Chapter 25 #4
Bent between her and the fire, she had not the opportunity to see what he was doing, only to study every inch of him, to marvel and to fantasise.
It was a faint hope that he might have landed a fish given his freely given admission that he was useless at it. She resigned herself that he was damping the fire and scattering the ashes. There was no point giving the enemy a present of fire. Let them bivouac for themselves!
Her attention was drawn to a small pile of large leaves lying flat at his side – big leaves the size of tea plates.
She got up onto her elbows when she saw him slip something onto one of the leaves and wrap it up before getting to his feet.
Smiling and holding the wrapped-up leaf in front of him, he came to her.
‘Breakfast is served, madam!’
Puzzled and intrigued, she took the leaf from him.
‘Gently,’ he said when feeling the heat on her hands she almost dropped it.
On opening the leaf, she gasped. ‘Eggs!’
‘Boiled eggs – in a manner of speaking. I buried them at the edge of the embers. I trust they are cooked to your taste?’
The shells were only a little blackened and very hot. After prolonged blowing and dipping in cold water, they became more manageable.
Suitably dressed, fed and watered, they considered what to do next.
There was still the matter of the sound of tumbling water.
Could they use the canoe to travel further down the river, or would the rapids make it impossible?
The prospect was daunting. Climbing up the sheer face behind them was not an option.
Now fully dressed, Ethan used the toe of his boot, then the side seam to douse what remained of the fire.
His hair fell forward covering his expression, but she didn’t need to see his face to know that he was worried.
They’d found a safe haven and eaten, but they were trapped.
Their backs were against the cliff face and judging by the sound of the thundering water, they might not be able to follow the river downstream.
The strain was immense. It was as though she were trapped by the terrain and also by her thoughts, the history she had blotted from her mind.
‘What do we do?’
She would willingly have died for him when he looked back at her that way, hair falling over the intense blueness of his eyes, one eyebrow raised as though mocking the situation as no more than a splinter in the banister of life.
Without a word of warning, he suddenly entered the river.
At first, it came up to his knees, but before long he had raised himself onto the first of the rocks.
Standing straight and holding his arms out to balance himself, he took a measured stride from one to the other.
Then another stride and another, gaining one stone, another stride as though they were nothing more than flat stones spanning a babbling brook.
Lochranza sprang to her feet. ‘What are you doing?’
He did not respond, not even to look back. Suddenly he wasn’t there, his white shirt, his lithe form smothered in the mist that rose from the water beyond the rocks.
A terrible thought came to her that made her heart jump and caught at her throat like a noose around the neck of a hanged man. What if he’d abandoned her? What if he gained safety on the other side of those rocks and saved his own hide?
No, growled the more logical and oddly more trusting side of her nature. Why now? Why go leaping along a line of rocks above a waterfall now?
She took hold of herself with firm resolve. If he were going to abandon you, he would have done so a long way back.
Running her fingers through her tangled hair where the wilted feathers still clung on, she kept her eyes fixed on the patch of mist into which he’d disappeared.
Tempted to cry out, she remembered the sound of their voices echoing off the rock face.
Whilst in the canoe, the echo would have been drowned out by the sound of the rushing water. Here in the cove somebody might hear.
It wasn’t possible that her heart had stopped beating, but that was how it felt. Fear was like a shroud covering her as she narrowed her eyes, trying to see through the thick mist, which even the morning sun had failed to penetrate.
Every sound was unnerving; a bird flying overhead squawked and made her jump. A large fish leapt out of the water close by before making a loud slapping sound as it split the surface and disappeared out of sight.
Narrowing her eyes did little to help her see anything in the mist. It was like a damask tablecloth, light and silky but too thick to see through.
Just when she feared he’d fallen over the edge and into the seething water, there was a darker patch in the mist that became a figure. Ethan had reappeared.
As his indistinct form retraced his earlier leaps from rock to rock, she ran forward.
‘Ethan! You’re safe.’
‘Of course I am.’
Her relief that he’d come back was overwhelming.
One final leap and the shingle crunched as his feet landed in it. His expression was joyous. He looked mightily pleased with himself.
‘The waterfall is only at this side of the river beyond these rocks. This side is quite treacherous, but if we cross to the other side, we should make good progress. Pray the Almighty is on our side and we make it home. If we take the canoe out and push our way towards the other bank, the river is safe and will take us further. We will get home, Lochranza. I promise we will. And once there, we will never leave home again.’
Her mind awoke from its long spell of slumber like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The smell of smoke, the crackling of burning timber and the horror of what had happened to a good and caring woman were now clear in her mind. Also in her mind was the conclusion, the thing she had to do.
It seemed an odd time to feel the need to say what was in her mind. Something was driving her to do so.
‘If – no – when we get out of this, I have to go back to Jamaica. I have to confront my past – and my brothers and sisters. I want to know why I lived separately from them, why I—’
Ethan’s expression turned stern. ‘Lochranza, you are not going to Jamaica. Let that be an end of it. We’re getting married and the sooner, the better.
You’ll have me, a home and in time a family.
Let that be enough. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Anyway, the first thing we must do is negotiate the rapids.
And stay hidden from the renegade braves and their French masters. ’