Chapter 3
Gentle surf rolled in at his feet causing Nicholas to snap his eyes open. He stared through a mesh of leaves. He glanced around. What the… He pushed off the palm fronds scattered over him, rose, and clutched his pounding head, the throbbing about to split his head open.
He staggered a few feet, and then collapsed near a coconut log and rested his back against it. He squinted at the blue sky with cloud racks piled upon the horizon, and parallel to him lay the sea, the restless, turbulent sea, now at peace.
His energy depleted, he sat there allowing the sun to beat down upon him. His stomach had long since contracted into a hard, little fist, shrunk to nothing. With neither food nor adequate water, he sweated little. His stomach gurgled with hunger and every muscle in his body ached from the hammering blows delivered by Damiano.
He brushed a sandy hand through his hair, remembered the mast falling on him. How had his life been delivered? He looked about. Nothing to eat or drink and…no weapons.
Worse than the prospect of perishing from hunger or being devoured by beasts in this godforsaken end of the world, was finding himself alone. To watch the sun, rise in the east, cross the sky and sink into the west while listening to the echoes of his own thoughts, and finding no other inspiration, would break him.
Entertaining the melancholy of his isolation, he narrowed his eyes on a trail of footsteps along the beach. He saw her then, with barely a stitch of clothing on, walking down the shoreline like a goddess, a knife tucked in her bodice.
Bright as the morning’s light, she was the symbol of the earth, the movement of waves, and the song at night. Blood pounded in his temples as he absorbed the movement of her hips beneath the sheer fabric of her chemise, and the way she wore her hair, long, wavy, gleaming gold tumbling down her back. The sight of well-shaped breasts unconfined by the normal female frivolities, stirred-up the heat in his loins and muddled his wits.
He scrubbed a hand across his face. He must be delirious with dehydration.
“Oh, you’re awake,” said his hallucination. She clutched a coconut to her chest, used it as a ridiculous shield of modesty.
He closed his eyes tight shut and opened them again to make sure he was not dreaming.
“Is it my state of undress, Lord Rutland?”
The vision knew his name? He stared at her as if she might escape if he didn’t hold her with his gaze. “Am I hallucinating?”
“If you were, how would asking me, help?” She laughed at her own wit.
Stunned by the truth of that logic, he fumbled with his recollection. Had they been introduced? Her voice had a sweet, innocent quality… “Alexandra?”
She nodded. Good God. How could he have thought the breathtakingly beautiful woman standing over him was a hoary old crone? When he pulled her out of the hold, he’d been too busy with fighting Damiano and hadn’t looked at her.
No wonder Damiano chose to suffer a lashing and loss of profit to have her. If he were not a gentleman, he’d have torn down the wall himself.
A blush stole across her sun-kissed cheeks. “I had to divest my skirts and overcoat when I dove in the ocean to save you.”
Nicholas jerked his head back. “You dove off the ship? In that storm?”
She rubbed her hand over a long thigh, an unconscious act of smoothing out skirts that no doubt lingered at the bottom of the ocean. “When the mast fell, you were pitched into the sea…trapped in the rigging. I freed you…tied you to floating wreckage…the storm pushed us to this place.” She concentrated on her toe, liberating a shell from the sand.
He frowned, taking in the extraordinary events since his imprisonment aboard the Santanas. “I am indebted to you.”
The lacy fringe of her lashes lifted and he felt as if a thread went taut between them, connecting them, alone together on this wretched beach.
“You’ve had another knock on the head. I worried if you would regain consciousness or become demented.”
“I assure you, I have all of my wits.”
She laughed at his grimness, picked up the shell she had unearthed, waded into the sea and filled it with water. “You were too heavy to drag up the beach, so I covered you with palm fronds to shield you from the sun.”
She ripped off the hem of her chemise, knelt beside him, and washed his face. Her fingers trembled. He flinched not only from her touch but the sight of long shapely calves.
“You have a gash across your forehead but it will heal.”
“I feel like dying.”
“I’ll decide when you die, Lord Rutland, not you. Although, I should have let the sea have you when you kept up that witless fight with Damiano.”
He glanced around. “Damiano?”
She shuddered. “The mast cut him in two.”
“It was no more than the swine deserved. Are there any other survivors?” Nicholas started to rise, but fell back against the log.
She brushed her long golden mane behind her shoulders and peered toward the west. “I walked the beach for miles and didn’t see evidence of any others. Not even a drift of flotsam from the Santanas to mark its existence. Not that I would welcome Damiano, Capitan Diogo or his crew’s hellish company. I desire no remembrance of them.”
He attempted to rise again. She waylaid him by taking hold of his face with both her hands, and rubbing her thumbs along his jaw. He felt as though he were being stroked by the wings of an angel. She looked like an angel too, damn it all, with those enchanting turquoise eyes that matched the sea. He liked her cool hands upon his face, but it made it damned hard to concentrate on what to do about this predicament. She had no idea how her touch seemed to make him a bumbling idiot. Perhaps he was demented.
Maybe, if he didn’t look at her mouth again he’d be able to think. But damn if he didn’t look anyway. It was impossible to not look at those full luscious lips that were meant to be kissed.
