"Damn it," Katharine repeated. "I have never received such a romantic proposal. You wish for me to be your wife so Pearl can have a mother?"
"No. I want you, as I have wanted you for all these years, and was too proud and stupid to come home and admit I ruined everything. I was taken for a fool by a woman who played on my inexperience, but I was not forced to do anything. I do not deserve to be forgiven, and you will surely never forget the events of eight years ago. I do not deserve you but neither am I complete without you." He went down on one knee and started to sink into the wet sand.
"Edward, please," Katharine began, and looked desperately around her. Pearl stopped her dance in the waves and stood watching them from a distance. Behind them, near the cliff wall, someone cheered.
"Marry me, Katharine. Give a fool a second chance, for you will always be his first and only love."
She said nothing, thinking of her grief and humiliation and all those lost years. But somehow, they were nothing now, if she could only spend the rest of her life with him.
He started to rise and was nearly knocked off his feet by the next wave. "You speak of romantic proposals. Have you received many of them?" he asked, sounding unsure of himself.
She could not continue to punish him. For all he deserved it, she loved him too much.
"I have only received two proposals in my life, and both from you. The first was in a spring garden, but nothing bloomed from it. Now here we are on a cool, windy day, wet with salt water and sprayed with sand. And yet I feel we have been set free on this beach, for it has brought us back to what we once were."
Edward regained his footing and stood before her. "I prefer to think of what will be," he said, and kissed her.
A member of Romance Writers of America for over twenty years, Sharon Sobel is the author of eight historical and two contemporary romance novels, as well as a series of Regency Christmas novellas. She has served as the Secretary and Chapter Liaison of RWA and has twice been president of the Beau Monde chapter. After earning a PhD in English Language and Literature from Brandeis University, she started her career as a professor of English and currently works at a Connecticut college, where she co-chaired the Connecticut Writers' Conference for five years. An eighteenth-century New England farmhouse, where Sharon and her husband raised their three children, has provided inspiration for either the period or the setting for all of her books.
LUCAS FORTUNE HAD BEEN in worse situations in his thirty-six years.
Heat baked the walls of the tiny cell, and he'd stripped off his shirt in hope of some relief, but there was none to be found. The sun blazed orange through the small rectangular window at the top of the west wall, and the iron bars cast interesting shadows on the foot of the rusted bed frame, amplifying the particles of dust that hung in the air. There was no mattress, so he'd used his torn cargo jacket as a buffer to keep himself from frying like bacon on top of the bed frame. It was better than sitting on the dirt floor with cockroaches the size of dinner plates.
He hadn't been there too long--maybe five or six hours. The bastards had sucker punched him into unconsciousness. There was a hazy memory of being jostled inside a crowded car trunk, and then he was in the cell, his jaw aching and his head pounding before fully regaining his senses. He'd realized soon enough that standing at the bars and yelling for someone to let him out was futile. There wasn't a sign of anyone--inside or outside--and he figured he needed to save his anger. He was a big believer in conserving his energy for the important things. And planting a fist in Damian Hunter's face had quickly moved up on his list of "important things."
Chinks of mortar were missing from the concrete blocks they'd used to build the jail. Or what he assumed had once been a jail. By the layers of dust and disrepair, it didn't look like anyone had stepped foot inside in quite some time. The only recent sign of occupancy was the shuffled footprints from the door to his cell and back again. He was surprised the iron bars still stood, but he'd shaken them, looking for weakness, and hadn't found any.
Sweat trickled down his spine and ran in rivulets from his temples into the scruff of beard he hadn't bothered to shave in a few days. Served him right for taking a vacation. All he'd wanted was a hammock, the sand and surf, a beautiful woman or two to keep him company, and if he was lucky, a little gold to line his pockets.
Lucas didn't have any tools to pick the lock of his cage or to chisel away the mortar on the outside wall. Damian's men had relieved him of the items he habitually carried--a Swiss Army knife, a small roll of dental floss, a compass, t
he emergency cash in his sock, a needle and thread, and the gold doubloon he'd gotten on his first find that he kept for good luck. The bastards had gone too far with that one.
He'd learned over the years that an opportunity for wealth and fame could come at any moment, but only to those who were prepared. Most treasure hunters lived by the same basic rules he did. Those who didn't ... well ... they didn't last long. It was a brutal and addictive lifestyle, and only the strongest survived. Damian Hunter wasn't the strongest or smartest or most talented treasure hunter, but he was the most cunning. And he was definitely the most ruthless.
Lucas perked up at the sound of muffled voices and footsteps coming in his direction, and he got up quickly, looking for something--anything--he could use as a weapon. To no avail--even the rusted iron bedframe was solid and too heavy to tear apart.
The voices quieted as they got closer and he settled himself on the bed, trying to look non-threatening and still weakened from the blow they gave him earlier. Not an easy accomplishment for a man who was six foot two in his bare feet and built like a brawler. His fists had gotten him out of more than one sticky situation. Learning to defend himself had been a priority once he'd realized hunting treasure left him with a target. The six-inch scar on his back from a knife was as much of a reminder of his first find as the gold doubloon now missing from his pocket.
He was a hell of a poker player, and that ability was the only thing that kept him seated and looking bored as two of Damian's men charged in, dragging another prisoner behind them. And dragging her was exactly what they had to do. She wasn't going to make it easy on them. He almost smiled at that. Miranda George had never made things easy. She was a hundred and twenty pounds of pure fire and prickly temper. And she'd once been all his.
"Let me go, you son of a bitch," she said between gritted teeth.
"We don't get paid enough for this bullshit," one of the men said. He had four distinct claw marks on the side of his face that oozed blood.
"Shut up, Ryan," the other man said. "I told you to knock her out. It's your own fault for not wanting to hit a woman."
"I didn't see you volunteering to do the job," Ryan spat. "You were the one going on about it being a shame to ruin a face like hers."
"That was before I realized what her mouth was like. Never in my life have I heard such a foul-mouthed banshee of a woman."
Lucas did grin at that. It sounded like Miranda hadn't changed much over the past couple of years.
Miranda hadn't seen him yet, and the hired guns had their hands full dealing with her. It would be the perfect time to spring into action. Miranda dug her feet in and went limp, making Ryan stumble. The other finally picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He got an elbow in the head, and her tiny fists pounded at his kidneys hard enough that he'd probably be pissing blood for a few days, but he took the abuse stoically. Lucas knew instinctively he was the more dangerous of the two.
The old cell used a skeleton key of some kind, and Lucas figured they either didn't know where it was or didn't want to chance that he'd be able to pick the lock, so they'd wrapped a very modern and sturdy chain around the bars and fastened it with a padlock. Ryan fumbled with the keys and eventually got the padlock undone and the chain unwrapped. The cell door swung open with a rusty creak and the man holding Miranda tossed her into the cell.
She landed with an ummph, and the fall must've surprised her because she sat there looking stunned instead of hopping up to fight. Lucas had shifted his weight to attack the men as soon as the door opened, but Miranda was in the way, and he didn't want to take the chance of her getting hurt. They had the gate closed and the chains on and locked before he'd come up with another plan.