He did not wait for her to finish. One moment, she was attempting to explain her predicament with the composure befitting a baronet’s daughter; the next, large hands had closed about her arms, and she was lifted from the wreckage as though she weighed no more than Molly’s abandoned pamphlet.
“Sir—” she gasped, but speech proved difficult when one was being cradled against a chest that felt carved from the same stone as the cliffs. His coat was soaked through, yet beneath it she felt the heat of him—the solid, living warmth that cut through the rain’s chill.
He looked down at her. At such proximity, she saw that his eyes were not merely dark, but the deep brown of aged oak, of earth after rain, fringed by lashes any debutante would envy. His jaw was set, his mouth a firm line that suggested he found the storm, the wreckage—and perhaps Fiona herself—deeply inconvenient.
“Your maid?” he asked.
“Inside. And our coachman—he said he was pinned—”
The stranger turned his head and bellowed an order into the gale. Though Fiona could not distinguish the words, two additional figures soon emerged from the rain—servants, by their appearance. One hastened toward the carriage; the other followed at a run.
“My men will see to them.” He was already moving, carrying her away from the wreckage with long, decisive strides that defied mud and wind alike. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Fiona Hart.” Her teeth had begun to chatter as the cold penetrated the shock. “Miss Fiona Hart, of Suffolk. I was travelling to Whitby, to my aunt—”
“You will not reach Whitby tonight.” The words were delivered without apology. “The road is washed out in three places, and the bridge at Cragmoor has collapsed.”
“Collapsed?” she repeated faintly. “But my aunt is expecting—”
“Your aunt must wait.”
The audacity of it—spoken as though her family’s expectations weighed less than the weather—ought to have offended her. Yet the rain drove harder, her ankle throbbed with each step, and his arms were the only constant in a world that had abruptly lost all sense of order.
Through the veil of rain, a shape emerged.
A house—no, a castle—of dark stone and sharp angles, perched upon the cliff’s edge as though grown from the rock itself. Lightning fractured the sky behind it, and for one absurd moment, Fiona wondered whether she had fallen bodily into Molly’s novel.
“Where are you taking me?” she called over the wind.
He glanced down at her, something flickering in his eyes—surprise, perhaps, that she dared question him. “Thornwick Castle. My home.”
Thornwick Castle.
The name stirred a faint chord in her battered memory—something mentioned in her aunt’s letters, some warning ormorsel of gossip she had skimmed in favour of practical details. But the thought dissolved as another wave of pain surged through her ankle, and she found herself clutching at his coat to suppress a cry.
His hold tightened—not painfully, but with deliberate assurance, as though he had perceived her distress and addressed it in the most efficient manner possible.
“We are nearly there.” His voice softened, if only a degree—from granite to sandstone. “You are safe now, Miss Hart.”
Safe. A simple word. And yet, cradled against this stranger’s chest while a storm raged and a castle loomed ahead, she found she almost believed him.
The world began to blur at the edges—shock, cold, or both. She tried to focus upon his face, to commit its stark planes to memory, but her vision would not obey.
“Sir,” she managed, because even on the brink of insensibility, she was her mother’s daughter, and propriety must be observed. “I do not believe you have given me your name.”
A pause. Rain drummed against his shoulders as the castle gates swung open before them, revealing a courtyard lit by guttering torches.
“Hale,” he said at last. “Christian Hale.”
The name meant nothing to her. Yet the manner in which he spoke it—as though he anticipated recognition, or perhaps braced for it—penetrated even her gathering haze.
“Thank you, Mr Hale,” she whispered. “For saving my life.”
Something shifted in his expression—surprise, perhaps, or something more guardedly tender—but darkness crept in from the edges of her vision, and she could no longer be certain of anything.
The final words she heard before unconsciousness claimed her were spoken low and rough against the storm, a murmur that might have been a warning—or something more intimate still:
“Not‘Mr Hale’, Miss Hart. The Duke of Thornwick.”
