Seduced by the Scoundrel (Danger and Desire 2)

‘Get back here!’

Luke! She did not turn or reply, only ploughed doggedly on, fighting through the thigh-high waves. ‘Stop or I will shoot!’

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t shoot

a woman in the back. Even a French agent wouldn’t—

She didn’t hear the shot, only felt the impact, a thumping blow below her left shoulder, behind her heart. It pitched her forwards into the sea and everything clouded and went dark. Her last thought as she felt the water closing over her head was of shocked anger. He said he would not kill me. Liar.

Chapter Six

‘Wake up.’

It seemed that the voice had been nagging at her for hours. Days, perhaps. She did not want to wake up. She did not think she was dead and this obviously was not heaven unless angels habitually sounded angry and impatient. But even if she was alive, Luke had shot her. Why should she have to wake up and face that? It would hurt.

‘Why should I?’ Averil asked.

‘So I can strangle you?’ the voice enquired and became identifiable as Luke.

‘You shot me.’ She opened her eyes, surprised to find she was not frightened or in great pain. Perhaps she was in shock. Best to lie very still—she was badly wounded, surely she must have lost a great deal of blood?

‘I did not shoot you.’ He was looming over the bed, tight-lipped and furious. ‘I threw a stone at you and you seem to have fainted.’

‘Oh.’ Averil sat up and yelped in pain. ‘It hurts! You could have killed me if you had hit my head.’

‘I hit what I aim at,’ Luke said. ‘It is just a bruise. You might want to cover yourself up.’

Averil glanced down and found she was naked. Again. Her borrowed clothes were draped, steaming, over chairs in front of the fire. She grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulled it up to her chin and sat there glowering back at him.

‘What the hell were you doing?’ He turned on his heel and walked away as though he was having trouble keeping his hands off her. Averil was not deceived into thinking he was restraining lustful urges.

‘I intended to swim to the nearest ship,’ she said. ‘It was one thing not to try to escape when I believed you were just deserters, but when I realised you are a French spy I had to do something.’

Luke folded his arms and looked at her without emotion or denials. ‘Why do you assume I am a French spy?’

‘Because you are French, because you have lied to the Governor about why you are here and because you are hiding those men and training them for some nefarious exercise.’

‘That is almost entirely correct on all points, Miss Heydon, and you have drawn entirely the wrong conclusion from it.’

‘What is not correct?’ she demanded, wishing she had her clothes. Defiance was much easier when one was not naked, she had discovered.

‘I am half-French.’ Luke’s shoulders lost their angry rigidity and he sat on the edge of the table and regarded her with what looked like exasperated resignation. ‘I am going to have to trust you.’

‘Well, you cannot. Not if you are my enemy.’

‘I may be that—you seem determined that I am—but I am not England’s enemy. I am an English naval officer and I am also le comte Lucien Mallory d’Aunay.’

‘A French count? A Royalist?’

That produced a bark of laughter. ‘Shall we say, a constitutional monarchist? That, at least, was what my father was until Madame Guillotine took his head off and ended his political philosophising.’

He rubbed both hands over his face and through his hair and emerged rumpled and with no sign of the anger of a few moments before, only a weary patience. ‘Averil, will you take my word of honour that what I tell you is the truth? Because if you will not, then I fear we are at an impasse. I cannot prove any of it, not here and now.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said with total honesty. He shrugged and suddenly seemed very foreign. ‘I wish I had some clothes on,’ she added, half to herself.

‘Why on earth would that make any difference?’

‘I want to look into your eyes.’