An errant breeze played at the flame of the lantern. She sucked in a sharp breath as a wash of light fell across the man's face. Even though his shaggy hair and beard made him appear uncommonly fierce, right now he looked vulnerable, helpless.
Slowly, she reached out and brushed the rain off his forehead, her fingers tracing his strong features. As she felt his damp skin beneath her fingers, her breath stopped in her throat. He was so cold, so still. A shiver skittered down her spine and she snatched her hand away and clutched it to her chest.
Warily, she stood, then backed away from him, filled with a strange sense of foreboding. He was a perfect stranger and she should be frightened. Meredith Abbott was usually leery of pretty much everything, especially men. But this man, lying half-dead on her beach, didn't scare her.
No, what truly frightened her were the forces that had brought him here.
Meredith flopped down onto the floor, every muscle in her body aching with cold and exhaustion. Her pirate lay sprawled next to her on the couch where she'd finally settled him after dragging him inside. Ben stared at them both from his perch in the corner, silent, suspicious of the stranger.
As soon as she'd closed the door behind him, the wind and rain had kicked up again, almost on cue, resuming its former fury. But this time, she couldn't run for the closet. The pirate didn't look at all well and, at the moment, she was the only one available to tend to him. She efficiently gathered all the candles and lanterns from the rest of the house and brought them into the living room. The cottage was well-stocked with both, for the island suffered power outages during most storms.
As she set a kerosene lamp on the coffee table, the pirate moaned again, then muttered something she couldn't understand. His expression suddenly turned angry, agitated, and she was again reminded of how menacing the man looked. His clothes were in tatters and his face was covered with a scruffy black beard. Tall and broad-shouldered, he barely fit on the couch. She gently pushed his shoulders back and in a few moments he relaxed. If he were lucid, she knew she'd be no match for his strength.
With a shaking hand, she reached over and placed her palm on his cheek. His skin was still cold and the rise and fall of his chest nearly imperceptible. The scrape on his forehead had stopped bleeding, but he had other wounds more serious than a simple abrasion. A quick examination revealed a knot the size of a golf ball on the back of his head, several cuts and scrapes on his jaw beneath his beard and a nasty bruise on his left knee.
"Couldn't you just have gotten drunk and passed out on your own couch?" she said in a small voice. "I don't know what to do. I'm not a doctor. And I have no way to get help, not until the storm breaks."
She'd tried to call the police, but the phones were out. The sheriff's deputy and his assistant, who served as the island's police force, were probably well occupied with other problems. She would have tried the neighbors, but she already knew the houses on either side of her cottage belonged to summer residents. And the island's doctor visited the small medical clinic only once a week. For the present, she was this man's sole help.
If she were brave, she'd venture out and find help. But the opening in the storm that had allowed her to rescue him had quickly closed. She'd have to walk at least a quarter mile to the main road and hope to flag down the sheriff. Meredith sat up on her heels and rubbed her eyes. Suddenly, the weather outside seemed insignificant compared to what was happening inside the cottage.
"Where did you come from? And why did you have to pick my beach?"
She idly brushed his tangled hair back from his face. His eyelids fluttered and then opened. He stared up at her, his pale blue eyes empty, uncomprehending, as if he were looking right through her.
She leaned forward. "Can you hear me?" Meredith asked. "Who are you? What happened?"
He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but all he could manage was a raspy croak. As if the effort was too much, his eyes closed again and his harsh breathing settled back into a shallow, even rhythm.
"I don't even know what to call you," she murmured. "You must have a name." Meredith crawled to the end of the couch and tugged at his knee-high boots. "Maybe I'll call you Ned. Ned, the pirate. You know, Blackbeard's nickname was Ned, for Edward." She glanced over at him and shook her head. "I guess you're not in any condition to complain about my choice, are you Ned?"
After a long struggle, the wet boot suddenly slipped free of his foot. Meredith landed on her backside, the boot in her lap. She stared down at it, stiff leather around the calf and a flared top that formed a cup around the knee. She turned the boot over in her hand and looked at the sole.
