Miracle (23 page)

Finally, he moved toward her, felt his boots sink in the
quicksandlike
floor, a rush of consternation sluicing through him as the muck sucked at his ankles and gripped him hard. His heart was beating fast as he joined her at the foot of the steps.

"Careful," she called back as she ascended before him. "The steps are very narrow and steep. And extremely slippery." Then she disappeared up the dark bend above him.

"Just what the hell am I doing here?" he muttered to himself, then cursed through his teeth as his foot slipped on something slimy and he fell against the wall.

By the time he joined Miracle in the lighthouse, she had perched upon the wide windowsill that was no less than four feet thick. She swung her bare, sandy feet and regarded him with such intensity that he felt as if he had gone before a magistrate.

"So tell me," she said. "What do you think of my world?"

He glanced around the small chamber, noted the mechanics of the lighthouse, an unsafe pit of a furnace full of wood ash, then the simple cot shoved against the wall. There were stacks of books, sketches on linen canvases of birds and boats. A pair of kid slippers. A shawl. "It is rather . . . sparse," he replied, and glanced again at her bare feet. "You're bleeding, love."

"I've never brought anyone here," she said, ignoring his observation. "Not even Joe Cobbett, though he wanted me to. I wouldn't of course. '
Twouldn't
have been proper."

"It isn't proper to bring me here, either," he told her pointedly and smiled.

"Aye. But then, you're a gentleman. Aren't you? Joe Cobbett wasn't a gentleman. Besides, 'tis my decision who I choose to be my friends."

"Am I your friend, Miracle?"

She lowered her eyes and chewed her lower lip.

Clayton moved toward her.

"No," she commanded, bringing him to an abrupt stop. "You'll stay away from me until I tell you otherwise. '
Tis
my
heart.
I
will choose to whom I wish to give it."

Gracefully, she dropped to the floor, and keeping a cautious and attentive eye on him, she moved to the far side of the room, glanced toward the sea, and frowned. Daylight was quickly disappearing, and with the encroachment of darkness, an intense chill had set in. Still, she did not seem to be bothered, though her clothing was ill suited to the cold. Her dress consisted of a single layer of cotton that had been dyed fawn brown. Its long sleeves were overly full and open about her wrists. There were no frills, no lace, no ruches. Only a delicately braided belt of ropelike material cinched around her tiny waist.

She looked, he thought, like a child, and the idea occurred to him that she no doubt knew little or nothing about the ways of a man, how the sight of her small naked foot peeking from beneath her skirt hem could set a man's blood to racing, or how a simple flash of her arm up her sleeve could make his body go hard as stone. Oh, yes. She obviously knew nothing about a man's baser instincts, or she wouldn't be looking at him now, all timidity and innocence, with wide aqua eyes that were so large they seemed to take up her entire face; she wouldn't part her lips like that, just enough so he could see the tip of her pink tongue toy with the edge of her pearl-white teeth. And she certainly wouldn't allow her gloriously blazing hair to fall so sensually and softly around her face and over her shoulders to blanket her full, pointed breasts. A woman with any worldly common sense would recognize him for what he was, a jaded womanizer who, when it came to women, had the morals of a tomcat.

Then again, a man of his experience should acknowledge her ignorance, and get the hell out.

"John's late with my dinner," came her words as she continued to gaze down the distant beach. "It's not like him. Did he seem well when you last saw him?" she asked, her mind obviously not on Clayton any longer.

He tried to respond but couldn't. He couldn't seem to do anything but allow his eyes to wander up and down her slender form as she leaned, with her back to him, against the window ledge while searching for her friend. He noted how her skirt clung to her gently rounded hips and buttocks, and he could see her ankles. It was then that he noticed her stockings, discarded in a filmy pile near her cot.

At last, she turned to face him, her countenance a melee of emotion that he was beginning to recognize any time she grew concerned. Yet, whatever fears for Johnny she had thought to voice were silenced as her eyes met his. A richer pink now suffused her cheeks—a blush not of the wind and cold, but discomposure. It was as if she had allowed herself to play the temptress but suddenly, like a poorly rehearsed thespian who found himself on a stage before critics, she discovered the folly of her misjudgment and became frightened.

"What are you thinking?" she demanded pointedly.

"That you
are . . .
very beautiful," he replied honestly.

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm not beautiful.
I'm . . .
unusual. Johnny calls
me . . .
exotic. And I'm not intelligent, I'm simply eccentric. And I don't like hypocrisy nor indecisiveness. You, Your Grace, are both. Oh,
no . . ."
She circled him. "I don't believe you. How can I believe you when before, you could find nothing positive to say about me and my home. Now, because you want something from me, you flower me with compliments. Beautiful now when before I was tatty and tacky and unfit for the company of sensitive townsfolk."

"I was blind," he said, not bothering to follow her with his eyes as she paced about him like a vixen scrutinizing a trap.

"You think because you speak kindly now to me, that you break bread at my table, and treat Johnny as your equal, that I should forgive your previous ill humor—"

"I apologize," he announced in a deep, clear voice that seemed to reverberate his growing irritation in the stone chamber. "A thousand times I beg your tolerance and forgiveness—"

"And if I don't forgive you?"

