Amber (Jewel Trilogy, Book 3) (33 page)

Cursing under his breath, he shot a glance at the other boat floundering its way into open water. No time to argue, no time to turn back. "We'll discuss this later, too. Haven't you learned anything today?"

Niall grabbed two oars and started rowing. Before long, the ferryman looked like a tiny toy doll back on the quay, pacing and pounding his fists into the air. Another rumble of thunder ripped through the heavens.

"Look!" Kendra gasped.

From the west, a dense black cloud was sweeping down the firth.

"Bloody hell!" Trick had spent enough time aboard ships to know what that meant. Saying a quick prayer for the souls aboard the already-faltering boat, he snatched up the second set of oars to help row toward the laden ship, his ribs throbbing with every stroke. "If we transfer a chest or two aboard," he panted, planning as he went, "maybe we can lighten the load enough for the ferry to make it back. Niall, help me move them. Kendra, when I pull alongside, take the oars and try to keep her in place."

With the storm bearing down, he hadn't the luxury of being angry with her now. He would use her now, and yell at her later for complicating everything.

Damn stubborn woman. Always doing exactly as she pleased. Riding out by herself and getting them trapped into marriage, showing up at a highwayman raid when he'd expressly told her not to, running after him to Scotland, following him to Burntisland. And now this.

A few minutes later, they bumped up against the bucking ferry. "Now!"

He leapt across, his landing painful but safe. Niall followed and dashed to the nearest chest. Damn, it was heavy—not easily loaded by three men, and Trick was one injured man with a lad. But necessity bred strength, and together they wrestled it to the rail.

Frantically bailing water, Gregor and Rhona failed to notice them until they'd already half-shoved the chest onto their craft. A scrape and a
clunk
, and it was aboard—and Gregor rounded on Trick with a vengeance.

Trick took a punch to the gut that glanced off his tender ribs. He doubled over, wheezing in pain before he gathered force and returned the favor, smashing a fist into the older man's face. Niall added his own blow to the midsection, and Gregor stumbled backward, landing hard in a foot of water.

The ferry was pitching and yawing, slashing rain pounding its decks. As Gregor struggled to his feet, the vessel abruptly tilted. Thrown against the rail, Rhona screamed. One of the chests skidded past her, missing her by inches, and crashed over the side, taking a section of railing and Rhona along with it.

"Rhona!" Gregor scrambled after her, grabbing for her hand as she slid from the deck, their fingertips grazing but failing to grip. Trick leapt to keep Gregor from going overboard, his arms around the man's waist slamming him back into his abused body, while Niall jumped in to save the man's wife.

Tossed on the roiling firth, Niall's head swung wildly in search, but she'd already slipped beneath the waves. He disappeared after her. Bracing between two chests, Trick grimaced and hung on to Gregor, holding his breath until his brother's blond head broke the surface, the woman draped limp on his back.

Niall fought his way to the vessel's outer ladder, shoving her aboard before clambering up himself, fighting the wind and the rain.

Gregor wrenched from Trick's grasp and threw himself on his wife while Niall lay on deck, panting, water washing over him and into his open mouth.

"We've got to move another one!" Trick yelled. "She's still taking water!"

Niall nodded and pushed himself up.

"Trick!" Kendra's panicked voice came thready through the storm. "It's slipping!"

He rushed to the other side of the ship. Tossing wildly, the smaller boat had drifted yards away. Though she strained against it with both hands and a shoulder, the chest he'd loaded was inching toward one end, threatening to overbalance the boat.

Threatening to drown Kendra.

Faster than the wind, Niall flew past him and into the water. Priming to follow, Trick found himself smashed to the deck by an enormous, roaring wave.

He gasped for air, the deck awash, the rush sucking him over the side.

Freezing black water covered his head.

He fought his way to the surface, only to be blindsided by a plunging chest.

Woozy, he flailed in the lashing surf, battered by waves and debris. Chunks of broken timber, lengths of rigging, thick hunks of rope. He took water into his lungs, and it burned like the fires of hell. His ribs screamed with pain, and he couldn't lift his arms, couldn't swim, couldn't keep his head above the pitching seas that seemed determined to send him to a watery grave.

