by Aileen Adams
An incredible sense of lightheartedness swept through her despite their situation. She felt safe with Jake. She realized why.
She trusted him.
He would take care of her, make sure that she was safe. The fact that he was willing to risk his own safety to ensure her own left her feeling humbled.
A guttural sound escaped from his chest and brought her back to her senses.
She should break off their kiss, but at that moment she felt the warm brush of his tongue against her lips, encouraging her, prompting her.
The palm of his hand warmed the side of her face, a finger tracing her cheekbone, in front of her ear, along the line of her jaw.
She realized she was holding her breath and with a sigh, let it out.
He made another sound and slowly lifted his head.
They stared at one another, only a fraction of space separating their lips as she gazed up into his eyes, and then he crooked an eyebrow.
“What say you we get off this ledge and I can give you a proper kiss when we get back up top?”
For a moment, she felt dumbfounded.
A proper kiss? What she had just enjoyed wasn't a proper kiss? What did he mean? Her body felt warm and lethargic despite the morning chill. Despite the long hours she had spent sitting here, awake last night, looking up at the stars, thinking about Jake, her sister, and—
She turned away, thinking she should scold him for taking advantage, but froze.
She stiffened. “Jake, look.”
Jake had already shifted his position, prepared to stand.
Heather pointed to where she had gazed off into the distance, her mind filled with questions. Would she ever see her sister again? If something happened… if they fell, it was doubtful that they'd survive. Caught in a maelstrom of emotions, she had noticed vague movement down below. She looked down at the bottom of the ravine and off to the west where she had seen the riders disappear the night before.
At first, she had assumed that what she saw were several deer likely heading toward a creek down at the bottom of the ravine. Then she realized that the animals were larger than deer.
Horses!
From this distance, she couldn't tell if they were the same small group of riders she had seen the night before. They were too far away to make out any of the features of the riders, only their shapes.
She looked at Jake and saw that he too had his gaze riveted on the riders.
“Don't move,” he said.
His tone of voice startled her.
She didn't move, but, with her gaze fastened on the riders in the distance, she asked him a pointed question though she dreaded the answer. “Those aren't Duncan riders, are they?”
“No, we don't have anybody patrolling up here. I only came this way because the others spread out to the west and south.” He tilted his head and glanced up at the steep slope above. “If we try to climb up now, they’re likely to spot us.”
“What are we going to do?” She struggled with a surge of disappointment.
She was terrified of whatever plan Jake had to get them back on top of the slope, but she didn't want to spend another minute here.
“We’re going to wait until they pass.”
* * *
But they didn't pass.
Unbelievably, the riders abruptly stopped nearly below them, perhaps a few hundred yards off, plainly visible from their point of view, although she doubted if they could be spotted up here on the ledge from their position. The riders lit a campfire and huddled around it.
They sat and waited.
Finally, she snapped. “Why haven't they moved on? They've been sitting there for hours!”
Jake sat close to Heather, one arm draped over her shoulder, his right side pressed up closely to her left.
She relished his warmth. Under any other circumstances, she would likely be content to sit with him like this for hours. Despite his warmth, the ledge beneath her bottom was hard, and as the clouds increased and the mist transformed into a light drizzle, the rock also grew cold and slick.
“They know the rain is coming. They're staying put to prevent leaving a trail.”
“You know who they are?”
He shook his head. “Not any of our clan. Therefore, they're either the McGregors or the Orkneys. They're the only clans who would dare venture onto Duncan lands.”
“Do you think that woman is down there? The one that hurt you?”
“Possibly,” he shrugged. “She's a healer, like your sister, but not nearly as gifted.”
Heather didn't say anything for a moment, but as long as they were trapped up here, unable to climb out, it was as good a time as any to ask. After all, if those riders down there posed any danger to them, she wanted to know about it. “I’ve heard her spoken of, Jake, but I don't know what she did. Sarah never gave me many details. Why did Phillip banish her? What exactly did she do?”
He didn't reply for several moments, as if weighing his thoughts. Then he began to speak, his voice low and emotionless.
“The three of us grew up together, Phillip, Ceana, and I. As youngsters, we played together and fought together. When I was a young man, I realized that Ceana wanted more than friendship from me.”
Heather felt a surge of jealousy, but shook it off.
“When I told her I had no intention of marrying her, she grew angry. As if I had been playing with her emotions, or done something to betray her.” He glanced down at Heather. “I made her no promises. Never suggested we would ever be more than just… well…”
Heather said nothing. Had they been lovers? She didn't want to know.
“Anyway, I went off to war. Then I was wounded and was brought back home. Unbeknownst to any of us, Ceana, though pretending to care for me, was doing anything but.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning. “Is she so unskilled that she couldn't heal you? Is that why Phillip kidnapped Sarah?”
“It's not that she was unskilled,” he said, his voice hard. “It was that she chose not to. She allowed my wound to become infected. Let me lay in my own filth. To make things worse, she tried to poison me.”
