by Deborah Hale
“Aye, that’s likely all it is,” Jenny hastened to agree. “The next lass who passes the time of day with ye will make ye forget all about me.”
Somehow, that thought did not sit well with her, though she could not puzzle why.
Just as Jenny had decided to put the whole matter from her mind, the rapidly moving ship came to an abrupt, shuddering halt.
She plowed across the narrow cabin and onto the berth with Harris. He gave a sharp hiss of pain as she landed on top of him. The lamp went crashing to the floor, where it sputtered for a moment before going out.
“Damn!” cried Harris. “We’ve run aground.” Pushing Jenny off him, he groped for the floor. “Where’ve ye put my boots?”
With a muffled report of rending wood, the barque lurched forward again.
Reaching down into the darkness, Jenny retrieved one of Harris’s boots.
“I have the other.” She heard him call as though from a great distance.
She sensed his contortions, trying to pull on the tight boots with an injured arm.
“We’ve got to get on deck,” said Harris.
Before they could scramble out of the berth, the St. Bride once again fetched up against something solid. This time Harris fell on Jenny. As the breath burst from her lungs, she felt the soft scratch of his unshaven cheek against her forehead. One of his knees pinned her legs apart. When she raised her hand, it brushed the warm flesh of his chest through his open shirtfront. Some lunatic impulse within her wished they had hours to roll around on this narrow berth.
As the barque strained between the force of the storm wind in her sails and the pressure of the sandbar on her hull, Harris clambered up and hoisted Jenny to her feet. She gasped to feel water soaking into her shoes. There must be a good three inches of it already seeped through the floorboards, and rising fast.
“This way.” Harris grasped her right hand and latched it to the waistband of his trousers. “Don’t let go, ye hear? No matter what happens.”
They staggered toward the cabin door. Jenny hoped that was where they were headed, at any rate. It was impossible to make out anything in the dense darkness of the barque’s hold. Jenny fought to master her mounting panic at the thought of being trapped below decks. At least she had Harris with her this time.
She would trust him with her life.
As Harris pulled the cabin door open, someone fell through from the companionway.
“Have a care what ye’re doing!” cried a voice. Jenny recognized the gruff, bass rumble of Mr. Tweedie, the cobbler from Wigtown. With a splash, the man regained his feet and fought his way out into the passage once more.
Harris followed, towing Jenny along behind him.
The tight companionway boiled with frantic shouts and grunts and the press of bodies anxious to escape the seawater flooding the lower decks. Jenny clutched Harris for all she was worth as he plunged ahead. They stumbled up the steep stairs, bursting onto the deck at last.
After the suffocating squeeze of the companionway, Jenny gulped in deep drafts of the briny wind, grateful to be out in the open at last.
“We must get to a lifeboat!” Harris bellowed.
His words barely penetrated the howl of the wind and the frantic babble of voices around them.
After a few faltering steps, Jenny felt the solid bulk of the ship’s railing. Clinging to Harris with her right hand, she closed around the railing with her left and followed him.
“It’s just up ahead!” Harris called back to her as a great billow hit the barque and doused them both with seawater.
Coughing and sputtering to catch her breath, Jenny lost her hold on the railing.
Another breaker followed, driving the St. Bride against another treacherous sandbar. Jenny’s feet slid on the slick boards of the deck. She felt herself tumble against the rail and over into a black void.
At the last instant, she loosed her hold on Harris. She owed him better than a watery grave with her.
Chapter Six
“Jenny!”
Harris felt her pull on him cease abruptly. He heard the retreating sound of her scream as she fell overboard.
He knew he had not a second to lose. The St. Bride might pull free of the bar at any moment and be driven far from where Jenny’d gone over. Some flicker of logical self-interest pleaded with him that it was useless to go after her. In a storm like this, Jenny was surely lost.
Even as his heart acknowledged the futility of it, Harris dove into the sea.
Into the roiling waves he slammed. The salty, silty sea forced its way into his nose and mouth. It stung his eyes. Retching the water from his lungs, he fought his way to the surface, letting the breakers carry him where they would. Struggling for every precious breath, he vaguely sensed the St. Bride’s looming shadow moving away from him.
“Jenny!” he hollered again, straining to catch her reply no matter how feeble. “Jenny, where are ye, lass?”
He called and called, scarcely mindful of the swells that washed over him. Even after his rational self had abandoned hope, he continued to cry out her name like some plaintive last lament.
“Harris?”
It was scarcely more than a sigh on the wind, and he wondered if his drowning mind was playing tricks on him. Or perhaps her departing soul coaxed him to a final voyage with her.
He did not care.
She had called his name and he must answer.
“Here, Jenny! I’m here. Can ye come to me, lass?”
“Harris!” It was louder this time and definitely closer. A human voice, choked with fear and exhaustion. No flying angel or echo in his mind, but a lass of flesh and blood struggling to stay afloat.
Battling the opposing billows, he struck out toward the sound, desperately roaring her name whenever he could catch breath enough.
Then, suddenly, she was there. The only other living being in an endless storm-tossed night. Forgetting the need to stay afloat, forgetting his own name in the dizzying relief of finding her again, Harris clasped Jenny to him. She did not even struggle as they subsided beneath the waves and into the relative tranquility below.
