Captive Surrender (11 page)

“
God, you hit
me,” Stephen growled. “What the hell did you do that
for?”

“
You were
threatening, Robbie,” Prudence gasped.

She stared at him with
wide eyes, slightly awe struck at the speed in which he had gotten
the upper hand. Silence fell over them as they studied each other.
Her heart pounded in her chest and she suddenly became aware of his
warm weight above her but she couldn’t focus her thoughts on
anything.

He was even
more handsome up close
, she thought with a
sigh. That was enough to snap her out of her daze but, before she
could speak, a thin trickle of blood began to meander out of his
hairline and down the side of his face.

“
I was trying
to help you,” he whispered. If there were such a thing as angels in
heaven, he knew that this woman was one of them. The feel of her
feminine softness beneath him felt so indescribably perfect that he
could have remained where he was, headache and all, for the
remainder of his days and been a happy man. “Prudence,” he
whispered.

“
You know my
name,” Prudence gasped. She wasn’t sure whether to be shocked,
delighted or horrified. So many emotions swirled through her that
she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to make sense of
them.

Stephen merely smiled.
His gaze was slightly fogged around the edges but he knew that he
wasn’t too badly injured. “I know a lot about you.” He wished he
hadn’t spoken when he saw wariness sweep over her face. “I won’t
hurt you, you know,” he drawled in the most charming voice he could
manage given their situation.

“
You are one
of Levant’s men,” she accused. It was by far the strangest
encounter she had ever had in her entire life. His voice was rich
and slightly husky, and had a strange West Country drawl to it that
held her captivated.

“
There is
much more that you don’t understand, Prudence,” Stephen sighed. He
wasn’t sure if he would ever get another chance, and couldn’t
resist knowing what it was like. “I am sorry, Prudence, I just have
to know.”

“
Know what?”
Her startled gasp was captured by the warmth of his mouth. The
gentle pressure was enough to assure her that she couldn’t break
away, but it wasn’t hard enough to threaten or intimidate her in
any way. She trembled and placed her hands on his shoulders to push
him away only to find that the warmth of his solid flesh beneath
her fingers held her captive. The strange feel of his mouth on hers
was mesmerising and, despite the fact that this man was one of her
enemies, she couldn’t bring herself to turn away.

Stephen didn’t deepen the
kiss. His head pounded and he wasn’t in any fit state to compromise
any lady any more than he already had, especially this one.
Unprofessionally, he wanted to tell her everything, just so she
understood that she didn’t need to be fearful of him, but knew that
he would have to wait until another day. He slowly lifted his head
to stare into her stunned gaze.

“
I apologise.
I just wanted to know,” he whispered. His stomach roiled at the
severity of the pain in his head and he wondered for a moment if he
was going to unman himself by being as sick as baby right there and
then.

“
Know what?”
Prudence sighed. She wondered if he wasn’t making sense because of
his head injury, or whether her mind had just been
scrambled.

“
What it was
like to kiss an angel,” he replied with a gentle smile.

He opened his mouth to
say something else when pain exploded in his head for the second
time that night.

“
Prudence,
are you alright?” Eloisa demanded as she dropped the same piece of
driftwood Prudence had used to hit him on the head the first time
round. “Talk to me,” she demanded. “What was that bounder about to
do to you?”

Prudence couldn’t have
spoken for the life of her. She watched his face disappear and lay
staring up at the stars for a moment, before Eloisa’s concerned
face broke her line of vision. The handsome stranger’s weight was
so heavy that she could barely breathe, and she was left to wave
her arm aimlessly toward him in the valiant hope that they would
get the message and lift his dead weight off her. It felt
scandalously intimate to have him lying almost completely over her,
with his head buried between her neck and her shoulder. While he
had been talking to her he had taken most of his weight onto his
arms. Unconscious, he drove the breath out of her until she began
to see stars again; or was that the night sky?

The ladies rolled the
handsome stranger onto his back and helped Prudence to her feet.
She stood for a moment and tried to get her breath back while she
attempted to ignore the slightly bereft feeling that unnerved
her.

“
Prudence?
Who is that?” Maddie demanded in a voice that quivered with
fear.

“
Mr Simpson,”
Robbie replied dourly. “I don’t touch dead men.” His declaration
was met with startled gasps.

“
Is he
-?”

“
Of course he
is,” Prudence snapped. “Why do you think he is staring at the skies
like that; because he likes star gazing?”

She was more shaken by
the events of the last few minutes than she cared to admit and,
although she was glad that the cavalry had arrived to help her, she
wished Eloisa hadn’t hit him on the ahead again. She touched her
tingling lips with fingers that trembled with fear and cold and was
suddenly very sorry that she had sent Robbie to the house to fetch
help.

“
Mr Simpson
is dead. Unfortunately, if we leave him here, his body is going to
be get swept out to sea.”

“
How did he
die?”

Prudence shook her head
and held her hands out. “I have no idea. Right now, I don’t think
that it is a wise idea that any of us stand out here and try to
find out. First thing in the morning we can send for Rufus. Even if
Mr Simpson does get washed out to sea, we can at least inform Rufus
of what we have seen.” She hated to admit it but she didn’t want to
handle the dead body either, no matter how necessary it
was.

“
Let’s drag
him up there,” she pointed to the cliffs and winced at the weight
of Mr Simpson’s leg. She glared at her siblings in turn until they
each, reluctantly, picked up a limb. Together, they half-carried,
half-dragged the corpse up the beach to the driest sand. They were
panting heavily by the time they got there and had to wait a moment
to catch their breaths.

“
Look!”
Maddie gasped as she turned around and caught sight of the surf
snatching at the handsome stranger’s legs.

