Rapture Becomes Her

Book 5: Becomes Her

by Shirlee Busbee

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Historical Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

"Busbee is a pleasure to read." -- Booklist An Irresistible Danger To save her village and what's left of her family fortune from her wastrel cousin, gently bred Emily Townsend secretly leads a ring of smugglers. With the king's forces and deadly rivals closing in, she has but one last shipment to acquire. But when her men rescue an injured stranger from the sea one stormy night, Emily faces her most formidable--and tempting--adversary ever. For Barnaby, the new Viscount Joslyn, is determined to uncover who tried to kill him the moment he set foot in England. Yet proving to Miss Townsend that he can also be trusted with her deepest secrets is an equally intriguing challenge. Now Barnaby and Emily's boldest gambit rests on unthinkable risk--and surrendering to an undeniable love. . . "Busbee spins a tale unusually well-balanced between its appealing central romance and lively action-adventure." -- Publishers Weekly "Busbee is one of the grand dames of historical romance. Longtime readers and new fans will be captivated by her latest Becomes Her story." -- RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars

Release date: September 5, 2013

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 432

Sample

He was going to die, Barnaby thought incredulously. He was going to drown in the middle of the night, in the midst of a storm sweeping across the English Channel, and no one would ever know what had happened to the most recent holder of the title Viscount Joslyn. He would have simply vanished.

A crackling bolt of silver lightning snaked across the black night sky, and through the heavy rain, Barnaby glanced desperately around, trying to get his bearings, searching frantically for something to use to save himself, but all that met his gaze was roiling seas. There was no land or sign of rescue to be seen. He was going to die, he thought again as the brightness from the lightning vanished and he was left alone in the blackness. Fighting to keep afloat in the churning water, he admitted that there would be some in London who would rejoice at his passing, and heading that list would be his newly met English cousin, Mathew Joslyn.

Mathew had been furious that the title, long considered his, was going to an American and with it the Joslyn family fortune and estates. “A bloody, half-breed colonist, Viscount Joslyn? It is an insult!” Mathew snarled at their first meeting three months ago in October in the London solicitor’s office.

Barnaby didn’t blame Mathew for being angry. In Mathew’s shoes he might have felt the same way, but he wasn’t about to allow the slur to pass. “You are mistaken,” Barnaby drawled. “It was my grandmother who was half-Cherokee.” He smiled, showing his excellent teeth. “But I warn you—you would be wise not to use that term again in my hearing. As for being a colonist . . .” His black eyes full of mockery, he continued. “I think you forget that America gained her independence from Britain a decade ago. I am a citizen of the United States.”

“Very well,” Mathew snapped, his cheeks faintly flushed, “but it is insupportable that someone like you should think to step so easily into command of my great-uncle’s estates. Good God, man, you don’t know the first thing about running an estate like Windmere. You’re little more than a backwoods upstart!”

Barnaby held on to his temper with an effort, thinking that it wouldn’t help his cause any if his first act as Lord Joslyn was to throttle his cousin. He took a deep breath and, letting that last comment ride for now, said curtly, “I would remind you that I am not uneducated and that I have been overseeing my own plantation in Virginia for a number of years. I’ll grant you that Green Hill is not as vast as Windmere—there will be differences, but I’m quite capable of managing Windmere.”

Mathew’s lips tightened. “Perhaps, but you are a fool if you think that someone with a grandmother who is a half . . . uh, part savage will be eagerly accepted by the ton as Viscount Joslyn.”

“Considering the situation with France, you should be more worried about the fact that my grandmother’s father was a Frenchman,” Barnaby retorted. The expressions of horror on the faces of those present at this new abomination had Barnaby biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. His gaze swept the handsome room, and with his foes momentarily silenced, he rose to his impressive height and walked to the door. His hand on the knob, he looked back at Mathew and said softly, “Upstart I may be, but I’ve never lived in the backwoods and you, sir, can go hang—and for all I care, take the damn title with you!”

It had been a pleasurable moment, but as he lifted his face above the next wave and the cold seeped deeper into his bones, Barnaby tried to remember the events leading up to his present predicament, but his thoughts were sluggish and erratic. Like a serpent curling around its prey, the icy water was inexorably draining the life from him and with every second, his will to survive wavered.

It would be so easy, so simple, he thought, to let the storm have its way, so easy to stop fighting and allow himself to be pulled down into the depths.... A wave slapped him in the face, startling him and shattering the seductive song of death that crooned in his head.

