A Reckless Match

by Kate Bateman

  Her legs were beginning to ache. They must’ve covered at least half a mile already. Maybe more. The tunnel was sloping gradually downward; perhaps it ran all the way to the sea?

  Surely he didn’t intend to follow it that far? Then again, he’d been a soldier. He was probably used to marching twenty miles a day without complaint.

  She hitched her satchel higher on her hip. Well, he certainly wouldn’t hear a Montgomery complaining. She’d go wherever he led.

  Chapter 9

  “You know,” Maddie said as they trudged onward, “The fact that I could have died gave me a great deal to think about. What if I’d never woken up? What would people have said about me?”

  “They’d have said you were a hoyden who never wore a hat.”

  She ignored his levity. “No, really. What had I achieved? The sad truth is, very little.”

  “You were only eighteen. Nobody would have expected—”

  “Exactly! A well-born woman like me isn’t expected to do anything. Nothing interesting, at any rate. We’re supposed to live quietly, speak politely, marry where we’re told. It’s only you men who are expected to make something of yourselves. You’re given an education to help you make advances in science or literature. You become lawyers and landowners, soldiers and clergymen, artists and doctors. Just look at Tristan; he’s followed his passion for architecture—he’s having a wonderful time gadding about the Continent.”

  She sucked in a breath, astonished that such a vehement diatribe had come out of her mouth. She’d never articulated her frustrations before, never even known she harbored such feelings, other than a vague sense of dissatisfaction, but they must have been simmering inside her for months. Years, even.

  “Joan of Arc led the French to victory over the English when she was eighteen,” she said, more levelly. “Cleopatra became a queen.”

  She scratched another chalk arrow on the wall. “It’s not as if I want to do anything spectacular. Just something I can look back on and be proud of. Something that leaves the world a better place, with a little more knowledge or beauty. Is that so much to ask?”

  Gryff grunted, and she held her breath, afraid that she’d said too much, revealed too much. This darkness was dangerous; it created a false sense of intimacy, it made her feel like she could tell him anything.

  Ridiculous.

  “It’s a noble goal,” he said finally, and she let out a surprised little huff of relief that he wasn’t mocking her ambition out of hand. “When you think of it, I haven’t done much for the past few years either, except march around the Continent fighting. That’s hardly an achievement.”

  She opened her mouth to remind him that he’d risked life and limb to defend his country, but he cut her off with another question.

  “So what did you do when you recovered?”

  “I went to London and did all the things I’d always wanted to do. I visited the theater and the opera. The British Museum, the Tower, and the Royal Exchange.”

  She’d enjoyed the social whirl, the excitement of being courted and flirted with, but no particular man had caught her fancy and she’d been in no hurry to choose a husband.

  “But there are only so many routs and balls one can go to before it becomes tedious,” she finished.

  “Surely you jest?” he gasped, mock-scandalized. “I thought you ladies lived for dancing and shopping. Who was it that said, ‘When you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life’?”

  “Samuel Johnson. But I must be the exception, because after a few weeks, all I wanted to do was come back here and start digging.”

  “Where did this fascination with archaeology come from?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve always been interested in history. It’s hard not to be, living around here. Wales has more castles per square mile than anywhere else in Europe. But I suppose my serious interest began when father’s old school friend Sir Richard Hoare came to visit. He and a man named William Cunnington had been investigating a site near the stone circle of Stonehenge, near Glastonbury. They discovered the Bush Barrow treasure, an ancient burial that contained jewelry, gold, and weapons. Sir Richard believes there are similar hoards buried all over the country.”

  “Forgive me for playing devil’s advocate,” Gryff said, “but isn’t that just grave robbing? You wouldn’t dig up someone who was buried last week and steal their wedding ring. So why is it acceptable to dig up someone who died a thousand years ago?”

  Maddie frowned. She’d never really thought of it like that. Trust a Davies to come up with an irritatingly logical argument.

  “Well, I mean, the bones are never disturbed. It’s just the artifacts that are removed. Besides, it’s not just barrows and tunnel graves that yield discoveries. Plenty of times a hoard has been hidden by someone who meant to come back and retrieve it, but they were killed before they could. So it just stays there, waiting for someone like me to find it.”

  Gryff halted and Maddie breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  “Oh, thank heavens. Have we reached the end?”

  “Not at all. There are side tunnels that branch off. Which way shall we go?”

  “Don’t you think we’ve gone far enough?”

  He sent her a chiding look. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Listen, I can hear rushing water. I think we’re about to find that underground stream you were talking about.” He pointed to the narrowest of the available routes. “This way.”

  Maddie eyed the slim crack in the rock with apprehension. “I don’t think so. What if it gets even narrower? I’m not getting wedged in there.”

  “You won’t. I’ll go first, and I’m bigger than you.”

  “What if you get stuck?”

  “Then I expect you’ll just leave me down here to starve,” he said, grinning. “You’ll be glad to see the end of another Dastardly Davies.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Maddie drew a new arrow on the wall and gave a sarcastic flourish of the hand for him to precede her. “After you.”

