Becoming the Prince's Wife (Princes of Europe) (17 page)

He clung and clung.

And through it all was the mantra. Make Jake safe. Dear God, make Jake be okay.

Another wave. Somehow he managed to claw himself higher, but at what cost? The pain in his leg...in his head...

He could close his eyes, he thought. Just for a moment.

If Jake was safe he could close his eyes and forget.

* * *

And then she found it. Him.

Dear God, this was no detritus washed up in the storm. This was a dark-haired, strongly built man, wearing yachting gear and a lifejacket.

He was face down in the sand. He’d lost a shoe. His pants were ripped. Lifeless?

As she reached him she could see a thin line of blood seeping down his face. Fresh blood. He’d been alive when he’d been washed up.

His hands were sprawled out on the sand. She knelt and touched one and flinched with the cold. His skin was white and clammy—how long had he been in the water?

She touched his neck.

A pulse! Alive!

She hauled him over—no mean feat by itself—so he lay on his side rather than face down. She was frantically trying to clear sand from mouth and nostrils. She had her ear against his mouth.

He was breathing. She could hear it. She unclipped his lifejacket and she could see the faint rise and fall of his chest.

There was so much sand. His face was impossibly caked. Wiping was never going to get rid of that sand.

He’d be sucking it into his lungs.

She hauled off her raincoat and headed into the waves, stooping to scoop water into the plastic. That was a risk by itself because the waves were fierce. She backed up fast, up the beach to where he lay, then placed her back to the wind and oozed the water carefully around his face. She was trying to rid him of the caked sand. How much had he already breathed?

Why was he unconscious? That hit on the head? Near drowning? With his mouth clear, she put her mouth against his and breathed for him. It wouldn’t hurt to help him, to get more oxygen in, to keep that raspy breathing going.

His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, more surely now that she was breathing with him.

She kept on breathing while the sleet slashed from all sides, while the wind howled and while wet sand cut into her face and hands, every part of her that was exposed.

What to do? The tide was coming in. In an hour, probably less, this beach would be under water.

She thought of the trolley, but to pull it on a sandy beach was impossible. This man must be six foot three or four and strongly built. She was five foot six and no wimp, but she was no match for this guy’s size.

How to move him? She couldn’t.

‘Please,’ she pleaded out loud, and she didn’t even know what she was pleading for.

But as if he’d heard, his body shifted. He opened his eyes and stared up at her.

Deep, grey eyes. Wounded eyes. She’d seen pain before and this man had it in spades.

‘You’re safe,’ she said, keeping her voice low and calm. Nurse reassuring patient. Nurse telling lies? ‘You’re okay. Relax.’

‘Jake...’ he muttered.

‘Is that your name?’

‘No, Ben. But Jake...’

‘I’m Mary and we can worry about Jake when we’re off the beach,’ she said, still in the reassuring tone she’d honed with years of district nursing. ‘I’m here to help. Ben, the tide’s coming in and we need to move. Can you wiggle your toes?’

She could see him think about it. Concentrate.

His feet moved. Praise be. She wasn’t coping with paraplegia—or worse.

She should be factoring in risks. She should have him on a rigid board with a neck brace in case of spinal injury.

There wasn’t time. Survival meant they had to move.

‘Now your legs,’ she said, and one leg moved. The other shifted a little and then didn’t. She could see pain wash over his face.

‘That’s great,’ she said, even though it wasn’t. ‘We have one good leg and one that’s sore. Now fingers and arms.’

‘I can’t feel ’em.’

‘That’s because you’re cold. Try.’

He tried and they moved.

‘Good. Take a breather now. We have a little time.’ Like five minutes. Waves were already reaching his feet.

He had a slash across his face. The bleeding had slowed to an ooze but it looked like it had bled profusely.

Head injury. He needed X-rays. If he had intracranial bleeding...

Don’t even go there.

Priorities. She had a patient with an injured leg and blood loss and shock. The tide was coming in. There was time for nothing but getting him off the beach.

The sand and sleet were slapping her face, making her gasp. She was having trouble breathing herself.

Think.

Injured leg. She had no time—or sight—to assess it. The slashing sand was blinding.

