But he wasn’t. He never had been.
“You’re everything I want,” he rasped as he ripped his mouth from hers. “But we both know I can’t have you.”
Chapter 10
If Daniel hadn’t spent the entire night unable to sleep, he might not have been standing at his window at sunrise in time to see a small familiar figure steal through the garden and wend her way across the drawbridge.
Rebecca. Leaving the castle.
Alone.
There was no time to wake his valet. Daniel paused only to tug on breeches, a linen shirt, and his greatcoat before racing out of the guest quarters and across the front garden to the top of the drawbridge, where he’d last caught sight of her.
Heart pounding, he scanned the horizon. That women should never venture out unaccompanied wasn’t just some namby-pamby rule to guard fashionable ladies’ reputations. It helped protect the fairer sex from being set upon by thieves, or worse. And out here on the abandoned Cornish cliffs, where smugglers were known to row ashore… She could be in real danger.
A flash of black hair and white pelisse against the infinite blue of ocean and sky.There. That was Rebecca, striding off the walking path to the village and angling instead toward the cliffs and the caves in the distance.
He ran.
Daniel had no clue what the blasted woman was up to—he didn’t even know what the devilhewas about—but the last thing he wanted was for any harm to come to Rebecca. He would never forgive himself.
By the time he reached the cliffs at the edge of the sea, she had vanished from the horizon. His boots knocked a cloud of dust into the nothingness as he swayed unsteadily to keep from sliding over. Vertigo assailed him as he searched for any sign of her on the rocks below.
A flash of white disappeared into a yawning black crevice amongst the rocky outcroppings of the unforgiving cliff.
Bloody hell. His hands went clammy. Daniel hated dangling from perilous heights over the ocean almost as much as he hated passing the night with restless spirits in a haunted castle.
He dropped to his knees and eased the toes of his Hessians down the cliff face until they found purchase on a slender ledge no wider than his palm. Bits of rock crumbled away from the weight of his body as he edged his way down until there were no more toeholds. His tight muscles began to tremble from the strain of holding on.
To reach the next flat grouping wide enough to walk upon with a slightly lower probability of breaking his neck in the process, he was going to have to release his death grip on the edge of the dusty cliff above, drop another six or eight feet straight down… and hope to land on jagged rock, rather than tumble into the depths of the sea.
Brilliant.
With a final, pleading glance up at the heavens, he kicked back from the ledge and released his fingers.
Salty air rushed past his ears before his boots landed hard on the rocks below, jarring his shaky knees and causing him to flail for balance.
Once his panicked heart slowed to a slightly less apoplectic pace, he picked his way to the crevice he’d glimpsed from above and slipped inside.
Darkness surrounded him.
Light from the fissure was quickly extinguished by shadow as the cave twisted and sloped its way toward the sea. There was no sign of Rebecca. No sign of anyone. He pressed onward.
Just when he thought the pitching turns in relentless blackness would never end, a blinding light filled the cave and dazzled his eyes.
He squinted to regain his swimming vision. The world blurred, then came into focus. His lips parted in stunned disbelief.
An opening. The treacherous path had led to a fairy-tale opening the size of a portico. On the other side was a pristine stretch of placid, white sand beach. The gentle lull of frothy ocean ripples washing ashore was the only sound to break the tranquil silence.
He was certain not a single soul had ever set foot on this portrait-perfect, inaccessible beach in a forgotten stretch of virgin land. Except for Rebecca.
And now…him.
He cleared his throat as he stepped out of the cave. “Fancy meeting you on this… godforsaken path that only a madwoman with no care for her life at all would dare be foolish enough to take.”
She spun around, mouth falling open. “Daniel?”
“I told you London bucks often get lost in the country.” He cupped a hand to his eyes. “Is this the way to the apothecary?”