"Then you, mademoiselle, can go to hell."

She stopped suddenly.

He slowly turned to face her. "I've grown far too weary of this game,
Meri
Mine. I'm not a man of extreme patience when it comes to dealing with coy women. I've no reason to be. There are a thousand other women out there, all of whom are as beautiful, or exotic, or intelligent, or eccentric. And a damn sight easier to get along with."

He moved past her toward the stairwell. A candle burned halfway down the flight, painting the spiraling stone steps in shadows and wavering light. He descended the stairs almost recklessly, cursing the recurring image of her feminine stockings tossed so carelessly near her cot.

Yes, better to get the hell away from the bloody island as fast as he could, before this dangerous game he was playing for his brother became
real . . .
before he fell in love with her himself.

What had the vicar once preached? Thou
shalt
not covet thy brother's wife?

Reaching the chapel, he froze. Water lapped at the bottom step, frothed and hissed and appeared to lick long green tongues up at his boots. He stumbled back two steps, then Miracle's small, firm hand on his shoulder stopped him.

She slid by him, paused at the water's edge and looked back up at him. He stared down at her for a few hurtling moments, his heart beating in his ears, the closeness of the quarters and the rising water seeming to suck the air from his lungs. Her eyes regarded him intensely as Miracle leaned against the wall of the stairwell. In the gloomy confines of the stifling tower she seemed small, yet there was nothing in her expression that denoted weakness. He sensed that if he attempted to escape her company and his damnable circumstance, she would stop him at whatever cost.

"What is it?" he snapped. "Say it and get it over with. The goddamn tide is coming in." He glanced beyond her to the rising water.

"I've made you angry," she said.

Releasing a sharp breath, Clayton took another backward step up the tower, leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes. He tried to swallow, to ignore that sense of rising and falling that made his head dizzy and his stomach sick.

"I apologize," came her voice through his fog. "You've been most kind since you've returned to Cavisbrooke. Perhaps my mistrust stems from the fact that
I'm
constantly scrutinized and criticized by the village folk. I've been forced to question any act of kindness or consideration because too often there have been obscured motives for their courtesy. But at some point, one must trust, mustn't one? And the truth is, Your Grace, I've begun to like
you . . . a
little. Therefore, when one deems to like someone, even if it is just a little, there are certain responsibilities that go along with
it . . .
such as trust. Your
Grace . . .
is something wrong?"

Forcing open his eyes, Clayton focused on the water that, in the past eternal seconds, had climbed yet another step up the tower. It flirted now with the hem of Miracle's threadbare little dress of rough cloth, and in a disjointed instant, he forgot the wretched tidewaters and could see nothing but the way the damp material clung in an almost immodest fashion over her rounded bosom—and there were those nipples his brother had waxed on about—
his brother,
for God's sake—they thrust out the material of her dress like tiny rosebuds. Could she not see that? Didn't she know how flagrantly arousing she looked, poised there above the mystical chapel with its ancient, weeping Virgin, looking like some seductive Madonna herself?

Passing one hand over his eyes, he said through his teeth, "Wrong? Yes, something is wrong. I want to get the hell out of this place before I do something I'll regret for the rest of my life."

She thought he meant to quit the tower. He didn't. He wanted away from Cavisbrooke, from Saint Catherine's, from her. Definitely from her.

Miracle lifted her white hand to him, and the sleeve of her gown slid back, exposing her slender wrist and forearm. The pale hair on her arm shimmered like spun gold in the wavering candlelight. "Are you afraid?" she asked softly. "The water isn't so deep. I'll help you through it. Please, Your Grace. Take my hand."

"I'm not an invalid!" he shouted, only in the cavernous tower it sounded more like an angry, wounded roar that made the girl flinch and move away, down into the water. "I am not afraid," he said in a more controlled tone. "I—am—not—afraid, damn you." Then he knocked her hand away, and stumbling down the steps, grabbed her around her waist and heaved her up, flinging her over his shoulder as she cried aloud in surprise and kicked and pounded on his back.

"Put me down! Barbarian! What are you doing?"

Swatting her derriere, he growled, "Shut up and allow me to be a gentleman for once."

"Pray, sir, a gentleman would not treat a lady as if she were a sack of grain!"

The driving water surged around his ankles, then his shins as he struggled toward the door of the chapel, his gaze focused on the distant, watery horizon that seemed to surge higher with every beat of the ocean's heart. He slid once and nearly fell, fumbled for his footing while the sand beneath his feet was sucked away by the current's undertow. At last, he burst from the building, staggered as the rising night wind thrust into his face, and as the waves climbed higher up his legs, he forced himself toward the Undercliff where the steep steps offered certain sanctuary from the water.

He took the steps two at a time, until his legs and lungs began to burn with exertion and realization struck him that he continued to hoist Miracle on his shoulder. At last, he stopped, slid her down his chest, his arms clutching her to him, her body pressed against his, while her feet danced in midair above the rock landing and her glorious hair, spirited by the rising wind, floated around their faces like a wispy copper cloud.