Having satisfied his curiosity, he turned on his boulder perch and faced the men. He wasn’t wearing his officer’s insignia, but he mustered the mien of authority and voice to match.
“Listen sharp, all of you. When I give an order, it will be followed. Today is the absolute last instance in which I will tolerate a moment’s hesitation, on any man’s part. Hemming, hawing, hedging, and fidgeting—and most especially ‘ask-Miss-Finch-ing’—will heretofore be grounds for immediate discharge, without pay. Am I understood?”
A mumbled chorus of agreement rose up.
He jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I’m your lord and commander now. When I say march, you march. When I say shoot, you shoot. And no matter what Miss Finch would think about it . . . if I tell you to take a flying leap off this cliff, you will damned well leap with a smile.”
Before he alighted, he allowed himself one last glance down at the cove. All the ladies bobbing and floating in that cool, enticing, blue-crystal sea. One, two, three little spinsters . . .
He stopped. Frowned. Concentrated and looked again. And then his heart left his chest and tumbled straight off the cliff.
He counted only eleven.
Twelve
“What’s Lord Rycliff doing up there?” Charlotte asked, pointing up at the bluff. “Peeping at us? Where are his clothes?”
“I don’t know.” Squinting as she continued to tread water, Susanna watched the barefooted Bram inching closer to the edge of the bluff.
“He looks very dire and serious.”
“He always looks that way.”
From high above, she heard Lord Payne call out. “Don’t do it, Bram! You have so much to live for!”
The ladies shrieked as Rycliff, apparently ignoring his cousin, flexed his legs—and jumped.
“Oh God.” Horrified, Susanna watched his long, perilous dive into the sea. “He’s done it. He’s seen how hopeless the men are, and it’s driven him to suicide.”
A mighty splash announced his impact with the water. She could only pray it wasn’t the prelude to an impact with something else. That area was rocky. The entire cove was rocky. More likely than not, he’d struck his head on a boulder and would never surface.
“Go for help,” she told Charlotte, hitching up the skirts of her bathing costume. “Call to the men up there and tell them to follow the path around to the beach.”
“But . . . but I’m not dressed. Whatever would Mama say?”
“Charlotte, this is no time to be missish. This is life and death. Just do as I say.”
Susanna propelled herself into the water, swimming toward the place he ought to have landed. She sliced through the waves with fast, confident strokes, but her progress was hampered by the dratted bathing costume they all wore for modesty’s sake. The fabric dragged around her ankles, heavy and tangled.
“Lord Rycliff!” she called, nearing the bottom of the cliff. She pulled up and began to tread water, looking this way and that in vain. She saw a great number of rocks, but none of them resembled his stony lump of a head. “Lord Rycliff, are you well?”
No answer. Her skirt snagged on an obstacle, and the sudden tug pulled her under. She took a swallow of seawater. As she surfaced, she sputtered and coughed.
“Bram!” she shouted, growing desperate now. “Bram, where are you? Are you hurt?”
He broke through the surface of the water, not two feet in front of her. Soaked to his skin and wearing a dark, dangerous look.
He was alive. The burst of relief was so visceral, so swift, she was nearly overwhelmed by it. “Bram, what on earth are you—”
He ignored her entirely, looking around the cove instead. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Number twelve.” With a gulp of breath, he disappeared beneath the water’s surface, leaving her treading water, utterly bewildered.
Number twelve? He wasn’t making any sense. Heavens, this was like that ridiculous sheep-bombing all over again.
He broke the surface, pushing water off his face. “Have to find her. Dark-haired girl.”
Minerva. Now it made sense. He was looking for Minerva Highwood. He’d dived off a cliff to save her. The brave, heroic, reckless, misguided idiot.
“I’ll look over there.” He took off swimming, stroking his way around a cluster of boulders.
“Wait,” she called, swimming after him. “Bram, I can explain. She’s not drowned, I promise.”
“She was here. Now she’s not.”
“I know it looks that way. But if you’ll—”
He gulped a deep breath and submerged himself again. It seemed an eternity before he surfaced. The man had the lung capacity of a whale.
When he finally came up for air, Susanna launched herself at him to keep him from going under again.
“Wait!”
She caught him from behind, like a child riding piggyback, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, and her legs—such as the bathing costume permitted—around his waist.
“She’s fine!” she shouted in his ear, shaking him back and forth. “Listen to me. Number twelve. Minerva Highwood. She’s alive and well.”
“Where?” he managed, breathless. He shook himself, and seawater sprayed her in the eye.“There’s a cave.” She sandwiched his head between her two hands and turned it. “That way. The entrance is under water at high tide, but I showed her how to swim into it. She’s alive and well and looking for rocks. Geology. Remember?”
“Geology.”
They were quiet for a time. She rose and fell in the water as he worked to catch his breath.
“It was good of you,” she said, pressing her cheek to the back of his neck. “It was good of you to try to help her.”
“But she’s fine.”
“Yes.” And so are you, thank the Lord.
Several panting breaths later, he said, “I believe you’re safe to release me. It’s shallow enough to stand.”
