Captive Of Sin Part 12

If only principle was all that made him hesitate.

He couldn't touch her. That was the sodding tragedy of it.

She was still speaking. He fought back the clamor in his head and tried to concentrate on what she said.

"...few bruises."

Confound it, he needed to get a grip on his reactions. Through the buzzing in his ears, he battled to focus. He realized her good hand plucked unhappily at the sleeve of her plain gown. "...mend it."

He tore his gaze from her mouth. So soft. So moist. So tempting. And glanced down to her dress. He must have ripped the sleeve when he dragged her back from the brink. There was a gaping rent in the threadbare brown material.

That was one problem he could solve, surely. He sucked in a tattered breath and spoke over her stumbling explanations. "I'll take you back to the house. One of the servants must have something you can wear."

She sent him an odd look. He hoped to Hades she had been talking about clothes. "As you wish."

He frowned. She sounded disappointed. "Are you sure you're not injured?"

Her restless hand tangled in her skirts, and she looked away. "Of course I feel a little knocked around. But, no, I'm not seriously hurt. Thanks to you."

"Miss Watson, there's no call to harp on your totally unnecessary grat.i.tude," he said repressively.

He flushed as he realized he barked like a displeased sergeant dressing down a recruit. She cast him a resentful glance that scorched him to his soles. He needed to get away. Fast. But his feet were welded to the path.

"I hardly think it's unnecessary." Her tone was soft but firm.

"Sarah..." He knew it was a mistake using her Christian name the moment the word emerged. He needed to resist further closeness, not reinforce it.

"I won't refer to it again." She still sounded subdued.

"Shall we go?" He gestured her past him, but she hesitated.

"Sarah?" d.a.m.n, he'd said it again. Every second in her presence extended his torture. If he didn't put some distance between them soon, he'd grab her. Then the shaking would start, and the sickness and the humiliation.

"Can't we go down to the beach? Only for a minute?" She sounded wistful, like a child denied a treat. "I've been cooped up for so long. I'd love to see the sea. I've never been so close to the ocean before."

He desperately tried to ignore the plea in her hazel eyes. Curling his hands into fists, he strove to steady his tone. "You need to rest."

Her lips-Lucifer himself must have created those moist, red lips-turned down in a dismissive quirk. "I'll be careful on the way down. I'm not such a fragile vessel as you imagine. I've had a shock, but I'm perfectly all right. What sort of girls have you been talking to?"

"I haven't been talking with many girls at all," he said before he could remind himself that swapping confidences with his gorgeous tormentor was unlikely to ease his predicament.

With every second, she looked more like her usual self. "You surprise me."

Curse her, why did he feel the urge to explain? "I told you Penrhyn was a masculine province."

Apart from his father's blowsy mistresses, who occasionally took up residence. His father's taste had run to the overblown, the obvious. None of those women had been remotely interested in a studious stripling, for which Gideon had been heartily grateful.

"Surely when you left home..."

"I went to Cambridge at sixteen and immersed myself in study."

Frowning thoughtfully, she laced her hands at her waist. A sign he hadn't done her wrist serious injury, he was relieved to note. "The university men I know caroused their way through their education."

His smile was grim. "I suspect the men who paid court to you weren't second sons with no prospects. I was much younger, not to mention poorer, than most of my fellow students."

If he were another man with another life, he'd surely have been among those men who courted her. He straightened as if physically resisting the forbidden idea. A stray strand of windblown hair briefly clung to her lush lips. Another blast of sensual awareness shook him. He fleetingly closed his eyes and told himself he mustn't under any circ.u.mstances kiss her.

He breathed deeply, struggling for composure. When he could see straight, he stepped past so he could precede her down the cliff, in case they struck any more unstable patches. Against his every instinct, he'd take Sarah to the beach. He knew when he was beaten. "Watch your step. It's steep, and you've used up at least three of your nine lives today."

"Thank you," she said softly to his back. "I know I'm a trial."

She had no idea just what a trial she was. Pray G.o.d she never found out. Craving to seize her in his arms tightened his skin and made his heart gallop as it had galloped when she teetered toward the edge. Except this time with l.u.s.t rather than terror.

The reminder of her fall made him slow his pace. His hand itched to reach back and grab hers, in case she stumbled. Such a natural action, yet completely outside his capability. He couldn't risk another of his attacks. He cursed himself and his affliction.

On the way down, he frequently glanced back to check on her. Her near disaster had obviously convinced her to treat the path with respect, and she negotiated it with visible concentration. Thank G.o.d. At least it checked her questions.

When he reached the base of the cliff, he jumped from the rocks to the beach. He landed hard on the firm sand and turned to watch Sarah carefully climbing from boulder to boulder.

Guilt bit at him as he remembered how he'd shoved her against the rock wall. For all her brave words, he recognized the stiffness in her movements as discomfort. He bit back a demand that they return to the house. After his experiences in Rangapindhi, he understood better than most her need for freedom.

She crossed to stand at his side just past the high-water mark. The bruises on her face were mere shadows now. In the bright clear light, her beauty was flamboyant, heartbreaking. She made him feel as close to alive as he ever expected to again.

