Lily (49 page)

“I guess you’ll be relieved when it’s over.”

“Yes. I have many … different feelings about it. You can probably guess what most of them are.”

“I’d be afraid too,” he admitted.

He’d misunderstood her ambivalence, she saw. It wasn’t the pain of childbirth that troubled her—or not only that. It was afterward, when she would have to go away.

“I’d like to have children someday,” Clay said suddenly.

“You will. I’m sure you will.”

“Lily … do you like Alice?”

She raised her brows. “I don’t really know her, Clay, I only met her once.” Something more seemed called for. “She certainly seems to be an agreeable person.”

“Oh, she is, she really is. I’ve known her forever. We grew up together, our families were friends. I wish you knew her better, I know you’d like her.” He saw that she was staring at him in fascination. He blushed, then grinned, looking away. “I, um”—he brushed crumbs around on the blanket—“I, you know, like her.”

Lily nodded encouragingly.

“Not the way I used to—as friends. It’s changed since she came here and started taking care of me. I don’t know what I’d have done without her, Lily. She’s been so kind to me.” He paused. “Actually,” he confided shyly, “after I’m back on my feet, really all right again, I was thinking I might ask her if she’d like to get married.”

“Oh, Clay.” Lily’s face was wreathed in smiles. “I’m so glad.”

“Do you think she’d have me? She’s a bit older, you know. Only a year or so, but still—”

“I think she’d be a perfect fool if she let a fine catch like you slip through her fingers.”

He leaned over and gave her an impulsive kiss on the cheek. Lily laughed at him. She lay down on her side to ease the pain in her back—it felt now as if someone were kneeling on her spine, trying to break it—and half listened to Clay extolling the perfections of the lovely, the inestimable, the incomparable Alice Fairfax, until her eyelids drooped. She was so tired. Clouds had begun to obscure the sun, but it was still warm and the whisper of the sea was restful.

When she woke up, the sky was black. The wind blew in warm, violent gusts and the sea had turned into a random swarm of foaming whitecaps. Clay awoke a few seconds later, and for a little while they watched the approaching storm in silence, hypnotized by the rude, inhuman energy of it. “How wild it looks,” Lily murmured, and the wind whipped the words from her lips and away. She smiled and pointed at Gabriel; his ears were blowing straight out from his head. Finally they got to their knees and started to gather together the remains of their picnic.

“Hullo.”

They turned in unison, startled to see Cobb striding toward them along the headland path from the east, away from the manor house. He stopped beside their blanket, courteously sweeping off his wide-brimmed hat. Until now he had seemed to make a point of keeping out of her way; this was the first time Lily had met him direcdy, close up, since her return to Darkstone nearly three months ago. Even now he didn’t look at her; he spoke to Clay, exchanging pleasantries, discussing the impending storm. “‘Tes blawin’ up from the south,” he observed. “Seen the long black swell, ‘ave ee?”

Lily looked up at Clay when he didn’t answer. His face was colorless. “Clay?” she faltered. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

He didn’t hear. He was staring at Cobb, the whites of his wide eyes glimmering in the sickly gray-green air. “You,” he rasped, rising to his feet, clumsy.

Gabriel growled low in his throat; that frightened Lily more than anything. “What’s happening?” she asked, gazing back and forth between the two men.

“That’s what you said, that night. ‘Seen the long black swell?’ It was you.”

Cobb dropped his hat. “What’re ee blatherin’ about?” He bared his teeth in a travesty of a grin.

“You tried to kill me.”

“Have a care, lad. This is panhandle foolishness.”

“Because I found out about the money. You weren’t giving it away, you were keeping it. Jesus God, it was you.”

“Bleedin’ ’ell, Clay, don’t be a fool.”

Clay grabbed Lily’s hand and pulled her up. Without speaking again, he began to walk fast toward the house, towing her along.

She looked back fearfully—and screamed when she saw Cobb, striding after them, pull a long knife from his belt.

Clay whirled. Gabriel closed in, stiff-legged, fangs bared, the sound in his throat deep and feral. Cobb came nearer; Clay dragged Lily behind him. The rest happened with blinding speed. Cobb lunged and Clay shouted,
“No,”
flinging up both hands. A second later Gabriel sprang, hurling himself between them. Clay lurched, stumbled backward, and fell. Lily saw the knife in Cobb’s hand, dripping red, and screamed just as the dog launched himself again. She heard a smacking sound, then a hideous snarl of pain and fury, and Gabriel collapsed in the bloody dirt at Cobb’s feet.

