He puffed out a breath and shoved his hair out of his face, an action that left a smear of sand on his cheek. The sand in the cove was dazzling at dusk, Archer had always thought—all flecks of glitter and rippling lines left by the waves.
Golden. Exquisite. Somehow both soft and sharp at once.
Impossible to be free of, once you’d touched it.
Archer ground his teeth and headed toward the water’s edge to fling himself into the ocean and thereby rid himself of the metaphor. But before he could finish peeling his shirt over his head, he heard a familiar squeaky throat-clearing behind him.
He let go of his shirt and spun about. Lady Ruby stood, tucked behind a shelf of rock, not ten feet from the cave in which he’d hidden sixteen casks of wine. Her chin was up, her eyes fixed on the streaked pink clouds, and her expression so innocent that he almost expected her to begin to whistle.
She was absurd. And he more so, because his heart had leapt in his chest at the sight of her.
“Oh,” she said brightly, as if only just noticing him. “Captain Archer. Fancy seeing you on the beach.”
“A coincidence, I’m sure,” he muttered, and prowled toward her. He needed to distract her—needed to keep those damned penetrating eyes directed away from the cave at the foot of the cliff. “Did Lamentation send you down here?”
She locked her hands together, her gloved fingers intertwined. “Erm... no.”
“How did you find this cove, then?”
“Well,” she said. The faux innocence on her face was slowly evaporating as her cheeks pinked. “If you must know. I followed you.”
“You followed me?” he demanded. Bloodyhell. Had she been watching as he’d moved the wine? Surely not—he knew her well enough to think she would not have remained silent as he blithely committed crimes in front of her nose.
She looked even more guilty now. “Your trail, rather.”
He squinted at her. The light was low, but—yes, her frock did appear to be covered in sand and bits of pink thrift and white campion. “You followed mytrail?” He kept on echoing her words, but only because she was such a fantastic enigma. Was she some kind of tracker of wild game, in addition to her expertise in Greek statuary and home decorating? Had she crawled along the footpath looking for signs of where his boots had trod?
No doubt she had. There was no sense in continuing to be shocked by anything she came out with. If she took wing and flew to the top of the cliff, he would have to simply accept it as another talent she’d kept hidden away.
She was quite red now and yes, in fact, her flushdidgo all the way down to the tops of her breasts, visible above her low-cut bodice.
He cursed himself for noticing.
“In the interest of honesty,” she said, “I will admit that it took me several tries to locate you.”
He was close enough now to put his hand to her elbow, and so he did. He plastered a smile on his face as he gripped her arm, though at this point any effort at charm was mostly reflex. “Lady Ruby, you continue to astonish me. Have you any interest in showing me how you managed such a feat?”
She widened her stride so that he could not spin her away from the cave’s entrance. “As a matter of fact,” she said. “No.”
Of course. Of course she did not. “Then might I escort you—”
“No,” she said again. “I have come down here, Captain Archer, for the express purpose of determining what brings you to the beach so often.”
Bleeding, bloody hell. She could not find these damned casks. He would do whatever it took. Anything.
He turned his desire to wince into a brighter, more enthusiastic smile. “‘Often’ must be an exaggeration—”
“Twelve times,” she said crisply, “in the four weeks since we arrived at Pomeroy House. I can’t think what one would call that frequency other than ‘often.’”
“You pay remarkable attention to my person, Lady Ruby,” he got out. Only force of habit kept the words from emerging through gritted teeth.
But to his surprise, her flush, which had just begun to fade, flared back again, hot and pink. Her lips parted, then shut again, and she glanced to the open neck of his shirt. To where his chest was bared beneath her gaze.
Archer realized he was still holding on to her, nothing but rough sand between his fingers and her skin.
He had not meant to suggest that she had some licentious interest in him. But his blood heated beneath the slow drag of her eyes—more gray than blue in the gathering dark.
Perhaps hehadmeant to suggest it. Perhaps some part of him had known that beneath the ruthless scrape of her gaze was something hotter, more intent.
