The Reckless Bride (36 page)

“Hold on!” Julius yelled, never taking his eyes from the river ahead.

Grasping a window ledge, looking ahead, Rafe saw the river’s surface ripple and churn. Although the water to either side appeared smoother, Julius steered the boat into the dangerous currents.

The boat pitched. Loretta’s hold on the door handle slipped. Before she staggered Rafe clamped her to him, his arm about her waist, her back to his chest. He held her steady as the boat wallowed, then rolled, then shot ahead.

“The channel for boats is very narrow through here,” Julius called back. “It is the most dangerous part of the river.” Abruptly, he hauled on the wheel, righting the boat as it listed wildly, then one of the crew pointed and yelled. Julius swung the wheel the other way.

Under his expert steering, the
Loreley Regina
rocked and rolled, but overall continued surging on.

“Luckily,” Julius continued, “the passage is short and fast. It doesn’t last long.”

Just as well. Loretta was grateful for small mercies. Grateful, too, for Rafe’s arm snug about her. She relaxed back against him, knowing he was strong enough to hold her, and would, even if her feet went out from under her.

The warmth that stole through his coat and through her pelisse was soothing, too.

Comforting and reassuring.

The
Loreley Regina
slowed; a minute later the boat rode steadily, stablely, onward once more.

They thanked Julius. He grinned and snapped off a salute, then they returned to the forward deck.

Once again at the prow rail, they were joined by Hassan and Rose.

“We were in the salon,” Rose replied in answer to Loretta’s query, “but the crew warned us. Bumpy old ride, it was.”

Just ahead, the cliffs drew back from the river leaving a narrow strip of land just wide enough for small townships on both banks.

“That’s St. Goar.” Nose in the guidebook, Loretta waved to the cluster of houses on the left bank. Above the town, a castle crowned the thickly treed cliff. “This book doesn’t mention that castle. But to the right we have St. Goarshausen.”

They all studied the small town as the boat slid by. Rafe and Hassan noted and commented on the square defensive tower that stood guard toward one end of the town.

Loretta looked further along and up. “And that"—she pointed to a castle just beyond the town, perched on the point where the cliff swept back to the river’s edge—"is Burg Katz.”

The castle gradually came into full view as they rounded the next gentle curve. A sizeable edifice, it dominated that portion of the river, with a clear view south to the Loreley Rock and a similar view north along the next stretch.

Rafe and Hassan speculated on the military implications of its position.

The boat sailed on. The light was fading, the shadows lengthening as a winter’s dusk took hold. Peering ahead, Loretta pointed at another, even larger castle perched on a height a little way back from the river. “I think that’s Burg Maus.”

Rafe glanced at her. “Burg Katz, Burg Maus?” When, brows rising, she glanced at him, he explained, “Castle Cat, Castle Mouse.” He grinned. “I wonder what significance
that has. Were the families actually the Katz and the Maus, or do the names allude to something else?”

The question resulted in some very inventive answers.

“Oh, here it is.” Looking up from the guidebook she’d been scouring for any suggestion of the true origins of the Cat and Mouse designations, Loretta swung around and looked back at the castle rising above St. Goar on the opposite bank. “That’s Burg Rheinfels.”

“At least that name makes sense,” Rafe said.

Having straightened from the prow rail to look back, he noticed the boat’s sails had been lowered. That, indeed, the boat had slowed.

As if in answer to the question forming in his brain, the rattle of the anchor chain reached them.

Julius swung down from the bridge and came toward them. “We will halt here for the night. This is a peaceful spot and as we need nothing in the town there is no need to tie up there.” He met Rafe’s eyes. “The river is too strewn with sandbanks and submerged islands to allow us to safely navigate the channels by night.”

Rafe nodded. “How are we faring with respect to our schedule?”

Julius grinned. “From here on, the river is swift and our way is fast. We should still reach Rotterdam on the nineteenth, as you wished.”

“Good.” Rafe glanced at the mists rising off the river now that the daylight had fled, then turned to Loretta, Rose, and Hassan. “Let’s go down and stay warm.”

