Swept Away

by Marsha Canham

  “It is not so much a case of what I want to see,” he tried to explain. “More what I hope to feel.”

  Anna watched him start down the steep path. After a moment she lifted her hands away from her thighs in a gesture of frustration and followed, wondering if there were varying heights of foolishness to which one could aspire, and if so, she must surely be nearing the zenith.

  When Althorpe reached the bottom, he set off immediately toward the rocks noting as he passed, the scallops of dried seaweed that marked the high tide. Anna trudged across the gritty sand behind him, resenting his stubbornness almost as much as the midday heat. She had not worn a bonnet, of course. No gloves, no shawl, nothing to protect her skin from the harsh effects of the sun save for a skimpy lace fichu worn around the shoulders and tucked into the front of her bodice. There were scant patches of shade along the base of the cliffs where overlapping seams of limestone jutted out, and, after five minutes of watching Althorpe search for goodness only knew what along the edge of the water, she retreated there to wait him out.

  He walked back and forth at least half a dozen times. He went down on his knee at one point and turned over several smaller rocks and pebbles; he poked the toe of his shoe into the thicker grains of shingled stone, but found nothing. Three days and nights of active tides would undoubtedly have removed anything Broom might have missed, yet it did not stop Althorpe from climbing onto the top of the largest boulder and balancing precariously on the slime and seaweed. With both hands raised to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun, he searched the shallow depths. Anna was on the verge of losing her patience and was about to start the long climb back without him when she saw him drop his hands suddenly and in two nimble leaps, splash into the water and wade knee deep into the foaming surf.

  The waves were stronger than they had been the day she had found him and he had to wait until a swell passed before he was able to bend over and pluck something off the bottom. He stood, letting the water swirl around his legs while he turned something over and over in the palm of his hand.

  Curiosity brought Anna out of the shade to stand at the water’s edge again. “Have you found something?”

  He did not answer right away. He turned and started walking back to shore, but halfway there, a spasm brought him doubling over and caused his eyes to screw tightly shut against a searing hot flash of pain.

  The street was narrow and dark, the gutters overflowed from a recent rain that had done little more than bring a million worms rising out of the cracks in the cobbles. The air smelled slimy with them. Each footstep crushed the elongated bodies to mush.

  He crouched in the shadows, his torn and bleeding back pressed against the damp bricks. He waited there a moment, listening for the scrape of a heel on stone, the snap of a hammer being cocked, ready to fire. He could not hear anything, but that did not mean he was in the clear. The fact he had escaped at all was a miracle; that he had made it this far was a triumph of strength and sheer willpower. But his vision was beginning to blur and the world was starting to skew on a sickening angle that would make it feel as though these last hundred yards were all uphill.

  He could not afford to wait any longer. Seamus was either there, or he was not. He had either waited or he had decided Emory was dead and it was better to take the ship out of port and save the rest of the crew.

  He drew a deep breath into his lungs, wondering if it would be his last. He doubted he could outrun a bullet and he was vaguely curious to know how it would feel tearing into his back, ripping through is heart, bursting out his chest. At least there would be an end to the pain. It would be over.

  With a final, desperate heave, Emory pushed himself away from the rough stone wall and ran. He ran like a thousand year old man, bent in half, his feet dragging as if they hauled iron balls behind them. He saw the expected flash of powder in the shadows to his left and a fraction of a second later, heard the sharp report of a pistol. The shot whistled past his ear and likely would have gone in his ear had he not stumbled and gone down hard on the cobblestones. The air burst out of his lungs on a sob and he saw a shadow detach itself from the side of a building and start to walk toward him. He passed briefly under the gaslight and Emory saw his face, long and pointed like that of a bloodhound. It was Le Couteau and he was grinning. It was a sick, evil grin and Emory was determined it would not be the last thing imprinted on his mind before he died.

  With a groan of pure agony, he rolled to the side of the wharf. An instant before he fell over the side and splashed into the greater agony of the salt water, he caught a glimpse of something bright and shiny that had been clutched in his hand. Now it would die with him, the key to everything, to all the secrets, the truths, the lies....

  “Mr. Althorpe! Mr. Althorpe! Emory... please--!”

  Emory forced his eyes to open. Someone was calling his name...

  “Emory!”

  He looked up and saw Annaleah. Her eyes were impossibly wide, impossibly blue, and her hands were clasped into small white fists, pressed over a mouth that was crumpled with concern.

  “Emory?” she cried softly, lowering her hands. “Are you all right?”

  He blinked and swallowed hard several times in an attempt to fight back the wave of nausea rising his throat. The pain in his head, the cramps in his belly began to subside and he was able to slowly straighten. “Yes,” he gasped. “Yes...I think so.”

  His voice sounded like a dry croak and he waited until he was fairly confident his legs would not give out beneath him before he splashed forward the remaining few steps to shore. Anna reached out and took hold of his arm, guiding him over to a seat on a nearby rock.

