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 thos
e 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 circumstances 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 God 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 lust 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 God. 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 shining 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 coarse 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 shell, 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.