With a curse, he renewed his struggle to stay afloat in the darkness—if only for a few seconds longer. Ignoring the stinging pain at the back of his head, he vaguely remembered freeing his knife fastened at his ankle and then jettisoning his boots and heavy greatcoat, along with his jacket, within minutes of hitting the water, knowing they would only weigh him down. He’d held on to the knife for a while, until he realized it was hampering his ability to swim and then reluctantly he’d let the waves take it. Those memories did him little good because he still had no idea how he had ended up in the Channel, yet oddly enough he knew he was in the English Channel. But where, or how he had gotten there, he had no inkling. His mind was blank—as much from the lethal cold as the blood he had lost from the wound on the back of his head.

He frowned. How the devil did he know he had a wound? And how did he know that the wound had bled? Again he had no answers, and as his head slipped beneath the onslaught of another wall of water, the urge to end it, to let the cold and the Channel have its way, was nearly impossible to resist.

But as his friends often pointed out, he could be stubborn as a mule, and with a powerful kick of his long legs he surged up above the waves. He wasn’t, he swore, with a fierce grin, going to make it easy for anyone or anything to kill him. Another streak of lightning lit the black sky and in that moment, Barnaby spied something that made his heart leap: several planks linked together bobbed in the water not six feet from him. He half recognized them as being a section of the floor of the yacht he had inherited along with everything else owned by the late Seventh Viscount Joslyn. Fighting his way toward that beacon of hope those boards represented, he struggled to think where the yacht had been moored and then it came to him: near Eastbourne on the Sussex coast. But what in the hell had he been doing there?

He had no time for further thought—all of his focus was on surviving—and though it seemed that it took him hours to reach those planks, in mere minutes, his fingers brushed against the slippery wood. Getting himself out of the water took longer, the tossing waves and the shifting, slick surface of the planks thwarting his efforts, but finally, he was able to heave himself aboard the makeshift raft.

Gasping for breath, he rolled over onto his back and with his face pelted by rain, he stared up at the black sky. He was freezing, his teeth chattering, his body shaking from the cold, and he suspected he had traded one form of death for another. Exposure would kill him as sure as a hangman’s noose, but he wouldn’t die, he consoled himself grimly, by drowning. And that, he thought as he drifted into unconsciousness, was a victory of sorts.

“Is he dead?” asked Jeb Brown ghoulishly above the shrieking wind and rain whipping around outside the best room at The Crown. It was a pleasant room with high, open-beamed ceilings and a gleaming oak floor covered here and there with cheerful rag rugs, the space dominated by a huge bed, impressively draped with a rich green silk canopy. A fire glowed orange and gold on the brick hearth; soft yellow light from several candles lit by Mrs. Gilbert, the widowed owner of The Crown, flickered about the room and, despite the snarling storm, cast a cozy spell.

Mrs. Gilbert, her liberally streaked gray hair half hidden beneath a muslin cap, gave a sharp shake of her head. “No, he’s not dead. Half drowned and near frozen, but not dead.”

Jeb looked to the other occupant in the room, a tall, fair-haired youth wearing breeches, boots and a leather jerkin over a billowy long-sleeved shirt. Looking beyond the boy’s garb, closer inspection revealed that the slim shape and finely etched features belonged to a young woman, her thick silvery-blond hair pulled back into a queue tied with a bit of black ribbon.

“I tell you, Miss Emily, it was pure luck I spied him,” Jeb said, his wrinkled fisherman’s face full of wonder. “With the storm and all, it’s black as midnight out there, and if it hadn’t been for this bloody big bolt of lightning at the very second I was looking in his direction, I never would have seen him.” He shook his head. “Good for him that we had a run tonight else we’d be finding his body washed up somewhere along the shore—if we found it at all.”

Emily Townsend nodded and walked closer to stare down at the man Jeb had pulled from the waters of the Channel. “He was indeed lucky,” Emily said, her gaze running over the man who lay still and silent beneath Mrs. Gilbert’s examination. His hair was black, his skin so dark it was almost swarthy—except for the worrisome blue cast to his lips. From what she could see, he was an exceptionally tall, fit man—and a stranger to all of them.

