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“We need to find shelter. Dry clothing.” He glanced around.
They were in a small cove, dotted with jutting rocks and a small patch of sand. Steep black cliffs imprisoned them as certainly as the walls of Newgate Prison.
Tanner touched her arm. “If that fellow managed to get in here, we can get out.”
She nodded, but suddenly any strength she’d possessed seemed to ebb. It was difficult to think. The cold had seeped into her very bones.
He rubbed her arms, then pressed a hand on his ribs and winced. “Come now. We’ll be warm and dry very soon.”
He picked up the man’s lantern and circled their prison walls. She could do nothing but watch. A huge wave tumbled ashore, soaking her feet again, but she could only stare at it swirling around her ankles. He crossed over and took her arm, pulling her away from the water.
He’d once danced with her, she remembered, although he never knew it. Lady Erstine had held a masquerade ball, a respectable one, and she and Eliza attended, having spent many agonising hours deciding what costume to wear. Tanner had danced one dance with Marlena without knowing who she was. Eliza had been green with envy.
“Stay with me,” he said, holding her firmly.
What looked like one massive black rock was really two, with a narrow corridor between them. He held her hand and pulled her through. They climbed up smaller rocks that formed a natural stone staircase. When they finally reached the top, they found flat and grassy farmland. The storm had passed at last, but in its wake blew a cool wind that made Marlena’s clothes feel like ice.
In the distance they spied one light. “A farmhouse,” he said. “Make haste.”
Marlena had difficulty making sense of his words. She liked his arm wrapped around her, but disliked him making her walk, especially so briskly. He made sounds with each breath, as if every step brought pain. Pain would be preferable to feeling nothing, Marlena thought. She was no longer aware of her arms or her legs.
The light grew nearer, but Marlena forgot what it signified. Her mind felt full of wool and all she wanted was to sleep.
She tried to pull away from him. “Rest,” she managed to say. “Sleep.”
“No.” He lifted her over his shoulder and carried her.
They came to a cottage with a lone candle burning in the window. Tanner pounded on the door. “Help us! Open the door.”
Soon a grizzled man in a white nightcap and gown opened the door a crack.
“Quick. I must get her warm,” Tanner told him.
“Dod i mewn,” the man said. “Come in, come in.”
Tanner carried her inside and made her stand in front of a fireplace. The dying embers on the hearth gave heat, but the heat felt painful after the numbing cold.
“Bring some blankets,” Tanner ordered. “I must warm her.”
The man tottered into another room, and Tanner began stripping her of her clothing, which seemed a very odd thing for him to do, but nice, because her wet clothes were so very heavy, and she wanted to feel light again.
Suddenly dry cloth covered her shoulders and Tanner made her sit in a chair close to the fire.
The old man threw more lumps of coal into the fireplace, and poked at it with the poker, which only made it hotter and more painful.
“M’wife and son are at the wreck,” the man explained.
Oh, yes, Marlena dimly remembered, as shivers seized her. She had been on a ship that had broken apart. She remembered the shock of the cold water.
A cat ambled by, rubbing its fur against her legs. “Cat,” she said to no one in particular, as her eyelids grew very heavy.
Marlena woke to find herself nestled in a nice warm bed with heavy bedcovers over her. She did not seem to have on any clothing at all, not even a shift. Next to her, also naked and holding her close, lay the Marquess of Tannerton.
Chapter Two
The woman felt warm against him, warm at last, when Tanner had thought never to be warm again. He slipped his hand down her smooth back, savouring the feel of her silky skin under his fingertips. He could still smell the sea on her, but they were both blessedly dry. And warm. He had saved her from the sea, thank God.
Thank God.
A shuffle sounded in the room and a murmur, and the woman pushed away from him with a cry.
He sat up like a shot.
The woman slid away to a corner of the bed, clutching the blanket up to her chin. Morning light shone through the small window and three pairs of eyes stared at them both, the wrinkled old man who had opened the door to them the night before, a wrinkled old woman and a younger, thick-chested man.
“What the devil?” Tanner growled.
The spectators jumped back. The old man gave a servile smile. “M’wife and son are back.”
