Taken by Storm (26 page)

Colin . . .

She gazed at all she could see of him; the base of his throat, and the wedge of skin just beneath her lips, where soft, wiry hair lay and a pulse beat rhythmically. She moved her head just enough to nuzzle his shirt aside and put her mouth against it. He smelled clean, of English wind and English pastures, hay, clover, and wild grasses.

Colin. . . .

She kissed that warm, beating pulse.

He did not stir, and gingerly, Ariadne tried to push herself out of his protective embrace. It was no easy task, with his arms locked loosely around her, but she felt the call of nature and had no choice but to answer it. Holding her breath, she moved back another inch, and the arm that weighed down her shoulders slid off and thumped heavily to the blanket.

She froze. He made a soft, unintelligible noise, but did not wake.

She stood and looked down at him. He lay with his back propped against the hard spokes of the chaise’s left wheel, his head at an uncomfortable-looking angle to his body and his lashes making long, sweeping crescents atop his cheeks. Moonlight gilded his hair and turned it silver.

He had not abandoned or forgotten her after all, but had come for her.

He had saved her.

He had saved all of them.

“You are beautiful,” she whispered, her heart in her throat. “I think . . . I could love you.”

His spectacles lay upside-down on the grass beside his hip, and carefully picking them up and folding them, she put them on the seat of the chaise. The movement sent pain winging the length of her arm and wincing, she hesitantly touched the area. A bandage bound the wound, tight enough that it felt snug and secure. Her eyes filled with tears of adoration, and as she gazed down at her handsome, gentle savior, sleeping like a babe in the starlight, she felt her heart constrict, then overflow with something so powerful it did not even have a name.

In that moment, she
knew
that she loved him.

Knew that she’d loved him from the moment she’d seen him bending over that dying dog.

“Dear, dear, Colin . . .” she whispered, kneeling down beside him and placing her lips against his forehead. She leaned back, just looking at him, and feeling the tears gathering in her eyes. “God help me, but I have fallen in love with you.”

And then, suddenly, Maxwell, her betrothal, and the plight of the Norfolk Thoroughbred swept over her like a dark cloud.

She moved stiffly away and attended to her needs. The brook babbled quietly in the darkness, and kneeling on its bank, she splashed water on her face and tried to make sense of things. The stars reflected on the flat parts of the water, refracted into millions of bright sparkles on those broken areas where the brook tumbled over rocks and rises. She stared down into the depths, her heart aching with longing and despair and something she couldn’t quite grasp, couldn’t quite understand.

Colin . . .

Bits and pieces of scenes came back to her. That hot kiss on the muddy slope, promising further, untold delights. His hand on her breast, sweeping up her thigh on a trail of fire. The long gazes, the accidental touches, the silent glances when the other wasn’t supposed to be looking, and always, the constant awareness and underlying attraction they each had for the other. She thought of the sound of his voice, the taste of his kiss, that crooked grin and his helpless laughter when she said something outrageous. She was lost. But then, she had been, from the moment she’d first seen him and he’d glanced up and caught her with those striking, oddly beautiful eyes.

Just thinking of his kisses, the gentleness of his strong, warm hands—and the idea of them touching her here, there, and all over—was enough to melt her from the inside out and reduce her to a state of mindless need and want.

Lady Ariadne St. Aubyn got to her feet and stared resolutely across the darkened pastures that stretched away toward the pink rim of the coming dawn.

There was nothing to do but face the truth.

She loved Colin Lord, veterinarian.

Wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.

Head high, she turned and went back the way she’d come.

# # #

“Blowing a good one, sir,” said his first lieutenant, as Colin, with difficulty, came up on the steeply heeling deck and noted the waves roiling, thrashing and building all around. He glanced up at the pennants, noting the strength and direction of the wind, and braced himself against the crutches, keenly aware that the officer had moved a bit closer to him, protectively, though he was trying to be discreet about it.

“Time to take in the courses,” Colin said. “Get some cloth off her and let her fall off a few points so the seas are running under her counter. ‘Twill make it more comfortable for those who are below, recovering from their injuries.”