"This is a handmade boot," she murmured. Meredith tugged the other boot off and examined it closely, searching for a brand name or a label. "Jackboots. These boots haven't been made since the early eighteenth century. Where did you ever find a cobbler to…"
Her voice trailed off as her eyes moved up from his rough woolen stockings to his breeches. Like the boots, they were handmade, fitted at the leg and baggy at the waist. Glancing nervously at his face, she plucked at the fly with her fingers, causing a flood of heat to rush to her cheeks. "Hmm, no zipper, just buttons. Very authentic." Her confusion was deepened even further by his tattered linen shirt, full at the sleeves and ruffled at the wrist. There was no tag in the neckline, only very fine hand stitching on the band collar..
The shirt lay open nearly to his waist. She stared down at his deeply tanned chest, mesmerized by the play of candlelight on the rippled muscle. With a small pang of uneasiness, she pushed the damp linen together, her hand brushing against the light dusting of hair that ran from his collarbone to his belly.
All of his clothes were wet, but Meredith wasn't about to remove them. Not that she wasn't curious as to what he looked like beneath the odd garments. It wasn't every day she had a man lying helpless on her couch. But there were limits to her nursing skills and to her temerity.
Instead, she pulled a throw from the back of the rocking chair and tucked it around his body. Then she dragged a quilt from the guest bedroom and arranged that on top of him. By the time she'd finished building a fire, his breathing seemed less labored and the color had begun to return to his lips.
She drew a steadying breath. "All right, Ned, now that you're warm, we'd better take care of your wounds. After that, I'll make some coffee and we'll sober you up."
A quick search of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom turned up alcohol, bandages, shaving cream, a straight-edged razor and a small pair of scissors. After bandaging the scrape on his forehead, Meredith tucked a towel around Ned's neck and began to snip away at his salt encrusted beard. She staunched the bleeding from the cuts with the towel before she gently covered his face with shaving cream.
With great care for his wounds, she drew the razor along his cheek. Stroke by stroke, she carefully stripped away the remains of his dirty beard, intent on her task. When she was finished, Meredith drew back. She blinked in shock, clutching the razor in her fist as her gaze fell on the planes and angles of a startlingly handsome face. Until this instant, she'd had nothing more than a nagging fear of this stranger, of having this man alone in her house with help so far away.
As she stared down at his perfect features, Meredith found herself hypnotized. She had seen him before, just hours ago as she focused on the illustration of the pirate in the old book. Pinching her eyes shut, she tried to steady her spinning thoughts. If she had believed in the powers of fate, she might have also believed that she'd somehow summoned him here to answer her girlish fantasies.
But she knew better. He was merely one of Tank Muldoon's boys, she repeated to herself, out to tear up the town right alongside Hurricane Horace. And yet, even though that explanation seemed perfectly logical, it didn't make sense. This was a grown man, not a college boy. No one developed a body like his waiting tables-he worked hard for a living, probably outdoors. And no one took Tank Muldoon seriously enough to wear an authentic costume.
Meredith leaned over to wipe a trace of shaving cream from his cheek. Suddenly, his hand snaked up and clamped onto her wrist in a punishing grip. She cried out and tried to pull away, but he held her fast. Her gaze met his. His pale blue eyes were now lucid and hard as ice. They watched each other for a very long time in the dim light, Meredith's pulse thudding in her throat, his breathing harsh and even.
"Where am I?" he demanded, his voice ragged.
Meredith tried to pull out of his grasp again, but he only tightened his fingers.
"Tell me, lad. Who are you?"
"Lad?" Meredith asked.
He easily twisted her wrist and brought the razor she was holding flat against her throat; "Who brought me to this place?" he asked, enunciating each word, a slight brogue to his proper British accent. "Have a care, for I will know if you speak falsely."
"I-I brought you here," Meredith whispered. "You were washed up on the beach during the storm."
"The purse, where is it?"
"You want my purse?"
"The purse," he said, his grip weakening. "I… I must deliver… proof… upon my soul… I must… avenge… father…" His eyes rolled back in his head and his hand flopped down on his chest, suddenly lifeless, boneless.
"Have a care!" Ben squawked from the shadows.
