Captive Surrender (12 page)

Up close, his hair wasn’t
as long as she had first thought, and he hadn’t got it tied back at
his nape at all, it was just unfashionably longer than most and
brushed the collar of his shirt, but it seemed to suit him
regardless.

“
I will go
and get some water,” Eloisa murmured and nudged Robbie with her toe
as she passed him. “Come and give me a hand.” She ignored his low
groan and continued to badger him until he followed her down the
stairs.

“
He is
soaked,” Maggie sighed as she plucked at the sodden sheets beneath
him. “We have to change the sheets.”

“
There is no
point changing the sheets while he is so wet. We need to get him
out of those clothes.”

This caused Maggie to
yelp in alarm. “We can’t take the man’s clothes off,
Prudence!”

“
What do you
want us to do?” Prudence demanded matter-of-factly. “We can hardly
ask Robbie to do it and, if we leave him like this, he is likely to
die of influenza even if he does survive the head injury.” She
hated the idea of undressing him, but the thought that he might
actually die from cold forced her to put her own feelings aside for
the sake of his life.

“
I am not
doing it,” Maggie retorted as she defiantly crossed her
arms.

“
Margaret
Freestone, you are going to help me and that is final.” Prudence
rarely used her pompous tone with Maggie, but was left with no
choice. She saw the brief moment of hesitation in Maggie’s eyes
before she sighed and gave in.

“
What do you
want me to do?”

Prudence had absolutely
no idea. She had never undressed a man before and, when they had to
dress mother, she had always been awake and able to help them by at
least moving her arm about. This man was a heavy weight and as
uncooperative as anyone could be.

They were blushing
furiously and trying hard not to stare when they dragged his
breeches off beneath the sheet they used to protect his modesty. As
they tugged his sodden material off, the sheet slowly crept
downward and revealed a large expanse of chest that was liberally
smattered with a thick patch of dark hair.

“
Oh Lord,”
Maggie whispered, her mouth agape at the sight his tanned skin made
against the whiteness of the sheet.

Prudence echoed the
sentiment. The sight of that tanned flesh covered in white shirt
and rainwater had been startling enough, but to see him now, bathed
in the golden glow from the fire and the candles, he looked
dangerous yet vulnerable at the same time. She gave Maggie a
nudge.

“
We shouldn’t
be staring at him like this,” she whispered and watched Eloisa
return to the room with a bowl of water and some strips of
cloth.

In spite of her
statement, she was aware that Maggie made no attempt to leave and
merely stood to watch Eloisa and Prudence bathe his hair and wash
the blood off his face and shoulders. They rolled him this way and
that while they changed the sheets before they stood back to study
him.

“
He looks a
bit more settled.”

“
He is very
pale.”

“
He is going
to be very angry when he wakes up,” Georgiana whispered from the
doorway. They all turned to stare at her.

Until now, they had all
been concerned with the nature of his injuries, and getting him
warm and dry so they could see how much harm they had caused him.
Nobody had considered the possible consequences should he wake
up.

“
We cannot
just leave him. We don’t know if he was the one who killed Mr
Simpson,” Eloisa sighed.

“
She is right
about that. He is wonderful to look at, but we have caused his
injuries. We cannot forget his connection to Levant,” Madeline
sighed. “What was he doing down on our beach in the first
place?”

That question made them
all pause, and they turned to look at each other.

“
Tie him up,”
Robbie declared with a little too much enthusiasm. “I mean, we need
to keep him in here so that he doesn’t stumble upon
mother.”

Her initial urge to scold
him for his suggestion was thwarted by his logic. Prudence sighed
deeply. “I hate to do it, but I think that we have no choice but to
tie him to the bed.”

“
What with,
though? I mean, we don’t have any reins or anything.”

“
He isn’t a
horse, Eloisa,” Georgiana snapped.

“
I know, but
what else is there? We can hardly use undergarments, now can
we?”

“
I saw a
couple of father’s old scarves up in the attics yesterday. We can
use those,” Prudence suggested. She was chilled to the bone, and
her fingers were already numb from cold. The thought of having to
back up to the cold attics and rummage around in dusty clothing
made her stomach clench, but someone had to do it.

Half an hour later, she
returned to the room with three scarves and a shirt. Although she
was fairly certain the shirt wouldn’t fit the considerably larger
man on the bed, they could use it to clean the wound because,
unless she was much mistaken, Eloisa had already torn up the last
remaining table cloth they owned.

Fog swirled around his
ankles and gave the woods around him an eerie glow. Through the
trees, the mist cleared enough for him to see Prudence smiling at
him as she stood in the middle of a sun-lit glade. He wanted to go
toward her, but his feet wouldn’t move. He frowned, desperate to
try to warn the danger away from her but couldn’t call out; his
voice was locked in his throat. Fear began to build and panic urged
him to do something to protect her. If only he could get to her, he
could warn her; tell her that she was in incredible danger. He
could help her, if only she would let him.

Unseen hands began to
claw at him, and draw him steadily backward, further away from her.
He tried to cry out but his scream wouldn’t come. His arms ached to
reach out to her but he couldn’t lift them. They felt as though
they belonged to someone else, but who? Why couldn’t he control the
direction of his own arms?

A cry hovered on his
lips. His eyes flew open. Sweat beaded his brow and he waited for
several long moments for his pounding heart to return to its normal
rhythm. His breath sawed in and out as he tried to make sense of
what was happening. He ached from head to foot, but why?

He lay perfectly still
for several minutes and listened to the clock on the mantle while
he tried to force his thoughts into some semblance of order. It
took some time before the fog of his nightmare dissipated enough
for him to think about the events of last night. He could vaguely
recall having kissed her; Prudence, but where?