She withdrew her hands. “I’ll scout around and find something to make a poultice.”
“You know of such things?”
She sat back on her heels. “You find it remarkable that a thief would have healing knowledge?”
“We are on equal footing, Miss Elwins. We have survived thus far and will need each other to continue to do so.”
She smiled with his concession and her face took on a mesmerizing radiance. She leaned over to pick up the coconut she dropped, giving him a tantalizing view of her full breasts and rosy nipples. He cleared his throat, listening to the thudding of her smashing through the grassy husk, pounding the inner shell on a rock until it cracked open. She offered the crude vessel to him. He lifted the sweet water into his parched mouth, amazed by her resourcefulness, from diving off the ship, cutting through rigging, covering him with palm fronds and gathering coconuts.
“Eat the coconut meat inside,” she ordered.
Not accustomed to taking orders, he slanted a look at her.
“We are on equal footing, Lord Rutland,” she repeated his words. “You need your nourishment if you are to be of help to me.”
With avid interest, he saw a spark in her eyes and an amused twitch of her mouth. She was a dazzling vision and like a schoolboy with his first infatuation, she could cut him out into little stars if she had the whim.
What other secrets lay behind her playful smile? The innocent appeal of a thief this beautiful could easily operate undetected by charming her victims. Why, she could steal the Crown jewels out of London Tower and be long gone before anyone noticed. He grunted. Despite her past crimes, he needed her.
He chewed on a piece of fibrous coconut and his strength seemed fairly restored. “Are we on an island or a continent?”
She shielded her eyes, scanning the treetops and the mountain behind. “On board the ship, I observed the stars through the shrouds. I think we are in the northern region of the Caribbean. Whether we are on an island or continent, I cannot tell.”
“Your knowledge of the sea?” he said, more of a question than a statement.
“My father kindled my imagination and set fire my thirst for learning, taking great delight in sharing his knowledge of the ocean. He spent many hours taking me out in his dingy, catching fish, teaching me how to use a knife and how to live off the sea. During those idyllic days, he instructed me about the stars.”
“Did he ever take you on his voyages?”
“I never accompanied him but he told me tales about the places he visited especially the Caribbean. He returned with books, shells, and rare fruits. With some accuracy, I’ll be able to identify what we can eat.”
She gestured with a coconut chunk. “To think one of my favorite books was Robinson Crusoe and here we are living Defoe’s imaginings. Who would have thought?”
“Reading fiction and surviving it are two different experiences.”
He followed her searching gaze out over the horizon, a thin seam where the crown of the sky and the flat of the sea hemmed each other into a line of sapphire. The harsh cry of a seagull fractured the serenity. “We will explore later to find out if we are on an island. For the time being, we need to deal with necessities like food, water and shelter.”
He glanced at the palm trees with their giant fronds and vines clinging to their massive trunks. Shelter would be easy enough to do. “We will build a signal fire first to herald a passing ship.” Now that he had a thread of hope that his father and brother might yet live, he had to get off this godforsaken patch of earth.
“We will not.”
He turned so fast a muscle in his neck snapped. “Excuse me. Did I hear you right? We have to get off this barbaric coast. I have to rescue my sister and find out who committed this horrendous act to my family.” He clawed at the sand at his side, his soul burning at his inability to protect them. Of one thing, he was sure. He would not fail to find who was responsible and make them pay. “We will build a signal fire first to herald a passing ship.”
“No, we will not.”
“Did I hear you right?”
She stood there, her posture, ramrod straight, a mutinous expression on her face. “Oh, you are favored by the gods, Lord Nicholas? Shall we hail a Spanish ship and become slaves of the Spaniards? They make the Portuguese look like saints. Or the Caribes? A lovely indigenous Indian group that resides on this tail end of the earth and who are predisposed to cannibalism. Perchance you are inclined to be someone’s dinner.”
Heat burned in his chest. There was nothing demure about the woman. Didn’t she realize as a gentleman, he knew best? “I’ll take that risk. We can live on coconuts for the time being,” he said with enough glaring force that would make his tenants cower.
“And you are expert at starting fires?” She made an outrageously exaggerated curtsy. “Where is your tinderbox?”
“You do not believe I can perform the task?” Shaking off his dizziness, he stood, towered over her. Most women would take a step back. Miss Elwins stood her ground. He gritted his teeth, regretting the part about being on equal footing. Miss Elwins was demonstrating she had the upper hand.
“I suppose being a gentleman, you know a great deal about setting fires,” she sniffed, her tone inferring that since he was really a softly reared aristocrat, he knew nothing.
He needed to set clear boundaries, and the sooner she realized he was the one who possessed the sounder logic the better off their relationship would be. “Your suggestion of obtaining food is admirable, but for today, I want you to pick-up driftwood.”
“Suit yourself, Lord Rutland. I wish you luck building your fire. I’m off to scavenge for food which is a greater priority.” She headed down the beach, kicking up puffs of sand from her heels.
He tore off his coat and threw it on the ground. Miss Elwins thought he couldn’t build a fire. She could curtsy herself all the way to Windsor Castle and back. He’d show her.