The Counterfeit Gentleman (4 page)

* * * *

The sunlight not only warmed Bethia, it also promised
her life and safety. Her horrible nightmare was over at last
...
or was it? Mr. Rendel was looking worried again.
Could they still be in danger from the kidnappers? Might
one of them be hiding behind that tree? Might they be
creeping along on the other side of the low stone wall, waiting to jump out and grab her?

“Do you think they will come after us?” she asked, her
voice no more than a breathless whisper.

“Who? Oh, you mean the men in the boat. No, they are
doubtless celebrating in some tavern, dreaming of the
wealth they think they will soon be collecting from their employer.” Mr. Rendel voice was calm, but his forehead
was still creased.

“Then why are you frowning? If it is not those villains,
then what is worrying you?”

His expression lightened. Smiling down at her, he said,
“My worries now are quite mundane. The first one is that
we need to get you safely back to my cottage without letting anyone see us together, lest you be compromised.”

“You are worried about my reputation?” Bethia asked in astonishment. “After I have just escaped a watery grave?”

“To be sure I am worried. Most people do not truly com
prehend how important a good name can be until they have
damaged theirs,” he replied. “I would not be doing you a
good turn if I saved your life only to ruin your reputation.” Turning left where the path divided, he continued, “And the
other thing that is bothering me now is how we shall
arrange for you to have a bath.”

At the word
bath,
Bethia could feel the heat again rising
in her face, and she quickly looked away from her companion in hopes that he would not notice.

“I know from experience that dried salt on one’s skin is
not particularly comfortable. For my part, I am accustomed
to sluicing myself off behind my cottage with cold water
from the cistern, but I can hardly expect you to do like
wise.”

Turning in at the gate of a little cottage, he stopped with
one hand on the latch. “And therein lies the problem. As I
see it, we have only two alternatives, neither of which is
without drawbacks.”

“Well, an hour or so ago my kidnappers were not willing
to offer me any choices at all,” Bethia said, trying not to
look at Mr. Rendel, whose wet clothes were every bit as re
vealing as hers undoubtedly were ... and trying also not to think about Mr. Rendel standing naked in his garden.

Opening the door for her, he said, “Somewhere around, I have a hip bath, and I can heat water over the fire. But I am
afraid I have neither maid nor housekeeper in my employ to
assist you.”

Bethia started to enter the little cottage, but then the sig
nificance of what he was saying struck her, and the prohibi
tions of a lifetime froze her in her tracks.

Ever and again her aunt had warned her that all men
were alike—no matter how honorable they might appear,
not a single one of them could be trusted alone with a young, unmarried female. Despoiling a maiden’s inno
cence, so her aunt insisted, was every man’s chief goal in
life.

“If it is not feasible for you to manage without help, I can ask my neighbor to come over. The widow Pollock lives but a short distance farther along the lane, and she
would doubtless be willing to act as lady’s maid for an hour
or two,” Mr. Rendel said calmly. “Unfortunately, gossip
travels as quickly in the country as it does in London. Even
if she tells no one you are here, people will be curious as to
why she has been in my cottage. And once someone begins
asking questions, it is always possible that the wrong per
son will hear and become suspicious.”

Although he did not come right out and say it, Bethia had
the strongest feeling that Mr. Rendel was no longer talking
about her reputation, but about the wicked men who had
tried to drown her. And thinking about them made her real
ize that she was already far outside the small, safe world
that was governed and firmly bound by her aunt’s rules and strictures.

There was no way to discount what Mr. Rendel had
done. At great risk to his own life, he had saved hers. If ei
ther of the men in the boat had seen him, they could have
shot him through the heart, or simply bashed him over the
head with an oar. Considering that he had given her back
her life, she would be a small-minded person indeed if she
balked at trusting him now.

“I feel sure I can manage by myself, so I think we can re
frain from asking your neighbor to become involved.”
Without further hesitation, Bethia ducked her head and
crossed the threshold.

As soon as she stepped through the doorway of his
home, Bethia knew that the man who had dragged her from
the sea was not—could not be—a simple fisherman.

“Sit by the fire where you will be warmer,” he said, and
as chilled as she was, she needed no second invitation.

She started to seat herself in the large wing-backed chair that was placed conveniently close to the fire, but it was upholstered in silk brocade and remembering her damp dress, she sank down instead onto a small, three-legged stool.

Mr. Rendel appeared to be quite accustomed to wearing
wet clothing since he made no attempt to warm himself by the fire. Instead, after throwing a few pieces of wood on the
fire, he took two tin buckets from their hooks by the back
door and began carrying in water to fill the large black ket
tle hanging from a pot-chain.

With part of her clothing beginning to give off steam
while the other half still felt as if it were woven out of icicles, Bethia looked around in growing puzzlement

From the outside the cottage had appeared to be quite
bleak and primitive. Built of rough, undressed stones with a
thatched roof, it was no different from any of the other cottages they had passed.

