These were patently no squeezed-out feminine tears that were carefully calculated to soften a man’s heart or loosen his purse strings. He could feel her body quiver and vibrate with the fury of her weeping, as if she had been a small boat tossed about by rough seas; and even after he had released her and moved back she did not, as most women would have done, attempt to wipe her nose or knuckle her eyes. No, not this one, for Christ’s sake! She continued to stand there, rubbing at her wrists almost unconsciously, while she rocked back and forth like a professional mourner; and the noisy sobs were turning into angry wails that seemed to grow increasingly louder by the minute, he noticed grimly.
The devil take her! What had set her off so suddenly? And why didn’t she make some effort to control herself? She was acting like a spoiled, frustrated child taking refuge in a temper tantrum when she couldn’t have her way— that was it! He’d observed the spoiled younger son of one of his mother’s friends cry in much the same manner once—throwing himself on the floor to lie there drumming on it with his heels and striking out wildly at anyone who approached in an attempt to soothe his ruffled feathers; squalling all the while. And no doubt that was exactly what she would do at any moment now—kick her heels in the sand while her weeping and wailing became even noisier and more hysterical. Well, damned if he’d stand for it!
His jaw clenched, Nicholas grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and shook her as he growled: “You’d better stop your damned caterwauling this minute, do you hear? And temper tantrums won’t get you anywhere either, let me tell you! Control yourself and quiet down at once, or I’ll be forced to treat you like any other hysterical female!”
“Ahh...aahh...” Christ, he thought disgustedly, was she going to start off again? “Ahh...can’t...sto...stop!” Alexa wailed, gasping, and the way her voice had risen dangerously made Nicholas drop his hands from her shoulders before he ran tense fingers through his hair while he eyed her grimly and found himself almost wishing that he had broken her neck after all—as he’d been tempted to do when she first ripped at him with those sharp talons of hers. But what should he do with her now? Slap her face? He would have enjoyed doing so if he hadn’t had the unpleasant feeling that such an action would only succeed in making her cry harder and even louder. If only there had been a bucket of cold water handy he would have thrown it right in her face—exactly what he had done to Fernando when he had grown bored and heartily annoyed by the little brat’s screaming; and it had worked like magic, too.
Cold water...dammit, he had reached the limits of his patience with this ill-tempered, sharp-clawed brat wh
o stood there bawling with frustration because he’d foiled her attempt to catch herself a Viscount. And if he’d had her on his ship he’d damn well have no compunction at all about giving orders that she should be keelhauled, or thrown overboard for that matter! His mouth hard with determination, Nicholas needed only to take one long stride to reach her before he scooped the startled and still sobbing young woman off her feet and into his arms with as little care or consideration as he might have paid to a bundle of old rags. Only five more furious strides took him thigh-deep into the ocean, unmindful of his polished leather boots or his expensively tailored fawn trousers. And then, still without uttering a word, he looked down just once to make certain the water was deep enough before he dropped her into it.
That should cool her off, and teach the little wildcat a lesson as well! In fact, Nicholas told himself grimly, as he turned about and made for the shore without a backward glance, he didn’t really care what happened to her now— or whether she might sink or float. The devil take them all—Charles and his anxious, overly protective parents included! Dammit, Charles was not exactly an inexperienced boy any longer, and was hardly in need of protection or unwarranted interference in his affairs either. Already angry at himself for ignoring his own earlier resolution not to meddle in anything that might transpire between Charles and Miss Howard, Nicholas found his foul mood accentuated by the squelching sound made by his waterlogged boots with each step he took back to shore. Ruined, of course, like his newest pair of trousers and his fine linen shirt, which had been a present to him from his last mistress.
