A Reluctant Courtship Read online

  He laughed and released her. “Dare I hope you know how to sail this?”

  “I do, but we cannot sail it. The sea is too rough. We will only drown.”

  “Then how can we help?”

  “A rope. This boat should have a rope on it. I am afraid that is all we can do.”

  “It’s better than nothing.” Ashmoor leaped aboard the fishing smack and returned to land a few moments later with a coil of rope tucked under one arm. “Hang on to me. I’ll not even ask if you have on anything but those silly slipper things you ladies think you can wear anywhere.”

  “I never intended to come out here.” Honore shut her mouth.

  “But it isn’t beyond one of the feats of Miss Honore Bainbridge.”

  “We are all known in the family to misbehave. I just got caught.” She spun on her slipper’s flat sole and started for the narrow band of shore between incoming tide and jagged rocks.

  Ashmoor caught hold of her arm. “Hang on to me, Miss Bainbridge. I don’t want to have to fish you out of the sea.”

  “How will you fish them out of the sea?”

  “I can brace myself on the rocks at the mouth of the cove. If they abandon that boat, they’ll have a chance to find purchase on the rocks themselves.”

  “It is too dangerous for you.” She hung on to him. She should have run back up the path to home, but she could not while that lantern continued to flash distress and the silhouette of the boat grew lower and lower. With the tide coming in, the boat would wreck against the rocks. She was not convinced the passengers would escape being battered too.

  “Why would they go out on a night like this?” she cried above the roar of wind and surf.

  “Smugglers, I expect.”

  “Smug—” For the first time, the cold of the night penetrated her cloak and her gown. Her feet went numb. “We cannot stay here and come face-to-face with smugglers. They—they will kill us.”

  “They will die if we don’t stay.”

  And there they were as a wave as high as a farmer’s cottage lifted the craft up and up, where it hovered as though suspended from the sky on string, then the wave hurtled it against the shore like the hand of an angry child discarding a toy.

  “Wait here.” Ashmoor ran forward, charged into the water near the smashed craft, and hurled the rope. Legs braced wide apart, he hauled like a fisherman with a struggling catch. A fisher of men.

  Two men plunged over the side of the boat. They clung to its gunwale for a moment, staggering like drunken souls, then released the craft before the next wave struck. Ashmoor tossed the rope again and again as the men half swam, half stumbled toward solid and dry land. One of them went down and did not get up. Ashmoor stepped farther into the surf, and Honore covered her mouth to stifle a scream. But the other man caught the rope with one hand and dragged his companion to his feet with the other. Ashmoor lunged back, slipped, lunged back again. At last, the two sailors struggled ashore. Cursing and thanking Ashmoor in the same breath, they stumbled onto the rocks, then fell to their hands and knees.

  “Are there more of you?” Ashmoor asked.

  “No, sir. Just . . . two of us,” one of the men gasped out between coughing up water.

  “That was a fool thing to do, going out there in this weather, but don’t say anything more to me. I won’t ask what you were doing out there,” Ashmoor said. “I’ll just suggest you get yourselves home before I happen to see your faces.”

  Honore shrank back against the rocks and drew her hood over her own face. Like as not, judging from the man’s accent, these were local men who just might recognize her even in the darkness.

  Obediently, the men scrambled to their feet and, hands on one another’s shoulders for support, staggered a few feet up the path, then one of them turned back. “We won’t forget your help, my lord.” Then they were gone.

  “My not quite English speech, I suppose.” Ashmoor spoke from beside Honore.

  She jumped. “What?”

  “They know who I am.”

  “Ah, yes, you do not quite talk English.” She grasped his arm. “We need to get out of here or we will be trapped by the tide.”

  “Then let us go, by all means.” He started up the path. “Where are you going?”

  “Home, I think. That is—” Her throat closed.

  Ashmoor stopped on the path and looked down at her, his face a pale blur. “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “I doubt that. You are brave enough that you intended to save those men all by yourself, even though they could have been the bloodthirsty kind of smuggler, but you choke on the word home. So don’t tell me nothing is wrong.”