  He turned sideways and started to push himself through the narrow opening. After a few moments the glow from his lantern disappeared completely and Maddie felt a rush of alarm.

  And then his voice echoed back from between the stones. “Come on, Montgomery. Stop dawdling.”

  With a sigh, Maddie followed. She lifted her lantern high and sucked in her stomach to edge sideways through the narrow crack. Her skirts snagged on the uneven walls and she mentally cursed Gryffud Davies with every breath, but after about ten feet or so the crevice widened out again and they carried on.

  “My father had his own plan to grow the local economy, you know,” Gryff said suddenly. “But it was doomed from the start.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it needed Montgomery cooperation.”

  “Ah.” Maddie wrinkled her nose. “The only time a Davies ever cooperated with a Montgomery was to hand him a poisoned chalice, or to give him a helpful push off the battlements. Legend has it Queen Elizabeth once told Shakespeare that our families made his Montagues and Capulets look like amateurs.”

  “Good to know we’re maintaining tradition.”

  “What was your father’s scheme? Are you talking about that canal?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you’re right. It is a lost cause.”

  “I expect your father refused it on principle.”

  “I won’t deny that thwarting a Davies would have given him a great deal of pleasure, but there’s logic behind his opposition too. He refused because I asked him to.”

  Gryff stopped dead, and she almost bumped into him as he twisted around to glare at her.

  “You! You’re the reason? But why? You’d get a percentage of the tariffs. Why would you have an aversion to making money?”

  “I don’t have an aversion to making money,” Maddie countered irritably. “Far from it.”

  God knew, any income would be a blessing right now, even if it derived from a deal with the devil. Or a Davies, which was tant
amount to the same thing. But a girl had to maintain some moral principles.

  “What’s your objection, then?” Gryff ground out.

  “Those plans had the canal cutting dangerously close to an important tunnel grave near Newchurch. I asked your father for permission to dig there for the past three summers, and he always refused. He wouldn’t even allow me to dig a test trench to see how far the site extends.”

  Gryff frowned. “So it’s as I said earlier: You think people who’ve been dead for hundreds of years should take precedence over people living right now.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. The past and the present should be given equal consideration. And since when did you become interested in this project? You haven’t even been here for the last few years.”

  His eyes narrowed in displeasure at her accusatory tone, and his brows rose in a haughty, forbidding expression that instantly put her hackles up.

  “I became interested when I became Earl of Powys,” he said curtly. “Everything that happens on these lands is my business. My father chose that particular route because it was the shortest distance from the pithead to the river. A straight line is always the cheapest. It would cost a great deal more to avoid the burial site. Why are you so set against progress?”

  “What I’m set against,” Maddie snapped, “is ruining some perfectly lovely countryside with a great big ugly canal.”

  “It’s just a straight river,” he ground out.

  She shook her head, stubbornness in every line. “We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this subject, my lord.”

  The corner of his eye flickered at her mocking use of his title. He took a menacing step closer and a little thrill of excitement—or terror—shot through her veins. He really was an imposing specimen.

  The glow of their lanterns and the unfathomable darkness beyond gave the oddest impression that they were the only two people in the universe, floating somewhere out of time and space.

  His shirt brushed against her chest and his breath warmed her face as he glared down at her in exasperation. Her stomach contracted as she inhaled his scent.

  A muscle twitched on the side of his jaw and his eyes had darkened almost to black. “You are just as vexing as I remember, Miss Montgomery,” he growled.

  Maddie returned his look stare for stare, refusing to be cowed by his arrogant displeasure, but her heart was beating so hard against her ribs that she was sure it echoed around the still chamber.

  “Likewise.”

  For a split second his angry gaze flicked down to her lips, and she had the strangest thought that he was about to kiss her, even as furious as he was. Her body stilled, tingling with an inexplicable combination of fright and desire.

  She half expected him to push her up against the wall and ravish her, but after another uncomfortably tense moment he let out a muffled curse and stepped back. He swiveled around, away from her, and Maddie expelled a shaky breath, unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

  Dear God, they were enemies! She must be light-headed from the lack of air. These were clearly the first symptoms of asphyxia: lurid fantasies and shameless hallucinations. She was succumbing to madness, like some lust-crazed female hermit.

  She squinted over at the far wall, trying to gather her wits, and something odd caught her attention.

  “Gryff,” she murmured. “Look.”

  “What?” His tone was nothing short of sullen.

  She gestured with her lantern. “Over there. Is that … daylight?”

  He stomped back to her side and squinted at the area she’d indicated, a corner of the rock where the shadows seemed a paler gray than the rest. And then his brows lifted in reluctant agreement.

  “Damn it all, I think you’re right.”

  He set off with unflattering haste, skirting a rocky ledge and leaping over another with athletic ease.

  Maddie followed, hampered by her skirts and by her shorter stride, and soon the dim glow she’d detected grew more distinct. They rounded a curve in the rock, and the pale patch revealed itself to be a semicircular hole, about ten feet across, through which a slow trickle of water flowed.

  Gryff edged up to it and, keeping a strong grip on a nearby pillar of rock, thrust his head through the aperture. His delighted cry almost made her jump out of her skin.

