The Counterfeit Gentleman Read online

  His expression lightened. Smiling down at her, he said, “My worries now are quite mundane. The first one is that we need to get you safely back to my cottage without letting anyone see us together, lest you be compromised.”

  “You are worried about my reputation?” Bethia asked in astonishment. “After I have just escaped a watery grave?”

  “To be sure I am worried. Most people do not truly comprehend how important a good name can be until they have damaged theirs,” he replied. “I would not be doing you a good turn if I saved your life only to ruin your reputation.” Turning left where the path divided, he continued, “And the other thing that is bothering me now is how we shall arrange for you to have a bath.”

  At the word bath, Bethia could feel the heat again rising in her face, and she quickly looked away from her companion in hopes that he would not notice.

  “I know from experience that dried salt on one’s skin is not particularly comfortable. For my part, I am accustomed to sluicing myself off behind my cottage with cold water from the cistern, but I can hardly expect you to do likewise.”

  Turning in at the gate of a little cottage, he stopped with one hand on the latch. “And therein lies the problem. As I see it, we have only two alternatives, neither of which is without drawbacks.”

  “Well, an hour or so ago my kidnappers were not willing to offer me any choices at all,” Bethia said, trying not to look at Mr. Rendel, whose wet clothes were every bit as revealing as hers undoubtedly were... and trying also not to think about Mr. Rendel standing naked in his garden.

  Opening the door for her, he said, “Somewhere around, I have a hip bath, and I can heat water over the fire. But I am afraid I have neither maid nor housekeeper in my employ to assist you.”

  Bethia started to enter the little cottage, but then the significance of what he was saying struck her, and the prohibitions of a lifetime froze her in her tracks.

  Ever and again her aunt had warned her that all men were alike—no matter how honorable they might appear, not a single one of them could be trusted alone with a young, unmarried female. Despoiling a maiden’s innocence, so her aunt insisted, was every man’s chief goal in life.

  “If it is not feasible for you to manage without help, I can ask my neighbor to come over. The widow Pollock lives but a short distance farther along the lane, and she would doubtless be willing to act as lady’s maid for an hour or two,” Mr. Rendel said calmly. “Unfortunately, gossip travels as quickly in the country as it does in London. Even if she tells no one you are here, people will be curious as to why she has been in my cottage. And once someone begins asking questions, it is always possible that the wrong person will hear and become suspicious.”

  Although he did not come right out and say it, Bethia had the strongest feeling that Mr. Rendel was no longer talking about her reputation, but about the wicked men who had tried to drown her. And thinking about them made her realize that she was already far outside the small, safe world that was governed and firmly bound by her aunt’s rules and strictures.

  There was no way to discount what Mr. Rendel had done. At great risk to his own life, he had saved hers. If either of the men in the boat had seen him, they could have shot him through the heart, or simply bashed him over the head with an oar. Considering that he had given her back her life, she would be a small-minded person indeed if she balked at trusting him now.

  “I feel sure I can manage by myself, so I think we can refrain from asking your neighbor to become involved.” Without further hesitation, Bethia ducked her head and crossed the threshold.

  As soon as she stepped through the doorway of his home, Bethia knew that the man who had dragged her from the sea was not—could not be—a simple fisherman.

  “Sit by the fire where you will be warmer,” he said, and as chilled as she was, she needed no second invitation.

  She started to seat herself in the large wing-backed chair that was placed conveniently close to the fire, but it was upholstered in silk brocade and remembering her damp dress, she sank down instead onto a small, three-legged stool.

  Mr. Rendel appeared to be quite accustomed to wearing wet clothing, since he made no attempt to warm himself by the fire. Instead, after throwing a few pieces of wood on the fire, he took two tin buckets from their hooks by the back door and began carrying in water to fill the large black kettle hanging from a pot-chain.

  With part of her clothing beginning to give off steam while the other half still felt as if it were woven out of icicles, Bethia looked around in growing puzzlement.

  From the outside the cottage had appeared to be quite bleak and primitive. Built of rough, undressed stones with a thatched roof, it was no different from any of the other cottages they had passed.

  Having frequently paid calls on the tenants residing on her grandfather’s estate in Sussex, Bethia had expected to find that one end of the crude building was used by Mr. Rendel and his family, and that the other end of the building was occupied by their livestock.

  But if ever any animal that mooed or neighed or cackled had lived under this roof, it was in the quite distant past, because no trace of them remained, not even the faintest, lingering odor.

  Moreover, although this one room served as kitchen, living room, and dining room, and the fireplace was obviously intended both for heating the cottage and cooking the meals, the furnishings were not the crude homemade benches and table she had expected.

  On the contrary, the floor was polished wood rather than packed dirt, and was covered with an Oriental carpet rather than strewn with rushes. In addition, the clock ticking on the mantel above her was ormolu, and the round table with four matching chairs had to have been designed by none other than Sheraton.

  Indeed, if it were not for the fact that the room had a rather low ceiling, she could have believed she was in a manor house rather than a cottage.

