As the book opens, we meet Lord Ryderbourne,
eldest son of the Duke of Blackdown, riding his horse along the cliff
path in Dorset on the south coast of England.
It's 1828, and Ryder's offer of marriage to an
eligible young lady has just been turned down:
It was, he supposed, a serious
shock to his confidence.
Not to his position in the world, of course. To his
faith in himself.
The sensation was both unwelcome and novel. It left
him feeling oddly vulnerable, to which the best answer was righteous
resentment. Any insult to the male heart fuels only anger.
Drizzle wet his face. The ground was getting slick.
Just ahead, part of the road surface had fallen away, carried down with
the collapsing cliffs toward the sea by a landslide the previous winter.
The local people had beaten a new track across the tumbled earth and
another, narrower path down through the uprooted trees to the beach, but
no wagon or carriage could pass this way any longer.
He slowed his horse, then stopped to gaze out over
the bay. Clouds gathered on the horizon. Jade-shadowed breakers
shattered white against the broken rocks of the headland.
Something bobbed, appearing and disappearing among
the swells.
Ryder shaded his eyes. A scrap of wreckage, perhaps?
Whatever it was, it had vanished.
He took a deep breath. Salt air filled his lungs.
Rollers surged up the Channel. Spume splattered onto cliffs. Waves
dashed and sucked on the shingle far below.
He loved this land. He loved Wyldshay, his ancestral
home, his joy, his burden. He loved his family. His father, the aging
duke, who delegated more and more responsibility to his elder son. His
mother, brilliant and demanding and a light in society. His sisters, who
would soon be fielding suitors of their own. And his younger brother,
Wild Lord Jack—the wicked, interesting boy with the face of an angel who
had left home long ago to drift about the world—gone again now with his
new bride to India, while Ryder was left to both the duties and
privileges of being the heir.
He had never resented it before, but now a small
disquiet seemed to be gnawing at him like a mouse at a grain sack.
Ryder shrugged and urged his horse forward just as
the flotsam lifted, closer to shore than he had expected. Dipping and
spinning, it tossed haphazardly toward the headland.
He pulled up abruptly. A dinghy. Foundering, without
oars, without rudder, spinning straight toward the rocks.
Yet something fluttered, almost out of sight behind
the prow—a scrap of fabric?
Someone lay in the slosh of water in the bottom of
the boat.
The gelding sank its haunches. Hooves slid on mud as
the horse hurtled downhill through the jumble of dislodged trees and
shrubs. Pebbles rattled, then showered past, when they reached the
shingle. Riding full-tilt toward the surf, reins dropped onto his
horse’s neck, Ryder shed hat, cloak, and jacket. His heart hammered as
he plunged his mount into the sea.
The gelding swam strongly. Cold water broke over
Ryder’s chest, soaking him. The saddle turned to soap beneath his
thighs. He urged his horse to swim faster, his hands filled with wet
mane and reins slippery as fish.
The sinking craft had disappeared among the waves.
The gelding’s breath roared like dragon fire. Ryder
shouted. The ocean swallowed the sounds in an infinity of moisture.
He circled his horse, shouting like a madman, when
the little boat suddenly wallowed down the face of a breaker. Cold spume
broke over Ryder’s face.
Half blinded, he grasped at the gunnel.
A woman. Almost naked. Ivory flesh shone blue-white
beneath her corset and a scrap of soaked chemise, her thighs and arms
bare to the cold rain and the sea. Beaten iron-salt hair plastered over
white neck and shoulders, streamed like seaweed across a slim waist.
Just clear of the bilge, her half-hidden face lay pillowed on one
outstretched arm.
The next wave tore the boat from his fingers.
Ryder tugged the swimming gelding back toward the
dinghy. A rope trailed from the bow, coy as an eel. Reaching from the
saddle, he grabbed at it. Skin ripped from his palm as the next wave
lifted the boat, and his grip on the rope tore him from his horse.
Cold ocean, loud with bubbles, closed over his head.
Kicking strongly, Ryder grasped the end of the gelding’s tail. Fighting
water, he looped a knot between tail and rope. As he surfaced and his
horse turned back toward land, a flailing stirrup iron struck him hard
on the elbow.
He cursed and hauled himself into the dinghy
one-handed.
She was alive. As Ryder lifted her she groaned, her
head falling back to expose her white throat. A red bruise marked one
cheek. Streaks of color spoiled the flesh of her arms. He knew an
instant of livid fury before he forced his mind back to the problems at
hand.
The boat wallowed deeper as another wave broke over
it. The nerve screamed in his elbow, numbing the muscles from wrist to
shoulder. Nevertheless, he propped the woman against his own body with
one arm and hooked a foot under the seat to jerk off one of his boots.
He began to bail as if his life depended on it—though his life was not
at stake, of course.
He could still swim to shore with one arm. Yet he
probably could not carry her with him without both of them foundering.
Her life, then. Her life depended on it.
A woman. A stranger. Her bones as lovely as glass.
Her long legs entangled in beauty and threat. Her hair a cloak of
mystery. Her face damaged by a man’s fist. Other than the purple
fingerprints branded onto her flesh, her body might have been carved
from marble beneath the little stone ridges of crumpled wet fabric. A
sensuous, enchanting body, ripe with female invitation.
He cursed again and kept bailing.
Freed of its burden of water, the dinghy lifted. The
horse swam nobly, driven by instinct straight back to the beach. The
woman coughed and opened her eyes. The deft curve of her waist burned
beneath his palm as she coughed again, then thrust both hands back over
her head, pushing the sea-tangled hair from her forehead.
Her breasts lifted, nipples shining dark beneath the
soaked fabric.
She looked up at him from bleak chocolate eyes, her
lashes spikes of distrust.
He met her accusatory gaze without flinching. Of
course he was aware of the shadowed triangle between her thighs; her
breasts thrust up in deliberate invitation by her corset; her naked legs
and cold white feet—glimmering beneath torn silk stockings as if she had
run unshod over stones. Did she think he was villain enough to pay
attention to anything but rescuing her? To feel anything but this
white-hot anger at her unknown assailant?
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re almost ashore.
You’re quite safe now.”
She shivered and crossed her arms as if hugging
herself, moving as far from him as space on the seat permitted, yet her
mouth quirked with a kind of wry bravado.
“So who are you?” she asked. “Sir Galahad?”