Chapter Sixteen #2
He flung himself out of the saddle, straining his eyes to see through the sheets of driving rain, the prickling of his scalp and the gooseflesh erupting on the back of his neck a sure sign that she had to be near.
Somewhere.
And close.
He knew it with every inch of his body, each thundering beat of his heart. Sakes, he could feel the connection crackling between them—a living thing, holding them close even when he could not see her.
He just knew, and his heart gave a great bound at the surety of it.
No one else had believed him, the lot of his kinsmen charging off to the high moors, the whole fool band of them declaring the women would seek shelter in one of the many cairns and hollow-walled brochs dotting the isle’s interior.
Certain he knew better, Magnus scanned the rows of unfinished galleys. Sakes, there were more than he’d realized. They littered the beach!
But with each sweeping gaze, he promised himself he’d see her, catch sight of her huddled beneath some upturned hull, shivering with the cold and rain, but safe.
Whole.
He could not, would not, lose her now.
Sweet images of her flooded his mind, crazing him as he raced up and down the empty strand, calling her name even if the wind snatched away his cries almost as quickly as they left his lips.
Not willing to lose heart, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the rain and stared out at the two recently completed galleys moored in the deeper water just offshore.
The first two vessels his kinsmen had built—or what remained of them—bobbed on the surf, smashed by nature’s unforgiving fist.
The largest, a fine twenty-six-oared beauty, lay on her side, half-submerged beneath the churning waves, the single mast snapped in two like so much kindling to float impotent and useless in the surf.
The other, equally fine but with only twenty oars, was still afloat, but just barely. Indeed, it appeared to be sinking fast.
But of the three women, naught was to be seen.
Magnus swore, dashed the rain from his eyes for what had to be the hundredth time in mere moments.
By the living God, even without the rain coursing down his forehead, he could scarce see two feet ahead of him much less hope to spot a sooty-haired lass on a morn darker than the crack of the Devil’s own arse!
“Ho, Magnus!” Colin thundered up beside him, his winded garron as uneasy as the howling storm.
“Come, let us be gone from here,” he urged. “Your brothers are off on the moors, searching the heather. I say let us join them. In God’s name, why would the women come here? We are wasting precious time. . . .”
“Nary a moment is wasted if it can be used to find them.” Magnus glared at his friend, but Colin’s own ill ease stood etched in his face, and Magnus remembered too late Colin’s deep affection for Janet.
“Forgive me,” he said for the second time that morning, forgetting his pride. “I know you mean well, and that it is unlikely they are here, but . . . I just had a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
“Aye,” Magnus snapped, his tone daring Colin to deny it. “And so long as that feeling persists, I am not riding off elsewhere.”
Even if he spent the rest of his days stalking up and down the dune-lined strand calling his wife’s name.
“They cannot be here, Magnus,” Colin argued. “Come, see reason. Let us be off to where we may have a better chance of finding them.”
“Nay. They are here, I tell you!”
Scrunching his eyes against the rain, Magnus scanned the beach, the great rollers crashing on the shore, willed them to appear.
When they didn’t, he flung an arm toward the unfinished galley hulls. “Go you, if you wish. I am staying here. To search those boats—every last one of them.”
“’Fore God, but you are a stubborn loon.” Frowning blacker than his beard, Colin swung down from his saddle, strode across the wet sand to grab Magnus by the arms.
“Those are empty hulls, my friend. The most of them unfinished. Do you not see? The women will not be cowering beneath one of them. Not in this storm. Had they been caught unaware, they would seek more adequate shelter, wouldn’t you say?”
“And that is the heart of it, you witless dolt!” Magnus shot him an irritated look.
“Do you not see? They were not caught unaware. This storm started raging last night and worsened with each passing hour. No sane person would venture out into the teeth of such fury. They had to have been taken by force, and whoe’er would do such a thing is capable of any infamy, would not care whether they were sheltered in the storm or no. ”
The color drained from Colin’s face. “You are right,” he agreed, dashing the wet hair off his forehead. He held a flattened hand over his eyes and stared out across the tossing waves. “Think you they might be aboard one of those foundering galleys?”
Magnus followed his stare. “I pray not,” he said, praying indeed.
“Were they on the one already on its side, they’d have been long since swept out to sea.” Colin voiced Magnus’s own dread. “If they are on the second, the one that is fast sinking—”
“Then we must fetch them!”
