Bertha shook her curly head. “No, miss—and I would of if there had been. We’d heard there’d been a wreck, so those ‘round about have been looking, but no one’s even seen bits and pieces.”
Grimacing, Linnet glanced up at Logan. “It was worth a try.” Looking back at Bertha, she said, “Now we’re here, we’ll have two plates of your fish stew, Bertha, and two pints of cider.”
Bertha bobbed and hustled back to the kitchen. Understanding they were lunching at the tavern, Logan stepped over the bench and sat beside Linnet.
One of the old sailors leaned forward to look at Linnet. “No sign of debris in Roquaine Bay?”
She shook her head. “My men have checked, but no one’s found anything.”
“Then seems likely the ship broke up on the reefs well out from the bay, north and west of the point. Given the direction of that last blow, if things didn’t fetch up in your west cove, they’d miss our coasts altogether.” The sailor looked at Logan. “If that’s the case, there’s not going to be anything to help you get your memory back, not anywhere on the island.”
The other sailors all nodded their grizzled heads.
Bertha appeared with two heaped and steaming plates, which she placed with a flourish before Linnet and Logan. “There you are! That’ll warm you up before you head out again. Wind’s whipping up. I’ll fetch your ciders right away.”
The talk turned to the perennial sailors’ subject of the day’s likely catch. Logan applied himself to the surprisingly tasty fish stew and let the chatter wash over him.
He was ready to leave when Linnet rose and bade the company good-bye. He was reaching into his pocket for his purse when he remembered.
Linnet waved to Bertha, telling her to put the charge on the Mon Coeur slate. Logan followed her from the tavern, frowning as they walked to their tethered horses.
He lifted Linnet to her saddle, then held her there, caught her gaze. “If I was wearing Hoby’s boots, I must have money somewhere. When I remember where, I’ll pay you back.”
She arched her brows. “I was thinking you could pay me back tonight.”
Lips thinning, he held her gaze. After a moment said, “That hardly seems sufficient recompense.”
Releasing her, he turned, grabbed Storm’s reins, and swung up to the saddle.
“Then make it sufficient.” Linnet caught his eye. “I’m sure, if you exert yourself, you’ll manage.”
With that, she set her heels to the mare’s sides and surged out into the lane.
Logan held Storm in, prancing on the spot, while he stared at Linnet’s back. Then, frown converting to a scowl, he eased the reins and set off after her.
Returning to the house, Logan insisted on doing what he could to help about the estate—which that afternoon meant helping the other men erect a new enclosure to protect a small herd of deer Linnet had imported to breed and raise for meat.
He threw himself into it, blotting out his frustration with not being able to remember—and with her. He hadn’t liked her suggestion that he repay her hospitality with sex the first time he’d heard it, and he was even more annoyed that he’d let her override his scruples and lure him into playing her game last night.
Her continuing insistence on casting their nighttime interludes in that light made him … he didn’t know what, but spearing a shovel into the dirt to dig out a post hole felt good.
He was aware of his wound, of it pulling, skin tugging, but as long as he protected his left side, he wasn’t too restricted. His strength had largely returned to what he thought it should be, and as he was right-handed, he could wield a mallet with more force than any of the other men there.
So he dug, and thumped, and with the other men heaved posts into place, railings into grooves, and ignored the female critically watching.
Linnet stood under a nearby tree and watched her deer pen take shape. The pen itself met with her approval; it was just the right size, in both acreage and height. She wasn’t so sure about her latest stray, but she could hardly complain. Constructing enclosures was not her forte, yet he, apparently, knew enough to direct Vincent, Bright, Gerry, and their respective staffs. From the respect they’d immediately accorded his “suggestions,” he was, once again, firmly in charge.
He pulled his weight, literally. Despite the chill wind and the gray clouds scudding overhead, all the men had stripped off their coats and were working in their shirts, with or without waistcoats. In Logan’s case, without; she watched the way his muscles, visible through the fine cotton of one of her father’s old shirts, bulged and shifted, contracted and released as he lifted a huge post into the last hole.
Immediately he grabbed a shovel and started filling the hole in. Young Henry ran to help; even from a distance Linnet could detect a certain awe in the lad’s expression.
She humphed. All very well, but … was this Logan’s way of balancing the scales with her, rather than obliging her in her bed? In her view, there was no real debt—she would do the same for any man in his situation and expect nothing beyond sincere thanks—but their liaison had been established, more through his doing than hers, and in light of that, her request that he educate her in matters in which he was expert was entirely reasonable. Yet although he wanted to lie with her, neither last night nor this afternoon had he been at all eager to fall in with her script.
Indeed, after today’s exchange, her earlier challenge, he’d insisted on coming out here and building her a deer pen.
Folding her arms, she frowned, as the last section of fence in place and secured, negligently swinging a mallet it would take her two hands just to lift, he walked to where Vincent and Bright were assembling the gate.
The message was clear. He wasn’t going to cease his exertions until the pen was complete.
