at me with temper. Let me thank you—’

‘No! I’ll let you do nothing of the sort. Have you not been listening to me? Just forget the whole incident. It will be better for you if you do. As for my denial, put it down to indifference. You entertained me for a bare hour—nothing more.’ His mouth twisted.

As Marie-Claude’s eyes widened at this final unbridled, unforgivable slight, with one long stride, Zan dropped the reins and was back to swoop and pinion her. Hands firmly cupping her shoulders, he pulled her hard against him. ‘Or perhaps, in honesty, a little longer than an hour. No man could overlook or forget the sweetness of your kisses.’ His mouth devoured hers, his tongue owned, a scrape of teeth along her soft lips. Yet even as she resisted the assault, the sheer insolence of him, her senses absorbed the thrill.

Zan thrust her away.

‘Farewell, Madame Mermaid.’

Without a backwards look he swung up, let the mare quicken and stretch into a full gallop across the parkland, out of her line of sight.

Zan concentrated on putting as much distance between himself and Lydyard’s Pride in the shortest possible time. As if he could erase the memory of the woman who still stood on the steps and looked after him. He knew exactly who his mermaid was.

Marie-Claude de la Roche—he’d forgotten her name, if he ever knew it. He supposed he’d never heard it mentioned in his hearing. There was no reason why it should have been in the circumstances. He had become persona non grata in the Hallaston household after that night. He’d heard later of her existence, of course, from George Gadie, who knew all the Hallaston affairs. French, married to Captain Marcus Hallaston and widowed, cast adrift in Spain with a child, taken under the unscrupulous wing of some French rogue—called Jean-Jacques Noir, was it?—who had held her to ransom to bleed Luke Hallaston, the Earl of Venmore, dry in return for her safety. Threatened to use her as a whore in one of the military towns if the tale ran true. And she had been rescued by Venmore and Harriette in that eventful run to the French coast, bringing her back along with the barrels and bales of contraband.

Oh, yes. He recalled that night, right enough. The night that had brought an unmendable rift with his cousin Harriette. The night when he had been accused and found guilty, albeit without trial, of treachery, wrecking and attempted murder.

He knew the widow had been rescued, but had never met her, nor she him. She did not even recognise his name. Obviously no one had ever spoken the name Zan Ellerdine in the Hallaston household from that day to this. He tightened his hands on the reins to bring the mare back into a more controlled canter. Alexander Ellerdine no longer existed in that august circle.

In the circumstances, he could hardly blame the noble Earl and his family, could he?

Well, he had delivered the pretty widow home and that was that. He had not compromised her sensibilities too greatly, nor damaged her spotless reputation. He set the mare to a low hedge, pushing her on into a stylish leap. And then another as he increased the distance between himself and the Pride. But the speed and exhilaration did not take his attention as he might hope. Clear blue eyes with no hint of shyness. Soft lips that parted beneath his. Smooth fingers that touched his cheek. Desire curled in his gut, tightened into urgency in his groin.

Forget about her. Forget how for those few short minutes she turned your blood to fire. Forget how she made you think that life could have been different. Forget how she called you Zan and wound her fingers into your hair as she wound them into your heart…

When Marie-Claude smiled at him in his mind, Zan ruthlessly banished the image. An unfortunate dose of lust, that’s all. Easily remedied. He’d been right all along. Love did not exist. Not for men like him. And certainly not with one of the Hallastons, a family who hated him with every breath it took.

Marie-Claude stood on the steps, ignoring the cold striking up through her bare feet, her boots and stockings clutched to her bosom. She stared after Zan Ellerdine in disbelief.

What had happened? What had she done?

Surely she had not imagined that intense closeness. And surely he had felt it too. Some of the things she had said to him…She blushed to recall them. And he had kissed her. He had actually kissed her on the lips. Raising one hand so that she dropped the boots—not that she noticed—she pressed her fingers to her mouth, reliving that moment when her pulse had rioted and desire had flooded her veins. He had kissed her and she had kissed him back. She could still feel him there. Taste him there. Even the scent of him, a purely male blend of sun and sweat and salt-water, still filled her head.

And then what had happened? It was as if a curtain of icy rain had cascaded down between them, separating them so there was no connection, no sense of oneness between them at all.

What had he said about the Hallastons and Lydyards? Once I knew them. No longer. What was that about? Some mystery here. And he knew about Meggie and her association with the family.

He had been so kind, so considerate. He had taken off her shoes, ordered her tea, kissed her hand, a burning brand that had been anything but a formal caress. Had he not told her she was beautiful? He had rolled down her stockings and dried her feet. She swore she could still imagine the gentle impression of his fingers. And then when he had kissed her she had abandoned all modesty and offered herself.

And what had happened? The enchantment had been smashed, destroyed.

It was her name. As soon as she had mentioned Lydyard’s Pride. The Hallaston connection had caused the rift.

