Chapter 4
Alexandra stomped down the beach, kicked a coconut out of the way. A sharp pain jagged from toe to ankle. Cursing, she hopped on her good foot while holding her injured toe. Apart from the King, Lord Rutland was the most dignified and memorable man she had ever met….and he knew it. Oh, to take him down a peg.
She sat down on a log and massaged her foot. To think she had saved his life and he commanded her like she was one of his servants.
Yet, she could not quell the rioting in her stomach. She had studied him while he was unconscious, reposed like a warrior taking his rest. Regardless of his pathetic state, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His face was shockingly handsome with high cheekbones and full lips. His bearded jaw spoke of determination and…stubbornness. Or did it hide a weak chin?
His thick wildly unkempt hair, dark in the sunlight, waved over his temple. And he had a patrician nose. A giggle bubbled up from deep in her throat from her imaginings on the ship. Beak nosed? What would his imperial majesty think about that notion?
While he’d been unconscious, she checked for bone breaks. His arms and legs were sound, but would have been thinner if she had not fed him aboard the Santanas. His coat had parted. She had walked her fingers over his ribs, skipped them over his abdomen, stopped at the waistband of his breeches. How shameless she had been. Her cheeks reddened from the memory.
Oh, when he was awake and stood up, he was a ferocious man, and how those blue eyes of his had raked her. Heat flooded her with his awareness of her attire. She shook her head. Not much to do about the thin chemise that stuck to her skin. If he couldn’t stomach the impropriety, then she should have let him go down with the ship.
Would he hurt her? How he had fought Damiano with his powerful fists. Instinct told her he would not hurt her.
Why did she let him continue to let him believe she was a thief? The overwhelming culpability of what happened to Molly she had not been able to come to terms with yet. Like a bird grounded with a broken wing, guilt kept her a prisoner.
“I’m so sorry, Molly.”
There was no echo, nor reverberation. If anything, the firmament consumed her words and her infinite, hopeless apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those.
And then to, days of secrets, hiding still another truth weighed on her shoulders with backbreaking force. Her throat constricted. Best to keep her identity as a ship captain’s daughter. Too many questions would follow and she had no means of answering them.
Apart from her musings of Lord Nicholas, her spirits soared as food was in abundance. Their newly acquired diet would restore their health from the deprivations they had suffered aboard the Santanas. Fresh fruit hung heavily from the trees and her arms ached with the weight of mangoes, bananas and coconuts she had collected. She passed a herd of wild pigs, grazing on the edge of the beach, and then waded into the sea to cool her skin. Colorful fish darted around her knees, so plentiful and tame, and if her arms weren’t full for fruit, she could pick them up.
Despite being God knew where, she took a deep breath of satisfaction. The wind was freshening and waved through the palms lining the deserted pink sand beach on which she followed her solitary footsteps. A sea hawk with its wings spread wide, floated motionless upon the updrafts issued from the land, and in the distance, the frothy creaming of waves broke upon an outer reef.
Her father had described this quarter of the earth, but his descriptions were nothing in compare to the soft, compelling beauty of these seas, and the endlessly changing shades of turquoise, greens and blues. The scenery induced her soul to complacency for it seemed incredible that here nature could prove to be an adversary…much like Lord Rutland.
She smiled. No matter his prevailing pride, she was blessed with such an agreeable climate and situation, and she would not be alone. This land with its bountiful fruits was far superior to being a prisoner on a ship and to be sold as a sex slave to a sadistic man.
Lord Rutland was not where she had left him. She followed a muttered curse and pushed through a canopy of palms. He stooped over a pile of driftwood, spinning a crude arrangement of twine procured from a vine, and a stick, reminiscent of Cro-Magnon man. At least he took her advice and moved the unlikely inferno away from the sea and potential hostile intruders. “How is the fire-starting?”
He threw down his contraption and stared at the bounty in her arms. “Food. I’m starved.”
Cro-Magnon. She clutched the fruit to her breast. “I thought you said food was not a requirement.” She held up a mango, dangling it back and forth. He cut the distance between them with long purposeful strides, snatching the ripened fruit from her hands. Lord Rutland’s predictability was a supreme art. “You may want to peel it first,” she suggested.
He ripped open the peel and sank his teeth into the fruit. “I know what a mango is, they are grown in our conservatory at Belvoir Castle.” Juices flowed down his bearded chin. He was barefoot, his stockings and boots propped upside down on a log to dry. His shirt sleeves were rolled up over his elbows and his breeches were torn and filthy, his appearance contradictory to the well-spoken aristocrat.
“We should demonstrate some refinement and chew our food before we swallow. After surviving infinite probabilities, I’d hate to see you choke to death.” She sat cross-legged in the velvety sand, and peeled a banana, popped a piece in her mouth, savoring the sweetness. She had eaten small amounts during the day, careful not to overdo.
“Not when you haven’t had anything to crow about in your stomach for a month.” He sucked the pit, threw it aside, grabbed a bunch of bananas and devoured the lot of them.
She wagged a finger at him. “It is dangerous to stuff yourself. Be mindful that people who have suffered starvation, follow their instincts to consume a lot of food, and then die.”
He grabbed a coconut and started smashing it on the limestone rock. “I waited all day for you to return with food.”
“Surely you jest.”
“It is not in my nature to joke about food when I’m starving.”
She gave a weary sigh. “This morning you brushed away my ideas of procuring food and water, claiming a fire was more important.”
He pounded the coconut with renewed vigor. “When I went hunting at home, I crafted fires easily enough. Without a tinderbox, I’m having the toughest time getting one started.”
He hated being useless. Alexandra was less forgiving. “I’ll start a fire if it makes you happy.”
“Be my guest. He bowed with the scornful elegance of a haughty aristocrat and waved his hand toward the pile of wood.
