Elisabeth Fairchild (24 page)

Just as he had once described them to her, the gannets were fishing, flinging themselves down out of the sky rather like terns did, fearlessly falling, plunging into the sea, from great heights. Val wondered if she remembered.

He watched for her reaction, observed the reactions of each of the women.

His mother had seen them before, and yet she eyed them with no less awe than when he had been a boy. He leaned close to whisper in her ear, “Leap of faith, mother. Do you remember?”

“Leap of what?” She seemed confused.

“You said that.”

She blinked at him. “I did?”

He nodded. “When I was a lad. Do you not remember?”

She shook her head.

“It is very noisy!” the eldest Biddington cried out. “I have never heard anything like it.” Her sister seemed transfixed, momentarily speechless.

“I wish Alexander might have seen this,” Penny said to Felicity, who turned to him, hands clasped, and said, eyes shining, “It is wonderful, papa. Truly wonderful.”

Only Miss Deering held tongue, not a word to give him clue as to her feelings with regard to this image, this beautiful courageous wildness that a young man had clung to throughout the most rigid tests of his life.

This magic was the reason sensible Elaine Deering had been enchanted by him from the start, a wild man who might ruin her reputation, a man who had proved not so wild as his memories of Wales, and yet her reputation was in question anyway.

He sighed, and stepped in behind her at the railing to ask, voice low, “What do you think, Miss Deering? Were they worth the trip to Wales?”

“In they plunge,” she breathed the words, as if afraid to speak too loud, chin lifting, eyes following the plunging flight. “Big as swans, with ink-dipped wings, and Egyptian eyes. Just as you said.”

His words. So long ago, and she remembered his words exactly. He had woven a tale of this magic, and here it was, larger than life, far more spectacular than she might have imagined, far more worthy of examination than his colored past.

“Leap of faith,” she said as another bird plunged.

His mother, who had drifted close, turned her head at the words, listening as Miss Deering said, “Or do they not so much leap. . .”

“As fall?” The two women spoke in perfect unison, his words and the memory linking them if only for a moment, his mother’s eyes startled, as if she saw Miss Deering, really saw her, for the first time.

E
laine had known from the start this was how it would be--known she must eventually leave him. Why did it surprise her that life had worked out just as expected? Why did it tear at her heart like the cry of the kittiwake? Like the memory of thousands of birds taking wing? Like the startled look in Lady Wharton’s eyes as they uttered the same words at exactly the same moment?

Elaine could not sleep.

Felicity lay curled in slumber, dreaming of castles, no doubt. Mrs. Olive snored gustily from the next room. Tomorrow they would proceed from the comfortable Tudor inn in Dale where Lord Wharton’s party had taken all the rooms, to Pembroke by boat. A castle was their final destination--for Felicity--Pembroke Castle--her father’s idea. He knew how much the child adored castles. They had come this far. It would be a shame not to see.

A greater shame that Elaine must leave them in Pembroke. Felicity. Valentine. Especially Valentine, who gave her gannets.

She must make a leap of faith in leaving. Or was it a fall?

Elaine tossed and turned in bedclothes grown wrinkled and hot, hair sticking to her neck. The day’s heat carried into the night, a time when her greatest fears and worries always reared their ugly heads. Monsters--as she had once believed Valentine Wharton to be--new monsters to trouble her now. She fretted over her sister’s letter, the presence of Val’s forbidding mother, the Biddington sisters’ disdain, and Penny Shelbourne’s watchful, knowing pity.

The voice of the ocean called her, promising cooler air, a breath of a breeze, clarity of mind. Elaine went to the window, flung wide the shutters, stared out at the moonlit beach, the taste of salt and cooler air in her face, the sound of the waves dashing upon the shore a comfort to that part of her that needed it most.

Leap of faith.

She threw on a muslin wrapper, yanked on stockings, and grabbing her shoes crept barefoot down creaking stairs. Careful not to be seen, she stepped into her shoes, and followed the moon to the beach where she stood staring out to sea, moonlight on rippled waves, her heart aching with the idea that tomorrow she must leave. Tomorrow she must put all of this behind her, perhaps never to see it again.

Leap of faith.