Well, she would not tell Meggie—for some reason she did not want to talk about this meeting with Zan Ellerdine—but she would find out who he was.

‘Meggie…’ Once servant and confidante to Harriette Lydyard, now Harriette Hallaston, at present with Marie-Claude at the Pride, as stout and buxom and forthright as she had ever been, was the obvious source. Ask her, Zan had advised with no pleasant anticipation. So she would.

‘Miss Marie-Claude! Just look at you…What have you been doing?’

Well, she would ask eventually. First she must soothe Meggie’s eagle eye.

‘Oh…I was caught by the tide. Silly of me. I’ll learn.’ She cast her bonnet on to the scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen where she had run Meggie to ground, and prepared to deflect the flood of concern.

‘It’s dangerous. One minute out of my sight and just look at the state of your clothes…’

‘The only things to suffer are my shoes and my gown. Both beyond redemption…although my feet are cold and damp.’

It did the trick. Meggie bustled her out of the kitchen, insisting on ordering up the tub and heated water to Marie-Claude’s bedchamber. Nor was Marie-Claude sorry. All things considered it had been an exhausting day.

She sank back into the soothing water with a sigh. Here was the chance as Meggie fretted and fussed around her.

‘Meggie—who is Alexander Ellerdine?’

A short expectant hiatus. Meggie angled her a glance.

‘Who?’

‘Alexander Ellerdine.’ Marie-Claude fixed her with an innocent expression.

‘Now why would you want to know that?’

‘I heard his name mentioned in the village, that’s all.’

A pause. The glance became even sharper as Meggie folded a pile of linen. ‘Did you meet him?’

‘No.’ Marie-Claude hoped the flush of colour would be put down to the heat of the water.

‘He owns Ellerdine Manor.’

‘Oh.’ This was not getting very far. ‘Is there a—a problem about him? Some scandal, perhaps?’

‘Yes.’ Meggie folded a linen shift with a sharp snap of the cloth.

‘Will you tell me?’

‘No.’

Marie-Claude could not help the frown. ‘Then I shall have to ask elsewhere.’

‘No need to do that. And Miss Harriette wouldn’t wish it.’

‘Well, if that’s so, there must be a good reason.’

Meggie pursed her lips as if coming to an unpleasant but necessary decision. ‘Well, if you must know…he’s a smuggler—amongst other things.’

‘Is that very bad?’

‘Isn’t that enough, miss? It’s not a reputable occupation for a gentleman, is it?’

Marie-Claude read the disapproving expression on Meggie’s face and gave up the hunt. ‘No. I suppose not. That must be it then.’

‘All I’ll say is—no woman of taste or discrimination would seek his company, however handsome his face. Handsome is as handsome does…He’s a dangerous man.’

‘Is he? Why?’

‘He just is! Take my word for it.’

It was clear that she wasn’t going to get any further with Meggie. She tipped back her head and closed her eyes, letting her impressions form and solidify. The fact that Zan might be a smuggler couldn’t be the only reason. As she understood it, almost everyone in Old Wincomlee had a finger in the smuggling pie. As she knew, from personal experience, Harriette herself had been one of the Brotherhood of Free Traders. Captain Harry, sailing her cutter Lydyard’s Ghost, swaggering in boots and breeches.

So what was the issue with Mr Alexander Ellerdine? One moment he had looked at her as if he saw her as a glittering prize to be owned and savoured. And the next—he had fixed her with a stare cold enough to freeze the air in her lungs and informed her she had been as mistaken as he. She had accused him of being capricious. But that was not it either. Capricious was too mild a word for his apparent disgust with her. He had dared—he had had the effrontery—to swat her aside as if she were an autumn wasp!

Was she prepared to leave it like this and pretend they had never met?

No. She was not.

What’s more, she would not. Within her, bright anger warred with intrigue, and a little frisson of excitement such as she barely recalled curled its way into her belly as she ran her tongue over her lips. She would discover the mystery of Mr Ellerdine, for it was her chief desire that he should kiss her again. Then with a little laugh she rubbed at her lips with the scented water. No daughter of the de la Roche family would bow weakly before the whim of fate, but would seize it, shake it.

Alexander Ellerdine had better beware.

Chapter Three

Mr Alexander Ellerdine—Zan, as she had called him—had told her, before his bewildering volte-face and his descent into disgraceful bad manners, that he would come the next day to the Pride to ask after her safe recovery. Marie-Claude waited, finding an excuse from her previous day’s exertions to remain within the house and gardens. She was feeling just a little weary, she informed Meggie—quite understandable. She would stroll and sit in the rose garden and read perhaps. So she did with increasing difficulty. She had never felt so full of energy in her whole life. And of course he did not materialise—and she was not in the least surprised, in the circumstances. He had warned her off, well and truly, with no attempt to soften his words. She paced the rose garden with increasing impatience.