  Finding nothing else to use in its stead, she untucked her fichu and dipped it into the surf. She twisted most of the water free then used it to bathe away the sweat that glistened across Emory’s brow and temples. Before she could finish, his hand had closed gratefully around hers and he was pressing the coolness of her fingers and the cloth over the burning lids of his eyes.

  “There was no warning,” he said haltingly. “It just...happened.”

  “Another one of your lightning flashes?”

  “More than a flash. It was a bloody great bolt.” He leaned forward without thinking, without conscious intent and pressed his forehead into the soft juncture between her breasts. Anna stood breathlessly still for a moment, her hands hovering just above his head, the dampened ball of lace dropping forgotten into the sand.

  Slowly, so very slowly she could scarcely believe she was doing it, she rested one hand in his hair, then the other, cradling him against her breast while she stroked the gleaming black waves with her fingertips.

  “W-were you on the ship again?”

  “No. No, I...I was near a wharf. It was dark but I could hear the water, and there were ships nearby riding at anchor.”

  “Was it here, in Torbay do you think?”

  “No.” He was very firm in this as he tipped his head up. “It was a French port. I could tell by the smell.”

  Anna’s hands were still in his hair, though they had stopped moving. Emory’s hands had somehow found their way around her waist and although he was barely touching her, she could feel the heat through the scant layers of muslin and silk she wore. As much as her fingers had moved of their own accord, his did the same now, molding gently to the curves, daring even to inch upward so that his thumbs rested just below the ribbon separating the bodice from the empire skirt.

  “H-how can you be so sure it was a F-French port?”

  “I don’t know. The same way I knew Napoleon was emperor. It was just...familiar somehow.” He frowned and focussed on her mouth. “Like I had been there many times before. And I was trying to get back there again.”

  “Trying...why?”

  He started to shake his head again, but then he remembered something else and lifted his hand away from her waist. In his palm were the pooled links of a gold chain. When he held it up, it glittered like liquid sunlight, a stark contrast to the p
lain iron key that dangled at the bottom of the loop.

  He straightened and frowned as he turned it over in his palm and Anna, not knowing what to do with her own hands, carefully lowered them and clasped them together behind her back.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “I recognize what it is,” he said. “A key to a strongbox. The kind you find in the captain’s quarters on most ships.”

  “Is it yours?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I saw the flash of gold through the water and--” He paused to draw another calming breath. “I don’t know. It could be. Or it could have been there a couple of months, or years even...”

  Anna pointed out the faint orange stain it left on his skin. “I set a hairpin on the windowsill one night, and in the morning, after a night in the damp sea air, it was completely turned red and stuck fast to the wood. I suspect, had this key been in the sea much longer than a few days, there would be rather more rust on the iron than you see here. What is more, young Blisterbottom comes almost daily to dig for clams and mussels. He would have found it long before now.”

  Althorpe nodded, if a little reluctantly. “The last thing I saw before I fell into the water was a key. This could be it.”

  “You fell into the water?”

  “I rolled myself off the edge of the wharf,” he said. “Deliberately. I was trying to get away from someone. From whoever had been cutting on my back...”

  He looked up again, suddenly, a question in his eyes.

  “I saw the marks,” she said softly, nodding. “Willerkins said he thought the wounds had been deliberate. That someone had made them with the purpose of causing you great pain.”

  Emory had neither answer nor explanation. His frustration was echoed in the soft oath that came through his lips as he squinted up at the sky. His eyes, catching the direct rays of sunlight changed from almost soulless black to a rich amber-lit brown and Anna wished she had the nerve to reach out and take him in her hands again. To draw him against her breast and comfort him until the pain on his face changed to something else as well.

  “If I ask you something, will you oblige me with an honest answer?”

  She refocussed her attention and moistened her lips. “If I can, yes.”

  “Do you believe me guilty of the charges laid against me?”

  “My aunt, clearly, does not.”

  “That was not what I asked.”

  “I do not know you well enough to form an opinion of what you are and are not capable of doing, sir,” she said truthfully. “Up until these last few days, I did not even know my aunt well enough to say whether her judgement was creditable or not. I always thought...” She stopped, not wanting to betray too many confidences, but he looked at her again, his eyebrow raised in gentle askance, and she continued with a faint smile. “I had always been led to believe she was a little addled.”

  “And now?”

  “Now...I think she is eccentric, certainly, and definitely set in her ways. I also believe she takes great pleasure in letting the rest of world think she is addled, yet she is far from it. She is strong-willed, stubborn, tenacious. If it does not suit her purpose to do or say what other people think she should do or say, then she simply does not do it or say it.”

  “You sound as if you envy her.”

  “I envy her courage. And her freedom. And the fact she has no one to answer to but herself. That makes a great deal of difference.”

  He bent over and retrieved the scrap of lace off the sand. “Everyone has that choice, Miss Fairchilde. They can please themselves or they can try to please everyone else.”

  “It is a choice that is much easier for a man to make, sir, than a woman.”

  “You just said your aunt was able to do so.”

