Chapter Two
Out in the bay, the Merrow plowed through the waves, drawing closer with every stroke of her oars to what Rynn felt in her very bone marrow was disaster.
Even as she watched, the oars were shipped and a dark figure jumped out of the boat into the water. Whoever it was—Seamus
or Fergus Boyd or Paddy Colgan or even Donal himself, really any of what was most likely the usual band of four that had been
finding trouble together all their lives—started dragging the boat the last of the way in against the teeth of the outgoing
tide.
Heart pounding, she leaped down onto the sand just as the moon ducked behind the clouds again. In an instant the night turned
so dark that she could barely see the giant driftwood tree that had been the focus of many a childhood game lying in her path.
Skirting it, sprinting toward the sliver of denser darkness in the rolling gray breakers that the Merrow had become, she was thankful for the obliteration of the light. If she should be seen by the soldiers who she was as certain as it was
possible to be were waiting . . .
At the prospect she thought she might burst from fear.
She couldn’t shout a warning—even the crunch of sand beneath her feet sounded terrifyingly loud—couldn’t flash the light, couldn’t do anything that might draw the attention of the soldiers.
The entrance to the cave was behind her, tucked into a wrinkle in the cliff face, but it was near and there was sure to be a lookout.
The thought that hidden eyes might spot her, or the boat, and armed British soldiers would then erupt from the cave sent blood-curdling darts of panic through her.
Reaching the shoreline, she ran into the surf. Within moments she was knee-deep, then thigh-deep, battling through surging
water that was cold enough to take her breath.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Seamus—for it was Seamus in the water—yelped, stopping short with the boat in tow and whitecaps
breaking around him as she, waving her arms in silent warning and thanking the Lord that the crash of the waves prevented
his voice from carrying much beyond her ears, drew near, plunging toward him through the swells. His attention caught at last,
he peered at her through the darkness. “Wait, hold, is it a kelpie you are, then?”
The humor in that last as he recognized her won him an infuriated hiss which she knew he couldn’t hear.
“Hush, you blithering idiot! It’s an ambush! Go back!” Losing her footing as the ebb current pulled at her and her soaked
skirts wrapped around her legs, she forced the words out through chattering teeth just as a wave, bigger than the rest, caught
her up. She barely managed to save herself from being bowled over by throwing herself at Seamus at the last second. He grabbed
her to steady her as another swell rushed past and almost lost his anchoring grip on the Merrow.
“Rynn!” Donal’s horrified exclamation as he, too, recognized her sliced through Seamus’s muttered curses as he struggled to
hold on to both her and the boat.
“Here, now. What’re you on about?” Seamus shook her arm to recall her attention.
Though the boys were a year older than her, they’d been childhood playmates and schoolmates all, and thus stood on no ceremony with each other.
As Seamus leaned close she could smell the whiskey on his breath.
Of course she could. Seamus had ever had a fondness for strong drink and would have fortified himself for the night’s doings by, as he would put it, having a wee dram.
“Go back! Soldiers! They’re on the beach!” Her voice cracked with urgency.
Another wave broke around them, slapping her in the face with a shower of freezing spray. The sandy floor was sucked out from
under her feet as the current beneath the surface receded. Tottering sideways, she was torn away from Seamus by the undertow
and would have tumbled headlong into the surf if she hadn’t been grabbed in the nick of time by a pair of strong hands.
Donal. He’d jumped into the water to catch her.
“What the devil? Are you daft?” Wrath warred with astonishment in Donal’s voice as he hauled her against him. Catching a hint
of whiskey on his breath, too, she felt a fresh surge of anger. He’d clearly joined Seamus in his wee dram.
“It’s an ambush!” Shaking what was now the entirely fallen, inky-black mass of her hair back from her face, she looked up
at him with fire in her eyes. “They know! About the guns! Get back to the boat! Turn back!”
“The hell you say!” His face was pale in the darkness. His black hair, soaked like the rest of him, clung to his skull. His
eyes, a warm brown, were hidden in shadow and impossible to read. He’d left his coat behind in the boat. His skin still felt
warm beneath his sodden shirt.
“They’re on the beach. Soldiers. We have to go.”
The tightening of his grip on her was his answer: he understood.
“You promised me!” This wasn’t the time for accusations, she knew. She couldn’t help it.
“Seamus needed a man he could trust.”