And so they might have ended, had not Harris felt his foot strike solid firmament. Surely, it could not be…
With the last ebb of his strength, he anchored his feet to the sand and straightened up. To his amazement, his head and shoulders cleared the surface of the water—at least in the troughs between waves. His wounded arm blessedly numb, he pulled Jenny’s head free of the water, too.
Together they sputtered and strained for air until Harris was able to gasp, “I can touch bottom, Jenny! We must be near the shore.”
“Shore? Then we’re saved!” Clinging to him as though she never meant to let go, Jenny began to laugh. And sob.
Harris held her tight—marveling at how natural it felt to have her in his arms, wishing the moment would never end.
But like all sweet things, its time was finite.
As Jenny’s weeping calmed, Harris sensed her shivering. Until then, he’d been too preoccupied with staying afloat to notice the temperature of the water. It was surprisingly warm. Warmer than the rain that continued to lash them. For all that, it was cooler than their bodies and slowly it was leeching the life from them. They needed to reach land and find shelter.
“We have to get out of the water before ye get any colder.” Harris took a tentative step or two in each direction, trying to figure which way led to shallower water, and eventually to shore.
“What I wouldn’t give for a bit of light,” he muttered. His own teeth began to chatter.
Cautiously he made his way forward, heartened to feel more and more of his chest and back exposed to the air. Bared to the howling wind, the parts of him above the surface felt more chilled than those beneath.
“There, I can touch bottom, too!” cried Jenny. “Come on Harris, the beach can’t be much farther.”
They wallowed several steps more before Harris realized what was happening.
“H
old on, Jenny. Come back this way, lass. The water’s getting deeper again.”
“No, it isn’t.” she protested. “It can’t be.” A plaintive note of exhaustion in her voice told Harris she recognized the truth even as she denied it.
“This must be one of those sandbars the ship fetched up on,” he said. “God knows how far it is to shore, or which way.”
“What can we do?” wailed Jenny. “We have to find land.”
“So we will,” replied Harris with far greater assurance than he felt. “We just have to hang on here until we’ve enough light to see the way to shore.”
“How l-long do ye k-ken that’ll be?”
“I haven’t a notion, lass. It feels as though this night’s lasted a thousand years, already. There’s two things we need to do if we’re to last till sunrise. We’ve got to keep as warm as we can and we’ve got to keep awake.”
“How c-can we k-keep warm? It’s not like we can light a fire or pull a blanket around us.”
Harris tugged her toward him, wrapping his arms around her once more. “This is the only warmth we have, Jenny. Now rub yer hands on my back, like I’m doing to ye. As for keeping awake, we’ll have to help each other there, as well. We’ll talk. Do ye mind how fast the hours went by when we got to work arguing over something in one of Walter Scott’s books?”
“Aye.” Jenny didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Ye’re right about keeping warm, though. I feel a mite warmer already.”
So did Harris.
Not just warm, but positively hot. In one part of his anatomy at least. He felt a rush of exasperation with his carnal nature, almost as intense as the rush of straining pleasure in his loins. Here he stood, poised on the brink of doom, yet his body perversely yearned to procreate. He prayed that Jenny, in her innocence, would not grasp the import of the eager bulge in his trousers.
“What will we talk about, then?”
Her question brought Harris back to himself with a start. What were they to speak of? Not the situation in which they found themselves, surely. Not their slim chances of surviving the night. Not this awkward but necessary embrace and the sensations it provoked…in him at least. They needed to occupy their thoughts with something far removed from this storm-swept strand. Preferably something warm.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I’m willing to entertain suggestions.”
Jenny did not immediately reply.
Harris grasped desperately for something to fill the silence and hopefully prime the conversational pump. It seemed absurd to be making small talk when, at any moment, they might die in each other’s arms.
“I think the rain has eased.” He tossed his head to twitch back the sodden hank of hair that clung to his brow. At the same time he chided himself for being the most unoriginal creature on the planet—commenting on the weather at such a time.
“I wonder if this is how folk in the Old Testament felt when God sent the flood?” mused Jenny. “I mind Pa reading the story of Noah to us. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in dry land, died.”
She shuddered, and Harris knew it was not entirely due to the cold.
“I ken even God took pity on those drowning sinners in the end,” Jenny added. “Didn’t he promise Noah never again to destroy mankind by flood?”
“Better flood than fire.” The words were out of his mouth before Harris could recall them.
For an instant he hoped Jenny had not recognized the significance of what he’d said. Then he felt the back of her fingers slide along his jawline in the most tentative caress.
“Is that how ye came by yer scars? In a fire?”
“Aye. When I was a wee lad.”
“Do ye mind how it came about?”
Harris hesitated. He had never spoken of the fire or its aftermath to another living soul. Under any other circumstances, he might not have divulged anything to Jenny, either. But this second brush with mortality had dredged up long-buried memories of his first. Besides, there was something about the blind physical contact between them that inspired confession.
“I don’t recollect much about it,” he admitted. “At least not when I’m awake. I have dreams though, of the smoke and the burning. I wake up drenched in sweat with my heart pounding like I’ve run a mile.”
