Taken by Storm (30 page)

But now, “forever” was a frightening uncertainty, for here, bordering the road, were the eight-foot high, ivy-choked stone walls that ringed Maxwell’s estate, and the gates themselves lay just around the next bend. Soon now, Colin—if he wanted her as much as she hoped, prayed, he did—would have to make a decision.

A decision to trust her enough with whatever shameful secret he was harboring.

A decision to offer for her, himself.

Thunder stumbled on a rock, and the massive, cast iron gates loomed up before them, dark, skeletal sketches against the night.

“Is this it?” Colin asked, his voice oddly strained, flat.

“Yes.”

He pulled Thunder up short. “Ariadne, I. . . .”

“Yes?” she said breathlessly.

They stared at each other, their thoughts and longings lying unspoken between them. Colin saw the hopeful expectancy in her eyes, saw that she had caught and was holding her breath, her hands tightly clenching the reins. He was no fool, and knew very well what she wanted, what her eyes begged him to do . . .

Please ask me to marry you, Colin.

But he couldn’t. What would her future be like if she consented to be his wife? How would she feel when the
ton
whispered behind her back and shunned her for marrying someone who had fallen so far from grace and glory? How would she feel when they snubbed her for breaking off her engagement with an earl, only to marry a lowly animal doctor?

She deserved better than that.

And, she deserved better than a disgraced naval officer who didn’t even have the courage to tell her the truth about that awful night back in ’05 that had ended his career with absolute finality. He liked being her hero. He liked her warm affection and declarations of love and the adoration in her eyes at the acts of healing and caring that came as naturally to him as breathing. But oh, what would her reaction be when she opened the Pandora’s box of his past and saw the ugly things that lurked inside? That adoration would quickly be replaced by shock, pity, and disgust, she would go cold toward him, and then. . . .

And then she would turn away and no longer love him, because in her eyes, he would no longer be a hero.

“Colin?”

Veils of cloud drifted across the night sky, and a light wind sprang up, ripe with the scent of the sea.

Pain twisted his heart. He took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring, the old ache starting up deep within his soul. His eyes fell shut and he took another breath, sucking that precious scent deeply into his lungs until he wanted to put his head in his hands and weep with longing.

Five long years, and still . . . oh, did it have to hurt so damned much?

And Ariadne. Looking at him. Waiting.

“Colin, are you well?”

Insects sang in the night around them. Far, far off in the distance, he could hear the sea running against the land, and knew the tide was coming in.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse and raw.

He could feel her gaze upon him and knew she was worried. He heard the stallion’s shoes against dirt and stone as she turned him and sent him back to the chaise, heard the squeak of leather as she dismounted, then the rustle of her clothes, the soft sounds her feet made as she came up to him. She leaned over the door of the chaise, and put her face close to his. Her scent invaded his senses, mingling with the tang of a sea he had not dared approach since—

“Colin, you’re ill.” Her hand was against his brow, soft, sweet, light as air.

He opened his eyes, raked a hand over his face and shook his head. “No, Ariadne. I’m . . . missing something. Someone. We—we need to talk, I think, yes, need to talk, now, while there’s still time and my courage is up to it.”

The breeze rustled in the trees above them, in the star-shaped ivy that fought for space on Maxwell’s old wall, through the long, bent grasses of the surrounding fields. A few strands of Thunder’s tail skated over Colin’s fist. Several feet away, Shareb-er-rehh lifted his head, his wide nostrils flaring as he, too, caught the scents borne on the wind.

Far, far off beyond the fields, beyond Ariadne’s worried face, beyond the road that ribboned away into the night, Colin saw the distant, moonlit silver line of the sea that had once defined his life.

