My Dangerous Duke (8 page)

“Kate!” he bellowed.
“Halt!”

The wind made sport of his command, snatching at his words and tossing them away toward the sea, but she had heard him, all right. She skidded to a precarious halt on the icy flagstones of the walkway, looked over her shoulder, spied him in the window, and blanched as she met his matter-of-fact stare.

“Going somewhere?” he inquired loudly as he rested his hands on the window ledge and raised an eyebrow at her.

She shot back a glare in answer, then she simply ran, no longer bothering to crouch down behind the parapets.

If actions spoke louder than words, her answer was clear, and once more, Rohan was astonished. The saucy tart wanted no part of him.
We’ll just see about that!
Noting the way she was headed, he realized her destination was probably the little door still several yards ahead of her, which opened into the upper story of the gatehouse tower.

He took it as confirmation that her goal was to get back to the smugglers’ village with whatever booty she had managed to lift from his chamber.

“Findlay!” he shouted, waving his arm to attract the attention of one of the guards on duty. He could see a few of his men staying out of the weather as best they could while keeping their posts at the gatehouse.

It took a moment for one of the men to hear his shout above the constant loud splatter of the rain.

“Sir?” Findlay shouted back, coming out of their shelter toward him. The men’s black cloaks blew every which way as they approached across the inner courtyard.

Shielding their eyes from the needling rain, they gazed up at the window at Rohan.

“The girl! She’s coming your way! Stop her!”

“Pardon, Your Grace?”

He pointed angrily at the wall, but even as they followed his gesture and turned to look, Kate slipped into the little side door on the upper story of the gatehouse.

Findlay turned back to him, raising his hands in an eloquent shrug.

Rohan cursed, realizing he had only served to distract the guards, thus making it all the easier for Kate to sneak out the front.

“Get the girl!”
he boomed, pointing to the castle gates.
“She’s getting away!”

Bloody hell.

In the blink of an eye, he abandoned the window, bolted out his chamber door, and went rushing down the stairs to go after the little hoyden himself.

“Sir! What is the matter?” Eldred surged toward him in surprise as Rohan came barreling down the steps.

“The girl’s run off. I don’t think she likes me,” he said wryly, then he dashed down the corridor and pushed the massive door aside.

Without his greatcoat, he was instantly drenched by the pelting rain, though its prickly ice edges melted on contact. Striding out into the courtyard, he saw that his men had finally caught on and now gave chase; Kate raced ahead of the pack like a fox, her short lead already diminishing.

Rohan followed as the whole group moved out of sight beyond the castle walls. The light crusting of ice on the dead winter grass made every step crunch as he jogged after them, wondering what he would say once they’d caught her.

Obviously, she had changed her mind about trying to join the London demimonde. Did she think he’d object? It was all the same to him. Let her do as she pleased.

In the next instant, however, his heart skipped a beat, every protective male instinct in his blood summoned when he suddenly heard her scream.

He sprinted automatically, speeding to the scene as fast as his body could move.

About thirty yards beyond the castle gates, he saw a standoff that made his blood run cold.

His men had cornered the girl on the edge of a hundred-foot cliff overlooking the sea.

The salt wind buffeted her, whipping the dark, wet cords of her hair around her pale face, while under her sock-clad feet, the weather had slicked the rough folds of rock, making her perch on the cliffside all the more perilous.

He slowed his pace as he approached, his forceful heartbeat easing, his breathing deepening as his training took over, his mind locking into emergency mode.

Details of the whole scene before him sharpened, his men’s agitation, yelling at her as if they could not see her vulnerability, or how scared and small she looked in his oversized coat, drooping in the rain.

Behind her, the cold, indifferent, pewter sea stretched to the horizon.

Kate was holding out her cold-reddened hands, warning his men back in fury as Rohan strode into their midst, with one goal—to defuse the situation. She needed to be calmed, and she had to be protected, if only from herself.