  “We did it! We found a way out.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. “You mean I did,” she muttered. “You were too busy bellowing.”

  He pulled his head back through. “It was a team effort.”

  “What’s out there?”

  “Another cave, but this one opens out onto the sea.”

  Maddie blinked. “The sea! You mean we’ve walked all the way to the coast? But that’s impossible.”

  He shot her a grin, his good humor apparently restored with the prospect of soon being rid of her.

  “Obviously not. Time just flies when you’re having fun. We’ve probably only walked a few miles, all in, it’s just hard to tell when you’re underground.”

  He edged his big shoulders beneath the overhang and climbed through. His face reappeared, uplit by his lantern; it gave him a dangerous, devilish appearance. He seemed quite at home down here, like Hades in his underworld.

  A blast of fresh air, laden with the unmistakable scent of seaweed and salt, ruffled his hair, and Maddie tried not to notice how attractive he looked. She was glad they would soon be out of the darkness.

  “There’s a bit of a drop to the floor on this side,” he said. “Twenty feet or so. But we should be able to climb down without getting too wet. Come through.”

  Twenty feet? Maddie wasn’t particularly fond of heights, and she hadn’t climbed anything higher than a five-bar gate for years, but she could do this. She wouldn’t shame the name of Montgomery by falling at the final hurdle.

  “Pass your lantern through to me,” he commanded.

  She sent him a warning look. “You’re not going to leave me here in the dark are you? Remember your promise.”

  “You have my word. I’ll wait to strangle you until we’re out of the cave,” he said drily. “I want decent light to witness your last, gasping breaths.”

  She sent him an unimpressed glare and relinquished the light, then gathered her skirts and clambered through the gap between the water and the low-hanging ceiling. Her hair snagged on a rock, but she gave it an impatient tug and emerged onto a perilously narrow ledge next to Gryff.

  A swift peek downward had her pressing back into the rock face behind her. “That’s forty feet, not twenty!” Her voice had risen an octave in panic.

  “Breathe,” he chuckled. His warm, rough hand slid over hers where she clutched the rock, and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. She sucked in a steadying breath.

  The outcrop they were on was barely a foot wide, high up near the domed ceiling of a very large cave. The entrance—with a welcome patch of blue sky and gray sea just visible through it—made Maddie’s spirits soar.

  Below them—far below—the cavern floor was a mixture of sandy ridges and tumbled rocks, some still filled with watery pools. The high-water mark, a band of dark seaweed and clustered black mussels, could be seen about halfway down the walls.

  The lower half of the cave clearly filled with water when the tide was in, making it virtually inaccessible from the beach, but where they stood, higher up, the rocky shelves remained dry.

  “Good thing the tide is out,” Maddie gasped. Her voice still sounded a bit breathy. “Or we’d be trapped. We’d have to wait until the water got low enough to walk out, because I certainly don’t fancy a swim.”

  Gryff turned to face the rock and caught her gaze. “I’ll go first. This isn’t a difficult climb. There are plenty of places to put your hands and feet.”

  Maddie shook her head. Her legs felt like water and her fingers were white-tipped from where she clung to the rock as tightly as a shellfish. “I really don’t think I can do this.”

  “Of course you can. You once told me that girl
s could do everything boys could do. And then you beat Rhys climbing to the top of an apple tree.”

  “I was thirteen, and wearing breeches. How can I climb now, with these skirts?”

  “Feel free to take ’em off.”

  She gave him a hard stare.

  “Oh, come on. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ever seen your unmentionables, now, would it?”

  The heat of embarrassment crept up her neck. “If you’re referring to that time you and Morgan came across Harriet and me panning for gold, it’s something I’ve tried hard to forget.”

  His amusement was a wicked rumble in his chest. “I haven’t laughed that much in years.”

  “You tackled me, pulled my skirts up over my head so my arms were trapped inside like a sack, and tied the top with string.”

  “It was a brilliant plan, if I do say so myself. I’ll never forget the sight of you rolling around, petticoats flailing.” He grinned, utterly unrepentant. “I had no idea well-bred young ladies even knew such shocking language.”

  “It took me ages to get free. I rolled on a thistle.”

  He snorted. “You got off lightly compared with some of the lads at boarding school. We once staked Hugo Bambury to the chapel lawns using croquet hoops and left him there all night, covered in honey. All you had to contend with was a little mud.”

  “You were a monster.”

  “True. But you have to admit, never dull.” He took another assessing glance downward. “Now, since we’ve established that I’ve already seen your underthings, I’ll go first. I’m fairly confident I won’t get distracted and fall to my death if I happen to glance up and see your stockings.”

  Maddie lifted her brows. “Fairly confident?”

  The wicked twinkle was back. “If I’m wrong, at least I’ll die happy.”

  She was wearing a chemise, petticoats, stockings, and cotton drawers beneath her skirts, but there was still no way she was going to risk him seeing her from below.

  “I know what you’re doing, Gryffud Davies. You’re trying to distract me so I forget to be afraid of the climb. And while the thought of your mangled body is entertaining, I think we should go down together. Side by side.”