Swept Away

by Marsha Canham

  The dark eyes widened as they were startled away from the trees. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Will you please kiss me, sir! And will you please do so with all good haste before he realizes that we have seen him.”

  Emory opened his mouth to question her intentions. Then closed it again. The wind was whipping her hair again and she had dispatched a hand to gather it against her nape; her eyes were so intense, so determined, that he gave a little shrug and bowed forward, obliging her with a brief, clingy meeting of the lips.

  In and of itself, the contact was not particularly shocking, for she had been chastely kissed by prim-lipped suitors before, and while she was by no means an expert, her first reaction was certainly disappointment. Her second was to glance surreptitiously along the path. Barrimore had emerged from the trees. It seemed as though his pace had slowed--as if he had seen something but not quite well enough to give it credence. And he was still coming their way.

  In a blaze of frustration, augmented by the sheer unparalleled audacity of what she was doing, she twisted her hands into the loose folds of Emory’s shirt. “Was that your best effort, sir?”

  “My best...? Miss Fairchilde, I do not know what your game is but...”

  “I assure you this is not a game, sir. It is my life. Would you continue to press suit upon a woman you found in the arms of another man?”

  “Well, ah, no. No, I do not suppose I would.”

  “Then will you please kiss me? And do so as if you mean it this time! Surely the loss of your memory should not have resulted in the loss of all your abilities.”

  Again, she could have bitten off her tongue and swallowed the offending chunks, but her challenge had the desired effect. His eyes darkened to the color of chocolate and his arms slid around her waist, pulling her forward against his body.

  “My best effort, then,” he mused. “As you command.”

  When he bent his head again Anna was, in all honesty, just expecting more of the same. Perhaps a little more firmness, more authority, with more care to hold his arms the proper way to give the whole of it the appearance of unbridled passion. She did not expect his arms to crush her close enough to almost lift her off the ground. Nor did she anticipate his mouth would come down upon hers open and as heated as one of his flashes of lightning.

  Startled, she made a soft, stifled sound in her throat. The heat and pressure increased and the next thing she knew, he was inside her mouth. His lips had worked hers apart and his tongue had thrust past the barrier of her teeth and, after smothering her initial gasp of surprise, he began to boldly explore all the smooth, pliant contours he found within.

  Instinctively she tried to pull away, but one of his hands raked into the dark tangle of her hair and held her fast. She could hardly refuse the intimacy, having insisted upon it herself, but when she attempted to whimper a codicil to that invitation, he only held her tighter.

  A loud drumming filled in her ears, drowning out the sound of the surf. Her hands were still curled in the folds of his shirt, but as his mouth and tongue explored hers with such delicious intensity, inch by inch they crept upward. Her fingers spread wide over muscles tempered to the strength of steel, over sinews that tightened and rippled with each movement he made. Every drop of resistance drained out of her body, leaving her whimpering for very different reasons. Her every sense was focussed on the lush heat of his lips, the brazen seduction of the kiss. Her legs were useless, quivering from the tops of her thighs to where her toes curled within her shoes. Her skin was tight, tingling everywhere with shivers and tremors that responded to every thrust, every sleek, slippery pattern he made on the inside of her mouth. And when he would have begun to ease away, to withdraw and set her firmly back down on the ground, she drove her hands up into his hair and parted her lips wider. She thrust her tongue after his, demanding more, demanding everything he had to give her with all the raw innocence of newfound pleasure.

  Dimly, she heard a groan that did not come from her own throat and realized it came from his. His breath was expelled in a gust against her cheek, and his body shifted, threatening to shatter even more of her ingenuous yearnings. He held her impossibly closer than he had before and his hands...his hands curved up and around her ribcage, his fingers caressing the sides of her breasts. This time when she gasped, it was not to protest his boldness but to mark the rush of light-headedness that told her she had to break free if only to catch hold of her breath and wits before they deserted her completely.

  Stunned, shocked beyond comprehension, she tore her lips away from his. The dark eyes searched her face a moment, clouded with a similar sense of confusion and incredulity. Unable to answer the questions she knew must be mirrored in her own eyes, she bowed her head, too shamed, too shaken to even push out of his embrace, as she knew she should. His arms eased their grip but did not relinquish their hold on her completely. Nor was he behoved by any sense of propriety to do so.

  With her brow touching his chin, and her body churning with all manner of unfamiliar sensations...Anna remembered Barrimore. She gasped and turned to check the path, but he was nowhere in sight. A further small twist and she could see the drive, the berline, and the haste with which the driver and liveried postillions were clambering into their seats. A moment later, the huge wheels spun into the crushed stone and the matched fours were galloping away under the urgent crack of the driver’s whip.

  She closed her eyes and melted weakly against the heat of Althorpe’s chest. The deed was done and could not be undone, and for some reason, though she knew she should be falling away in a dead faint, she only wanted to stay within the protective circle of Emory’s arms.

  Indeed, the only faintness she felt was inspired by the overwhelming need to feel his hands rake up into her hair again, to feel his mouth descend upon hers once more in a devouring passion.

