Escapade (9781301744510) (25 page)

"What nonsense."

"Is it? Look at this trouble I have dragged
you into."

"Let me tell you, sir, I am very good at
getting myself into trouble without help from anyone else."

Her feigned indignation was meant to provoke
his heart-melting grin. But instead of lighting up with amusement,
his dark eyes remained somber.

"I am serious, Rory. Tessa made me think
about how selfish I was being. It would be better if I didn't see
you again."

"What! No more chasing me through the
streets?"

"No. No more."

"Just when I was starting to get used to it.
Well, it won't do you a bit of good, Zeke Morrison, trying to go
all noble on me now. If you stop chasing me, I’ll just have to
pursue you. And I warn you, I can run much faster than you
can."

A reluctant chuckle escaped him. He regarded
her with a mixture of incredulity and hope.

"Rory, I never realized that you had come to
feel so- I hardly know what to say."

"Don't say anything. You talk way too
much."

She pressed a hard kiss to his mouth. It was
the first time in her life she had been the one to initiate an
embrace, so she was a little rough, a little awkward.

But she must have done something right,
because Zeke was not slow to respond, for the moment forgetting all
his recently acquired noble impulses. Tangling his hand in her
hair, he returned the kiss with an intensity that left Rory
breathless.

It was amazing considering what he had
recently been through, that he should still be able to kiss that
way. It hardly seemed fair. She was now clinging to him, her pulses
thrumming, her mind reeling as though she had been the one knocked
over the head and shot—straight through the heart.

She had the sensation of falling, tumbling
head over heels through the sky. Mid-kiss, her eyes flew open,
startled. She found herself staring into Zeke's own wide, dark
ones.

Their lips parted, both realizing at once
that the giddy sensation of descending was not due to the fervor of
their kiss.

"What the devil's happening?" Zeke removed
his hand from her hair to clutch at the basket's side.

"The air must be cooling. We're coming down
faster than I thought." Rory scrambled to her feet and peered over
the edge of the gondola. She paled.

"Oh, damn, damn, damn," she muttered under
her breath and began slashing at the few remaining ballast bags
with frantic energy.

Ever since first being lifted into the sky,
Zeke had been fighting off a knot of tension. Neither Rory's words
nor her actions were calculated to ease that.

"What are you swearing at?" he shouted,
bracing himself for the worst. "Are we going to crash?"

"Uh, no, there just doesn't seem to be a
convenient place to land."

By now Zeke was familiar with Rory's mastery
of the art of understatement. Horrific images filled his mind of
the terrain below—tangles of trees, jagged rocks, closely packed
houses. Although his stomach lurched, his head spinning at the mere
thought of doing such a thing, Zeke forced himself to his feet.

Momentarily he closed his eyes to take a deep
breath. Gripping the edge of the basket until his knuckles were
white, by sheer force of will, he got his eyes open and stared
downward.

The world below was nothing but a blur of
gray, and Zeke cursed, despising himself for his own weakness,
which had him on the verge of fainting like any of those hen-witted
debutantes he'd met at Mrs. Van H.'s parties. But as he strove to
steady himself, he realized it was not his vertigo causing the
scene below to go gray.

It was gray, a shifting, eddying, chilling
gray breaking into waves crested with whitecaps.

"It’s the Atlantic," Rory said in a small
voice.

"I know the ocean when I see it," Zeke
growled. "Although I've always had the good sense to view it from a
boat, not dangling above it a hundred feet in the air."

As though to dispute his measurement, the
balloon dropped several more yards. The roar of the sea carried to
his ears. Zeke had always thought it such a pleasant sound, so
soothing, but now it caused a chill to strike through him as though
he could already feel the lick of those ice-cold waves.

He never thought he would hear himself say
such a thing, but he bellowed at Rory, "Do something. Take us back
up."

But Rory stood frozen, staring over the side,
her delicate features a blend of horror and fascination as though
she had been hypnotized by the eternal lure of the sea.

In desperation, Zeke reached for a rope that
he had seen Rory tugging at earlier.

His movement snapped Rory out of her trance.
"No! Don't touch that!"

