“More as native liaison.” The answer was strained. He didn’t want to tell her the truth, that he’d been a spy. Of course, if she cared to investigate, she’d find out. His life had been sensationalized in every newspaper in Britain. In the world, for all he knew.
Elements of the press coverage were true, at least superficially. The papers had invented the rest, each story more lurid than the last. In the public mind, he’d become a bizarre mixture of Robin Hood, Casanova, and Sir Galahad.
The cruel farce of his celebrity made him cringe.
She straightened and ran a thoughtful finger along the edge of the hard white shell. He already knew enough to guess another question percolated. “Were the Indian girls beautiful?”
“Yes.”
She glanced quickly up at him, then away, a delicate pink washing her cheeks. “Were you in love with someone there?”
Dear Lord, were all women so fixated on love? He’d heard more on the subject today than he remembered hearing in all his twenty-five years. Against his will, he found himself answering. “No.”
The man who stepped off the ship in Calcutta seven years ago had never known a lover. But Gideon’s fascination with Indian language and art, nurtured in the dusty library of his college, became a fascination with the living, breathing culture. And soon the living, breathing female embodiments of that culture.
That first six months as he traveled around the Company’s offices and residences, he’d succumbed to hedonistic license. The women were beautiful and generous and adept at pleasure. He’d never imagined a world like it. Sex became a drug.
His hedonistic existence came to an abrupt end once he entered the field. The dangers of betrayal were too great.
He swung away from further questions and strode along the beach, his long legs eating up the stretch of sand. The gulls cried overhead. The loneliest sound in the world.
He should have known she wouldn’t let him escape. Running footsteps crunched behind him, then he felt the soft touch of her hand on his arm.
Through his shirtsleeve, that contact scorched. Rapacious hunger jolted him even as his flesh crawled. He jerked free. “Don’t touch me!”
She recoiled, her eyes darkening with such pain that he flinched. “I’m sorry,” she said huskily.
He fought to speak normally, but his voice emerged dull and flat. “No matter. I don’t like to be touched.”
Her mouth straightened into an unhappy line. “By me, at any rate.”
God in heaven, how much of this could he take? He sucked in a lungful of salty air and floundered for control. “It’s not you.”
She shook her head and raised a hand to keep her wind-tossed hair from her eyes. He couldn’t mistake the anguish in her face. “Don’t spare my feelings. I’ve noticed your revulsion for my presence.”
He let his breath out in a despairing hiss. “That’s not true.”
Sarah’s slender throat moved as if she stifled a protest. Hell, he hated to hurt her. He felt like the lowest bastard in Creation, even though he acted for her sake as much as his own.
Don’t be a blockhead, Trevithick. The girl isn’t suffering from genuine love but from a bad case of hero worship. She’ll survive without ill effects.
“Miss Watson…Sarah…” He stopped, struck silent by her vibrating misery.
“You must consider me a foolish creature.” The breeze whipped at her low words, so he had to lean closer to hear. A dizzying waft of her scent mixed with the salt air and made his nostrils flare in masculine response.
A torrent of words fought to escape, words that told her how exquisite she was, how brave, how wonderful. He stifled them all. He had no right to pay compliments to innocent young girls.
“I have a great-aunt who would be horrified at my behavior. She worked hard to turn me into a lady.” Sarah hesitated, sucked in a breath, then went on in an artificially bright voice. Gideon knew she desperately strove to ease the prickling tension between them. “I was quite the tomboy when she took me in hand. My father raised me much as he’d raise a son. You see, the estates would all be mine one day.”
Even through the wild tumult in his head, Gideon knew this didn’t make sense. He frowned. “Wasn’t your oldest brother the heir?”
Guilt flooded her vivid features. “The entail had come to an end. My father…”
Her shoulders sagged as she relapsed into troubled silence. Gideon had noticed before that she wasn’t a good liar. He was an excellent liar—he’d learned to be as defense against a violent father. He’d perfected the skill, playing a role where discovery of his identity meant death.
“They’re my stepbrothers,” she said in a subdued voice. “My father died when I was sixteen…” The sunlight shone stark on her expression of naked grief. “My mother remarried. Her husband had two adult sons who hated me on sight.”
Gideon shifted closer as if even on this deserted beach, he protected her from her rapacious family. His mind flared with a fierce, relentless urge to kill anyone who threatened her. His voice roughened with the power of his anger. At last he discovered her secrets. At last he came to grips with the forces ranged against them. “Those are the swine who beat you?”