Harry dropped back down on the rock and stretched his booted feet out on the sand in front of him. “Sometimes it’s good and other times, well, marriage can try a man’s patience.” He paused. “I say, did Lucy pack another bottle of wine?”
Pierce finished his chicken leg and wiped his greasy hands on his breeches before pulling out the third bottle. He also took out bread and cheese. He offered all three to Harry who reached for the wine.
“I’m just as happy to get drunk.”
“Well, it’s a good day for that,” Pierce observed. It had been too long since he felt the sun warm his face, and had such an open conversation with Harry. He tore off a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese, put the rest of the food back in the hamper, and sat cross-legged on the grainy sand beside his friend.
Harry continued his original train of thought. “There are many times I wish I’d stayed a bachelor like you. Of course, I would have been a poor bachelor with nothing to my name but my military pension.”
“Harry, I’m not a bachelor because I want to be.” Pierce took the bottle and washed down the bread before admitting, “It’s just that I haven’t found the woman I want to spend my life with.” He gazed back out at the sea, noticing that the little boat drifted closer and closer. It was halfway covered by a tarp that flapped in the breeze. So, it wasn’t a fisherman, he mused idly.
“And you won’t ever,” Harry said with authority. “I mean, you think you will—I thought I had with Helen. They are all so cute and sweet and lovely—but something happens to women once they tie the parson’s knot.”
“What do you mean?” Pierce asked, truly curious. He turned his attention back to Harry who was trying to remove his jacket with a good deal of grunting exertion.
“So how do women change?” Pierce prompted.
“They change, they change!” Harry reiterated. “For example, they think you are clever and witty before the ceremony but the minute the 1 do’s’ are spoken, the first thing your new wife wants to do is remake you into something better of her own design. Suddenly everything you say is subject to debate and you can’t do anything right anymore. One time Helen had a fit of tears because I slurped my soup at one of her dinner parties. I’ve always slurped soup! You know that, Penhollow. Have you ever seen me not slurp soup?”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, but Helen did and once we’d married, it was no longer acceptable. And this idea that a man’s home is his castle… what rubbish! The only room a man controls in his own home is his privy and that’s because it is the only place he can hide from his wife and her incessant demands.”
“Oh, come now, Harry. It isn’t as bad as all that.”
Harry took another healthy drink from the wine bottle. “Yes, it is. When I married Helen, I thought she was the most biddable of young women. Now the only words I’m allowed to say are ‘Yes, dear.” ’You are right, dear.“ ‘Of course, dear.” I’m the biddable one!“
Pierce, who had always thought Helen to be too strong-minded for his taste, was more shocked to learn that Harry had at one time thought the woman “biddable.” “But you are happy,” he insisted.
“I’m happy as long as Helen is happy.” He leaned forward. “Trust me, Pierce, that’s our family motto and could be emblazoned under a coat of arms. All the statements vicars and priests make about marriage and women obeying their husbands is a good deal of rot. It wouldn’t be so brutal if a man could at least plan on a little warmth from his wife now and then—if you know what I mean—but there is no assurance to that fact either. You, a single man, probably have the opportunity to enjoy yourself under the covers more than I ever do lying beside my wife every night. I tell you, something happens to women when they marry. By the way,” he said, boozily. “Are you still seeing that widow in Exter?”
“Occasionally.” He didn’t want to change the subject to his personal life. Not right now. Harry was telling him things he’d never heard before. “I would think that would be one of the advantages to matrimony: that a man could be with his mate every night. I assumed that since you and Helen were having children… ?” He let his voice drift off and pitched another stone into the ocean.
“Women don’t like it as much as men.”
“Truly?” Pierce hadn’t found that to be true in his experience.
Harry snorted and lowered his voice. “I’m not proud to tell you I can count on one hand the number of times Helen and I have—well, you know—over the past year. She’s either been pregnant or too tired. My life is going to the damn dogs. I think often of taking on a mistress, but I’d pay a terrible price if Helen found out—and she would find out.”
