Burning Up by Nalini Singh
"Merely human."
He turned.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, her hair tumbled over her smooth shoulders, watching him. "You would make a good husband, I think. For someone else. I am . . . fond of you. But I have no desire to marry."
She was rejecting him. His hands curled into fists at his sides. He did not understand. Every woman wanted to marry. What other options did she have?
"You must want security," he said. "A family, a home of your own."
"I enjoy my freedom. I wish to keep it."
He stared at her, baffled and frustrated. "What if you are with child?"
Her eyes were bright as the sun-struck sea. But underneath the golden surface, shadows flickered and swayed. "It is not possible."
"Of course it's possible." His voice was harsh. "We have lain together. Twice."
She raised her brows at his deliberate appropriation of her words. "And will do so again, I hope."
"Then marry me."
The offer slipped out, shocking them both. But he did not take the words back. He wanted this, wanted her.
"Because we pleasure each other in bed?" She tilted her head as if considering. His heart pounded in anticipation. "No. My life suits me. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have. Nothing I need or want."
Her rejection knocked the air from his lungs. He inhaled past his constricted throat.
He had narrowly escaped committing his life and honor to a woman he hardly knew. A woman without apparent wealth or connection. He should be relieved.
He was not relieved. He was hurt, confused, angry.
"Then I will bid you good day, madam."
Unfortunately, he could not even exit on that dignified note, bearing away with him his injured pride, his bruised heart, and his rejected proposal. First he must get through the awkward business of dressing. He could only be grateful that he was a soldier and not a dandy. At least he did not require her assistance to struggle into his boots and his coat.
She pulled the blue dress over her head and stood in the doorway of her cottage to watch him mount.
Her words echoed in his empty heart. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have. Nothing I need or want.
A child. He could have gotten her with child.
"You will inform me," he commanded, "if there are any consequences."
A flush rose in her smooth, pale, perfect face. "I will inform you."
With that, he had to be satisfied.
He pressed his heels to Neptune's sides and rode away.
FOUR
The rising wind rattled the library windows, pushing smoke down the chimney and into the room. The fire fought the gloom outside. Unfortunately, the red flames failed to lighten Jack's mood or to dispel the chill between him and Sloat.
The estate manager settled deeper into his chair on the opposite side of Jack's desk, stretching his thin shanks toward the fire. "Everything was done to preserve the wealth of the estate," he protested. "To protect your interests."
Possibly, Jack acknowledged.
And possibly Sloat, like a looter on a battlefield, would rob anyone too weak to beat him off.
Jack had spent the last four days reviewing the household accounts, responding to a flood of bills and grievances presented by local fishers, farmers, and tradesmen.
In the past six months, pleas for payment had been disputed or ignored. Improvements had been neglected or denied. Jack suspected some of the money that could have been plowed into the land had gone to line Sloat's own pockets.
He wouldn't trust Sloat at his back in a fight. But he had no cause to fire the man. After four days of searching, he could find no proof that the steward had stolen from the estate, no evidence that Sloat had exceeded his authority.
"I do not question your attention to the estate's profits," he said. "Only to its people."
Sloat smirked. "Your cousin never complained."
An old, sick man without any family about him, dependent on his steward and his housekeeper.
"My cousin is dead," Jack said. "You report to me now."
"His executors charged me to run his estate," Sloat said.
"While they searched for an heir." News of his inheritance had come as a surprise to Jack. Presumably it was a shock to Sloat as well. "The estate is my responsibility."
"You cannot manage without me."
"Let us hope," Jack said steadily, "that won't be necessary. Or are you proffering your resignation?"
Silence fell. A sudden squall lashed the windows.
Sloat sniffed. "You are, of course, free to do as you please."
No, he wasn't.
He was bound by his responsibilities, trapped by his obligations and a gentleman's code of behavior. If he pleased himself, he would overcome Morwenna's objections and carry her off to his bed. Instead, he was stuck in this smoky room with his hostile steward going over figures until his eyes blurred.
He plucked another bill from the pile on his desk, scanned another column of numbers. "Dougie Munro wants a hundred pounds for horse feed."
"He'll be lucky to get half that."
It cost more to feed a horse than to keep a servant. The stables at Alden housed four farm animals, Sloat's cob, and a couple of carriage ponies. "The charge seems reasonable to me," Jack said.
"He is a tenant. He owes rent."
"He cannot meet his obligations if we don't meet ours." Jack put the bill on the stack to be paid.
Outside, a bell rang, tolling against the storm, penetrating the rush of wind and rain.
Jack raised his head, glad of the distraction. "Who died?"
"No one. Yet," Sloat said. "They ring the church bell to guide the boats in to the harbor."
Jack glanced at the windows, where a hard rain streaked the glass. "The fishermen went out in this weather?"
Sloat shrugged. "It wasn't raining when they went out."
They continued to work with the rain beating at the glass and the fire hissing in the hearth. The bell tolled incessantly, jangling on Jack's nerves.
He drummed his fingers, glanced outside at the thrashing trees and turbulent sky. He thought of the men on the boats, braving the storm, and the families waiting for them onshore. "I'm going to the village," he announced abruptly. "We need to help."
