Even he was no longer certain of his sanity.
In the next moment, he saw her again. This time, she was hurrying down the castle path overlooking the cliffs and ocean, her steps as light and graceful as a faerie flitting across a bluebell garden.
“Aislin!” he cried out, but his voice was swallowed amid the noise of the pounding waves that were thunderous and roaring as fiercely as his heart.
He ran after her.
Aislin hurried down the steps of Tintagel Castle toward the mare she’d left untethered to roam among the gorse and hedgerows overlooking the sand beach and rock cliffs. Why had she stayed so long? The sun was beginning to dip toward the horizon, and although it was still hours before nightfall, she had a long ride ahead.
She loved the sight of the ocean in its twilight glow, the way it cast a beautiful, silver sheen across the water. At this time of day, with the sun’s rays hitting the water at just that angle, it seemed as though the ocean was covered in a sleek coat of ice.
However, it was merely an illusion. Beneath the shimmering surface roiled turbulent waves that could drag a man under and drown him in their powerful currents. A life lost, washed out to sea. All the while, the ocean would ebb and swell as ever before, the waves constant and ever breaking upon the shore.
She shook out of the morbid thought, knowing she had to hurry, or she would barely make it to Port Isaac before dark. Her father would be furious. He had business this evening, that’s what he called it. Business. But it wasn’t that at all. It was smuggling and piracy, and once murder because of her, he’d claimed.
He’d murdered to protect her, but she knew he’d done it to protect his own hide. It was easier to cast the blame on her.
Still, she fully felt the burden of blame, a soul-aching regret for a life cut short. The life of a good man. The very best sort, a man any young lady could love with all her heart given the chance. The irony of it was, she doubted her father’s victim had ever given her a thought beyond asking for a pint of ale when she’d served his table at her father’s establishment, the Farnsworth Inn.
Well, the gentleman had kissed her once, but out of gratitude and nothing more.
It all amounted to naught.
She hadn’t been able to save him.
Aislin hurried across the bridge and down more steps, then broke into a run along the winding path when– “Sir! My apologies!” She’d slammed into a visitor to the castle ruins. He was big, and she’d careened straight into his broad chest.
Mother in heaven. This man was built like a warrior, his body as firm and unbending as Damascus steel.
She flailed her arms to regain her balance as she bounced off him, but he caught her by the waist and drew her close to steady her. She grabbed his arms and immediately felt the tension flowing through them.
“I do sincerely apologize.” She must have hit him harder than she realized, knocking the wind out of him despite his size and obviously muscled strength. Ridiculously strong. His arms were boulders. “I…” The breath caught in her lungs.
William?
No, he was dead.
And yet, no matter how many times she blinked to correct her vision, he remained standing before her, the heat of his hands burning through the muslin of her gown. “It cannot be.” He was just as she remembered him. Tall and broad-shouldered, his blond hair the color of beach sand, and dark green eyes that had once been light and smiling, but now appeared haunted and angry.
“You know me?” he asked, although it sounded more like a declaration, for there was a sharp edge to his voice that cut through her confusion like a finely-honed sword.
She could only nod in response.
Her heart was beating too fast, surging into her throat, and making speech impossible.
“Who am I?” He gave her a quick but gentle shake when she did not immediately reply. His hands were still about her waist, firm and unyielding. However, he touched her like a gentleman, taking care not to be rough as he held her.
Why would he not let go of her?
Did he believe she was a ghost who would disappear into the air if he dared release her? She feared to let go of him for the same reason.
Was he real?
How could he be? Her father had sworn he’d killed him.
Who am I? What an odd question to ask her. She tipped her head up to meet his steady gaze while she forced her breath to calm. She wasn’t certain she’d found her voice yet, but she gave it a try. “You are Baron Whitpool. Are you not, my lord?”
Now, it was his turn to respond.
But he said nothing, only gazed at her unblinking.
“William Croft, fourth Baron Whitpool,” she elaborated as the silence between them stretched uncomfortably. “Or is it fifth? I may have the count wrong. Perhaps it is third. Does it matter?”
“No, it doesn’t matter,” he said finally with a rasp to his voice.
His hands did not move from her waist.
The silence between them resumed.
She ought to have drawn away, or taken her hands off his arms, but she had no wish to let him go. Her heart still pounded too hard, and her legs were trembling so that she was no longer certain she could stand on her own.
William.
How could he be alive?
Yet, here he stood before her, as big and perfect as she remembered.
She would never address him as William among polite company…among any company, for that matter. She had no right to refer to him as anything but ‘my lord’ or ‘Baron Whitpool’.
However, in the privacy of her thoughts she gave herself the liberty of calling him by his given name.
She studied him as boldly as he studied her.
Although he was a gentleman of rank, his appearance had never been genteel. There was an aura of power about him, a ruggedness in the build of his body and the strong line of his jaw. He was handsome back then, and even more so now.
His eyes were the green of emeralds.
“My lord, why have you come back?” She did not wish to sound alarmed, but he was in danger here. How could he not understand this?
