Rake Beyond Redemption (3 page)

‘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.

A
lexander 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.