Heather gasped, shocked to the core. How could a healer—
“It was Sarah who discovered she had been trying to poison me. When Phillip found out, he banished her from Duncan lands. I don't know whether she came back to take out her revenge for the banishment on Sarah or she was going to do me in once and for all. But that's when Sarah was kidnapped. After Ceana made some kind of deal with the Orkneys.”
He didn't look at her, but continued to gaze down the mountainside toward the group of clustered around their small fire.
“When the Orkneys found out what she had done, they too sent her on her way. Maybe that's why she's now riding with the McGregors, if the rumor is true.” He looked at her. “You didn't happen to get a glimpse of any of them, did you? Ceana is pretty much unmistakable. A red-haired beauty to be sure. Too bad that beauty is only skin deep.”
Heather listened to Jake's story with growing dismay. Anger burned in her heart. The thought of someone deliberately trying to kill Jake—a woman who claimed to be a friend, who had wanted to marry him… “
What's going to happen when you catch her?” She had no doubt the woman would be caught, eventually.
He glanced down at her. “That's for Phillip to decide as the laird.” He looked once again of the riders huddled in the distance.
Fingers of mist-laden fog had made its way along the floor of the valley beyond and pulsed into the ravine, occasionally obscuring the trio.
He glanced upward at the slope above them, then at the clouds building above.
“I think we better take advantage of the increasing fog and the drizzle. If we don't, we may be stuck here for days.”
Heather stared wide-eyed at Jake and then up at the steep slope rising above. “But the rocks, Jake. They're slippery!” Her heart pounded. No, he couldn’t be thinking— She found it difficult to swallow. Fear threatened to im
mobilize her. “I don't think I can…”
“You don't have to. I'll do the climbing. All you have to do is hang on.”
“What?”
He deliberately rose to a standing position, keeping an eye on the faint glow of a fire down below. “Stand up, Heather, very slowly.”
She wanted to refuse, but the gaze he sent her was encouraging, forceful. She had never been so frightened in her life.
She swallowed again. “What do you want me to do?”
“The bottom of my rope is only about ten feet above us. If I can make it that far, the rest shouldn’t be difficult.”
Fear raced through her mind. What if they couldn't make it up that ten feet? What if his makeshift rope broke beneath their weight? Why did she have to—
“I'm going to turn around. You're going to climb onto my back and wrap your arms around my neck. Mind you, not tight enough to choke me. Clasp your legs around my waist.”
“Jake, I'm not sure—”
“You need to trust me, Heather. It's our only—”
“But your leg! What if—”
The look he gave her chilled her to the bone.
She hadn't meant to hurt his feelings, to suggest that he couldn't possibly—
“Do you trust me?”
She looked into his eyes, at the determination she saw there. She swallowed again, and though trembling with fear and her heart pounding with anxiety.
She nodded. “Yes, Jake. I do.”
“Then hurry up. We don't have much time to waste. If it starts raining in earnest, there's no way we'll be able to scramble up.”
Heather briefly closed her eyes, offered a quick prayer, and then reached for the hand he extended toward her.
Slowly, she rose to her feet, wincing when she placed the least amount of weight on her injured leg. But if Jake could do it, so could she. He hunched down and turned his back toward her.
After only a brief moment of hesitation, she wrapped her arms around his neck, making sure that his shoulders had free range of motion. She tried to lift her legs high enough to wrap them around his waist, but her right leg refused to obey. She tucked her left leg up near his hip and lifted her right as far upward as she could.
“That's all I can do, Jake.”
He nodded, already looking upward. “Hang on. No matter what happens, don't let go of me.”
“All right,” she choked out.
He reached a hand upward and shoved his fingers into a small crack above his head.
She closed her eyes, and squeezed them tightly shut. She didn't dare move a muscle, hardly dared to breathe. Even a slight effort on her part to shift her position might send him careening downward.
They moved in small increments.
She felt his muscles bulging, sensed them straining with their combined weight as he tried to lift them upward, heard him grunting with effort as he lifted his left foot from the ledge, tested their weight on a mound of stone, and then rose a few inches.
One hand, one foot, rising a few inches at most, then the process was repeated.
Her heart pounded so hard that her ears started buzzing.
At first, she thought she was going to faint from fear, but she forced herself to concentrate on Jake's efforts, his incredible strength, his determination to save them both.
After what seemed hours but was only minutes, he spoke, his voice strained.
“I'm going to let go with one of my hands and reach upward for the rope. Don't adjust your weight.”
She didn't say anything.
Not that she could.
She felt frozen with fear. Her left leg ached with the tension of holding it close to Jake's hip. Her right leg throbbed. She could just imagine how his leg felt.
For a second, as he released his grip on the rock and reached upward, she felt them both shift sideways.
She bit back a groan of despair, thinking that any second he would lose his grip.
He would misjudge the distance between his hand and the rope. The rope would break or simply come apart.
