His Betrothed Page 2

  “I’ll find you, Thornton!” echoed across the water, and a bullet whistled past his head.

  Once out of range, Spencer tried to staunch the blood flow at his side using his shirt. Then he rowed northwest, to where the chalk cliffs of the island rose out of the sea to guide him through the darkness.

  On dark nights, on the low cliffs overlooking the English Channel, Roselyn Grant could almost forget that the English and Spanish fleets were resting at anchor, waiting for dawn to renew their battle. The moonlight tonight wouldn’t allow that, illuminating the masts rocking out on the waves. Occasionally the flash of a lantern winked at her, and she could hear a sailor’s shout, sounding eerily close.

  Many of the island’s people had fled to the mainland, leaving the villages half deserted. But she had rebuilt her life here, and she would stay until the Spanish invaded, if necessary.

  She had no other place to go.

  The wind off the channel was as chilly as the rest of the cool, wet summer had been. Roselyn tugged the kerchief closer about her shoulders and closed her eyes, breathing deeply of the salt air. Her usual nighttime peace eluded her.

  When she opened her eyes, she stared in shock at a small boat silhouetted in the moonlight, rocking wildly in the breakers close to the beach. For a moment she thought they were being invaded, but the solitary boat looked empty as it was tossed ashore and overturned.

  She told herself to run away, but the impetuous Roselyn of old suddenly appeared, as if the last two years hadn’t happened. She found herself descending the path to the beach, skidding on gravel, grabbing clumps of weeds to steady herself. Her curiosity had awakened from its long dormancy, and could no longer be appeased. After all, it might be a perfectly good boat.

  She walked unevenly down the sloping sand, stepping over broken spars and split casks, remnants of the sea battles. She slowed as she reached the boat, which was resting against a boulder, but it was empty. Then she heard a low, ragged moan. Roselyn froze, taking a deep breath before peering cautiously around the far side of the boat.

  For a moment she thought her mind was playing tricks on her, that it was only the gulls she’d disturbed. In the roar of the waves she could imagine anything.

  But she heard the sound again, and this time a dark shadow moved. It was a man, sprawled facedown across the wet sand, his lower body buffeted by the surf. Roselyn cautiously crept forward as he moaned more softly, as if his strength were ebbing with the tide.

  She crouched down beside the man’s body, gathered her courage, and tugged on his shoulder to roll him over. His arms splayed out to his sides; his head lolled. Above a ragged beard, his face looked distorted, misshapen, and she saw the darker shadow of welling blood below his eye.

  With a groan, the man shuddered, and Roselyn scrambled away from him.

  “Help…me.”

  He was an Englishman, not a Spaniard. Relief flooded through her, and she sagged to her knees at his side. “I’ll go for help. I promise I will not be long.”

  Before she could stand, he reached a trembling hand toward her. “No! Please…”

  He gripped her fingers with a strength that surprised her. His skin was wet and frigidly cold as he seemed to will her with dark eyes to heed him. She felt caught, trapped in his gaze as the moist wind swirled around them.

  Roselyn licked the salt from her lips as she released his hand. “I cannot carry you alone, sir, and I think there’s blood soaking your shirt. You might be badly wounded.”

  “No…the Spanish…they’ll be coming…” With a groan he rose up on one elbow. “I can…walk.”

  She knew she should go for help now, before the man injured himself even further, but he had already dragged himself up into a sitting position. Resting his chin against his chest, he took ragged, deep breaths that convulsed his entire body, as water ran in rivulets from his long dark hair.

  “Sir…” Roselyn began doubtfully.

  The sailor groaned as he rolled onto his hands and knees. She gave up trying to persuade him to be still and reached down to help him. He clutched at her shoulders and almost knocked them both to their knees in the surf, but somehow she withstood his weight. He smelled of brine and sweat and blood, and as he threw his arm across her shoulder, the cold ocean water seeped into her clothing.

  When he reached his full height, she realized that even injured he could be formidable.

