Shannon Drake - Reckless

To Jeanne Havens Beem,

with deepest thanks for the love she always gave Vickie,

and the encouragement she has always given me.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

“DEAR LORD! HE’S GONE into the water!”

Katherine Adair—Kat to her friends and beloved family—gasped and leapt to her feet. Just seconds before, she’d been sitting on the deck of her father’s vessel—sadly misnamed The Promise—reading and indulging in dreams. The day had been like many other Sundays she had spent throughout the years with her small family aboard the boat on the Thames. Often, as they’d watched the elite in their far more magical vessels, she had smiled as her sister, Eliza, mimicked the upper-crust accents, then joined her in singing old sea chanties—all the while looking to see if their father was about before adding a few of the more risqué lyrics.

But there were times, of course, when she did nothing but indulge in dreaming…about the very fellow whom a wave had just swept from the deck of the far finer leisure yacht The Inner Sanctum!

David. David Turnberry, youngest son of Baron Rothchild Turnberry, brilliant student at Oxford and avid sailor and adventurer.

“Kat! Do sit down! You’ll rock this old scow and we’ll be in the drink, too,” Eliza chastised. “Don’t worry. One of those Oxford chaps will dish him out!” she said with a sniff.

But none of them did. The river was wicked that day—fine for Kat’s father, who used the turbulence in his work—but a poor time for entertainment. The young swains who had accompanied David on the sail were clinging to the rigging, looking into the water, shouting…but not jumping in and attempting a rescue! She recognized one—Robert Stewart, handsome, landed and charming, as well, David’s best friend. Why wasn’t he in the water? And there was another of his chums…she couldn’t remember his name…Allan…something…

Oh, the fools! They hadn’t even thrown in a life preserver, and David was so far from her own vessel that any attempt on her part to do so would be useless.

They shouldn’t have been out on a day like today. They imagined themselves to be such sailors, and they were still so young, so raw. The river was far too rough, only for fishermen and fools. And, she thought ruefully, her father.

But now they’d lost David! And still, there was no one aboard heroic enough to dive in for the dear man’s salvation.

Indeed, the waves were high, and she could understand their trepidation. But her heart cried otherwise. He was beautiful, magnificent. No fellow in all of England or surely even beyond had such a smile. Nor had she ever heard a fellow of his social position speak so kindly to those who were hard put to earn their meager living from the sea. She had watched him so often.

“They’re not going for him!” she cried.

“They will.”

“But he will drown!” Kat looked around quickly. Her father had brought in their own sails; the scow was merely riding the waves now.

In fact, her dear father was not working or paying the least attention to her. Lady Daws had come with them today; and she was laughing—the sound something like that of a sea-witch cackling, Kat thought sadly, something her father simply didn’t hear—and that completely enraptured the hardworking man upon whom she had set her sights.

Kat looked back anxiously at the river. Maybe what had seemed like an eternity to her had been nothing more than a few seconds. Maybe the fellows had needed a moment to draw on their reserves of courage. But no…time ticked away, and none of those young swains aboard the richer vessel had made the slightest attempt to effect a rescue.

“Kat! Don’t look so perplexed. Come, come…he can probably swim. The beaches are still all the rage with his crowd, even though the poor can now reach our beaches by train. Of course, the elite, they say, prefer to frolic in the Mediterranean.”

Though Eliza spoke of the rich with disdain, in these moments with the sailing almost done for the day and the afternoon near its end, she always had her nose thrust into the pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book. She did love her fashion. And she could sew delightfully, creating fantastic designs from such bizarre materials as cast-off sails and canvas.

Kat paid her sister little attention. Her heart seemed to have lodged in her throat. She couldn’t even see the young man’s head bobbing in the waves.

Ah, there! And far from his own sleek vessel.

“The sea is too rough!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “He will die!”

“There is nothing you can do. You’ll but kill yourself,” Eliza warned fiercely.

“Ah, but I would die for him. I would sell my very soul for him!” Kat returned.

“Kat, what…?” Eliza began in horror.

Too late.

Being poor sometimes had its advantages. Kat shed her heavy, solid and sensible shoes and slid her cotton skirt down her hips to the floorboards. In seconds, she had also shed her secondhand jacket. She had no corset, no bustle, no darling little hat to discard, and so, despite her sister’s protests, she leapt into the filthy water in her shift.

The chill hit her viciously.

And the waves were mercilessly rough.

But she had spent her life nearly as one with the sea. So she took a big lungful of air, plunged beneath the surface and swam hard.

She bobbed up first near the sleek yacht. She could hear the fellows on deck shouting, their voices sounding desperate.

“Can you see him?”

“His head… He’s down again. Oh, God! He’s going to drown…Bring her around, bring her around, we’ve got to find David!”

“I can’t see him anymore!”

Kat took another deep breath and plunged beneath the surface again. She kept her eyes open, straining to see through the murky depths. And there…

There she saw him. To the right and a few feet below her.

Dead?

Oh, Lord, no! She prayed as fervently as she sought to reach the man. David. David the beautiful, the magnificent. Eyes closed…body sinking…

She grasped him, as her father had taught her to grasp a fisherman fallen overboard, catching him beneath the chin with the palm of her hand, allowing her to draw his head to the surface, while leaving her torso, legs and the solid strength of one arm to draw him toward shore.

Ah! The distance.

She could not make it!

But it seemed that both the luxury yacht and her father’s fishing vessel were ever farther out to sea. What other vessels were at sail or anchored seemed at even greater distances. She had to make the shore.

She kicked, trying to stay calm, to remember that she mustn’t lose her strength by using it to fight the rough water—that she must go with it, let the tempest take her until it drove her toward the shore.

She tried hard to keep David’s head above the water, tried harder to keep breathing and moving herself against the waves, white-tipped, gray and brown, like living, breathing, beings anxious to suck her into their depths. How slender the river could seem at times, but…how great its span!

And yet, chilled and desperate as she was, it occurred to her…

He was in her arms. Oh, God! He could die in her arms.

As she would gladly die in his.

“GOOD LORD! WILL YOU LOOK at those young fools!” Hunter MacDonald stared at the young swains who raced around their yacht like simpletons. They’d lost one of their number, yet none was doing a damn thing about it.