Linda Needham (18 page)

They’d sent Magnus and Elden back to the hall with the children to outrun the storm, and now Jared was alone with this unorthodox woman, thinking randy thoughts about her and the dark woods behind them.

“At least you’ll think of me, Jared, whenever you look toward the hills and its sea of green.”

“Think of you? What makes you believe that I would ever stop?” He turned her in his arms as a huge glob of rain landed on his shoulder.

“The forest that will grow here someday—you’ll remember me by it when I’m long gone and out of your hair.”

“You’re not—” The rest of Jared’s reply blew back against his mouth with a blast of wind and rain as the sky dashed against them.

“Come,” he shouted, grabbing her around the shoulders and leading her toward the shelter of the trees and the place he had left his horse.

“The cannon.” She stopped and tried to wriggle away. “And the powder.”

A blinding blast of lightning bored into the side of the peak above them, the crack of thunder too close and nearly deafening them.

“Leave it. I’ll buy you another.” As many as she wanted. He gave a yank on her hand and she followed him deeper into the forest.

They slipped and slid through the brambles of the sloping woods as the sky lit up behind them and the thunder rolled down the hill.

Jared had lost a mast or two at sea in sudden, unpredictable storms just like this one, but he’d never been quite so concerned about taking cover, about safety.

Her
safety, whether she cared or not. Though she sprinted through the underbrush and between the oak and alder like a gazelle across the Kalahari.

And he could have sworn that he’d seen the glint of her smile more than once, and her delighted laughter among the peals of thunder.

“There’s the horse, Jared!” The huge bay seemed unconcerned about the storm, and stood steadfastly as he mounted, then dragged Kate up behind the saddle.

“Hold on, wife!” Reveling in the heated feeling of Kate slipping her arms around his waist, pressing her chest against his back, Jared gave the horse a heel and started along the road just as the sky opened up with a drenching downpour.

“Lord, I love a good storm!” she shouted into the wildly swirling air, pulling herself more tightly against him.

“And a good dance in the moonlight, I hear?”

“You heard right, Hawkesly.” Her laughter rippled along his ribs and lodged in his groin. “Now to the hall, please. I need a bath.”

Now, there’s an enchanting idea!

The image of Kate standing naked and glistening in a bath rode just ahead of Jared, dragging him hard against the wind. He galloped up to the entrance of Hawkesly Hall with his beautiful wife drenched to the skin and clinging to him.

“You needn’t carry me,” she said against his ear as he lifted her down from the saddle.

“My pleasure, I assure you.” He raced up the stone staircase, his head filled with plans of courting and seduction, soap and warm water, and Kate.

But his fantasy vanished the moment he carried her over the threshold and right into a sea of children.

“Is Lady Kate hurt, Lord Jared?”

“What happened to your legs, Lady Kate?”

“Why are you all wet?”

Kate looked up at him with a wan smile. “You’ve been most gallant, my lord.”

“A lot of good it’s done me.” Jared reluctantly set her on her feet, clearly recalling his vow that morning to follow her through her day and wondering how he’d survive it.

He cleaned up down the hall from the master’s suite which he and Kate ought to be sharing, stole a listen at the door to her bedchamber as she splashed around in the tub while regaling Rosemary with tales of shooting off the cannon.

He ate supper with his knees crammed against the
underside of the shortest table in the kingdom, and finally dozed off in the library to the third reading of the
Brave Little Tailor
.

“Are you sleeping here tonight, Jared?”

He woke with a start, lying on his back on the carpet, nose to nose with his wife. Close enough to kiss her and so he did. Pulling her mouth gently to his, just in case she got away. Or was a dream. Or a phantom.

“Am I what?” he asked, nibbling on her softness.

“It’s after eleven and I’m off to bed. Are you going back to Badger’s Run, or will you be sleeping here?”

“With you?”

“No room. I’ve got Dori and Mera and Mr. McNair with me tonight.”

“I should have guessed.” He sat up, his head stuffy with sleep. “Off with you, then. I’ll go back to the lodge in a few minutes.”

She straightened and studied him with her impatient goodness. “You’re not a half-bad man. A few lessons would do you a world of good.” She bent and kissed his forehead, then left him to the dimness of the library.

Lessons be damned. His body as exhausted as his soul, he lay back for just a moment, and then dropped off like a rock.

