Chapter One #2
She swiftly stripped Nicky naked, dried him with her shawl and dressed him in clean, dry clothes. He’d been prone to all manner of ailments throughout his childhood and she didn’t want him to catch a chill. She wrung out her skirts as best she could, dried her feet, and slipped on the shoes.
She glanced up at the cliff. She’d never get up the steep path with her skirts dragging and clinging around her legs. For two pins she’d remove her skirt and petticoat and climb in her drawers, only her petticoat, with its secret pockets, was currently her most valuable possession.
She knotted the skirt and her petticoat high on her legs, as she’d seen fisherwomen do. The icy wind bit into her wet skin. “Now, for the climb,” she said and picked up the portmanteau.
Nicky stared up at the cliffs. “Do we really have to climb all the way up there?” No wonder he sounded daunted by the prospect. She could just make out the top by a faint lightening of the darkness—a change of texture, rather than shade.
“Yes, but the man said there was a path, remember?” Callie tried to keep fury out of her voice. The cliffs were enormous and very steep—dumping them there was more than outrageous, it was criminal, given Nicky’s leg!
They scrambled upward, Nicky in front, so Callie could help him if he stumbled. The weight of the heavy portmanteau soon had her palms burning. Gusts of wind whipped at them.
“Stay away from the edge!” she called to Nicky every few minutes. The path was frighteningly narrow in places: in the darkness it was terrifying.
“I can see the top, Mama!” he called after what seemed like forever.
Callie paused for breath, cooling her burning palms against her wet skirt, and looked up. Almost there. Thank goodness! She heaved a huge sigh of relief. With any luck it would not be far to Lulworth.
Gabriel Renfrew rounded the bluff at a gallop. The narrow cliff path was barely visible yet Gabe didn’t slow his pace. One misstep could send them over the edge but both rider and horse knew the path well. They’d ridden it almost every night for the past few weeks.
Cold salt air bit into his lungs. The storm was closing in, fast.
Trojan suddenly broke stride. Gabe looked up. “What the devil—”
A child stood directly in his path, staring and terrified. Horse and rider were almost upon him. There was no time to stop, no place to maneuver. On one side rocks rose steeply among scraggy bushes, on the other lay a plunge to certain death on the rocks below.
“Get off the path!” Gabriel shouted. He hauled on the reins, felt Trojan’s muscles bunching in the effort to slow enough to stop before the child was trampled.
The little boy didn’t move, was frozen with fear. There was no time to think, only react. “Get down!” Gabe yelled as he prepared to jump his horse over the child.
But as Trojan rose, leaping high in blind obedience to the command of his master’s hands, a woman erupted from nowhere and with a scream flung herself at the child.
It was too late—his horse was already in the air, clearing, Gabriel hoped, both woman and child.
Did he feel a thud as he flew? It happened so fast he couldn’t be sure.
He flung himself off his still-moving horse and ran back. He could hear something crashing down the cliff, sending stones and rocks rolling down. He hoped to God it wasn’t the woman. The child, he was sure, had gone in the other direction, away from the edge.
In the darkness he could just make out a huddled female shape lying on the very edge of the cliff. Thank God it wasn’t her he’d heard falling. But if she moved an inch…
He was three paces away when she started to stir. Before he could reach her she moved, tried to stand, and slipped toward the edge.
Gabe hurled himself forward, grabbed a handful of wet clothing, and dragged her back.
Wet clothing? “Stay still,” he barked. “Don’t move.”
“Where is—?” She batted his hands away and scrambled to her feet, looking around frantically. “Nicky! Nicky!” she screamed.
“Don’t move!” he ordered sharply. “You’re right on the very edge of the cliff.”
She stared, horrified, at the edge. “Nicky!” She breathed. She swayed forward, peering over.
“He didn’t fall,” Gabe said firmly, easing her back again. “If Nicky is a small boy, he’s all right.”
“H-how do you know?” She was stuttering, almost past speech.
“I saw him run off that way.” Gabe pointed further along the path.
“Run off? Oh God, he must have been terrified. What if he goes over the edge in the dark!” She started along the way he’d pointed. “Niiicky!”
“He’s all right, I’m sure,” he began in a soothing voice.
“Niiicky!” she screamed again.
“I’m here, Mama.” The voice came out of the darkness. “The bandbox rolled away. I had to chase after it.”
“Oh, Nicky! I was so worried.” The woman pushed past Gabe and wrapped the child in a damp embrace.
“Mama, you’re all wet!” said the boy, and with a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob she stepped back. She caressed the boy’s hair gently.