“And how do you mean to get out there?” Colin eyed the wild-foaming surf, the high, pounding waves. “Would you swim? Only to find you’d squandered time when they are not there?”
That they could drown was left unsaid—not that Magnus cared. At least not for himself.
To lose Amicia now that he’d finally made her his would be to have the sun and all the stars extinguish. His world would lose all light and purpose—his life . . . an unthinkable grief.
“Well?” Colin stared at him through the rain.
“The currachs!” Magnus decided, already running for the nearest of the little skin-and-wicker boats.
Colin pressed his lips together, his bad leg forgotten. “A wee hide boat—a cockleshell! In those seas?”
“A currach will hold five people and is seaworthy enough.” His mind set, Magnus snatched up a length of rope from the sand, secured it to his belt. “We have no other choice,” he added, patting the coils of rope.
Colin heaved a great sigh, looked doubtful.
But, bless his true heart, he didn’t balk.
Not entirely.
“Just do not think I’m hieing myself out there alone,” he stipulated, eyeing the surging waters with more than a shade of trepidation. “I cannot swim, see you. . . .”
“We will both go,” Magnus assured him, feeling better now that a plan had been made.
But the instant he curled his fingers around the rim of the little currach, began pulling it across the sand, the prickling sensation along his spine increased a thousandfold.
A glance at the fast-sinking galley showed him why.
Janet stood at the galley’s low-slung rail, one hand raised high above her head and waving.
“By God, there’s Janet!” Relief surging through him, he grabbed Colin. “See? She has spotted us,” he added, his heart making a great bound.
Where Janet was, his lady and Dagda would be, too.
But only Janet stood waving from the rail.
And, bless her sweet self, but she looked as happy as Magnus. Truth be told, she glowed. But despite her beaming smile and the pallor of her skin, surprisingly notable at the distance, the strands of seaweed tangling her hair bespoke of a struggle with the sea at the very least.
Magnus glanced at Colin, gave the lout’s arm a rough shake. “Ho, man! Your lady is out there, waving at us. . . . Do you not see her?”
“I see nothing but rain.” Colin cupped both hands to his eyes, leaning forward to see better. After a moment, he shook his head. “Nay, I only see the damned empty galley.”
Impatient, Magnus thrust out an arm, pointed. “Look! I tell you she is there—” He broke off at once, staring in disbelief, for Janet had vanished.
Gone, as if she’d never been.
“She was there, at the rail, waving . . . I swear it,” he vowed, dragging the currach into the surf.
“Come you, hurry!” he called to Colin as he hopped into the little boat, grabbed up the oars.
“I know they are on that galley. I can feel Amicia’s presence out there so surely as I can see your ugly face! ”
“We shall soon see, my friend,” Colin said, inserting himself into the bobbing craft. “Aye, we shall see—if we do not lose our own lives trying to get out there.” He grimaced. “Sakes, but you made the worst possible choice of boats!”
Ignoring him, Magnus set his jaw and began paddling toward the galley. He was not about to admit that, in his haste, he had indeed seized a less than fine craft.
Already water slopped around their ankles—and not from the pouring rain. The little currach’s timber frame was half-rotted. They’d be hard-pressed to reach the galley, much less use the dubious vessel to transport five adults safely back to shore if they did.
“I am paddling—you bail,” he said grimly, his gaze fixed on the galley, not trusting himself to meet Colin’s eye.
Not all of his damnable pride had left him.
“This is madness!” Colin lifted his voice above the wind, cursed blackly when a great wave crashed into the currach, near upturning it.
“The only madness is if we do not try,” Magnus gritted, straining to hold their course, the oar blades effecting little against the churning seas, Colin’s two-handed water-scooping efforts even less.
But, at last, the galley loomed before them and, to Magnus’s vast relief, the wee boat withstood the violent crash of impact. Better yet, they’d managed to collide with the galley’s low-slung midsection and not the high bow-platform or raised stern as he’d feared they might.
Whipping the coiled rope from his belt, he secured the currach to the larger vessel as swiftly as his unsteady hands allowed, then clambered over the side of the galley, Colin close on his heels.
“Amicia! Janet!” he cried, dropping to the planked deck. He glanced about, near frantic, and seeing . . . nothing.
Someone might well have upturned a barrel of ice chips over him. He’d been so sure.