And waited two more full days.

Zan Ellerdine did not come.

Marie-Claude decided to seize the initiative. Events played beautifully into her hands. Meggie’s ageing mother demanded her daughter’s attendance at her side when a flare of the rheumatics kept her to her bed. With no one to notice her comings and goings, and certainly not to question them, on the third morning Marie-Claude ordered up the cob and trap as soon as Wiggins had cleared the breakfast cups and saucers and asked directions from a stable lad. She dressed with care.

She would wager the pearl bracelet that she clasped about her wrist against his being overjoyed, that she was the last visitor he would wish to see uninvited on his doorstep. Tant pis. Too bad. He had made her feel alive again, restored to her a vivacity that she had somehow lost over the years since her coming to England. And the connection between them had been so strong, so undeniable, like knots in a skein of embroidery silk. Until, that is, the unfortunate mention of her name. She must discover what it was about the Hallastons and Lydyard’s Pride that had turned his tongue from lover to viper. It was quite beyond her understanding, and it was not in her nature to let it lie.

Marie-Claude considered her imminent conversation with Zan Ellerdine. How to conduct it, she had as yet no idea, but must wait to see whether he would smile or snarl at her. Then she allowed her mind to assess her own personal situation as the cob picked its sedentary way towards Ellerdine Manor. It was a line of thought that had occupied her frequently of late.

The Hallastons were not her family, of course, the only one of them who had given her that connection being dead now for—unbelievable as it might seem—almost six years. And her future as a Hallaston widow? She could not imagine what it would hold that would bring her true happiness and heal her heart that had recently acquired a hollow emptiness. Perhaps that was the problem, she mused. She no longer had any roots, not in France, the country of her birth that she had fled those five years ago, not here in her adopted country. Her future, cushioned as it was by Hallaston money and consequence, seemed increasingly solitary and just a little lonely.

Until, that was, she had met Zan Ellerdine. It was as if he had opened a window to allow sunshine into a darkened room. Or opened an unread page in a book, promising any number of new possibilities. Only to slam them both shut again! Marie-Claude swiped her whip at a bothersome fly. She did not think she could allow him to do that.

She would never forget Marcus, of course. Marcus Hallaston, the vivid young man who had awoken her to the delights of first love when their paths had crossed in the battle-torn campaign of the Peninsula War. Rescuing her, he had wooed and wed her before she could collect her thoughts, loved her extravagantly, and then died at Salamanca, leaving her destitute in Spain with a new-born child. She would always remember him, always love him. What a whirlwind romance that had been. A regretful little smile curved her lips. But she had known him so little time. And her memories were growing pale with the passage of the years. Sometimes fear gripped her when she could no longer bring Marcus’s face to mind, yet it seemed that her heart was frozen in time, when she was still nothing more than a young girl who had fallen in love with the handsome officer in Wellington’s army.

Until Zan Ellerdine had pulled her into his arms and kissed her. With a delicious warmth, the ice around her heart had melted. And then what had he done? Thrown all her reawakened emotions back in her face.

It was not that she was unloved of course. Marie-Claude denied any such self-pity. There was Raoul, her five-year-old son, spending a few weeks with Harriette and Luke, Marcus’s brother, at The Venmore. Raoul had been her whole life since Marcus’s untimely death. They had not always been safe. She narrowed her eyes at the cob’s ears as the horrors of the past pressed close. Abducted by that villainous individual Jean-Jacques Noir as objects of blackmail to wring money from Luke, it had demanded a midnight run to France by Luke, and Harriette in her old guise as Captain Harry the smuggler, to rescue them and bring them home safe. What an adventure that had been when the Preventives had almost caught them on the beach and Harriette had been shot. Marie-Claude’s recall of the details was vague—it had been a time of danger and extravagant emotions with the future of Harriette and Luke’s marriage on the line—but she had been accepted and welcomed at last, and her son had reclaimed his rightful place in the Hallaston family.

But now Raoul was growing up and showing a streak of Hallaston independence. Of course he would rather spend time with Luke, in the stables, riding round the estate at The Venmore on a new pony, running wild in the woods, than with his mother. Of course he would. It was to be expected. But what would she do with the rest of her life?

Spend it with Zan Ellerdine…

Ridiculous! He did not want her. She should not be demeaning herself by going to meet this man. But Marie-Claude’s newly melted heart began to throb with some strange elation. She would not step back from him and whatever it was between them that had been ignited in that dingy little room. If he did not want her in his home—then he would just have to send her away.

She would not make it easy for him. She shook up the reins and prompted her somnolent cob into a more sprightly gait.

Ellerdine Manor. Not so very far away. First impressions—not good as she steered the cob into the drive. An old mellow stone house, long and low, stood at the end of the drive. Substantial, attractive it must once have been, but now with an air of dilapidation. The drive was choked with weeds and overgrown shrubs that had not seen a gardener for a decade. It was plain to see as she drew closer that the stonework needed attention. The chimneys were crumbling. So this was where her mystery rescuer lived. She wrinkled her nose. It could have been lovely with time and inclination. With money.

