He caught her waist to steady them both and then, hastily, thrust her behind him.
“There it is,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on the sea. “The Scourge of St. Petroc’s. In the flesh.”
He followed her gaze, searching for the thing—the monster—that had frightened her.
He froze, looking out at the water’s edge.
The Scourge of St. Petroc’s, it appeared, was a seal. An enormous, scarred, spotted bull seal, for some baffling reason nowhere near the colony that lived on the other side of St. Petroc’s. He was making his way ponderously out into the ocean, but he stopped at Ruby and Archer’s approach. As they watched, the seal lifted his head and emitted a long, high-pitched, bone-chilling moan.
Archer froze in horrified anticipation. Did seals... charge?
To Archer’s relief, the seal dropped his head and resumed his trek into the ocean.
And behind Archer, Ruby giggled.
He spun to face. “What the devil—”
“I’m sorry,” she said—she did not look sorry in the slightest—“but yourface.” She clapped a gloved hand over her mouth, but more laughter broke out around the edges.
“You ungovernable little—” He caught her waist and dragged her backward into a small hollow in the cliff’s face. She tried to dig in her heels, and one of her slippers fell off, sticking in the sand. “You knew there was no Scourge.”
Her face was tipped up to his, all amusement. Somehow her fingers had locked around his upper arms. “I knew,” she said. “I’ve always known.”
He tucked her into the hollow, her back against the damp rough shelf of stone. “Why would you—”
“It was a mad notion, I know.” Her laughter was still there, in her voice, in the peach-tender curve of her mouth. “I kept running into that fellow when I was trying to find your hiding place on the beach. And it struck me that if therewasa rumored legend about a monstrous sea beast, he was probably the cause.” Her eyes were bluer than he’d ever seen them, and her hands were still on his biceps. “He did not truly hunt me. I was joking about that bit.”
“God,” he muttered. “Lunatic. Witch. You wouldn’t laugh like that if I’d met the damned thing on the field of battle and been eaten for my trouble.”
“You needn’t worry.” Her eyes sparkled. “I was prepared to hold you back by any means necessary.”
He crowded closer to her—damned impossible woman, she deserved crowding, deserved to be knocked off her feet and unsettled. “You don’t think I would’ve won?”
“Against a fifty-stone bull seal? To be honest—no.”
“I can’t think what I’ve done to deserve such little faith. Did you note the part where I put my body between you and the mysterious Scourge?”
Her eyes were on him—on his face. “I noted it,” she said.
Her voice had gone soft. All of her was soft—soft and unbearably close. Without his strictly intending it, his hands found hers, and he tugged at the fingers of her gloves.
But she closed her hand to stop him before he reached her skin. “I brought you down here,” she said quietly, “because I wished to be alone with you. I wanted to tell you that I know, Archer.”
He looked at her—her clear, encompassing gaze—and felt a cold wash of fear.
He tried to make his voice light. “About the Scourge? You’ve proven that well enough.”
“Not just the Scourge. I know everything.”
As always, he felt exposed by her. Vulnerable. He didn’t know what she thought she knew. “‘Everything’ seems a high bar,” he murmured. “Even for you.”
“I know that you truly are the steward of Pomeroy House,” she said, “though you use it as a cover for your smuggling operation. And I know that the rest of the house’s staff is... not. Not staff. Not meant to be there. They’re yours, aren’t they? Your people. Your crew.”
His heart clenched, and if he hadn’t been holding her hands, he might have stumbled backward.
His crew. She knew about his crew.
An agonized tangle of emotions tightened his throat, cutting him off from speech. Relief—some part of it was relief, that he no longer had to lie and dissemble, that he could stop trying to skip out from the purview of her damned relentless eyes.
