Swept Away (12 page)

Althorpe walked to the middle of the room and made one complete, slow turn before meeting Anna’s eyes. She did not have to ask. He recognized nothing.

He was about to rejoin her by the doorway when he apparently glimpsed something that caught his attention. He veered over to Anna’s left and, when she edged further inside to see what he was looking at, she could once again feel her heart slowing to a dull thud in her chest.

It was a gun case. Glass-fronted and crisscrossed with a diamond pattern of leaded panes, it contained several long-snouted muskets and a shelf displaying half a dozen assorted pistols nestled in pockets of green baize. The cabinet boasted a stout lock cut in the design of two rearing griffons, but the purpose was rendered moot by the presence of the key jutting from one of the beast’s mouths.

Annaleah said nothing as Emory turned the key and opened one of the doors. She stared, not knowing quite what do think when he reached inside and picked up one of the flintlock pistols, testing its weight and balance in his palm, checking the condition of the firing mechanism. He did not miss a step breaking open the large S shaped cock to see if there was flint inside, or in sliding open the frizzen to see if there was powder in the pan. An agile thumb pulled the hammer into half cock, then full cock position while the finger he curled around the trigger squeezed to release the mainspring.

Anna jumped when she heard the distinct click of the striker hitting the pan. Her father and brother were avid hunters and she was familiar enough with weaponry of many kinds to know how to load and prime a full charge. She was definitely
not
comfortable with Emory Althorpe’s obvious expertise, nor with the glance he cast over her shoulder when he heard her gasp.

“They are not loaded,” he assured her. “In excellent working order, however and exceptionally well-kept compared to the rest of the contents of these shelves.” He raised the gun to his nose and took a delicate sniff. “Cleaned regularly, I would guess.”

“Willerkins,” she said, clearing her throat to remove her heart. “He is a fine shot. An expert huntsman.”

Though she could not be absolutely certain, she thought she saw a wry twinkle in his dark eyes as he carefully returned the gun to its compartment. He closed the door again and turned the key in the lock, removing it after a moment’s hesitation and presenting it to Annaleah when he joined her at the doorway.

“Careless habit, leaving keys in locks.”

He bowed casually to indicate she was free to continue the tour, and when he straightened, his eyes held hers for a long, dragging moment.

“You have remembered something else, have you not?”

“Not really,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “It is more like small flickers of lightning that cut through the darkness for a split second...
'and doth cease to be ere one can say it lightens.’
”

“They were victims of cruel circumstance,” she whispered, conscious of her belly starting to make the slow downward slide into the region of her feet. He was standing close--too close, really. Almost touching her. If there had been a wall behind her, she would have gladly leaned on it to prevent the rest of her body melting into a hapless puddle at his feet.

If he was aware of her discomfort, he did nothing to alleviate it. His gaze, in fact, drifted down to her mouth, which she was in the process of moistening. Seeing where his attention was focussed, her tongue froze halfway across her bottom lip, then curled slowly inward leaving a moist shine behind.

He looked up into her eyes again and tipped his head slightly to one side as if he was contemplating exactly what her reaction would be if he drew her into his arms there and then and kissed her.

“Sh-shall we try another room?” she stammered.

He bowed again, obligingly, and moved slightly to allow her room to pass through the doorway. She felt like running, but she managed a regal enough walk to the next set of double oak doors which opened into a huge drawing room.

The interior was similarly steeped in gloom and neglect. It had never, in all of Anna’s memory been opened to guests or used for entertaining. The furniture, though dusted and polished on an irregular basis, was in the same general condition and appearance as she imagined it had been in her great-grandfather’s time. There were no guns, no books, no lazy streamers of sunlight stirring the dust motes to offer distractions and Althorpe dismissed the ghostly elegance with another nonchalant shrug.

The only remaining room of any consequence on this floor was the conservatory, another sadly mouldering chamber that, as a child, Anna had thought to be the most beautiful, awe-inspiring place in all the world. One entire wall was a glittering array of stained glass. Row upon row of tall colored windows reached up to a gilded ceiling painted with cupids and fairies and beautiful women with long flowing hair. The floor was marble, and with the noon light pouring through the squares of red, blue, green, and yellow glass, it created a kaleidoscope pattern on the stone, on the sheer white muslin of Anna’s dress, and on the front of Emory’s shirt.