She narrowed her eyes on his back. She knew the male of the species found her significantly more than passably attractive. Logan was, in that respect, typical of his kind. So why wouldn’t he accept her proposition?
Presumably because he didn’t like the language in which it was couched.
Last night his reticence had sprung from a sense of honor. While she might not agree, that she could respect. And the more he recalled of the man he was—cavalry commander, gentleman—the more his code of honor would become entrenched. However, if she didn’t have the excuse of allowing him to repay her by teaching her of things she, at her age, really ought to know, things she patently wouldn’t be able to learn from, or with, anyone else, then what reason would she have for indulging with him?
What other excuse could she have for wanting to lie with him?
She felt like Queen Elizabeth worrying about Robert Dudley. At least she judged Logan more trustworthy, and less power-hungry, than Dudley had been.
But like Elizabeth, she felt she was grappling with a relationship that was threatening to develop in ways she didn’t want.
Ways that could only lead to heartache.
So no. Logan would have to toe her line, and accept her proposition as it stood; it was safer that way. While their interaction remained on such a footing—a near-commercial exchange—neither she nor he was likely to forget that what happened in her bed had nothing to do with her heart.
And neither would develop any deeper expectations.
The men finally lifted the gate into place and secured it. As a group, they stepped back and looked at it—surveyed the pen, admired their handiwork, then congratulated each other on a job well done.
The lads gathered up the tools. Parting from the other men, Logan bent to retrieve his coat from where he’d tossed it over a log—and Linnet saw the bandage around his torso shift and slide.
Lips thinning, she stepped out from beneath the tree and waited on the path as, shrugging on the coat, he walked toward her.
As he drew near, he arched a brow.
“Thank you for your help. Now come inside and let me check your wound and retie that bandage.”
Spinning on her heel, she stalked ahead of him bac
k to the house.
Lips tightening, Logan followed.
After pausing to wash his hands under the pump near the back door, Logan ambled in Linnet’s wake into the downstairs bathing chamber. Without a word, he shrugged off his coat, drew off his shirt, then sat on the bench beside the sink and let her have at him.
He’d largely worked off his earlier frustration, but was curious as to what was gnawing her. As she shifted back and forth in front of him, unwinding the long bandages, he studied her expression.
When she next went to step past, he caught her about the waist, held her between his knees. He examined her forehead, then lifted one finger and rubbed between her brows.
She jerked her head back, stared at him. “What was that for?”
“There was a furrow forming there.”
The furrow promptly returned. He raised his finger again.
She batted it away. “Stop that.”
“You don’t have any reason to frown, so why are you frowning?”
She met his eyes, hesitated, then said, “You’re making things too complicated. Just …” The last bandage fell free and she scooped it up. “Just sit there and let me check your stitches.”
Linnet shifted his arm, held it back, and focused on the stitches. She breathed in, steeled herself against being this close to him. Just concentrate on the stitches.
She examined, gently prodded. Thought again of how he must have got such a wound. Seized on the distraction. “Some man faced you with a sword—someone who knew how to wield one. Right-handed, like you. He went for a killing stroke, but you pulled back just enough, just in time. You must have been fighting on deck during the storm—you could only have just taken this wound when you went into the water. You lost some blood, but you would have lost a lot more if you hadn’t been immersed in icy water.”
“There were two of them.”
She glanced up to see his gaze fixed in the distance.
“No.” His eyes narrowed. “That’s not right. There were three, but I killed one … after they leapt on me as I came out of the forward companionway. I came up to see what was happening with the storm.”
Carefully straightening, she held her breath. His words were coming slowly, as if he were literally piecing the memory together.
“I didn’t know them … I can’t remember who they were. I’m not even sure I knew at the time. I can’t see their faces.”
When he fell silent, she whispered, “What can you see?”
“Beyond the storm, beyond the flash of blades … nothing.” Suddenly focusing, his gaze shifted to her face. “But I know they were after something I had. That was why they wanted me dead, so they could take …” He paused, then, face and voice hardening, continued, “The only thing of potential value I had on me at the time. They must have been after the wooden cylinder.”
He tensed to stand.
Slapping her hands on his shoulders, she held him down. “No! The cylinder is where we left it. You can get it in a minute, but first I need to finish checking these stitches, then I need to wash, dry, and rebandage. With stitches you can’t go out without a bandage yet.”
The look he bent on her should have withered steel, but she was adamant and gave not an inch.
With a disgusted humph, he settled back on the bench.
Logan let her finish tending his wound while he struggled to make sense of what he’d remembered. The facts were sketchy, disjointed, some visual memories, others just random bits of knowing.
When he added them up … his blood ran cold. He didn’t know who his opponents were, or why they wanted the cylinder, but of their viciousness, their utter disregard for life, their callousness, their unrelenting evil, he had not a shred of doubt.
He might not remember who they were, but he knew what they were.
The thought that such evil might have followed him there, might even now be tracking him to this isolated, windswept, and so beautifully complete little corner of the world—Linnet’s corner, her domain—shook him.