At water’s edge she kicked off her shoes, shed her stockings, and lifting the hem of her nightshift and wrap, picked her barefoot way across wet shale and sand to the water, cool against her toes, surging about her ankles. Blessedly cool, washing away her fretfulness, her worries. She took a step deeper, lifting the bundle of her nightclothes higher, careful not to soak them, her ankles enjoying alternating waves of water and air, heated flesh cooled.

“Trouble sleeping?”

He came up behind her too quietly on the rocky beach, the unexpected sound of his voice sending her heart skittering along with the scree beneath his feet. Breath caught, she whirled to face him, fear looming large, that anyone should be about at this hour, that the someone should be a man, that the man should be Valentine Wharton--with whom her name and reputation were now irrevocably linked.

She thought of his kiss on her forehead, of so much more they might have done--what they were suspected of doing--heat flushed her cheeks, her neck, stirred lower. And not enough ocean to cool her.

She found him strange in the night, a shape gone unfamiliar and gray--the shape of all that might have been--of all that might be. His eyes caught starlight, glinting in the darkness. He wore nothing but a shirt, open at the neck, white against the darkness, sleeves rolled high, his breeches, stockings and shoes, the same color as the sand, so that he seemed sprung from the night, the sea, her imaginings.

He stood beside her shoes, glanced down, head cocked, from the shed shoes at his feet, to the exposed state of her legs.

With a chuckle he kicked off his own shoes, and hopping toward her, yanking stockings, said, “Excellent idea--wading--in this heat.”

Shocked, without thought for consequences she dropped her hem, a wave catching the fabric, soaking it, the wave dragging the weight of it before and then behind her.

She made a little noise of distress, and leapt away from the incoming tide, away from the prospect of becoming even more soaked than she was. And in making the leap she moved toward him rather than away, so that they collided at the edge of the surf, water curling around their ankles, his arms curling about her waist, steadying her, the drenched hem of her gown washing up around his bare ankles.

“My lord! You startled me. It is an unusual hour to be walking.” Her remark sounded so formal, proper--preposterous.

“Indeed.” He chuckled. “A dangerous hour.”

Danger lived in Valentine Wharton’s voice, his presence, the moonlit sparkle of his eyes. Danger roused its head in her own desire.

He did not let go his light grip on her arm, did not lean down to free his ankles from her drenched nightwear. She did not attempt to step away, nor to look away from the link of his gaze in the darkness, a most searching gaze--heated. Danger in that.

“Do you walk the beach often after dark, Elaine?” So light the tone of his question, so nonchalant. And yet, his use of her given name triggered a shiver of anticipation.

She clutched her wrap, all too aware that he saw her, most inappropriately, in her nightclothes. Not that her high-necked plain white linen gown was revealing. To the contrary, she was most circumspect in every stitch of the sturdy fabric she had chosen as a governess’s attire. Fine lawn had been deemed too sheer a fabric for a job in which she must live in the homes of strangers.

The muslin wrapper criss-crossed her breasts, tying beneath them. And yet water wicked up almost to her knees, the wet warp and woof of cotton plastered to her calves, wrapping his ankles, the waves tugging at it, at them, as though they were joined by flesh rather than fabric. She felt humid, disarrayed, her hair, still plaited, unpinned, a weighty braided rope that trailed upon her back, tendrils wisping in the breeze. The high-necked gown was unhooked, her throat exposed.

His arms, his legs seemed so very bare. The look in his eyes bare too. Needy. Wanting. Waiting. Feelings she understood too well.

She inhaled abruptly, looked down, at their legs, his naked ankles, her soaked hem. “I had best go,” she said, and at last she moved, toward higher land, away from his hold on her, away from the look in his eyes.

She dragged the wet weight of fabric out of the tide, picking her way across the rocks, bruising her feet in her haste, encountering something sharp in the darkness, an exclamation of pain loosing her lips.

He was beside her at once, hand a support at her elbow. “May I be of any assistance?”

She bent, gathering wet muslin in both hands, wringing it awkwardly, ineffectively. “Turn your back,” she said briskly, struggling with the weight, the water, legs cold, a shiver dancing along her spine.