“
We can’t
leave him on the beach until morning, he could die,” Eloisa gasped,
as she hurried down to the man she had hit with the wood. She hated
the thought of him being anywhere near the house, but they simply
couldn’t leave an injured man to fend for himself, especially when
it was her who had caused the man’s problems.

“
We cannot
take him to the house,” Georgiana protested. “He is one of Levant’s
men. If he catches sight of Mama, he will know for certain what is
wrong with her. What then? Levant will never let it rest until one
of us is married to him and he has rendered us homeless.” The panic
in her voice echoed the fear in her eyes.

“
We just have
to keep him until we know he is safe and well, and then we can get
Rufus to escort him home. After all, he is on our beach, in the
dark, with a dead man. I think he has some explaining to do, don’t
you? You are right, we shouldn’t take him to the house, but we
cannot leave him here, and there really is nowhere else we can put
him. We cannot go to fetch Rufus at this time of night. Even if he
is at home, there is little he could do to help right now. We have
to get out of this rain,” Prudence gasped as the heavens suddenly
opened and pelted them with a relentless deluge that soaked them
all to the skin in record time.

“
We have to
take him inside and find out if he is going to last until morning,”
Robbie declared with a little too much glee.

“
He is
bleeding,” Eloisa gasped. “What if he dies?” Her thoughts turned to
Rufus. He was a magistrate and would have to arrest her if she had
killed a man, even one of Levant’s men.

“
Let’s get
him to the spare room. We can then take a proper look at his head
and see how bad his injuries are. If he dies, we will just have to
deal with it.” Prudence hated to sound so harsh but she couldn’t
see what else they could do. If the man did pass away, and she
hated the thought that he would on a much more feminine than
vengeful level, then they would have to decide what to do to ensure
that neither she, nor Eloisa, went to prison for murder.

As with Mr Simpson, they
each took a limb and began to half-drag, half-carry the handsome
stranger up the beach toward the house. They heaved and shoved,
pushed and slid, until they struggled to move him another
inch.

“
We aren’t
going to make it,” Madeline gasped as she wiped rain water out of
her eyes.

“
We have to,”
Prudence shouted. “We cannot leave him here.” Over the last few
minutes a strong wind had accompanied the heavy rainfall until even
breathing became extremely difficult. With renewed determination,
and desperate to get out of the weather, they staggered with their
heavy burden toward the house.

By the time they reached
the top of the cliff path, the place where the man had fallen had
been swallowed by the sea completely. Prudence flicked one last
glance at Mr Simpson’s body and sent a silent prayer for
forgiveness. It seemed an unnecessarily harsh thing to do to leave
him on the beach, but they couldn’t manage to drag two bodies up
the cliff path; they were exhausted enough as it was.

They eventually reached
the bottom of the stairs in the house, soaked to the skin and
gasping for breath. Robbie collapsed onto his knees in the middle
of the floor and began to cry while Eloisa leaned against the wall
and dripped water steadily onto the tiled floor. Upstairs, their
mother could be heard wailing and bashing at the door with almost
fervent determination.

“
Go and see
what she wants,” Eloisa ordered Georgiana quietly. “We will deal
with him.”

“
How do we
get him up there?” Madeline nodded toward the stairs. “I don’t
think I can pull him another inch, let alone all the way up the
flight of stairs.”

“
Well, we
cannot leave him here, now can we?” Prudence snapped.

Rage suddenly flowed
through her veins like molten lava and she physically shook with
the urge to rant at the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t bad enough
that they were under continual threat from Levant; they now had a
dead body on their hands and a badly injured man and one, if not
two of them, could be facing a prison sentence in the morning. It
all seemed so hideously unfair.

She took a moment to
steady herself before she hauled Robbie to his feet. “Now dry your
eyes, Robbie. I am sure that he will be fine. He is going to be
even better when he is upstairs where it is warm and dry, and we
can take a good look at his injuries. Let’s give it one last go and
get him up there. Then we can all call it a night. I don’t know
about you, but I have had more than enough for one day.”

She knew that even once
he was upstairs and in bed, it was going to be a long, sleepless
night for her. She had no idea what to do with a man who had
injured his head, but her conscience, and her sense of duty,
wouldn’t allow her to leave his side for long. As she bent down to
grab his arm, she sent a silent prayer heavenward that he wouldn’t
need the services of the doctor because they didn’t have any money
with which to pay one.

CHAPTER
SIX

It took them nearly an hour to get the man up the
stairs and into the room next to the stairs without causing him any
further injuries. It was Prudence’s room, but she didn’t raise
objection given that nobody had the energy to drag the man’s heavy
weight any further. She wished he would wake up and at least help
them but, from the trail of blood they had left behind on the
stairs, it was going to be some time yet before he returned to full
consciousness – if ever. She quickly blanked that thought out and
pulled the sheets back off the bed before they hefted him onto the
crisp sheets.

Once the man was on the
bed, Robbie flopped onto his back on the floor and lay staring at
the ceiling, while Madeline collapsed into the chair beside the bed
and began to fan herself. They were so wet that they all squelched
when they walked, and would have to clean the water and blood off
the floor before they went to bed, but that was of little
consequence given how pale and unresponsive the man was.

Despite their exhaustion,
Eloisa and Prudence turned their trying to establish how much
damage they had caused. Prudence leaned over the man and peered at
the sticky patch of hair on the back of his head. When she turned
his head gently to one side so she could part his hair to see his
scalp, he groaned.

“
Great, now
he decides to wake up,” Robbie snorted in disgust.

Prudence shared a
relieved smile with Eloisa and turned her gaze back to the man. She
could see only one cut on the back of his head, and it wasn’t too
deep, but it was covered with hair that would have to be washed
before he could be bandaged.