By his calculation, they had that night, and if they were lucky the next, before they encountered the cult and the tension induced by his mission increased exponentially. They had been amazingly lucky; he held no illusions that such luck would hold.

Back in the salon, Rose settled with some sewing in an armchair at the rear of the room. Hassan sank into the chair alongside her.

Leaving them quietly chatting, Rafe followed Loretta to
the pair of armchairs in the prow. Reflecting on the insights their earlier conversation about their childhood exploits had revealed, he waited while she sat, then lounged in the other chair and returned to that subject. “Tell me about your sisters and brothers—what are their lives like now?”

The more he learned of her, her background, her family, the better placed he would be to ensure his claim to her hand met with no unnecessary resistance.

Nothing loath, Loretta replied. “Robert is the eldest. He and his wife, Catherine, make their home in London. They have three children—”

Describing her married siblings’ households brought them and their spouses vividly to mind. The more she spoke, the more she remembered and sought to convey, the more she saw, the more she understood—the more clearly she saw what it was she was searching for.

What it was she wanted of life. Of a husband, of her future.

What it was she wanted of Rafe.

No one who knew her three married siblings and their spouses could doubt that an emotion deeper than mere affection linked each couple. Even Robert and Catherine shared that deeper bond.

Loretta hadn’t, until then, defined, even in her own mind, why she’d refused to agree with Rafe’s decree that he and she would wed. Why she was still holding aloof, holding back from that decision.

A decision Rafe wanted to insist she’d already made.

She hadn’t, and no matter what he thought, she did have alternatives.

If at the end of this journey, she returned to London, to Robert and Catherine’s household, only to discover that the social pressure to choose a husband had become too great, she would simply seek refuge with one or other of her sisters in the country. They would shelter her, and if this journey had taught her one thing it was that she didn’t lack for spine when she had need of it. It wasn’t in her nature to cause dif
ficulties if she didn’t care about the issue, but if she did … she was confident, now, that she would act. She would retire from society until she reached the age of twenty-five, and was officially declared an old maid, on the shelf. Thereafter, the pressure to marry would largely evaporate, and she could continue on as she had before—writing her vignettes and amusing herself with being an aunt to her siblings’ offspring.

She’d been happy enough before, and would be again. A lesser happiness than her sisters and sister-in-law had claimed, but she would cut her coat to suit her cloth and be content.

So her alternative life was real. It was there, ready for her to claim if she wished.

Prior to meeting Rafe, that alternative had been her first and, to her mind, only available choice. Now … while she spoke, she studied Rafe. He was leaning forward, drinking in all she let fall, asking questions that by their very nature revealed an inherent understanding of sibling interaction.

Studying his eyes, the clean lines of his face, she acknowledged that her previous first choice had slipped very definitely to second place.

What now stood in first place, what encompassed her most ardent desire for her future life, was … a relationship with Rafe that held that same element of deep connection that her siblings enjoyed with their mates.

That was what she’d been searching for—instinctively, intuitively—in their physical interactions. Some hint, some clue, that he and she might within them possess the necessary ingredient for that deeper bond. She knew what she sought went by the name of love, yet that word described such a broad gamut of feelings and reactions that it seemed wiser not to evoke it.

Wiser instead to search for the evidence of its existence. For its shadow, as it were.

So she’d started to search, and was determined to keep
searching. What she’d found … was thus far inconclusive. What she sought might be there, in his heart and in hers, but she wasn’t experienced enough to be certain. Not yet.

But if what she sought was there … pursuing her agenda, devoting herself to the task of revealing it, confirming it, then strengthening and protecting it, was self-evidently the only reasonable choice she could make.

Tilting her head, she looked into Rafe’s eyes. “What of your brothers and sisters? Are they married with families, too?”

His lips twisted. He leaned back in his chair. “They are, but I’ve been away so long … rejoining the fold will be like walking into an unknown world.”

“What about in India? Were you close to other English families out there?”