“Nonsense!” He grabbed up the wet hem of her wrap, and gave it a good wringing. She objected, but he would have none of it. “I have seen your limbs before.” He laughed, teeth flashing white. “Rather nice limbs they are, too.”

He swiftly lifted her hem, pulling it tight about her thighs as he bunched the fabric, as he wrung out the water again, his movements affecting every inch of the garment, tugging, twisting, her body affected, the rate of her breathing. She did not stop him. They were suspected of far worse. He could not ruin her with such behavior if she was already ruined in the eyes of the world.

She clutched the folds of the wrapper about her shoulders as if she were cold, as if she must hold it tight when in truth she longed to throw it off. He seemed so at ease, there in the moonlight beside her, sleeves rolled high. She was anything but.

“This heat.” He chuckled--such a devious sound. “Makes one long to throw off one’s clothes, and run into the sea. Does it not?

She stared at him, a trifle alarmed. Was he accustomed to young women who jumped to comply? The suggestion was strangely tempting, with her reputation already suspect. She had nothing to lose, in throwing off her clothes, in running into the sea.

Nothing except self-respect, and her maidenhood.

“I had best be getting back.” She took a deep breath, and stepped away from him, the fabric of her gown slipping from his grasp.

“Wait,” he said. “Your shoes.” He took two steps, bent to catch them up.

“I can manage perfectly well . . .”

He laughed and knelt before her. “Stick out your foot.”

She did as he bade, not because he was master, and she beholden to him, not because it was a practical suggestion as there was no place to sit and do the task herself, she placed her hand on his shoulder, and thrust her foot out from under the wet hem of her skirt because she remembered the intoxicating pleasure of his hands on her feet, and wanted, one last time to experience it again.

He bent his head, golden hair gone silver in the moonlight. He shook out her darned stocking, plain worsted wool when he must be accustomed to silk. It did not matter. Nothing mattered but the heat of her hand on his shoulder, the movement of muscle and bone, the gentle brush of fingers on flesh. He used the stocking to dry her leg, the flat of his hand to brush sand from the sole of foot and toes, traces of salt and sand from the fat of her calf.

“A sturdy foot,” he said.

She could not speak. Her none too sturdy knees almost buckled with every touch. She was glad of her grip on him, the solid support of that shoulder. He took his time, exploring between her toes, dusting away every last grain of sand. She did not urge him to make haste. She could not say a word, only breathe, deep ragged breaths, as she imagined allowing her hands to pass over him in similar fashion.

At last he planted the arch of her foot on buckskinned thigh, that it might not get sandy again. She could feel muscle and tendon flex as he rolled up the stocking in such a way that he might slip it over her toes without dragging it in the dirt, her heel cupped in the palm of his hand. Deftly he smoothed the stocking up over her leg, the heated friction of his fingertips traveling high, so high her breath caught on a gasp.

“Now the shoe,” he said, and held it that she might step in, and laced it snug, and directed her, “Now the other one.”

Without a word she shifted her weight, shifted the shoulder on which she braced herself, raised her wet hem and gave her other foot into his hands, abandoning it to his careful ministrations. And he, just as silently, just as thoroughly dried and dusted off her foot, checking toes, and the hollow behind her knee, his movements exquisitely deliberate, his hands and fingers languidly thorough.

This time when Valentine planted Elaine’s heel upon his thigh, he paused in rolling up the stocking to murmur, “This is all wrong, of course, you know. Quite backward.”

“The stocking?” she asked, voice low. “Is it inside out?”

“No.” He laughed, shoulder shaking. “That I kneel here dressing you when I would much rather be undressing you.”

She gasped, might have pulled away, but he maintained gentle grasp of her heel.

“Do I shock you?” He slid the stocking over her toes, smoothing the wool into the arch of her foot, over heel, then ankle, and she knew she ought to stop him, ought to stop the deliberate path of his hands as they tugged the stocking higher, cupping the ball of her calf, nudging the wet cling of her hem higher, so that he might kiss her knee, so that he might pull her closer by way of the hollow of that knee. “I have missed this,” he said. “Dreamed of this leg, this foot, this hand. There is something I would ask you Elaine, while I am down on bended knee. Something I desire of you.”

She tensed, unwilling to hear the request a notorious rogue would most likely make of his daughter’s governess.