This, Marie-Claude thought, was the point of no return, and her courage nearly gave out. Fearing it would if she hesitated longer, she directed the cob at a shambling trot into the stable courtyard to the rear. Stepping down from the little carriage, she headed for the sound of activity in the range of stalls occupying one side of the outbuildings.

It amused her a little. This area looked as if someone had taken it in hand. Someone was more interested in the stables and their occupants than the house itself. She stepped through the open doorway into shadows, bars of sunlight angling across to form strips across the floor. It smelt of dust and hay and horses, in no manner unpleasant. Dust motes danced and glinted gold in the light. Somewhere in the far depths of the building someone whistled tunelessly.

The first stalls were closed. But the third was not.

Marie-Claude approached quietly.

And there he was. Coatless, in shirt and boots and breeches, he was grooming a dark bay stallion. Long smooth strokes of the brush from shoulder to knee. It was no difficulty for her to simply stand and stare, to watch the stretch and bend of his body. The flex of sinew in his powerful thighs. The fluid, agile play of muscle in his back and shoulders under the linen shirt. He reached and stretched with an elegant grace that set off a silent hum of pleasure in her throat. Turned away from her as he was, she could not see his face, but his dark hair shone in the soft light. Once more she experienced the urge to run her fingers through the dishevelled mass.

Here was her future. She was sure of it. Here was the man who could make her body sing again, even without touching her. And when he did—well, she really had no point of comparison. It was as if all the sparkle and bubbles from a glass of French champagne had erupted in her blood. This was the man who could wake her from the trance in which she had lived and slept since Marcus had died. Like Sleeping Beauty roused from a hundred years of enchanted sleep with one kiss from the Prince.

Marie-Claude was transfixed. Until Zan Ellerdine stood to his full height, half-turned and shook back his hair from his face as he reached up to a curry comb on a shelf above his head. As the light gleamed on the sweat at throat and chest she felt a need to touch her tongue to her dry lips. He was magnificent. And how intriguing. He applied himself again to the animal’s quarters, his expression distinctly moody, the lines between nose and mouth heavily drawn, his eyes dark and brooding, snapping with temper. There was no softness in that beautiful face, only a cold ruthlessness, a driving force that would be indifferent to all but the ultimate goal.

But, oh, he was beautiful.

Cold logic immediately took hold. She should run for her life. This was not a man any well-bred woman should seek out. Zan Ellerdine was a man who had no thought of her, of any woman, but only of his own needs, who would take her and use her to his own ends.

A faint noise. She must have moved, scraped her foot against the cobbled floor. Marie-Claude held her breath.

Zan straightened to run his fingers through the stallion’s mane. ‘How’s the mare, Tom?’ He raised his voice to the far whistler. ‘Just a sprain, I thought…’

He glanced back over his shoulder. And stilled, every muscle controlled, the words drying on his lips.

There, just as she had known. Those dark eyes, dark as indigo, looked into her, knew every secret of her heart, she was sure of it. For a brief moment his features softened as he saw her. The lines that had bracketed his mouth smoothed out. The fierce emotion in his eyes faded. She thought he would smile at her. Hoped he would.

His mouth firming into a hard line, Zan Ellerdine tossed the brush he was holding on to the bed of straw and faced her, hands fisted on hips.

‘Go away. There’s no place for you here. You shouldn’t be here.’

It was like a blade to her heart, a tearing pain. Marie-Claude took a moment to wonder why it should matter so much, if a man she barely knew felt no desire to spend even a moment in her company. And after all, wasn’t this what she had feared would happen? If she’d had any sense, any sense at all, even one ounce of dignity and pride, she would never have set foot on Ellerdine property in the first place. Instead she had laid herself open to this.

And she would open herself to more. She simply did not believe that his insolent denial of her reflected that initial response in his face. She summoned all her sang-froid, straightened her spine and raised her chin.

‘I have come to pay a morning call, Zan.’ There! She had called him by his name. ‘Did you not expect me?’

‘No.’

‘You promised you would come to ask after my health. You didn’t.’

‘No. I didn’t.’ Still he stood, uncivil and unwelcoming.

‘Did you even care?’

‘You had wet feet and a ruined gown, nothing more. A gown that Venmore could afford to replace out of the loose change in his pocket. I doubt you would succumb to some life-threatening ailment.’

So callous. So unreasonably impolite. But Marie-Claude kept the eye contact, even when it became uncomfortable. ‘As you see, I am perfectly well, but I was raised to honour my obligations,’ she stated, her demure words at odds with her galloping heart. ‘So since I am indebted to you, I have come to pay a morning call to offer my thanks in a formal manner.’