Sloat huddled closer to the fire. "Why?"
He eyed his steward with dislike. "Because we can. Load a wagon with blankets, brandy, firewood. Have Mrs. Pratt make up some baskets and bring them down with you."
"Bring them where?"
Where did people gather in times of trouble? The church?
"The tavern," Jack said. "Hurry."
A wet and worried-looking groom led Neptune from the stables. Outside the yard, the wind pounced, shrieking, biting, pelting them with rain. The horse shuddered and shook his head in protest. Jack steadied him with hands and voice. Neptune responded to his reassurance, putting his head down, forging forward through the sucking mud. The rain slashed down like knives. Trees tossed and bent. Branches creaked and flew.
Jack raised his face to the slashing wind and rain. Despite the freezing discomfort, it felt good to be out, to be doing, to pit his strength against something as substantial as the storm. Neptune emerged from the illusory shelter of the wood onto the track that spilled to the harbor.
The ruthless wind, the brutal view, snatched his breath away. The ocean raged as loud as an army on the move, gray and violent as a battlefield. Huge breakers rolled between the swelling sea and the lowering sky, flinging themselves onto the rocks in a fury of spray and foam.
The shuttered houses clung to the rocks like a colony of oysters, dark and closed. Slits of yellow lamp light edged the tavern windows. The church bell tolled, Come . . . back. Come . . . back.
A boat spun and tumbled in the turbulent waves like a leaf in the gutter, beyond reach, beyond help, beyond hope. Half a dozen men clustered onshore, brandishing a rope in the wind. Their shouts rose thin and piping as gulls' cries.
The small craft pitched and tossed without sail or oars, up and down, up and . . . A wave crashed down and drained away, leaving a single man inside clinging to the side of the boat.
Jack's heart thundered. He spurred Neptune forward, hooves clattering on the wet stone.
They reached the strand. The man in the boat had caught a wild toss and somehow tied the rope to the prow. The men onshore hauled and cursed, the wet rope yanking through their hands.
Jack slid from the saddle and stumbled down the beach into the teeth of the wind and the cold, cold tide. The air was thick with salt and fear. Water slapped his face, filled his boots, dragged at his thighs. He slogged through the churning surf and grabbed hold of the rope between two other men.
"Pull!"
The boat leaped liked a shark fighting at the end of a line. Jack's shoulders wrenched. His boots scraped shale.
"Pull."
A waved crashed over them, almost knocking Jack from his feet. The man in front of him went down. He hauled him up by his collar, wrapped white knuckles around the twisted rope.
"Pull."
They staggered back, fighting the savage sea and angry tide for possession of the boat. It wallowed and rolled, ungainly in the shallows, banging ribs and shins, smashing fingers. They towed it through the long white breakers and onto the shore.
The man inside sprawled against the bench, dark and limp as seaweed abandoned by the tide.
Jack's leg throbbed like fire. Blood crawled across his knuckles. He couldn't feel his fingers or his feet. He ran to Neptune, a big, gray shape against wet, black rocks, and led him to the men whipped by the rain, huddled around the boat.
"How many more?" he shouted against the wind.
A burly man with an orange beard--the baker--looked up. "All in. Jeb's was the last boat."
"Put him on my horse. We'll take him to the tavern."
Sloat would be there soon with a cartload of brandy and blankets.
Or he'd fire the bastard.
They limped and lurched from the beach, a sodden line of men buffeted by the gale and bolstered by their small victory over the sea.
The taproom enveloped them in warmth, noise, and light. Half the village of Farness crowded the bar or clustered around small tables. The smell of wet wool, smoke, and onions hung on the air.
Jack's head swam. He needed to sit down.
The rescued man leaned on his companions, stumbling across the wet plank floor to a place by the fire.
"Da!" A pretty, rounded young woman with swollen eyes rushed forward and threw her arms around him. She drew back, her gaze fixed painfully on his face. "Colin?"
Quiet fell on the taproom.
"Sorry, lass." Her father's voice was hoarse with salt and sorrow. "He's . . . He was trying to save the nets when . . ."
"No! Colin." Wailing, she sank to the floor.
"Whiskey," Jack ordered.
He was tired of death. He had sat by too many dying soldiers, stood in too many sitting rooms to deliver unwelcome news to grieving mothers and wives. Sliding an arm about the girl, he raised her from the floor. "Let me help you to a chair."
She sobbed noisily and collapsed against his chest. The tavern keeper reached for a bottle.
The door to the taproom burst open in a rush of rain and a gush of cold air.
Jack glanced up, expecting Sloat.
Morwenna materialized from the storm, framed by wet timbers against the stormy sky. Her fair hair was plastered to her head by rain. Her blue dress clung to her body. She looked like the figurehead on a sailing ship. Like a mermaid.
Jack felt a crackle like lightning zing along his nerves and lift all the little hairs on the back of his neck.
"I heard the bell," she said. "What is happening?"
No one answered.
She was not one of them, Jack realized. She shone among the villagers of Farness like a fine wax taper, slender, straight, and pale. She did not belong in this grimy taproom. How could he ever have thought she could belong to him?
