Untouched Mistress

‘I thought…’

‘I should have warned you that it was badly shattered.’ He crouched and began to separate the remnants of the boat, laying them out across the floor with care. ‘Part of the bow is still intact.’ He placed it close to her feet.

She dropped to her knees beside him, unmindful of the hardness of the wooden floor or the sand that now clung to the damp wool of her dress. She reached out a hand, caressed fingers against what had once been the bow of a small boat.

‘I do not know. I cannot tell if it is the same boat.’ She shook her head, a look of frustration crossing her brow.

‘And there is this,’ he said, uncovering a ripped piece of timber on which a string of bright letters had been painted.

He sensed the sudden stillness in the figure by his side. It seemed that she did not so much as breathe, just leaned forward, taking the torn planking from his hand to trace the remnants of the name.

‘Bonnie Lass.’ Her voice was just a whisper. She swallowed hard; without moving, without even laying down the wood, she closed her eyes. She looked as if she might be praying, kneeling as she was upon the floor with her eyes so tightly shut. Her face appeared bloodless and even her lips had paled.

‘Mrs McLelland,’ he said, and gently removed the wood from between her fingers to place it on the ground. ‘Do you recognise what remains of this boat?’

She made no sign of having heard him.

He heard the shallowness of her breathing, saw how tightly she pressed her lips together in an effort to control the strength of the emotion assailing her. ‘Helena,’ he said quietly, and touched a hand to her arm.

Even then she did not open her eyes, just stayed as she was, rigid and unwavering.

He pulled her kneeling form against him, his hands stroking what comfort he could offer against her back, his breath touching against her hair. Yet still, she did not yield.

His fingers moved to caress her hair, not caring that several of her hairpins scattered upon the floor in the process.

He heard the pain in her whispered words, ‘They should not have died. It was my fault. They were only there to help me. And now they’re dead.’ For all her agony she did not weep.

Guy held her, awkward and stiff though she was, and looked down into her face. ‘How can it be your fault?’ he said. ‘It was an accident, nothing more than a terrible accident. A small boat out in a big storm.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Then explain it to me,’ he said gently.

Her eyes slowly opened and looked up into his. And for a moment he thought she would do just that. Every vestige of defence had vanished from her face. Stripped of all pretence she looked young and vulnerable…and desperately afraid. ‘I…’

He waited for what she would say.

‘I…’

And then he saw the change in her eyes, the defensive shutters shift back into place.

‘I must be getting back. Mrs Weir will be wondering where I am.’ She began to gather up her hairpins.

‘Annabel knows very well where you are,’ he said with exasperation.

Helena carefully picked each pin from the sandy floor before rising and turning to leave.

‘Wait,’ he said, catching her back by her wrist. ‘You are certain that this is the boat in which you travelled?’

A nod of the head sent a shimmer down the coils of hair dangling against her breast. ‘Yes.’

‘With whom did you sail?’

He saw the pain in her eyes, the slight wince before she recovered herself. ‘The boatman who agreed to take me.’

‘Who else?’

‘No one,’ she said, and averted her eyes.

‘Not even your maid?’

Her gaze darted to his and then away. He heard her small fast intake of breath and released her. She folded her hands together, but they gripped so tightly that her knuckles shone white. ‘I have told you my story.’

He reached one finger to tilt her chin, forcing her to look at him. ‘And that is exactly what you’ve told me, isn’t it, Helena? A story.’

He saw the involuntary swallow before she pulled her head away.

‘When I found you upon the shore you told me that your maid, Agnes, had been with you in the boat. In your distress just now you spoke of them, rather than he. Why will you not tell me what happened?’

She shook her head, stumbling back to get away from him.

He snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her to him, until he could feel the wool of her dress pressing against his thighs, feel the softness of her breast against his chest. He lowered his face to hers, so close that their lips almost touched. He could see each fleck within her eyes, every long dark red lash that bordered them, the delicate red arc of her eyebrow. His lips tingled with the proximity of her mouth, so close that they shared the same breath. ‘The truth has a strange way of making itself known sooner or later, sweetheart. Are you sure that you do not want to tell me yourself?’ Much more of this and he would give in to every instinct and kiss her as thoroughly and as hard as he wanted to.

The tension stretched between them.

His eyes slid longingly to her mouth, to the soft ripeness of her lips. He was so close as to almost taste her.

‘Please, Lord Varington,’ she gasped.

It was enough to bring him to his senses. Slowly he released her. Watched while she began to coil her hair back into place.

He replaced the boat wreckage in an orderly pile and re-covered it with the canvas, and when he looked again she had tidied her hair.

‘We should return to the house.’ She spoke calmly, smoothing down the creases in her skirt, fixing the cloak around her body, as if she hadn’t just discovered the boat that had claimed the life of her servants and very nearly her own, as if she was not grieving and afraid. There wasn’t even the slightest hint that he had just pressed her the length of his body and almost ravaged her lips with his own. Yet he had felt the tremor ripple through her, the strength of her suppressed emotion. There was no doubting that the woman before him was a consummate actress when it came to hiding her feelings. But Guy had glimpsed behind her façade, and what he saw was temptation itself. What else was she hiding and why? Guy was growing steadfastly more determined to discover the mystery of the beautiful redheaded woman.

Chapter Four

Later that afternoon Guy was sharing a bottle of whisky with Weir in the comfort of Weir’s gunroom.

‘Do you think that she was lying about the boat?’ Weir poured yet another tot of whisky into Guy’s glass and added a splash of water. ‘Could be she’d never set eyes on the blasted thing before. I’m beginning to wonder whether this whole thing of her being apparently washed up on the shore that morning isn’t just some kind of farce.’

‘Her reaction to the boat seemed genuine enough. She’d have to be a damned good actress to have feigned that.’ Guy accepted the whisky with thanks.

‘Well, maybe that’s exactly what she is.’

‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘Certainly her name is not Mary McLelland, nor did she travel alone with a boatman from Islay. But whoever she is, and whatever she’s up to, I think she recognised the wreckage of the Bonnie Lass.’

Weir stood warming himself at the massive fire that roared in the chimney place. ‘Doesn’t mean she was in it when it went down.’