“Then give your father my thanks. But I will respectfully decline.”
“Why?”
“I’m meant to be defending the coast. Difficult to do that from a mile inland.”
“But my lord, you do understand this militia business is all for show? My father’s not truly concerned about an invasion.”
“Perhaps he should be.” He glanced at his cousin, who was currently snapping dead branches from an ivy-covered wall. With a tilt of his head, Rycliff drew her aside. “Miss Finch, it’s not wise for officers to quarter in the same house with an unmarried gentlewoman. Have a care for your reputation, if your father does not.”
“Have a care for my reputation?” She had to laugh. Then she lowered her voice. “This, from the man who flattened me in the road and kissed me without leave?”
“Precisely.” His eyes darkened.
His meaning washed over her in a wave of hot, sensual awareness. Surely he wasn’t implying . . .
No. He wasn’t implying at all. Those hard jade eyes were giving her a straightforward message, and he underscored it with a slight flex of his massive arms: I am every bit as dangerous as you suppose. If not more so.
“Take your kind invitation and run home with it. When soldiers and maids live under the same roof, things happen. And if you happened to find yourself under me again . . .” His hungry gaze raked her body. “You wouldn’t escape so easily.”
She gasped. “You are a beast.”
“Just a man, Miss Finch. Just a man.”
Four
Bram told himself he was looking out for Miss Finch’s safety as he watched her picking her way down the rocky slope. He told himself a lie. In truth, he was utterly entranced by her figure in retreat, the way her curves gave a saucy little bounce with each downward step.
He would dream of those breasts tonight. How they’d felt trapped beneath him, so soft and warm.
Blast. This day had not gone as planned. By this time, he was supposed to be well on his way to the Brighton Barracks, preparing to leave for Portugal and rejoin the war. Instead, he was . . . an earl, suddenly. Stuck at this ruined castle, having pledged to undertake the military equivalent of teaching nursery school. And to make it all worse, he was plagued with lust for a woman he couldn’t have. Couldn’t even touch, if he ever wanted his command back.
As if he sensed Bram’s predicament, Colin started to laugh.
“What’s so amusing?”
“Only that you’ve been played for a greater fool than you realize. Didn’t you hear them earlier? This is Spindle Cove, Bram. Spindle. Cove.”
“You keep saying that like I should know the name. I don’t.”
“You really must get around to the clubs. Allow me to enlighten you. Spindle Cove—or Spinster Cove, as we call it—is a seaside holiday village. Good families send their fragile-flower daughters here for the restorative sea air. Or whenever they don’t know what else to do with them. My friend Carstairs sent his sister here last summer, when she grew too fond of the stable boy.”
“And so . . . ?”
“And so, your little militia plan? Doomed before it even starts. Families send their daughters and wards here because it’s safe. It’s safe because there are no men. That’s why they call it Spinster Cove.”
“There have to be men. There’s no such thing as a village with no men.”
“Well, there may be a few servants and tradesmen. An odd soul or two down there with a shriveled twig and a couple of currants dangling between his legs. But there aren’t any real men. Carstairs told us all about it. He couldn’t believe what he found when he came to fetch his sister. The women here are man-eaters.”
Bram was scarcely paying attention. He focused his gaze to catch the last glimpses of Miss Finch as her figure receded into the distance. She was like a sunset all to herself, her molten bronze hair aglow as she sank beneath the bluff’s horizon. Fiery. Brilliant. When she disappeared, he felt instantly cooler.
And then, only then, did he turn to his yammering cousin. “What were you saying?”
“We have to get out of here, Bram. Before they take our bollocks and use them for pincushions.”
Bram made his way to the nearest wall and propped one shoulder against it, resting his knee. Damn, that climb had been steep. “Let me understand this,” he said, discreetly rubbing his aching thigh under the guise of brushing off loose dirt. “You’re suggesting we leave because the village is full of spinsters? Since when do you complain about an excess of women?”
“These are not your normal spinsters. They’re . . . they’re unbiddable. And excessively educated.”
“Oh. Frightening, indeed. I’ll stand my ground when facing a French cavalry charge, but an educated spinster is something different entirely.”
“You mock me now. Just you wait. You’ll see, these women are a breed unto themselves.”
“The women aren’t my concern.”
Save for one woman, and she didn’t live in the village. She lived at Summerfield, and she was Sir Lewis Finch’s daughter, and she was absolutely off limits—no matter how he suspected Miss Finch would become Miss Vixen in bed.
Colin could make all the disparaging remarks he wished about bluestockings. Bram knew clever women always made the best lovers. He especially appreciated a woman who knew something of the world beyond fashion and the theater. For him, listening to Miss Finch expound on the weakened state of Napoleon’s army had been like listening to a courtesan read aloud from her pillow book. Arousing beyond measure. And then he’d made the idiotic—though inevitable—mistake of picturing her naked. All that luminous hair and milky skin, tumbled on crisp white sheets . . .
To disrupt the erotic chain of thought, he pressed hard against the knotted muscle in his thigh. Pain sliced through the lingering haze of desire.