That was when she realized he hadn’t moved once, for all her furious thrashing. She peered over his shoulder. The water hit him midtorso, matting his open shirt to his body. In the notch of his open collar, little droplets of spray clung to the dark hair on his chest, sparkling in the sunlight. Small waves licked at his dark male nipples, perfectly delineated by wet linen.
And she was plastered to his back, limbs clinging in every direction. Like a deranged octopus.
“Oh.” Mortified, she slid off his back. She stretched her feet under her and found solid footing. “Well, that’s rather embarrassing.”
When she finally dragged her gaze up to his face, she realized he was staring at her nipples now. How predictable. Just like a man. Here she’d been worried he was dead, and he had the nerve to be alive. Outrageously, manifestly virile and strong and alive. How dare he. How dare he?
What with the excitement of that water rescue exercise, atop several days’ worth of unspoken tension, a revealing haircut, and not least of all, that explosive kiss . . . There was too much emotion building inside her, and it had only two possible outlets. Irrational anger, or . . .
She wasn’t going to contemplate “or.” Irrational anger it would be.
“You reckless fool,” she cried. “You mollusk-brained addlepate. What were you thinking, making a dive like that? Don’t you see these rocks? You could have been killed!”
His chin jerked. “I might as well ask what you’re doing, swimming out in that horrid getup. You could be dragged underwater like Ophelia and drown.”
“I swam out here to rescue you, you beastly man. I’m a very strong swimmer.”
“So am I. I don’t need rescuing.”
She turned her head and spat another mouthful of seawater. “Oh, you will when I’m through with you.”
Beneath the water’s surface, something brushed her waist. A fish? An eel? She batted at it, whirling.
“Easy. It’s just me.” His arm slid around her waist, and he pulled her close. They sank into the water, up to their necks. With a one-armed stroke, he tugged her between two boulders.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
He glanced up at the bluff. “Giving us some privacy. We need to talk.”
“Here? Now? We couldn’t converse in some normal time and place?”
“That’s the problem.” He pushed a hand through his dark, wet hair. “I can’t stop thinking about you. All the time. Everyplace. I have work to do up there. Men to drill. A watch to organize. A castle to defend. But I can’t even concentrate, for thinking of you.”
She stared at him. This? This was the conversation he wished to have. Well, she could see why he wouldn’t come calling at the house to bring it up over tea.
“You tell me why that is, Susanna. Keep in mind, you’re talking to a man who’ll march a hundred miles out of his way, just to avoid a romantic attachment.”
“Attachment?” She forced a casual laugh. An unconvincing string of ha-ha-has. “A barrel of warm pitch couldn’t attach me to you.”
He shook his head, looking perplexed. “I even like it when you snipe at me.”
“You’ve seen me with a gun. If I were to snipe at you, I promise you’d feel it. And you wouldn’t like it one bit.” She had to extricate herself from this situation, and his big, brawny arms. She wrestled in his grip, but he only embraced her more tightly.
“You’re not getting away. Not yet.” His deep voice sent ripples through the water. “We’re going to have this out, you and me. Right here. Right now. I’m going to tell you every wild, erotic, depraved thought you’ve inspired, and then you’re going to run home scared. Lock your bedchamber door and stay there for the next month so I can concentrate and do my damned duty.”
“That sounds like a very poorly thought-out plan.”
“Thinking’s not my strong point, of late.”
This rush of sensual awareness . . . oh, it was dangerous. She could grow to enjoy it. To be honest, she already enjoyed it. But she could grow to crave it, and that would make for difficult, lonely times ahead. She knew he needed a bit of human closeness. Perhaps because of the war he’d gone without it for too long. But at most, he had in mind a frantic tangle of body parts, not a meshing of hearts and souls.
“I want you,” he said simply. Starkly. Composure-destroyingly.
See? she told herself. He couldn’t be any more plain than that.
“I want you. I dream about you. I am desperate to be near you,” he said, sending a fresh shiver down her spine. “To touch you. All over.” His hands roamed over her arms and back. “What is this hideous thing you’re wearing?”
“It’s a bathing costume.”
“It feels like a shroud. And it’s too damned opaque.”
“Yes, well. That’s rather the point. Opacity.” Her breathing was quick; her words, stupid.
One of his hands slid down to capture her fingers. He raised them above the water’s surface, shaking them as though they were some kind of damning evidence. “Who wears gloves in the ocean?”
She swallowed hard. “I do.”
“These gloves of yours, they drive me mad. I want to strip them from your hands. Kiss those slender wrists, suck on each of those long, delicate fingers. And that would only be the beginning. I want to see the rest of you, too. Yours is a body made for a man’s pleasure. It’s a crime against nature to hide it.”
This could not be happening. Not to her. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. “Lord Rycliff. You’ve forgotten yourself.”
“No, I haven’t.” His green eyes held her captive. “I recall precisely who I am. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Victor St. George Bramwell, the Earl of Rycliff since a few days back. You’re Susanna Jane Finch, and I want to see you bare. Bare, and pale, and soaked to the roots of your hair, glistening with moonlight and drops of seawater. I’d lick the salt from you.”