Under the Boardwalk: A Dazzling Collection of All New Summertime Love Stories (23 page)

Sydney realized mat she wasn't behaving like a young woman betrothed to a duke should behave. She rarely did behave in a proper manner, which made it all the more a mystery why Peter wanted to marry her in the first place.

She knew why she had wanted to marry him. Her fiance was young, wealthy, and as charming as a prince when he chose to be. He brought Sydney's ancient aunt little presents. He took her sisters on outings, but lately she'd been disturbed by the way his eye lingered when he spotted a pretty shopgirl, and she would have to be a total idiot not to have noticed the long, meaningful look he'd exchanged with Lady Penelope Davenport at last month's Mayfair dinner party.

Sydney realized she wasn't sophisticated. Her father had recently retired from the university. She and her three sisters now lived with their parents in Chelsea, comfortable but certainly not well-off. Sydney knew she didn't have much experience with the opposite sex. She had definitely been swept off her feet by the Duke of Esterfield. But what girl wouldn't have been, especially when she would probably have ended up as a governess otherwise?

Still, even a girl who had no worldly experience, so to speak, sensed certain things, and although Sydney had never breathed a word of this aloud, she wasn't totally persuaded that Peter loved her with his whole heart, or that she even loved him at all.

The yacht race, away from Peter, had given her time to reconsider their engagement. It was actually a relief to escape him because lately he was always finding fault with things she said or did, and his friends weren't much better. They were thoughtless, fickle, and amusing, but Sydney wasn't thinking of marrying them so their flaws were really neither here nor there.

"Does this hurt?" the stranger asked, his deep voice jarring her thoughts. He pressed his thumb into the back of her knee.

She sighed. "No. It feels wonderful."

"Sydney!" Audrey said, scandalized.

The man smiled faintly. "And this?"

"Oh," Sydney cried, flinching as he fingered her kneecap. But the deep pain soon dulled in contrast to the warmth she felt when his fingers slid down her stockinged calf, and he seemed to know what he was doing even if Sydney had relinquished complete control of the situation.

He had strong, competent hands and the devil's own eyes, full of humor and self-confidence. Sydney sighed again.

"Are you a physician?" Jeremy asked, frowning at this peculiar turn of events.

"No." The stranger lowered her skirts, straightening to regard the shipwreck with a resigned look. "I suppose I shall have to offer you lodging. This woman should have a doctor look at her knee. It's deeply gashed and that swelling is only going to get worse."

"I am Jeremy, Lord Westland," Jeremy said, prompted by a poke from Audrey. "This is my wife Audrey."

"Freddie Matheson," Freddie said, stomping his sodden shoes to get warm.

The stranger looked at Sydney. "And you are—"

"Sydney. Sydney—" She hiccoughed, her other hand flying to her mouth.

"Sydney Hiccough." He raised his eyebrow. "What an unusual name. I don't think I'm liable to forget it."

Sydney shivered as a gust of cold air chased across the cove. "It's Windsor, actually. Your name, sir?"

"I know who you are," Jeremy said suddenly, pointing his index finger up at the man's face. "You're Lord DeWilde. We shared Henley's opera box last summer."

Freddie gasped. "One of
the
DeWilde brothers?"

"The literary DeWildes?" Sydney asked, so impressed that for a moment she forgot she was freezing to death and had just allowed a man to peep under her skirts. "One of the three brothers famous for writing tales of the Wondrous and Terrible?"

Freddie gaped up at him. "Why, I stayed up all night reading
Confessions of a Scottish Corpse
. Nearly scared myself to death."

"My personal favorite was
A Ghost Chats from the Grave
," Sydney said warmly. "Oh, golly, this
is
an honor, Lord DeWilde."

Only Audrey remained unimpressed, studying the dark stranger in cynical silence.

Sydney nudged the woman, annoyed at Audrey's lack of enthusiasm. "Audrey, I know for a fact that you couldn't sleep an entire week after reading
The Elixir of Death
. Isn't that a fact, Audrey?"

Audrey blinked. "Yes. It's a fact. But I'm wondering which DeWilde brother—"

The rest of her sentence was lost in a sudden clamor of bells ringing across the cove from the parish church. The deafening sound reverberated against the cliffs. It throbbed to a painful pitch in the air.