The errant breeze flirted with her hair, teasing it around her face as she turned to him. "So you went to India to make your fortune?"

More blasted questions. He wished he had the heart to tell her to mind her own business. But he couldn't resist the honest interest s.h.i.+ning in her eyes.

His voice was stilted as he replied. He wasn't used to talking about himself, and every time she pried a confidence out of him, it was an acknowledgment that they were more than just chance-met strangers. "An opportunity arose."

Gideon began to walk along the coa.r.s.e yellow sand, and she fell into step beside him. She flattened her hands on her skirts to stop the wind lifting them, but still he caught a breathtaking glimpse of slender ankles and shapely calves. He closed his eyes briefly and prayed for strength.

She was going to kill him before she was done.

"With the East India Company?"

He dragged himself back to the conversation and tried to ignore how lovely she was. He made himself go on, partly to distract himself from the pale flash of Sarah's stockings.

"My talent for languages attracted the attention of powerful people." He spoke without vanity. He had a freak facility for picking up foreign tongues. Some strange tic in how his mind worked. "They thought I could be useful."

"As a trader?" She bent to pick up a scallop sh.e.l.l, the movement hitching up the back of her dress. He stopped to watch her, then wished he hadn't. His hands flexed at his sides as he fought the urge to toss those skirts up to a more pleasurable purpose.

Because to his eternal regret, there could never be pleasure.

"More as native liaison." The answer was strained. He didn't want to tell her the truth, that he'd been a spy. Of course, if she cared to investigate, she'd find out. His life had been sensationalized in every newspaper in Britain. In the world, for all he knew.

Elements of the press coverage were true, at least superficially. The papers had invented the rest, each story more lurid than the last. In the public mind, he'd become a bizarre mixture of Robin Hood, Casanova, and Sir Galahad.

The cruel farce of his celebrity made him cringe.

She straightened and ran a thoughtful finger along the edge of the hard white sh.e.l.l. He already knew enough to guess another question percolated. "Were the Indian girls beautiful?"

"Yes."

She glanced quickly up at him, then away, a delicate pink was.h.i.+ng her cheeks. "Were you in love with someone there?"

Dear Lord, were all women so fixated on love? He'd heard more on the subject today than he remembered hearing in all his twenty-five years. Against his will, he found himself answering. "No."

The man who stepped off the s.h.i.+p in Calcutta seven years ago had never known a lover. But Gideon's fascination with Indian language and art, nurtured in the dusty library of his college, became a fascination with the living, breathing culture. And soon the living, breathing female embodiments of that culture.

That first six months as he traveled around the Company's offices and residences, he'd succ.u.mbed to hedonistic license. The women were beautiful and generous and adept at pleasure. He'd never imagined a world like it. s.e.x became a drug.

His hedonistic existence came to an abrupt end once he entered the field. The dangers of betrayal were too great.

He swung away from further questions and strode along the beach, his long legs eating up the stretch of sand. The gulls cried overhead. The loneliest sound in the world.

He should have known she wouldn't let him escape. Running footsteps crunched behind him, then he felt the soft touch of her hand on his arm.

Through his s.h.i.+rtsleeve, that contact scorched. Rapacious hunger jolted him even as his flesh crawled. He jerked free. "Don't touch me!"

She recoiled, her eyes darkening with such pain that he flinched. "I'm sorry," she said huskily.

He fought to speak normally, but his voice emerged dull and flat. "No matter. I don't like to be touched."

Her mouth straightened into an unhappy line. "By me, at any rate."

G.o.d in heaven, how much of this could he take? He sucked in a lungful of salty air and floundered for control. "It's not you."

She shook her head and raised a hand to keep her wind-tossed hair from her eyes. He couldn't mistake the anguish in her face. "Don't spare my feelings. I've noticed your revulsion for my presence."

He let his breath out in a despairing hiss. "That's not true."

Sarah's slender throat moved as if she stifled a protest. h.e.l.l, he hated to hurt her. He felt like the lowest b.a.s.t.a.r.d in Creation, even though he acted for her sake as much as his own.

Don't be a blockhead, Trevithick. The girl isn't suffering from genuine love but from a bad case of hero wors.h.i.+p. She'll survive without ill effects.

"Miss Watson...Sarah..." He stopped, struck silent by her vibrating misery.

"You must consider me a foolish creature." The breeze whipped at her low words, so he had to lean closer to hear. A dizzying waft of her scent mixed with the salt air and made his nostrils flare in masculine response.

A torrent of words fought to escape, words that told her how exquisite she was, how brave, how wonderful. He stifled them all. He had no right to pay compliments to innocent young girls.

"I have a great-aunt who would be horrified at my behavior. She worked hard to turn me into a lady." Sarah hesitated, sucked in a breath, then went on in an artificially bright voice. Gideon knew she desperately strove to ease the p.r.i.c.kling tension between them. "I was quite the tomboy when she took me in hand. My father raised me much as he'd raise a son. You see, the estates would all be mine one day."

Even through the wild tumult in his head, Gideon knew this didn't make sense. He frowned. "Wasn't your oldest brother the heir?"

Guilt flooded her vivid features. "The entail had come to an end. My father..."

