Page 8 of A Stroke of Luck
“So you see, while my personal travails may not be any of your concern, the loss of my boat is!” she snapped. “I have lost my last tangible asset, and all because of you!”
“Because ofme?” The duke looked rather stunned.
“It’s all your fault that we came to grief on the rocks!”
“It wasmyfault?”
“Stop sounding like a parrot!” she cried. “Yes, your fault! If you had not been so jugbitten as to fall overboard, I would not have been forced to veer off course in order to pluck your pickled carcass out of the seas. If you had not been so rude as to swear, I would not have been distracted from the shoaling reefs. If you had not?—”
“Er, begging your pardon, Miss.” Stump cleared his throat. “If you wish to ring a peal over someone’s head, it ought to be mine. I was the clumsy fool who slipped over the gunwales. Prestwick felt beholden to dive in after me, not on account of a surfeit of spirits but because of some misguided notion that my scarred old hide was worth the risk of his own neck.”
Zara found it was her turn to blush. In the heat of her anger, it appeared she was guilty of misjudging the dratted man—at least on that account. He might be arrogant and ill-mannered but if what his companion said was true, then underneath the foppish clothes and stiff speech he possessed a good deal more character than she had given him credit for. Her accusations had been unfair, and much as it pained her to admit it, she owed him an apology.
“Forgive me,” she said through gritted teeth. “It seems I was wrong in assuming you were three sheets to the wind.”
In response to the rather ungracious admission, he inclined his head, a barely civil nod.
“But I was not wrong on the other accounts. You are at least partly to blame for us being stranded upon these shores.”
“And you, Miss Admiral of the Amazons?” The sarcasm had returned, and was fairly dripping from his words. “I trust you are also going to bear some responsibility for running us up on the rocks?—”
“That’s quite enough.” Stump punctuated his gruff order with a slap of his one remaining palm upon one of the rocks. “Hell’s Bells, you should be ashamed of yourselves. We have enough obstacles to overcome without the two of you brangling like children.” After a quick glance at Perry and Nonny, who were following the heated exchange with great interest while polishing off the rest of the rabbit, he amended his analogy. “Not that the present company of young people have exhibited any such behavior.”
Zara suddenly felt all the fight leak out of her. She did not often give way to doubt, but like the smashed hull of her sailboat, her confidence had sunk to rock bottom. Good Lord, had she made a terrible mistake in setting out on this voyage? She had known that the elements were unpredictable, and that it would take a great deal of skill to navigate through all the dangers, but the risks had seemed worth it.
Now, she was not so sure.
However, it was too late to turn back. Ducking her head to hide the tears she felt welling up in her eyes, she began to stuff her few meager possession back into the small canvas sack.
“Oh, what does it matter whose fault it is?” The words, hardly more than a whisper, were meant more for herself than anyone else. “What is done is done, and we shall just have to make the best of it.” Squaring her shoulders, she turned to her brothers. “Finish your breakfast, and then let us pack up our bags and pick a direction to start walking.”
Nonny scrambled to his feet. “Don’t worry, Zara. We have been in far worse places than this and have always found our way clear.”
“That’s right,” piped up his brother. “Remember that inn in Genoa?—”
“Actually, I would rather not.” However their plucky attempts at keeping her spirits afloat did manage to buoy her sense of humor. She managed a wan smile. “That was an awfully close shave.”
“As I recall, you had to remove a bit more than just whiskers from the chin of that drunken Venetian merchant.” Nonny’s eyes narrowed as he cleaned off the blade of his knife. “You should have let me help you fend off the son of a?—”
“I only resort to violence when absolutely necessary.”
“You should not have to fight off such louts by yourself.” Assuming a twisted scowl, he set his hands on his hips and thrust his chest out. “Not when you have Perry and me to protect you.”
His adolescent limbs were still as gangly as those of a growing puppy, so the effect was not quite as menacing as he intended. Still, she took great care to repress any quirk of amusement. “And I could not wish for two more stalwart defenders,” she assured him. But as she spoke, Zara could not help wondering what it might be like to have a man’s shoulder to lean on. Such girlish fantasies were then ruthlessly shoved aside. She had learned quickly over the course of her journey that it was not a shoulder that most men sought to offer a lone female.
“However, our main concern at present is not fending off a lecherous Lothario, but in finding some way out of these wilds. So let’s be off.”
Stump levered somewhat awkwardly from his seat on the sand. “Mind if we come along with you?”
Zara noted that his companion looked about to argue, then clamped his jaw shut.
“Oh, why not?” she answered with a wry grimace. “Like it or not, it looks as if we are stuck with each other for the time being.”
Three
The young lady was right. Her problems were not any of his concern, Prestwick assured himself. And she was wrong. It was hardly his fault that some submerged hunk of rock had sabotaged her plans. Still, he could not help feeling a tad guilty for having contributed, however unwittingly, to the burden upon those slim shoulders. He tried to imagine Lady Catherine—or any young lady of his acquaintance—left on her own in a foreign land, with two younger siblings to look after and naught but her own pluck and resourcefulness to fall back on.
To no avail, save for grim images of shattering vinaigrettes and fainting females. The confounded chit may be as abrasive as a pebble between his toes, but he couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for the flintiness of her courage.