“Then why are you encouraging me to get married?”
“Because Helen promised a bit of—well, you know—if I had this talk with you. ”Course, as you can see, I’m making a muddle of it.“ He reached for the wine bottle. ”But I’m a desperate man.“ He drained the bottle.
Pierce leaned back against the rock, staring up at the blue sky. Huge, puffy white clouds sailed across it. “I’m just sorry you’re not happier.”
“Married men weren’t meant to be happy,” Harry said philosophically. “At the pub, all of us married ones are more than a bit jealous of you.” He came down to sit on the sand beside Pierce. “But you know, you’ve got to join the ranks with the rest of us sooner or later. There are no Cornish dukes and few earls. To most of the common folk in Cornwall, the Penhollows are royalty. You have to sire an heir, Pierce. Your title demands it.” He snorted. “Even the villagers in Hobbles Moor are anxious for you to marry.”
“I know that,” Pierce answered, his gaze still on the sky. “And I plan on marrying. That is, once I meet the right woman.”
“A woman with an income of three thousand a year sounds like the right woman to me,” Harry said with conviction.
Pierce shook his head. “Money isn’t enough. My father married my mother for her fortune and then proceeded to make her life miserable. There has to be something more.”
“More than money? What else is there?” Harry asked. He blew across the top of the wine bottle, making a tooting sound.
“I don’t know…” Pierce began and then paused. He turned to Harry. “What about love?”
“Love?” Harry stared at him as if there was a third eye growing in the middle of his head. “Have you gone daft?”
“I don’t think so. Don’t you love Helen?”
Harry drew away. “I liked her a great deal at first.”
“But do you love her?” Pierce insisted.
“It’s hard to love someone who is constantly criticizing you.” Harry crossed his arms, cuddling the empty bottle. “Besides, love is a bunch of romantic claptrap,” he said at last. “Don’t tell me you believe in such a thing?”
“No, I don’t—at least, not yet.” He contemplated the waves rolling up onto the small stretch of beach. “But I want to believe. I know I have to sire an heir, and I know time is running out, but deep inside something whispers to me to wait.” He could feel it even now, that inner sense that someday he would find what he was searching for.
He shot a rueful grin at Harry. “I imagine I sound foolish to you.”
His friend didn’t laugh. Instead he admitted softly, “It’s not like I don’t have certain feelings for Helen. It’s more that we seem to have lost track of each other. Of course, if she were less irritable… ?” His voice trailed off.
A movement from the boat caught Pierce’s attention. He jumped to his feet and stared intently out at the water, not certain of what he’d seen.
“What is the matter?” Harry asked, also coming to his feet.
“That dinghy. I could have sworn I saw someone in it.”
“And what if you did? Do we have another bottle of wine?”
“Look how close the boat is to the rocks, Harry. It’ll be smashed in a moment or two.”
Harry scrunched his eyes to look in the direction of the boat. “I don’t see anything.”
> At that moment, a rolling wave lifted the boat and tilted it, and Pierce saw a flash of human flesh. Someone was lying in the bottom of that boat! And it was about to be splintered apart on the rocks.
He took off running. With a skill and experience honed since childhood, he made his way over the slick rocks guarding the entrance to Hermit’s Cove.
The rocks the boat was in danger of crashing against jutted out of the ocean several yards from shore. Pierce went as far by land as he could and then dove into the seawater.
He was a good swimmer. His strokes were sure, but with respect for the currents that ran their way along the coast. Harry was shouting at him from shore, too tipsy to be of much help.
He reached the boat. A hank rope, one end tied to an iron ring on the bow, hung in the water. Pierce grabbed it, scraping his toes on a jut of rock below the water’s surface, and then used that same rock to push off and away.
It was slow going. The boat and ebbing tide impeded his progress. His arms grew heavy, his legs tired. Through sheer force of will, he kept going, heading for the smoother water in the cove.
At last, his feet brushed against land. A few more strokes and he could stand.