She could so easily fall from the precipice, and that spelled certain death. In a most unhurried fashion, Rohan walked past the bristling line of guards, all his focus taking her in.

“What’s going on, Kate?” he asked softly.

“Stay back!”
she screamed. “I swear I’ll jump if you come any closer, I’ll do it.”

He obeyed, at least for the moment. He stopped about ten feet away, but stared at her intensely, as if he could slow time and the wind itself to keep her secure.

“Easy, now. Come away from there, Kate,” he cajoled her as gently as possible.

“Go to Hell!”

“No one is going to hurt you, sweet. I just want to help.”

“Oh, really?” Her voice was shaky, but her incredulous glare was fraught with rage. “Then call off your dogs!”

“Fall back!” he commanded at once. He looked over his shoulder to make sure his men backed off far enough to satisfy her. He did not want them frightening her any further. He gazed at her again, wondering if Caleb had saddled him with a madwoman. “All right? You’re in control now. We’ll do as you say.”

She shook her head at him with an angry scoff. “Right!”

“Kate: Listen to me. Come away from the edge. You mustn’t stand there. These cliffs are very unstable. They crumble all the time without any warning. This rain has probably weakened them more. It’s not safe.”

“Safe?” she echoed miserably. “I don’t even know what that word means anymore.”

Training or no, his heart pounded at the prospect of this beautiful girl with the tragic green eyes killing herself right in front of him. He could not allow it to happen. He just wished he had some idea of what demon was driving her.

Something was obviously very wrong, beyond his earlier assumptions. “Kate. Please.” He clenched his jaw, inching forward ever so slightly, but taking pains not to make any sudden moves. “Tell me what is the matter.”

“You expect me to trust you?”

“What is it you want?”

“I want to go home!” she wailed.

“Then you shall,” he promised softly. “But come away from there, my dear. It isn’t worth it. Those rocks are icy. You’re soaking wet. Come in and have breakfast—”

“Don’t toy with me!” she wrenched out. “God, I can’t bear any more cruelty.”

“What cruelty?” he asked in amazement. “Has someone on my staff been unkind to you?”

She laughed at him and turned away in disgust, shaking her head.

His heart leaped into his throat because he thought at that moment she was going to do it—going to jump.

His glance homed in, swiftly calculating the distance between them—seven or eight feet, now that he had moved closer—but before he could spring, she looked at him again, this time with hopeless tears in her eyes.

“Please, Your Grace. Just let me go. I swear, I won’t tell anyone. But I’m not going back in that cellar,” she whispered barely audibly. “And I’d rather die than live as any man’s slave.”

Rohan stared at her in shock. “What cellar?”

“As if you don’t know!” she screamed at him in sudden fury.

“Kate—I don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about!”

At that moment, a loud crack and rumble split the air.

She glanced around wildly and started to rush forward, but she was too late—before his horrified eyes, the ledge crumbled under her weight like a trapdoor.

Before the shriek had even left her lips, he dove forward onto his stomach with a lightninglike move, grabbing her arm as she fell. Flat on his belly at the edge of the broken cliff, he pulled back, counterbalancing his weight, while dimly aware of his men’s wild shouts.

In that instant, plagues, fires, wars—all the terrible things he had seen in his thirty-four years flashed through his mind like a deck of cards being expertly shuffled in the hands of a cardsharp … all the things that had nearly stripped him of his humanity.

Time bowed, taut with the echo of the various targets he had been sent to kill for the Order. He could still hear them begging in vain for their lives.

Somehow, all of it paled in comparison to the sight of Kate dangling off the cliff’s edge—and the prospect of losing his grip on her rain-slicked arm.

His heart slammed as the seconds dripped like the rain off the tip of his nose.

A hundred feet below, the fiercely churning sea yawned, waiting to swallow her. The white waves broke with violent sprays of foam over the jagged boulders.

Gritting his teeth, he clasped her left arm with his right hand, taking a stronger hold.

“Hold on to my arm,” he ground out.