The order was conveyed, and men ran to the shrouds, others to the lines and braces. Above, the sky was turning a deep, ugly charcoal, almost green, and a gust of wind hit the mighty man o’ war, heeling her over even farther, still. Desperately, Colin braced himself against his left crutch, the pain in his shattered leg radiating up past his kneecap, his thigh, and into his groin. Nausea flared in his stomach, and he bit it back, determined not to show weakness, determined to prove that he could still do this.

He lifted his gaze to the horizon, at the parade of building swells marching toward them, and there, he saw it, a sailor’s nemesis, a rogue wave, huge, towering, and heading mercilessly toward them.

He shouted a warning, and felt the thing slam into the starboard hull and burst high, the giant spray of towering foam hanging suspended against that black cloud before the monster wave broke and fell streaming over the deck. The sheet of gray-green water came sluicing toward him, bursting through scuppers and crashing up against the boats in the waist, washing over men who, like himself, had seen it coming and grabbed onto anything they could hold. Colin had seen and survived many a rogue wave in his years at sea, but never on crutches.

The water slammed against him, and he never had a chance, no matter how great the strength in his arms, no matter how prepared he was for it. It swept the crutches right out from under him and he fell, hard, to the deck, there to lay gasping, helpless and humiliated, as the water rushed past him and poured out of the larboard scuppers, carrying him with it; then Lieutenant Pearson, his face pale, was there, grabbing his wrist before he could be swept over the side, and Colin knew then, that he was never again going to be able to inspire confidence amongst those who looked to him to lead them, if he could not even stand up. . . .

# # #

He lay sleeping where she had left him, a golden angel lacking only the wings and the halo. In the starlight, his hair was almost silver, and the effect was enough to lend him a sort of ethereal mystique that held her breathless and spellbound.

Ariadne knelt down before him.

It has been said that if you stare at a sleeper for long enough, he will waken. Squatting, she propped her elbows on her knees, her chin in her palms, and focused her gaze on his closed eyelids. But after five minutes of this, he still had not moved.

Growing impatient, she reached out and carefully touched his hair.

He flinched, but did not wake.

Her hand remained with the soft locks caught between thumb and forefinger; then her palm moved lower, tracing the warm, stubbly curve of his jaw and cheekbone. She put her hand against his cheek, and with a soft sigh, he leaned his face into it.

And then his eyes—beautiful, mystical, almost magical in the kiss of the starlight—opened.

He said nothing, only looking at her. There was no fogginess in his gaze, none of the customary adjustment most people must make from sleep to wakefulness. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her; then, he seemed to remember himself, and reaching up, gently encircled her wrist with strong, warm fingers.

The moment was broken.

“Your arm—”

“My arm is fine.”

He frowned, seeing her face. “Are you alright, Ariadne?”

Her eyes pooled with tears. Slowly, she shook her head.

He sat up, leaned against the wheel of the chaise, and patted the ground beside him. She swallowed hard and joined him, feeling very tiny beside him, feeling very foolish for making such a mess of things. Anguish filled her, and the tears slid unchecked down her cheeks. He was too gallant to call attention to them, merely pulling out his handkerchief and dabbing silently at her eyes until she had herself until control. Then he slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and only her breeding and manners kept her from huddling against him and burying her face in the warm cup of his shoulder.

“I love you, you know,” she said. Then she raised her chin and stared mutely out into the darkness. Her lip trembled, but her voice was firm with resolution. “I love you, Colin, have loved you from the moment I first saw you, I think, and I don’t quite know what to do about it.”

Sighing, he drew up one knee, lay back against the wheel of the chaise, and gazed wordlessly out at the coming dawn.

“Colin, did you hear me?” Feeling suddenly foolish, she looked down and began to twirl a clump of grass around her finger.

“Yes, sweetheart, I heard you.”

“I . . . don’t know what to do about it.”

