Annie Burrows - Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride

Her eyes flew open in shock as the Captain applied the first, icy cold layer of bandages to her ankle. But then, this seemed to be a night for shocks. First of all in hearing him admit he had no wife or children, followed by what she had thought was an indecent proposition. And now finding out that he had been speaking of marriage. To her.

She could still not quite believe it. She looked at him closely, not as a prospective employer, or a would-be ravisher, but for the first time as a suitor.

And her heart turned over. His hair was dripping wet, and so was his coat. Yet he was selflessly tending to her injury before making himself comfortable. She had already discovered how strong he was, yet now his fingers were gentle as he deftly wrapped layer after layer of ice-cold cloth round her swollen joint.

He was handsome, in spite of his scars, and strong and affluent.

And capable of reining in his anger. It was a rare thing, in her experience, to see a man exercise any selfcontrol, let alone to such a degree. He had been furious with her. Completely furious. Yet even though he had shouted, and, yes, sworn at her, he had still managed to consider how she would have felt if he had delegated the task of carrying her back to the house to one of his men.

‘You’d better give ‘er some of this, too,’ Billy was saying, pulling a small brown vial from his pocket.

‘No …’ she whispered, shaking her head as Billy unstoppered what was clearly a bottle of laudanum.

In a voice as cold as the iced water in which Billy had soaked the towels, Captain Corcoran said, ‘She clearly suspects that you are offering it only so that I can tear her clothes off and ravish her the moment she loses consciousness.’

It was probably just as well she did not want to marry him. The woman affected him far more than he would like. It was not just that her beauty appealed to him, though God knows it did. Too much. Though he had railed at her, telling her she looked like a drowned rat, in truth she resembled nothing so much as a mermaid, with all that ripped grey silk streaming over her luscious little body. The image had started the moment he had seen her thrashing around in the undergrowth, as though she was unable to walk on land, with her hair flowing like so much deep-brown kelp down to her waist. And men, he reminded himself, got snared in such weed. It tangled round their legs and drowned them.

Just as he was drowning in the reproach in those sea-green eyes of hers. The sight of her tears coursing down her cheeks had made him want to drop to his knees, and kiss that tiny, perfectly formed foot, and beg her forgiveness, even though he was utterly determined he would never let another woman bring him to his knees. When he married again, he would be the one in control.

‘No!’ she said again, this time pulling herself together and sitting up straight. There had been quite enough misunderstanding between them already. One after the other, from the very moment she had read that confounded advertisement! Maybe she could do nothing about the others, but this one, at least, she could nip in the bud.

‘The fact that I do not wish to take laudanum has nothing to do with you, sir. It is just that I prefer not to take it. It makes me feel so sick, and leaves me feeling so confused—’

‘You do not need to worry about keeping your wits about you,’ he bit out. ‘I have never taken a woman against her will, and I am not about to start upon one who has injured herself whilst under my care.’

He straightened up to his not inconsiderable height, clasped his hands behind his back, and said, pacing over to the window, ‘Moreover, you need not worry that I shall importune you with repeated requests that you consider my proposal, since you find the idea so repugnant.’

Billy, his head lowered, began to tidy up the scattered towels, bowl and the stockings the Captain had tossed to the floor.

‘In the morning,’ he continued, ‘Jago will make whatever arrangements are necessary for your transportation back to the slums he plucked you out of.’

‘No, please,’ said Aimée, aghast to think of being sent straight back to London.

‘I find it hard,’ he said, not even breaking his stride, ‘to believe you would flee from the prospect of becoming a Countess, when you walked to my house in the pouring rain, thinking you were about to become a mere governess. Am I so repulsive to you? ‘

Countess? Mr Jago had told her that he was a naval officer. Not that a man could not hold a title, as well as a post in the navy, but …

He strode to the end of her bed, his large hands clenching on the footboard, and glared at her while Billy scuttled out of the door.

‘Not that it makes any difference now,’ he said in a tone of chilling finality.

‘Oh, but …’ she began, but he had turned away. His shoulders stiff with affront, he stalked from the room, shutting the door behind him with the exaggerated care of a man who would have got a great deal more satisfaction from slamming it hard.

Aimée sank back into her pillows.

‘Oh, no,’ she moaned, curling up into a ball and covering her face with her hands.

If only he had not used the very words Hincksey had employed when she had gone to him to request the services of one of his underlings, to forge her some convincing-looking character references!

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ Hincksey had said, as he handed the documents to her. ‘It’s a miserable business, being a governess. You’d have a lot more fun sticking with me. And better conditions. You could have fancy clothes and jewels. Even set up your own house with servants, if you was clever about the way you worked your clients …’

‘Oh,’ she moaned, rolling on to her other side. No wonder she had jumped to the wrong conclusion, after the way her own father and that weasely Mr Carpenter had let her down.

Especially after his admission that he had lured her to Yorkshire under false pretences!

She rolled on to her back, thumping the counterpane at her sides. Yes, why had he gone to such lengths to get her to his house? Why had he placed an advertisement in a London newspaper that made it sound as though he wanted to employ a governess, when what he really wanted was a wife?

Men! They were all so untrustworthy. No wonder she had not recognised his meanderings about the glowing future he could provide as an honest proposal of marriage.

‘Marriage,’ she groaned, pressing the heels of her hand to her eyes. If she had not been so suspicious, so very frightened of the man, she might be an engaged woman by now. Not that marriage necessarily meant safety for a woman. Her mother’s marriage had been a mistake of monumental proportions.

But Captain Corcoran was not a penniless charmer like her father had been in his youth. He was not attempting to get his hands on her fortune, for she hadn’t one. Quite the reverse. He was offering to provide for her in a style she had hitherto only dreamed of.

‘Jewels and servants,’ she moaned.

Not that she was tempted by them, as such. If they were all she cared about, she could have become some man’s mistress years ago! Or thrown in her lot with Hincksey.

It was just … what would it have been like to never have to worry about where the next meal was coming from? Or what means she might have to employ to procure it?

What would it have been like to have had a home of her own? Somewhere she could put down roots? To be able to make friends with neighbours, rather than keeping everyone at arm’s length lest they see through the latest story her father had fabricated to explain their current mode of life?

Above all, to have become respectable.

No, more than that. The Captain had told her she might have been a Countess. She could have screamed with frustration. Her mother had always insisted she should set her sights on that kind of rank, should she ever consider matrimony.