They would both slip and plunge downward to their deaths.
She opened her eyes just as he reached for the rope.
Grabbed it.
She had just uttered a sigh of relief when she saw his hand slip.
14
Every inch was hard-won and fought for.
Jake's heart pounded. He felt it in his temple and his neck. He heard the buzzing in his ears. He might not be on the battlefield at this moment, but the stakes were just as high. His focus intent on searching for a handhold. He could allow nothing to distract him. He didn't dare shift his gaze to anything else but the face of the rock above him.
Ignoring the pain shooting through half his body every time he lifted his right foot higher, with Heather clinging desperately to him, dangling off his back.
He felt her tension.
Still as a board, her arms tightly clasped around the base of his throat.
Her breath, taken in short gasps, warmed the side of his neck.
He heard the soft mewling sounds of fear that issued from her throat every time he moved.
He could imagine her fear.
He felt it too.
But he could not—would not—allow it to take hold. If it did, he would freeze.
He’d never done anything so foolish in all his days.
Oh, he had risked his life many times on the battlefield, but to attempt to climb a steep rock face with someone hanging onto his back?
He inwardly cursed.
He shouldn’t be in this position, having to do this.
But here he was, doing it.
To save Heather.
Foolish girl.
She had gotten herself into this mess that she couldn’t get out of. If he hadn’t found her, she would still be stranded on that ledge, unable to go up or down.
In another couple of days, maybe sooner, she would have died of exposure. She had been near frozen when he’d gotten down to her.
So no, he couldn’t have left her there. Doing so would have been against everything he stood for. Everything he believed in.
But this? He hoped God felt benevolent this day.
It seemed to take forever to get to the point where he felt he might be able to reach upward with his left hand and grab his makeshift rope.
The mist had turned into a drizzle. It wouldn’t be long before that drizzle turned into a steady rain.
They had to reach the top of the incredibly steep slope before then. Water ran downhill. The rock face and the ledge Heather had landed on were downslope of the crest of the mountain and its foot-wide ridge. Any water that wasn’t absorbed by the landscape above would come down. Fast.
Every once in a while, a large raindrop landed on his upturned face. Before long it would begin to rain in earnest.
He had to reach the top!
So many things counted on everything working just right.
His quickly crafted rope had to bear their weight combined.
He couldn't make one wrong move.
Heather had to hold still.
His muscles had to endure the strain. He couldn’t loosen his grip.
So many things he couldn't do without risking a long plummet to the bottom of the narrow canyon.
It wasn't only his own life he had to worry about. The moment she had climbed onto his back, he held her life in his hands. He couldn't fail. He'd never felt so physically and mentally challenged in his life. Not even on the battlefield. Not even as he had fought for life after his devastating injury.
Never had he felt so scared.
Scared that he would fail. That his body was weaker than his determination.
Focus!
He paused for the briefest of moments, gathering his strength for an upward lunge. Before he could reach for the rope, he had to maintain grip with a least one hand, his feet straddled awkwardly, the balls of his feet in his hard leather boots balanced precariously on pieces of rock no bigger than a baby's foot.
The end of his makeshift rope—the leather rein from his horse—dangled perhaps six inches away from his left hand, now tightly wedged into a small crack in the rock.
His knuckles were white with strain as he clung to it.
Six inches.
A laughable distance, really, unless you found yourself dangling vertically on a rock face. Those six inches seemed impossible. He quickly, but carefully, searched the rock face, seeking another handhold. The rock was smooth here. No place to lift himself another inch or two, no handhold to grab onto, no narrow crevice into which he could shove his hand.
Straining with the effort, he clung to the rock face, the weight of Heather on his back worrisome. Under his own weight, he believed he could release one hand to lift himself upward, but with her added weight? If she shifted, even the slightest, he could miss his rope. If he didn't grasp that thin strip of leather just above him, he would twist slightly to the right. He would dangle, relying on the strength of his hand and his precarious grasp onto the small crevasse. Perhaps lose his precious foothold.
With the rocks growing slippery by the second, he knew that if he lost his grip, they would surely fall.
If they did, would they land on the ledge? Hard to tell.
The entire situation was impossible, but they couldn't stay put. Another night on that ledge, exposed to the increasing cold and a possible storm? With Heather already injured, hungry, and chilled to the bone? It wasn't so much the physical struggle that he felt would better them both.
He was more concerned with Heather's frame of mind.
She was strong, but he doubted if she had ever spent a night exposed to the outdoors under the stars. And not a pleasant night, with a campfire, a blanket, and food to sustain her.
She had spent the night huddled carefully on the ledge, for all intents and purposes trapped where she sat. No way down. No way out.
It was up to him. Grunting with effort, he decided it was now or never. He sent a quick prayer up into the heavens, inhaled, and then, with one mighty effort, lifted himself upward, his right hand bearing much of their combined weight as he lifted his left, reaching for that damned piece of leather.
