A rustle went through the crowd, more of whom suddenly seemed to be watching the battle developing on shore than the one in the water.
Distracted by the groan of the man whose shoulder she was holding down, trying to stem the flow of blood, Bess looked away from the growing crowd.
The attention they were drawing made Bess uneasy, but there was no help for it. The half-drowned sailor needed help. “For heaven’s sake, can’t one of you send for a doctor?”
“It’s hardly a mortal wound.” Amused derision, from the fair-haired one Lucy had called Thornecliff. “This fine fellow likely suffers worse injuries on a night out drinking by the docks.”
“Don’t bother, Bess,” Lucy said, scorn dripping from her tongue like venom. “This gentleman, and I use the term loosely, wouldn’t bestir himself to do the right thing even if it cost him nothing.”
“Quite right.” That same lazy voice replied, smoother than silk and twice as cool. “I’m not in the habit of putting myself out to help a man who’s already being well compensated for his work. I’m flattered you seem to know me so well, Miss—…I’m sorry, but have we been introduced? I can’t seem to recall.”
The way Lucy drew herself up sent a wash of real alarm through Bess; if she hadn’t been actively stanching a wound, she would’ve leapt up to intercept Lucy before she could inflict one of her own.
But she needn’t have worried—Lucy only turned her back on the crowd, dismissing them from her attention with the regal assurance of a queen.
It was very well done and Bess was proud of her, especially as she could see from the hectic flush mottling Lucy's cheeks that the girl's blood was well up and she would much rather have landed the ill-mannered “Thorne” a facer.
Something about the name tugged at Bess’s memory, but she couldn’t place it and it hardly mattered anyway. If the fellow had any sense, he’d take his friends and move along. Meanwhile, they had to figure out what to do with this injured man.
The prone sailor moaned again, more feebly this time, and Lucy leaned over to get a better look at his face. “Mercy, he's just a boy. He can’t be more than sixteen years old.”
Lucy was right. Bess hung on grimly as the boy thrashed about under her hands. She couldn’t believe no one else was helping. Where were this boy’s parents?
Well. Bess knew better than most what was the likely answer to that question. It only made her more determined to see this poor boy through his ordeal.
“Ah yes, a fitting companion for an impudent child like yourself,” the man Lucy had called Thornecliff drawled. So he was still lurking there behind them. Wonderful.
Lucy audibly gritted her teeth but kept her eyes on Bess’s face. “I will go for help.”
“You certainly will not go anywhere alone! Your mother would have my head, and she’d be right to!”
Lucy opened her mouth, undoubtedly to argue that her mother would understand, but that dreadful, drawling voice rang out over the onlookers like the shot of a cannon across the bow: “Ah yes, that well-known paragon of virtue and respectability, the dowager Duchess of Ashbourn. Heaven forfend that her daughter should behave in a way that would bring shame upon her illustrious name.”
Before Bess could do more than draw in an outraged breath, Lucy was up and leaping in a flurry of mud-streaked muslin and near-silent fury.
So. He’d recognized Lucy after all.
Chapter Three
The crowd erupted all around them. Keeping her hands clamped to the shoulder wound, Bess managed to crane her neck around in time to see Lucy haul back her arm, fist curled tight, but as she swung Thornecliff caught her wrist in a move almost too fast to track.
Lucy gave an inarticulate cry of murderous rage that ended up half muffled against the superfine wool of Thornecliff’s exquisitely fitted coat.
He pulled her in close to control her angry attempts to twist free and clamped a large hand over Lucy’s mouth. All around them, his obnoxious companions brayed with laughter and encouragement.
“Get her, Thorne,” cried a sandy-haired gentleman with cheeks almost as red as the blood staining Bess’s gloves.
All of this would be bad enough, Bess thought, despairing—but the worst of it was the expression on Thornecliff’s too-handsome face. She would’ve expected him to be smirking about at his friends, smug at having goaded Lucy into such disastrously impetuous behavior.
And there was a curve to the cruelly sensual line of his lips, but his pitch-dark eyes were fixed upon the girl in his arms. And the look in those black eyes reminded Bess of the look she’d last seen on a fox caught in a trap in the woods behind the Cartwright farm.
Ensnared. And in a bit of a frenzy about it.
Bess blinked, and the expression had smoothed to the faint, above-it-all air of amusement she’d expected, but she couldn’t forget what she’d seen on Thornecliff’s face for that brief instant.
The nearby retort of rifle fire no longer seemed the closest source of danger.
Summoning every ounce of authority she’d earned while presiding over a barroom full of rowdy villagers and farmers, Bess snapped, “Release her this instant, sir.”