“Are you all right, darling? That horrid horse didn’t kick you, did it?”
“No, it jumped right over the top of me—like flying, like Pegasus. But you pushed me, Mama, and that’s when I dropped this.” The boy lifted the bandbox. “It rolled away. It nearly went over the edge, but I stopped it.”
“How clever of you,” she told him shakily, starting to recover from her fright. “I don’t suppose you saw my slipper, too, did you? I dropped it somewhere.” She was shivering quite badly, Gabe saw. Cold, or reaction, or both.
“I told you he was all right,” Gabe said.
She turned on him in fury. “Don’t speak to me! If you had hurt one hair of his head with your criminally irresponsible behavior, I would—I would—” Her voice cracked and she hugged her boy convulsively.
She took a deep, ragged breath and said shakily, “Are you drunk? I expect you are, to jump a horse over a child! The fact that my son is all right is no thanks to you and that creature!”
“I’m not drunk. Had I been, I could not have reacted with such split-second—” Gabe took a deep breath and harnessed his temper. He said in a deliberately calming voice, “Look, the boy is perfectly safe and—”
“Safe! You almost killed him!”
“Madam, I risked my horse and myself in order not to hurt him,” he said with some asperity. “I don’t normally use small boys and women for jumping practice. He suddenly appeared from nowhere and stood stock-still, right in my path—”
“With that horrid great beast thundering toward him, he was probably too terrified to move!”
“The sensible thing to do—”
“Sensible? You expect a child to think clearly when a man is riding straight at him? He’s just a little boy!” She hugged the child again.
“I was not riding at him! He was in the middle of the path—and at a time when small boys ought to be in bed. And there was not enough time to stop—”
“Because you were riding like the devil!”
“Quite so. On my own land.”
“I see.” She took a deep breath, making a visible effort to gather her composure. “I…I see. I gather we are trespassing. In that case I shan’t bother you any further. Good evening.”
Gabriel frowned. The moon was still behind the clouds, but he could see her well enough to notice she was rubbing her shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“A little bruised,” she admitted.
“Are you sure it’s not worse than that?”
“No, it’s not serious. The shoulder was already sore from carrying the portmanteau.”
Gabriel looked around. “What portmanteau?”
“It’s…It must be here, somewhere. I lugged the wretched thing all the way up from the beach. It’s as heavy as lead.”
They all looked but there was no sign of a heavy-as-lead portmanteau.
“It must be here,” she said. “It couldn’t have rolled away like the bandbox.”
“Ahh,” said Gabriel. He had a sinking feeling where the portmanteau was. “I think it went over the edge when you, er, fell.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “Perhaps it didn’t fall far.” She started forward, but Gabe stopped her.
“I will look,” he told her. “My nerves can’t stand any more of you perched on the edge of that drop.” He stepped forward and peered down into the gloom.
“Perhaps it was further along,” she prompted.
He moved along and his boot connected with something small. It fell, taking a light scatter of pebbles down with it. “Um, I think I found your slipper,” he told her.
“Thank you. Hand it to me, if you please.”
“I, er, just kicked it over the edge.”
She sighed. “Of course you did.”
“I shall retrieve the portmanteau for you in the morning,” Gabe said stiffly. “The slipper may be more difficult to find.”
“Pray do not bother about either,” she said wearily. “The slipper was probably ruined anyway and I shall send someone to fetch my portmanteau in the morning.”
“Fetched from where?” Gabriel asked. There was nothing for miles, only his house.
There was a short silence. “From where we are staying,” she said warily.
“And where is that?”
“That’s my business,” she said firmly. “Thank you for your concern. Good-bye.”
Gabriel admired her spirit. She’d dismissed him like a little duchess, and on his own land. “I’m not going anywhere, without you,” he informed her. They were in dire straits and it was not in him to abandon any woman and child to their fate.
She edged away from him, clutching the boy to her. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even know us. And we don’t know you.”
She took another step backward…Another…
He strode forward and grabbed her as she started to slip. Before she knew what he was about, he placed both hands around her waist and lifted her away from the brink.
“Let me g—Oh,” she stammered, as he released her. She glanced behind her and saw. “Oh…Th-thank you.”
“My pleasure. Gabriel Renfrew, at your service.” He bowed. “And you are…?”
She drew herself up straight, fighting desperately for dignity. “Appreciative of your…assistance. But my son and I shall do very well now, thank you, good-bye.”
“It’s my land,” Gabe reminded her gently.