Splint.

Walking-stick.

She made to rise but his hand came out and caught her. He held her arm, with surprising strength.

‘Don’t leave me.’ It was a gasp.

She understood. She looked at the ripped lifejacket and then she looked out at the mountainous sea.

This guy must be one of the yachties they’d been talking about on the radio this morning. A yacht race—the Ultraswift Round the World Challenge—had been caught unprepared. The cyclone warning had had the fleet running for cover to Auckland but the storm had veered unexpectedly, catching them in its midst.

At dawn the broadcasters had already been talking about capsizes and deaths. Heroic rescues. Tragedy.

Now the storm had turned towards her island. It must have swept Ben before it. He’d somehow been swept onto Hideaway, but to safety?

Would this be as bad as the storm got, or would the cyclone hit them square on? With no radio contact she had to assume the worst.

She had to get him off this beach.

‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said, and heaven only knew the effort it cost to keep the panic from her voice. ‘I’m walking up the beach to find you a walking-stick. Then I’m coming back to help you to safety. I know you can’t see me clearly right now but I’m five feet six inches tall and even though I play roller derby like a champion, I can’t carry you. You need a stick.’

‘Roller derby,’ he said faintly.

‘My team name is Smash ’em Mary,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to mess with me.’

‘Smash ’em Mary?’ It was a ragged whisper but she was satisfied. She’d done what she’d intended. She’d made him think of something apart from drama and tragedy.

‘I’ll invite you to a game some time,’ she told him. ‘But not today. Bite on a bullet, big boy, while I fetch you a walking-stick.’

‘I don’t need a walking-stick.’

‘Yeah, you can get up and hike right up the beach without even a wince,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. Lie still and think of nothing at all while I go and find what I need. Do what the lady tells you. Stay.’

* * *

Stay. He had no choice.

‘Smash ’em Mary.’ The name echoed in his head, weirdly reassuring.

The last few hours had been a nightmare. In the end he’d decided it was a dream. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness or that was how it’d seemed. The past was mixing with the future. He and Jake as kids in that great, ostentatious mansion their parents called home. Their father yelling at them. ‘You moronic imbeciles, you’re your mother’s spawn. You’ve inherited nothing from me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.’

That’s how he felt now. Stupid.

Jake, flying through the air with the blast from the roadside bomb. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Jake on a rope, smashing through the waves.

‘Ben, look after your brother.’ That was their mother. Rita Marlene. Beautiful, fragile, fatally flawed. ‘Promise me.’

She was here now.
Promise me.

Where was Jake?

This was all a dream.

His mother?

Smash ’em Mary.

There was no way a dream could conjure a Smash ’em Mary. The name hauled him out of his stupor as nothing else could.

Stay.

He had no choice but to obey. The nightmare was still there. If he moved, it might slam back.

He’d lie still and submit. To Smash ’em Mary?

She’d been so close he’d seen her face. She had an elfin haircut, with wet, short-cropped curls plastering her forehead. She had a finely boned face, brown eyes and freckles.

She had shadows under her eyes. Exhaustion?

Because of him? Had she been searching for him—or someone else?

How many yachts had gone down?

Memory was surging back, and he groaned and tried to rise. But then she was back, pushing him down onto the sand.

‘Disobedience means no elephant stamp,’ she told him. ‘I said lie still and I meant lie still.’ Then she faltered a little, and the assurance faded. ‘Ben, I can’t sugar-coat this. Your leg might be broken and there’s no way I can assess it here.

‘In normal circumstances I’d call an ambulance, we’d fill you full of nice woozy drugs, put you on a stretcher and cart you off to a hospital, but right now all you have is me. So I’ve found a couple of decent sticks. I’ll tie one to your leg to keep it still. The other’s a walking-stick. You’re going to hold onto me and we’ll get you off this beach.’

He tried to think about it. It was hard to think about anything but closing his eyes and going to sleep.

‘Ben,’ Mary snapped. ‘Don’t even think about closing your eyes. You’re cold to the marrow. The tide’s coming in. You go to sleep and you won’t wake up.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ It was a slur. It was so hard to make his voice work.