His lip curled. ‘I was clearly not raised to honour my obligations, my upbringing being lacking in such finesse,’ he retaliated, giving no quarter.

‘Frankly, sir, I don’t believe you.’

That shook him. She saw the glint in his eye, but his response was just as unprepossessing. ‘What you believe or disbelieve is immaterial to me. I thought I made it clear our—our association was at an end. I am not available for such niceties as morning calls. As you see, madam, I’m working and you are disturbing me.’

She would not be put off. ‘Then I will say what I wish to say here, Zan. It will not take but a minute of your so very valuable time.’

‘Say what you have to say, madam, and then you can leave.’

He would be difficult. He was deliberately pushing her away. Well, she would not be pushed away in that manner. ‘My name is Marie-Claude,’ she informed him with a decided edge.

‘I know your name.’

‘You called me Marie-Claude before.’

‘So I did. I should have treated you with more respect.’ His tone was not pleasant.

‘But as you have just informed me, your upbringing was lacking in social niceties. So why should you cavil at using my name? I did not think Englishmen were so stiff-necked as to be so rigid over etiquette. Frenchmen, perhaps.’ She paused, then delivered her nicely judged coup de grâce. ‘Since you kissed me, more than once, and I think did not dislike it, I would suggest you know me quite well enough.’

He breathed out slowly, unfisted his hands, but only to slouch in an unmannerly fashion. ‘What do you want from me?’ Still bleak and unbending.

‘I’m not sure quite what it is I wish to say,’ she admitted. How hard this was, how intransigent he was being. ‘You saved me from drowning, or at least a severe drenching. I think I didn’t thank you enough.’

‘As I said—it’s no great matter. I happened to be there—and I would have saved anyone in your predicament.’

‘I think it does matter. Would you deny that some emotion flows between us? Even now it does. It makes my heart tremble.’ She stretched out her hand to him, but let it fall to her side as the stony expression remained formidably in place. Indeed her heart faltered, but she drove on. She would not leave here until she had said what was in her mind. ‘I think I should tell you that I don’t usually allow strange gentlemen to kiss me—or any gentlemen at all, come to that. Just as I don’t believe you kiss women in inn parlours—unless it’s Sally who showed willing. Then you would.’

‘I might,’ Zan admitted.

‘I envy her.’ She raised her chin higher. ‘What I don’t understand is why you went into fast retreat when you learned my name, as if an overwhelming force had appeared on the horizon.’

His eyes released her at last. Turning from her, Zan picked up a wizened apple from the shelf and offered it to the stallion, who crunched it with relish. ‘What did Meggie say?’ he asked, stroking his hand down the satin neck.

‘That you are a smuggler and I shouldn’t associate with you. But that’s not it. Everyone seems to have some connection with smuggling here. Harriette was a smuggler. George Gadie is a smuggler and Meggie doesn’t disapprove of him. Or not much.’

His eyes snapped from the stallion back to her, fierce as a hawk. ‘You don’t want to know me.’

‘I choose whom I wish to know. I am not a child.’

‘Your family would disapprove.’

‘But why?’

A pause. Would he tell her? ‘I’ll not tell you that.’

‘Then you must allow me to make my own judgements. Do I go, Zan? Or do I stay?’

It was a deliberate challenge. If he wanted her to go, he must tell her so. She would not move one inch otherwise. She could read nothing in his face, anticipate nothing of his thoughts. And so was surprised when she heard him issue the invitation.

‘Since you’re here, I suppose I must take you into the house and provide you with the tea that never materialised at the Boat.’

Something had changed his mind. She inclined her head graciously. ‘It would be polite.’

He retrieved his coat from the stall partition and remarked drily, ‘I know the form after all. My mother was a stickler for good manners. I was at least raised as a gentleman.’

‘I never doubted it. And I would like to see your house.’ She fell into step beside him.

‘You’ll be disappointed.’

He took her hand, drew it through his arm, to lead her out of the stable courtyard towards the main entrance.

Until she hesitated. Looked up at him, head tilted.

‘What’s wrong? Have you changed your mind after all? Not willing to risk stepping into a smuggler’s den of iniquity?’

‘Not at all. I simply wondered why you led me to think that you were raised as an unmannered lout. Not that you will tell me, of course.’

He laughed at her prim reply. ‘You’ll prise no secrets from me, Madame Mermaid!’

Abruptly he opened the door into the entrance hall and stood back so that she could enter.

Marie-Claude stepped into his home. ‘Do you live here alone?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Are you changing your mind again?’

‘No. Are you? Do you not want me here?’

‘I invited you. I have a housekeeper. Mrs Shaw.’

‘I did not think I would need a chaperon, Zan,’ she chided gently. She stood in the centre of the entrance hall and turned slowly round, taking in her surroundings. ‘Will you show me around?’

‘If you wish. It won’t take long.’

