Silver-Tongued Temptress

by Sara Ackerman

  “What a bold creature to stay in the water playing when a stranger approaches. Most likely not Bea.”

  Beatrice was ever cautious and would have swum away, sought shelter, and been prepared to attack before any intruder would even have noticed the ripples her hasty departure would have caused. Defeat weighed like a stone around his neck, and the oars cut a sluggish swath through the darkening waves.

  The shore was close now, yet a quick glance to the rocks where the shadowed swimmer had been hiding revealed nothing but lapping waves. Scanning the beach, he looked for any sign she had gone to shore. Finding none, worry took root.

  “I hope no harm has befallen her.”

  “Careful, or you’ll row over me.” The fine hairs on his arm raised at the voice’s familiarity.

  The woman, who had pulled herself to the lengthening fingers of sunlight splaying across the water’s surface, waved at him and swam behind the craggy ledge. He caught a glimpse of her curvy backside as she pulled herself onto shore and wrung out the water in her hair. She turned her profile to him, and his heart stopped.

  “Bea!” he shouted, too afraid to hope but helpless to stop.

  She peered over a large boulder, her familiar heart-shaped face and lush lips so welcome a sight her face blurred and wavered, emotion clogging his throat. It is her! Frantic to be near her, he jumped out of the boat and dragged the vessel the remaining distance to shore. Once on dry land, he ran, stumbling through the wet sand in his haste to see her.

  Now clothed in a light shift, she ran away from him, peering over her shoulder, fright etched on her pale face. Though exhaustion lay heavy upon him, he lengthened his stride before she had put too much distance between them.

  “Oh, my God! It is you.” He searched her face, afraid to take his eyes from her, and when unable to resist, he cupped her cheeks to caress her soft skin. His fingers trembled, and he worried he had been clumsy and hurt her when he saw her flinch.

  “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.” For hurting you now, for sending you to danger, for not being there when you needed me most. His faults were numerous, and from the continued look of fear on her face, he had much for which to atone. He’d have to seek her absolution later, after he had assured himself she was real. Because he feared she’d run away, and because he could no longer help himself, he enfolded her in his arms and buried his face against her neck.

  “Who are you…mphf?” But her question was to remain a mystery, for he captured her lips with his and kissed her. Not wishing to add to her distress, he kept his kiss chaste, praying she recognized how his mouth paid her reverence and respect. The rounded curves he held in his arms and the gentle touch of her mouth against his brought him a measure of peace he had not experienced since the night she had gone missing. He was home.

  Breaking off the kiss, he tucked her head onto his chest, and the hole he had carried with him since her ship had exploded shrank.

  “Beatrice, the world declared you dead, but I refused to lose hope. I’ve been looking for you for months, determined to find you.” He cradled her face in his large hands again, letting a shaking thumb glide across her cheek and over her swollen lips. For endless moments she stared at him, confusion replacing fear. While she studied him, he waited.

  What does she see? Will she turn me away?

  She nipped at his thumb resting on her lower lip, and he groaned. Perhaps he was to be forgiven after all.

  “T-Thomas?” She loosened her arms from his tight hold and ran her hands over his face. “Is it you?”

  Thomas’s stomach clenched. Something was wrong with Beatrice. Not knowing what, all he could do was offer her comfort, but when he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, she flinched and pushed away. His arrival was not the happy reunion he’d expected. Instead of bringing joy, he’d brought pain and confusion.

  In her haste to leave him, Bea stumbled and fell to the sand. He offered his hand to help her rise, but she raised her hands over her head as if protecting herself from a striking blow.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’d never hurt you. Tell me how to help you.” He crouched on the sand, careful to maintain a comfortable distance between them.

  She whimpered and clutched her temples. “My head. What’s happening to me?”

  Chapter 18

  Reading, England, July 1802

  “What’s wrong with her, Doctor?” Mr. Wickes asked, his hushed whisper carrying to where Bea lay on the bed. She rolled on her side and faced away from the two men carrying on a whispered conversation within the confines of her room at Mr. Wickes’s country estate.