  By slow, reluctant inches, she lowered her arms from around his neck and eased her body away from his. Because she could not think of a single solitary thing she could say that could possibly excuse or explain her reasons for having just invited complete ruination down upon herself, she whirled around and started running back along the path, her hair snapping out in a dark wake behind her.

  She ran until a stitch in her side forced her to slow down. Her flight took her as far as the trees, to the same spot where Barrimore had stood frozen in monumental outrage watching his carefully selected fiancé throw herself into the arms of what must have appeared to him to be a black haired, muscle-bound, ill-dressed common clod.

  Anna touched her fingers to her lips. They were still tender and more than slightly puffed. She was aching in places she did not know she could ache. Her heart was pounding relentlessly in her breast and while she attributed some of the weakness in her legs to the mad dash from the cliffs, she knew that was not the only reason.

  Once again she heard the faint crush of footsteps approaching on the path and she pushed away from the trees without daring to glance back. She could not have borne it if he had been grinning. Or if his eyebrow was raised and his mouth was curled and he was mocking her for her staunch declaration earlier that it was easier for a man to fly in the face of convention than a woman.

  Fly? She had fairly launched herself off a cliff!

  Annaleah returned to the house the same way she had exited, through the conservatory. Her shoes made hurried clipping sounds on the marble floor and she would have gone directly up the staircase and locked herself away in her bedroom for the rest of her natural life had she not been halted in the hallway by Willerkins.

  “Ah. There you are, Miss. Milady asks that you join her upon the instant.”

  “Tell my aunt...I will join her as soon as I am able.”

  She took a step to one side, intending to dart past the old butler, but Willerkins took a matching dance step and blocked her way.

  “She did say, upon the instant, Miss.” He leaned slightly forward to rub a shin that often bore the brunt of his mistress’s impatience. “Both she and h
er walking stick were quite adamant on the point.”

  Anna pushed the straggled and windblown locks of hair off her face and followed Willerkins’ outstretched hand toward the open doors of the day parlor. A mortifying thought nearly finished what strength remained in her knees--had her aunt been standing at the window and had she witnessed the same scene that had sent Barrimore driving off in a spray of crushed gravel?

  But no. The parlor faced south and east. Her aunt could not possibly have seen the cliffs from any of the windows. The driveway, yes. She might have seen that. She might have seen Barrimore’s coach pull up then drive off again without its passenger so much as paying his respects.

  Wilting inwardly, she dutifully followed Willerkins to the parlor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement further along the hallway as Althorpe emerged from the conservatory and closed the doors behind him.

  Florence was, to her further dismay, indeed standing in front of the window. A fire was blazing in the hearth and spirit lamps flickered on the tables, but Anna’s blood was burning far hotter when her aunt turned and raised a snowy eyebrow.

  “Gracious, child, where have you been? There is a coach coming up the drive. We can expect a visitor at any moment.”

  “Dear Lord,” Anna whispered, pressing her hand over her belly. “He has come back.”

  “Who has come back?”

  “Lord Barrimore. The marquis. I...he...I thought I had discouraged him, but he must have been so enraged he turned his carriage around.”

  “Enraged? Have you said something to anger him?”

  Anna waved her hand, but the words floundered in her throat, fighting with her efforts to catch a deep enough breath to clear away the stars spinning in front of her eyes.

  Althorpe came through the doorway just then and the dark eyes barely touched on Anna before seeking out her aunt. “I’m afraid I am to blame for our tardiness. I asked Miss Fairchilde to show me the beach where she found me and, while it was a pleasant enough walk down to the shore, the wind picked up considerably on the way back. A storm is likely on its way.”

  “Yes, well, another kind of storm may well be approaching even as you stand there shedding sand on my floors again. It might be best for the pair of you if you tuck yourselves away until it passes. No, no, Willerkins has already gone to answer the door. It is too late to go out that way, you would be seen before you reached the stairs. Come. You can remove yourselves through here.”

  She pulled an ornamental carving on a section of the wall and a wide panel swung silently open. “All of the rooms in the house connect one to the other with secret passages and niches,” she explained rather blithely. “Quite clever, actually. I suspect there was an ancestor somewhere in our past who did not like surprises. Quickly now. And watch your step, it is very dark.”

  Having no choice but to obey, Anna allowed herself to be ushered through the opened panel and into a narrow, cramped passageway that appeared to run between the two rooms. Without light, it was difficult to confirm, but she thought she could see an equally narrow flight of wooden stairs midway along the wall leading up to the third floor on the one side and likely down to the first floor on the other.

  “I’ll be damned,” Althorpe murmured, squeezing his broad shoulders in behind her.

  “Just be very quiet,” Florence warned. “And when the time comes,” she reached past Emory’s shoulder to point out a corresponding latch on the opposite wall that would open a secret door into the adjoining room, “go through there to the library.”

  Before either of them could object to being closed into the confining space, the panel swung shut, smothering them instantly in darkness. They heard the click of the latching mechanism and for the next few seconds, there was nothing but silence and absolute darkness.