Her shoulders sagged as she relapsed into troubled silence. Gideon had noticed before that she wasn't a good liar. He was an excellent liar-he'd learned to be as defense against a violent father. He'd perfected the skill, playing a role where discovery of his ident.i.ty meant death.

"They're my stepbrothers," she said in a subdued voice. "My father died when I was sixteen..." The sunlight shone stark on her expression of naked grief. "My mother remarried. Her husband had two adult sons who hated me on sight."

Gideon s.h.i.+fted closer as if even on this deserted beach, he protected her from her rapacious family. His mind flared with a fierce, relentless urge to kill anyone who threatened her. His voice roughened with the power of his anger. At last he discovered her secrets. At last he came to grips with the forces ranged against them. "Those are the swine who beat you?"

"Yes." Sarah paused, then continued with a reluctance he could hear. "My mother pa.s.sed away not long after she married my stepfather. Her choice hadn't been a happy one. Her new husband was a drunkard, a gambler, and a wastrel. From the first, he was openly unfaithful."

Gideon's gut clenched as he read the pain she tried so hard to hide. If he was any sort of man, he'd take her in his arms and offer comfort. But of course, he was no man at all. "Have you lived in that bears' den since you were sixteen?"

Sarah shook her head and tossed the scallop sh.e.l.l to the ground with a disgusted gesture. "To them, I was just another useless mouth to feed. After my mother's death, I went to a great-aunt in Bath. She's the one who tried to instill some manners." The desolation faded from her face, and real affection tinged her smile. "Great-aunt Georgiana was determined to find me a brilliant match. Bath in the season is a social whirl."

"I'm sure you didn't lack for suitors." Absurd to be jealous of these unknown men who had flirted and danced with her.

She shrugged and looked toward the waves, her color rising. He studied her profile. Those men had seen exactly what he saw now. Innocence. Generosity. Beauty. And a fresh and fragrant sensuality that drew him like a bee to honeysuckle.

Gideon had believed himself immune to female allure. Good G.o.d, the merest contact with anyone's skin set him shaking like a windblown leaf. Yet this girl promised such pa.s.sion, even he couldn't resist.

She began to walk up the beach. Silently, he joined her, pleased to note she moved more easily now she was on flat ground.

"My stepfather fell down the stairs in a drunken stupor and broke his neck." Her tone deepened with contempt, and her hands tangled in her skirts. "My stepbrothers inherited nothing but crippling debts. And whatever they could wring out of being named my guardians in the will."

Ah, this was the crux of the problem. As her legal guardians, her stepbrothers had every right to compel Sarah back into their custody. No wonder she'd been so reluctant to confide the details of her dilemma to a stranger. Gideon broke the law by sheltering her. That fact alone would cause many people to hand her over to the authorities, whatever the personal issues involved.

Gideon kept his voice even, much as he wanted to rage and curse the mongrels who had hurt her. "So legally you're at their mercy."

"Yes, unfortunately. After they took me from my great-aunt, they launched the scheme to marry me off." A wayward gust blew a long strand of hair across her face, and she absently brushed it back. Her tone developed an edge. "When they realized I wasn't so gullible, they tried to put me completely in their power. No letters in or out of the house. No newspapers. If I tried to visit the village, they stopped me. At first with excuses. Later with threats."

Poor chit, relying on spirit and cleverness, in a situation where only brute strength counted. "Couldn't you bribe a servant to take a message?"

She shook her head. "The servants knew any chance of wages relied on my marriage."

A scorching need to smash her stepbrothers into jelly filled him. Almost as scorching as his urge to sweep this girl into his arms and kiss her senseless. And what a d.a.m.ned disaster that would be. "I suppose as your birthday approached, they became desperate."

She stopped and sent him a stark look. With one hand, she held her hair away from her face. The freshening breeze finished the destruction of her plait. In her thin gown, she must be cold although she showed no sign of it.

"Naively, I thought some code of gentlemanly behavior would constrain them." She went on in a curiously flat tone as though she distanced herself from what she said. "They cut back my meals. They locked me in my room. At first the violence was casual, and they made sure the bruises wouldn't show. I can't imagine why they troubled. It wasn't as though the servants didn't know. And I saw n.o.body else."

She paused as if waiting for Gideon to comment. But he was too angry to trust himself to speak.

"At least the violence was honest." Her voice sc.r.a.ped into rage and her fists curled at her sides. "It was worse when they insisted the marriage was for my own good. That made me sick to the stomach." She looked over the waves again but not before he caught a flash of fury in her eyes.

"d.a.m.ned curs," Gideon muttered under his breath. An inadequate response. But everything was inadequate against what she'd been through.

"That last day was the first time they set out to beat me into obedience. Before Hubert started hitting me, Felix said I should save everyone trouble and give in before they made things really tough."

Gideon could imagine how she'd responded to that. "Of course you sent them to the devil."

"Yes. But then..." For the first time, she faltered and stared down at the sand in front of her. "Felix said..."

Nausea knotted Gideon's gut. He could imagine what came next. No wonder she'd been frightened out of her mind in Winchester. "You don't have to tell me."