His last thought was of Kendra, struggling against that chest. Stubborn, willful, beautiful Kendra. Kendra, who put orphans above riches...Kendra, who'd accepted his own family before he did....Kendra, who could make his heart pound with a single glance...

Damn, but he loved her.

He was freezing.

He wasn't dead, then. Hell was supposed to be hot. And heaven—not that he expected to go there—was supposed to be like floating on a warm, comfortable cloud. Yet he shivered with a bone-deep cold, so cold it felt as though he'd never be warm again. And he was far from comfortable.

A teeth-rattling jounce drove home that last point. Even hell would be better than this, he thought with a groan.

"He's coming around!" The voice was heavenly, the warm lips pressed to his face more heavenly still. "Oh, Trick, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..."

"Cold," he murmured.

"Just a minute. I'm almost finished."

A tug against his side sent such pain spiraling through him, he decided he must be halfway dead, at least. "Hurts," he grated out.

"I know. This bandage should help."

He forced his eyes open and lifted his head, which felt entirely too heavy—so heavy it dropped back with a skull-jarring bang. But he'd seen her. Kendra. Sweet Kendra. She hadn't drowned, after all.

His heart wanted to fly, but the rest of him insisted on staying earthbound. "Bandage?" he wondered.

"My chemise. Or part of it, anyway."

A bump sent his body into the air and back down with a wracking jolt. Not earthbound. Wagon-bound. He was in a wagon. And his precious wife was wrapping his ribs in a bandage ripped from her chemise.

His brain struggled to put the pieces together. How had he been hurt, but even more intriguing, how had she torn the bandage from the chemise? He pictured her lifting her skirts, her lovely, shapely legs coming into view as she rent the ivory fabric.

Wishing he'd been able to watch that, he realized he must not be half-dead, after all. Parts of him were far from dead, although other parts made him long for that peace. Then she raised her gaze to his, and he was glad, oh, so glad he was still alive.

"He's awake, Niall!" Her hair was a tangled mess, her face smeared with dirt, but her smile enough to brighten the cloudy day. Then her expression fell. "Oh, God, Trick, I'm so sorry." Tears sprang to her eyes.

He wanted to tell her not to cry, but the words were stuck in his throat.

"Brother!" Elated, Niall's voice floated to his ears from somewhere above his head. "How do you feel?"

"Throat hurts," he croaked, still staring at his wife. Even red-rimmed, her eyes looked the most beautiful green.

"You tossed a heap of water," Niall explained. "Jesus, was it disgusting." Something was passed over Trick's head. A flask. "Kendra, give him this."

She cradled his head in one hand, lifting the flask to his lips with the other. He drank greedily at first, then choked when the liquor burned his raw throat.

"
Usquebagh
," Niall called. "Water of life. Whisky. Take more, it'll do you good."

He did, gingerly this time, feeling the spirits burn a path to his belly. "Warm," he murmured.

Drawing a shuddering breath, Kendra blinked back her tears. "I'll warm you in a minute."

She tied off the makeshift bandage, a blessed tightness that seemed to pull him back together, both his body and his mind. Memory rushed back, and with it some of the anger at her for interfering. But, too, he remembered his thoughts as he'd sunk beneath the water. Thoughts of love, from a man who'd been certain he didn't believe.

Later. He would think about all of this later.

As she struggled to tug down his shirt, he levered up and found himself surrounded by horses. Niall had roped the four dray animals together to pull the wagon, and their own three mounts trotted behind. They were making good time.

Trick's feet were braced against a chest—the single chest they'd wrestled off the doomed ship. One chest saved out of twenty-three. He dropped his head to a makeshift pillow fashioned from his soggy surcoat. The rain had stopped, and the sun was struggling valiantly to peek between broken clouds.

"There." She drew up a blanket to cover him. It felt warm, then warmer still when she crawled beneath to cuddle up to his good side, sharing the heat of her body.

Heavenly. He was in heaven, after all.

"The ferryman gave it to me," she said.

"Gave you what?"

"The blanket."

"After you puked all over his floor," Niall added from the driver's seat up front.

"Nice of him." Trick laced his fingers with Kendra's. "Especially considering he lost his boat."