Halting to look down at himself once he had regained dry ground again, Nicholas scowled blackly as he growled a lurid Spanish obscenity and then swore again when he heard himself take another step. He refused to squelch every time he set his foot down, goddammit! His teeth gritted when he thought about the time and the careful effort that had gone into the making of these boots. Made of the finest, softest leather obtainable and hand stitched by a master shoemaker known throughout Europe, his closely fitting Wellington boots were his favorite footgear as well as being the envy of his friends. His trousers, his shirt and his mistress could be replaced quickly and easily enough; but not the boots! His expression darkening even further, Nicholas sat down on the closely packed sand and began to remove his now-offending footwear; experiencing considerable difficulty in doing so, to make matters worse. Swearing under his breath each time he was forced to tug and wrench at his own foot, he did not feel inclined to pay any attention to the splashing noises he had begun to hear, accompanied by gasps and sputters. At least she wasn’t weeping and wailing any longer, and even if he hadn’t managed to drown her he hoped that her salty bath had served to cool off her nasty disposition. In fact, if she knew what was good for her the little vixen would do well to slink back to her lair and not make any further attempts to provoke him!
Having managed to get one boot off at last, Nicholas turned it upside down and watched the water run out of it, cursing under his breath. Damn her! This was all her fault! And what was more, he had absolutely no intention of making any apologies for his somewhat rough treatment of her. The deep gouges her nails had made in his back and along the side of his neck had begun to sting and throb quite painfully, and for all he knew he might develop blood poisoning and die from it; and then how the bitch would laugh, no doubt, to think she had obtained her revenge on him for confronting her with the truth about herself—with the fact that she was, for all her pretenses and protestations, no more than a sly, teasing coquette who enjoyed taking risks now and then. The half-shy, half-wild child of nature he had thought he’d discovered that moon bewitched night had been only a figment of his own imagination, making him the damned fool for wanting to believe in the impossible—he, the cynic, who of all people should have known better!
In the act of attempting to tug off his other boot while he gave full rein to his dark and angry thoughts, Nicholas suddenly happened to look up, and the apparition that met his eyes was sufficient to stop both thought and motion for the moment. In fact, he remained half bent over, with both hands still holding on to his wet and slippery boot and his head lifted, while he continued to stare, fascinated, at the strange object that looked as if it had been washed up on the beach by the playful waves. A bedraggled, forlorn looking sea waif! Or.. .no, more like a half-drowned kitten! In any case, the sorry creature he saw before him bore no resemblance to the temperamental virago he’d just tossed into the ocean—or the calculating adventuress of his brooding thoughts just moments ago.
Alexa, if she had known what he was thinking, would probably have turned and crawled back into the sea she’d just crawled out of; but at that moment she hadn’t yet thought of what she must look like, because she felt almost dead with exhaustion from the effort it had taken her to struggle back to shore. The fact was that she had been so distraught and tear-logged when he had heartlessly thrown her into the ocean that she could easily have drowned, especially since she had swallowed great quantities of salt water before she came spluttering to the surface and realized that she could actually stand. Swimming would have been almost impossible with her water-soaked skirts to impede her; and as it was, it was only with the greatest effort and difficulty that she had, almost by instinct, managed to half-stagger and half-crawl out of the tugging, insidious pull of the waves in order to regain the beach once more. All she wanted, all she cared about was to let herself crumple somewhere dry, where the waves couldn’t reach her and grasp at her skirts any longer. Almost beyond thought, Alexa felt as if all emotion had been drained out of her, leaving her so empty that nothing mattered except finding a safe place to lie down and rest—her appearance the least of all. Her hair hung in straggly rattails about her face and down her back, with the sad-looking velvet ribbon all entangled in it; while the prettily becoming green dress she had always liked so much bore no resemblance to what it had looked like before. Both the gown and the one petticoat Alexa had conceded to wear tonight had become quite transparent from the soaking they had received and clung far too revealingly to every curve and hollow of her supple young body, drooping off one shoulder to bare a pointed breast. And since Alexa had unthinkingly tugged her skirts up almost as far as her knees in order to make her stumbling progress easier, she now gave the impression of some rain-wet stray out of the gutters of London or Paris who hopefully displayed everything she had to offer in order to earn the price of a meal or a bed to sleep in.
