Page 4 of Sir Durham’s Disarming Asset

Rafe stood and offered her his hand. “Come inside. I will make tea to soothe your throat.”

Sweet, infuriating fellow, always after her welfare like a mother cat. Or rather…like the bear he resembled.

She put her hand in his large, warm paw. He took hers and covered it whole. He was indeed a bear of a man. Big. Broad. Dark and gruff. She adored his strength. His determination to save her. His savoir faire.

Now she was getting sentimental! Bah! To be honest, she had complaints against him. Too bad she could only think at the moment of one: she hated that he had lopped off her hair. But what could she do? Lice were never attractive.

Gazing up at him, she told him instead what she dearly wished. “I want to leave here, Rafe. Soon.”

“We go, chouchou. When I get a fine smuggler to take us hence. But I need you able to withstand the crossing.”

As if to prove how well she was, she shot up…and swayed. Damn it.

He caught her tightly to him. If she had a figure, her old looks, and a bit of her old perfume, she’d find his embrace an attempt at familiarity. Who would want a rough stick without form or allure? Not him. Not any man. Still, she counted her blessings that she was a head or more shorter than he. That difference meant that when they debated, she had to state her position boldly and often to maintain her ground. “We should leave France now!”

He tucked her arm in his, and patted her hand as if she were a child. “For us to sail out upon the sea, you must be good. Eat more. Get fat, chouchou.”

She could say one thing was true in her life: Rafe Durham, her bear—without whom she would never again have seen the light of day or sky of blue, nor had any air to breathe—never made a promise he did not keep.

“You are a terrible cook,” she grumbled.

“All the more reason, Zephora Butler, to eat up so we can get the hell out of here!”

Chapter Two

July 16, 1806

A smuggler’s hideaway

Near Portsmouth, England

Zephora scrambled away from Rafe, around the two other passengers who stumbled down the gangway off the creaky old packet. Never had she been a good sailor—and she certainly had not been on that teacup of a boat. It was dark, after midnight, the stars twinkling in the sky, and she saw only wild shadows outlining the docks, but she had a violent need to reach land.

She didn’t hear Rafe call her back. Thank God. He was a liberal sort of fellow in his devotion to her care. Of course, he would let her go, let her run to dry and stable land, let her indulge herself in the illusion that she could go far…and go far without him. Smart man. Still, she was too ill, her innards too queasy, her need to feel dirt and rock beneath her flimsy shoes too urgent.

But the dock was rough. The planks uneven.

She stumbled.

“Chouchou,” Durham whispered as he caught her arm before she landed flat on her face. “You are not yet ready to run.”

Can I ever be? She glanced up at his dear face. How did he tolerate her infernal weaknesses?

She did not care to probe too deeply into her dependence on Rafe. She had fought herself not to cower from the deckhands on the packet from St. Nazaire. She had smiled and done her best acting when the two other passengers had to assemble on the deck for air or their daily walk. She had swallowed her screams—and kept her eyes on Rafe and her hand in his.

“Right you are,” she said in her low whiskey voice that never seemed to improve to its former, higher range. Holding on to Durham for dear life seemed to be the way she must live for now. She did not object. For now. How could she?

“Don’t worry.” He patted her hand, as he was wont to do. “You’ll get used to the crowds.”

The lump in her throat proclaimed she did not agree. Since Rafe had swept her from the lower depths of the Conciergerie, she had changed, improved, even. At first when standing near a man she did not know, she melted away from him. With Rafe’s insistence on his technique of breathing, she had learned to control her body’s rigid stance. To allow fresh air to circulate into her blood and in her mind.

Seeing her reluctance all through their sojourn in France, south out of Paris, then up the coast from Bordeaux to St. Nazaire, Rafe repeated the lessons of his technique and insisted that her shyness around others was to be expected. She took his word as gospel. After all, he was the only man who had ever saved her from disaster.

So, head high, she walked with him like a lady with her man. Yes, she even strolled with him to the hack that idled near the square.

“Where do we go?” She had asked him that early this morning when the captain had declared that, after twelve days of torture on rough seas, they would land.

“The captain says east of Portsmouth. Ever been there?” His bright eyes had danced at the prospect.