“I need to leave.” He met Linnet’s eyes as she turned from setting a washcloth aside. “They might follow me here.”
“Nonsense.” She frowned at him. “You heard the old seadogs—if they didn’t wash up in our coves, then they almost certainly perished.”
He frowned, shifted as she dabbed along his damp side with a towel. “Others might have been waiting ahead and now be searching—they might hear there was a survivor and come looking here.”
Linnet blew out a dismissive breath. “If they’re waiting ahead, then they’re either somewhere in England, or somewhere even farther away—we assumed your ship was heading north, but it might just as well have been going the other, way.” Opening a pot of salve, she dabbed two fingers in, then—trying not to notice whose chest she was tending, or indeed anything about that chest at all—she smeared Muriel’s potent cream down the still red, but healing, wound.
“And,” she continued, doggedly stroking, “no one other than locals knows you’re here. How could anyone—especially off-island—learn you’re here?”
She glanced up, saw his jaw clench. Setting aside the salve, she reached for the roll of clean bandage she’d left ready.
“Matt and Young Henry went to the market with the cabbages the second day I was here—they would have mentioned it to someone.”
“No, they wouldn’t. Trust me—they know better than to gossip about something like that.” As she shifted around him, bandaging his chest again, she looked into his face, saw his disbelief. “If you need more reassuring on that point, both lads are ex-buccaneer brats. They know to keep their mouths shut about anything that washes in from the sea.”
Logan gave up arguing. He didn’t have enough facts to win, or even to make sense of his burgeoning fear. His pursuers were people any wise commander would fear—of that much he was now sure. And in that vein, the fear he felt wasn’t personal. All his fear was for her and hers.
He didn’t know why—couldn’t formulate a rational argument—but he knew what he felt.
Later, standing before the sideboard in the parlor and turning the wooden cylinder over and over in his hands, he still couldn’t say why he felt so strongly, but the premonition of danger, of impending threat, was impossible to deny.
After dinner, he sat on the parlor floor with the children and taught them another card game.
Linnet sat in her armchair and watched, not the children but him.
She could almost see the connections forming, the intangible links. Brandon and Chester he’d held in the palm of his hand from the moment he’d opened his eyes, but Willard—Will—was both older and more wary. Although friendly, Will had initially held back, hesitated to commit to the near hero-worship the younger boys had so enthusiastically embraced. But Will was now a convert, too.
All three asked questions—about this, that, male-type questions—all of which Logan either answered or used to gently steer their thoughts in a more appropriate direction.
The girls, too, Jen and Gilly, enjoyed his company, and while they didn’t take the same advantage of his presence, they, too, were benefiting simply from having a large, strong, adult male about with whom they could interact freely, and trust implicitly to care and watch over them.
Children knew. Her children—her wards—certainly knew. She, Muriel, and Buttons hadn’t raised them to be anything but quick and bright. Enough to be wary of strangers, ready to be suspicious, ready to react to any even minor detail that wasn’t quite right.
All of them had looked at Logan, looked at him and seen, and known he was trustworthy.
And in that they were correct. He was good with them, instinctively knowing when to be firm, when to laugh and tease. When to be kind. He was good with them in ways neither Edgar nor John, both of whom were fond of the children, could emulate. Where the older men struggled to find the ways, Logan simply knew.
She doubted he was even aware of it; his reactions to the children were immediate, innate. It occurred to
her that while he might still be wrestling with what sort of man he was, she and her brood could fill in many traits—all the important ones, certainly.
He was good, kind, considerate without being overwhelming. He was commanding, yes, but only in spheres in which he was experienced. He was trustworthy, caring, strong, able, and, after his response to his latest recollection, she could throw loyal and protective—highly protective—into the mix.
She also suspected he could be recklessly brave.
And on that note, she decided she would stop—she was making him sound like a saint, and he was definitely not that.
Underneath his protectiveness and caring lay a dictatorial possessiveness she recognized all too well; she carried the same trait. That was one reason he and she would never be compatible beyond a certain point. For a few days, even a few weeks, they could brush along well enough, but eventually the inevitable clash would come—and she would win. She always did, and then he’d leave—if he hadn’t remembered and left already.
“Time for bed.” Pushing out of the armchair, she rose, let her skirts fall straight as she fixed the children with a direct look that slew their protests before they uttered them.
Edgar and John had already retired. Buttons was struggling to stifle her yawns. Muriel looked up from her knitting and smiled over the top of her spectacles. “Indeed. It’s grown late.”
Within minutes, Linnet was alone with Logan in the parlor, with only a single candle burning and the sound of footsteps retreating up the stairs. She arched a brow at him, wordlessly asking why he’d remained.
“I recall last night you said something about ‘doing the rounds.’ “
She might have known. “I check all the doors and windows on the ground floor—a habit my father instilled in me.” Shielding the candle flame, she started for the back door, smiling wryly when Logan fell in behind her. “At one time, pirates, then later buccaneers, used to lurk in the southern reaches of Roquaine Bay.”