“I had to,” he said softly, the deep rumble of his voice almost a whisper.
“Why?”
He swallowed her up in his gaze. “To find you.”
She laughed and shook her head in disbelief, recalling the day they’d first met. How long ago was it? Three years or more? It had taken her less than a minute to fall in love with him. That was the day he and his brother had marched into the Farnsworth Inn seeking rooms while they waited out a storm. What was the expression for the tingling, breathless feeling that had swept through her in that moment?
Love at first sight.
These same sensations came rushing back to her now, never truly lost, merely numbed because the ache in her heart was unbearable otherwise.
His brother Gideon had once bothered to ask her name. “Aislin,” she’d replied, setting the mugs of ale they’d ordered on the table before them. William had never once looked up, never spoken to her, not even smiled at her.
Men were always smiling at her. She knew how to set them in their place.
Only later did he look at her.
And even then, it seemed such a small thing. Almost nothing.
But she’d felt his gaze as though a lightning bolt had shot through her body.
William’s lips were now tightly pursed, and his brow remained furrowed as he continued to study her.
“You were looking for me?” she asked. “Do you even know my name?” The question may have come across as impertinent, but so was his continued silence and his frowning stare.
Aislin waited patiently for an answer, but still, he did not respond.
She could wait him out, for she was used to being on her own and speaking to no one. He was silent, but this place was alive with sound. Of waves crashing against the cliffs below. Of their roar and echo within the hollow caves.
Choughs and ravens cawed as they circled in the sky abov
e, and the ever-present wind whistled through the ruins of Tintagel Castle.
“My name is Aislin,” she said finally. “And why would you be looking for me?”
She felt a tremor shoot through him, for she still had her hands on him.
How odd they should continue to cling to each other, each afraid to let the other go. She understood her reasons, fear that she would lose him again.
His reasons?
Could they be anything other than revenge for what her father did to him?
“Aislin,” he said in a husky murmur, circling an arm around her waist while he cupped her face in his warm hand with the other. “My Aislin.”
He bent his head and kissed her softly on the mouth.
She wanted to cry for the beauty of it.
For the hunger of it.
His lips were warm and pleasantly firm. The kiss itself was not a polite kiss, but neither was it too rough. It seared her soul.
He’d kissed her like this once before.
She’d not forgotten and had never been in another man’s arms since. In truth, she’d never been in a man’s arms before his either. But it could not have meant anything to him back then. Did it mean anything now?
He was a baron. She was a barmaid.
Yet, he held her in his embrace as though she was his treasure.
She slid her hands up his broad chest to wrap her arms around his neck. As the kiss continued, she placed her hand against his cheek, feeling the rough bristle of a day’s growth of beard. “How can I be your Aislin?” she asked when he drew his lips away.
“I don’t know.” He was not apologetic as he continued to hold her close, so that she felt his breath against her ear. “I hoped you might tell me.”
“Me?” She stepped back and felt a chill when he released her. She grew angry that he might be playing a game with her. “Do you think you own me because I allowed you to kiss me once before?”
“I kissed you before this?” He shook his head as though reaching back for the memory.
So, he’d forgotten her. Then why go on about my Aislin now?
None of this made sense. Nor did her feelings for him, she supposed. “Yes, you kissed me. But only the one time before.”
“When? I mean other than just now.” He began to pace in front of her, then paused and ran a hand through his hair in obvious consternation. “When, Aislin?”
“Long ago. When you were last in Cornwall. As you were about to sail away.”
“And that was…?”
“About three years ago. You came with your brother. He was polite, but you hardly said two words to me all the while you and he were here.”
His body coiled with tension. She took another step back, for he appeared like a wolf about to pounce, savage and untamable. “You knew my brother?”
She nodded warily. “Gideon Croft. He hasn’t come by here for over a month now. I thought perhaps you had come in his place.”
He appeared quite shocked, his surprise a raw wound that had not yet healed. “Me? In his place?”
She put a hand to her throat. “Is he injured? Has he been harmed?”
He growled, the sound low and feral.
His gaze remained on her, fiery and so at odds for a man who’d just kissed her as gently as he had. She must have misunderstood. Of course, why would he feel any interest for her when he did not remember her?
He growled once more, the sound softer now but still angry. “What trick is this?”
He had her utterly confused. “How is my worrying about your brother any sort of trick?”
“My brother?” The words came out as an accusation as he repeated them slowly, his tone obviously wary. “Gideon?”
She nodded.
“You dare to claim you saw him recently?”
She stepped further back as he took another menacing step toward her. However, she did not fear that he would hurt her, even though his rage was as obvious as a gathering storm across the Irish Sea. “It’s true. Let me think back, and I will tell you exactly when. But it was no more than two months ago, for certain.”
“How is it possible? Our ship was attacked by pirates three years ago and sank in the St. George’s Channel. I was the lone survivor. The lone survivor.”
What irony, she thought bitterly.
Her father had meant to kill him alone.
