‘Little did she know,’ Deborah muttered to herself, ‘that she was conferring upon me the happiest five years of my life in all my eight-and-twenty.’
At Miss Kilpatrick’s Seminary for Young Ladies, Deborah’s stories had made her popular, helping her to overcome her initial shyness and make real friends.
As she’d grown from adolescence to young womanhood, her plots had progressed from pirates and plunder through ghosts and hauntings to tales of handsome knights fearlessly and boldly pursuing beautiful ladies. Love had ever been a theme—even in Deborah’s most childish scribblings she had found new families for orphaned babes and reunited long-lost brothers with their loyal sister on a regular basis. But it was romantic love which had dominated her stories those last two years at the seminary—the kind which required her heroes to set out on wildly dangerous journeys and carry out impossible tasks; the kind which had her heroines defy their cruel guardians, risking life and limb and reputation to be with the man of their dreams.
Huddled around the meagre fire in the ladies’ sitting room, Deborah had woven her plots, embellishing and embroidering as she narrated to her spellbound audience, so caught up in the worlds and characters she’d created that it had always been a jolt when Miss Kilpatrick had rapped on the door and told them all it was time for bed.
‘Some day soon,’ she remembered telling her best friend Beatrice, ‘that will be us. When we leave here …’
But Bea—pretty, practical, a year older and a decade wiser, the eldest daughter of an extremely wealthy Lancashire mill owner—had laughed. ‘Honestly, Deb, it’s about time you realised those romances of yours are just make believe. People don’t fall in love with one look; even if they did, you can be sure that they’d likely fall out of love again just as fast. I don’t want my husband to kiss the hem of my skirt or clutch at his heart every time I walk into a room. I want to know that he’ll be there when I need him, that he won’t fritter my money away on lost causes and that he won’t go off to fight dragons when we’ve got guests to dinner.’
Bea had married the eldest son of a fellow mill owner less than a year later, whom she’d declared, in one of her frank letters to Deborah, at that time once again incarcerated in her guardian’s house, would do very well. Deborah’s correspondence with her friend—with all of her friends—had been one of the many things Jeremy had taken from her. It was not that he had forbidden her to write, but that she had no longer been able to bear to paint a bright gloss on the dreadful reality of her own marriage. And now, though Jeremy had been dead two years, it was too late.
The melancholy which had been haunting her these last months and which had intensified, as ever, during her annual visit to Kinsail Manor settled upon Deborah like a black cloud. Jeremy’s death had been far from the blessed release she had anticipated. Of late, she had come to feel as if she had simply swapped one prison for another. Loneliness yawned like a chasm, but she was afraid to breach it for she could not bear anyone to know the truth—even though that meant eventually the chasm would swallow her up.
She was not happy, but she had no idea what to do to alter that state—or, indeed, if she was now capable of being anything else. Isolated as she was, at least when she was alone she was safe, which was some consolation. No one could harm her. She would not let anyone harm her ever again.
A breeze caught at her mantle, whipping it open. Goosebumps rose on her flesh as the cool night air met her exposed skin. She had been lost in the past for far too long. She would not sleep, of that she was certain, but if she did not get back into the house she would likely catch a cold and that would of a surety not do. It would give Lady Margaret, the Earl’s downtrodden wife, whose desperation made her seek any sort of ally, an excuse to beg Deborah to prolong her stay.
Head down, struggling to hold her cloak around her, Deborah made haste towards the side door to the east wing and was directly under the long drawing room when a scuffling noise gave her pause. She had no sooner looked up and caught sight of a dark, menacing figure, seemingly clinging to the sheer wall of the Manor, when it fell backwards towards her.
The bracket holding the drainpipe loosened as he was still some fifteen feet or so from the ground. Deciding not to take a chance on the entire thing coming away from the wall, Elliot let go, trusting that his landing would be cushioned by the grass. He did not expect his fall to be broken by something much softer.
‘Oof!’
The female’s muffled cry came from underneath him. Her ghostly pale face peered up at him, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth forming a perfect little ‘o’ shape.
Elliot felt the breath he had knocked out of her caress his cheek before he quickly covered her mouth with his hand. ‘Don’t be afraid, I mean you no harm, I promise.’
Delicate eyebrows lifted in disbelief. Heavy lids over eyes which were—what colour? Brown? He could not tell in this light. Fair brows. Her hands flailed at his sides. Her body was soft, yielding. He was lying on top of her—quite improperly, he supposed. At the same moment he realised that it was also quite delightful. She seemed to be wearing nothing but a shift beneath her cloak. He could feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest. Her mouth was warm against his palm. For a second or two he lay there, caught up in the unexpected pleasure of her physical proximity before several things occurred to him at once.
She was most likely the Countess of Kinsail.
She would definitely raise the alarm as soon as she possibly could.
If he was caught he would go to the gallows.
He had to leave. Now!
In one swift movement Elliot rolled on to his feet, pulling the distracting female with him. Still with one hand covering her mouth, he put his other around her waist. A slim waist. And she was tall, too, for a lady. The Earl was a fortunate man, damn him. ‘If I take my hand away, do you promise not to scream?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.
A lift of those expressive brows and an indignant look which could mean no or it could mean yes.
Elliot decided to take the risk. ‘Did I hurt you? I wasn’t expecting you to be there—as you can imagine,’ he said.
‘That makes two of us.’
Her voice was husky—but then it would be, for he’d just knocked the wind out of her. She had an unusual face, an interesting face, which was much better than beautiful. A full mouth with rather a cynical twist to it. No tears nor any sign of hysterics, and her expression was rather haughty, with a surprising trace of amusement.
Elliot felt the answering tug of his own smile. ‘Delightful as it was—for me, at least—I did not intend to use you to soften my landing.’
‘I am happy to have been of value.’ Deborah looked at him through dazed eyes. ‘What on earth were you doing?’ she asked, realising as she did so that it was an amazingly foolish question.
But he didn’t look like a common housebreaker—not that she knew what housebreakers looked like! She should surely be screaming out for help. Of a certain she should be afraid, for she held his fate in her hands and he must know it, yet she felt none of those things. She felt—a dreadful, shocking realisation, but true—she felt intrigued. And unsettled. The weight of him on top of her. The solid-packed muscle of his extremely male body. The touch of his hand on her mouth.
‘What were you doing, halfway up the wall of the Manor?’
Elliot grinned. ‘Exactly what you suspect I was doing, I’m afraid, Lady Kinsail.’
Now was definitely the time to cry for help, yet Deborah did not. ‘You know me?’
‘I know of you.’
‘Oh.’