  “My aunt was able to do many things because she was very wealthy and did not have to rely on anyone else’s good grace to support her or keep her. Nor did she feel any oppressing need to heed the opinions of others in order to form her own. In that respect, I am coming to believe she is a very astute judge of character.”

  This last was said softly enough to bring a surprisingly unguarded smile to Althorpe’s lips. It held long enough to play havoc with her senses again and for a not so subtle flush of hot color to flood into her face.

  “We should go back,” she said, taking back her fichu.

  He did not release it fast enough--or at least, his hand came with the lace and somehow ended up holding her arm, then her shoulder.

  Once again, she had no where to look but up into his eyes.

  “Perhaps it would be safer if you were the keeper of both keys,” he murmured, slipping the gold chain over her head. She could feel the cool weight of the key sliding down between her breasts and the warmer presence of his long fingers carefully lifting her hair to ease the curls free of the links. He was rather more meticulous than the circumstances warranted--a suspicion that was confirmed when his thumb brushed along the curve of her chin and in the process, forced her head to tilt higher.

  Anna held her breath. His mouth was slightly pursed in contemplation and he wore much the same look as he had in the library when she thought he was going to kiss her. The desire to do so, the longing to do so was as plainly etched on his face as it was in the subtle shifting of his frame forward.

  Exactly what stopped him, she did not know. He was there, bending toward her one moment, then stiffening and moving awkwardly away the next. It was certainly nothing she did or said, for she had felt herself bracing for the touch of his lips, her entire body in trembling anticipation. But something made him pull back in the very last heartbeat and when she opened her eyes, he was bending over and taking off his shoes, tipping them one at a time to empty of them of sea water.

  He had the grace to pretend not to notice her embarassment. He also made very sure he shook every minute droplet free before he put each shoe back on again, and by the time he had done so, Anna was halfway back toward the base of the escarpment. He let her run well ahead before he followed and made no effort to close the gap between them.

  At the top, she paused to catch her breath and the wind caught her hair, sweeping it over her face, blinding her briefly behind a dark silky cloud. Her emotions were still raw and singing when she heard the soft crunch of Emory’s footsteps coming up behind her, but whatever he might have said by way of inept apology was distracted by something in the distance.

  Where a gap in the trees allowed a view of the curving drive in front of the house, the elegant shape of a gleaming black berline was just rolling to a stop. A smartly liveried postillion jumped down from the back of the carriage to open the door and drop the stair and a moment later, Winston Perry, Marquis of Barrimore stepped out into the sunlight.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Sweet merciful heaven!” She gasped and turned quickly away. “I completely forgot. He sent his card this morning to inform me he would be calling just past noon.”

  Emory looked toward the house and saw the tall figure of the marquis hesitate briefly beside the coach. The pale blot of an aristocratic face was angled in their direction; he must have seen the splash of Anna’s white muslin gown outlined against the sky.

  “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “His name is Barrimore. Lord Barrimore. He has come to Brixham with my brother to take me home. At least...it was their intention to take me home, but I refused to go. Now they have taken rooms in Torquay and...and...” She stole a quick peek over her shoulder. “Oh dear God, he has seen us. He is coming this way. What must I do to convince him I do not want any part of his marriage proposal! That is why he has come, I know it is.”

  “Proposal? But I thought you said were already betrothed?”

  Anna looked up and vented an exasperated sigh. “My mother assumes we are as good as betrothed, as does my father, my brother, my sister--! I have no doubt his lordship presumes it as well, though I have given him absolutely no encouragement whatsoever to sustain the belief. I have, in all truth, been the closest th
ing possible to downright rude whenever I am in his presence and simply cannot understand why he would even want to marry someone so horribly disagreeable.”

  The corner of Althorpe’s mouth twitched at the explosion of fire in her eyes. “I confess I cannot see much of him at this distance, but he looks a stalwart enough fellow. Rich, to be sure. A confident stride. I am no expert on the subject--at least I do not think I am--but he does not appear to be the type of man who would be irreparably crushed if you simply said no.”

  Barrimore was three hundred yards away and temporarily hidden by a copse of trees as Anna glared at Althorpe in amazement. “Simply say no? To a man my mother has groomed for the altar these past six months or more? To a man who is a friend and confident of the Prince Regent and goodness knows who else in government, and who will eventually be one of the most powerful and influential dukes in England? Why, I could no sooner ‘simply say no’ to the Marquis of Barrimore than you could simply say ‘yes, by all means old chap’ to someone wanting to turn you over to the magistrate’s office.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth she could have bit her tongue off at the root for the grin they put on Althorpe’s face, but there was no way to retract them. There was nowhere to hide, either. They were standing on the edge of a cliff, for pity’s sake, with nothing but endless sea and boundless sky surrounding them. She was with a man who had no memory, no constraints on his conscience, no reason to question his own ill conceived belief that everyone had a choice whether to please themselves or to please others.

  “Perhaps,” he murmured, “I should, ah, retreat back down to the beach and leave the two of you alone.”

  “No!” she cried. Then in a calmer, more determined voice she added, “No, I think you should stay right where you are and....and I think you should kiss me.”