Of course, this was her father’s way, to destroy all who got in his path without a care for who they were or the harm caused to the innocents left behind to mourn their loss. Nor did he care that he might leave widows with small children to carry on by themselves. I’m only after the goods, he would tell her, and she forced herself to believe him. We don’t kill no one unless they come at us first. Only to defend ourselves, Aislin, m’love.
“Why that look, Aislin? What do you find so hard to understand?” Something flared in his dark eyes. “No one else survived the pirate attack.”
Her father had only mentioned killing him, even boasted about it. Never said a word about hurting others. She ought to have known he’d do away with anyone who could have pointed a finger at him. “I’m so sorry.”
She meant it with all her heart.
In the darkest recesses of her mind, she had buried the truth. She’d suspected it, feared it, and then hidden the knowledge deep inside of her in order to pretend it had never happened. How could she be the blood of that monster?
He was her father, and she was ashamed of what he was.
She was ashamed of who she was, daughter to that man.
When he’d boasted of killing William, she knew in that moment Gentleman Jack Farnsworth had to be stopped. Hah! Gentleman was a misnomer, only given to him because he claimed to be the son of an earl. Born on the wrong side of the blanket, of course. “Then it is a mercy Gideon survived.”
“Did you not hear what I just said? There were no survivors from my ship.”
“I heard you, my lord. My heart is in pieces over it.” She frowned as she studied his expression. Was it possible he did not remember? “You sent your brother off on other business before your vessel sailed. He never was aboard your ship. I saw him not two months ago.”
A look washed over him, she could not tell whether he was surprised, relieved, or horrified. Likely every feeling tore through him in that moment. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Tell me exactly where you saw him last.”
“Right here, at Tintagel Castle. This is where I meet him.” Her brow furrowed, now worried she’d given away too much information. But Gideon had always held his brother in the highest regard and…were they not on the same mission for the Crown? If not, then what had brought William here? “Why are you asking me these questions?”
He released her and once more ran a hand through his thick mane of hair. “Are you saying my brother is alive?”
“Yes, but you must know it. You’re the one who sent him off to Plymouth for the militia. When you sailed out of Port Isaac, he was already on his way there to summon help.”
He remained silent another long moment.
“My lord, I will meet you here tomorrow if you wish. But I must leave now. Where are you staying?”
“Nowhere settled yet.”
She thought he might be lying to her, for gentlemen always sent on ahead for rooms to be made ready wherever they traveled. Perhaps he’d come here in haste and hadn’t made arrangements. “Do not go near Port Isaac or Polzeath. They’ll kill you if they see you there. Head north, my lord. You’ll be safer in Trevalgo or Boscastle. You mustn’t come south.”
“Who’ll kill me?”
She couldn’t tell him. Not until she knew more about William’s purpose. Likely, it was to kill her father. Jack Farnsworth deserved it, too, for all the evil he had done. But Gideon’s orders from the Crown were to gather enough evidence to disrupt and destroy the operations of the pirates who plundered in the waters off Cornwall.
Gentleman Jack wasn’t the only devil to loot and pillage along the coast, only among the most ruthless. Also
, there was a high-ranking traitor in their midst who had to be ferreted out.
She would not be the one to ruin years of Gideon’s work.
“Aislin, who are you to my brother?”
“Me?” She shook her head and laughed softly. “I’m no one to him, not in the way I think you are implying.”
Was it relief she noticed in his eyes?
She glanced away to look at the sky and knew she ought to be on her way. The days were long in summer, but she had a lengthy ride home and would be making the last leg in the dark if she did not leave soon.
But leaving William was no easy thing to do.
She’d just found him again and could not bear to lose him. “My lord, why did you kiss me?”
“In truth, I don’t know. Perhaps I was listening to my heart.”
“Your heart?”
He nodded, seeming to be in earnest.
What a lark!
“Baron Whitpool, who do you think I am to you?”
Chapter Three
William did not know how to answer the question Aislin had posed.
Who do you think I am to you?
Someone important, she had to be. If only he could remember. But his memories of that time were lost, still trapped in a thick mist that hovered over a vital part of his brain. Finding Aislin had done nothing to clear it away.
Too soon, perhaps.
He had to be patient. Give it time.
But there had been so much time lost already.
For the last three years, William had been known as Lucifer by the sailors who’d found him floating amid a ring of fire from the debris of a sinking ship in St. George’s Channel just south of the Irish Sea.
It was a favorite stalking ground for the Cornish pirates.
Aislin was somehow connected to those pirates and the attack on his ship, but he did not know how. For all he knew, she could have been the one to order his vessel destroyed. But his dreams of her had never been angry or distrustful ones.
Quite the opposite, his every instinct had been to protect her.
Even now, he sensed the girl was in danger. Obviously, more so because of his presence here. “Aislin, in truth, I do not know what we are to each other. But I cannot shake the feeling you are important to me. I have no memory of my time here. I need your help. You must tell me truthfully. Who are you?”
The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides Page 7