He opened the doors that led off the entrance hall, into the library, two small parlours, a withdrawing room, a little room with an escritoire that still held traces of his mother who had used it for her endless letter-writing. He watched Marie-Claude with some amusement as she inspected each room without comment. Without expression. Finally, calling along a corridor to an invisible Mrs Shaw for tea, he led her back into the library, where she sat on the dusty cushions of the sofa, hands neatly folded in her lap.

‘Well? What do you think?’

‘Disreputable,’ she remarked immediately. ‘What are you thinking to allow this?’

He gave a crack of laughter at the directness of her censure. Then Zan sobered, frowned. ‘No money to spend on it.’

‘I was thinking soap and water, rather than money. What is your housekeeper doing? And is smuggling not a lucrative trade? I was under the impression there were fortunes to be made if a smuggler was not too nice in his choice of companions. We hear talk of the vicious rogues in the smuggling gangs even in London. I know all about rogues…’ She shivered as if a draught had touched her arms.

‘It can be lucrative, as you say, with the right contacts,’ he offered.

‘Are you a member of a smuggling gang?’

‘No. I am not.’

‘Forgive me. I did not mean to pry.’

‘I’m sure you did mean it! But I forgive you and I assure you I’m not a vicious rogue. When I organise a run, I use my own operation from the bay, and my own cutter.’ The door opened to admit the spare form of the housekeeper, bearing a tray. ‘And here’s Mrs Shaw with refreshment.’

Whilst Zan leaned his weight back against the edge of the desk, arms folded, Marie-Claude removed her gloves and took charge, murmuring her thanks despite the housekeeper’s chill disapproval of an unchaperoned female visitor, then proceeded to dispense tea with skilled assurance, measuring the amount from the inlaid box, pouring the pale liquid into fragile china cups. Zan took the cup offered to him.

‘I can at least guarantee the quality of this,’ he remarked drily.

‘I’m sure you can.’ She sipped. ‘And doubtless your brandy too. Has it paid any duty?’

‘Not that I know of!’

‘Tell me what you do when you are not smuggling.’

Zan cast himself into one of the chairs and proceeded, against all his good intentions, to tell her the trivial nothings of life on the run-down Ellerdine estate whilst Marie-Claude sat and listened, asking a question when it seemed appropriate. How strange it was. How surreal. There they sat and exchanged polite conversation as if they were in a London withdrawing room, certainly not as if an intense undercurrent throbbed on the air between them. Later Marie-Claude had no clear idea of either her questions or his answers. Only that he had not taken his eyes from her.

Mon Dieu. How confusing this all was. Marie-Claude felt like a butterfly on a pin. His replies were brusque, his dark beauty and stern demeanour never exactly encouraging, yet she felt astonishingly at ease in his company. Eventually she put down her cup. Replaced her gloves. Rose gracefully to her feet and held out her hand to him.

‘I must go. Morning calls should only last half an hour, should they not?’

‘So I understand. I’m sure you’re well versed in such social niceties.’ He bent his head in a formal salute to her knuckles, a glint of humour lighting his dark eyes at last. His lips brushed softly against her skin.

‘You have been most hospitable.’ She managed a smile as her heart jolted with desire. ‘Will you come to Lydyard’s Pride one afternoon? For tea?’

‘No. I will not.’

The humour vanished. The whole pleasant house of cards they had just constructed collapsed around them.

‘Why not?’

‘I would not be made welcome there.’

‘But why would you not? What on earth have you done to cause this impasse? Meggie will not say, and neither will you. How can I accept what I do not understand?’ She frowned at him, her dark brows meeting in frustration. ‘You don’t like the Hallastons, do you?’

‘No.’

‘There! Again! That’s no answer, Zan.’ Her fingers gripped hard when he would have released them. ‘Why won’t you tell me the truth?’

‘Because I choose not to. Goodbye.’ He kissed her fingers once more with an elegant little bow. ‘You have made your morning call and reprimanded me for my lack of duty in fulfilling my own obligations to you. You have seen and disparaged the way I live. Let that be an end to it. Whatever is between us—it can be explained away as a momentary foolishness. We should acknowledge it and bury it. It’s good advice, Madame Mermaid. I advise you to take it.’

‘No. I won’t.’ The frown became almost a scowl. How effective he was at dismissing her, at putting her at a distance. ‘Three days ago you called me Marie-Claude. Your told me I was beautiful and that you had known me all your life. And now you tell me to put it aside as if it had no meaning? Three days ago you kissed me.’

‘So I did and I should not have done so. Forget what happened.’

‘I will not.’ A determination stormed through Marie-Claude, to hold tight to what she believed might be if he would only allow it. ‘If you will not come to me at the Pride, then I must come to you. But you have to agree. I’ll not force myself on you or be a trouble to you.’

‘You don’t know what you’re stepping into. You don’t know me.’

