Sitting down in the sand, she allowed her head to drop onto her arms. It was not usually her custom to be so despondent but with the Twelfthtide approaching and her happily coupled family about to arrive, she couldn’t help but feel despair. She’d have to face them all alone. Their looks would be pitying, their happiness underscoring her own loneliness.
She’d give anything for those she loved and she didn’t begrudge them a single bit. She just wanted a little sliver of hope for herself. Was that wrong? She sent up a silent prayer that she too would find joy in love.
But her plea was cut short. Out of the mist a booming noise sounded across the water. Her head snapped up as the vague outline of a ship came into view.
But something was wrong, the ship listed at an angle and didn’t correct itself as the waves rolled.
Standing, Emilia craned her neck to get a better view but her blonde hair blew into her face. Swishing it away, she lifted her skirts to step closer to the grey water. As the ship moved closer, its outline grew clearer. It was in distress. The sails hung limply as the ship tipped at an even wilder angle to the water. Gasping into the wind, she forced her legs to move as she raced along the beach. She threw open the door to the lighthouse and climbed the narrow stairs.
It was slow going thanks to her morning dress, but she lifted it higher and made her way to the top. Sounding the bell that alerted the castle above, she lit the lamp and prayed the ship would see its light. Then back down the stairs she flew, out the door and across the beach where several rowboats were moored.
If she’d stopped to think, she’d have realized that a single rowboat could not possibly hold an entire crew, but fear propelled her as Emilia climbed onto one of the dinghies and began rowing out to the ship. She heard the chains as it dropped anchor and then the whizzi
ng of the ropes as several other dinghies dropped from the deck into the ocean but her eyes were on the shore as she pushed the boat out past the break to aid the failing vessel.
A rowboat passed her by and one of the sailors being shuttled to the shore called out. “You’re a woman.” As if that was somehow significant.
“Thank ye for noticing,” she huffed back. It would have been far better if she’d been able to deliver it with a good measure of disdain but alas, she was running out of breath.
Another dinghy passed by and she stopped for a moment to check behind and see if everyone was off the ship. It seemed prudent to turn around if they were. Much of her fear had been replaced with exhaustion.
One more dinghy made its way towards her, laden down with men. She watched in horror as a massive wave rolled toward them. With so many men, they were powerless to move out of the way and too heavy to roll atop the wall of water. It took them over, crashing the men into the ocean.
She might have screamed, but the wind ripped it away and then she redoubled her efforts, rolling easily over the massive wave and pushing toward the men who were now bobbing helplessly in the water.
She rowed toward them until she reached the first man attempting to stay above the water and, holding out an oar, she yelled, “Get in!” Reaching out her hand, she helped him climb into the rowboat. He collapsed on the bottom of the tiny ship and then she collected another swimming toward the shore. The overturned dinghy had landed right side up and several men were crawling back into it as well.
Between Emilia’s boat and the other dinghy, all the men save one had been pulled from the ocean and she made her way to where he tread water.
When she reached down her oar, the man latched onto it, his blue eyes piercing into hers in a way that made her already labored breath rush out of her chest. They were so mesmerizing she completely forgot to reach out her hand to help in into the boat.
He climbed up anyway, grasping the side of the ship, and then several men reached over to pull him into the nearly full dinghy.
Unlike many of the men who had collapsed into the boat, the second his feet hit the bottom, he stood. Without missing a breath, he grasped her about the waist and hauled her up against him. She nearly dropped the oars in her surprise. For a moment, she had a wild thought that he would kiss her. Her eyes widened as his held hers captive. Every nerve tingled as she became aware of all the places his hard body pressed against hers.
Her lips parted in anticipation but he only gave her a small smile and then his hands left her waist as he slipped underneath her arm, sitting on the bench behind her. Grasping her waist again, he pulled her down into his lap.
Confusion knitted her brow and she turned back to look at him. “Sir, what are you—”
The smile returned as his hand came over hers, to clasp the oars. “I thought I might help you row.” His breath was warm against her cheek and it made her tingle in the strangest places.
“Oh,” she exclaimed as his hands grasped hers on the oars. Then he began to move, her body cradled into his as she worked with him to row the boat back to shore.
A flush climbed her cheeks as they swayed back and forth, their bodies moving together. She’d never been this close to a man, so intimately entwined, and her body hummed with the feel of it. If not for the cold seeping into every extremity, it might have been the most exciting moment of her life.
The waves helped push them onto the beach and the men hopped out, pulling the rowboat further onto the shore. Without a word, the man whose lap she sat upon stood and swept her into his arms. Deftly he climbed over the side of the boat and then began making his way up the beach, still holding her.
“Lady Emilia,” one of the stablemen, Creeves, called out from the bottom of the stairs. He must have seen the light or heard the bell and had come to aid the ship. “Are you all right, my lady?”
“My lady?” His voice whispered into her ear.
She turned to look at him, which might have been a mistake, because then her lips were just a breath away from his. She wondered what they might taste like. Salt, of course. He’d just been in the ocean. Blinking, she tried to clear those thoughts. “Y-y-yes. I-I am-m-m the d-d-daughter…” What was wrong with her voice? Belatedly she realized she was shivering despite his heat.
“It’s all right, you can tell me later. I am Captain Jack Andrews. I owe you a debt of gratitude for aiding us. You saved my men’s life today as well as my own.”
She gave a nod as more of the servants began flooding onto the beach. Voices were calling from everywhere, questions were being bandied about from all directions but she could barely understand them as she shrank further down into Captain Andrew’s heat.
Her head lolled onto his shoulder and her eyes drifted closed. “No sleeping now,” his voice called her back.