She obeyed, her right hand clawing onto his forearm; he braced himself on the ledge with his left hand as Kate looked up into his eyes with a pleading, panicked stare that begged him not to let her go.

“Help me,”
she choked out.

With a heave of furious strength, Rohan pulled her up, dragging her higher until he was on his knees. She gained the ledge. He fell back, hugging her to him.

She collapsed on his heaving chest, shaking, soaked, and panting. Her slim body felt frozen to the bone atop him; she choked on a sob.

He rolled her onto the wet, frigid, hopefully solid earth beside him, and took approximately three seconds to catch his breath. But years of survival training had begun to drive him now. He stood up, scooping Kate into his arms.

She let out a small cry as he slung her over his shoulder and strode at a swift pace past Eldred and his men, who were standing by to help.

Rohan ignored them. The men parted to let him pass as he carried her into the nearby gatehouse. Some of them followed anxiously, asking if they could help, but he did not answer, marching up the narrow steps to the heated guardroom in the gate tower’s upper story.

“Stay out,” he ordered them, shutting the door in their faces.

A fire crackled in the hearth. He carried her across the wood-plank floor to the chair in front of the fire. The simple guardroom had a timber-beam ceiling and plain stone walls.

Depositing Kate unceremoniously in the chair, he scanned the room like an eagle-eyed sentry and retrieved a blanket the men kept on a shelf for those long night watches. He shook it open and wrapped it around her shaking body without a word, then noted the kettle hanging over the fire. He took a mug off the rugged wood mantel and poured her a cup of what proved to be mulled cider.

His hands were steady as he poured it, and his mind was crystal clear, but some deep, savage part of him wanted to roar at having just pulled this woman out of the mouth of the monster, death. His old friend! Why, it seemed he had saved a life for once instead of taking it.

How novel,
he thought acidly.

Moving with angry, automaton-like precision, he turned and held the steaming mug toward her, but she was staring at nothing, apparently in shock.

He put the cup in her shaking hands. “Drink this,” he ordered in a most uncompromising fashion.

 

Still dazed by her narrow brush with catastrophe, Kate slowly lifted her stunned gaze to his face.

Warrington looked furious.

She took in his taut-lipped expression; the jagged star-shaped scar carved in his skin at the outer corner of his left eyebrow. A small streak of mud slashed across his cheek like war paint.

Iron authority was stamped across his closed, hard face. His pale eyes glittered as he held her gaze.

She had nothing left to fight him with, so she simply bent her head and took an obedient sip of the mulled apple cider, as commanded. It left a warming trail all the way to her belly, but it could not fill her emptiness at the moment. Her heart felt as hollow as a drum.

The Beast turned away, apparently not quite ready to deal with her yet. Kate did not know what to think: The man she had reason to fear the most had just saved her life.

Where did that leave her now?

Wrapping her hands around the mug, she shut her eyes, still hearing the horrific sound of the stone ledge breaking under her.

If not for Warrington, she would be dead.

A tremor ran through her.

She had threatened suicide as a final, desperate measure to gain her freedom, but even the earth itself seemed to be against her, delivering her back to him, whether she liked it or not.

She had been so close to escape! But now her hopes were dashed. She was glad to be alive, of course, but having been recaptured, she feared she might be in for an even darker fate now that she had displeased the man she had been “given” to, had made him risk his own life to save hers. Now Warrington could claim that she
owed
him whatever he might want. Even now, she could feel his silent anger throbbing through the Spartan little room.

Dear heaven, what punishment might she have to endure for her attempt to flee? She let out a long, shaky exhalation, tears threatening behind her closed eyes. As she huddled in her chair and held the mug close, letting the curling steam warm her nose, she searched her heart to find out if there was any fight left in her.

Always, the thought of her seafaring papa gave her another little ounce of strength to keep holding on.

The memory of the man who had laughed in the face of a tempest, along with the sweet, spicy taste of the cider with its bracing hint of cinnamon began, ever so gradually, to bring her back to the world of the living.