He shook his head. “I lived mostly in barracks, or in bachelor lodgings in Calcutta and Bombay. In between fighting, Hassan acted as … my majordomo, I suppose you might say. In the early years we spent a lot of time in the field, putting down uprisings and the like, then securing trade routes for the merchant caravans. And in the last months when we moved to Bombay, we spent all our days pursuing the Black Cobra and the cult.”

She approached the subject from every angle she could think of, but the answer remained the same. Rafe had no experience of married life to draw on—of the sort of married life his contemporaries might have. The concept of what she sought might well be a complete mystery to him.

Consequently she jettisoned any thought of asking him directly what he felt for her, yet him not knowing what love, the sort that applied in marriage, was did not in any way preclude him from feeling it.

Clearly discovering whether love could be the foundation stone of a marriage between them rested solely on her shoulders.

When the darkness outside had closed in and they rose to
change for dinner, she headed for her cabin determined to prevail. To unearth the truth, for both their sakes.

After dinner, a rather relaxed affair now there were only the four of them at table, they repaired to the salon and, at Rafe’s suggestion, indulged in several games of whist. To Loretta’s amazement, Rose proved surprisingly adept; when questioned, she revealed that in Robert’s often quiet household, the staff had taken to playing the game to fill their evenings.

An hour sped by, then by general consensus, they retired to the lower deck, to their cabins.

But not to their beds.

In her cabin off the stateroom’s sitting room, Loretta, still fully dressed, vacillated over whether she was brazen enough to invite Rafe to her cabin and her bed—and, if so, whether to change into her nightgown first, or later, which presumably would mean not at all—when the sound of a door opening and quietly closing reached her.

Going to the cabin door, she eased it open—and heard the stateroom’s main door, the one into the corridor, quietly shut.

Emerging into the sitting room, she stared at the corridor door, then crossed to the other smaller door that gave onto the tiny cabin tucked behind the principal cabin Esme had occupied. Loretta scratched on the panel. When no answer was forthcoming, she opened the door and peeked in—confirming that Rose was no longer in the cabin. No longer in the stateroom.

Loretta smiled fondly. That made things simpler.

Turning to the corridor door, she opened it—

Rafe filled the doorway.

Swallowing a gasp, she reeled back, waved him in. He stepped past her. She shut the door, turned to face him.

His hands, already sliding about her waist, firmed. He smiled, blue eyes improbably innocent under raised brows. “Were you expecting me?”

Hands rising to his shoulders, she frowned him down. “I was coming to invite you here … to my cabin.”

“I decided to save you the journey.” He glanced at her open cabin door, at the bed visible beyond it. When he turned back to her, his expression had left innocent far behind. “Your bed’s bigger than mine.”

He drew her closer until their bodies met, until heat streaked through her, familiar and sweet. “And,” he murmured, seductively deep as he lowered his head, “there’s a great deal to be said for a good-sized bed.”

His intention to demonstrate didn’t need to be stated. Loretta twined her arms about his neck and met his lips with hers. Kissed him with all the beguiling passion she could muster, then parted her lips, invited him to take, boldly challenged him to conquer.

She was getting better at this, the giving and the taking, more confident and assured, and if her wits still suspended beneath the onslaught of his passionate response, they no longer vanished or vaporized.

Both wits and will were still hers, able to be deployed in the pursuit of her need. In pursuit of the answer, in pursuit of her goal.

She still gasped when his hand found her breast and closed, then eased and fondled. Even through the heavy silk of her winter dinner gown, she felt the heat of his touch, the passion that flowed as he caressed, the possessiveness when he kneaded her soft flesh, then found her nipple and tweaked, squeezed …

“The cabin.” The words came out as a sultry instruction, a directive more than a request.

His lips curved against hers. “As my lady commands.”

Somewhat to her surprise he stepped back, but then he caught her hand, and with his other hand still at her waist she was twirling. Whirling. He waltzed her, literally, around, then through her cabin’s door, swirled and nudged it shut behind them, then slower yet no less powerfully, he continued to dance with her in the moonlight.