  Watching Mr. Rendel, who had finished filling the kettle, and was now climbing up a ladder into the loft, Bethia noticed another discrepancy. In the far corner of the room were several bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes, which belonged neither in a laborer’s cottage on the south coast of Cornwall, nor yet in a manor house. Country squires, in her experience, were not inclined to muddle their brains by too much reading.

  No, the extensive collection of weighty tomes in this room would be more suited to a vicarage. But from the oaths she could hear accompanying the numerous thumps and bumps coming from overhead, she rather doubted Mr. Rendel was a member of the clergy.

  By the time he came back down, dragging with him a tin hip-bath, she felt as if she were bursting with questions she wanted to ask him, but she had been too well brought up to pry into another person’s private affairs.

  No, that was not quite correct. Propriety and impropriety were not what mattered here. What was making her rein in her curiosity was much more fundamental than the rules of etiquette that she’d had drummed into her head since she was a small child.

  Mr. Rendel had saved her life, which gave him the right to know anything about her he might wish to know. But the reciprocal was not true: Owing him more than she could ever repay him, she had no right to ask anything more from him than what he freely offered.

  In fact, sitting by his fire, doing nothing while he was doing all the work was beginning to make her feel guilty. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

  Digory looked down at the bedraggled figure hugging her arms in front of the fire and tried very hard to think of her in the same way he had always thought about the poor wretches he had helped drag from the sea in the past—the victims of storms or poor seamanship or vessels that were simply unseaworthy. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of fools who underestimated the power of the sea or who overestimated their own abilities.

  Miss Pepperell was, or so he had been telling himself, just another scrap of humanity temporarily needing his help. Soon she would vanish from his life, leaving no more trace of her presence than had all the nameless o
thers who had sat where she was now sitting, and who had shivered as she was now shivering.

  And who had not looked up at him with soft brown eyes filled with concern for his well-being.

  “I can manage,” he said, wondering if he could actually manage to forget the courage she had shown in the face of imminent death. And likewise the absolute trust she had given him, despite the fact that he was a total stranger and not what anyone would call a harmless-looking man.

  It was even more unlikely that he would ever forget her face, forget the softness of her skin, forget the way her arms had felt around his neck.

  Or forget the feminine curves her dripping garments had been unable to hide—forget how acutely he had wanted her there on the beach—how a single glance at her now was enough to rekindle his desire, to heat his blood.

  What he wished he could do was to carry her into the other room and share his bed and his passion with her.

  What he was going to do was fix a bowl of mulled wine.

  Mr. Rendel had made it very clear that he wanted neither her help nor her conversation, so Bethia did not ask what was in the cup he handed her. From the smell of it, it was some sort of spiced punch. She would have preferred tea, but politeness dictated that she drink what her host had prepared.

  At first she was not at all sure she liked it, but then she felt a warmth begin to spread through her body, and she decided to try a little more. This time she could actually taste the cinnamon and cloves, and she rather thought she might become used to this beverage.

  Which raised the question of how long it would take for her to become accustomed to being alone with a man—for her to be able to look at Mr. Rendel without having her heart decide all on its own to speed up.

  Watching Mr. Rendel pour steaming water into the hip bath was not precisely the same as observing a pair of footmen carry buckets of water to fill the enameled tub in her own dressing room back home, Bethia realized, feeling heat rise once again to her face.

  It should have been no different; a tub is a tub and a bucket is a bucket.

  But it was in truth vastly different.

  There was an unshakable feeling of intimacy about the entire situation. She knew she would soon be naked in that tub ... and she knew he knew she would be naked ... and he was not a footman.

  Who was he?

  Watching the practiced way he added cold water to the tub and tested it until the temperature was precisely right, it would appear that he must have spent time in service, perhaps even been employed as a footman.

  But everything about him—the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he took charge—made it impossible to believe that he was a man accustomed to taking orders. Indeed, anyone could see in his eyes that he was used to giving orders ... and that he would also expect to have them obeyed.

  Bethia knew her aunt would be scandalized at the mere thought of a strange man preparing her niece’s bath, and she would doubtless have a seizure if she knew that Bethia was alone in a cottage with no maid or chaperone in attendance.

  Last Monday Bethia herself would have found it unthinkable, but she was not the same person she had been three days ago. Being only moments away from death and then being given back her life made her look at ordinary, everyday things in an entirely different manner—made her reappraise things she had previously taken for granted.

  Mr. Rendel was still apparently concerned with propriety, however, because as soon as her bath was ready, with soap and washcloth and towel laid out for her use, he strung a rope between two hooks and then draped a quilt over the line to give her some privacy.

  That was not actually needed, because with only a brief word of assurance that he would be close at hand if she needed him, he disappeared into the room at the opposite end of the cottage, shutting the connecting door firmly behind him.

  Setting down her cup, Bethia stripped off her garments and with a sigh of pure pleasure, stepped into the tub and sat down.