  Althorpe was beside her. Anna could not see him but she was all too aware of his big body close by. Gradually, as her eyes adjusted, she began to see little cracks and slivers of light where moulding was attached to the walls, or age had caused the wooden panels to shrink at the seams. Somewhere up above she heard a faint scuffling sound and it occurred to her that there were probably other creatures of the four legged variety that preferred the seclusion of the narrow passages.

  “I hate mice,” Emory muttered, giving voice to her own thoughts. “I would rather be locked in a hold with a nest of snakes.”

  Before Anna could answer, he was touching her arm, cautioning her to silence.

  She heard them too. Voices. At least two of them, one distinctly female as Florence was greeted with a gush of delight.

  “Dame Widdicombe! How positively wonderful to see you again. I was just saying to my dear husband...”

  It was not Barrimore! He had not come back to confront her. He had not returned to challenge Emory Althorpe to a duel or to condemn her to social hell with his icy condescension.

  The weakness in her knees was complete and when she felt Emory’s hands on her shoulders, she simply sagged back against him, assuming he shared her same sense of relief.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered. “There isn’t much room to maneuver in here.”

  “Wh-what? What are you doing?”

  “Trying to change places, but I seem to be stuck on something...” After the distinct sound of a tear set him free he shifted sideways again. “There we go. And there it is.”

  Anna was almost beyond registering any further surprise as he reached up to where a small pinhole of light was showing through the wood. A flick of his thumb dislodged a disk of wood, revealing what turned out to be a large peephole bored into the wall. He leaned forward and pressed his eye to the hole, then moved aside and guided her into place that she might also take a peek.

  “Do you know them?” he asked, his mouth pressed against her ear.

  Anna blinked at the cool draft that blew against her eye. She offered a small nod then realised he could probably not see the gesture. She turned her head in order to whisper the information in as low a voice as he had used but instead of finding his ear, she managed quite to their mutual surprise, to find his mouth. The contact was brief and quickly broken, but it was made nonetheless, and the shock of it caused her to jerk back and bump her head hard against the edge of a beam.

  Emory muffled her cry with his hand, his reaction as swift as it was instinctive. But instead of releasing her right away, he merely eased his hand to one side and rested his fingers against her throat, angling her head so that her lips were where she had originally intended them to go: next to his ear.

  “It is your brother, Stanley,” she said in a strained whisper. “And his wife, Lucille.”

  He straightened and peered through the peephole again. After a moment, he dropped the little disc back into place and, cautioning her unnecessarily to silence, wormed his way behind her again and located the latch Florence had shown him. When the panel--which turned out to be a section of shelving--swung open, he took her hand and led her out of the passage into the library.

  With the shelf pushed securely back into place behind them, he inspected her skirt, brushing dust and shreds of cobwebs off the folds of muslin. He had lost the ribbon from his hair back on the cliffs and the unkempt black waves hung loose and shaggy around his shoulders. Thanks to a protruding nail in the wall, there was now a considerable gash in the sleeve of his shirt; when combined with the salt water stains on his breeches and the sodden condition of his shoes, it was not the best impression he might have wanted to present to a brother he had not seen in several years.

  Something else struck Anna as she watched him comb his fingers through the wild black locks of his hair.

  “How did you know about the peep hole in the wall?”

  “What?”

  “The hole in the wall, how did you know it was there?”

  Althorpe frowned. “I don’t know. I just...did.”

  Anna relinquished her own frown less willingly as she glanced at the door. “I suppose it would look odd if I did not join them. The vicar seemed quite ada
mant about not wanting his wife to know you were anywhere near Brixham, and if that is still the case, if she has only come with him by accident, you may have to remain out of sight until they are gone.”

  Althorpe nodded, somewhat reluctantly she thought, although she could appreciate his disappointment, for Stanley was not only his brother, but possibly the strongest bridge to his vanished memories.

  “Wait here. If it is safe, I will come back and fetch you.”

  He nodded again, but before Anna took half a step, he reached out and caught her arm.

  “I am sorry.”

  “For what?” she asked in a whisper.

  Though there were undoubtedly a multitude of sins for which he could have sought penance, he merely offered up a crooked smile. “For having washed up on your beach.”

  Emory waited until the library door closed before he released his pent up breath.

  His gaze flicked over to the locked gun cabinet. He had given Annaleah the key and had watched her slip it to an inside pocket of her skirt. It had been a simple matter to retrieve it while brushing past her in the passageway, but why had he felt the need?

  Did he have reason to doubt his own brother’s loyalty? Did he have reason to fear his brother might have betrayed his presence to the authorities? A more nagging question concerned the marquis, Lord Barrimore. Who the devil was he and why had the hairs on the nape of Emory's neck stood on end when Annaleah identified him? He had not recognized him, had suffered no spontaneous flashes of memory, but that was not to say the marquis would suffer from the same handicap. Annaleah assumed she had driven him off by throwing herself in the arms of another man, but what if Barrimore had recognized him from the warrant posters Florence had said were being nailed up around town and had ridden off post haste to fetch the constables?