Meredith quickly retreated from the couch, watching the man from a spot near the fireplace. If she wasn't frightened of Ned before, she certainly was now. He was a madman, muttering about purses and revenge in some hokey British accent. She could still feel the cold blade of the razor against her throat. Her fingers flexed and the straight-edge clattered to the wooden floor. Without thinking, she wrapped her grip around the fireplace poker instead.
She turned and raced to the closet for her slicker. She couldn't stay here. She'd have to summon the sheriff before her pirate woke again. But when she pulled open the front door, the reality of the situation slapped her in the face.
The wind ripped the door from her hand, slamming it back against the wall with stunning force. Debris whipped through the air and the rain stung her skin like a hail of tiny bullets. It took all her strength to push the door shut-and all her courage to admit that she stood a better chance inside with the pirate than outside with the hurricane.
In a panic, she searched the house for something to use against him, something to provide protection in case he tried to attack her. Lord, he'd called her "lad." He wasn't just drunk, he was hallucinating, too. She nearly missed finding the coil of rope on the closet floor, until she tripped on it.
"That's it!" she cried. "I'll tie him up! So tight he won't be able to move. And once the storm dies down, I'll get the sheriff."
"Tie him up," Ben echoed. "Tie him up!"
By the time she finished, he looked like Gulliver after the Lilliputians were done with him. A riot of ropes circled his wrists and ankles, then wrapped around both his body and the couch. It would take superhuman strength to break the bonds and if she believed anything about this pirate, he would be too hung over to be sailing the high seas for some time.
Once he awoke, she'd question him, and if she decided it was safe to let him go, she would. If not, the sheriff could have him. As an added measure of protection, she retrieved a butcher knife from the kitchen before she curled into an overstuffed chair near the fireplace and watched him warily, exhausted.
Meredith closed her eyes and tipped her head back, trying to calm her racing heart. Suddenly, the raging weather outside didn't frighten her at all. This man had become her "Delia" now, the name she had given to all her fears since she'd been a child.
Meredith had been only eight years old when Hurricane Delia had roared along the Atlantic shore of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She and her widowed father, a shrimp fisherman, had lived in a tiny weather-beaten cottage on the creek side of Ocracoke Village.
Though she had been only a child, her memories of that day had completely supplanted all the shining Christmas mornings and blurry birthday celebrations she'd come to experience in the following years. The day, September 11, 1976, had dawned calm and humid. But somewhere south of the island, Delia had lurked, turning the ocean into a terrifying force of nature. As darkness began to fall and the wind began to rise, her father had left her alone in their cottage, promising to return once he had checked the lines on his boat for a final time.
As he pulled on his rain suit and knee-high rubber boots, she had begged him to stay. He'd bent down from his towering height and told her she would be safe, tucked inside the house until he returned. But he hadn't returned. She'd crawled inside a dark closet and cried for her father, and then for her mother, even though Caroline Abbott was just a vague memory to her. She'd been left to face a hurricane alone and from that night on, Delia came back to haunt her dreams.
Her father had been injured that night and had nearly died, but with the help of friends on the island and Meredith's nursing, he'd recovered. His boat hadn't fared as well, but a bank loan repaired it and he continued to shrimp in the waters off the Outer Banks. Still, shrimping had been a hand-to-mouth existence before Delia, and it only got worse after the hurricane.
He lost his boat to the bank the year Meredith turned thirteen, bringing an end to her childhood on the island. Sam Abbott was forced to leave Ocracoke for a dredging job in Maryland, his young daughter in tow. How well she remembered that day, standing at the rail of the ferry and watching Ocracoke Island disappear behind the southern tip of Hatteras.
In her heart, she'd been secretly relieved. There would be no more dreams of Delia and no more hurricanes to fear. But though she hadn't missed Ocracoke, her father had. The island had been part of his blood, calling to him every minute he spent on the water. He died when Meredith was twenty-five, still longing to return to his island home.
So she had made the trip back for him, to bring back the memories of the times they'd spent together when she was young. And now, in less than a day, her life had turned into one major nightmare. She was trapped inside this cottage with a man who could very well be a psychopath.
But even though she knew she should be terrified, she wasn't. She was an adult. She had a big knife, an even bigger fireplace tool and a few more miles of rope if needed. She actually felt in control, as if she could handle whatever might happen.
And she could… until Ned the pirate decided to wake up.