Mrs. Gilbert muttered, “He had the devil’s own luck, I’d say.” Looking up from her examination, she added briskly, “And most likely will recover with no ill effects.” Her hand on the cold, damp blankets that Jeb had wrapped the stranger in once he’d dragged him on board his boat and stripped off the wet clothes, she glanced over her shoulder. “Miss Emily, you need to leave the room now,” she ordered, “and let Jeb and I put this nightshirt on him and get him into a warm bed.”

When Emily hesitated, Mrs. Gilbert’s plump face softened and she said, “I know you have dozens of questions to ask Jeb, but go fetch those hot water bottles I left in the kitchen.” When Emily’s jaw took on that mulish cast they all knew so well, Mrs. Gilbert said firmly, “It wouldn’t be proper for you to stay. By the time you return, we’ll have him snug and warm between the sheets. Now go.”

Emily snorted at Mrs. Gilbert’s determination to treat her like some gently born miss just out of the schoolroom. It was true, she was gently born—her father had been the local squire until his death seven years ago—but she’d turned six and twenty months ago and was no child. And, she reminded herself, if it weren’t for her, Jeb wouldn’t have been running a load of contraband from France tonight and the stranger wouldn’t have been found. She had every right to remain, but from past experience she knew that there was no arguing with Mrs. Gilbert and reluctantly she left the room. Never one to brood, by the time she reached the inn’s kitchen she was smiling. No one, she admitted ruefully, as she picked up the hot water bottles and accepted the heated brick thrust into her hands by Flora, the middle Gilbert daughter, no matter what age or standing, disobeyed Mrs. Gilbert. Even her cousin, the dissolute Squire Townsend, was known to scamper away like a schoolboy to escape a tongue lashing by Mrs. Gilbert.

When she had returned, the stranger was decently garbed in an old nightshirt that had belonged to Mrs. Gilbert’s deceased husband and tucked beneath the quilts. The heated brick was placed at his feet; the water bottles snuggled up against his sides. Mrs. Gilbert shooed Jeb from the room and after taking one last look around, said to Emily, “I’ll send Mary up with some warm water and a cloth—you can clean that nasty gash on his head.” With a meaningful look at Emily, she added, “We’ve wasted enough time as it is—the others need to be on their way.”

Emily opened her mouth to protest but Mrs. Gilbert shook a finger at her. “I know,” said Mrs. Gilbert, “you think you should be the one down there dealing with them, but for once act like the lady you were raised to be and stay up here out of sight. Please.”

Emily hesitated. “Keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary,” she finally said. “My cousin has been acting strangely lately and I think he is spying on me.” She took a deep breath and confessed in a rush, “Every night for the past week or so someone, and I suspect it is my cousin, has tried the knob to my room.” At Mrs. Gilbert’s quick intake of breath, she said quickly, “Don’t worry. I keep the door locked and a chest of drawers pushed against it—as does Anne—so whoever it was goes away. But it would not be good if my cousin found me gone from my bed.” She swallowed. “If he were to discover what we are about—”

Mrs. Gilbert looked grim. “You don’t think he saw you leave tonight and followed you when you left the manor, do you?”

“I don’t believe so, but I’ve had the feeling ever since I slipped from my room that something wasn’t right, that something was wrong.” She glanced at the stranger. “First him and then . . .” She shivered. “I feel like a goose, but I still haven’t been able to stop myself from looking over my shoulder all night. I keep feeling as if someone is watching me . . . us.” Wearily, she added, “If the door to my bedroom was forced and Jeffery discovered my room was empty this is probably the first place he’d look.”

Mrs. Gilbert’s lips thinned. “Well, he won’t find you. We’ll have you on your way back to the manor quicker than a cat can lick its ear!” Giving Emily a fond pat on the shoulder, she said, “You worry too much, my dear—you always have. The stranger’s arrival has put us all in a dither, but I’m sure that’s all it is.” She looked around the room one last time and said, “And now I must go and see if Jeb and the others are loaded up and ready to leave. I’ll send Mary to you with those rags and the warm water. She can keep you company while I’m gone.”

Mrs. Gilbert bustled from the room and shortly Mary showed up with the cloths and bowl of water. At seventeen, Mary was the youngest of the five Gilbert daughters, and her blue eyes wide with excitement she approached the bed and stared at the stranger.

“Coo!” she exclaimed. “He isn’t dead, is he?” she asked, echoing Jeb’s earlier question.

Emily smiled faintly and said, “No. He just looks dead, but your mother says he will recover.” Her smile became a grin. “And we all know your mother is never wrong.”