Her warning came too late. Zeke had already
given a tentative tug. As soon as he heard that god-awful hiss, he
knew what he'd done, even before the balloon started to
descend.

"Damn it all to hell!"

He let go the rope and grabbed for Rory,
expecting that at any moment the pair of them would be plunged into
the sea. Miraculously, the balloon leveled off, but some of the
higher waves were almost lapping at the bottom of the basket.

Rory wrapped her arms about Zeke's neck, her
face nearly as white as the crests.

"Oh, Zeke, I can't swim. Tony tried to teach
me, but I always sank." She made a valiant attempt to smile. He
said it was because I have rocks in my head."

"He's right," Zeke said, but took the sting
from his words by straining her close. Desperately, he scanned the
distance, making out the edge of the shore, but it had to be a good
quarter of a mile away. At full strength, he might have been able
to make it, even towing Rory.

But his injured arm throbbed, reminding him
of his weakness. Zeke cursed under his breath. He had never felt so
helpless, so caught up in circumstances beyond his control. If they
managed to come through this alive, Zeke vowed, he would never set
foot in one of these damned contraptions again, and he wouldn't
allow Rory to do so either.

The wind current seemed to be carrying them
closer to shore, but Zeke could tell they were never going to make
it. A spray of water dashed over the basket, wetting his face and
dampening Rory's hair. He could already taste salt upon his
lips.

"Rory," he spoke desperately into her ear.
"Isn't there anything you can do to bring us up a little?"

She shook her head. Her lips were set and she
was trying to conceal her fear. Only her eyes betrayed her. She
called back above the ocean's roar, "We've got nothing left to
throw overboard, nothing to lighten the load."

As Zeke's gaze roved frantically around the
empty basket, he saw that she was right. There was nothing in the
gondola except Rory and himself.

The thought struck him like the slap of a
wave. Yes, himself, some two hundred pounds of dead weight. Without
him, Rory might have a chance. A desperate one, but a chance all
the same.

But if he was going to act, it had to be now.
He had no time to debate the wisdom of his decision. He thrust Rory
away from him. Steadying himself by gripping one of the balloon
cables, he moved quickly before Rory could divine his intent and
try to stop him.

He had only worked one leg over the side of
the basket when she screamed. "Zeke! Stop. What are you doing?"

She launched herself at him and she managed
to catch his arm. He tried to shake her off, but she hung on with a
strength borne of desperation.

"Rory! Damn it! Let go."

"No! Zeke, you fool—"

He shoved her away, but it was already too
late. The balloon lost altitude, the gondola hitting the ocean
surface with a hard smack that toppled Rory over. As a wave crashed
over the side, the basket tipped, some of the cables snapping.

Zeke lost his balance and felt himself
falling. He gasped as he plunged into the ocean's chilling depths,
the sea foam dissolving over his head. Taking in a mouthful of
ocean, he choked, the salt water burning his throat and stinging
his eyes.

Kicking, he fought his way back to the
surface, drawing in a welcome lungful of air. Treading water, he
battled the waves, blinking his eyes, searching for a glimpse of
Rory and the balloon.

He spotted her some yards away, clinging to
the side of the overturned basket. The deflating balloon, still
connected to the gondola by the few remaining ropes, was acting
like a sail, dragging the basket through the water.

"Zeke?" Above the wind, the waves, Rory's cry
came, faint and desperate.

Drawing in a deep breath, Zeke struck out
after her, swimming as hard and fast as he could. Ocean water
seeped through his bandage and salt got into his wound. His arms
and lungs seemed to be on fire as he battled both the waves and his
own weakness.

Twice he drew near Rory and the balloon, only
to have them wrenched out of his reach. His muscles ached with the
effort it took to keep kicking, extending his arms for just one
more stroke.

Rory was so close, but he knew it didn't
matter. He was never going to make it. Panting and choking on the
briny waves, he was all but spent. Rory risked her tenuous hold
upon the gondola, stretching out her arm to him.