Her gaze swept the room like a flame, lighting on his hand where it rested on the girl's back. Her brow pleated. "You are hurt."
He had forgotten his bloody knuckles. "I'm fine."
Morwenna took a half step forward out of the rain, toward him. "I could help."
Her offer seared him like the drag of the wet rope. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have, she had said. Nothing I need or want.
"There is nothing you can do," he said.
Her breath rasped like a match against the silence. Her gaze narrowed. "Who is that?"
He glanced down at the crying girl in his arms. He didn't even know her name.
The tavern keeper's wife crossed her padded arms against her bosom. "That's our Jenny Miller. She just lost her man."
"Lost," Morwenna repeated blankly. As if the young fisherman were a halfpenny or a sheep.
"In the sea," Jack said harshly.
She cocked her head, listening to the wind and the sad, deep notes of the bell: Come . . . back. "I could find him for you."
Jenny's father stirred by the fire. "He went down with the nets," he said dully. "He will not be found until this storm is past."
His daughter gave a muffled sob.
Jack's helplessness pushed like a thumb on his windpipe. "There's nothing you can do." He forced the words through his tight throat. Nothing he could do. "Nothing anyone can do."
She met his gaze, her eyes running with borrowed colors like the sea. Without a word she turned and walked into the rain.
The tavern keeper's wife sniffed. "She's a fool to go back out in this weather."
Jack stared at the closed door, his throat aching, his heart burning in his chest.
Yes.
And he was a bigger one for going after her.
Morwenna strode to the harbor in a welter of rain and unfamiliar emotion. The storm was raw and turbulent outside her, inside her, churning in her chest, pulsing in her fingertips.
The memory of Jack's dark, weary eyes, his hard, strained face, jabbed at her heart.
She had offered her help, and he had dismissed her.
She could not blame him. She had spurned him, after all. And he had no idea what she could do. What she was.
Once her kind had been revered, feared and worshipped. But as their numbers dwindled and they withdrew deeper into the wild places of earth, their encounters with humankind became less frequent. Reverence had faded to superstition and fear to unbelief. Now even the legends were fading from human memory.
Better that way, her brother insisted. Safer that way. There were so many of them . . .
And Jack was one of them, one with them, the men with their wet clothes and weathered faces, the girl with the red-rimmed eyes.
She lengthened her stride, unhampered by the pelting rain and gusts of wind. She was not jealous. What she wanted, she would have. She was an immortal child of the sea, part of the First Creation.
And yet . . .
Standing alone outside the circle of the fire, she had been achingly aware of something outside and separate from herself, the web of human experience. All those others in the taproom had come together in the face of the storm, bound together by some human need, united by a shared understanding of death and love and loss.
Humans died.
She would not die.
But she could do something they could not do.
She walked the long stone jetty that protected the harbor. Waves crested and crashed around her, pouring their might onto the rocks, sending up shoots and plumes of spray, drenching her hair and her skirt. The sea pounded through the soles of her feet and within her chest.
Dimly, she heard shouting behind her. She would not have chosen to reveal herself. She did not want to prompt questions she was not prepared to answer. Not yet.
But she would not let human considerations, human fears, distract
Lifting her arms to the wind, she raised her face to the rain and sang in the storm.
Her notes pierced the heavy sky, soared like drops of vapor into the clouds swirling and combining high above the earth. Bright shards of music ripped from her throat and flashed like lightning among the currents of air. The energy of the storm pulsed inside her, welled inside her, spilled from her eyes and her heart like song. Like blood.
She felt the clouds shift and break, felt the sea surge and respond, and trembled in the marrow of her bones.
It was not enough.
Voices fretted her, plucking at her peace, stirring her to the depths like the wind moving over the waters.
She lost her man.
He will not be found until this storm is past.
There is nothing you can do.
Resolve stiffened her spine. She anchored her feet on the slippery wet stone and sang in the seals from the sea.
She summoned them by name and by magic, and they came, streaking dark and brindled out of the deeps, racing in response to her song. Leaping, diving, seeking, finding . . .
There. A young man drifting in a fisherman's smock and boots, his dark hair flowing like weeds. A heartbeat, thin and thready beneath the surface of the water. Her own pulse fluttered in response.
Rain spattered and sank on the surface of the ocean. She felt his breath rising like a chain of silver bubbles, barely linking him to life. Her lungs emptied. Was she too late?
In a burst of notes and panic, she sent the seals scything through the water to bring him up, to bring him in. They curled around him like cats, bumping him with their whiskered heads, prodding him with their flippers, rolling him on to his back like an otter. They turned his white face to the clearing sky and bore him up, making a raft of their broad, sleek bodies to carry him toward shore. She smoothed the waves in their path to a grumble, a ripple, a flourish of foam.
Her power was running out like water from a cup, leaving her emptied, her throat raw, her legs as heavy as wet sand.
She heard cries, raucous and indistinct as the kittiwakes on the cliff. The human inhabitants of Farness straggled along the seawall, watching the seals come in on the tide.
Jack . . .
Even from a distance she recognized him, his broad shoulders, his straight soldier's posture, and everything inside her shifted and flowed like the changing shore. As if he had power over the very landscape of her heart.