If the thin shelf of dirt and rock that had broken her fall didn’t soon crumble beneath her, sending her plummeting to a stony grave, then she was going to freeze to death. As the fruits of her exertion faded, the chill hanging in the air began to worm its way deep into her bones. She huddled against the stony wall of the bluff and hugged the tatters of her wedding gown around herself, fearing her uncontrollable shivering might further damage the fragile soil holding the shelf in place.
She cast a despairing glance upward. She was only a few feet below the top of the bluff but the distance might as well have been a hundred leagues. Even if she could manage to make it to her feet without sending the entire ledge crashing to the gorge below, the rim of the bluff would still remain just out of her reach. There wasn’t even a stray rock or root protruding from the damp wall to use as a hand or foothold.
It was probably a poor testament to her strength of character that she was feeling in that moment not grief or prayerful resignation, but anger mixed with a petty dollop of satisfaction. It appeared she was to have the last laugh after all, she thought with a faint edge of hysteria. Once she was dead, she would be of no value to Sinclair, her papa or the earl. They would no longer be able to barter her back and forth as if she was some prize sheep or sow at the local market. She wondered if Sinclair would go to the trouble of burying her or if he’d just leave her body to rot on the ledge and go riding off to abduct another bride.
“Halloo down there. Is anybody home?”
Emma started violently, sending a fresh shower of dirt skittering to the gorge floor below. She slowly tipped back her head to find Jamie Sinclair grinning down at her from the rim of the bluff.
Her heart betrayed her with a wild surge of relief. To hide it, she narrowed her eyes to glare up at him. “You needn’t look so smug, sir. As far as I’m concerned, you can go straight to the devil.”
Her words only deepened his smile. “You’re not the first lass to tell me to go to hell and you probably won’t be the last.”
She snorted. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
He dropped to one knee and peered over the edge of the bluff, his sharp gaze quickly assessing the urgency of her situation. “Would you like to come up or shall I come down?”
She smiled sweetly up at him. “Oh, do feel free to come down. I’ll make sure and wave as you go by.”
“Now, that wouldn’t do either one of us any good, would it? Especially since you’d be destined to join me shortly thereafter and then we’d have to spend eternity in each other’s company.”
She watched warily as he stretched out full-length on his belly and extended one arm over the side of the bluff, offering her his hand.
Remembering exactly how she had come to be stranded on the ledge in the first place, she ignored the undeniable temptation of his outstretched hand. “I heard what your man said,” she reluctantly confessed. “While the two of you were sitting around the fire.”
His eyes clouded briefly, then cleared as comprehension dawned. “Oh,” he replied, the single word speaking volumes. “So that’s why you ran. Because you thought you were about to be…”
“Fooked,” she finished grimly.
He looked startled, then was forced to strangle back a cough. While he was struggling to catch his breath, his eyes a shade too bright, she shook her head in frustration. “I’m not familiar with the word because I don’t speak Scot but I’m not completely ignorant. To prepare me for my wedding night, my mother explained to me that a man has drives… much like an animal.”
He cocked one eyebrow. “And that a woman doesn’t?”
“She implied that there were women who did, but that they were unnatural creatures, given to bringing scandal and ruin upon their families. She also explained in rather excruciating detail what would be expected of me if I was to provide the earl with an heir.”
The sparkle in Jamie’s eyes hardened to a dangerous glitter. “And you assumed I would be expecting the same thing from you.” It was not a question.
“From what your man said, you’d be more likely to demand than expect.” Even though it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life, she forced herself to hold his direct gaze. “Or to simply take what you wanted without begging my leave.”
His rugged jaw tightened, that subtle motion only hinting at the dark things that could pass between a man and a woman when she was forced to rely upon his mercy. “As long as Hepburn gives me what I want, you’ve naught to fear. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” He paused for the space of a heartbeat. “Including me.”
She gazed at his outstretched hand, still torn. All she had to do was stand and stretch out her own arm to seize his offer of salvation.