  “Nothing is wrong that need concern you.”

  “A lady in distress concerns me. A lady wandering on the shore in the middle of the night concerns me.”

  “Do you not know I am no lady? At least not fit for the company of ladies?”

  “I know you made some mistakes . . .”

  Of course he would not finish speaking his thoughts aloud. Even he rejected her for not being a perfect miss, the epitome of womanly graces worthy of being a countess. Oh, he deserved to fall in love with her.

  She filled in the silence between them. “I needed some air to think over something, and I saw the boat in distress.”

  “You couldn’t think in the garden?”

  “Under the eyes of all the servants and Mr. Tuckfield in his cottage and whoever was sneaking about for a little clandestine behavior?”

  He jolted as though attached to one of those electricity machines where someone wound the crank.

  She smiled. “I shocked you with that remark. But you are forgetting my reputation.”

  “Probably greatly exaggerated in its . . . miscreant status?”

  She caught the question of his remark but merely shrugged. Let him stew. He had chosen to believe the worst or he would have honored that marriage contract. Papa had done a great deal to help his lordship. The least Ashmoor could do for Papa in return—or his memory anyway—was marry the disreputable daughter and make an honest woman of her. She had not made herself socially unacceptable all that far. She had not contributed to her beaux’ lawless activities but had merely been an innocent dupe.

  All right, by her own willfulness she had associated with them too freely. Still, she had behaved far better than had her sister Cassandra and Lord Whittaker. Of course, they were now wed and all was forgiven.

  If Honore were Lady Ashmoor, her brother would not dare remove her from the house. He would be begging her to welcome his fiancée into the family and the neighborhood, give her parties for the county. The county would not reject her.

  “Those men did not even see who I was,” she said too abruptly for the change of topic not to go unnoticed.

  Ashmoor tensed. “Did you recognize them?”

  “I should not say if I did. That is how people get themselves killed in these parts.”

  “What if—” He paused. “I suppose I should deliver you to the apple orchard gate again?”

  “No, I came out a different gate. It’s farther away, but it was the only key I could find in a hurry.”

  “Ah, you came out in a hurry.” He resumed walking. “Did that light attract you or signal you?”

  “What are you suggesting, my lord?”

  He shrugged.

  “And I can ask you the same. What are you doing here?”

  He did not answer for the space of a hundred yards. Then he sighed. “I’m looking for my brother.”

  “Is he missing?”

  “He’s always missing at odd hours.”

  “And you’re concerned he is as in league with criminals as I am.”

  “He’s young and impulsive at times.”

  “Ah.” Wind whipped her skirt and cloak around her legs and against his lordship’s, nearly tripping them both. Gusts howled, masking the crunch of their footfalls, and clouds began to blot out the stars and quarter moon. An entire regiment of smugg
lers could fall upon them without them noticing until it was too late to run.

  Then they slipped around the end of the orchard wall, and the wind dropped to a mere breeze. Their footfalls sounded loud enough to be a regiment of smugglers. With each yard passing beneath their feet, the new stillness emphasized the silence between them.

  “Where is this gate you have—for which you have the key?” Ashmoor asked.

  Honore smiled. “Ah, Mr. Chilcott even dares correct your grammar.”

  “My mother tried, but failed in much of her efforts.”

  “Your mother knew—but of course. Your mother was a Ludlow from Cornwall or something, was she not?”

  “Not that that branch of my family wants anything to do with me.” He sounded sad, not bitter, as he might have rightfully been. “I understand her parents are still alive, living in Bath, and I have an uncle who is unwed and childless.”

  “Which means you are likely the heir there too, or your mother perhaps, but probably you. No title would come to you, but they are well off.”

  “You know them?” He stopped and faced her.

  She shook her head. “But I had to memorize the peerage before my come-out.”

  “They have not, apparently, forgiven my mother for running off with my father.”