Mary grinned back at her. “You can wager your last guinea on that!”

Taking the clean, white cloth and dipping it into the bowl of water, gingerly Emily began to clean the ugly wound, wincing when the man groaned at her ministrations. Just as well he’s unconscious, she thought, as she dipped and rubbed the length of the gash.

Mary shuddered as another violent gust of wind slammed into the walls of the inn. “Ma says it’s a miracle he’s alive. Not many survive a dip in the Channel on a night like tonight.”

Concentrating on the task at hand, Emily nodded and murmured, “I wonder what he was doing out there. And who he is.”

Mary paled as a thought struck her. “Oh, miss! You don’t think he’s a revenuer, do you?”

Having cleaned the wound as good as it was going to get under her hands Emily dropped the bloodstained rag in the water and studied the man’s features, noting the broad forehead, the high cheekbones and the generous mouth. She had nothing to base it on, but revenuer would be the last occupation she would have guessed this man to ply. There was something about his face . . .

Emily shook her head. “No, I don’t think he’s a revenuer.” Lifting the quilts, she looked down at his hand, studying the long, elegant fingers and the clean and trimmed fingernails. She frowned and glanced over at Mary. “Did Jeb bring the clothes the man was wearing with him to the inn? Or leave them on board the boat?”

Mary’s pretty face grew animated. “They’re downstairs drying by the fire in the little private room at the back. Do you think they’ll tell us who he is?”

Emily spared the stranger one last look. He seemed to be resting easier and the faint blueness around his lips was fading. There was nothing more she could do for him for now. Rising to her feet, she said, “I think we’ll know more about him than we do right now, if we take a look at what he was wearing when Jeb pulled him out of the Channel.”

The clothes told Emily quite a bit. Though damaged by salt water, the frilled white linen shirt was expensive and sewn by an expert seamstress and the cream-and-fawn patterned silk waistcoat was something only a wealthy man would own, as was the ruined pocket watch and the gold chain and fob. The water-stained cravat, like the shirt, was of the best linen and the finely knitted pantaloons also would have belonged to a man of means. When he’d gone into the water, to avoid the extra weight, she assumed his boots and coat had been wisely discarded.

Staring at the items draped over a pair of chairs near the roaring fire, Emily considered what she’d learned. The stranger was apparently a wealthy man. Not a revenuer, that much was certain.

Leaving his clothes behind, Emily dismissed Mary and returned upstairs. Resuming her seat beside the man on the bed, she stared at him, as if willing him to wake and tell her who he was and how he’d gotten into the Channel.

Being the daughter of the previous squire and having lived all of her life near a small village nestled in the Cuckmere valley she was intimately familiar with the local inhabitants. Her mouth twisted. And since her cousin had stepped into her father’s position, she had, unfortunately, become familiar with several randy, young bucks and widows of questionable morals from London who made up her cousin’s circle of friends.

This man was a complete stranger, but he wasn’t just any bit of flotsam tossed up from the belly of the Channel either. He was wealthy and his hands told her that he was a member of the gentry, perhaps even a member of the aristocracy.

Her expression puzzled, she continued to stare at him. There’d been no gossip about someone of his description visiting any of the great houses in the surrounding countryside.... So who was he? And why was he found drifting in the Channel on a wicked night like tonight?

As if to punctuate her thoughts, a shaft of wind suddenly shrieked down the chimney, making her jump. Amused at her reaction and noting that the fire was dying, Emily got up and walked over to poke at the fire, sending a shower of sparks flying upward. From the neat stack nearby, she threw on several more pieces of wood and only when the fire was crackling and snapping to her satisfaction, did she take a seat in the high-backed tapestry-covered chair near the fire.

She looked over at the stranger and was pleased to see that there was a faint flush to his cheeks and that his lips were a more natural color, the blueness having faded as his body warmed. Mrs. Gilbert was right: he should recover.

With the stranger’s most immediate needs taken care of, she dismissed him from her mind and turned her attention to what Mrs. Gilbert and Jeb were doing at this very minute. And she wondered again, if she had made the right decision four years ago....

She’d resisted the idea in the beginning and for the first few years following her father’s death, despite the unpleasant intrusion of her cousin and his drain on the family estates, she’d managed to keep her great-aunt, Cornelia, and her stepmother, Anne, fairly insulated and comfortable. Once her cousin had frittered away the bulk of the tidy fortune her father had amassed and began to ravage the estate for money to squander at the gaming tables and brothels in London, she’d had no choice.