She had no reason to trust him. He was a scoundrel and a thief. He could be lying through his teeth. Her gaze darted to the dizzying drop below. If she were a true lady, she would fling herself upon the rocks rather than risk being defiled by his hands.
Almost as if reading her mind, he said, “You’re forgetting one thing, lass. Your virtue is of nearly as much value to me as your life. The Hepburn isn’t going to pay me so much as one halfpenny for damaged goods.”
“What makes you think he’ll still want me? How can he not consider me damaged after you and your band of not-so-merry men have dragged me halfway to Hades without the benefit of any sort of chaperone?”
“Oh, he’ll still want you,” Jamie said grimly, “if only to prove a Sinclair didn’t get the best of him. Knowing the Hepburn, he’ll probably insist his own personal physician examine you to prove you’re still worthy to be his bride.”
As the full import of his words sank in, a scorching blush drove the chill from Emma’s cheeks.
“Why, I wouldn’t put it past the auld buzzard to invite the wedding guests into his bedchamber to witness your deflowering or to hang a bluidy sheet out the window the next morning just as the Hepburn lairds of auld used to do.”
“Stop it!” Emma shouted. “Stop trying to make a kindly old man out to be a monster when you’re the true villain! For all I know, you’re lying about everything, including what you plan to do to me if I trust you enough to give you my hand!”
“What if I am?”
The deadly calm of his tone cut right through her agitation.
A taunting sneer curled his lips. “What if I am lying to you? Have you so little spirit that you’re willing to die to preserve your precious virtue?” Even though Emma suspected he was deliberately trying to goad her into action, she was still mesmerized by the cruel cant of those sensual lips. “You set a very high price on yourself, don’t you, lass? Why don’t you come up here and show me whether or not you’re worth it?”
Keeping her furious gaze locked on his face, Emma began to inch her way to her feet, her back still pressed to the stony wall behind her. As the subtle shift of her weight sent a fresh shower of rubble dancing its way down the side of the cliff, she squeezed her eyes shut against a rush of paralyzing vertigo.
“Damnit to bluidy hell, woman, take my hand!” Jamie’s voice deepened on a beseeching note. “Please…”
It wasn’t his roared command but that raw plea that finally swayed her.
She swung her arm upward and slapped her hand into his broad palm, choosing life, choosing him. His fingers closed around her slender wrist with the force of a vise. As the narrow ledge beneath her feet broke away from its stony mooring and went tumbling into the gorge below, Jamie hauled her up and into his waiting arms.
Chapter Six
JAMIE ROSE AND STAGGERED backward, dragging them both away from the edge of the bluff. As the last echo of the shelf tumbling into the gorge died, reminding her anew that it could have been her fragile bones shattering on those rocks, Emma clung helplessly to him, conscious only of the warmth and solidity of his bare chest beneath her cheek. Her shivering had deepened to a violent trembling she could not seem to control.
He hesitated for a moment, but then his arms went around her, drawing her e
ven deeper into his embrace. Through a haze of blind relief, she realized his heart was pounding nearly as wildly as hers.
“There, there, lass,” he murmured, stroking a hand over her tangled hair. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”
Although there was some treacherous part of her that wanted to believe she was safe in the solid warmth of his arms, she knew better. Flattening her palms against his chest, she pushed herself away from him, determined to stand on her own two feet.
He watched through wary eyes as she brushed crumbs of dirt from the skirt of the tattered, filthy rag her wedding gown had become. An alarming amount of pale, freckled skin was beginning to peek through the shattered silk, a fact that did not seem to have escaped Jamie’s heavy-lidded gaze.
“When I warned you about trying to escape, it never occurred to me you’d take some fool notion into your wee head to go running off in the middle of the night and tumble over a cliff .”
