“I’m awfully heavy.”
He wiped his sweating palms on his padded thighs. “Let’s try it.”
Jess stretched out on the grass, using her arms to support her half way over the rock ledge.
Alex stood over her. The baggy sailor’s pants were clinging to her thighs and showing every curve of her lovely little fanny.
“Alex!” Jess said impatiently. “Are you going to hold me or not?”
“I will,” Alex said in a subdued voice, then took her ankles and lifted her so she could hang over the side of the ledge.
“Just a little more,” Jess said, stretching to reach the net. “Got it. You can pull me up now.”
Quite easily, Alex pulled her up, being careful not to let her body touch the rough rocks. He dropped her feet when her head was on flat land.
Jess lay still for a moment while she examined the net. “No new tears, I’m thankful for that.” Lithely, she got to her feet. “Alex, you look a little pale. I think I was too heavy for you. Sit down and rest.”
Alex did as she bid.
“I’ll get the clams and walk you back. A man of your…physique shouldn’t have exerted himself like that.” She ran down the little bank and picked up the basket of clams and when she returned, Alex was still sitting on the rock, his face white, his forehead sw
eaty. Poor man, she thought, he isn’t used to exercise. She extended her arm to him. “Lean on me, I’ll help you. We’ll go back to your father’s house and Eleanor will brew you a cup of tea—legal, expensive tea,” she added, smiling and patting his hand that was on her arm. “Eleanor will help you recover.”
* * *
“She thinks I’m ninety years old!” Alexander said to Nicholas, through his clenched teeth as he brushed the big stallion.
They were on a piece of land off the coast of the Warbrooke harbor, a tiny rocky island good for nothing but the breeding of mosquitoes and black flies. Eighteen years ago a ship had gone aground on the island’s south coast during a hideous winter storm and all hands had died. One man had been found the next morning frozen to the top of the main mast, a lantern in his hand. People said that for days a light could be seen wandering about the island, but upon investigation, no one was to be found. Someone called it Ghost Island and everyone kept away from it. It was the perfect place to hide the Raider’s horse and gear.
“She stands in front of me wearing wet clothes that stick to her heavenly little body, then lies down on the ground and crawls around so that her backside—sorry,” he said to the horse when he brushed too hard. “What does she think I’m made of?”
“About two hundred and fifty pounds of fat.”
“Fat doesn’t make me less of a man,” Alex said. He was wearing only breeches that clung to his big, muscular thighs. The sun was warming and browning the skin of his broad back.
“Then maybe it’s the wig,” Nick said, his eyes smiling. “Or maybe the satin. Or perhaps it’s the lazy way you walk or the fact that you do nothing all day except read and eat. Or it could be the slightly whining tone in your voice.”
Alex opened his mouth to speak but closed it again as he brushed the horse even harder. “I’m not that good of an actor. She should see that I…that I…”
“That you lust after her?”
“Jessica Taggert? Not on your life! Why should I expect anything from any of the Taggerts? There isn’t a brain in any of them except Eleanor.”
“But it wasn’t Jessica’s brain you were lusting after, was it?”
“I only brought this up to show you the stupidity of the woman. She said she’d recognize the Raider, that he had a cruel-looking mouth, but there I was right in front of her. Let’s not talk about her. Did you see that little Abigail Wentworth when I kissed her? Now she’s a woman a man could spend some time with.”
“If a man wanted to be bored to death two years after the marriage,” Nick said, yawning. “You’d have to create entertainments for her. What would you do when she got bored with the Raider? Dress as a devil for two years? Then what?”
“Abigail recognized what the Raider was doing. He was risking his life to save someone else. Jessica didn’t see that at all.”
“Perhaps she had too much dirty water in her eyes to see much.”
Alex winced. “I apologized to her for that. At least I did the best I could. I certainly wouldn’t have sought out a brainless, aggressive woman like Jessica if I hadn’t had a reason.”
“Makes perfect sense to me. Check his right foreleg,” Nick said, lazily giving Alex orders in the way only a Russian grand duke could. “Maybe Alex should seek out Mistress Wentworth and leave Mistress Taggert alone.”
“Good idea,” Alex said, returning to his brushing.