He awakened to the sound of little voices whispering above him. And then a huge tongue washed over his face.

“Mr. McNair!”

“Good morning, Lord Jared!” came the full chorus.

He swabbed his face dry with his sleeve and then found a half dozen pairs of eyes staring cheerily at him.

“Lady Kate was going to meet you at Badger’s Run,” Grady said. “Boy is she going to be surprised.”

Not half as surprised as he was: At the ache in his bones, or the larger one in his heart as a bolt of laughter rumbled out of his chest.

“I
think I’ve packed enough clothes for the children, Elden.” Kate inventoried the contents of the trunk one last time, then fastened it tightly before helping Elden slide it into the back of the wagon.

“Two wagon loads of clothes and shoes and blankets and food for nine little ones seems plenty to me.”

“Until they each grow another two inches.” Thunder rumbled off the sea and up the little valley, signaling the second storm since three days ago, when they had planted the hillside.

More rain meant damp trunks, even with canvas covers for the wagons. So she’d wait a day or two more until the weather cleared and then leave Hawkesly Hall for a place of safety with the children.

She’d hidden the wagons and their cargo from Jared in the meadow barn because the man wouldn’t under
stand. He hadn’t come right out and said it, but she knew that he would never willingly let her leave him or their marriage. Despite his worldly travels, he lived by traditions. And a wife belonged at home, cleaving to her husband, no matter how wrong-headed he was, or how badly they fit together.

Or how grand she felt to be in his powerful arms.

“We need to be getting back to the hall, Elden, before his lordship comes looking for us and finds our contraband.”

“Better that he finds a few trunks of clothes, my lady, than a half dozen warehouses filled with grain stolen from your dearest enemies.”

“Lord Grey will never miss a grain of it. At least his children won’t starve for the lack of it. The bloody bastard.” She helped Elden drape the canvas over the trunks. She was just locking the door when a voice rose over the growing wind.

“Lady Kaaaaa-thryn!”

“That’s Ian. Here we are!” she shouted, hurrying out into the lane where he could see them in the coming darkness.

He came running toward them from around the bend, his eyes widening when he saw her. “My lady!”

“Great heavens, Ian, what is it? One of the children?” Her stomach was already knotted with fear.

“Not that. A boat’s having trouble out in the bay. They think it’s the
Fairheart
.”

“Father Sebastian’s little longboat?” Nothing more than a launch with a sail. Hardly a boat at all, especially in a storm like this. “Dear God, Ian! I hope he doesn’t have children with him this time.”

“What shall we do?”

“Ride to the lodge, Ian. Tell Lord Hawkesly and Magnus that I’ll meet them in Mereglass. Elden, go to the hall and let them know what’s happened. I’ll take my mare.”

Minutes later she was galloping down the road toward the village, wishing that the light weren’t fading so quickly and praying for the wind to settle and the waves to carry the little boat safely into Abbey Cove and not onto the rocky headland.

She rode hard against the wind, made the crowded quay a half hour later. Dozen of villagers watched the longboat inching its way toward disaster, a tiny, dark shape in the steely-gray half light.

“Did you see it, Connell? Is it the
Fairheart
?”

“Certain of it, my lady,” Connell said, tossing a rope to his son on the lower dock. “Gibson’s boys were up on the old abbey ruins collecting gull eggs and saw the boat enter the mouth of the bay just as the storm come in.”

“Fought against the wind and that damn tidal current for such a long time without goin’ anywhere,” Avery shouted from below, clamping his arm across his cap, “then the boat just give up its mast and its sail.”

“Now it’s adrift, my lady. Sure to run up onto the rocks out there on the point. An’ the tide’s rising fast.”

Please, not again.

The storm had paused in its rampage, opening a large hole in the west of the sky, letting the bright, placid moon limn the violent sea and the cliffs and the darkly forbidding promontory opposite the village.

Kate could barely see the boat for the depth of the waves and crashing surf so near it. She could feel it being drawn up against the ragged rocks.

“Did the Gibson boys see anyone on board?”

“Four or five, maybe. Too small to be sailors or fishermen.”

“Then Father Sebastian has children with him.”

“Me and Avery thought we’d get as close as we can. Pluck some out of the water.”