Having frequently paid calls on the tenants residing on
her grandfather’s estate in Sussex, Bethia had expected to
find that one end of the crude building was used by Mr.
Rendel and his family, and that the other end of the build
ing was occupied by their livestock.

But if ever any animal that mooed or neighed or cackled had lived under this roof, it was in the quite distant past, be
cause no trace of them remained, not even the faintest, lin
gering odor.

Moreover, although this one room served as kitchen, living room, and dining room, and the fireplace was obviously
intended both for heating the cottage and cooking the
meals, the furnishings were not the crude homemade
benches and table she had expected.

On the contrary, the floor was polished wood rather than packed dirt, and was covered with an Oriental carpet rather
than strewn with rushes. In addition, the clock ticking on
the mantel above her was ormolu, and the round table with
four matching chairs had to have been designed by none
other than Sheraton.

Indeed, if it were not for the fact that the room had a
rather low ceiling, she could have believed she was in a
manor house rather than a cottage.

Watching Mr. Rendel, who had finished filling the kettle,
and was now climbing up a ladder into the loft, Bethia no
ticed another discrepancy. In the far corner of the room
were several bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes,
which belonged neither in a laborer’s cottage on the south
coast of Cornwall, nor yet in a manor house. Country
squires, in her experience, were not inclined to muddle
their brains by too much reading.

No, the extensive collection of weighty tomes in this room would be more suited to a vicarage. But from the
oaths she could hear accompanying the numerous thumps and bumps coming from overhead, she rather doubted Mr.
Rendel was a member of the clergy.

By the time he came back down, dragging with him a tin
hip-bath, she felt as if she were bursting with questions she wanted to ask him, but she had been too well brought up to
pry into another person’s private affairs.

No, that was not quite correct. Propriety and impropriety
were not what mattered here. What was making her rein in her curiosity was much more fundamental than the rules of
etiquette that she’d had drummed into her head since she
was a small child.

Mr. Rendel had saved her life, which gave him the right
to know anything about her he might wish to know. But the
reciprocal was not true: Owing him more than she could
ever repay him, she had no right to ask anything more from
him than what he freely offered.

In fact, sitting by his fire, doing nothing while he was doing all the work was beginning to make her feel guilty.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

Digory looked down at the bedraggled figure hugging
her arms in front of the fire and tried very hard to think of
her in the same way he had always thought about the poor wretches he had helped drag from the sea in the past—the
victims of storms or poor seamanship or vessels that were
simply unseaworthy. There seemed to be an unlimited sup
ply of fools who underestimated the power of the sea or
who overestimated their own abilities.

Miss Pepperell was, or so he had been telling himself,
just another scrap of humanity temporarily needing his
help. Soon she would vanish from his life, leaving no more
trace of her presence than had all the nameless others who
had sat where she was now sitting, and who had shivered as she was now shivering.

And who had
not
looked up at him with soft brown eyes
filled with concern for his well-being.

“I can manage,” he said, wondering if he could actually
manage to forget the courage she had shown in the face of
imminent death. And likewise the absolute trust she had
given him, despite the fact that he was a total stranger and
not what anyone would call a harmless-looking man.

It was even more unlikely that he would ever forget her
face, forget the softness of her skin, forget the way her
arms had felt around his neck.

Or forget the feminine curves her dripping garments had
been unable to hide—forget how acutely he had wanted her
there on the beach—how a single glance at her now was enough to rekindle his desire, to heat his blood.

What he wished he could do was to carry her into the
other room and share his bed and his passion with her. What he was going to do was fix a bowl of mulled wine.

* * * *

Mr. Rendel had made it very clear that he wanted neither
her help nor her conversation, so Bethia did not ask what
was in the cup he handed her. From the smell of it, it was
some sort of spiced punch. She would have preferred tea,
but politeness dictated that she drink what her host had pre
pared.

At first she was not at all sure she liked it, but then she
felt a warmth begin to spread through her body, and she de
cided to try a little more. This time she could actually taste the cinnamon and cloves, and she rather thought she might
become used to this beverage.

Which raised the question of how long it would take for her to become accustomed to being alone with a man—for
her to be able to look at Mr. Rendel without having her
heart decide all on its own to speed up.

Watching Mr. Rendel pour steaming water into the hip
bath was not precisely the same as observing a pair of foot
men carry buckets of water to fill the enameled tub in her
own dressing room back home, Bethia realized, feeling heat
rise once again to her face.

It should have been no different; a tub is a tub and a
bucket is a bucket.

But it was in truth vastly different.

There was an unshakable feeling of intimacy about the entire situation. She knew she would soon be naked in that
tub ... and she knew he knew she would be naked ... and
he was not a footman.

Who was he?

Watching the practiced way he added cold water to the
tub and tested it until the temperature was precisely right, it
would appear that he must have spent time in service, perhaps even been employed as a footman.