  “She did the right thing, going with her husband.”

  “I know.” He resumed walking until a dark patch in the wall suggested the switch from stone to iron. “Here?”

  “Yes.” She placed the key in his hand.

  He slipped it into the lock and turned. The gate swung open on well-oiled hinges. “Don’t come out in the night again, Miss Bainbridge. Besides being bad for your reputation, it isn’t safe.”

  “I know. I was feeling . . . desperate.”

  She still was. The tears she had managed to hold at bay earlier now choked up her throat and burned her eyes.

  “Good night,” she managed in a whisper.

  She snatched the key from him and fled through the gateway. She did not manage to hold back the first sob as she locked the gate and tried to flee out of earshot. She tripped over a hem she had not realized had come down just far enough to catch the toe of her slipper, and landed on her knees. She stayed there, her face buried in her arms, sobs shaking her harder with each effort at keeping them silent.

  But not silent enough. Lord Ashmoor began to pound on the gate.

  9

  His pounding stopped her weeping. She flew at the gate, hissing, “Stop, stop, stop.” With her arms flapping out of her cloak and her hair glinting pale in the sliver of moonlight, she looked like some sort of night bird, perhaps a particularly pretty goose with all that hissing, or a female peacock whose feathers were not dull.

  “Got you to stop crying, didn’t I?” He grinned at her.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “A gentleman would have left me alone in my distress.”

  “Not where I come from. We see to females in distress. For all I knew, you’d injured yourself.”

  “I didn’t.” She turned her face away. “Please leave me.”

  Leaving her was the last thing that made sense at that moment. Perhaps she wept after moments of fright, but this time seemed far different from her near catastrophe on the cliff. She had never been in any danger tonight. The men who had come off that wrecked boat hadn’t noticed her, let alone recognized her cowering back in the shadow of an overhang. So the deep, wrenching sobs made no sense if she was not in pain.

  Meric reached through the gate and caught one of her hands in his. It was a tiny hand, narrow with long, slim fingers. A smooth hand. A lady’s hand unlike the hands of his sisters, who, though possessing rather slender fingers and narrow wrists themselves, constantly battled red and roughened skin from the harsh soap and labors they engaged in to survive.

  No more. They had better not be scrubbing and even chopping wood any longer. Yet he hoped they never lost the sturdiness of their hands.

  Miss Bainbridge’s hand felt anything but sturdy. Her fingers fluttered inside the curve of his palm like a small bird about to take flight, and he tightened his hold, smoothing his thumb across her knuckles. “Don’t run off, Miss Bainbridge. Something’s not right when you’re out on the cliffs in the middle of the night and now crying like your favorite dog died.”

  “I do not have a dog. Papa did not like them much, but my sister had cats.”

  “And everyone in your family is well? You didn’t get bad news about your sisters?”

  “They all are well as far as I know.” She tugged on her hand. “Please let me go.”

  “Of course.” He released her.

  She tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her cloak but didn’t leave.

  Meric leaned on the gate as though ready to stay for hours. “You know I have three sisters.”

  “I know that, but little more about you, my lord. People never talked about your family. That is, your father’s branch of the family.”

  “No, I expect they didn’t.” He curled his upper lip. “I expect that was Christian of them.”

  “I think it was more a desire not to offend your uncle than not to gossip.” She turned her face away, and her hair slid over her shoulder like a silk shawl.

  He reached his hand through the gate bars again, then jerked it back. He had no business touching her hair, however curious about its softness he might be.

  “The least said about why people didn’t talk about your branch of the family, the better,” she said a little too harshly.

  “I was talking about my three sisters. They’re still young. The eldest is about your age. After five boys, my mother presented my father with three daughters. They’re tall and thin, but strong. Every one of them can shoot a musket or a rifle and wield an axe. Sarah is sixteen and a better tracker than any of us boys.”

  “Why do you not bring them here so they can learn to be ladies as is their birthright?” She leaned just a little forward as she posed the question.

