cold, dusty, but empty. He thought she would not want an audience of local fishermen when they returned from their expedition. Once inside, he stood her gently on her feet, then strode back to the door, raising his voice to echo down the corridor.
‘Sal…bring some clean towels, if you will. And a bottle of brandy. Also bring—’
‘I would prefer a cup of tea,’ the voice behind him interrupted. Neat, precise, faintly accented.
‘Not at the Silver Boat you wouldn’t,’ he replied, closing the door. ‘There’s been no tea brewed within these four walls in the past decade to my knowledge, although plenty’s been hidden in the rafters over the years.’ He saw a shiver run through her again. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’
‘I’ve lost my parasol,’ she remarked inconsequentially, regarding her empty hands in some surprise.
‘It’s not the end of the world. I’ll buy you another one. Sit down,’ he repeated.
When she sank into one of the two chairs in the room, Alexander came to kneel before her.
‘What…?’ She didn’t quite recoil from him, but not far off.
He didn’t reply, curbing his impatience, but simply raised the hem of her ruined skirt. Ignoring when he felt her stiffen, he grasped her ankle and removed her ruined boot, first one foot, then the other. ‘There, you need to dry your feet when the towels get here.’ Then, catching her anxious glance, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve no designs on your virtue.’
‘Oh…’
The inquisitive spaniel muscled in to sniff and lick the girl’s feet. When she flinched back, Alexander nudged Bess away.
‘Sorry. She’s nosy, but won’t harm you.’
For the first time a glimmer of a smile answered him. ‘I don’t mind dogs. It’s just that—’
The door opened and brandy and towels arrived in the hands of a curious Sal. Alexander cast a glance at the girl he had just rescued, her hands clenched white fingered in her lap, and made a decision.
‘Can you manage to make a pot of tea, Sal?’
‘I’ll try, Mr Ellerdine, sir.’
‘And put these by the fire to dry, will you?’ He handed over the girl’s boots.
Although he had no real hope for the tea, he smiled encouragingly at Sal before shutting her and the spaniel out of the room. He considered the wisdom of drying the girl’s feet for her. Then, after a close inspection of her, changed his mind. He handed her the grey, threadbare towel, liberally stained but the best the Silver Boat could manage.
‘Here. Dry your feet.’ It would give her something to do to occupy her mind and her hands, to remove the glassy terror that still glazed her eyes. Then he changed his mind again as she eyed the linen askance and seemed incapable of carrying out the simple task. He supposed he must take charge. Once more he knelt at her feet.
‘Hold out your foot.’
She did so. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not usually so helpless…’
‘It’s shock, that’s all. Don’t flinch—I’m going to remove your stockings.’ He continued to talk inconsequentially, matter of factly as he began to perform the intimate task with impersonal fingers. ‘You need to dry your feet, Madame Mermaid. My mother swore that damp feet brought on the ague. I don’t know if she was ever proved right, but we’ll not take it to chance. Lift your foot again…’
He doubted that his mother had ever expressed such practical advice in all her life, but that did not matter. He felt the muscles of the girl’s feet and calves under his hands tense once more, but he unfastened her garters and rolled her stockings discreetly down to her ankles, drawing them from her feet, placing the sodden items neatly beside her. Her skin, he noted, was fine and soft against the calluses on his own palms, her feet slender and beautifully arched. She owned an elegant pair of ankles too, he thought with pure male appreciation. He forced himself to resist drawing his fingers from heel to instep to toes as he ignored the increased beat of his pulse in his throat when she flexed her foot in his grip. Instead, briskly, he applied the linen until her feet were dry and the colour returning.
‘There. It’s done.’
He raised his eyes to find her watching his every move. Somewhere in his deliberately businesslike ministrations, her fear had gone and her eyes were as clear and blue as the sea on a summer’s day. Remarkable. It crossed his mind with an almost casual acceptance that he could fall and drown in them with no difficulty at all.
He had no wish to do any such thing.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are kind…’
‘I don’t need your thanks.’
More abrupt than he had intended, disturbed by his reaction to her, Alexander pushed himself upright, picking up the jug to pour brandy with a heavy hand into the smeared glass. ‘Here. Drink this.’
‘I don’t like brandy.’
‘I don’t care whether you like it or not. It will steady your nerves.’
The girl sighed, accepted the glass, sipped once, twice, wincing at the burn of the liquor, then placed the glass on the table at her elbow whilst she untied the satin strings of her bonnet. Alexander tossed back a glass of brandy himself before he turned foursquare to look down at the girl—the lady, for certainly from her clothes and bearing she was of good family. To his amazement temper heated, rapid and out of control. A surge of anger that she should have endangered her life so wantonly. That she might have been swept to her death before he had even known her. For some inexplicable reason the thought balled into fury that he could not contain.
‘What were you thinking, madam, getting yourself trapped by an incoming tide? You could have been swept out to sea if you’d fallen into one of the channels. The undertow of the tide is strong enough to drag you under. It’s happened before to an unwary visitor. Did you not see what was happening?’
The soft summer-blue of her gaze sharpened, glints of fire, as did her voice. ‘No, I did not see. Or I would not have been trapped, would I?’
‘If I hadn’t ridden into the village by chance, George Gadie would have been fishing your dead body out of the bay to deliver it to your grieving family.’ The heat in his words shook him. How could he have been drying her feet one minute and berating her with unreasonable fury the next? She did not deserve it.
‘But thanks to you I’m not dead,’ she snapped, matching temper with temper. ‘Thank you for your help. I’m sorry to have been an inconvenience to you. I’ll make sure it never happens again.’
‘Then it will be a good lesson learned if you’re to stay in this part of the world for long!’
‘I’ll heed your advice, sir.’
She had spirit, he’d give her that. Intrigued by her sharp defence, by the definite accent when under stress, Alexander raised his brows as his irritation began to ebb. The lady did not appear grateful at all. He felt the need to suppress a smile at the heat that had replaced the frozen terror.
‘So