He heaved the boat to shore until its bow was safely buried in the sand. Then he fell to the earth and lay there willing his labored breath back to normal.
“You could have drowned, Pierce,” Harry was saying.
Pierce fobbed him off with a wave of his hand and closed his eyes.
A second later his eyes popped open when Harry exclaimed, “God in heaven, it’s a woman. A naked one!”
Pierce rolled over onto his feet. “A what?”
Harry was leaning over the boat, his eyes practically bulging with his excitement. He drew out the syllables. “A woman. Naked.”
Pierce came up beside him. Harry was right. There was a woman on the bottom of the boat.
A beautiful woman.
She was unconscious, her lips pale, her skin tinged slightly red from sunburn. One arm crossed her body modestly. Thick, spiked lashes rested on high cheekbones and her full lips were slightly parted. The sun glinted off a gold chain around her neck.
She was not naked, but very close to being so. The thin white cotton of her nightdress was soaked by the sea and clung to every lush curve of her body like a second skin. Long tendrils of dark hair covered the high tips of her breasts, but nothing else was left to the imagination. Her feet were bare, her legs long and shapely up to the dark triangle of hair between her thighs. For one wild moment all Pierce could do was stand beside Harry and gape with sheer masculine appreciation.
The cry of a gull brought him to his senses. He closed his mouth and pressed his fingers against the pulse point at her neck. Her skin was as smooth as satin and as hot as one of the irons Dane, the blacksmith, heated in his forge. To his relief, her pulse beat steadily. He leaned over and felt her breath against his cheek.
“It’s a mermaid,” Harry rasped out.
“Oh, no, she’s very human.” He lifted her out of the boat. “Spread my coat out,” he ordered Harry who hurried to comply.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Pierce said, laying the girl on his jacket.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, but she’s not well. She’s obviously been floating out there for some time.” He took a water flask from the hamper and poured some between her lips. No reaction. “We must get help for her, and quickly.”
“Where will we take her?” Harry asked, staring down at her.
Curiously proprietorial, Pierce took off his wet shirt and laid it over the woman to cover her from Harry’s prying eyes. “Hand me your jacket. She’s had enough of sun and wind.”
The corners of Harry’s mouth turned down as if he were disappointed he could no longer feast upon her nakedness, but he did as he was asked.
“This seems odd,” Harry said. “You don’t always find people floating around in boats unconscious off this coast. Quite dangerous.”
“No,” Pierce agreed absently, ignoring Harry’s wine-induced speculation. He attempted to wet her lips with water again. The woman shifted and frowned.
Pierce pulled back, watching.
He was rewarded for his patience when she opened her eyes. They were the deep, vivid green of bottled glass.
For a second their gazes met and held. Pierce felt a tremble, a sense of anticipation, flow through him.
He wasn’t a superstitious man, but in that moment, he had the eerie feeling that this woman and he had been destined to meet. Perhaps they’d met before?
He didn’t think so. He would have remembered her. Even wet and beaten by the sea, she was an uncommon beauty… but there was something else. Something about her that pulled him to her.
Her lips curved into a small half smile and then she closed her eyes, sinking back into the bliss of unconsciousness.
He pulled on his boots, shrugged into his jacket, and picked her up in his arms. She weighed next to nothing. He strode toward the narrow passageway leading out of Hermit’s Cove.
Harry had bent over to retrieve the sopping material out of the bottom of the boat. “What have we here?” he asked, and then noticed that Pierce was leaving. “Wait, Pierce, where are you going? What are you going to do with her?”
“I’m taking her to Penhollow Hall,” he answered without looking back.
Chapter 3
The sound of roaring waves in Eden’s ears subsided and turned softer, gentler.
She didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to keep her eyes closed and drift in a state of half-consciousness forever.
Even as wakefulness pulled at her, she snuggled deeper into the fresh, starchy sheets. The air smelled of beeswax and the sound of water splashing was so restful—
Sudden, terrifying visions of the storm rushed into her head, tumbling with memories of what she’d done. She’d escaped, but in doing so, she had gone against Madame Indrani and a powerful sultan. Fear ran cold inside her.
