Regency High Society Vol 3: Beloved Virago / Lord Trenchard's Choice / The Unruly Chaperon / Colonel Ancroft's Love

Katherine opened her eyes to see the lamp suspended above her head swinging to and fro and, uttering a groan, quickly shut them again. She had hoped it might all have been some diabolical nightmare; that she could not possibly hear the creaking of timbers or be rocking to and fro as though she were in a cradle, but it was all too real. She was still on board that wretched vessel!

‘Ha! So you’re awake, are you? Good! It saves me the trouble of having to rouse you.’

Katherine forced just one eye open this time to see Daniel, appearing disgustingly hale and hearty, negotiating the last few narrow steps down to the cabin. ‘No, I’m not awake. Go away!’ she snapped pettishly, as a vague memory of his being here not very long ago and pouring something fiery down her throat filtered through her mind. ‘I’m not having any more of that wretched draught you gave me.’

‘It was brandy, young woman. And it wouldn’t hurt to take a drop more. You must get up,’ he announced with what she considered a callous lack of sympathy. ‘The rowboat is already over the side, and two members of the crew are waiting to row us ashore.’

His last disclosure possessed the magical effect of some powerful restorative, and Katherine sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. ‘Do you mean we’re back in England?’

‘Not quite, but we very soon shall be,’ he assured her, helping her to don both hat and jacket, before swirling the cloak about her shoulders. Then, taking a firm clasp of her wrist, he led the way up on deck, where the captain stood waiting to help her over the side.

Daniel offered to toss her over his shoulder and carry her down the rope-ladder; a suggestion which she instantly declined. Her legs might still feel slightly wobbly and she certainly wasn’t fully restored, but she had no intention of suffering the indignity of being handled in such a fashion with the captain and his crew looking on, though she was thankful when Daniel insisted on descending first.

Although they seemed a fair distance away from the shore, Katherine was amazed, once she had managed to scramble into the rowing-boat, just how quickly they reached the beach. The relief of stepping on to dry land almost restored her spirits completely.

‘Where in the name of heaven are we precisely?’ she asked, after watching the two sailors head back towards their vessel.

‘We’re on the Dorset coast.’

For a moment she thought she must have misheard. ‘What possessed you to have us set down here? How do you propose we reach London …? Walk?’

‘I’m not taking you to London. I’ve funds enough remaining to get us safely to my home, which is about twenty miles from here, where I’ll be able to keep an eye on you.’

Puzzled, Katherine joined him on the huge rock a little further up the beach, where he had settled himself. ‘I do not perfectly understand, Daniel. Sir Giles wished me to travel to the capital.’

‘I know what that old rogue wanted, Kate. But I have no intention of placing you in his hands. I’ll send him word that we’re back safely, once I’ve reached home. But until I know precisely what he intends to do, I’m not letting you out of my sight.’

Arrogantly dictatorial his decision might have been, but it engendered such a warm feeling of contentment deep inside as she turned her head to see the rugged lines of his profile now set in hard determination.

What a complex mass of amazing contradictions Major Daniel Ross had turned out to be! she mused. He still did, and possibly always would, annoy her intensely on occasions. Yet there had been times during these past days when she had felt very moved by his displays of attention and thoughtful concern for her well-being. Although she thankfully retained few memories of that wretched sea voyage, she did recall quite clearly how he had helped her down to the privacy of the cabin, and had covered her with a blanket. She recalled too with humiliating clarity the way he had held the basin for her when she had been so helpless in the throes of nausea.

Her smile was distinctly tender. ‘I have yet to thank you for taking such care of me last night, Daniel,’ she said softly. ‘It must have been no less a disagreeable time for you than it was for me.’

‘I have enjoyed vastly more pleasurable experiences, certainly,’ he conceded.

An understatement if ever there was one! Katherine mused, with a tiny shake of her head, still at a loss to understand why she should have succumbed to the malady. ‘It really is most odd. I’ve never suffered from seasickness before. I can only imagine it must have been that pasty I ate.’

‘Possibly,’ he returned vaguely, as he raised his eyes to scan the cliff face, which Katherine privately hoped he had no intention of asking her to attempt to negotiate. ‘If you feel sufficiently recovered now, I should like to begin the last stage of our journey. I have every intention of reaching Rosslair before nightfall.’

‘Rosslare?’ Katherine gaped up at him in astonishment as he rose to tower above her. ‘But that’s in Ireland, Daniel! Why in the name of heaven do you want to go there?’

Once again a wry smile clung to his attractive mouth as he helped her to her feet. ‘Yes, I suppose I should have known from the very first,’ he remarked somewhat enigmatically, just as a gust of wind sent several auburn curls whipping across her face. ‘Rosslair is the name of my home, Katherine,’ he enlightened her, as he reached out one hand to capture the errant strands and confine them beneath the hat once more. ‘The spelling is different. It is a coincidence, all the same, that I should be taking to my Rosslair a half-Irish girl.’