Cobb still held the knife. He moved toward her slowly, lips gleaming in his fierce beard, black eyes flickering between her face and her great, protruding belly. “Don’t,” Lily begged, backing away, arms folded around herself. “Please, don’t, don’t” She saw uncertainty in his face, then consternation. When he shoved the knife into his pocket, she wailed with relief.

“Don’t move,” Cobb warned as he came toward her, huge hands curled.

“I feel so much better now, Dev, since my little nap. I wish I’d told Clay I’d go with him,” said Alice, standing in the library door. Devon nodded, his mind on the column of figures he had been trying to add up for too many minutes. “Oh, but no—look at the sky! I didn’t realize.” She laughed softly. “Poor Clay, he’ll be drenched. Now I’m
delighted
I had the wisdom and foresight to decline the invitation.” Perceiving that her companion was listening with less than half an ear, she wandered across the room to the terrace doors, the better to watch the coming storm. “It’s amazing how quickly the sky changes in Cornwall,” she said in a soft voice, mostly to herself. “The clouds in Devon are hardly ever this dramatic, they’re more—Oh, no. Oh my God, Dev—
look.”

Devon scraped back his chair and crossed the room in four long strides. “What’s wrong?”

“That dog—there, on the terrace. He’s hurt. Dear God, I think he’s dead.”

Devon threw the doors open and rushed out. Gabriel lay on his side, half hidden in a bloody bed of ivy, his eyes wide and glassy. A long slash between brisket and belly oozed sluggish blood. Devon rose from his knees slowly, wiping his hands on his breeches. “Lily,” he cried, and started around the side of the house for the drive and Cobb’s cottage.

“She’s not there!” Alice called to him.

He halted, spun around. “Where is she?”

“At least—she might not be there. Clay was going to ask her to go with him on his picnic.”

“Where?
Where was he going?”

“He said the drowning cove. Dev, I’ll come with you!”

Without waiting for her, he sprinted for the cliff path at a dead run. The trail was easy to follow; it was speckled with Gabriel’s blood. Devon ran as fast as he could, into the wind, panting not so much from exertion as from an ice-cold dread that squeezed his chest in a vise. Minutes later he found Clay not far from the cove, crawling in the path, legs churning pitifully to drag himself along. “Jesus,” Devon prayed, touching him gently. His wound looked as bad as Gabriel’s.

“He’s got Lily, he’s killing her.” Clay’s hands were clamped over his diaphragm, holding himself together. Tears streamed down his face. “It was Cobb—shot me, killed Wiley. Get Lily, Dev.”

Devon clutched at his brother’s bloody shirt and brought his face close. “I can’t leave you!” He shouted it like a curse. Then he remembered. “Alice—Alice is coming.”

Clay shook his head frantically. “He’s killing her. I’m not bad, it’s—just blood.” He subsided weakly, but kept his wild-eyed gaze on Devon.

“Alice is coming,” he said again, unable to think past that, and Clay groaned in frustration. Great thudding drops of rain began to fall on them. Devon leapt up suddenly and started to move, backwards at first, keeping Clay in sight to the last second. Then he whirled and ran.

He and Cobb saw each other at the same moment—Devon beside the blowing remains of Clay and Lily’s picnic, Cobb clambering up the rough face of the clifftop, soaking wet. Devon’s heart stopped beating when he read sorrow and regret in Cobb’s bleak, black-bearded face. It meant he was too late. He was too late.

He came at Cobb on a wild run, not pausing even when he saw him draw a bloody knife from his pocket in an oddly weary, almost stoical gesture. Beyond thinking, Devon dodged the knife’s murderous arc by reflex and closed with Cobb in a ferocious, grappling clinch. Cobb gave ground, and found his feet inches from the cliff’s stony edge. They wrestled, neither gaining advantage for long, grueling seconds. Both men were strong, but Devon was half-mad with a killing rage. At last he got a grip on Cobb’s wrist and twisted; the knife clattered to the ground. Cobb dove for it at the same moment Devon struck him in the throat with his fist.

Cobb dropped to his knees, wheezing. “I’ll kill you,” Devon gasped, hitting him again. “I’ll kill you.” He kicked him in the chest with the flat of his boot, and Cobb fell backwards. When he felt the sharp edge of the headland on his spine, he screamed. But when he thrust up an arm and shouted, “Help me!” Devon reached for him.