Tall french doors led out onto a wide terrace that overlooked the slope leading down to the cliffs. Althorpe opened them and walked outside, but Annaleah did not immediately follow; she stood in the doorway and just watched his reactions.

As always, the pounding of the surf was a low rumble of thunder in the background. The breeze, blowing in off the ocean, carried the faint tang of salt and wet sand and brought the sound of gulls crying in the distance. An ornate stone balustrade fronted the terrace, with open stairs at either end leading down to paths and little gardens, but here too, everything was choked with ivy and weeds that had gone wild.

Althorpe went to edge of the terrace and braced his hands on the stone rail. “It is a shame this place has gone to ruin. It must have been quite magnificent at one time.”

Seeing he was not in any haste to return to the musty smell of the interior rooms, Anna stepped outside. “If it is any consolation to you, sir, I do not remember Widdicombe House looking any other way. It was always big and empty and unused, and as a child, I was convinced there were ghosts lurking around every corner. My brother, in fact, used to hide in my bedroom and wait until I was almost asleep, then he would rustle the curtains and make dreadful, low moaning sounds.”

Even that much charity was unsettling, and Anna felt the goose bumps rise along her arms. His profile reminded her of a statue of a Roman centurion, powerful and clean. Wisps of his hair were slowly working their way free of the ribbon. Strands of it curled against his nape, the ends black as paint strokes over the collar of his shirt, and she had a sudden, preposterous urge to free the rest of it and run her fingers through the inky waves.

Giving herself a little inward shake, she turned to gaze out across the sea. The sun was nearly straight overhead, a colorless ball in a bleached sky, the distant horizon distorted by a gray haze.

“There’s a storm coming our way,” he predicted. “We will have heavy rain before the day is through.”

Anna scanned the horizon as far as she could see, but there was not a single cloud anywhere. She turned to say as much but the words died in her throat. He was looking at her. Not just looking, but
lookin
g, as if he had not had the chance to do so before. His eyes travelled slowly along her hairline, touching on her cheek, her mouth, her chin, eventually following the spiral of a dark curl where it trailed over her shoulder and lay against the gentle swell of her breast. The end of the curl held his attention for the length of two stilted breaths, then he was looking into her eyes again, with an intimacy more shocking than any pressing of flesh against flesh could have been.

“How badly do I frighten you, Miss Fairchilde?”

“You do not frighten me at all,” she said on a whisper. “Well, perhaps a little. Should I not
be
frightened of you?”

“That would depend,” he said widening his smile, “on how loudly you can scream, and how safe you would feel walking with me to the cliffs.”

“The cliffs?”

“Yes. I would like to see exactly where you found me, if it would not be too great of an imposition.”

Annaleah glanced hesitantly over her shoulder at the open doors to the conservatory. His allusion to how loudly she could scream was another mockery, for she doubted a volley of gunshots would carry up from the beach. Once again he was putting her in the awkward position of having to bend the accepted rules of conduct, for it was simply not done that an unmarried woman should walk anywhere with a man unchaperoned.

On the other hand, it was ludicrous to keep applying accepted rules of behavior to the situation with Emory Althorpe. He was a man without a memory. A man struggling to regain his identity and she should be doing what she could to help him instead of worrying what a few singularly peculiar servants might think if they saw her out walking along the cliffs without a maid and a parasol.

“We can go this way,” she said, pointing to one of the wide staircases.

Emory fell easily into step beside her, adjusting his long strides to her smaller, more compact ones. They walked in sunlight and silence across the lawns and along the worn path Anna had taken on her early morning excursions to the shore. She had not ventured down to the cove since the morning she had found Althorpe lying in the sand, nor was she particularly eager, when they reached the end of the path and stood looking out over the escarpment, to do so now.

“There,” she said, indicating the cluster of rocks near the midpoint of the shingled crescent. “That was where I found you. The other side of those large boulders.”

He nodded. “Wait here. I will only be a few minutes.”

“There was nothing else washed ashore with you,” she assured him. “Broom went back and made a very thorough search of the entire cove.”

“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.