Rapture Becomes Her (2 page)

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Authors: Shirlee Busbee

BOOK: Rapture Becomes Her
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Taking the clean, white cloth and dipping it into the bowl of water, gingerly Emily began to clean the ugly wound, wincing when the man groaned at her ministrations. Just as well he’s unconscious, she thought, as she dipped and rubbed the length of the gash.
Mary shuddered as another violent gust of wind slammed into the walls of the inn. “Ma says it’s a miracle he’s alive. Not many survive a dip in the Channel on a night like tonight.”
Concentrating on the task at hand, Emily nodded and murmured, “I wonder what he was doing out there. And who he is.”
Mary paled as a thought struck her. “Oh, miss! You don’t think he’s a revenuer, do you?”
Having cleaned the wound as good as it was going to get under her hands Emily dropped the bloodstained rag in the water and studied the man’s features, noting the broad forehead, the high cheekbones and the generous mouth. She had nothing to base it on, but revenuer would be the last occupation she would have guessed this man to ply. There was something about his face . . .
Emily shook her head. “No, I don’t think he’s a revenuer.” Lifting the quilts, she looked down at his hand, studying the long, elegant fingers and the clean and trimmed fingernails. She frowned and glanced over at Mary. “Did Jeb bring the clothes the man was wearing with him to the inn? Or leave them on board the boat?”
Mary’s pretty face grew animated. “They’re downstairs drying by the fire in the little private room at the back. Do you think they’ll tell us who he is?”
Emily spared the stranger one last look. He seemed to be resting easier and the faint blueness around his lips was fading. There was nothing more she could do for him for now. Rising to her feet, she said, “I think we’ll know more about him than we do right now, if we take a look at what he was wearing when Jeb pulled him out of the Channel.”
The clothes told Emily quite a bit. Though damaged by salt water, the frilled white linen shirt was expensive and sewn by an expert seamstress and the cream-and-fawn patterned silk waistcoat was something only a wealthy man would own, as was the ruined pocket watch and the gold chain and fob. The water-stained cravat, like the shirt, was of the best linen and the finely knitted pantaloons also would have belonged to a man of means. When he’d gone into the water, to avoid the extra weight, she assumed his boots and coat had been wisely discarded.
Staring at the items draped over a pair of chairs near the roaring fire, Emily considered what she’d learned. The stranger was apparently a wealthy man. Not a revenuer, that much was certain.
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 downstairs.
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.”

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