Wrong arm. Devon grasped air instead of a hand, and Cobb disappeared over the face of the cliff.

H
E HEARD NO SCREAM
, no sound of falling. On his knees, he shuffled to the cliff’s edge and looked down. Directly below, the waves churned over a jagged line of rocks, gray and grim, back-leaning as if aghast at the violence of the incoming tide. He made out the dun color of Cobb’s coat in the wash, just for a moment, and then it was all swirling foam. He closed his eyes, breathing hard. When he opened them, he saw Lily in the trough of an ebbing breaker. She was tied by the wrists to the drowning rock. Before his eyes, the tide swept back and buried her.

He shrieked her name into the roar of the wind. Once, there had been wooden steps curving down to the cove, but they had rotted away, leaving only crude stone outcrops in the cliff face, slimy now with salt spray and rain. He scooped up Cobb’s knife and plunged down the outcrops, cursing and praying, abandoning caution in his haste. At the bottom he thanked God he hadn’t broken any bones, and plunged out into the roiling surf.

He saw her again in the reflux of the streaming, sucking tide. She gasped a deep chestful of air before the next wave swamped her, beating her back against the drowning rock. He strode toward her, arms flailing, struggling against the malignant power of the swell. At the moment he reached her, another wave hit, submerging them both. He held onto the iron ring under water and slashed through her leather bonds—Cobb’s belt—with the knife. The wave receded; they surfaced together, gasping. He caught her around the chest with one arm before the next roller could wash her away, and thrashed through the tide with her toward shore.

Shore was two feet of wet shale at the base of the cliff that the inrushing tide had not yet inundated. He fell to his knees there, Lily in his arms. They couldn’t speak. Rain pelted them; the wind blew a steady, brutal assault. They felt nothing but each other’s bodies. That she was alive, breathing, arms wound tight around him, filled him with light and awe.

But she was crying. He pulled away to see her face. She sobbed, “Clay’s dead,” and buried her face in his neck.

“Lily, no, he’s not. He’s hurt, but he’s going to be all right.” He was absolutely sure of it.

She wiped her eyes and stared. “He’s not dead? But Cobb stabbed him with his knife, I saw it. Gabriel, too. But he couldn’t stab me, I think because of the baby.” That reminded her. “Dev—”

“Gabriel dragged himself all the way home, darling. Alice found him. That’s how I knew to come after you.”

“Gabe,” she whispered. “Oh God. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid he might be.”

They held each other, trading comfort until, all at once, Lily hunched her shoulders and went rigid, convulsed with sudden pain. Devon bit out a panicky curse. She was clutching her abdomen; helpless, distraught, all he could do was hold her. At last she straightened, for the spasm seemed to have passed. He touched her rock-hard stomach with shaking fingers, searching for a wound. Her arms and hands were scratched and scraped from the rock, her shoulders too where her dress was torn, but otherwise he couldn’t see any injuries.

“Dev,” she gasped, stilling his hands, panting, leaning back against the wet stone. “The baby’s coming.”

He gaped at her for a second, then shook his head. “No, it’s not. It can’t. No, no. It’s not.” Lily pushed her dripping hair out of her eyes. “Excuse me, but—”

“No, it’s not coming. You’re mistaken.”

“I’m mistaken?”

“Listen—”

“Devon, I’m having the baby!”

“All right, all right,” he said, soothing her. But he still didn’t believe it. He stopped staring into her frightened face and looked up through the rain at the solid wall of cold, slick stone hulking above them. “Can you, um—”

“No.”

“No. I didn’t think so.” And he couldn’t carry her, not unless he slung her over his shoulder, leaving himself one free hand for climbing. Lily was in no condition just now to be slung over anyone’s shoulder. “Well now,” he said, with false calm. “Let’s see, here.” While they had been speaking, their two feet of dry land had diminished to one and a half.

“Oh God, oh God,” Lily muttered, teeth chattering. “This can’t be happening, it just can’t be.”

“No, exactly, that’s what I was just—”

“Uh!” with a terrible groan she tensed again; she had a bone-breaking grip on his fingers that made him want to groan with her. When the pain faded, she was ghost-pale and shiny with perspiration, and he couldn’t deny it any longer: Lily was in labor. “Oh God,” she wailed, “what am I going to do? I can’t have the baby here!”

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said again, trying to sound confident, “everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to take care of you. Don’t worry about anything except having the baby.”