“I have not always been a veterinarian, Ariadne,” he began hoarsely, not knowing how—or where—to start.
God, give me courage.
The wind blew harder, and he saw sails in the clouds above his head, sixteen years of sails, day in, day out, from the time he’d turned twelve ‘til the day the Navy threw him out in the twenty-eighth year of his life; sails, stiff with salt and hard with wind, swelling above his head and reaching toward the skies, sails in rain, snow, sunlight, fog, battle, dawn, and darkness. The breeze whispered against his cheeks, his brow, and in it he could hear the memory of distant voices moving across time and space, the voices of junior officers passing his orders on down the line, the voices of seamen calling to each other from high, high in the tops. He shut his eyes, not wanting to remember. Wanting to escape the memories, the looming tragedy he had sensed as he’d begun to pace the quarterdeck of the mighty flagship, HMS
Triton
, the wind beginning to rise, the ship moving uneasily beneath his feet, and yes, even the coldness of brass and leather as he’d pulled out his night-glass and trained it aft on HMS
Cricket
, where his admiral, Sir Graham, had gone to join that ship’s captain for a late dinner. . . .

His admiral, newly wed and the brightest star in the Royal Navy, for whom Colin would gladly have laid down his life.

Something welled up in his throat, and he suddenly couldn’t speak.

A hand touched his arm. A voice stirred the hair near his ear, seemed to come from far away. “Colin, are you well?”

He heard the wind rising, growing stronger—

“Colin?”

Rain, beginning to pelt the decks, sporadically at first and then with the tattoo of a thousand drums, so deafening he couldn’t hear himself think. He took shelter beneath the poop deck, growing increasingly uneasy as he waited for his admiral to return but no, the admiral was still aboard the frigate
Cricket
with Captain Young, and could not know of the sudden fear and foreboding welling up in the heart of his flag-captain:
Do hurry, Sir Graham. It’s running a high sea and I don’t like this at all—

Was it that, with an unsteady, still-healing leg that would not support him, he no longer felt invincible? Had the weakness laid bare for all to see by the rogue wave that had swept the crutches out from under him, and humiliated him in front of his officers and men, robbed him of the steady confidence that had always been such a part of him? It was just a storm, one of many, nothing to be worried about. . . .

And then, through the howl of the wind and rain, he’d heard it—great booms of thunder as waves broke against distant, submerged rocks.

They had, in the darkness, come up against a lee shore.

It was every sailor’s nightmare.

Chaos, shouted orders, all hands on deck as the mighty flagship had begun the desperate process of saving herself. And even now, Colin knew that he could have saved her. There had been room to wear the massive warship, to find sea room. Room for
Triton
, yes.

But not for
Cricket
, much farther in their lee, so much closer to the rocks—and doomed.

He had run, limping, to the shrouds, the rain pummeling his face and the wind shrieking like a legion of demons around him. Rain had streaked the lens of his night glass as he’d trained it on the helpless
Cricket
and saw there, a sight he would never forget: Sir Graham coming up on
Cricket
’s decks . . . Sir Graham, who would die if Colin didn’t do something . . . Sir Graham, who immediately saw their predicament and rapidly signaled him to save
Triton
, and to leave
Cricket
to her fate. . . .

Colin had disobeyed that order.

New commands, directly opposed to those he had just given, a suicide mission if it failed. Beneath him
Triton
laboring and straining . . . the horror if every man aboard as they watched
Cricket
, floundering helplessly, moving closer and closer to the breakers, driven toward certain death by the violence of wind and current; again he heard the shouts of her terrified crew, again he saw his admiral bravely clinging to shrouds that lay nearly vertical beneath the onslaught of the storm, determined to meet his death with courage and dignity . . . and again, he made the decision that had cost him his career and in the end, the lives of so many—

Someone was shaking his shoulder. Blinking, Colin opened his eyes and stared at the woman for a long, uncomprehending moment.

Ariadne.

Her face was pure white in the darkness.

“I was calling you for the past minute . . . Colin?”

A sudden, violent chill seized him, and he put his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees and sat there, unmoving. His face was slick with sweat, cold, clammy, as though coated in sea spray.

Dear God.

“Ariadne, it is time to tell you something you must know—”

At that moment Maxwell’s giant black boarhounds, roaring with fury, came charging out of the darkness and hit the massive iron gates with such force that they clanged with the force of the great beasts’ impact. Marc ran to meet their challenge, snarling at them through the gates while Bow dove beneath Colin’s legs.