‘Because Jake needs you,’ Mary snapped again. ‘You pull yourself together and help me, and then we’ll both help Jake. Just do it.’

And put like that, of course he’d do it. He had no choice.

* * *

Afterwards she could never figure out how they managed. She’d read somewhere of mothers lifting cars off children, superhuman feats made possible by the adrenalin of terror. There was something about a cyclone bearing down that provided the same sort of impetus.

She was facing sleet and sand and the blasting of leaves and branches from the storm-swept trees of Hideaway Island and beyond. She had to get this man two hundred yards up a rocky cliff to the safety of the cave. The sheer effort of hauling him was making her feel faint, but there was no way she was letting him go.

‘If I had to find a drowned rat of a sailor, why couldn’t I have found a little one?’ she gasped. They were halfway up the path, seemingly a million miles from the top. Ben was grim-faced with pain. He was leaning on his stick but his left leg was useless and he was forced to lean on her heavily. His weight was almost unbearable.

‘Leave me and come back when the storm’s done,’ he gasped.

‘No way,’ she said, and then, as he propped himself up on the walking-stick, turning stubborn, she hauled out the big guns. ‘Keep going. Jake needs you even if I don’t.’ She didn’t have a clue who Jake was but it shut him up. He went back to concentrating on one ghastly step at a time, and so did she.

His leg seemed useless. He was totally dependent on one leg, his stick and her support. Compound fracture? Blocked blood supply? There hadn’t been the time or visibility on the beach to see. She’d simply ripped her coat into strips and tied the stick on his leg to keep it as steady as she could.

But it was bad. He was dragging it behind him and she could feel that every step took him to the edge.

She felt close to the edge herself. How much worse must it be for him?

‘If I were you, I’d be screaming in agony,’ she managed, and she felt him stiffen. She could feel his tension, his fear—and now his shock.

‘Smash...Smash ’em Mary screams in agony?’

‘I’m good at it,’ she confessed. ‘It’s great for getting free points from the referee.’

‘You’re...kidding me.’

‘Nope.’ She was trying desperately to sound normal, to keep the exhaustion from her voice as they hauled themselves one appalling step after another. Dizziness was washing over her in waves, but she wouldn’t succumb. ‘I’ve watched wrestlers on the telly. I swear their agony is pretend but they make millions. Some day I might.’

‘As a wrestler, or with roller derby?’

‘I might need to work on my muscles a bit for wrestling. I should have done it earlier. Muscles’d be helping now.’

They surely would. He was doing his best but she was practically dragging him.

Left to his own devices, he’d have lain where he was until the storm passed. Or not. This diminutive woman was giving him no choice.

‘Mary—’

‘Shut up and keep going.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘Lie down and we lie down together,’ she muttered, grim with determination. ‘I don’t give up. I might get it horribly wrong, but I don’t give up. Ever.’

He had no clue what that meant. All he knew was that she was iron. She wasn’t faltering. No matter how steep the ground grew, she wasn’t slowing.

But she stopped talking. She must be as close to the edge as he was, he thought. If he could only help...

And then suddenly, blessedly, the ground flattened. His leg jolted with the shock of a change of levels but she didn’t pause.

‘Heinz... Heinz’s waiting just round this corner.’ She was gasping for breath, not bothering to disguise her distress now they were on level ground.

‘Heinz?’

‘My...my guard dog.’

Somehow she hauled him another few steps, around a bluff that instantly, magically chopped off the screaming wind. Ten more steps took them towards darkness...the mouth of a cave? Five more steps and they were inside. The rain ceased. The light dimmed.

‘Welcome to my lair,’ Mary managed, and that was all she could get out.

‘I can’t...’ she muttered—and she folded into a crumpled heap.

What the...?

Somehow he dropped beside her, fumbling to lift her head, to clear her face from the sandy ground. Was this a faint? Please, God, let this just be exhaustion. To have hauled him so far...

This woman had put her own life on the line to save his. She’d given her all and more. Her faint had to be from sheer exhaustion, he told himself fiercely. It had to be. If it was worse, he’d carry the guilt for the rest of his life.

Her eyes were open, dazed, confused.