The dog on the rocks above them threw back its head and let loose an unholy howl in protest.

"Ye gods." Freddie groaned in pain. "Bells."

"Hell's bells," DeWilde said, clapping his hands over his ears.

Sydney raised her voice to a shout. "What do they mean? Are we being invaded by the French navy?"

DeWilde took her hand to guide her over the rocks and shipwreck debris. Almost as an afterthought, he looked back to motion the others to follow. "The bells were meant to warn you," he said as he drew her into a relatively quiet crevice in the cliff.

"Warn us?" Sydney said, shoving a strand of dripping hair from her face. She wished she had a comb. Imagine looking like a drowned mouse when you were rescued by a man like Lord DeWilde. "Warn us against what?"

He stared at her in amused concentration for several seconds. He seemed to be contemplating his answer.

She smiled to show she wasn't intimidated, which of course she was. She was spellbound, drawn to the magnetism of his dark gray eyes. His gaze bespoke a depth of experience and a self-control she could only envy. Sydney was sure her own emotions were written all over her face. She could never hide her secrets from anybody, but then again, she didn't have any secrets to hide.

"The cove looks harmless, but it is not," he said, his voice low with mischief. "There is a treacherous cross-current in the channel. It doesn't take much to run aground. A strong wind, a miscalculation—"

"Or four foxed idiots in a yacht," Sydney said ruefully.

He laughed. The low vibration of his voice did amazing things to Sydney's system. The sexual resonance gave her the shivers and made her feel as though she'd just drunk three glasses of brandy in a row.

"The villagers would tell you that the ghost of the Blue Knight lured you here," DeWilde said. "Well, perhaps he did. The bells were meant to warn you away, but it's too late now."

Too late. He turned. His words echoed in Sydney's mind as she limped after his tall figure onto the cliffside path. She couldn't say why, but she understood he was talking about something more than the shipwreck. He was every bit as intriguing as his novels, as those tales of the Wondrous and Terrible, and if she was sensible, she would have closed this book before she was drawn in any deeper.

She should have taken his warning to heart. She should have resisted. She definitely should
not
be clambering after him in the shadows with this delicious sense of adventure, wondering how the chapter would end.

Rylan Anthony DeWilde, Baron DeWilde of Harthurst, strode ahead of the struggling group, whistling in a carefree fashion. He didn't usually whistle after shipwrecks. But then again, shipwrecks usually didn't wash beautiful young brunettes with soulful brown eyes to his shore. No one he'd ever rescued before had made such a powerful impression. Small, sweet, a lovely girl.

Miss Sydney Hiccough would have to stay in his house until her knee felt better. Knees were tricky joints. They took a long time to heal, and relapses were common. She'd need looking after. In bed.

He whistled louder.

His dog brushed against his long legs, begging for a run across the moor. Rylan knelt and took the hound's ugly face in his hands.

"Listen to me, you spoiled beast. No frightening off that young lady back there like the last female who was brave enough to come visiting. I rather fancy Miss Sydney Hiccough."

The dog stared at him in plaintive silence.

"All right," Rylan said. "Frighten the others if you must. But be gentle with the lady."

The dog bounded off like a rocket toward the dark expanse of moorland that stretched beyond the cliffs.

Rylan straightened. His angular face amused, he watched the four unsteady figures weave their way toward him. He shook his head as his gaze lit on the woman. There was something soft and uncomplicated about her. She had an openness that could be used as a weapon or a weakness. It would depend on the man she gave herself to.

Rylan knew without doubt he was that man.

He smiled to himself, watching her eyes widen as she looked up at him, whatever she'd been saying to her friends forgotten. She might know it, too. She didn't bother hiding what she felt. For no reason at all, Rylan felt more hopeful then he had in a long, long time.

Audrey and Jeremy were supporting Sydney on either side, depriving Rylan of the chance to offer his help. She was such a slight thing, he could have carried her up the cliff without taking a breath. In fact, it was a wonderful idea—a stroke of genius—and quite the gentlemanly thing to do.