He pulled the flask from his breast pocket and downed a bracing swallow of whiskey. “The women aren’t my concern,” he repeated. “I’m here to train the local men. And there are men here, somewhere. Fishermen, farmers, tradesmen, servants. If what you say is correct, and they’re outnumbered by managing females . . . Well, then they’ll be eager for a chance to flex their muscles, prove themselves.” Just as he was.
Bram walked to the gateway and was relieved to see the wagons approaching. He couldn’t remain lost in lustful thoughts when there was work to be done. Pitching tents, watering and feeding the horses, building a fire.
After one last sip, he recapped his flask and jammed it in his pocket. “Let’s have a proper look at this place before the dark settles in.”
They began in the center and worked their way out. Of course, the current center wasn’t truly the center, since half the castle had fallen into the sea.
Turning back toward the north, Bram now recognized the arch they’d entered through as the original gatehouse. Walls spread out from the structure on either side. Even in spots where the walls had crumbled, one could easily trace the places where they’d stood. Here in the bailey area, low, moss-covered ridges served to mark interior walls and corridors. To the southern, waterfront side, a four-leafed clover of round turrets hugged the bluff, connected by sheer, windowless stretches of stone.
“This must have been the keep,” he mused, walking through the arched entryway to stand in the center of the four soaring towers.
Colin stepped inside one of the dark, hollow turrets. “The staircases are intact, being stone. But, of course, the wooden floors are long gone.” He tilted his head, peering toward the dark corners overhead. “Impressive collection of cobwebs. Are those swallows I hear chirping?”
“Those?” Bram listened. “Those would be bats.”
“Right. Bats. So this inches-deep muck I’m standing in would be . . . Brilliant.” He stomped back into the courtyard, wiping his boots on the mossy turf. “Lovely place you have here, cousin.”
It was lovely. As the sky turned from blue to purple, a sprinkling of stars appeared above the castle ruins. Bram knew he’d made the right decision to decline quarter at Summerfield. All concerns of duty and restraint aside, he never felt comfortable in stuffy English manor houses. Their door lintels were too low for him, and their beds were too small for him. Such homes weren’t for him, full stop.
The open country was where he belonged. He didn’t need a place like Summerfield. However, his empty stomach was beginning to argue he should have accepted a meal at Sir Lewis’s table, at least.
A low bleat drew his attention downward. A lamb stood at his feet, nosing the tassel on his boot.
“Oh look,” said Colin brightly. “Dinner.”
“Where did this come from?”
Thorne approached. “Followed us up. The drivers say it’s been nosing around the carts ever since the blasts.”
Bram examined the creature. Must have been separated from its mother. By this time of summer, it was well past the age of weaning. It was also well past the age of being adorable. The lamb looked up at him and gave another plaintive bleat.
“I don’t suppose we have any mint jelly?” Colin asked.
“We can’t eat it,” Bram said. “The beast belongs to some crofter hereabouts, and whoever he is will be missing it.”
“The crofter will never know.” A wolfish smile spread across his cousin’s face as he reached to pat the lamb’s woolly flank. “We’ll destroy the evidence.”
Bram shook his head. “Not going to happen. Give up your lamb chop fantasies. His home can’t be far. We’ll find it tomorrow.”
“Well, we do have to eat something tonight, and I don’t see a ready alternative.”
Thorne strode toward the fire, carrying a brace of hares, already split and gutted. “There’s your alternative.”
“Where did you get those?” Colin asked.
“On the heath.” Crouching on the ground, Thorne drew a knife from his boot and began skinning the animals with ruthless efficiency. The rich smell of blood soon mingled with smoke and ash.
Colin stared at the officer. “Thorne, you scare me. I’m not ashamed to say it.”
Bram said, “You’ll learn to appreciate him. Thorne always comes up with a meal. We had the best-stocked officers’ mess on the Peninsula.”
“Well, at least that satisfies one type of hunger,” Colin said. “Now, for the other. I’ve an insatiable craving for female companionship that must be addressed. I don’t sleep alone.” He looked from Bram to Thorne. “What? You’ve just returned from years on the Peninsula. I’d think you two would be positively salivating.”
Thorne made a gruff sound. “There’s women in Portugal and Spain.” He set aside one skinned carcass and reached for the other hare. “And I’ve already found one here.”
“What?” Colin sputtered. “Who? When?”
“The widow what sold us eggs at the last turnpike. She’ll have me.”
Colin looked to Bram, as if to say, Am I to believe this?
Bram shrugged. Thorne was nothing if not resourceful. At every place of encampment, he’d always ferreted out the local game and found a local woman. He hadn’t seemed particularly attached to any of them. Or perhaps the women simply didn’t attach themselves to Thorne.
Attachments were Bram’s problem. He was an officer, a gentleman of wealth, and, all things being equal, he preferred to converse with a woman before tupping her senseless. Taken together, these qualities seemed to encourage a woman’s attachment, and romantic entanglements were the one thing he couldn’t afford.
Colin straightened, obviously piqued. “Now wait just a minute. I will happily be outdone when it comes to hunting game, but I will not be . . . outgamed, where the fairer sex is concerned. You couldn’t know it, Thorne, but my reputation is legendary. Legendary. Give me one day down in the village. I don’t care if they are ape-leading spinsters. I’ll be under skirts in this neighborhood long before you are, and far more often.”