  “She’s experienced a trauma, Thomas. You can’t expect her to recover instantaneously.”

  “But her body has healed.”

  “Yet her mind remains trapped in the horrors of her past.”

  Bea tried to ward off the images the doctor’s statement resurrected, and failed. It was true. Her body was no longer wracked in unbearable pain. Broken ribs had healed, bruises had faded, but the images of her dead maid and her husband’s ugly sneer before she plunged the knife into his belly had not disappeared.

  “What can I do to bring her back?”

  She covered her ears with her hands and moaned. Leave me to die in peace, Sir Wickes.

  “Give her a purpose, Thomas, and a reason to live.”

  The men’s voices faded away, and Bea was once more alone.

  Quiet and alone. How I like it.

  Why, then, was her melancholy worse now in their absence than in their presence? Curling in a tight ball, Bea rocked herself and stared at the wall while her life, pitiful as it had been, played before her.

  ****

  “Who are you?” Bea asked. She had jolted awake in one of Sir Wickes’s many guest bedchambers to the unsettling sensation someone was watching her sleep. Her instincts were right. A man sat on a chair near the windows, his features obscured by the encroaching darkness.

  “What are you doing here? Where’s Mr. Wickes?” When he failed to respond, she rolled over and pulled the covers to her chin, dismissing the rude man and his officious silence. It’s the doctor keeping vigil to ensure I don’t expire while in his care. As quiet as the room was, she listened for a rustle of clothing, a shifting of limbs, or some indication the man in the corner was leaving. If possible, the room quieted even more, until the whoosh of pulsing blood deafened all other sounds. “Doctor Maxwell, I’m fine. You needn’t remain here with me. I simply need rest.” Having dismissed the man in the shadows, Bea resolved to put this strange interlude from her mind. When the man neither answered nor made any move to leave, worry clouded her mind.

  He is not Mr. Wickes or the doctor. They are both too polite to remain silent and ignore my questions, so if it’s not either of them, who can it be? An unpleasant notion wiggled its way to her conscious mind. Perhaps it was someone to avenge her dead husband. Though Mr. Wickes had assured her the double murder of her husband and maid was blamed on a botched robbery by an escaped felon, Beatrice did not believe such a matter was so easily explained away. Someone had to question why she alone survived. This man, it seemed, was he. My time has come.

  Beatrice tried to convince herself she cared not if the man was intent on killing her. By the time she had composed herself enough to talk to him, she was pleased to hear her voice did not betray her extreme panic. “If you’re here to kill me, please get on with it. I’ve been dying in stages for almost two years. Death and a quiet afterlife will be a pleasant reprieve from this business of living.”

  There was a rustle and a shift, and Bea listened in mounting horror as the man shuffled to the bed. He was here to kill her. Her eyes slammed shut and she knew a moment’s panic before her hand closed around the knife she had stored underneath her pillow. Grasping the hilt in her hand, she flung herself off the bed, sprang to her feet, and charged the intruder. She had only a vague idea where he was standing, for the room remained concealed in shadows, but she hoped he’d not expected her to fight back. It didn’t matter. He
was faster and more skilled and had her pinned against the wall in a matter of seconds, her own knife pressed against her throat.

  The man remained cloaked in darkness, though his pungent pipe tobacco was not as reticent. The smoke curled around her head and into her nose, the bitter taste coating the back of her tongue. It was the same tobacco her husband had used. Panic threatened to close her throat, yet she managed to speak around the lump. “Please. Don’t kill me.”

  “Why not?” the man said, his soft question punctuated by an odd lilt. “You were ready for it moments ago.”

  Those blasphemous words had been true, but with her own death imminent, she saw the lie behind her casual request. Her fight to survive, however hopeless, proved it.

  “I’m not ready to die.”

  He pressed the knife closer. “What did you say?”

  “I’m not ready to die! I want to live!”

  The knife’s pressure eased, and she was released, her knees buckling from the stress of her encounter. She sat hunched on the floor, gasping, and crying out when several small flickers cut through the gloom. As she watched, more light appeared to chase the shadows away, and her familiar room took shape. Two familiar booted feet strode into her vision.