With the Sussex coast only a few miles away, Emily had grown up hearing all the stories about the local smugglers and so it wasn’t such an outrageous decision. For as far back as she could remember, Cook, and even their butler, Walker, had filled her head with legendary tales of the smugglers’ bravery and cleverness in outwitting the custom officials and the hapless riding officers. When feeling mellow, even Cornelia had been known to tell a rollicking good story about the smugglers who plied their trade just off the coast. Many in the area, while not smugglers themselves, were relatives of smugglers or were aligned with the smugglers.

By the time she was ten, Emily could have named several known smugglers and a dozen or more villagers and farm laborers who helped transport the contraband goods to the outskirts of London. Her father had not been above accepting without comment the packet of tea, the cask of French brandy or the bolt of fine silk that periodically appeared in his stables—usually the morning after several of his horses were found standing in their stalls, muddy and exhausted.

Realizing that she had to do something to save them all from ending up destitute or nearly as bad, at the complete mercy of her cousin, turning to smuggling had been a simple step. And, she admitted with a clenched jaw, there’d been another reason: her little smuggling operation kept several villagers in their homes and saved them from the work house or being reduced to homeless beggars.

The sudden death of her father from a broken neck when his horse had balked at a fence and thrown him while he had been fox hunting in Leicestershire had stunned the family and the neighborhood. Anne, her stepmother, only two years her senior, had been shattered by the news of her husband’s death and had lost the baby she had been carrying.

It had been a terrible time. Not only had the little family suffered the devastating loss of nephew, father and husband, but Jeffery Townsend, the son of the old squire’s younger brother, had gleefully stepped into his shoes and took up the position as head of the family. It wasn’t a good fit. The new squire was as different from the old squire as chalk to cheese. Certainly Jeffery was no family man and had no time or patience for a cantankerous old woman, a weeping widow who’d just lost her husband and stillborn child and a fierce-eyed Emily. Only grudgingly had he accepted their presence in the lovely manor house that had housed the Townsend family for over two centuries.

The stranger stirred, groaning, and pushing aside her unpleasant memories, she hurried to his side. Hovering over him, she brushed back a strand of salt-stiffened black hair from his forehead.

She watched him for several more seconds, but he gave no further indication that he was coming awake. Staring intently at the dark face and noticing the thick black brows, the ridiculously long lashes of his eyes, she wondered again who he was and why he had been in the Channel. Did he have a family worried about him? A mother? A wife? Children?

The wound bothered her. It looked to her as if something . . . or someone had brought something very hard and very heavy down on the stranger’s head. Not that she was an expert, but in the four years since she had undertaken to rescue them all from destitution by smuggling, she had cleaned and patched and sewn up her share of wounds. Some were simply the result of the dangers faced at sea; others from clashes with the revenuers or with the vicious Nolles’s gang that claimed this part of Sussex as their own. She’d seen this kind of wound before and the cause was usually a blow to the back of the head.

Faith, at twenty-eight the eldest Gilbert daughter, opened the door and peeked inside. Seeing Emily standing beside the bed, she came into the room and stood by her side. “Whoever he is, he’s quite handsome, isn’t he?”

Emily shrugged. Thinking of her cousin, she muttered, “Handsome is as handsome does.” She glanced at Faith. “Has your mother returned?”

“No, but young Sam slipped by to say that she wouldn’t be long.”

“Did he say why they’re delayed?” Emily glanced at the painted china clock on the mantel. It was approaching two o’clock in the morning. “The ponies should have been loaded and on their way by now.”

“I expect the storm is the reason they’re running late.”

“There’s always a storm, Faith,” Emily said impatiently. “It shouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Well, that’s true, but with the stranger and all . . .”

Emily sighed. Faith was right. The stranger had played havoc with their schedule. Not having access to the easy landing at Cuckmere Haven like the Nolles gang, her intrepid little band of smugglers was forced to derrick their contraband goods up the steep, chalk face of the Seven Sisters. Without dashing him to death, getting the unconscious stranger up those same cliffs had been a slow process.

“Do you want me to bring you some soup or something hot to drink?” Faith asked.

Emily shook her head, and with her eyes on the stranger, she replied, “I’m fine and until he wakes, there’s no reason to prepare anything for him either. You can go help your sisters in the kitchen.”

