The Bride's Rescuer. Charlotte Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ been sound asleep when he tucked her into bed, so she remembered nothing after he’d carried her up the stairs.

      The problem of getting off the island still faced her.

      Using the basin and pitcher of water on the dresser, she washed her face, then inspected the garments Mrs. Givens must have left for her. The clothes were not only too big, which she expected, considering the plumpness of their owner, but lacked any sense of style. In addition to the skirt and blouse, she found a shapeless chemise, a slip and a pair of ruffled drawers.

      She shrugged off the nightgown, stepped into the strange panties and pulled the drawstring on the voluminous drawers taut, noting the tiny, even hand-stitching. Mrs. Givens apparently made all her clothes since Cameron Alexander probably wouldn’t let his housekeeper leave the island to shop. How did one order underwear from a charter boat captain?

      Celia shook her head at her dilemma. The sooner she returned to the mainland, the sooner she could end this crazy nightmare.

      She rejected the too large chemise and heavy slip—the Florida climate was too hot for either—and slipped on the gathered skirt, which hung just above her ankles. She pulled on the blouse, roomy enough for two, tied the shirttail into a knot at her waist, and rolled the long sleeves above her elbows.

      After plaiting her hair into a loose French braid, she hurried down to the kitchen, determined to find Cameron and force or cajole him—whichever it took—to take her to Key West.

      Chapter Two

      The house looked bigger in the morning light. Double doors at each end of the hallways and in every room opened to the cooling winds, and the broad, encircling roof of the veranda shaded every window. From the dogtrot, Celia noted the house was built on stilts to allow breezes and high water to circulate beneath, just like many of the homes on her own Clearwater Beach.

      When she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Givens looked up from her baking. The housekeeper’s mouth dropped as her gaze traveled upward from Celia’s bare feet and ankles, exposed by the skirt, to the strip of midriff where she’d tied the blouse above her waistline, to her cleavage where she’d folded back the high-necked blouse for coolness.

      The older woman’s cheeks glowed pink, probably from the heat of the open hearth, and her tongue tripped on her words. “Very pretty you are, m’dear, and looking less like flotsam every day.”

      “Thanks for lending me these clothes.”

      “Well, now, you couldn’t have worn that wedding gown, even if it was still in one piece, could you? Not in this heat.”

      Curiosity glimmered in the older woman’s eyes, but Celia wasn’t ready to discuss her hasty flight from the church. Mrs. Seffner’s visit and her accusations against Darren seemed like a distant nightmare, one Celia wished she could forget. She wondered how Darren had taken being jilted at the altar. Had he slunk away in disgrace? Expressed concern and organized a search? Or, if he was really the murderer Mrs. Seffner believed him to be, would he attempt to track Celia down for vengeance? The possibility made her shiver in the warm air.

      “Sit yourself down,” Mrs. Givens said. “Your breakfast is ready.”

      Celia settled at one end of a large wooden table whose battered, well-scrubbed surface smelled of lemons. Mrs. Givens poured steaming coffee from an enamel pot, filled Celia’s plate with scrambled eggs, grits and sliced mangoes, and moved a basket of hot rolls and a pot of honey within her reach.

      Celia discovered her appetite had returned. Besides, she’d need her strength to find a way off the island. While she ate, she gazed through the open doorway of the kitchen. The island apparently was a narrow key with the Gulf of Mexico beyond the dunes to the west, and to the south and east, a bay, dotted with islands, stretched off toward the dark green mass of the mainland.

      The house would have only a tenuous anchorage on the slender strip of land during a violent storm like the one that had wrecked the Morgan. Her hands trembled at the memory, and a suffocating sense of panic squeezed the air from her throat. She gulped coffee, and the scalding liquid doused the terrifying recollections of the storm and eased her breathing.

      “What’s this island called?” she asked, anxious to push her memories of the storm aside.

      “It isn’t named on any map, but Mr. Alexander calls it Solitaire.”

      Celia shuddered. The name evoked haunting images of a place withdrawn from society, forgotten by the world, almost as if suspended in time, like a place of legend. Its disquieting stillness made the name an apt one.

      “I’d hoped after six years of Solitaire, he’d be ready to return to England.” Sadness clouded Mrs. Givens’s green eyes as she added eggs and butter to a bowl and began mixing with a wooden spoon. “But the longer he’s here, the more determined he is to stay. I’m afraid his exile might last forever.”

      Celia pictured the golden stranger with the classically handsome face and a body like a Greek god. Who was this Cameron Alexander? She needed to know more about him if she was to persuade him to help end her own exile.

      “What did he do in England?”

      Mrs. Givens’s head snapped up, and her green eyes narrowed. “Do? What do you mean?”

      “What kind of work did he do?” Whatever it was, Celia mused, he must have been successful to have purchased his own island worth millions in the Florida real estate market.

      Mrs. Givens laughed with a nervous twittering sound. “He was a gentleman landowner with farms, mines and such.”

      His work didn’t sound ominous enough to make him run away to a deserted island. Maybe the illness Mrs. Givens had mentioned had caused his early retirement. “Why did he leave all that behind?”

      The housekeeper ceased her stirring and set the mixing bowl down with a heavy thud. Pain contorted her face. “I am never to speak a word about that. And you mustn’t ask. Mr. Alexander has sworn me not to speak of it.”

      “You hinted yesterday that he’s ill.” The night before Cameron had appeared strong and healthy, suffering only from the effects of too much brandy and his peculiar insistence that she remain on the island.

      “Aye, so I did. Suffice it to say his illness is one of the heart, and let it go at that. I’ve said too much already.”

      An illness of the heart? Of the head, more likely, if he believed he could hold her hostage for three months. Celia gauged the set of the housekeeper’s mouth and decided further questions would be futile.

      An illness of the heart. Had an ill-fated love affair broken his grasp on reality? It must have been a grand passion to keep him on his island called Solitaire, isolated from the world and its conveniences and pleasures.

      She finished her breakfast and left Mrs. Givens to her baking. She would find Cameron Alexander and demand he take her to the mainland, even if she had to bribe him with more money than she could afford.

      She stepped off the veranda and headed toward the beach. Cabbage palms provided the house’s only shade, and the tropical sun beat mercilessly on the tin roof. In the dazzling white heat of late morning, not even a condensation trail from a Miami-bound jet marred the perfection of the bright sky. The name Solitaire fit the isolated place.

      As she walked СКАЧАТЬ