Free A Most Unsuitable Groom by Kasey Michaels by Kasey Michaels Page B

stand here to look long-ingly toward the water and all that lay beyond if? "Oh,and two ships. Aren't they sleek-looking?"
    Callie also looked to her left to where the sloops rode at anchor offshore, about one hundred yards apart, their sails rolled up and firmly lashed to the masts. "The first is Papa's Respite, and the other is Chance's Spectre."
    "Spectre? You mean, as in ghost?"
    Callie's smile suddenly seemed awfully bright. "Yes, that's it. Chance, um, Chance says that with a wife and two children now and his estate to oversee, he has only the ghost of a chance to go sailing on her more than twice a year. He says that and then Julia gives him the hairy eyeball and he laughs."
    "The hairy eyeball and an anchor firmly tied to his ankle. Well, -they're beautiful ships." She leaned forward slightly, still looking to her left, to see a few peaked roofs peeking up behind a rise in the land. "And there's the village, I suppose. I'd like to walk over there someday, but not just yet."
    She then looked to her right where there was— nothing. Only some tall grasses waving in what must be a constant breeze from the water. Even the shingle slowly faded away, leaving only a wide stretch of sand.
    "You aren't allowed to walk there," Callie said, suddenly serious, as if she knew where Mariah was looking. "The sands can shift and swallow you whole, the way the whale swallowed Jonah. But the sands never spit you out again. Long ago, someone told me, some local freetraders taking their wool across the Channel used the sands to beach their boats where the Waterguard wouldn't dare follow, and then offloaded the contraband they brought back with them. There are so manylegends. But the smugglers knew the sands and we don't. They're not safe. Nobody goes there. And nobody smuggles from these shores anymore, of course. Not for years and years."
    "Really?" Mariah asked, still looking at the sands, fascinated by them for some reason she didn't understand. Perhaps it was the stark beauty of waving grass and sand and water.. .and the danger hidden beneath that beauty. Or perhaps it was the rushed way in which Callie had told her small story and then added even more warnings.
    "Oh, yes. There's no smuggling here. There's no need."
    "But it must have been so very exciting, don't you think, Callie?"
    Callie sniffed. Quite an adult sniff, at that. "That's just romantical. Smuggling is...smuggling was what they did to survive, nothing more. Nobody smuggles, for the adventure of the thing. That would be silly."
    "Yes, of course it would be," Mariah said, stepping back from the railing, ready to return to the house, as she was beginning to feel as if her legs were fashioned out of sponges. But then she caught a movement in thedistance, and moments later Spencer Becket appeared out of the tall grasses. He was striding surefootedlyacross the sands toward Becket Hall, a staff taller than himself in his right hand. The young man she recognized as Rian Becket from that first night walked along behind him.
    Rian Becket had a small wooden cask hefted up and onto his shoulder and he was whistling. The sound carried to her on the stiff breeze.
    She felt Callie's hand on her arm. "We should go inside now."
    Mariah blinked, closed her mouth, which had fallen open at the sight of the two men. "Yes, yes we should. I'm afraid I've done too much too soon" She allowed herself to be led back across the wide terrace to the French doors they had used earlier, turning only at the last moment to take one last look to the beach.
    He carries the staff in case the sands try to take him. To either hold out to a rescuer, or brace it lengthwise against the sands and employ it to crawl to safety. But he carries it carelessly, because he already knows the way.
    What had she asked him? How did he amuse himself here on Romney Marsh? And what had he answered?
    Oh yes, she remembered now. "We keep ourselves busy...."
    ----
CHAPTER FIVE

     
    "She saw me, saw what I was doing."
    "Is that