Tanner glared at them. “You disturb our privacy.”
In actuality, he and the woman were the intruders. Tanner had given the old man little choice but to relinquish what was surely the bed he shared with the old woman. The night before all Tanner could think of was to cover the woman in blankets and warm her with his own body—and be warmed by hers. He’d left their clothing in a pile in the front room and carried her to the little bedchamber behind the fireplace, ordering the poor man to bring as many blankets as he owned.
The younger man—the farmer’s son, obviously—rubbed his head and winced, and the hairs on the back of Tanner’s neck stood on end. The son, he would swear, had been his seaside attacker. Tanner frowned. Their place of refuge suddenly seemed more like a lion’s den.
He quickly regained his composure. “What are you doing in this room?” he demanded again, checking his finger for his gold signet ring and feeling under the bedcovers for the purse he’d had sense enough to remove from his coat. He held it up. “Were you looking for the purse?”
The younger man backed away to where clothing hung by pegs on the plastered walls above two wooden chests.
“We merely came to see if you required anything, that is all.” The old woman simpered.
Tanner scoffed. “All three of you at once?”
The young man gave a chagrined expression and inclined his head.
Tanner glanced at his companion, still huddled under the blanket. He turned to the others. “Leave us,” he commanded.
The old man and woman scurried towards the door. Their son moved more slowly, his hand returning to his head.
“We require our clothing.” Tanner added.
The woman paused in the doorway. “Your things are still damp, m’lord.” She tipped her head in a servile pose. “I’ve hung them out in the sun and the wind. ’Twill take no time at all to dry.”
“Good.” Tanner’s tone turned a shade more conciliatory. “Treat us well and you will be rewarded.” He lifted the purse.
The son smiled. “What else do you require, m’lord?”
“Some nourishment, if you please.”
The man bowed and closed the door behind him.
“They thought they could nick my purse,” Tanner muttered, rubbing the stubble on his chin. He did not have the heart to worry her with his suspicions about the farmer’s son. “How do you fare, miss? Are you all right?”
She moved beneath the blanket as if testing to see if all parts of her still worked. “A little bruised, but unharmed, I think.”
Her eyes flicked over him and quickly glanced away. Tanner realised he was quite bare from the waist up. From the waist down, as well, but the covers concealed that part of him. He reached for a blanket and winced, pressing a hand to his ribs.
“You are bruised,” she cried, reaching towards him, but immediately withdrawing her hand.
He looked down at himself, purple bruises staining his torso like spilled ink. “Nothing to signify,” he said, although his breath caught on another pang of pain.
He glanced at her again and the humour of the situation struck him. It was not every day he woke up in a naked embrace with a woman whose name he did not know.
He gave her a wry smile. “I do not believe we have been introduced.”
Her eyelids fluttered, reminding him of shy misses one encountered at Almack’s. “No, we have not.”
He made a formal bow, or a semblance of one there in the bed only half-covered by a blanket. “I am Tannerton. The Marquess of Tannerton. Tanner to my friends, which, I dare say—” he grinned “—I had best include you among.”
The blue of her eyes sparkled in the morning light. “Marquess—” She quickly cast her eyes downward. “My lord.”
“Tanner,” he corrected in a friendly voice. “And you are…?”
He had the feeling her mind was crafting an answer.
“I am Miss Brown, sir.”
It was a common name, and not her real one, he’d wager.
“Miss Brown,” he repeated.
She fussed with the blanket, as if making sure it still covered her. “Do you know of the others from the ship? Did anyone else survive?”
He gave her a steady look. “The Bow Street Runner, do you mean?”
She glanced away and nodded.
He made a derisive sound. “I hope he went to the devil.”
She glanced back at him. “Did any survive?”
“I know nothing of any of them,” he went on, trying not to think of those poor women, those helpless little children, the raging sea. “We were alone on the beach, except for the man who tried to rob me.” The man who had just left this room, he suspected. “We made it to this cottage, and all I could think was to get you warm. I took over the farmer’s bed and must have fallen asleep.”
She was silent for a moment, but Tanner could see her breath quicken. He suspected she remembered the terror of it all.