He turned, strode right up to Sydney with his cane under his arm, and swept her up off the sand. Audrey couldn't manage a single word; she elbowed her husband in the side, and Freddie just stood there, looking half-hopeful, as if DeWilde would offer to carry him, too.

"Honestly, this isn't necessary," Sydney said, not quite able to hide a grin.

"But you are hurt, and I don't want you to fall. The path is steep."

He reached the top of the cliff long before the others. His footsteps were certain and he knew this path, walking it alone for inspiration when his work wasn't going well. Still, in all his months here, he'd never imagined anything quite as wonderful as the woman who weighed practically nothing in his arms.

"I shall set you down here," he said.

"Do you know something, Lord DeWilde?"

Rylan stared down into her face. "I know many, many things, Miss Windsor." However, at the moment, he couldn't recall a single one of them.

Sydney smiled. "It has always been my secret wish to meet you."

It was unexpected, the power of her honesty, her innocence, and the way he reacted. She might as well have reached into his chest and torn out his heart. He was hers from that moment on, and, naturally, being an arrogant DeWilde, he didn't doubt the favor would be reciprocated.

He kissed her lightly, lingeringly, on the mouth before he set her down on the sandy grass. Sydney just stared at him, speechless, but not for one instant was he sorry for what he'd done. If he was sorry about anything, it was only that her three friends had finally reached the top of the path, and he couldn't kiss her again.

He glanced over his shoulder at the somber Georgian mansion, thinking of the privacy it afforded. He'd lived there for thirteen months now. Thirteen months to reassess the unsatisfying course he'd charted for his life. Thirteen months of penance for losing his temper and almost killing another man, who clearly deserved to be killed, but not at Rylan's hand.

Time enough to brood over a new book and search his soul, to realize he didn't need constant excitement or dangerous women to make him happy. Pursuing pleasure alone had never appealed to him, but somewhere there had to be a balance between boredom and self-destruction.

He'd chosen this isolated Cornish parish for his self-exile because it suited his purposes to research superstitious lore. Some of the legends he'd begun to investigate predated pagan times. There was magic here, if one believed in it, which he didn't.

The villagers claimed that no outlander was washed ashore by accident. Ghosts, they said, lured the seafarers onto the rocks. St. Kilmerryn was said to be haunted by an ancient knight who grieved for a lost princess.

The church bells might have sounded too late to warn the woman.

But Rylan thought she had come just in time for him.

"It's too late for what?" Freddie kept asking Sydney after Rylan gently deposited her on the path to his house. "And did he say something about a ghost?"

The effects of the alcohol they'd so freely imbibed was wearing off. The chilly sea air cut through their wet clothing. The high spirits of an hour ago were rapidly deflating. She felt like belting Freddie for the sheer hell of it, which wasn't at all like Sydney, and she couldn't stop thinking about that kiss, which had probably meant nothing at all to DeWilde, but she certainly wasn't liable to forget it.

"It's too late for what?" Freddie said again, huddling against her.

"It's too late for tea," Sydney said crossly. Her knee ached. Her head pounded, and she was still perplexed by Audrey's cryptic response to the fascinating man who strode ahead of them, and by her own response to him. She was tingling all over.

"Why were you so rude to him, Audrey?" she asked. "It's a great honor to be rescued by a DeWilde."

Audrey snorted. "If one ignores the fact that he examined your knee in public and carted you up the cliff like a captive."

"Tea?" Freddie sniffed. "I should hope not. I want something much stronger."

"Wait here a moment," DeWilde called over his shoulder. "I need to make sure the other hounds aren't running loose. We weren't expecting visitors."

"No wonder," Freddie said, frowning up at the atmospheric Georgian manor house that seemed to have been spawned from the rocks forming its foundation.

The estate was edged with thorn-laden brambles and Cornish elms that the wind had twisted into weird shapes. A loose shutter banged in the wind. A hound howled. The gables and leaded windows gave the house a gothic appearance.

"Egads," Jeremy said. "I'm not surprised he comes up with those warped stories, living in a creaking old tomb like this."

"Does it have a laboratory in the cellar, do you reckon?" Freddie whispered.

"If it does," Sydney said, "I shall ask his lordship to grow you a brain and have it immediately implanted inside the hollow cavity of your head."

"Hush," Audrey said. "
He's
coming."