‘I know what I see,’ she persisted. ‘A man who is brave, who risked his own safety to rescue an unknown woman.’

‘And kissed her in an inn parlour. Hardly a reputable act.’

‘Yes, you did. And then you took me home to save my reputation, from some ridiculous sense of honour!’

His lips twisted. ‘Don’t think too well of me.’

‘I’ll think what I like, what I know here.’ And Marie-Claude placed her palm flat against her heart.

For a long moment he looked at her as if he were reading her thoughts, considering an answer. Even searching for a decision. For the length of that moment Marie-Claude thought that he would dismiss her again.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

‘I am thinking that, almost, you persuade me, Madame Mermaid.’

And Zan Ellerdine, for better or worse, made a decision.

Drawing her close, he released her hands to slide his arms around her waist so that she fit perfectly against him, then lowered his head and laid his mouth against hers. Warm and firm, as was hers in reply. He deliberately kept the pressure gentle, seductive, tender even, sinking into her scent, her soft curves. Even when desire flooded through him, prompting him to pounce and ravage, he maintained the control to keep his demand light. His senses swam and he was suddenly iron-hard, but he lifted his head and smoothed the pad of his thumb over her cheek.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll not come to the Pride. Come here if you wish. I’ll not turn you away. But you must take care—if you tell them at the Pride, they’ll try to turn you away from me.’

‘So will you meet with me, Zan?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Come to the cliffs. Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Will you call me by my name?’

‘I will call you by your name.’ His lips, soft as a breath, devastating as a spear of lightning, a seductive promise on hers. Or was it a warning? Marie-Claude was not sure.

‘Adieu, Marie-Claude. Until tomorrow. If you dare…’

Chapter Four

She dared! Marie-Claude kept the assignation. Nothing other than the Crack of Doom would have kept her away. And now she found herself seated in the stern of the Black Spectre, fighting to catch her breath, racing with the waves and the wind towards the far headland, the sails taut and full.

‘Come with me, Marie-Claude,’ he had demanded. ‘We’ll launch the Spectre. Come and sail with me across the bay.’ There he had stood on the cliff top as if he would bar her way. He was impossibly, outrageously persuasive. And so splendid to look at, his even teeth glinting in a smile that challenged her mettle, his black hair shining, lifted by the relentless breeze. ‘I’ll make a sailor of you yet.’

Her heart had leapt, with fear, excitement, desire. ‘No, I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I think I’m afraid…’

‘Afraid?’ He seized her hand, tugged, as his careless smile tugged at her heart. ‘You have the courage to do anything, Madame Mermaid. I swear water’s your element. All you have to do is say yes.’

She doubted, after her recent ordeal, any affinity with water deeper than two inches, but could not refuse. Nor did she need to. He had swept her up into his arms before she could say either yes or no, carried her through the shallows and deposited her, hands firm about her waist, on to the planking of the Black Spectre. Zan Ellerdine had a distinct tendency towards the domineering.

Now here she was, denying her basic fear of open sea to be with him, and it was everything she had imagined it could be if she could overcome her trepidation. Windblown she might be, clinging to the side with rigid fingers, but exhilaration sang through her blood. Nor was it the speed and uncontrolled movement of the little cutter that forced her to catch her breath, even though it leapt over the water with the power of a runaway horse. Given the opportunity to study Zan whilst he was occupied, she felt free to watch the flex and play of his shoulders and back beneath the fine linen of his shirt, the strain of his muscled thighs as he braced against the kick of the waves. If she had enjoyed watching him groom his horse, how much more aware of him was she now as he leapt to secure a rope? Of his potent masculinity, the understated power of his body, the smooth control of interlocked muscle and flesh and sinew.

Suddenly he was standing before her, his body blocking out the light.

‘Why are you clinging to the side?’

‘The waves seem very close,’ she admitted as the spray rose and fell between them in a sparkling arc.

‘I’ll not let you fall overboard. Don’t you trust me?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She squinted up at him through the drops. ‘I think the sea has a mind of its own.’

Placing a booted foot on the seat next to her, he leaned to peel her fingers away from their grip. ‘There—you’re quite safe.’ Then he pressed his lips to the very centre of each palm—first one, then the other—before placing her hands firmly in her lap. ‘I promise to bring you safe home. Just sit there and enjoy it.’

And then he was gone to trim a flapping sail. Marie-Claude closed her fingers over that invisible imprint, still conscious of his closeness. The heat and power of his body as he had leaned against her. What would it be like to lie in those arms, to feel the weight of his thighs?

She turned her face away and shivered, considering whether she should feel some element of guilt. It was impossible to deny that she was acting against some unspoken disapproval, but since no one was prepared to spell out the truth for her she could hardly blame herself. She would snatch at the happiness that was offered. Never had she felt so full of joy, so awake to every sensation. So there was no guilt, no remorse, only a close-knitting into a seamless whole of all that she was with him.