  She managed to shampoo and rinse her hair without spilling too much water on the hearthstones, and indeed she encountered no problem until she was done bathing and had dried herself off. Then she discovered that the efficient Mr. Rendel had forgotten to provide her with any dry clothing.

  Her first thought was to call him, but then it occurred to her that he himself might not be done with his cold bath. And she knew that however much she might think herself ready to dispense with propriety, she was not quite willing to summon him to her side while she was naked.

  Beginning to shiver again despite the nearby fire, she decided that the only thing to do was use what was already at hand, namely the quilt.

  With a heartfelt prayer that her host would not choose that precise moment to return, she pulled the quilt from its line and with much fumbling, managed to wrap it around herself. Then hobbling as best she could, she dragged the upholstered chair closer to the fire and sat down to wait for her host to return.

  But she could not stay seated long. The smell of the spicy drink was too tantalizing, and she decided to finish her drink. Freeing one hand from the confines of the quilt, she retrieved her cup and took another sip and again felt the delightful warm glow begin to spread through her limbs, heating her veins to the tips of her toes and the ends of her fingers.

  A few moments later she began feeling the slightest bit light-headed, which surprised her until she thought about what she had just been through. In the last few hours she’d frequently had the unpleasant sensation that events were proceeding at too fast a pace to be fully comprehended. She had felt herself being dragged along at breakneck speed, as if she were in a curricle behind a pair of runaway horses.

  Was it any wonder that there were moments, like the present one, when she could not be completely, absolutely, positively certain that she was awake? That she was not still caught up in a laudanum-induced nightmare?

  Well, perhaps nightmare was not the proper term for the situation she now found herself in, but it was in truth a most peculiar dream.

  To begin with, Mr. Rendel had appeared quite simply out of nowhere. Indeed, at first she had thought he was some horrible monster rising up from the deep to wrap a tentacle around her ankle and pull her down to the bottom of the ocean.

  Some might scoff at the idea of a sea monster, but was the truth any more plausible? That by a sheer fluke of luck a fisherman had happened to be near where her abductors intended to drown her—a fisherman who had not only heard her cries, but who had also felt compelled to do all he could to save her? Even though by so doing he had risked his own life?

  It was almost easier to believe that he had been conjured up by her desperate longing for someone to help her. Or perhaps it was the gods on Mount Olympus who had heard her pleas and sent one of their own to save her?

  Bethia raised the cup to her lips and discovered it was empty. The bowl was right beside her chair, but she quickly discovered that if she held the cup in one hand and the ladle in the other, then there was no hand left to keep the quilt from sliding down around her waist.

  In the end she solved her dilemma by simply dipping the cup itself into the brew. It was really a delicious concoction, and it seemed much more efficacious than tea, which was her aunt’s remedy in times of crises both large and small.

  This brought to mind the question of whether Aunt Euphemia was correct. There was a possibility, Bethia had to admit, that she was actually suffering from disordered mental faculties. It could be that everything she thought had actually happened—the abduction, the murder plot, the rescue—was nothing more than the wild fantasies of a deranged mind. Perhaps even now, when she thought she was sitting here by a fire, drinking a most delicious punch, it could be that she was in actuality ranting and raving behind bars in Bedlam.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Rendel was not making it easy for her to believe she was awake. She had done her best to convince herself that he was no figment of her imagination—that he was exactly who he claimed to be: a fisherman who had fortuitously been in the proper pla
ce to hear her cries.

  Sitting there all cozy and warm, assuaging her thirst with a most delightful concoction, she brooded over the contradictions in Mr. Rendel’s person, in his home, and in his actions.

  All things considered, was it any wonder that she was not completely sure she was awake and not dreaming?

  After all, if this were not merely a dream, would she be naked—except for the quilt, which was even now surreptitiously trying to slide off her left shoulder—would she be naked in the presence of a man? Not even her grandfather would have felt comfortable sitting beside her when she was dressed—or rather, undressed—as she was.

  Perhaps before Mr. Rendel rejoined her, she should put on her gown, although as wet as it was, it was quite an immodest garment—less modest, in fact, than the quilt. Which in turn brought up the most interesting question of whether or not modesty was in any way logical.

  Taking another sip, Bethia considered the question of propriety. It would be highly improper, she knew beyond a doubt, for Mr. Rendel to see her in her nightgown, although that garment actually covered more of her than most of her walking dresses did. But her dresses were designed to be seen, and her nightgown was not designed to be worn outside the privacy of her own bedroom.

  Which was all very well and good, but that did not answer the question of the quilt, which was neither a garment designed for public view nor a garment designed to be worn in private. A quilt was not actually a garment at all, in fact, which thus left unanswered the question of whether or not she was properly attired.

  A quilt was neither a dress nor a gown, so she was definitely not clothed ... but on the other hand, she was also not naked, because she was completely covered—at least all but one of her arms was—by the quilt.

  Perhaps her host, who seemed to know about everything else, had read sufficient philosophy to answer the question of whether or not a lady was dressed or undressed if all she was wearing was a quilt.