Uncertainly Faith eyed her. “Miss,” she began hesitantly, “shouldn’t you be riding home? You’ve been away from the manor longer than usual. What if the squire misses you?”

With more confidence than she felt, Emily said, “Don’t worry. My cousin thinks that I am tucked safely in my bed. Before I left, I checked on him and he was deep in his cups with Mr. Ainsworth—his foppish friend he means for either Anne or myself to marry.”

Her eyes full of sympathy, Faith nodded, and since there was nothing else for her to do, she left for downstairs.

Emily stared at the door Faith shut behind her and sighed. There were few secrets in the village and it was common knowledge that Townsend wanted Emily, her great-aunt and her stepmother out of the manor. The late squire’s will prevented Jeffery from tossing them out of their home with only the clothes on their backs, but if he could marry off the two younger women . . .

Short of murder or marriage, Emily thought wryly, he was stuck with them—just as they were stuck with him. The former squire’s will had stipulated that Cornelia, Emily and Anne were allowed to live in the manor for their lifetimes—unless, of course, they married. Her lips twitched. But Jeffery would never be rid of Great-Aunt Cornelia, Emily thought with relish—at her age, no one expected Great-Aunt Cornelia to leave The Birches any other way than in a coffin.

Not only had the old squire ensured the women of his family a home for as long as necessary, he had also placed a nice sum in the funds to ensure that they would never be needy. Emily’s eyes hardened. Unfortunately, her father’s will hadn’t gone far enough. Jeffery, acting as head of the family and their trustees, had overseen the account and the money had vanished.

He may have gotten his hands on the money, Emily acknowledged, but he couldn’t budge them from the manor. Only by marriage or murder would they leave their home behind. But Jeffery wasn’t ready to murder them yet, she admitted with a curl of her lip, thinking of Mr. Ainsworth.

Mr. Ainsworth was the latest in a line of unsuitable suitors Jeffery had dredged up and forced under their noses, but Ainsworth was different and he worried Emily. She and Cornelia had managed to send the others packing, but Ainsworth was proving difficult to discourage and she wondered if it had been he who had tried the knob to her bedroom this past week.

Ainsworth had a compelling reason to want a wife: due to turn five and thirty in a matter of a few months, if he was not married to a “respectable” woman by his thirty-fifth birthday, he would lose a handsome fortune. It was well known for the last year or so that Ainsworth was hanging out for a wife, but since his reputation was reprehensible there were few respectable ladies willing to entertain his suit.

And that despicable creature, Emily thought furiously, is the man Jeffery thinks one of us should marry! Her hands tightened into fists. By heaven, she’d like to run the pair of them through.

A sudden awareness sent a trickle of unease down her spine and she glanced over to the man in the bed. Her heart skittered in her chest when she saw that the stranger was awake and staring at her.

Forcing a smile, she walked over to the side of the bed. “You’ve had a miraculous escape, sir,” she explained. “If Jeb hadn’t spied you when he did, I fear it would have gone badly for you.”

Eyes black as midnight studied her face. “Where am I?” he asked flatly. One hand shot out from beneath the pile of quilts and fastened like an iron vise around her slender wrist. “And who the hell are you, boy?”

With a swiftness Barnaby admired, a small knife appeared in the boy’s other hand and a second later the blade was pressed against his throat. The boy smiled fiercely and said softly, “I think, sir, that should be my question. Who the hell are you?”

The moment his hand closed around that slender wrist, Barnaby had a sensation of wrongness, but that feeling vanished in a flash, and he was left looking at the boy’s tense features. A very pretty boy, he thought frowning.

They stared at each other for a long moment, Barnaby’s black eyes boring into the boy’s gray ones. Neither was giving an inch and, reading the cool determination in the boy’s gaze, Barnaby decided, considering his dip in the Channel, that he might be wise not to find out precisely how handy the boy was with the knife.

Slowly letting go of the boy, he muttered, “Forgive me. I fear that I am not at my best at the moment.”

Her breathing ragged, Emily prudently put several feet between them. Keeping her knife handy, she said levelly, “Indeed, I would agree—especially if that is the way you greet someone who is trying to help you.”

The boy was insolent and Barnaby liked his pluck, but staring hard at the boy, he was nagged by the sensation that he was missing something, and that feeling of wrongness swept over him again. Una