Completely unconscious of the appearance she presented, Alexa continued her haltingly erratic progress up the slight slope, staggering like a sleepwalker; and as he continued to watch her as if he had been rooted in place, Nicholas suddenly found that his earlier feelings of disgruntled rage had been wiped away by the almost overwhelming urge to burst into laughter. A waterlogged sea waif left stranded by the tide! Actually forgetting his ruined boots, he could not help grinning while he waited for her to come up closer. If only she could see herself as she was now, she would never dare to give herself airs and graces again. He had, with unsympathetic amusement, watched her crawl out of the water on her hands and knees before she had managed to clamber onto her feet again; but now, quite suddenly, Nicholas discovered that he no longer felt like laughing derisively at her plight. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully as they took in every detail of her appearance at closer range. Leaning back on his elbows with one leg negligently cocked, he continued to study, as closely as the starlight allowed, the unstudied grace of her body—all the way up from her slender ankles and bare legs to the curve of her hips that accentuated the natural smallness of her waist. And her breasts, as he had noticed before, were high and firm, tapering to tiny peaks that could tempt even a saint into wanting to feel their growing tautness against the palms of his hands, or under his lips....
Without surprise, because he had been willing her to come to him, to offer herself to him, Nicholas became aware that, having come abreast of where he lounged, she had let herself drop to her knees, her star-sheened eye
s seemingly slightly glazed, as if she too had become mesmerized by the sudden pull of passion between them. Her skin seemed to have taken on a shimmering glow from the combination of salt water and fine sand that contained even finer grains of mica—fool’s gold some called it—which could reflect even the faintest light. Leaning forward, she seemed to be offering him her bared breast, with the material of her gown still selfishly clinging closely enough to partly cover her nipple.
His fingers itching to pull down her gown all the way to the waist, Nicholas started to reach out to her when she spoke in a husky, small voice.
“I...I think that I’m about to be quite sick!”
Forgetting himself, Nicholas swore in Spanish. “Maldicion! I should have...” He rolled sideways and out of the way just in time, coming to his knees while her shoulders still heaved and her body rid itself of all the sea water she had managed to swallow.
By the time it was over Alexa had barely enough strength left to drag herself a few inches further up the sloping beach before she collapsed face down onto the sand, to lie there in a kind of swoon. She had forgotten about the events that had led up to this moment and about him... forgotten everything but the ghastly feeling of nausea that had suddenly assailed her. But now, as she continued to lie still and limp with her mind emptied of any conscious thoughts, she remained aware of other small and inconsequential things—like the sound of the waves lapping innocently against the beach, and the gritty feel of sand against her face and outspread limbs that seemed to be weighed down by her water-soaked garments and the heavy mass of her wet hair. She neither wanted to move nor to think. She wanted only to be able to fall asleep and to wake up in her own bed at home, discovering with relief that she’d only been having a nightmare. Home—with all its familiar sounds and smells and mornings cool enough to force her to pull her blanket up to her neck. Sometimes over her ears to shut out the noisy birdcalls outside her open window and the plaintive, quavering songs of the Tamil coolies who worked among the coffee shrubs. But it was usually the familiar, tantalizing odors that woke her up in the end: the scent of blue-grey wood smoke from the kitchen that would be overlaid by the spicy aroma of curries, and the smell of steaming hot black tea when her old ayah carried in the tray and lifted off the tea cozy to pour out her first cup, tempting her into wakefulness. Her thought-dreams suddenly seemed so strong and so clearly defined that Alexa almost expected to hear her ayah’s voice scolding her for lying abed so late and reminding her cunningly the next moment that her horse was already saddled and becoming so restive that the muttu found it hard to control her and threatened to ride her himself if the missy didn’t come soon.
“He had better not dare...!”
Starting up, Alexa discovered that she had spoken the words aloud, so convinced that her wishful imaginings were indeed true that the feel of a wet rag mopping roughly at her face came as quite a shock.
