Rapture Becomes Her Read online

  Leaving his clothes behind, Emily dismissed Mary and returned upstairs. Resuming her seat beside the man on the bed, she stared at him, as if willing him to wake and tell her who he was and how he’d gotten into the Channel.

  Being the daughter of the previous squire and having lived all of her life near a small village nestled in the Cuckmere valley she was intimately familiar with the local inhabitants. Her mouth twisted. And since her cousin had stepped into her father’s position, she had, unfortunately, become familiar with several randy, young bucks and widows of questionable morals from London who made up her cousin’s circle of friends.

  This man was a complete stranger, but he wasn’t just any bit of flotsam tossed up from the belly of the Channel either. He was wealthy and his hands told her that he was a member of the gentry, perhaps even a member of the aristocracy.

  Her expression puzzled, she continued to stare at him. There’d been no gossip about someone of his description visiting any of the great houses in the surrounding countryside. . . . So who was he? And why was he found drifting in the Channel on a wicked night like tonight?

  As if to punctuate her thoughts, a shaft of wind suddenly shrieked down the chimney, making her jump. Amused at her reaction and noting that the fire was dying, Emily got up and walked over to poke at the fire, sending a shower of sparks flying upward. From the neat stack nearby, she threw on several more pieces of wood and only when the fire was crackling and snapping to her satisfaction, did she take a seat in the high-backed tapestry-covered chair near the fire.

  She looked over at the stranger and was pleased to see that there was a faint flush to his cheeks and that his lips were a more natural color, the blueness having faded as his body warmed. Mrs. Gilbert was right: he should recover.

  With the stranger’s most immediate needs taken care of, she dismissed him from her mind and turned her attention to what Mrs. Gilbert and Jeb were doing at this very minute. And she wondered again, if she had made the right decision four years ago. . . .

  She’d resisted the idea in the beginning and for the first few years following her father’s death, despite the unpleasant intrusion of her cousin and his drain on the family estates, she’d managed to keep her great-aunt, Cornelia, and her stepmother, Anne, fairly insulated and comfortable. Once her cousin had frittered away the bulk of the tidy fortune her father had amassed and began to ravage the estate for money to squander at the gaming tables and brothels in London, she’d had no choice.

  With the Sussex coast only a few miles away, Emily had grown up hearing all the stories about the local smugglers and so it wasn’t such an outrageous decision. For as far back as she could remember, Cook, and even their butler, Walker, had filled her head with legendary tales of the smugglers’ bravery and cleverness in outwitting the custom officials and the hapless riding officers. When feeling mellow, even Cornelia had been known to tell a rollicking good story about the smugglers who plied their trade just off the coast. Many in the area, while not smugglers themselves, were relatives of smugglers or were aligned with the smugglers.

  By the time she was ten, Emily could have named several known smugglers and a dozen or more villagers and farm laborers who helped transport the contraband goods to the outskirts of London. Her father had not been above accepting without comment the packet of tea, the cask of French brandy or the bolt of fine silk that periodically appeared in his stables—usually the morning after several of his horses were found standing in their stalls, muddy and exhausted.

  Realizing that she had to do something to save them all from ending up destitute or nearly as bad, at the complete mercy of her cousin, turning to smuggling had been a simple step. And, she admitted with a clenched jaw, there’d been another reason: her little smuggling operation kept several villagers in their homes and saved them from the work house or being reduced to homeless beggars.

  The sudden death of her father from a broken neck when his horse had balked at a fence and thrown him while he had been fox hunting in Leicestershire had stunned the family and the neighborhood. Anne, her stepmother, only two years her senior, had been shattered by the news of her husband’s death and had lost the baby she had been carrying.

  It had been a terrible time. Not only had the little family suffered the devastating loss of nephew, father and husband, but Jeffery Townsend, the son of the old squire’s younger brother, had gleefully stepped into his shoes and took up the position as head of the family. It wasn’t a good fit. The new squire was as different from the old squire as chalk to cheese. Certainly Jeffery was no family man and had no time or patience for a cantankerous old woman, a weeping widow who’d just lost her husband and stillborn child and a fierce-eyed Emily. Only grudgingly had he accepted their presence in the lovely manor house that had housed the Townsend family for over two centuries.