“I believe I owe you my life, sir,” she whispered.
Her blue eyes met his and seemed to pierce into him, touching off something tender and vulnerable. He glanced away and tugged on the covers, pulling off a faded brown blanket. He wrapped it around his waist and rose from the bed. “Let me see about getting you some clothes. And food.” He turned towards the door.
“A moment, sir,” she said, her voice breathless. “Do—do you know where we are? Who these people are?”
“Only that we are in a farmer’s cottage,” he replied, not entirely truthfully. “There was a lamp in the window. I walked towards its light.”
She nodded, considering this. “What do they know of us?”
His gaze was steady. “I did not tell them you were a prisoner, if that is your concern.”
She released a relieved breath. “Did you tell them who you are?”
He tried to make light of it all. “Last night I only saw the old man. I fear I failed to introduce myself. My manners have gone begging.”
“Good,” she said.
“Good?” His brows rose.
“Do not tell them who you are.”
He cocked his head.
“A marquess is a valuable commodity. They might wish to ransom you.”
She was sharp, he must admit. Her mistrust gave even more credence to his suspicions. He had thought to bully these people with his title, but he now saw the wisdom of withholding who he was—as well as who she might be.
He twisted his signet ring to the inside of his palm and put his hand on the door latch. “I will not say a word.” Her lovely face relaxed. “Let me see about our clothing and some food and a way out of here.”
She smiled and he walked out of the room, still holding the blanket around his waist.
It took Marlena a moment to adjust when he left the room. The marquess’s essence seemed to linger, as well as the image of him naked. She and Eliza had been too naïve to speculate on how the Marquess of Tannerton would look without clothing, but she could now attest that he looked spectacular. Wide shoulders, sculpted chest peppered with dark hair that formed a line directing the eye to his manly parts. She’d only glimpsed them upon first awakening, but now she could not forget the sight. He was like a Greek statue come to life, but warm, friendly and flirtatious.
He might not recognise her as the notorious Vanishing Viscountess, subject of countless Rowlandson prints and sensational newspaper stories, but he did know she’d been a prisoner. He would, of course, have no memory of the very naïve and forgettable Miss Parronley from Almack’s.
She hugged her knees. As long as he did not recognise her, she was free. And she intended to keep it that way.
She had no idea what piece of shore they’d washed up on, but it must be closer to Scotland than she’d ever dared hope to be again. She longed to be in Scotland, to lose herself there and never be discovered. A city, perhaps, with so many people, no one would take note of a newcomer. She would go to Edinburgh, a place of poetry and learning. Who would look for the Vanishing Viscountess in Edinburgh? They would think her dead at the bottom of the sea.
She’d once believed she’d be safe in Ireland, in the ruse she and Eliza devised, governess to Eliza’s children. Not even Eliza’s husband had suspected. Marlena had been safe for three years, until Eliza’s brother came to visit. Debtors nipping at his heels, Geoffrey had come to beg his sister for money.
Marlena would have hidden from him, or fled entirely, but Eliza and the children had been gravely ill from the fever and she could not bear to leave. Geoffrey discovered her tending to them. He’d recognised her instantly and suddenly realised he could raise his needed funds by selling the whereabouts of the Vanishing Viscountess.
Geoffrey had long returned to London the day Marlena stood over Eliza’s newly dug grave in the parish churchyard, the day the magistrate’s men and the Bow Street Runner came to arrest her.
She swiped at her eyes. At least we nursed the children back to health, Eliza.
She rose from the bed and wrapped the blanket around her like a toga. The room was tiny and sparse, but clean. There was no mirror, so she tried to look at herself in the window glass, but the sun was too bright. She felt her hair, all tangles and smelling of sea water. It was still damp underneath. She sat back on the bed.
She must look a fright, she thought, working at her tangled locks with her fingers, still vain enough to wish she appeared pretty for the handsome Marquess of Tannerton.
Except for the bruises on his chest, he had looked wonderful after their ordeal—his unshaven face only enhancing his appearance, making him look rakish. She inhaled, her fingers stilling for a moment with the memory of how his naked skin had felt, warm and hard with muscle.
