Rake Beyond Redemption (2 page)

‘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.