Page 12 of A Perilous Passion

A hand over her mouth stifled her cry.

She heard a muffled male curse, followed by the metallic clatter of something falling to the floor. Something that sounded ominously like a knife.

The blood froze in her veins.

Scrambled thoughts chased around her sleep-fogged brain—images of the two dubious-looking men on the beach, the broad shoulders of the intriguing Earl of Beckport, and the ghastly certainty she was about to die.

“Miss Allston, don’t be alarmed. It’s Beckport.”

Nonsense! The very idea was absurd.

She tried baring her teeth to sink them into the hand pressed over her face. But failed. The hand shifted slightly, the mattress dipping as he knelt on it, and she abruptly feared death was not the fate that awaited her.

Although it might still come…afterward.

“It’s me. Rafe. Calm yourself. I mean you no harm.”

It did sound like him. But…

Her eyes struggled to cope with the darkness, and her heart rammed so hard against her ribs it hurt. What did he want with her?

“I’ll remove my hand if you promise not to scream.”

Yes, it was, indeed, Beckport’s deep, clipped voice. She went limp with relief.

He lifted his hand, smoothed it reassuringly over her cheek, then struck a spark in his tinderbox and blew gently on the flame. Leaning across her, he applied it to her candle. Her bedroom filled with a warm, flickering light that accentuated the shadows beneath his high cheekbones and made his dark eyes glitter.

What in the name of all that was holy was he doing in her chamber, in the middle of the night, sitting on her bed?

Not naked.

Shockingly, she couldn’t decide whether that made her vastly thankful or more than a little disappointed.

Before she could decide, after stowing his tinderbox away he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and sank his head into his hands in an attitude of despair so poignant she immediately forgot her fears.

Hardly the behavior of a rapist or murderer. Thank heaven.

She blinked at him in surprise.

“What ails you, my lord?” she ventured hesitantly.

He shook his head and sucked in a breath of air. “You’d think,” he said, turning to her with a wry smile, “I’d have the good sense to bring a sharp knife with me rather than a blunt one, or at the very least, a pair of my valet’s sewing scissors.”

Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t worry. I’d no intention of harming you, my dear Miss Allston. I just wanted a lock of your hair.”

She stared at him in astonishment. “I believe the usual mode is to ask the lady to provide one, not to climb into her room in the middle of the night and cut one off while she sleeps. I presume you’ve climbed up the trellis, as nobody would have let you in.”

“There is, indeed, a well-placed creeper,” he replied in a low voice. “I could see your window was open. Most ill-advised, when there are desperate smugglers and so forth about.”

Mention of smugglers again. What would he say if she told him he was speaking to the daughter of one of England’s most notorious smugglers? “I’ll bear that in mind,” she whispered back. “But I think you’d better go.”

“Go?” He looked bewildered.

“Surely, you didn’t expect me to welcome you? I believe I’m insulted.”

He tilted an eyebrow. “Am I not to receive a slap for my audacity?”