  Together they took a few staggering steps across the sand. She could tell that something was wrong with his right leg by how little weight he put on it.

  Roselyn cursed herself with every exhaled groan he blasted in her ear. He was too big for her—what was she supposed to do with him, take him all the way to the lord-lieutenant?

  Though she thought every staggering step would be his last, he never faltered. During the climb up the cliff path, they had to stop several times as the sailor braced himself against the rock wall and gasped for breath.

  “Let me go for help,” she pleaded again.

  “No.” He could barely whisper, but still he clutched her skirts to keep her with him.

  She wondered what kind of man he was, to force himself beyond his strength. She could see only the barest outline of his profile in the dark—a bold nose over an unkempt mustache and beard. He wasn’t even using his right leg anymore, just her body as a crutch.

  They reached the meadow above the cliffs, and she thought the sailor would sag to his knees in relief. Instead his entire body trembled as he held on to her, resting.

  Roselyn’s own legs were weak, and she felt disoriented. She was helping a strange man through the stark, moonlit field, and she didn’t know what to do next. He hung from her shoulders, head down, his bare feet buried in the high grass.

  Though he was a British sailor, she did not dare bring him to her own cottage. She would take him to a shed on her father’s lands, where she could tend to his wounds before going to the lord-lieutenant. Not that the militia in the nearby village of Shanklin would have much time for one stray sailor; they were busy digging trenches and scouring the island for powder and shot in case the Spanish invaded.

  They half limped, half staggered through the night. Hours could have passed and Roselyn wouldn’t have known. She would have been grateful to run into one of the patrols, anything to have help with the ever-increasing burden of the sailor. She was exhausted by the time she reached Wakesfield, her father’s estate, where the outbuildings loomed in the distance.

  “’Tis…not far,” she gasped.

  But speech was beyond the sailor’s capability as he clung to her. She could feel the bones of his hips and ribs against her, as if he hadn’t eaten in a long time. By the saints, what would she do if he died?

  When they reached the shed, Roselyn shouldered open the wooden door, and the sweet smell of drying grasses from the mill pond wafted out toward them.

  Without a sound, the man dropped onto his knees, then face forward into the pile of grass, almost disappearing into the black shadows of the shed. She could see nothing without a lantern, so she rolled him onto his back and listened to his shallow breathing.

  “I shall return in but a moment,” she said slowly, hoping he understood. “I’ll bring bandages and food.”

  Roselyn left him and ran across the grounds, past stables and barns, the orchard and the gardens. Her father’s manor was dark and silent, with only the bailiff, Francis Heywood, and his family living there. The moon reflected off the panes of the windows like a single bright eye, following her.

  Her parents had no idea that she’d sought refuge here. If they knew, they would banish her. She’d refused to jeopardize Francis’s position by living in the manor, and instead lived in one of the cottages.

  A candle glowing in the small glass window of her home welcomed her inside, where the faint smells of supper still hung in the air. She retrieved a bucket of hot water off a hook over the fire, then put linens, salves, blankets, bread, and a horn of drinking water in a sack she hung over her shoulder. Next she searched for some of Philip’s garments buried at the bottom of a chest.

  When she returned to the shed, she set about removing the sailor’s sodden clothes. Finding an oilskin pouch strapped to his chest, she set it aside in the grass. As she tugged down his breeches she told herself that he was just another man to heal, but feeling his naked skin beneath her hands made her oddly unsettled. After a quick, wide-eyed stare, she put a towel discreetly across his hips. Then she examined the jagged gash in his side, obviously caused by a knife or sword. He groaned when she touched his right leg, and she felt a swelling at his shin—he must have broken the bone. Though his body was leanly muscled, it was obvious that food had not been in plentiful supply on board ship, for his ribs were too evident.

  Roselyn cauterized the bleeding wound in his side, cleaned the rest with wine, and applied salve. Then she bandaged his ribs and made a splint for his leg. The sailor’s trembling eased as she covered him with a blanket.