  The stranger stirred, groaning, and pushing aside her unpleasant memories, she hurried to his side. Hovering over him, she brushed back a strand of salt-stiffened black hair from his forehead.

  She watched him for several more seconds, but he gave no further indication that he was coming awake. Staring intently at the dark face and noticing the thick black brows, the ridiculously long lashes of his eyes, she wondered again who he was and why he had been in the Channel. Did he have a family worried about him? A mother? A wife? Children?

  The wound bothered her. It looked to her as if something . . . or someone had brought something very hard and very heavy down on the stranger’s head. Not that she was an expert, but in the four years since she had undertaken to rescue them all from destitution by smuggling, she had cleaned and patched and sewn up her share of wounds. Some were simply the result of the dangers faced at sea; others from clashes with the revenuers or with the vicious Nolles’s gang that claimed this part of Sussex as their own. She’d seen this kind of wound before and the cause was usually a blow to the back of the head.

  Faith, at twenty-eight the eldest Gilbert daughter, opened the door and peeked inside. Seeing Emily standing beside the bed, she came into the room and stood by her side. “Whoever he is, he’s quite handsome, isn’t he?”

  Emily shrugged. Thinking of her cousin, she muttered, “Handsome is as handsome does.” She glanced at Faith. “Has your mother returned?”

  “No, but young Sam slipped by to say that she wouldn’t be long.”

  “Did he say why they’re delayed?” Emily glanced at the painted china clock on the mantel. It was approaching two o’clock in the morning. “The ponies should have been loaded and on their way by now.”

  “I expect the storm is the reason they’re running late.”

  “There’s always a storm, Faith,” Emily said impatiently. “It shouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “Well, that’s true, but with the stranger and all . . .” Emily sighed. Faith was right. The stranger had played havoc with their schedule. Not having access to the easy landing at Cuckmere Haven like the Nolles gang, her intrepid little band of smugglers was forced to derrick their contraband goods up the steep, chalk face of the Seven Sisters. Without dashing him to death, getting the unconscious stranger up those same cliffs had been a slow process.

  “Do you want me to bring you some soup or something hot to drink?” Faith asked.

  Emily shook her head, and with her eyes on the stranger, she replied, “I’m fine and until he wakes, there’s no reason to prepare anything for him either. You can go help your sisters in the kitchen.”

  Uncertainly Faith eyed her. “Miss,” she began hesitantly, “shouldn’t you be riding home? You’ve been away from the manor longer than usual. What if the squire misses you?”

  With more confidence than she felt, Emily said, “Don’t worry. My cousin thinks that I am tucked safely in my bed. Before I left, I checked on him and he was deep in his cups with Mr. Ainsworth—his foppish friend he means for either Anne or myself to marry.”

  Her eyes full of sympathy, Faith nodded, and since there was nothing else for her to do, she left for downstai
rs.

  Emily stared at the door Faith shut behind her and sighed. There were few secrets in the village and it was common knowledge that Townsend wanted Emily, her great-aunt and her stepmother out of the manor. The late squire’s will prevented Jeffery from tossing them out of their home with only the clothes on their backs, but if he could marry off the two younger women . . .

  Short of murder or marriage, Emily thought wryly, he was stuck with them—just as they were stuck with him. The former squire’s will had stipulated that Cornelia, Emily and Anne were allowed to live in the manor for their lifetimes—unless, of course, they married. Her lips twitched. But Jeffery would never be rid of Great-Aunt Cornelia, Emily thought with relish—at her age, no one expected Great-Aunt Cornelia to leave The Birches any other way than in a coffin.

  Not only had the old squire ensured the women of his family a home for as long as necessary, he had also placed a nice sum in the funds to ensure that they would never be needy. Emily’s eyes hardened. Unfortunately, her father’s will hadn’t gone far enough. Jeffery, acting as head of the family and their trustees, had overseen the account and the money had vanished.