  Meric tightened his lips to stop his smile. “It wasn’t safe for them to cross the Atlantic. For all I knew, I was going to get impressed onto a British man-of-war on the way and they’d be left to fend for themselves. So I had to leave them behind. Maybe when this war is over, if the second eldest hasn’t wed by then. The youngest better not be of marriageable age by the end of the war, that’s for sure.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twelve.”

  “I hope it is all over long before then.” She definitely took a half step forward. “But why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I want you to understand that my sisters are strong and courageous. The tales I could tell you about them hunting with us would curl your hair.” He glanced at the ripples of gold over her shoulders and allowed himself a smile. “Well, maybe for you they’d straighten it.”

  Her teeth flashed in the dim light fading fast from the growing cloud cover. “I think they might find this country too tame.”

  “Pamela, the eldest one, would like it. She’s gentle that way. But it doesn’t stop her from snaring a rabbit or five if that’s what we need to eat.”

  Miss Bainbridge shuddered.

  “But in spite of all that strength, they break down and cry too. Sometimes it’s over the stupidest things, like a baby bird fallen out of its nest. Sometimes it’s important, like when Pamela’s first sweetheart got pressed into the British Navy despite his family living in New York for a hundred years. Sometimes they just want to be left alone to cry, and sometimes they need a brother’s shoulder and a good ear.”

  “You are not my brother, my lord. I could not—I could never—” She ducked her head.

  “I suppose not. People would get the wrong idea. But I have two good ears.”

  Which heard nothing but the surf pounding against the rocky cliffs, the wind howling and whistling around the garden and orchard walls, and the papery rustle of the tree leaves overhead. Miss Bainbridge said nothing, and dampness in the air warned of coming rain.r />
  “I’ll call on you tomorrow. No, that won’t do. We are taking an early dinner with the vicar. Wednesday then. I’ll call on you Wednesday afternoon.”

  Her head shot up. “Miss Devenish will not like that, my lord.”

  “Miss Devenish does not yet dictate with whom I associate.” He touched her arm in lieu of her hand to shake and found himself with a handful of hair that was indeed as silky as it looked.

  Too slowly for good manners, he drew his hand through the gate and stepped away. “If you’re sure you can get to the house safely, I’ll be on my way then.”

  “I am quite certain. Th-thank you.” A hitch caught at her voice.

  “I’m happy to help a lady in distress.”

  Perhaps a little too happy to do so.

  “Good night.” He strode off, wishing she had told him what distressed her so fully that she had left the safety of the grounds and fled onto the cliffs where she had nearly died just over a week earlier. And that bout of weeping, driving her to her knees, held a tale of its own, that was for certain. He recognized a female’s heartbreak when he heard it in a sob. No man who loved his family and had sisters didn’t know it.

  “Who has broken your heart, Miss Bainbridge?”

  Weeping for one of her beaux? Both had gone to their eternal reward—one shot while resisting capture, the other with the assistance of the Crown, he understood—so she wasn’t likely meeting one of them. Possibly she had met someone else and he had failed to meet her rendezvous. That seemed highly likely with her past behavior.

  The idea made him sick. No lady as brave and pretty and, yes, kind as Miss Honore Bainbridge should toss herself away on a rake or worse. Of course, his own grandparents thought his mother had done so. Despite her having to flee Devonshire in the middle of the night to keep his father from being arrested, despite her living hand to mouth more years than not in an attempt to feed their growing brood, the only part of life over the past twenty-eight years that Mother had not liked were the eight since Father’s death. In word, deed, and simple glance, she proclaimed her love for her miscreant spouse.

  A stab of pain struck Meric so profoundly he staggered under its impact. Whether it stemmed from missing his family or missing that kind of love in his life, he didn’t know at that moment. He wasn’t certain he wanted to find out. He had prayed for the right helpmeet in life for at least the past ten years, and all the Lord was providing was Miss Devenish—acceptable, but not a partner in one’s life.