“So what do you want from me now?” she asked, shooting him a defiant look. “Should I apologize for trying to escape or for making such a mortifying muddle of it?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Perhaps the question should be what do you want from me, Miss Marlowe? Do you want me to prove I’m every inch the villain you believe me to be? Are you deliberately trying to goad me into lifting my hand to you? Into forcing you to my will?”
“What I want, sir, is to go home!” Emma was as shocked as he was to hear the words come spilling from her lips. She’d been choking them back for what felt like an eternity.
Jamie stiffened. The heat faded from his eyes, leaving them as cool and opaque as paste emeralds. “I promised you I would return you to your bridegroom just as soon as I was able. I’m sure you’ll make a very fine mistress for his castle. And his bed.”
Shaking her head helplessly, Emma backed away from him. She sank down on a stump and rested her chin in her hand, unable to look at him for fear the tears clogging the back of her throat would finally come trickling from her eyes. “Hepburn Castle is not my home. My home is a ramshackle old manor house in Lancashire that’s been in my mother’s family for two centuries. The roof leaks like a sieve, the floorboards creak beneath every step, and there’s a family of mice living behind the kitchen baseboards that creep out every night to steal the crumbs left beneath the dining room table. Most of the shutters hang crooked and don’t close properly and when it snows the drafts are so cold a thin layer of ice forms on the inside of the windows. The flue in the drawing room fireplace sticks more often than not so you never know when you light a fire if you’re going to end up getting chased out of the room by clouds of smoke.”
She stole a wary glance at Jamie to find his expression even more unreadable than before. “I always know spring is coming because a cheeky robin and his mate build a nest in the holly tree growing right outside the window of my bedchamber. When the babies hatch, their chirping wakes me up each morning at dawn. The arbor at the edge of the orchard is on the verge of falling down because it’s completely buried beneath a tangle of wild roses.” She could not stop a wistful smile from curving her lips. “And in autumn when the apples start falling from the trees in the orchard, the whole world smells so tart and sweet you’d swear the very air could make you drunk.”
“You speak o’ this place as if it’s heaven on earth, but what about all o’ those treasures the Hepburn can give you? The jewels? The furs? The land? The gold?”
She cast him a despairing glance. “I’d trade them all for a chance to go out foraging for blackberries in the hedgerows on a fine summer morn.”
“If you love this home of yours so well, then why did you agree to marry the earl?”
Emma went back to gazing into the shadows. “Before Papa sent me to London for the Season, we received a notice informing us the house was being seized by his creditors and we had three months to vacate the premises. The earl’s offer was a godsend. Instead of demanding a dowry, he paid my father a generous settlement in exchange for my hand. It’s too much for even Papa to gamble or drink away. My mother will be guaranteed a roof over her head for as long as she should live. And as the earl’s new countess, I’ll possess both the means and the influence to sponsor my sisters’ London debuts. I’ll be able to find them decent husbands and homes.”
“While you give up your home and any hope of happiness?” Jamie shook his head, a flush of anger touching his high cheekbones. “If your father was the one who drank and gambled away his family’s last shilling, why should you be the one to suffer for it?”
She rose from the rock to face him. “Because I’m the one who drove him to it.”
Chapter Seven
FOR THREE LONG YEARS, no one in her family had dared to utter those words. Yet here she stood confessing them to a man who was little more than a stranger to her—and a dangerous stranger at that. It was such a relief to finally say them aloud that it took Emma a moment to register Jamie’s incredulous smile. It was the sort of smile one might give a gibbering escapee from Bedlam who claimed to be Richard the Lionhearted or a vanilla blancmange.
“You? You were the one who drove your father to the bottle and the gaming tables?” His smile escalated into a snort of disbelieving laughter. “Just what turrible transgression did you commit, you wee wicked hoyden? Did you forget to let the cat in or break your mother’s favorite china saucer?”
She lifted her chin a defiant notch. “I broke a man’s heart.”
She half-expected him to dissolve into fresh gales of laughter at the thought of her as some sort of temptress but as she continued, his smile slowly faded.
