Whatever her game, it was time to end it. Rafe opened his eyes. At the same instant, he moved, striking with the speed of a diamondback. Before the girl could even gasp, he had seized her arms in his two hands. He jerked her down and forward, bringing her face to a level with his own.
Startled eyes stared into his—violet-blue eyes, as cool and translucent as sapphires, and strangely familiar. Maybe he hadn’t been hallucinating after all. Or maybe he still was.
“Let me go!” she gasped.
“Not until you tell me where I am,” Rafe said.
She tried to pull away, twisting hard against the grip of his hands, but he was too strong for her. When she saw that she couldn’t escape, she stopped struggling. Her eyes glared at him through the tumble of her loose, tawny hair.
“Why, you stupid, addle-brained son of a baboon!” she said in a low voice. “If you want to know where you are, all you have to do is ask! There’s no reason for you to behave like an animal! Now let go of me, Mr. Garrick, before I scream bloody murder!”
Half amused, half embarrassed, Rafe let her go. The little spitfire was right about his behavior, he admitted grudgingly. If anyone in this place had meant to harm him, they could easily have done it while he was still unconscious from the crash. He had acted out of instinct. Acted rashly.
“How did you know my name?”
“It’s written on the lining of your jacket.” She had taken a couple of steps backward, giving Rafe his first real chance to study her. She was taller than he’d first realized. Prettier, too, with a windblown mane of hair and a face that could have been stamped on an ancient Greek coin, or used to launch a thousand ships. But she was dressed like a child, in a white middy blouse and a rumpled pongee skirt. Grains of sand clung to her bare feet. Innocence was written all over her. Rafe sighed. He liked his women experienced and eager.
“I’ve been down on the beach watching our groundskeepers dig your aeroplane out,” she said, keeping her distance. “They were almost finished when I left to check on you.” She ran a sun-browned hand through her hair, the motion pulling her blouse tight against one perfect, pear-shaped breast. Rafe felt the familiar surge of heat in his loins. Innocent or not, this female was no child.
“Not that I need have bothered,” she continued in a low, breathy voice. “You seem to have your strength back, Mr. Garrick.” Her straight, dark brows almost touched as she scowled at him. “What in heaven’s name did you think I was trying to do to you?”
Rafe tried to laugh and winced when it hurt. Maybe a rib or two had been cracked along with the leg. “You’ve got me there,” he said. “I’d just awakened, you see, and I didn’t quite have my bearings. I still don’t have them, for that matter, so if you’d care to explain—”
“You’re English, aren’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The way you speak—you sound English,” she persisted.
“All right. My parents came over on a boat from Liverpool when I was twelve,” Rafe said a bit impatiently. And they both died of typhoid eleven months later in a filthy Brooklyn tenement, he kept himself from adding. He never made a habit of telling people his life story. People had enough troubles of their own.
“I thought so,” she said. “I’m good with accents.”
“Look,” Rafe said, wondering if the female was stalling on purpose or if she was just naturally exasperating, “I need to know some things, like where I am and how long I’ve been here. And I need to know about my aeroplane. How bad is the damage? If you can’t tell me, for Pete’s sake, stop babbling and go get somebody who can!”
He saw at once that he had pushed her too far. Her chin went up and her nostrils flared like a blooded filly’s. “You look, Mr. Garrick,” she said coldly. “When your aeroplane crashed I was the first to reach it. I found you hanging halfway out of the machine with your head in the water. I held you up and kept you from drowning while the men got your legs free—and I ruined a brand-new party gown in the process. Now that you’re awake and I’ve met you, I realize I should have saved the gown!”
With an angry swirl of her pongee skirt, she spun out of the door and was gone.
Rafe groaned. “Hey!” he called after her. “I’m sorry! Come on back!” But the silence, like the wet sand that glittered on the carpet where she’d stood, mocked him. Minutes passed, and she didn’t return.
There was nothing to do but get up and investigate the situation himself, Rafe decided. Gritting his teeth, he rolled over onto his right side. Slow and easy, that was the way. Once he was on his feet, maybe he’d be able to get to the bottom of this mess.
And a fine mess it was! He remembered crashing the aeroplane, but he knew nothing about his rescuers. The girl had said the groundskeepers were on the beach, digging the aeroplane free, but what did that mean? What did these people plan to do with it, and with him? He had to find out fast.
Beads of sweat stood out on Rafe’s forehead as he pushed himself to a sitting position. The pain in his ribs was nauseating. Cautiously he inspected his own body. Someone had dressed him in a pair of gray silk pajamas that were finer than anything he’d ever worn. One of the legs had been ripped open to accommodate the bulk of the splint. Under the jacket, his ribs were bound with strips of muslin. A patch of gauze dressing covered a gash on his forehead.
Well, so much for damage assessment. He could only hope the aeroplane was in better shape than he was. Bracing himself against the pain, he seized the splint with both hands and swung his legs to the floor. That was more like it. Except for his rear still being on the bed, he was almost standing. All he had to do now was get his body over his feet. Then, broken leg or no broken leg, he would walk out of here and find out what was going on.
Gingerly Rafe put his weight on his good leg and stood up. The room shimmered in front of his eyes. He forced himself to focus on the face of the mounted tiger, on the dead-cold yellow glass eyes and leathery black nose. Why would anybody hang up a dead animal anyway? Even the well-mounted ones were ghastly.
Staring into the tiger’s open jaws, he gathered his resolve. The leg was well braced. There was no reason he couldn’t walk on it if he was careful. Nothing was impossible. When he’d started on his aeroplane, nobody had believed he could do it. But he’d shown them all.
The tiger’s face had begun to blur, its stripes curving into a moiré before Rafe’s eyes. He willed the leg to move, willed himself to put weight on it. Pain was a state of mind…to hell with pain…He leaned forward, trusting the strength of the splint. Slowly his weight came down on the broken leg…
Then pain exploded in him, shattering balance and will. The tiger’s face vanished in a swirl of darkness as Rafe pitched helplessly forward. He lay still on the Turkish carpet, at the foot of the brass vase, no longer wondering or caring where he was.
Alex came out through the kitchen onto the back porch, letting the screen door slam behind her. “He’s awake,” she said. “I just saw him.”
Maude Bromley glanced up from her needlepoint. “Oh? Is he hungry? Do you think he’d like some soup? I can send one of the kitchen girls up with a meal.”
“I didn’t ask him.” Alex draped herself sideways across the arms of a wicker chair and fanned herself with a magazine.
“Alex, your manners—”
“He was rude, Mama. More than rude. He was awful! First he grabbed my arms. Then he told me to stop babbling. He didn’t even thank me for saving his life!”
“Well, give him time, dear. He’s had quite a shock. And that sedative Dr. Fleury gave him yesterday afternoon was supposed to make him sleep round the clock. You can hardly blame the young man if he’s not quite himself.”