“Hurry!” Seamus called. Having recognized the danger at last, he was doing his best to hold the Merrow in place for them.
“You there! In the boat! Bring her to shore! In the name of His Majesty the King!” The bawled command was surprisingly clear.
Rynn’s heart leaped into her throat. Her head snapped around toward the shout.
She could just make out the dark figures of the soldiers, spilling from the fissure in the cliff as she had feared, then pelting across the pale sand toward the bay.
One stood still as the others spread out around him.
From his movements and the sound of his voice, she realized that he possessed a megaphone that he was using to amplify his shouts.
Dear God, they were out of time.
“Donal–” The arm she had wrapped around him tightened with fear. Her fingers dug into his waist.
“Hell and the devil!” Dragging her the rest of the way to where Seamus now practically danced with alarm, Donal snatched her
up out of the water and tossed her into the boat with as little ceremony as if she’d been a sack of potatoes. As she landed
hard between the seats another furious shout of “You there! I said bring that boat in!” from the shore was accompanied by
a desperate flurry of movement on the part of the men around her.
“Take her out! Let’s go!” Seamus’s words were barely audible over the crashing surf.
Freezing cold, tangled in drenched skirts that, like the ends of her hair, poured water everywhere, Rynn managed to roll onto
her hands and knees in the cramped space as the boat heaved and rocked beneath her. Her shoes were gone, she discovered, lost
to the sea. So was the shawl, and the torch. The currach, normally so light, rode heavy in the water. Because of its load
of guns, she realized with horror as she spotted the oilcloth stretched tellingly across unseen cargo in the stern. If they
were taken with guns on board . . .
The thought of the firing squad that would await them made her light-headed and nauseous and furious. The fools—
Without warning the moon slid out into the open again, capturing them all in its eerie glow. Rynn caught her breath as she realized the soldiers massing on the beach were now easily visible, which meant that they must be visible, too.
“Damn it, put your backs into it!” Donal cried to Fergus and Paddy as they worked the oars. He and Seamus were on opposite
sides of the boat now, using brute strength to push her out through the incoming waves.
Scrambling across the planks toward Donal, Rynn shivered as she was caught by the wind that fought their progress with every
gust. She reached the gunwale and grabbed on, sinking to her knees, holding tight to the worn-smooth wood that edged the hull.
The beach, she saw with a quiver of thankfulness, was rapidly receding. Under the combined power of the oarsmen and the two
men in the water, the Merrow had successfully reversed course and was heading back out to sea.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Donal yelled at her. He was so close she could see the bunching of the muscles beneath his soaked
shirt as he put all his strength into his task.
“If I hadn’t come you—all of you—would be under arrest by now!”
“Better us than you!”
“Better no one at all!”
“’Ware the rocks! Pull to port!” Seamus cried, and they did, avoiding the pyramid-shaped sea stack with little room to spare.
“Halt! I command you to bring that boat in! Now! In the name of His Majesty the King!”
“Pull, Paddy, pull!” Fergus urged. Faces grim, legs braced, the two strained mightily as they dug the oars deep into the waves.
Caught between wind and tide, the Merrow bucked like a wild horse on the frothing sea. Wary of being pitched out, terrified of what might come to them, Rynn huddled
close to the gunwale and held on for dear life.
“You! In the boat! This is your last warning!”
Heart pounding, she looked back. The soldiers had fanned out into an amorphous black blob along the shoreline. It was difficult to be certain at that distance, but she thought—were they pulling out the carbines they wore strapped to their backs? Her chest tightened until it was hard to breathe.
“Sit flat on your arse.” Donal threw the order at her as the Merrow pitched up over the crest then plunged down the back of an especially large wave.
“Get in.”
Rynn grabbed Donal’s wrist, held on. The brunt of propelling the Merrow out to sea had to be on the oarsmen now. He and Seamus could do no more in the water. It was too rough, and too deep.
“I’m aboard,” Donal yelled to his cousin, and heaved himself up and over the Merrow’s side.
The crack of a gunshot split the air, sudden as a thunderclap. Rynn froze at the shock of it as she identified the sound.
A pained outcry as Donal tumbled down on top of her, knocking her flat in the bottom of the boat, almost stopped her heart.
“He’s hit!” Fergus cried.
Her worst fear. She sucked in air, grabbed at his deadweight as he sprawled on top of her. “Donal?”
He was breathing. He was moving.