Page 12 of How the Earl Entices

She shrugged a slender shoulder. “A widow lives on her wits.”

She was no more a fisherman’s widow than he was the king. Her plan for him proved that. Only a woman who had been harmed by a man would think to go to such extremes to ensure she couldn’t be hurt again. Was that how she’d gotten that scar? A permanent reminder to always be cautious?

“So you plan on spending the day together like this? Making pleasant conversation, with me lying here.” He glanced at the pile of his clothes folded neatly on top of the dresser and grimaced. “Naked.”

“I had to undress you. I couldn’t sew up your wounds through your clothes. Besides, you’ve nothing I haven’t seen before.” But she glanced away, a faint pink staining her cheeks. “And yes, I plan on you lying there all day.”

“And if I have to relieve myself?” he challenged impudently.

She snatched an empty pitcher from the washstand and set it on the bed next to his hip. “Don’t miss.”

He narrowed his eyes on her.Damnable woman.

She returned to her chair. “So you’ll stay right there, tied up. Unless you tell me the truth about who you are and how you ended up here.”

“You first,” he dared. “You’re no fisherman’s widow.”

To her credit, her expression never changed, although he saw a darkness cloud her eyes. The Home Office was recruiting its operatives in the wrong places. They should have been looking in fishing villages.

He continued, “We can end by you telling me why you don’t want me to be seen leaving. Or why you’ve not already sounded the alarm for the villagers to raise their pitchforks against me.”

“I would never ask the villagers to raise pitchforks.” With faint indignation, she reached casually for a cup of tea resting on a small tray on the dresser. “We’re a fishing village. They would raise oars.”

Not moving her gaze from his over the rim of her cup, she lifted it to her lips and took a small sip. His stomach rumbled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and watching her partake of something even as unsubstantial as tea made him ravenous.

She asked softly, “What’s your real reason for being here?”

He closed his eyes and tried to relax, to make the best of a brutally bad situation. If he hadn’t been so desperate to leave France, he would have been able to take better care of himself, and he wouldn’t have let his guard slip to the point that she’d been able to tie him up. “First, you’ll have to tell me wherehereis.”

“Sea Haven Village on Winchelsea Bay.” Her bewilderment rang out loudly in her pause. “How could you disembark at the dock and not know where you are?”

“Because I didn’t disembark.” His lips curled in foolish pride at his own perilous behavior. At least this part of the story Kit would love. “I jumped overboard.”

“In that storm? I don’t believe you.”

“Good. It makes it easier for a man to hide his secrets when a woman won’t believe the truth.”

He heard the soft rustle of her skirts as she stood. “Why on earth would you do something like that? It was tantamount to suicide.” Her voice grew closer as she stepped toward the bed. “Was the boat sinking?”

“Perfectly good boat. I simply preferred to be off it.” To die by drowning rather than torture. With his kneecaps intact.

He felt the bed sink beneath her light weight as she sat beside him, and he opened his eyes to see her reach forward to set the little tray on the bedside table. In the faint gray morning light that filtered in around the edges of the shutters, she was just as pretty as he remembered from last night. Beautiful, in fact, with a delicately pretty face and hair a shade he would have called toffee. An apt description, as it so perfectly complimented the chocolate brown of her eyes.

It wasn’t only her physical appearance that struck him, but also the way she moved so gracefully, even just to reach for a teacup. She had blue blood coursing through her veins. He would have bet his fortune on it.

“So you jumped overboard.” She carefully brought the teacup to his lips and helped him take a sip. He closed his eyes at the exquisite sensation. The grassy-sweet liquid soothed his parched throat, made raw by swallowing what seemed like half the Atlantic Ocean as he’d struggled in the waves. “And came ashore here at the bay.”

She offered another sip of tea.

Not tea, he now understood, but a reward for confiding in her. He had no choice. He was too famished to deny himself sustenance because of something as malleable as the truth. “Yes.”

She reached for the tray and what looked deliciously like a cinnamon biscuit, then poised it at his lips, just out of bite-reach. “Why were you on a boat in the middle of that storm?”

“Lives were at risk. Mine especially.” He opened his mouth, and she placed the small biscuit on his tongue. He mumbled through his starved chewing, “And now yours, if anyone finds out that you’re helping me.”

He watched her closely, expecting her to pale at that. Instead she remained calm, as if not surprised in the least. He would have found that to be another intriguing facet to her, if she hadn’t tied him up.

“Then they shan’t find out.” She picked up a second biscuit and held it to his lips. “So you were being chased from France.”