Even when he was too busy to give her any attention it felt as if his mind caressed her. Soft, smooth as the silk he admitted to smuggling, she luxuriated in his presence and dreamed. Until she realised that the old fisherman, Zan’s efficient crew, was frowning at her.

She raised her brows and he came over.

‘What is it, Mr Gadie?’

As weather-beaten as the fishing smacks in the bay, George Gadie propped himself against the thwart at her side. ‘The family won’t like it.’

Marie-Claude sighed. Here it was again. ‘Why would they not?’

‘Not my place to say, mistress.’

‘Then I make my own decisions. No one has given me a good reason why I should not have Mr Ellerdine as my friend. Why should a sail in the Spectre be a subject for any man’s disapproval?’

‘It’ll cause trouble. I’m not saying as I agree with what’s said against him—but don’t say I didn’t warn you, mistress.’

‘I won’t. I see no cause for trouble.’ A trip of anger surprised her. ‘And do I not have you or Meggie as permanent mentor and chaperon? There’s nothing inappropriate in what I do. I am a respectable widow.’

She knew bright colour surged in her cheeks, nothing to do with the effect of the brisk wind. Nothing inappropriate? There was everything inappropriate in the line of her thoughts as her attention moved to Zan when he loped across the little vessel to secure a rope with those clever, long-fingered hands. Marie-Claude’s belly became mellow and liquid with longing. The glamour of his loose-limbed grace and handsome face struck home once more.

‘I will have him as my friend if I choose to,’ she said. ‘I’ll hear no more from you.’

The old fisherman’s lips shut with a hearty smack. ‘Aye, aye, mistress.’ He saluted. ‘You’ll do as you wish, I expect.’

Yes, she would.

But George’s words would not go away, spoiling the moment, forcing Marie-Claude to grasp at honesty. What was she doing?

Flying in the face of her upbringing, certainly. Of all she had been taught, all the principles instilled in her.

A daughter of the de la Roche did not engage in casual affairs. Did not throw aside all ideas and tenets of morality and good breeding. A well-mannered husband, marriage, family—that was as her upbringing dictated, that should have been her expectation in life.

‘But it is not enough!’ she informed a passing gull.

Nor was the life she was leading. Comfort, indeed luxury, a choice of houses in which to live, a thriving son, a loving family. An assured future. She must be the most selfish creature alive to cast all this aside in her mind as unsatisfactory. But it was. It was all enveloping, endlessly suffocating. Restricting every thought, every movement to fit with what the London ton considered respectable.

‘Respectable!’ She issued the word as a challenge as the gull circled and dived into the waves.

She lived, breathed, dressed in the most fashionable of garments, enjoying the pretty clothes that her jointure allowed her. When in London she danced, rode in Hyde Park, laughed.

But was smothered by it all. Stifled by respectability.

She was grateful to Harriette and Luke. Horribly grateful. And always would be. But she was only halfalive. Was this it for her, for ever? To exist, only half-awake?

‘I have a half-life. And I want to live!’

Marie-Claude gripped hard on the glossy wood of the Spectre’s gunwale. After Marcus’s death, she had escaped death, dishonour, appalling fear for herself and her baby son. Of course she would never wish to return to those days, but she recalled how her blood had run hot in her determination to break free from Jean-Jacques Noir and his evil plans. In the intervening years her blood seemed to settle into a dull sluggishness that horrified her. Was she now to sink into tedious oblivion, a widow, a doting and ageing aunt to Luke and Harriette’s children?

‘No! I won’t!’

Although the wind snatched her words away, they still lingered to echo in her mind as her eyes again sought the man who stood by the mast in utmost mastery of the vessel, shirt billowing at sleeve and neck. This man had come into her life, had awoken her. Had stirred her senses into flame. Until that moment in the inn parlour she had not fully understood how desolate her heart had become.

At that moment he turned his head, shouted an order to George Gadie to reef the sail as they would tack into the wind. What did he offer her? Ah, that was the problem. He offered her nothing. Nor ever would, she suspected. He was an enigma. A man with dark shadows. He had saved her and surely would not hurt her, but had shown a coldly calculating streak as he had tried to put her at a distance. He would have succeeded if she had not been so determined to have her own way. He could be ruthless too, she thought, given the right circumstances. And there was a guarded secrecy that trapped him, some mystery that he would not talk of. Certainly he had a reputation. He had not denied being a rake or a libertine, had he?

The mere thought of his mouth on hers took her breath away entirely. Marie-Claude closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun.

You don’t want to know me.

Well, she did, despite her confusion. But what did she want from him? Friendship? Zan Ellerdine was not a friend. What he was she did not rightly know, but it was not friendship that placed him at the centre of her thoughts and her dreams. He was a difficult and dangerous man to associate with.

Would she risk his threat to her reputation?

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.