Page 37 of Daredevil Lady and the Mysterious Millionaire (The Hidden Hearts Collection #3)
Thirteen
D arkness overtook the shoreline, the sea becoming a mysterious, moving shadow, white-crested fingers clutching at the beach, raking away particles of sand.
But beneath the wooden shingles of the fishermen’s shack, the breaking waves were no more than a lulling whisper and Rory felt safe and warm.
Wrapped in a blanket, she huddled before the crackling fire kindled on the hearth.
She barely remembered the details of her rescue, how she came to be at the cottage; she only felt grateful that she was.
The place was small, but the oil lamps flickering in the tiny parlor beamed a welcome as powerful as that of any lighthouse.
The furnishings were sparse but clean—a couple of rocking chairs, a table covered with a checkered cloth, a few scattered stools.
Everything smelled of salt, as though the very lifeblood of the sea had seeped within these walls, perhaps even more so into the person of the woman serving as Rory’s hostess.
Rory had never met any female as large as Mrs. Cobbett.
Tall with burly arms, she looked almost big enough to heft Zeke over her shoulder, and there had been a point when Rory feared she meant to do so.
Although on the verge of collapse when the two fishermen had deposited them on Mrs. Cobbett’s doorstep, Zeke had not taken kindly to the woman’s ministrations, her gruff demand that Zeke strip out of his wet things.
But even the two dour fishermen had stood in awe of this woman, one calling her, “Anchor” Annie, the other calling her, “Ma.” When she had bade them go about their business and tend to gathering up their nets, they had both snapped to do her bidding. Zeke hadn’t had much choice either.
The last Rory had seen of him, Annie had driven him through a door opposite into a chamber the woman, with fierce pride, had termed her guest room.
Annie and Zeke could still be battling it out in there for all Rory knew.
As for herself, she was too exhausted to do other than was she was told, bask by the fire, trying to get the chill of the sea out of her bones.
When the door opened and Annie returned alone, Rory glanced up anxiously.
The woman’s hair was a steely gray that matched the steel in her eyes.
Her face had more crags than a rocky stretch of shore, her skin as brown and weather-beaten as driftwood.
But despite the formidableness of her appearance, there was a bluff kindliness in her manner that Rory found reassuring.
“Zeke?” Rory asked, rising from her stool. “Is he?—”
“I redid the bandages on your man’s wound,” she said.
Had the woman recognized it as a gunshot wound?
Rory hated telling lies, but she could hardly tell Annie the truth, that Zeke had been winged fleeing the law on a charge of murder.
At the very least, the woman would fling them both out of her snug cottage with its circle of light and warmth. Rory shuddered at the prospect.
“Well, he—” Rory stammered, trying to come up with some plausible explanation of Zeke’s injury.
“Oh, shush, m’dear,” Annie interrupted. “I’m familiar enough with men folk and their scrapping ways. You don’t need to get all flustered trying to explain to me. Fact is, I oughta be apologizing to you for the behavior of my boy, Joe. I understand he was a little slow coming to your rescue.”
“Yes,” Rory said. “It was rather odd considering we were in danger of drowning.”
“The problem is my Joe never saw one of those balloon things before. He took it to be some kind of sea monster. Joe’s a good fisherman, but he ain’t exactly the brightest one of my boys.
“Now you stay by the fire and keep warm.” Annie placed one large hand on Rory’s shoulder, easing her back down. “Your man is doing fine. A little cantankerous, but I got some of my elixir down him. He’s tucked up and sleeping like a baby.”
Rory could only gape at her. Upon entering the cottage, although dead on his feet, Zeke had been determined to make his way back to New York tonight. He had been demanding a telephone, the distance to the nearest town.
“However did you persuade him to do that?” Rory asked.
Annie chuckled, a deep sound that shook her ample bosom. “Lord A’mighty, honey, I’ve had three husbands and five sons. A woman don’t go through that many men without learning something about how to manage them.”
If she hadn’t been so weary, Rory would have asked the woman to part with her secrets.
But Annie bustled about brewing Rory a cup of tea.
Rory accepted the steaming hot mug with real gratitude.
Annie poured herself a drink into a tin cup.
Rory didn’t see what it was, but she would have wagered it wasn’t tea.
Annie plunked herself down onto one of the rocking chairs. As Rory sipped her tea, she was aware of Annie studying her, curious but after a friendly fashion.
