Amanda Scott (39 page)

She did not reply, but when he raised up to let her scoot out from under him, she moved to obey him, trying at the same time to retain her hold on the line.

“Let go,” he said. “I’ve got her.”

She hesitated. Then, with a stifled sob, she let go. That sob, however, reminded him that she had just seen one sister plunge to her death and must be terrified for Isobel’s safety. That she struggled for her usual control made him want to weep for her, but he could not deal with her until Isobel was safe.

Gently, he said, “Move back farther from the edge, sweetheart.”

“But you may still need my help.”

“No, I won’t. Truly, lass, you can trust me to do this, but I need you out of my way so I have room to move. I don’t want to worry about your safety, too.”

When she still hesitated, he said more sharply, “Get off the rock
now,
Cristina. I cannot pull her up until you are out of my way.”

When she moved back at last, albeit only a few steps, he focused his attention on Isobel. “Hold on as tight as you can, lassie, because I’m going to pull you up now. Take care that you don’t swing into the cliff wall as I do. Use your feet to hold yourself away, and don’t worry if your foot slips. I won’t let go of you.”

“My hands are sweating, and my fingers feel numb,” Isobel said.

His heart clenched with cold fear at these words, and he heard a hastily stifled squeak of terror from Cristina. Fighting a nearly overwhelming urge to snatch the child to safety, he kept his movements slow and steady, knowing that even the smallest jerk could loosen numbed fingers from their grip.

When he could reach her hands, he grasped the nearest slender wrist firmly, and slowly stood up.

Sensibly, Isobel retained her hold on the leather line with both hands until her feet were near the rock. Then, with a sudden tug, she raised both feet the last inch and planted them solidly on it.

Putting his arms around her, Hector held her close. “You were very brave,” he murmured against her curls as tears pricked his eyes. “I’m proud of you.”

“Bring her back away from the edge,” Cristina snapped.

Knowing she still feared for their safety, he said soothingly, “We’re safe, lass. Give Isobel a moment to collect herself.”

“We don’t have moments to spare,” Cristina protested. “We must get to Mariota as quickly as we can.”

“We cannot help her,” he said.

“You do not know that! She may still be alive, and she will need me.”

Knowing that in the unlikely event that Mariota had survived the long fall, she would be suffering agonies of pain and unlikely to survive long, he said calmly, “I saw lads running from the landing, Cristina. They will get to her quicker than we could. You and I must look after Isobel, because she may have injured herself when she fell over the edge, or by supporting her own weight for so long afterward.”

“You look after her,” Cristina retorted. “I’m going to Mariota.”

Isobel tugged his sleeve, muttering urgently, “Don’t let her go, sir.”

“I won’t,” he assured her as he drew her away from the edge to solid ground, watching as Cristina strode purposefully toward the nearby palfrey, and wondering when she would realize that he and Isobel still held its bridle and reins.

He noted at the same time that Lachlan’s bay was not where he’d left it but had moved a short distance away to a point nearer the tree line.

“Can you wait here for a moment or two?” he asked Isobel.

“Of course, but please, sir, don’t let her make you angry.”

“I will strive to control my temper,” he said, still watching Cristina, “but I will not allow her to race down that hill in the state she’s in.”

She had reached the palfrey and stood gazing blankly at it for a moment. Then she glanced over her shoulder at him. She had remembered the bridle.

“Please, sir,” Isobel begged. “She loved Mariota, despite all her faults.”

“I know she did,” he said, watching Cristina look about for a place from which she could mount. When she grabbed the palfrey’s mane and began to coax it toward a boulder of suitable height, he added brusquely, “Stay here. Oh, and lass—” He waited until Isobel looked at him. “You might try trusting me, too,” he said.

She twinkled. “I do,” she said. “I trust you to lose your temper the minute she defies you again. I remember, sir, that you don’t tolerate defiant women.”

Hearing the echo of his own words from the child’s lips nearly made him smile, but Cristina had persuaded the reluctant palfrey to move to her boulder and would soon be able to mount.

“Wait, Cristina,” he yelled, breaking into a run.

Had the palfrey been used to such treatment, or Cristina’s skirts less cumbersome, she might well have mounted and ridden off before he reached her. As it was, when she saw him running toward her, she abandoned the palfrey and ran to Lachlan’s bay, catching up its reins, grabbing a handful of its mane, and flinging herself over its back.

Before she could right herself and find her seat, the half-trained horse reared and screamed in protest, sending her flying.

Hector leaped toward her, managing to break her fall but letting her slip to the ground as he grabbed the bay’s bridle and forced it down, smacking it away from Cristina and doing his best to avoid its flailing front hooves. Then, looping the reins around a branch, he turned purposefully toward his wife.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped at him as she scrambled to her feet. “She is my sister, and I am going to her. She will need me.”

“She does not need you, and you are not going anywhere,” he said grimly, fighting to keep from grabbing her and shaking her until her teeth flew from her head. “Have you not risked your life enough today that you would do so foolish a thing as to try riding a half-trained horse, without a saddle and in skirts?”

She did not respond, standing with her face turned so that she need not look at him, staring into space, jaw clenched, her lips pressed tightly together as if she fought to keep the words she yearned to shout at him from flying off her tongue.

After enduring the silence as long as he could, he put a hand at the small of her back, meaning to go back to her palfrey and bridle it for her but wanting to keep her near him lest she dash off again, as he feared she might in her present state.

