Archer pressed her behind him and then strode to the kitchen door in two long strides. “Stay here,” he barked, abruptly naval and commanding. And then he vanished into the corridor.
She pondered this directive for half a moment. He was nothersuperior officer, was he?
No, she reasoned. He was not. She trailed him out into the hall.
He glanced back. “I thought I told you—” He broke off at another muffled sound from outside, almost inaudible. “Never mind,” he growled. “Stay behind me.”
He moved cautiously outdoors, and she followed, pressing herself to the exterior wall beside a barrel of blue delphiniums. The sky was slowly shifting from gray to pink; it was brighter here than it had been inside the kitchen. Archer’s loose white shirt whipped slightly in the wind off the sea, rippling over his shoulders.
Ruby watched him, heart in her throat, as he eased himself around the corner of the house. As he—
Spun back.
Covered her body full-length with his own.
She gasped. The back of her head bumped the granite wall behind her, and his heated, solid body pressed into her chest.
“What—” she got out.
His mouth was at her ear. “Shh,” he whispered. “There’s someone out there. Don’t move.”
She held herself still as a stone, and so did he, his body crushed against her own.
Was it a trick? A lie? She couldn’t make him out—couldn’t think clearly beyond the roaring of the waves and the thunder of her own pulse. She sucked in silent gulps of air, her cheek pressed to Archer’s bare chest. His breathing too was unsteady; each ragged exhalation ruffled her hair.
She couldn’t say how long they stood like that. When she shifted, individual grains of sand from his chest scraped her skin: tiny pinpricks that flickered along her nerves. His hand tangled in the band of her dressing gown, holding her in place.
There was silence all around them. No more soft cracks or mysterious figures. Nothing but the throb of her own blood.
She felt... she felt...
She didn’t know what she felt. Her blood was racing with terror and a sudden, dizzy awareness of his body against hers. Her skin felt hot, her thighs tight and loose at once. His thumb made a slow, slow arc at her waist, and she shivered.
When he pulled away, it felt like a loss.
As she watched, he stepped in front of her to peer around the corner and then strode off in the direction they’d heard the sounds. He moved easily, gracefully: a jungle cat, prowling about the edges of the cliff.
When he came back to her, his face was taut. “I think—whatever that was—it’s gone.”
Her mouth was still too dry to speak. To swallow. She licked her lips and watched as his gaze flickered, for space of a heartbeat, down to her mouth.
And then he looked back up. His eyes were bright blue now that the sun was nearly up—fierce and deathly serious. “Tell me the truth. Was that one of your girls out there?”
“I—what?” Her voice wobbled, and she had to stop to clear her throat. “Of course not. Alice and Tam are in their beds asleep. I thought... it wasn’t... one of the staff?”
He lifted his hand to rub at his stubble. “No.”
Oh heavens, she felt exceedingly stupid saying this, but: “The Scourge, perhaps?”
“There is—” He broke off halfway through the syllable, staring down at her. A gust of sea wind snapped his shirt, baring more tanned skin.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Of course. The Scourge. What else could it have been?”
She narrowed her eyes. His right hand was curled around the lip of the flower barrel, and his face had gone closed. He wasn’t trying to charm. But he wasn’t telling the truth either. She could read it in the careful blankness of his face.
They had seensomethingoutside the window. She knew they had. And though she wanted to attribute Archer’s actions to some ulterior motive, his urgency had seemed all too real.
“You don’t know either, do you?” She moistened her lips again. “We are both in the dark.”