“Now I saw one of them there balloons once at a circus. You people with the circus?”
“No, I’m an aero—” Rory started to protest, then broke off with a tired sigh. What was the sense of getting into all that? With the Seamus sunk to the bottom of the ocean, she didn’t feel much like an aeronaut at the moment.
“Yes, we’re with the circus,” Rory concluded glumly.
“I thought so. A cousin of mine a few days ago traveled all the way to upstate New York just to watch some couple get married up in a balloon. Was that you two?”
“Yes, that was us,” Rory agreed before she even thought, then was appalled by her lie. But she sensed that Annie would be mighty disapproving if she realized Zeke and Rory were junketing about together unwed.
The woman was scowling anyway. “Married in a balloon— I’m not sure I exactly hold with that. Don’t sound as legal and binding as being wed in a church.”
“People get married on ships, don’t they?”
“That’s so.” Annie She tossed down the rest of her drink. “Well, I don’t mean to sit here jawing at you all night. Poor little thing. You’ve had a bad time of it, but you’ll feel perkier after a good sleep. Then, in the morning, I’ll get my boy to hitch up the buggy and drive you into Sea Isle.”
Sea Isle? Rory started at the mention of a town far down the south Jersey coast. She and Zeke had drifted much farther than she had imagined.
They would have a long, dreary trip back to New York ahead of them.
But she was better off not worrying about that now, or about the difficulties that would await them on their return.
Annie hustled off to her own bedchamber and returned with a voluminous nightgown, which she helped Rory to don. Rory felt swallowed up in it, like a child parading about in her mother’s things, but she was grateful for any clothing that was warm and dry.
“Off to bed with you now,” Annie said, jerking her head toward the door behind which Zeke had disappeared. “Your man’s likely out so cold, he’ll never hear when you creep between the sheets.”
Rory fought down a blush at the thought of slipping into bed with “her” man. She barely concealed her expression of dismay as she realized the full consequences of the lie she had told Annie. But wasn’t that just the way of it every time she told a fib? She always ended up in some kind of bramble.
What was she going to do? It would be far too humiliating to confess now. Annie was already marching about, blowing out the oil lamps. Rory had little choice but to inch toward the door, bidding Annie a nervous good night.
Her fingers trembled as she turned the knob and slipped inside. Closing the door, she leaned up against it, allowing her eyes to adjust to the chamber’s darkened interior.
Like the cottage’s sitting room, it was small, the chief object of furniture being a heavy wooden bedstead. Moonlight streamed through the open shutters, and Rory could make out Zeke’s muscular form draped beneath the covers, his dark head resting on a downy pillow.
“Zeke?” Rory whispered.
But she got no reply. It appeared Annie was right—Zeke was lost in a deep slumber.
The wind howled outside the cottage, rattling the panes.
There was something unbearably lonely about being the only one left awake.
Rory hovered by the bed, shivering, wrapping her arms about herself.
It was cold now that she was away from the fire, the boards of the floor chill beneath her bare feet.
Her gaze traveled wistfully to Zeke, so snug beneath the softness of a patchwork quilt, drawn halfway up across the bared expanse of his chest. She took a hesitant step closer.
It wouldn’t really be like going to bed with a man, she argued, not if both of them were asleep. Yet she knew what the nuns back at St. Catherine’s would have told her. Far better to curl up on the floor, suffer one night of discomfort rather than put her virtue at risk.
But Rory wasn’t sure she’d ever had much virtue, and it was difficult for conscience to win out with gooseflesh prickling her arms and her feeling half-ready to drop from fatigue.
“The devil with it,” she mumbled. Tugging back the covers, she scrambled beneath them, trying to keep to the edge of the bed, putting as much distance between herself and Zeke as possible.
The bed was as soft and warm as she had imagined, but having allowed herself to become chilled again, it was difficult to stop shivering.
She couldn’t help staring at Zeke, lying flat on his back, one arm flung over his head.
A silvery stream of moonlight outlined his profile, the muscular contours of his chest. Knowing the heat that radiated from that powerful body, Rory was tempted to snuggle a little closer.
She resisted, cuddling the quilt beneath her chin, trying to lie still, not wanting to disturb Zeke. Even in repose the rock-hard line of Zeke’s jaw conveyed a certain belligerence, as though daring anyone to challenge him or to hurt him.