  He may have gotten his hands on the money, Emily acknowledged, but he couldn’t budge them from the manor. Only by marriage or murder would they leave their home behind. But Jeffery wasn’t ready to murder them yet, she admitted with a curl of her lip, thinking of Mr. Ainsworth.

  Mr. Ainsworth was the latest in a line of unsuitable suitors Jeffery had dredged up and forced under their noses, but Ainsworth was different and he worried Emily. She and Cornelia had managed to send the others packing, but Ainsworth was proving difficult to discourage and she wondered if it had been he who had tried the knob to her bedroom this past week.

  Ainsworth had a compelling reason to want a wife: due to turn five and thirty in a matter of a few months, if he was not married to a “respectable” woman by his thirty-fifth birthday, he would lose a handsome fortune. It was well known for the last year or so that Ainsworth was hanging out for a wife, but since his reputation was reprehensible there were few respectable ladies willing to entertain his suit.

  And that despicable creature, Emily thought furiously, is the man Jeffery thinks one of us should marry! Her hands tightened into fists. By heaven, she’d like to run the pair of them through.

  A sudden awareness sent a trickle of unease down her spine and she glanced over to the man in the bed. Her heart skittered in her chest when she saw that the stranger was awake and staring at her.

  Forcing a smile, she walked over to the side of the bed. “You’ve had a miraculous escape, sir,” she explained. “If Jeb hadn’t spied you when he did, I fear it would have gone badly for you.”

  Eyes black as midnight studied her face. “Where am I?” he asked flatly. One hand shot out from beneath the pile of quilts and fastened like an iron vise around her slender wrist. “And who the hell are you, boy?”

  With a swiftness Barnaby admired, a small knife appeared in the boy’s other hand and a second later the blade was pressed against his throat. The boy smiled fiercely and said softly, “I think, sir, that should be my question. Who the hell are you?”

  Chapter 2

  The moment his hand closed around that slender wrist, Barnaby had a sensation of wrongness, but that feeling vanished in a flash, and he was left looking at the boy’s tense features. A very pretty boy, he thought frowning.

  They stared at each other for a long moment, Barnaby’s black eyes boring into the boy’s gray ones. Neither was giving an inch and, reading the cool determination in the boy’s gaze, Barnaby decided, considering his dip in the Channel, that he might be wise not to find out precisely how handy the boy was with the knife.

  Slowly letting go of the boy, he muttered, “Forgive me. I fear that I am not at my best at the moment.”

  Her breathing ragged, Emily prudently put several feet between them. Keeping her knife handy, she said levelly, “Indeed, I would agree—especially if that is the way you greet someone who is trying to help you.”

  The boy was insolent and Barnaby liked his pluck, but staring hard at the boy, he was nagged by the sensation that he was missing something, and that feeling of wrongness swept over him again. Unable to determine its cause but assuming it was a leftover effect from his ordeal, Barnaby glanced around the room and asked again, “Where am I?”

  “In the best room at The Crown.”

  He shot the boy an impatient look. “And where is The Crown located?”

  “In Broadhaven.” His gaze narrowed and Emily added quickly, “It is a small village not far from Alfriston in Sussex. We are only a few miles inland from the coast.”

  Barnaby recognized the name and relaxed slightly. The events of the night were hazy, but he remembered that he’d been told that Windmere, the Joslyn country estate, was situated near the village of Broadhaven. His memory wasn’t clear, but he rather thought that he’d been on his way to Windmere when he’d ended up in the Channel. “And someone named ‘Jeb’ pulled me from the Channel?”

  Emily nodded. His speech was not that of an Englishman, but had a soft cadence that she found attractive. She frowned, trying to place it. It wasn’t French or Spanish. . . . A bit of gossip she’d heard recently flitted through her mind and she gasped, “You’re the American.”

  The sound of raised, angry voices and a sudden crash below distracted them, preventing Barnaby from answering. The boy’s gray eyes widened and the already fair skin paled as the boy swung to face the door, the slender body braced.