  “Mr. Wickes? Someone tried to kill me.”

  He crouched to her level and took her cold hands in his. “Not kill you. Shake you out of your stupor, maybe.”

  “You planned this? After everything I’ve been through, you ordered someone to attack a defenseless, wounded woman?”

  “I asked a colleague to help you. He said you were hiding, protecting yourself from further harm. The barrier you erected worked too well, and it has prevented you from living. When I told him about you, he feared you were preparing to die.”

  “He’s right. I was, but I am no longer, Mr. Wickes, so please refrain from sending attackers to my bedroom in the future. My constitution cannot cope with further trauma.”

  “You’re wrong,” the lilting voice said. “You fear the evil you have experienced has corrupted you, made you weak, but it has strengthened you beyond measure and given you the tools you need to survive.”

  A small man, no taller than her sister Evie, stepped out from behind Mr. Wickes’s shadow and stood before her. His wrinkled face and dark brown eyes held a lifetime of happiness and sorrow, and she flinched from the pain she saw lurking there. He wore his long black hair loose about his shoulders. Clad in a flowing white shirt, the fabric draped over his torso and his legs to conceal the loose-legged black trousers which almost dwarfed his feet.

  “Who are you?”

  Mr. Wickes stood and helped Beatrice to rise before introducing the strange man to her. “This is Jones. He does side jobs for me when needed, is an accomplished thief, a skilled fighter, and has become a friend in the years I’ve known him. He has agreed to train you.”

  “Train me? For what purpose?”

  Jones approached her, and fearing a reprisal of his previous activities, she plastered herself to the wall he had pinned her to moments ago. “You hold on to your anger and fear like a shield. I can show you how to harness those emotions and wield them to your advantage.” The musical cadence of his speech soothed some of her frightened nerves, but his plan to help her left her panicked.

  “You want me to learn to fight, Mr. Wickes? Ladies of quality do not make a production of our anger or resort to fisticuffs when events do not turn in our favor.”

  “The moment you defended yourself against your husband, you forfeited your right to be called a lady of quality. It is time for you to become something more.”

  She hung her head, for it was true. Her actions separated her from her peers, and she’d never again be counted in their ranks. To survive, she had sacrificed her chance to live a normal life as suited a woman of her station. Life as she’d understood it was gone.

  What does he mean by “to become something more”? The path he’d have her trod was dark, uncertain, and full of pitfalls and lurking enemies. Mr. Wickes’s idea to train her intrigued her, though fighting accomplished nothing save to rid herself of unwanted guilt and anger. She didn’t see how this choice offered anything but danger, and she’d lived a lifetime of danger in the eighteen months of her marriage. Another path presented itself, one which led to a quiet country home on a small, overgrown road. It offered anonymity and peace if she but asked for it. But what to choose?

  Strong fingers cupped and raised her chin. “There is only forward,” Jones said. His gaze cut through her silence to the turmoil within.

  What if forward is as frightening as what lies behind? But the longer she stared at Jones, the more certain she was of what to choose. Her quiet country cottage faded, for rustication, even peaceful rustication, was its own form of cowardice. Hiding herself away from the world served to prove her dead husband had been right—she was a cowering weakling. More of his taunts returned to replay in her head, and anger, never far from the surface, rose and screamed in protest.

  You were a stupid ass, George Darimple, and if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you again. There is nothing weak about me.

  “Jones is going to show you how to channel your anger and use it for some good. He’s going to help you clear the muddle in your head and give you a purpose for leaving your bed each morning. He’s here to teach you to cope,” Mr. Wickes said. “Please, give him a chance.”

  “What is it you want?” Jones asked, his lyrical tenor a steadying melody to her mind’s discordant harmony.

  For the first time since the night she killed her husband, she was asked to choose. The idea she was at liberty to do so was freeing, and she made a tentative peace with this new path she had chosen. “I want to live.”

  Maybe because Jones was also something more, he heard her unspoken plea to belong and be useful in those four words, for he said, “You have my word, Beatrice Westby. When we are done, you will thrive.”