The fleeting touch of those fingers brushing against her cheek was no less disturbing than the look of tenderness Katherine couldn’t fail to perceive in his dark brown eyes. For several entranced moments she found it impossible to draw her gaze away. It was almost as if something tangible were binding them together, making each such an integral part of the other that they were becoming inseparable, becoming one. Then the spell was broken by a further gust of wind off the sea that caught at her cloak, sending it billowing about her. She grasped at the folds in an attempt to keep it about her shoulders, and her attention was captured by the long length of fine lawn almost reaching down to her knees.

Frowning slightly, she began to tuck the shirt front beneath the waistband of her trousers. The garment seemed much longer, and baggier than the one she had been wearing the day before. ‘Daniel, this isn’t the shirt you purchased for me, is it?’

He hurriedly turned away, but not before Katherine had detected the look of comical dismay which took possession of his features. Eyes narrowing suspiciously, she followed him towards the mass of large rocks which lined the base of the cliff. ‘Daniel, where did this shirt come from?’

‘You have our free-trading friend the captain to thank for your clean linen, Kate. You soiled your own shirt, and he was kind enough to give you one of his.’

‘Free-trader?’ Katherine swooped down on this interesting snippet. ‘Do you mean he’s a smuggler? I should have guessed,’ she went on when he nodded. ‘I thought it a strange fishing vessel. And I certainly didn’t detect the aroma of fish.’

‘No, but you’d have detected the aroma of brandy quickly enough if you’d been more yourself,’ he responded, thereby returning her thoughts to the borrowed raiment, and inducing a frown.

‘It’s odd, but I cannot recall being given the shirt.’

There was no response.

‘It’s odd that I cannot recall putting it on, either.’ Again there was no response. Furthermore he had suddenly quickened his pace, determined, it seemed, to remain just that short distance ahead—or determined to bring the conversation to an end. A horrendous possibility suddenly occurred to her. ‘Daniel! I demand to know at once how I come to be wearing this garment!’

He stopped and swung round so abruptly that Katherine almost cannoned into him. ‘All right, if you’re so set on knowing … I changed it for you, as you were incapable of doing it yourself,’ he admitted. ‘Now, does that satisfy you?’

She could feel the searing heat slowly rising from the base of her throat. ‘But-but … I’m not wearing anything beneath,’ she squealed, cheeks now aflame.

‘I’m well aware of that, strangely enough,’ he admitted, before neatly avoiding the small fist which swung in a wide arc towards his left ear.

It wasn’t so much the bold admission itself that had instantly replaced the searing humiliation with anger as the provocative gleam which had sprung into his brown eyes. ‘Ooh, you—you lecherous wretch!’ she screeched, frustration at missing her target only adding to her wrath. ‘I trusted you! How could you have taken advantage of me in such a despicable way?’

Half-amused, half-exasperated, Daniel followed as she swung away and began to stride up the beach, her slender frame held rigid with indignation. He could quite understand her mortification and anger, though he found it difficult to maintain his countenance when she swiped his hand away as he reached out to assist her over the rocks.

‘All I did was try to make you more comfortable, Kate,’ he ventured gently.

‘Kindly do not speak to me!’

‘My actions stemmed from the purest of motives,’ he assured her, sublimely ignoring the request.

The earnest admission won him a brief, considering glance. ‘Maybe so,’ she conceded in a tight little voice still throbbing with anger.

‘Come, be fair, Kate!’ he urged, determined to bring her out of her sulky mood, which was so unlike her. She might be a feisty little wench on occasions, hot-tempered and occasionally wilful, but sullenness was not in her nature. ‘After all, it was no more than you did to me when I received that slight wound the other day.’

‘That, Major Ross, was totally different, and you know it!’ she countered, clearly unwilling to be pacified. ‘You were fully aware of what I was doing the whole time. Furthermore, I don’t suppose for a moment that I’m the first female to have glimpsed you in a half-naked state. Whereas you are most certainly the first man ever to have seen me.’

He hardly needed this assurance, but the totally honest admission gave him a wonderful feeling of satisfaction all the same. ‘No, I don’t suppose I am the first, Kate. I expect your father was,’ he teased gently, and she swung round, tiny fists clenched.

‘Ooh, you really are asking to get your ears boxed!’

‘If it will help you recover from your fit of the sullens, then go ahead,’ he invited, screwing up his eyes in anticipation of the blow that never came. Consequently he risked opening just one again a moment later in time to catch the faintest of twitches at one corner of that delectable mouth.

‘This conversation is becoming ridiculous,’ Katherine announced, turning away in time to hide the smile that she seemed incapable of suppressing.

‘Wrong,’ he countered. ‘This conversation was ridiculous from the first. So I would suggest that, instead of wasting our breath in fruitless argument, we channel our energy into something far more worthwhile—namely, getting off this beach.’

She couldn’t help but agree with this. ‘And do you happen to know of some way off this rock-fall, without having to get our feet wet?’

‘There’s a path up the cliff a little further along. My cousin Simon and I occasionally played here when we were boys.’

Memory stirred. Katherine was almost sure that the cousin to whom he had just referred was none other than the man who had married his childhood sweetheart. Consequently she tactfully refrained from comment. She had no desire for him to discover that she had already learned something of his past from her aunt. If he wished to confide in her he would do so, she decided, asking instead if they were close to any towns or villages.