The shouts of a guard pierced the night. “Who goes there?”

The boarhounds’ snarling was drowning out all sound. Defeatedly, Colin made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Go ahead, answer him, Ariadne.”

“But you were going to tell me something—”

“Later.”

“But Colin—”

“I repeat, who’s there?” shouted the guard, and the hounds renewed their crazed snarling until little Bow was howling in terror.

The veterinarian turned away, his jaw hard in the moonlight, his eyes dark with pain. It was obvious he would not speak further to her of love, marriage, or whatever his shameful secret was, tonight.

If ever.

“Damn you,” Ariadne swore beneath her breath, and leaving him sitting in the chaise, stormed back to Shareb-er-rehh. She grabbed the reins, swung herself up into the saddle and drove her heels into the stallion’s sides. He snorted and balked, shying at a shadow that slanted across the road, then moving skittishly forward as though he had no wish to go near those tall, ominous gates.

Behind her, came the slow plodding of Thunder’s hoofbeats as Colin sent him following after Shareb.

And there was the guard, holding a musket in one hand and straining to hold two snarling, snapping boarhounds in the other as he peered through the thick iron bars.

“I repeat, who goes there?” he bellowed.

Bravely, Ariadne urged the stallion forward.

“Lady Ariadne St. Aubyn,” she announced haughtily. And then, aware of the veterinarian behind her, she spat, “Lord Maxwell’s betrothed. Now do open the gate. His Lordship is expecting me.”

# # #

“Pay to the order of . . . Colin Lord . . . the sum of twelve . . . thousand . . . pounds.”

“Really, my lord,
I
was the one who offered the sum to Dr. Lord,” Ariadne snapped, as the earl waited for the ink to dry on the cheque while regarding her with a tolerant, sardonic lift of one brow. “I can pay my own debts, thank you.”

“Ah, dearest,” came the silky reply, “you are to be my wife. What is mine is yours, and what is yours, mine. If I want to pay your escort here for safely bringing you home to me, then that is my business, is it not?”

“You don’t understand,” she said, her face flushed and hot. “We—”

“Nonsense, my dear.” Maxwell leaned back in his chair. It galled him to part with such a large sum of money, but once he was married to the beautiful heiress he would never have financial problems again. No more debts, no more threats on his life, no more fear of debtor’s prison. But oh, to think that foolish, stupid, unthinking Ariadne had sacrificed her reputation in favor of getting the horse to him . . . but then, he had to admit, the horse was worth far more than her reputation, anyhow.

And no one would ever have to know how she had got here.

No one
would
know.

Five feet away from her, the lout who had brought her here sat stiffly on the edge of his chair and regarded him in a way that was downright unnerving. A veterinarian, he had called himself. He was quiet and unassuming, but there was nothing benign about his lean, powerful frame, and the eyes that coolly took his measure shone with intelligence and perception. They made the earl uncomfortable, those eyes. Not just their unusual color. But the steady, watchful way they looked at him. Through him. As though the man knew those things that no one—except Maxwell himself—knew.

Ariadne, he could deal with. Colin Lord might pose a bigger problem.

The name struck him then.
Colin Lord.
He’d heard it before . . . sometime, someplace. But where?

No matter. It would be only a matter of time before he placed it.

But he had a bigger problem than just Colin Lord. He had not failed to notice the way Ariadne had angled her body toward the veterinarian’s, nor how he had pulled his chair possessively close to hers.

The slut.

Maxwell rose to his feet, consciously aware of his own height, and the image of power and sinister strength he conveyed.

The veterinarian rose to his feet, too. He reached out to take the check that Maxwell thrust toward him, and it was then that the earl saw the ring on the other man’s finger.

Not just any ring, but one with an anchor on it.

In that moment, he knew precisely who Colin Lord was.

# # #

As Colin accepted the check, Ariadne felt as though someone had slammed a fist into her stomach and then left her to die. The blood drained from her face, and her fingers went cold. She started to get up but every limb in her body had frozen, and she fell back into the chair, staring at Colin in shock and betrayal while the flames crackled and popped in the hearth.