“When I was seventeen, I went to London to stay with my aunt Birdie and my cousin Clara for my debut. Everything went exactly as my parents had planned and I was able to secure a proposal from a perfectly nice young curate with excellent prospects for a decent living in Shropshire. After he had obtained my father’s hearty blessing, all of the betrothal documents were drawn up. But less than a month before we were to be wed, I decided I had no choice but to beg off the engagement.”
“Why?”
Emma turned away from him then, biting her bottom lip as an old shame warmed her cheeks. “I realized I was in love with another man. Lysander was the second son of a marquess who flattered me with his attentions each time we met at a ball or while riding in the park. He would deliberately seek out my company and tease me so tenderly I soon found myself thinking of him every moment we were apart. After I went to my fiancé and broke off our engagement, I sought him out to tell him what I’d done. I thought he’d be overjoyed.”
Jamie winced as if already anticipating the inevitable outcome of her tawdry little tale.
Emma’s wry smile mocked no one but herself. “He was horrified. It seemed he was on the verge of announcing his own engagement to a young American heiress—a very beautiful, very wealthy American heiress. He made it quite clear a passably pretty baronet’s daughter from Lancashire could never be anything more to him than a flirtation—and a mild one at that.” She shrugged away the remembered anguish and humiliation of having her fragile young heart ripped right out of her breast. “He was generous enough to suggest I might consider becoming his mistress after he’d been married for a respectable amount of time.”
“What a perfect gentleman!” Jamie declared, his narrowed gaze more bloodthirsty than admiring.
Emma bowed her head. “When I declined, he patted me on the hand quite fondly and urged me to seek out my fiancé and beg his forgiveness before it was too late.”
“But you didn’t,” Jamie said. It was not a question.
She shook her head ruefully. “Perhaps it’s just as well because as it turned out, it was already too late. Little did I know that my fiancé’s pious façade hid a vindictive nature. He engaged a solicitor and sued my father for breach of promise. The settlement came close to casting us all into debtor’s prison and the scandal destroyed any hope I had of ever making a decent match as well as casting a shadow over my sis
ters’ prospects. No man wanted to risk being publicly humiliated as I had humiliated poor George. Unfortunately, George’s tongue turned out to be nearly as virulent as his temper. He wasn’t content with the monetary settlement so he spread rumors that my friendship with Lysander was more intimate than it had been. He didn’t precisely ruin my reputation but he certainly succeeded in casting a shadow of doubt over it. The sort of shadow designed to discourage all but the most ardent of suitors. And since there were none of those…”
“The unfortunate bastard,” Jamie muttered. “It sounds to me as if you bruised his pride instead of breaking his heart.”
She shrugged. “I’m afraid the result was the same. Papa started drinking more heavily and gambling more frequently. He rarely came home before dawn, if at all.” She closed her eyes briefly, remembering the muffled clatter of her father’s footsteps on the stairs, the raised voices that would come from her parents’ bedchamber while she and her sisters huddled beneath the blankets in mute misery, pretending to sleep. “Papa has always had a fondness for cards, but I think he deluded himself into believing he could restore the family’s fortunes at the gaming tables. Of course the exact opposite was true. He ended up squandering what remained of our meager resources, leaving us at the mercy of his creditors.”
Jamie’s brow darkened further. “And leaving his daughter at the mercy of a randy auld goat.”
Emma turned on him in frustration, surprised to find herself trembling with a passion she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for a very long time. “You have no right to pass judgment on my father! Not when you’ve proved yourself only too willing to trade women for gold.”
“All I know is that I’d never allow my daughter to pay off my debts in the bed of a mon like the earl!”
“Regardless of what you believe, my father is not a bad man, simply a weak one,” Emma said, echoing the refrain she’d heard fall from her mother’s lips a thousand times since she’d been a little girl. “He is not to blame for any of this. It was my indiscretion that destroyed my family’s fortunes and their good name.”