  Before dawn, the man began to toss and groan in a fever-induced delirium. He seemed panicked, desperate, and she wondered what horrible memories plagued him. When he began to mumble, she froze in stunned surprise.

  The words were not English, but Spanish.

  She had grown up near seaports and knew the language enough to recognize it, but not enough to translate.

  With a chill of foreboding, she lifted the lantern and held it above him. His hair was black, un-fashionably long, and she realized now that his skin was not the pale color of an Englishman. By the saints, could he be a Spaniard?

  She hung the lantern back on its hook, reminding herself that he had spoken perfect English up to this point.

  Yet wouldn’t a Spanish spy know English? Had he arrived to ready the island for invasion?

  Roselyn
reined in her panicked thoughts. He had been in battle and was barely clinging to life, which was not how a spy would come ashore. He had been fleeing from the Spanish—or so he’d said. And since many Englishmen knew Spanish, she couldn’t label the man an enemy with so little proof.

  “What is your name?” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear her.

  For two days the sailor moved in and out of consciousness, and Roselyn began to regret that she hadn’t brought him to her cottage. She was constantly running for supplies, for broth to dribble between his lips, for soap to clean his body and his matted hair and beard. She deliberately chose his most unconscious moments for such “baths,” then tried to tell herself that her hands weren’t shaking from performing such intimate acts on a strange man.

  He occasionally mumbled unintelligible words, though once he asked a lucid question: “Do you live on my land?”

  Before she could even think what to reply, he was asleep again.

  But always she worried about being discovered by the Heywoods. She could never put them in the way of a possible Spanish plot. Francis had been like a father to her, his children were practically her siblings, and they had been nothing but kind in the year since she’d fled to the Isle of Wight. She couldn’t involve them in this new problem she’d created for herself—not again. She could last until the sailor was well enough to turn over to the militia.

  Late in the afternoon, Roselyn returned to the shed with a thin stew for the sailor’s meal. She paused in the doorway, watching his face in a shaft of sunlight. The swelling from his bruises had subsided, and beneath all that long hair and beard, he seemed to be a handsome man. In his sleep, he turned his head, and his hair fell away from his brow.

  She frowned, feeling a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. She walked forward as if in a dream and knelt beside the man, setting her tray on the dirt floor.

  Roselyn felt a dim sense of panic reach her, grasp her, until she almost couldn’t swallow. With a shaking hand, she pushed the hair off his hot forehead, as a nobleman would wear it.

  Beneath the mottled purple and green bruises and the ragged beard was the face of Spencer Thornton—her betrothed.

  Chapter 2

  Roselyn scrambled away from Thornton, accidentally kicking over the bowl of stew. She pressed her back against the wall and stared wildly at him, waiting for him to awaken and remind her of all the sins she’d committed.

  She suddenly had a vivid recollection of the eve of her wedding, remembered his face looking her over with a casual cynicism and then looking away in disinterest. Her guilt for her own part in that disaster was swallowed by a sudden flaring of outraged anger at him, at her parents, for what they’d all forced her to do. Remembering it made her stomach clench.

  Just when she thought her life was proceeding at an even pace—she had a place to live, a way to earn her livelihood, and a few friends who cared about her—she had to face a ghost out of her past.

  Not a ghost, she told herself, but a man who’d wronged her—a man she, too, had wronged, she forced herself to admit.

  And he was no common sailor.

  Roselyn thought again of the foreign words he’d mumbled. His mother was Spanish; naturally he knew the language. Yet what was he doing with the fleet—and which fleet was he with? Did he hold alliances with Spain that she knew nothing about?

  Sliding down against the wall, she buried her face in her hands and shuddered. Why was this happening to her? She had tried to escape Thornton—and ended up shackled to Philip, a man no better, who wanted her only for the same reasons Thornton did: money and power.

  Just when she’d come to terms with living her life alone, Thornton reappeared. She remembered the words he’d mumbled, Do you live on my land? Could he have bought property near Shanklin?