In spite of the pain in
throbbed in his head, Stephen slowly opened his eyes only to wince
as the soft, warm glow of the fire intensified the discomfort. The
room he was in was sparsely furnished but was at least dry, and
warmer than the rooms he usually stayed in. He didn’t know how he
knew this, but felt certain that he was right. A dull ache at the
back of his head made him grit his teeth and he drew in a deep
breath to quell the fierce anger that rose at the realisation that
someone had knocked him out. How long had he been out
for?

The ticking of a clock
somewhere at the far end of the room was the only sound that broke
the silence. He didn’t mind though, it reminded him that he was
still alive. What had happened? Had Levant sent Humphrey after
him?

He sucked in a breath and
began to take stock of his injuries. His feet were about the only
part of him that didn’t feel bruised. He was fairly certain that he
was naked beneath the sheets and, although he was warm and dry,
every single inch of him ached fiercely. His head was by far the
most painful, and his arms had given way to pins and needles that
were bordering on a dull ache. Was he tied down? Why?

Swallowing against the
dryness in his throat, he winced as his head protested against any
kind of movement. He refused to be thwarted though and took a deep
breath before he glanced slowly around the room anyway. It was
definitely a feminine room. The curtains had delicate flowers on
them, and there was a pink shawl lying abandoned on a rocking chair
before the fireplace. There was very little else in the room except
for the bed and a couple of odd bits of furniture, but it was the
person beside him who captured his attention.

Prudence.

She was fast asleep and
curled up in a hard, wooden chair beside the bed in an
uncomfortable position that he knew would make her stiff and sore
in the morning. Even in slumber she was beautiful. Had he kissed
her last night? Was she the one who had smacked him on the head? He
was fairly certain that she was but, for the life of him, couldn’t
remember why.

He studied the ceiling
with a frown, and tried to think over the events of the previous
evening. He had seen Mr Simpson pleading for his life, or had that
been the day before? He couldn’t be sure, but he knew that he had
seen Mr Simpson’s body. That had been on the beach. He could
vaguely recall having stood near the house just to check that
everything was alright, and had seen Humphrey leave something on
the beach. He had followed Levant’s thug back to the gates at
Dinnington before he had returned to the beach. There he had found
the result of Humphrey’s recent round of brutality, all in the name
of Levant’s mission to obtain as much of the coastline in the area
as possible.

He had been studying Mr
Simpson’s body, trying to find a cause of death when he had heard
the quiet murmur of voices approaching. With very few options
available to him, he had melted into the shadows to watch and wait.
If Prudence and her brother had remained near the cliff path that
led to the house, they wouldn’t have seen Mr Simpson’s body in the
moonlight. Stephen had watched the young lad approach the body, and
could recall him screeching like a banshee at the sight of the dead
man on the beach. What had happened after that was somewhat of a
blur, although he could distinctly recall looking down into
Prudence’s startled eyes and thinking how beautiful she looked up
close.

Unfortunately, he
couldn’t be sure if the kiss had been a figment of his wayward
imagination: more a yearning than a reality, but there was
something deep inside him that refused to dismiss the faint
recollection as mere wishful thinking. If he had gotten a moment
alone with Prudence, and they had been lying down on the beach:
although how they had got that way, heaven only knew, he would most
definitely have taken advantage of the situation and kissed
her.

Maybe it had
been her who had screeched like a banshee
,
he thought dourly.

Whoever had hit him had
done a very efficient job. His head ached like the very devil was
pounding in it, and he felt his stomach churn alarmingly. It
forewarned him that if he didn’t wake Prudence up, he was going to
humiliate himself right there and then.

While he tried to stem
the rising tide of sickness, he became aware of a rather more
pressing need of a more intimate nature and he wondered where the
hell the young lad was. He couldn’t see where the clock was across
the room, but didn’t rightly care if anyone was in bed. They had
brought him here and, for some reason only known to themselves, had
seen fit to tie him to the blasted bed. He had no intention of
sparing their blushes when it came to his most basic bodily
functions.

He opened his mouth to
call for Prudence, only to frown and close it with a snap. He
winced when a dull ache behind his eyes immediately began to turn
into fierce pain, and wondered what he was going to do now. Giving
the ties an experimental tug, he cursed under his breath at the
dexterity of the knot maker. He was trussed up like a chicken.
Heaven only knew what they had done with his clothes. Even if he
could ignore the pain long enough to untie himself, and use the
chamber pot, what then? He could hardly break free and return to
Dinnington wearing nothing more than one of Prudence’s
shawls.

Cursing his luck, he
wondered just how bad life could get. Not only had he been unable
to prevent the murder of an innocent man, but he had now been taken
prisoner in a house full of women. His friends in the Star Elite
would laugh their backsides off if they ever got wind of the fact
that he had been bested by a bunch of females and a young
boy.

Should he pretend to be
ill so that they could take pity on him and release his bindings?
What if he did manage to get free? He was fairly certain that he
would be able to get out of the house. His head ached fiercely, but
it wasn’t a life-threatening injury. It would slow him down, but he
was made of sterner stuff and could ignore it long enough to get
back to Dinnington, but what would he say to Levant? What would he
do if Levant got wind of the fact that he had spent the night,
alone, with a bunch of unchaperoned females, especially at Cragdale
Manor?

He thought about his
nightmare, and the urge to protect Prudence from the dangers that
surrounded her. The frustration at his inability to get to her and
offer her the protection he ought still rankled; still lurked in
the back of his mind like a demon waiting to strike. Could he go
back to Dinnington and watch Levant continue to harass the family?
Stephan now knew that Levant was so determined to get his hands on
the coast-line that he was prepared to murder for it. He couldn’t
bear the thought of Prudence, or any of her family for that matter,
ending up the same way as Mr Simpson.