“Dear God, look!” As Kate had spoken the words, the little boat seemed to lose any kind of will. The next wave lifted it a dozen feet into the air, spun it, and then swallowed it inside a foaming curtain.

Everyone on the quay ran toward the edge, watching in horror as the waves sunk away from the ragged ledge in a frothing rage and left the little boat wedged among the rocks.

“I’m going out there to the point. Connell, you and Avery, do whatever you can to rescue anyone. But please don’t risk yourselves.”

“Now, where’s the fun in that, my lady! You just be careful yourself!”

Kate gathered two other men and as many ropes and lanterns as they could round up then rode along the rocky rise toward the cliffside and the point beyond it.

The cliffs jutted out into the sea like a gnarled, thick-knuckled finger, curving like a claw, narrowing as it stepped down to a flattened shelf where it finally reached the water.

As she galloped along the path at the base of the
High Watch crags, she kept her eye on the boat, holding her breath with every crashing wave as the vessel pitched and rolled in its precarious perch.

More terrifying, she couldn’t see a soul inside.

Kate led the rescue party across the flat, grassy plane of the upper ledge and then drew up the horses as near to the edge as they dared, fighting the slashing wind that was trying to push them backward.

“Do you see anything, Wallace?” Kate shouted, looking desperately for any sign of life, inside the longboat or bobbing on the surface.

“Nothing, my lady.”

A wave swelled and loosened the boat slightly, then shoved it harder into the rocks, tipping the stern toward them before the surf crashed again.

But the sight had left Kate’s heart soaring. “They were still there, Wallace. Did you see them? Three, at least. Clinging together in the bow.”

Wallace swabbed his eyes with his coat sleeve. “’At’s what I saw too, my lady.”

“Thank God! Can you tie the lantern to something, Ben? Let them know we’re coming.” Give them some hope to hold on tightly to.

Wallace crawled closer to the edge and hung over it slightly. “Looks like we’re gonna have to climb down this cliff face to that flat area there,” he said.

“About twenty, twenty-five feet,” Kate said from beside him. “But it’s the only way to get anywhere near the boat.”

“Right, then, Lady Hawkesly. I’ll get—”

“No, I’m going down there, Wallace.”

Wallace grabbed her by the elbow. “Oh, no you’re
not, if you don’t mind me sayin’, my lady. His lordship would have m’hide if anything should happen to you. I’ll go.”

“I won’t let you, Wallace. I’m the lighter of us three.” She wrapped a rope around her waist. “You and Ben will have to stay up here and act as anchors.”

Ben had managed to wedge the lantern into a crag just below them and must have heard the last of Kate’s orders. “You’re right, Wallace, Hawkesly will kill us.”

Kate handed Ben the end of her rope. “Tie yourself to the other end of mine, Ben. In case it gets rough out there.”

“In case it’s rough? It ain’t hardly gonna get any rougher!”

“Use the other ropes if you need to add more length. Wallace, you do the reining for me; I’ll give a yank when I need more rope.”

“I’m beggin’ you to let me do it, my lady.”

“Just hold tightly and guide me, Wallace. As soon as you have another man to spare, secure him with a rope and send him down! I’ll need help with the children.”

Kate knew the cliff well enough to start over the side without pausing longer than the realization that the landscape was vastly different now in the stormy dark than it had been when she brought the children here in the daylight to play in the tidepools.

Only this time she was climbing straight down the hard way, rather than having the luxury of waiting for low tide and the strip of sandy shore that exposed itself along the base of the cliff on a sunny afternoon in July.

“Down, Mr. Wallace!” She straddled the wide rocky columns of basalt, leaping from side to side as Wallace
and Ben let out the rope a few feet at a time.

“Yeeouuch!” Though she only whispered it, as the wind shoved at her suddenly and her boot wedged for a moment between two rocks before she bounced away.

“I’m down!” she shouted as she felt solid rock beneath her feet. She turned from the cliffside, bracing herself against the wind.

There it was! Should be as easy as that to rescue the passengers. A hundred feet in front of her: the underside of the bow projecting just above the edge at a dangerous angle. Thankfully still in one piece, though no sign of people from this vantage point.

“Father Sebastian!” Kate shouted for him, but the wind stole her words.

She put her head down and shouldered forward into the blinding gale. But the few yards she gained had only shoved her sharply sideways as she battled the stinging salt spray and the driving wind.