Fresh, warm tears wetted his almost-dry shirt where her head nestled on his shoulder. "We lost them," she said, the words soft and regretful. "Gregor and Rhona and the treasure."

"But we didn't lose each other." He squeezed her hand. "I think,
leannan
, we can thank God for that. And Niall."

"Nay," his brother called back. "Thank her. She's the one who pulled you from the water."

Stunned, he gasped. "How?" He was twice her weight, at least.

He sensed rather than saw Niall's shrug. "I managed to get to the boat, was dealing with the shifting chest. The next thing I knew she was leaping over my head."

"That wave." Kendra's voice shook with memory. "It was like a mountain. It came down, and you disappeared for a moment, then I saw you go over the side. It looked like you were riding a waterfall. I've never been more scared in my life."

"I know the feeling," he soothed, remembering the sight of her with a knife at her throat. "Rhona and Gregor? Did you see them, too?"

"No," she said. "We never saw them at all. They were there, they and the boat, and then they weren't. By the time I got you aboard, there was nothing where that ship had been but an eerie calm patch on the surface of the water, dotted with bits of debris."

Slowly he nodded, feeling an overwhelming weariness suddenly swamp him. Sweet Mary, she'd saved his life. Because she'd disobeyed him—because, in spite of his protests, she'd flown into that boat like an avenging angel—she'd been there, and she'd saved his life....

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

But Trick was already asleep.

It was nearing midnight by the time they arrived at Duncraven, cold, hungry, and—at least on Kendra's part—exhausted.

Trick's long sleep in the wagon bed seemed to have gone an amazing way toward restoring his strength, and Niall clearly found his second wind as they neared the castle, itching to tell his father all about the adventure of a lifetime. But she hadn't slept a wink on the bumpy ride, too caught up in wonder that they were all alive, tempered by a wrenching regret that her own part in the day's events had led to its tragic end.

While Trick and Niall went straight to fill Hamish in, she begged off and dragged herself upstairs, wanting nothing but a hot bath and a good night's sleep.

She'd almost accomplished the first when Trick came in, a platter in one hand and two goblets in the other. Quickly she slid deeper into the water, crossing her arms over her breasts. No matter that he'd seen all of her before—no man had ever seen her bathe. It seemed different. Private somehow. And too intimate, considering what she'd put him through today.

He shouldn't want to see her at all.

"I can take over from here." He nodded a dismissal at Jane, and she left, quietly closing the door behind her. "Hungry?" he asked matter-of-factly.

"Not really." Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm so sorry, Trick, for ruining your plan. If I hadn't arrived and tipped them off as to who you were, none of this would have happened."

"You cannot know that; we cannot know what would have happened." He set the food on the desk, his gaze filled with concern. "Maybe you ruined our plan, but you also saved my life. I thank you for that, lass, from the bottom of my heart."

Her own heart hurt. Oh, if only she could forgive herself as easily as he seemed to forgive her. Then he ran a hand back through his hair, and she blinked, staring, so stunned her own guilt fled her mind.

"You cut it," she breathed. "Your hair."

A wry grin twitched at his lips. "Mrs. Ross cut it. There I was, telling Hamish all about what happened, her fussing over Niall and me both. Moving chairs near the fire so we could warm, pushing hot drinks into our hands. As we talked, she removed Niall's damp coat and ran a comb through his hair. And the next thing I knew she was standing over me with scissors."

"You didn't stop her."

His only answer was a shrug. But he was no longer hiding, not from her. The heart that he'd spoken of thanking her from was right there in his amber eyes.

He came close and knelt by the big wooden tub, setting the goblets on the floor beside him. "No more tears. I hold you blameless for anything that happened today. You must believe that."

When he drew her hands from her body, she forgot to be embarrassed. She squeezed his fingers, gazing into those unguarded eyes. "You blame yourself instead, don't you?"

"Aye," he admitted, toying with the amber on her wrist. "But Hamish—Da"—a fleeting smile curved his mouth—"did his best to set me straight."

"What did he have to say?"

He kissed her fingertips and sighed. "He thinks it's just as well that Niall and I didn't manage to keep his friends from drowning, since it saved him the trouble of having them hanged. As for the Royal plate, he believes it's fate...and only fitting that it ended up where it was thought to be all along."