Then she heard a woman’s voice say, “She’s been like this all night, poor thing. She’ll be all calm and restful-like, then the next moment very agitated. She mutters a bit but I can’t make out a word she is saying.”
Eden went still, her eyes clamped shut. Where was she? Who had found her? The woman leaned over her—Eden could feel her body heat—and fluffed the pillow beneath her head.
“Here now, Betsy,” the woman said. “We must clean up around this bed.” The woman lowered her voice confidentially. “You know what a stickler Lady Penhollow is and she’s already a bit put out, with his lordship marching into the house with this poor lass.”
“What would she have had him do, Mrs. Meeks?” Betsy asked. She had the sweet, eager voice of a young girl. “He couldn’t leave her on the shore, could he?”
“I don’t think she knew what to make of the matter. Lord Pierce swept through the front door half dressed, shouting orders, and with this girl in his arms. Rescued her from a boat, he did, and felt responsible for her. He even stayed half the night in that chair right there in the corner until Dr. Hargrave announced that she’d taken a turn for the better. Wouldn’t leave her, he wouldn’t. Not until his mother claimed it was unseemly to have him hovering over her that way. ”Watch her for me, Mrs. Meeks," he said, and I did exactly that. Watched her the rest of the night as if she was my own, I did.“
Eden’s heart beat with alarm. Who was this Lord Pierce?
“You must be exhausted,” Betsy said.
“That I am.”
Eden slitted open her eyes. Mrs. Meeks was a roly-poly woman with a huge bosom and salt-and-pepper hair. Betsy was close to Eden’s own age and wore a very large mobcap from which squiggles of unruly red hair peeked out beneath. Both women appeared as if they had never known a day of hunger in their lives.
“Lord Pierce has left word he is to be notified the very second she wakes,” Mrs. Meeks said. “I must go attend to a few matters and I want you to stay here at the lass�
�s side.”
Betsy dropped her voice. “Do you believe she’s the one? The whole village is talking about it. The Widow won’t say yea or nay.”
“I don’t know. Certainly she is beautiful. I’ve never seen a lovelier woman.”
Eden could feel them both looking at her now, staring. The one what? She could barely breathe.
“She looks a bit like what you’d imagine a sea sprite would,” Betsy said. “You know, with long curling hair and fine, black, spiky eyelashes.”
“Or she could be some poor unfortunate soul whose ship was wrecked in that terrible storm,” Mrs. Meeks answered in a practical tone. “Lord Pierce sent out riders last night to search for information. He’ll have the right of her story soon enough.”
Betsy shook her head. “He’ll find nothing. Trust me, I have a sense about these things, even my ma says so. It’s no simple accident that the sea threw this lass into Lord Pierce’s arms.”
“Well, if she is the one, it’s too bad we didn’t think to ask for her to be rich. This poor child arrived to us practically naked, wearing little more than that gold chain around her neck. Indecent she was. I had to dress her in one of my old night rails. It’s far too large for her but it’s more substantial than that shift she was wearing.”
“Oh, but she is rich,” Betsy said.
Rich? Eden wondered.
“Rich?” Mrs. Meeks repeated. “How so?”
“You haven’t seen the clothes then?” Betsy asked.
“What clothes?”
“The clothes Captain Dutton found in the bottom of her boat.”
“No one told me about them,” Mrs. Meeks said, genuinely vexed.
“Perhaps because you were so busy in here,” Betsy suggested helpfully. “Mrs. Ivy had Lucy hang them in the laundry. You should see them, Mrs. Meeks. One dress looks as if it has been spun from gold.”
A cramp formed in Eden’s foot from lying so still. She slid her other foot over to press against the cramp, easing the pain slightly, while praying the two women didn’t notice. She needed them to leave her alone so she could escape this house. Nasim and Gadi could be out searching for her already.
WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE Page 4