The sea seemed to rise with a sudden surge and a towering wave hit the promontory broadside, washing over the rocks and knocking her flat, skidding her across the rugged surface toward the edge.

And plunging her right over the side, her motion slowed, and her thoughts so oddly clear:

Jared isn’t going to be at all happy with me.

“Where’s my wife, Mercer?” Jared pulled the fisherman closer, certain he’d heard wrong in all the noise and chaos on the quay.

The man pointed into the dark bay. “There, my lord, you see that light out on the point? They musta put up a lantern on the cliff.”

“They?”

Magnus had told him only that there was a foundering vessel out there somewhere, and Ian had said to tell him that she was on her way to the village.

Doubtless to supervise the rescue.

With her hands tied behind her back.

“She’s out there, my lord!” Mrs. Foster from the inn tugged on his sleeve. “Out on the point where the boat’s grounded itself.”

“On the point?” Hell, all he could see was a black, glistening cliff and the frothy white breakers pounding at the rocks. “She’s out there?”

“With Wallace and Ben, I hear. Must be them just below the light, sir.”

Lunatic woman! “I need my horse. And as many hands as we can muster.”

He was on the road short minutes later, followed by a half dozen able-bodied men. Most of the villagers were already perched along the rim of the bayside cliff, helpless, despondent, eager for someone to act.

“Here’s another lantern, Lord Hawkesly.”

“Hurry, help them, if you can!”

“And your lady.”

Kate! She was an impossible woman to protect. The wind gave a tear at his coattail, driving the cold and wet into his bones like a dread.

He grabbed the lantern and kept riding, his gut churning, replaying his last moments with her.

That blissful assurance that they fit perfectly together, that he would easily be able to change her mind about things.

As he approached the high-shouldered, jutting head
land he could just barely make out two dark figures silhouetted against the edge of the cliff, standing a few yards apart, both far too large to be Kate.

“Where is she?” He flung himself off the horse and ran the rest of the way.

“Mighty glad to see you, your lordship!”

“Don’t tell me you let her go over the side.”

Jared steeled himself against the buffeting winds, his gaze following the sharp play of the rope from Wallace’s hands into the darkness, where it dipped and bent around a huge, slick-backed rock below and then across the moonlit surface.

“She’s a bullheaded thing, your wife is, sir. Almost lost her once over the side, but we’ve got a good hold of her now.”

“Bloody hell!” With nothing but a rope keeping her from being tossed into the raging ocean.

“See her there, my lord?”

He panicked for a moment, his heart stopped as he searched the crags, never to beat again if he lost her.

And then there she was in the sheeting rain, struggling her way across the shiny surface of the rocky shelf toward the longboat that teetered on the edge.

“Keep it steady, men. I’m going down there.” Jared wrenched on his gloves and grabbed hold of Wallace’s rope, following it hand over fist down the face of the cliff, leaping the last half dozen feet.

“Kate!” Hell, she couldn’t possibly have heard him in the howling wind. “Hold on, you little fool!”

His little fool.

His heart.

He followed the rope and rounded the massive rock only to run right into the full, blinding, battering force of the wind and a sudden surge of the sea that shoved him back against the rock.

He looked up from under his sleeve and saw Kate straight ahead of him, but too close to the edge. His heart leaped and he called out her name again.

An instant later she was gone, swept away by an enormous wave.

“My God, Kate!” Jared yanked hard on the rope as he followed it to the craggy edge, catching sight of her once as a wave lifted her above the rocks and then dropped her back into the sea.

The rope went blessedly taut; she was still tied to it. “Hold on!”

Jared braced his feet against the rocky edge and held fast to the rope, taking up yards and yards of slack as the sea rose again.

“Kate!” One more yank and she came toward him on a shoulder-high wave, shooting forward, both arms outstretched, riding the crest like a miracle served up from the deep.

“Jared!” Her eyes were wide with surprise when she hit him square in the chest and hung on. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

Glad! Bloody understatement. He twisted as he went crashing to the hard ground, taking her full weight across his stomach.

He grabbed hold of her with his arms, so happy to see her that he could sing out loud, angry enough to spend the next week shouting at her. “You’ll be glad,
woman, that I don’t turn you over my knee and paddle you for this foolishness.”

But she was squirming to get up, even as the next wave skidded them a few feet.