To add to her feeling of disorientation a drily caustic voice that seemed unpleasantly familiar said, “I do hope I have not become the spectre of your maidenly dreams, Miss Howard?”
“I...what...? What do you think you are doing?” As her eyes became focused again and her mind dropped back to ugly reality with a dull thud, Alexa jerked her head back instinctively and found herself looking into the one, dark shadowed face she had hoped never to set eyes on again. Cruel...hateful! Even if she could not see him very well in the faint light, she could picture his face all too well. The Spaniard, as his cousin laughingly called him, with that dark, harsh-planed face and his hard mouth that never really smiled but only curled mockingly in an unpleasant travesty of a grin. He’d almost succeeded in drowning her a few moments ago. What did he intend to do with her now?
Caught in the whirlpool of her own fearful thoughts, Alexa hardly realized for some moments that he was addressing her again in the same dry tone he had used before. “What do you think I’m doing? I thought that cleaning off that grimy face of yours might do some good, unless you don’t mind being taken for a strayed guttersnipe when you decide to return to your lodgings. That is...” Alexa could feel her face begin to burn with humiliation as his eyes flicked over her in the most obvious manner before he continued smoothly: “That is, of course, if it was your intention to return? Forgive me for being blunt, but I do hope that for your own sake you did not do anything so silly as to leave a note or anything of the sort behind saying that you planned—or hoped—to elope with Viscount Deering?”
“I did nothing of the sort! And how dare you insinuate that I might as much as consider doing such a stupid thing? I had no intention of doing anything more than converse with Lord Charles, whether you choose to believe so or not. And I am not...not...ohh!” Almost breathless with rage and mortification, Alexa’s words trailed off into a furiously protesting cry as something about the way in which his eyes seemed to dwell significantly on her made her suddenly aware of her appearance. Tugging futilely at the shoulder of her gown which seemed in imminent danger of slipping down to the elbow, she panted, "You.. .you unfeeling...beast! You cad! Have you no conscience at all? This is all your fault! Ohh...!” Alexa broke off, speechless with raging frustration when she noticed that he had begun to shake with soundless laughter.
“I’m sorry!” he managed at last. “But it was that particular word you used—‘cad’—that set me off, I’m afraid. Although on more sober consideration I suppose it might be said to apply, even if it is rather mild in comparison to certain more colorful adjectives I’ve had used on me before.”
“And if I was acquainted with such terms of verbal abuse as you seem quite accustomed to, I would indeed use them on you!” Alexa’s voice shook with suppressed emotion. “But it so happens that my main concern at this moment is not you—as vile, as loathsome and without conscience as you have shown yourself to be. It is...”
“Ah, you’re doing much better now.” He applauded sarcastically; but with her distress overriding her fury as she glanced down at herself, Alexa managed to ignore his barbs this time.
She blurted out: “Oh, stop it, can’t you? Since you’re so anxious to be rid of me and since it was you, you brute, who caused this predicament I find myself in, please tell me how I’m ever going to explain this to that nasty old Langford woman when I get back? She’s such a wicked, evil-minded gossip, and we had quite a set-to this evening so that she... Why, there’s nothing she’d like better than to create a great scandal if she could. What am I to do?”
She noticed his shoulders lift in a shrug before he said in an unsympathetic, almost bored voice: “I should think, my dear, that if you were resourceful enough to slip away from the house unnoticed you should be able to manage getting back the same way. And if someone should notice how wet you are, couldn’t you explain it by saying you decided to have a nocturnal dip in the ocean? After all, you are wearing a trifle more than you had on the other night under the moon, aren’t you? And I presume you managed to get away with that particular escapade without any unpleasant repercussions?” Before Alexa, breathing hard with fury, could interrupt, he continued caustically, “I am quite positive, Miss Howard, that you possess a clever and inventive mind that will continue to serve you well, even in your present predicament. And now, if you will excuse me...”
“You have ruined my very favorite gown—and you deliberately tried to drown me, you murderer!”