So, it would be a contest of wills. Alexandra stood, dusting sand off her bottom and gathered a dry coconut husk he’d chipped off. She stared at him, her fingers deftly separating the hairs, but the intensity of his gaze sucked the air out of her lungs. She turned her back to him and knelt by his stack of wood. With shaking hands, she sculpted a dome of fibers.
From inside her bodice, she unpinned her father’s spectacles. Her heart squeezed as she smoothed her fingers over the polished glass, thanking providence for this useful part that belonged to Samuel. She squinted to find the sun behind her, and then turned, focusing the rays through a lens, and onto the coconut strands. Smoke curled. Sparks flared. She blew into the husk fibers, adding twigs, then breaking up branches until a fire commenced, and then glanced over her shoulder for his Lordship’s approval. The look of incredulity on his face was priceless.
“That is unfair, Miss Elwins.”
His tone was irascible.
“You let me waste an entire day—”
“You needed a little humbling, Lord Rutland.” She turned back to the fire. “That knock on your head has left you overbearing.”
He did not answer her rebuke. His face paled from grey to that of a tallow-hued cadaver. He rushed to a palm tree, bent over and relieved himself of his dinner.
Alexandra looked to the heavens. “I could say, I told you so—not to stuff the food down your throat because your stomach has shrunk, but you wouldn’t want to hear that would you, Lord Rutland?”
He collapsed by the fire, holding his head in his hands. “How I value your recommendations, shot from the quiver of infallible wisdom. What other sufferings do you live to taunt me with, Miss Elwins?”
Her lips twitched with his disgruntlement. She picked up a leaf she had collected from her scavenging. “You bring misfortunes on yourself. I found some medicine, Lord Rutland that will help your head wound heal.”
He slid down, propping his head against a log. “Call me Nicholas. I think we can exclude with formality. There is no society here to condemn us.”
She nodded her head. “And call me Alexandra.” She knelt beside him, split open an aloe leaf, dug her finger into the sticky gel, and applied it to his wound. When he flinched, she lifted an eyebrow.
How easy to imitate Molly’s treatment of patients in Deconshire, smearing the balm over his gash. Molly, who had cared for her all her life and taught her herbal skills.
Her stepmother, Lady Ursula’s last words reverberated in her head. Met Molly in London. She refused to tell me your whereabouts. I hired a thug from St. Giles, took pleasure in watching Molly turn purple…how she struggled to pull his hands from her throat, gasping for her last breath.
Aware he was staring at her, she picked up a coconut vessel, and lifted his head to drink. She laid him back down, turned and broke up small pieces of banana, placing them in the coconut shell. “Eat one at a time and—slowly.”
“Alexandra?”
She didn’t want to get into a discussion. No. Not about Molly. Not about her own past. She crossed to the opposite side of the fire, breaking up small twigs. Sparks crackled and hissed, rising once, and then sinking back to earth.
The silence of the night murmured with a rustle from under the palms, small nocturnal creatures seeking a meal. If not for the horrific events of the past few days, they wouldn’t be there either. She scrubbed a hand over her face. A profound weariness seeped through her bones as her mind replayed each nerve-shattering hour of their time on the Santanas. Lord Rutland’s fight with Damiano, the storm and her current fate.
With her back to him, she laid down, crossed her arms and curled into herself. Tears welled. She drew a shattered breath and then another, desperate to hold back the flood that would surely erupt if she let go. She deserved everything that had happened to her.
A shadow loomed and she looked up. Nicholas reached down and tucked his coat around her. “You need this more than I, Alexandra.”
“But I couldn’t possibly—” His coat slipped off her shoulder and he pushed it back up.
“Yes you can. I insist. You’ve been stronger than any woman I’ve known, facing unbelievable terrors.
You have cheered and consoled me. You have fed and cared for me. You have put up with my brutish moods.” His voice deepened. “You have saved my life.”
His mouth quirked as he slanted his handsome head to the palm tree where he had tossed the contents of his stomach. “You even possess the indelicate art of telling me, I told you so.”
Her bottom lip quivered. She didn’t deserve his praise. Whatever she’d done was purely for self-preservation. Survival. Two people had a much better chance fighting off their captors and, in fact, it was Lord Rutland who’d fought off Damiano. She would never have had a chance against the beast.
Maybe Lord Rutland wasn’t the rude man she’d thought him to be. Perhaps his condescending, boorish behavior was his shield to keep from getting hurt. That he thought to praise her, to give her credit for saving his life… She had to be wrong about him. A warm feeling flowed through her. Her stomach fluttered.
Nodding, he pulled a long breath. “You are like a sister to me, Alexandra.”
“Sister?” The apology she was about to give died on her tongue.
His chin rose ever so slightly, as if satisfied with himself.
So, they were sister and brother. Apparently he thought it wise to be straight forward with their relationship. Being stranded on a deserted patch of earth and all.
Alexandra offered a weak smile.
She rolled over, hiding beneath his coat, grateful for the warmth. Did he think she had insinuated a romantic inclination? Unable to think of anything she had said to make him think of that possibility, she burrowed further beneath his coat, her humiliation complete. She was powerless to escape her reality…and…his scent.
An affiliation with a duke would be impossible. With her vague history, she was far beneath that connection.
If only she could cork her melancholy in a bottle and cast it into the sea.
He moved to his log and soon his gentle rhythmic snoring could be heard in tandem with the waves that washed upon the beach. He lay huddled in a ball to keep warm. In his weakened state, what if he caught a chill and died? Alexandra sighed. She rose, clutching his coat to her. For the first time in her life, she laid next to a man, covering them both with his coat and sharing their body warmth. Just like on the ship…this was about survival. They needed one another.