  Not liking the boy’s reaction or the noise of a violent altercation filtering up through the floorboards, Barnaby struggled to sit up. A sharp burst of pain lanced across the back of his head and he groaned, falling back against the pillows. Dizzy and afraid he was about to cast up his accounts, Barnaby fought to gain control over his body.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs and a second later, the door burst open. It was Flora, the middle daughter, her cheeks flushed and her expression grim and frightened at the same time.

  “He’s here!” Flora exclaimed, hurtling into the room. She slammed and locked the heavy oak door behind her before turning to look at Emily. “My sisters and Sam can only hold him for a few minutes. You have to leave. Now.”

  Emily hurriedly stuck her knife in her boot and started toward the lone window on the far side of the room. It was a two-story drop, but it was her only way out.

  Flora grabbed her arm and cried, “Not that way. Here. Open the wardrobe. There’s a hidden door at the back—you’ll be able to escape out the secret passageway. Hurry!”

  Hearing the shrieks from Flora’s sisters and the sounds of furniture crashing below her, Emily flung open the door to the massive wardrobe on the wall opposite the bed and dived inside. Hovering behind her, as Emily pawed her way through some quilts and odds and ends hanging inside the ancient oak wardrobe, Flora said, “Reach up to the top at the back. There’s a small lever. Pull it and the door opens away from you. Be careful you don’t fall down the stairs.”

  With shaking fingers, Emily found the lever and, despite Flora’s warning, nearly tumbled down the narrow stairs that appeared at her feet when the concealed door at the back of the wardrobe suddenly gave way.

  Both women stiffened as the sound of a desperate struggle came nearer. From the curses and noise, it was clear the fight had moved to the bottom of the stairs. They had only seconds.

  Flora fairly shoved Emily down the hidden staircase. “Go. Go!” Flora hissed. “He must not find you here.” As Emily disappeared, Flora shut the concealed door and dragged the quilts back into place. With a practiced move that told Barnaby she had done this more than once, Flora fastened the outer door to the wardrobe.

  Flora’s sisters, with young Sam’s valiant assistance, had done their best, but they were no match for a full-grown, furious male, and Flora had hardly turned around when there was a thunderous banging on the door to the room.

  “Emily!” shouted a man’s angry voice.
“I know you’re in there. Open up. Open up, I say.”

  Flora glanced at Barnaby. She placed a finger to her lips and at his nod she took a deep breath, straightened her muslin cap and walked calmly over to the door.

  Confronted by utter blackness, Emily wasn’t certain how she made it down the unfamiliar steps. Leaning against the rough wooden walls on either side of her, she half stumbled, half fell down the narrow, twisting staircase. Reaching the bottom, she stood indecisively for a second, not certain of her next move. As she fumbled around in complete darkness, the best she could tell was that she was in a very small space, hemmed in by three walls with the stairs at her back. Remembering how the door had worked in the wardrobe, she reached up and ran her hand along the top of the wall in front of her, her heart leaping when her fingers found the lever. She gave it a pull and nearly hit herself in the face when the door swung open.

  The full force of the storm buffeted her the instant she stepped outside. Rain lashed down on her and the wind screamed around her as she pulled the door shut. There was a click and the door locked behind her, leaving her alone in the dark.

  It took her a moment to find her position, but the faint light from the candles burning in the main room of the inn told her that she was at the side of the inn with the stables behind her. Fighting against the wind and the rain, she ran to the stables and a moment later was on one of The Crown’s horses on her way home.

  It was difficult going, the storm having turned the road to muddy slush, the darkness, wind and rain adding to the difficulty, but eventually Emily turned the lathered horse down the long, curving drive that led to her home, The Birches. Jumping from the horse, she tied the reins to the saddle and with a slap on the animal’s haunch sent it lumbering back in the direction of The Crown.

  Her cousin had replaced many of their old, trusted servants with men who were loyal to him, and upon meeting the new stableman, Kelsey, that he had installed several months ago, Emily immediately took precautions to keep her activities secret. She stopped using her own horses and made arrangements with Mrs. Gilbert for Sam to bring her a mount on the nights they had a run. When their work was done Sam would accompany her this far and take the horse back, but tonight that hadn’t been possible.