  That night Roselyn couldn’t sleep. Questions and fears raced through her mind, but she didn’t want to confront them. She rose and dressed by firelight, then went out into the night with only the moon to guide her. She wanted to walk in peace, to feel the breeze on her face, to inhale the soothing smell of flowers and the sea.

  Yet when she found herself near the shed where Thornton lay, she was not surprised. Everything she wanted to escape had to do with him. With a heavy sigh, she opened the door.

  A shaft of moonlight cut across the pile of drying grass—but Thornton wasn’t lying upon it. The blanket she had covered him with lay in a heap on the ground.

  For a moment she remained frozen with shock, then came back to herself and quickly searched the shed. He was gone.

  Had someone discovered him and taken him away? Surely Francis Heywood would have been notified, and the sound of men’s voices as they trudged to the shed would have alerted her.

  Could Thornton have left on his own? He was weak from his injuries, and he wouldn’t be able to stand with a broken leg.

  But he’d also been delirious with fever.

  Roselyn searched the moonlit ground outside the shed, and found dark stains in the grass. She touched them with her fingers and felt wetness, then lifted her hand to her face and smelled fresh blood.

  She straightened and looked out across the estate. For a moment she was torn with indecision; should she let him go?

  But she couldn’t allow him to bleed to death in the grass, or fall off the cliff onto the rocky beach. She wouldn’t be able to live with the sin of her cowardice.

  So she followed the trail of crushed grass made by Thornton’s body. Every moment she expected to catch sight of him, but he’d crawled farther than she would have imagined. Her nervous fears increased, and the darkness seemed to wrap around her, with the wind picking up to tug at her unbound hair. She thought she heard the sound of voices, but it faded so abruptly she knew she must be imagining it.

  Where was he?

  Just as she began to wonder if she’d followed the wrong trail, she saw a glimmer of something parting the grass before her. She knelt down and found Thornton, whose bare chest gleamed by moonlight between the bandages. He wore only Philip’s old breeches. He lay on his side, trying to struggle up onto his knees.

  Though she didn’t want to touch him, she forced herself to place her hand on his arm. She felt the fire of his fever as he suddenly grasped her wrist and yanked her to the ground. She twisted onto her back, but before she could move he was upon her, his forearm against her throat. She tried to yell, but her voice came out as a muffled gasp.

  Kicking her heels into the ground and thrashing, she caught his arm and managed to pull it enough to breathe. His eyes were narrowed; his teeth were bared in a grimace above her.

  “Thornton!” she rasped. “I’m not your enemy!”

  She rolled and tried to push him off her, and in their struggles his free hand caught her waist. He immediately went still. All she could hear was his breath rattling in his chest. Slowly, his hand skimmed up her rib cage.

  “Yes, I am a woman!” she said in outrage, before his touch could become too intimate. She slid out from beneath him, and he allowed her escape, collapsing forward onto his elbows.

  “Mr. Thornton,” she whispered regretfully, “you must come back with me.”

  He got one knee beneath him and tried to crawl away from her, but ended up sinking down into the grass with a moan. He was muttering, and when she leaned closer, she realized that he was using Spanish again.

  Suddenly Roselyn felt a whisper of goose-flesh rise across her arms, and she stilled. Again, she heard voices, and realized with dawning horror that there were men out on the cliffs. She collapsed onto her stomach at Thornton’s side, her breath coming rapidly.

  She stared at his flushed face and his fluttering eyelids as the men came closer. What were they doing out in the middle of the night?

  Slowly she lifted up until she could just see over the swaying grass. A group of men hovered like dark shadows near the cliffs, moonlight glittering off them.

  She realized they were wearing swords. Could it be the militia from nearby Shanklin?

  Or the Spanish, ready to invade England?

  Roselyn dropped down again, only to find Thornton’s eyes open as he stared at her in exhausted bewilderment. What was she to do? If she crept away, they might find him and take him off her hands. He’d wake up soon and be able to explain everything. He might not even remember her.