“Did yer ma die in the fire?”
Somehow, Harris sensed she had not meant to ask this impossibly painful question. Yet, for reasons he could not fathom, he felt compelled to answer.
“Die? No. For all I ken, she may be living yet.”
“I don’t understand, Harris. How can ye not ken whether yer ain ma is dead or alive? Whereabouts is she?”
“I haven’t a notion. She ran away after the fire, so Father said. We never heard from her again.”
“I’m sorry, Harris.”
She was, too. He could feel it emanating from her fingertips and soaking into him. He could feel as she turned her face and pressed her cheek over his heart. He could feel it in the subtly different way she held on to him. Almost as though she wanted to cradle his lanky frame in her arms.
“Do ye mind anything of her at all?”
“No.” That was not quite true, and though he could not think why, it was suddenly very important to him that Jenny know the truth. “At least, I never tried to. There are one or two memories that come to me now and again, though, when I least expect them.”
“Aye?” It was a question, and a prompt for him to continue.
“I can hardly remember what she looked like, yet I sometimes get a flash of the way her chin tilted when she laughed. And sometimes, when I’m half-asleep, I can smell her scent and feel the brush of her kiss on my forehead…”
His voice choked off. Lifting his face to the night sky, he let the rain scour it like a torrent of tears.
“Harris?” There was cold fear in her voice. “The water’s getting deeper again, isn’t it?”
She was right. Even in the troughs between waves, the water level was higher than it had been.
“The tide must be rising.” He strove to keep the disquiet from his own voice—without success.
“I can’t die now, Harris. I’ve never lived until these past six weeks.”
Harris fought to quench the flicker of hope her words engendered. She must mean her anticipation of wedding Roderick Douglas. “You’re not going to die, Jenny. You’ve too much pluck. Mind about Mr. Douglas. He’s waiting for you in Chatham and ye don’t strike me as the kind of lass who’d disappoint her bridegroom.”
He expected her to launch into a litany of Roderick’s virtues. Harris braced himself to bear it. At least it would distract her from the peril of their situation.
“What made yer ma run off, Harris?” she asked instead, with quiet gravity. Her question took him so much by surprise he fairly staggered.
“That’s the one other thing I mind about her, Jenny. Her eyes whenever she looked at me after the fire. She left because she couldn’t bear the sight of me.”
What made him think anything had changed? He still bore the marks of the fire, and once again a woman he cared for was about to walk out of his life. Without a backward glance. Leaving behind nothing but sweetly taunting memories and wounds upon his heart that would scar him all over again. It made him long to give up the struggle and simply lapse beneath the waves with Jenny in his arms.
“I don’t believe it.” Her words stirred Harris from his painful reflections. He struggled to grasp what she meant.
“No mother would do such a thing. She may have had other reasons a child would never ken.”
“Such as…?”
Jenny fought to put it into words. How could a man understand the ceaseless drudgery and soul-consuming isolation? Perhaps the fire that scarred Harris had also wrought destruction on the Chisholm croft, making his mother’s lot harder than ever. But enough to leave her son behind? Jenny found that hard to credit.
“Ye don’t mind how it is for a woman, Harris. I ken well enough what it’s lik
e to crave something different. Something better. It could be yer ma felt that way, too.”
Her words met with silence at first.
Then came a low, thoughtful murmur. “Aye, lass. I reckon it could be.”
She couldn’t bear the thought of Harris dwelling on such bitter memories in what might well be his last hours. Jenny berated herself for raising the subject in the first place. Recklessly she cast about for any diversion.
“Do ye mind what I wish, Harris?”
“Aye, lass.” He sighed. “I’m yer fairy godfather, after all. Ye wish to wed Mr. Douglas and live prosperously ever after.”
“Besides that.”
“Aren’t ye being a mite greedy to wish for more besides?”
“It’s not that kind of wish, anyhow. More a…regret.”
“Ah, regret.” His voice lingered over the word. “There’s something I know about. What do ye regret, Jenny? Besides setting foot aboard an unlucky vessel like the St. Bride.”
“I regret…” Her whole consciousness suddenly fixed upon the two warm spots on her body. Her bosom, which nestled against his belly, and the shifting spirals on her back described by the caress of his hands. “I regret that I never got to know ye better while we lived in Dalbeattie. Who knows but we mightn’t have made a match?”
She felt the quiver in his belly before she heard his laugh. It was a queer sound—at this time and in this place.
“Can you just picture it, lass? If some old crone with the second sight had accosted us outside the kirk and told us we’d end up like this. Do ye ken we’d have stalked off in high dudgeon or laughed ourselves hoarse?”
“Ye’d have stalked off. I’d have laughed.”
Her quip made Harris laugh harder still. It was so irresistible a sound, Jenny could not help joining in. For a time, the warmth of that shared laughter and the contact between them held the cold, and the wind, and the darkness at bay.
Like a candle burning fitfully in its last puddle of wax, this tiny pocket of light also guttered and failed. Somehow, the cold black void oppressed Jenny even more after that sweet moment of relief. She began to shiver again and a deep weariness threatened to engulf her.