  Chapter 19

  Herm, Channel Islands, September 1810

  Beatrice had suffered since the accident, if the sobbing, moaning bundle of femininity in his arms was to be believed. “Ah, don’t cry, sweet Beatrice. I can’t stand it when you hurt.” Thomas wrapped his arms around her again and held her until sobs no longer wracked her body. “Better?”

  “All day my memories have been pounding on the door to my consciousness. You, though, were the key.” She nuzzled the soft skin bared by his unlaced shirt. He forced himself to relax under her inquisitive touch. She wasn’t ready for a renewal of affections. She needed time to reacquaint herself with him after the events of the last four months.

  “Has everything returned?”

  “Most. The events before the accident and my arrival on Herm remain fuzzy.”

  “They’ll return when you’re ready. Try not to worry about it.”

  “You smell nice,” she said, her sweet voice thick with her tears.

  He laughed. “I’m filthy and covered in sweat.”

  “Hmm. I disagree. Cloves, bergamot.” She rubbed her nose along the corded ridge of his neck muscles and sighed. “And sweaty man. My favorite.” Her sigh of delight coupled with the small wiggle of her hips had him taut and at attention. Thomas was near to expiring. When she molded her legs around one hard thigh and smashed her breasts against his chest, he promised himself never to bathe after exercise if this was the response he could expect.

  Hell, he’d roll around in the mud to experience the same tantalizing inspection of his person. Her arms snaked around his neck, and she rested her head on his collarbone. Her plump lips, scant inches from his own, begged to be kissed. Lowering his head, he touched his lips to hers. A breeze fluttered the leaves and sent his long locks, now loose from his queue, flying around his head and lashing their faces. Bea stiffened in his arms.

  “I remember,” she whispered and fell from his embrace.

  Thomas lifted her from the sand and cradled her in his arms, spreading warm kisses over her face. He walked away from the shore and sat on the gro
und, his back resting against a large tree. She held onto him and let go when he tugged his shirt over his shoulders to wrap around her chilled body.

  “Your hair. You’re wearing it longer now.”

  “My hair?” He freed a hand and pulled the mass of it over his shoulder away from Beatrice. “Of what import is my hair?”

  “Sandalwood. You must have taken to using it after I left. When the wind whipped strands of your hair across my nostrils, I smelled it. It clings to the ends.”

  “I don’t follow. You love the scent and begged me to try it. You’re not pleased?”

  “Michelson wore it.” She snorted. “More like bathed in it. It clung to anything he touched. After months of travel with the man, I became conditioned to hate it. Now I can’t smell it without it conjuring the specter of the man’s twisted smile and his beady, calculating eyes.” Bea scooted off his lap and crawled several feet away from him. Finding a spot on the sand, she hugged her knees to her chest. “Until you bathe, I prefer to keep my distance. I know it’s you holding me, Thomas, but a part of me imagines it’s him. I’m sorry.”

  “I shall bathe as soon as possible,” he said, hoping his words did not betray the anger brewing within him. Even now, with the man rumored to be dead, he came between him and the ones he loved. Yet another reason to despise the man. He’d almost killed Beatrice, and his greedy, grasping specter stood between their reunion.

  He longed to touch her, but he let his hand fall when he saw her flinch. Guilt competed with anger, for if he weren’t mistaken, she had suffered endless torments on her most recent voyage with Michelson.

  And I’m the one who sent her to the snake’s den.

  “The accident left you confused?”

  “For a while, yes. Events from early June are returning to me.” A shudder wracked her small frame. “I was so scared, Thomas. The blast came earlier than planned, and I couldn’t get out in time. Michelson had me trapped. He stabbed me under my heart and almost killed me. When the staircase fell and trapped my leg, I knew I was going to die. Michelson jumped overboard before the explosion. Jones stayed till the end, and we were able to heave the burning wood off my leg. Everything after that is a bit of a blur. I jumped and swam away from the ship, knowing if I were caught in the explosion I’d die. Sometime later, I found a plank and crawled onto it. No rescue came, so I prepared for death.”