Her fingers seemed to drift upon the water,
like a slender thread, all that stood between him and going under
one last and final time. With a tremendous effort, he forced
himself forward. Rory's hand clamped upon his wrist, her fingers
not so fragile, far stronger than he would have imagined.

Somehow he found himself beside her,
clutching at the rim of the basket. But the ordeal was far from
over. The remaining buoyancy in the balloon kept the soaked gondola
from sinking, but with the great monolith pulled by the breeze,
Zeke and Rory were left at the mercy of the wind and the waves.

Zeke knew neither one of them could last long
at this rate, taking such a buffeting. Rory looked white with
fatigue. When she showed signs of loosening her hold, he used the
length of his body to shore her up, keep her hanging on.

It was going to take a miracle to save them,
a blasted miracle. Zeke, who put no faith in such things, hardly
recognized it when it came.

But suddenly a small dinghy loomed before
them, two men in oiled cape coats and yellow sou'westers pulling at
the oars, fishers by the look of them.

Zeke thought he must be hallucinating until
Rory also lifted her head, a choked cry of gladness escaping her.
She saw the boat too. It had to be real.

"Help!" Zeke croaked. "Over here."

He wasn't sure if the fishermen could hear
him. But they had to be able to see the balloon, the two people
clinging for their lives. The dinghy had drifted close enough now
that Zeke could observe that the two men were frozen, staring.

"Help!" Rory shouted.

Her cry was shrill enough to have carried.
Yet the fishermen made no move to come to their aid although by now
Zeke could see the way their mouths gaped open, their dumbfounded
expressions. A particularly large wave broke over Zeke's and Rory's
heads, causing them to cough and sputter.

Zeke spit salt water and swore. It figured
that when he finally got a miracle, it turned out to be a stupid
one.

He shouted again and still got no response
from the dinghy. Drawing in one final mighty lungful of air, Zeke
raised his voice, letting loose enough curses to turn the gray
Atlantic blue, not stopping until his throat was hoarse.

The two men sprang into movement, reaching
for their oars. It wouldn't have astonished Zeke to see the dolts
start rowing in the opposite direction. But with his string of
imprecations, he seemed to have made some impression on them, like
a stranger in a foreign land finally catching on to the lingo.

Pulling in unison, the fishermen drew
alongside, the younger one reaching down weatherbeaten hands. Zeke
saw Rory lifted on board before struggling after her and collapsing
on the bottom of the boat.

He lay still for several seconds, numb to
every sensation but relief at being alive and having Rory safe by
his side. He thought she might have fainted, but she struggled to
raise herself to a sitting position.

“The Seamus," she cried

Her words made no sense. She was shivering,
and Zeke thought she must be in shock from being chilled to the
bone and half-drowned. He wrapped one arm about her shoulders, but
when she gestured with a shaking finger, he realized she was
pointing toward the remains of her balloon yet bobbing on the
surface of the waves. The bag was deflated, sagging into the sea,
growing more distant with each pull the two men took at the
oars.

Rory couldn't be so unreasonable as to expect
something to be done about salvaging the blasted thing. A wave
washed over the gondola, sweeping it from sight.

He pulled Rory firmly against him, trying to
warm her and force her to lie still. But as he gazed down, she was
still staring forlornly at the cresting waves, and Zeke had an
uncomfortable feeling that all the salt droplets trickling down her
face did not come from the sea.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Darkness overtook the shoreline, the sea
becoming a mysterious, moving shadow, white-crested fingers
clutching at the beach, raking away particles of sand. But beneath
the wooden shingles of the fishermen's shack, the breaking waves
were no more than a lulling whisper and Rory felt safe and warm.
Wrapped in a blanket, she huddled before the crackling fire kindled
on the hearth. She barely remembered the details of her rescue, how
she came to be at the cottage; she only felt grateful that she
was.

The place was small, but the oil lamps
flickering in the tiny parlor beamed a welcome as powerful as that
of any lighthouse. The furnishings were sparse but clean—a couple
of rocking chairs, a table covered with a checkered cloth, a few
scattered stools. Everything smelled of salt, as though the very
lifeblood of the sea had seeped within these walls, perhaps even
more so into the person of the woman serving as Rory's hostess.