“Yes—it, uh, well . . . certainly does present a problem, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, and it is all your fault, because I wouldn’t even
be
in love with you if you’d only stop doing things to make me love you!”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a helpless grin. “Oh, well, yes. I really should have left you to bleed to death.”

“And you should not have rescued Thunder from that heinous ogre, and you should not have saved that poor dog from bloat, and you should not show such patience with me, and—”

“Ariadne.”

She sniffled and glanced at him, her eyes glassy with tears, her lower lip quivering. “What?”

He smiled, a bit sheepishly. “You are missing a beautiful sunrise.”

To his surprise, she began to sob, and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Colin . . . I am
so confused
.”

He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “I know. I am, too.”

“I don’t know what to do . . . what to say . . . what to feel.”

Again, he drew his handkerchief and gently dabbed the tears from her cheeks. “Neither do I.”

“What do you think we ought to do about it?”

He looked up again, off into the gathering pink dawn, with eyes that were distant and sad. “Keep away from each other, I guess. It’s . . . safer that way.”

“Is that what you want?”

“What I want, and what I shall have, are two different things.”

“That is not what I asked you.”

“Very well then.” He turned to face her, his gaze holding hers in the faint light. “What I want is a beautiful young noblewoman who is promised to another. What I shall have, is the heartbreak of having to deliver her into the arms of somebody else.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest, locked her hands around them, and propped her chin on her kneecaps. A lump rose in her throat, and she looked down at the ground, seeing it through a haze of tears. “Colin . . . I’m not so sure I still want to marry Maxwell.”

“Have you ever been, Ariadne?” he asked, gently.

She swallowed hard, feeling something thick and harsh catching in her throat.

“No,” she whispered. “Not . . . after having met you.”

“You’ve only known me for a few days. Not so long as you’ve known Maxwell, and not long enough to consider giving up your future.”

“You’re too noble.”

“No, merely practical. And older than you.”

“You mean, wiser?”

He shrugged and gave a little grin. “Maybe.”

Her eyes sad, she gazed at him, her cheek still lying atop her kneecaps. “You will make some lucky woman the perfect husband,” she said wistfully. “You are the gentlest, yet strongest, man I have ever met, and you make all those London blades to which I am accustomed look like a bunch of whining sissies. You stand up for what you believe in, you defend what you think is right and just, you are . . . a
man
.”

His grin widened. “Yes, I was, the last time I checked—”

“Colin?”

“Yes?”

“Do you love
me
?”

He plucked a blade of grass, began knotting it around his finger, and slanted her a chiding look. “Do birds fly?”

“
Do
you?”

“Fly?”

“No, silly . . . love me.”

He tossed the grass aside and looked into her eyes, his gaze so full of feeling she thought she would drown beneath the force of its intensity. Then he gave a great sigh, took her hand, and turned his face to the dawn. “Yes, Ariadne. For all the good it does me, I do.”

The words hung in the still air, and there was not even any breeze to sweep them away. They glanced at each other, he looking a bit sheepish by what he had just confessed, she gazing at him with a slow grin spreading across her face that lit up her entire countenance. Then, shyly, they both looked away from each other.

She looked down at her feet. “So now what do we do?”

“
You
need to think about whether you will go through with this marriage to Maxwell, and if not, how to end it.”

“And you?”

“I think—” he squeezed his eyes shut and pushed the heel of his hand against his forehead— “I think I need to go take a walk.”

He got to his feet, and left her sitting there in the grass by herself.

“Why?”

“I need to think.”

“Why?”

He stood staring down at her. “Because if I
don’t
think, I’ll take action, and then both of us might—correction, both of us
will
—regret it.”

He turned and began walking away.

“But
would
we regret it?” Feeling rejected, Ariadne stared after him. “And would the ‘action’—I presume that means lovemaking—be so very bad, Colin? If we both want to do it I can’t see why—”

He spun around, shoving his hair off his brow. “For God’s sake, Ariadne, think about it! At the moment you’re engaged to another man, and you need to make some major decisions before you can even think about marrying
me
—”