However, the moment he touched her, she whirled with an unearthly screech and began pounding him as hard as she could with her fists.

He stood still, hands at his sides, making no effort to restrain her, ruthlessly suppressing his increasing urge to grab her and shake sense into her.

“Do something!” she screamed, still hitting him. “Why don’t you
do
something? Why didn’t you come sooner if you were going to come at all? Why couldn’t you save her? You said I need not do it all, that you would help, so where were you? You did nothing to help me prevent what happened!”

He remained silent, and when she had exhausted herself, her pummeling fists pressed together against his chest as she bent her head to them with a gasping sob.

Putting his hands gently on her shoulders, he said, “What happened to Mariota was not my doing, sweetheart.”

“I know it wasn’t,” she said with another gusty sob.

“Nor yours.”

She burst into tears then, and he drew her close and held her, letting her cry. As she did, he glanced at Isobel, meeting her solemn gaze over Cristina’s head. But seeing her sitting patiently, he returned his attention to his wife, and even after her sobs eased to sniffles, he waited until they stopped and she gave a deep sigh.

When she made no attempt to free herself but slid her arms around him, he experienced an unexpected deep sense of peace, as if the world, having tilted, had righted itself again. Warmth spread through him as he held her, and he knew in that moment not only what he wanted most of all in life but that he had found it. He knew, too, that he wanted more than anything to free her from her burdensome sense of responsibility for everyone else in her world.

When she finally looked up at him, her face tear-stained and smudged, strands of her hair straying untidily from her caul, her eyes red and swollen, he wondered how he could ever have thought she was not as beautiful as Mariota when she was so much more so. Cristina’s beauty radiated even now from within, from her very soul. Whatever happened between them after this, he could not let her destroy herself in the belief that she bore responsibility for Mariota’s death.

Steeling himself and keeping his hands on her shoulders, he looked down at her. “You don’t really believe any of the fault for her death lies with you, do you?”

“Of course I do,” she said with a sigh. “How could it be otherwise? I should have seen her distress and explained things better to her.”

“What things? No, don’t try to answer that,” he added grimly. “She would not have listened to you. You know that. She never listened to anyone.”

“But if I just had been kinder, more understanding—”

“You were always kind to her, Cristina,” he said, realizing only when she winced that his hands had tightened on her shoulders. Easing his grip, he added, “Faith, lass, you are kind to everyone. But I’m thinking it is not kindness that stirs you to assume blame for her death but pure arrogance.”

She stiffened as if he had slapped her, which in a way, he supposed he had.

“How can you say such a horrid thing?” she demanded.

He was relieved to see her anger. The unnatural stillness she had displayed until then had frightened him.

“I say it because it is true,” he said.

She glowered at him. “It is
not
true!”

“Believing that you wield sufficient power to control the lives of everyone around you, and protect them from their own faults and folly, can be nothing
but
arrogance,” he said. “Do you honestly believe that any mortal possesses such power?”

“But—”

“Nay, sweetheart,” he said, putting a finger to her lips to silence her. “We can talk more about this later, but we must return now before an army of the curious engulfs us. Since Isobel’s pony appears to have fled to the barn or wandered elsewhere, I’ll take her up with me.”

“I want her with me,” Cristina said. “I need to feel her close to me.”

“Nay,” he said again, his tone still gentle. “You’re exhausted. You’ll both be safer if I take her, so not another word,” he added when she opened her mouth again. “I’ve more to say to you before this day is over, but not now. Come, I’ll put you on your palfrey.”

She looked at him as if to protest again, but he met her gaze steadily and she did not. Without realizing it, he had dropped the palfrey’s bridle when he had taken her in his arms, so he picked it up and walked with her to the waiting horse. Slipping its bridle on, he looped the reins over its head, then gripped Cristina around the waist and lifted her to its back.

“Do you feel steady enough?” he asked.

“Aye, of course I do. Truly, sir, I could—”

Shaking his head, he waved to Isobel, who picked up her skirts and ran to him. “You’re going to ride with me, lassie,” he said. “I’ll mount first, and then—”

He stopped, realizing that he could not pull her up without risking further injury to her arms.

Cristina saw the problem at once, saying, “You cannot do it, sir, nor can you risk leaving her on that raw young horse alone even for the short time it would take you to mount. You’ll have to let her ride with me. This palfrey is used to skirts.”

“I’ll put her up with you until I’ve mounted,” he said. “But then I’m taking her from you. And no more backchat, lass. I’ve only so much patience.”

So saying, he lifted Isobel up to her, mounted the gelding, and got it under control before taking the child back again. Then he helped Isobel settle herself in front of him so that he could hold her safely and still control the horse.

“You follow me,” he said to Cristina. “That way I won’t have to worry about you urging that poor animal to a gallop down the hill.”

Not only did she not argue but she did not say another word. Her expression revealed that her thoughts had turned inward, and he did not know whether to be glad or sorry. Either she was thinking about what he had said to her, which would be good, or she was back to blaming herself for Mariota’s fall, which would not be.

“How are your arms?” he asked Isobel.

“Not so bad,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I’d hurt them until you started pulling me up that wall, but it was hard then to hold on.” Her voice trembled.

Matter-of-factly, he said, “I warrant it was, but you are safe now.”

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Cristina was obediently following. He had half feared that she would try to ride to where she could look down at the rocks along the shore and see who was tending to Mariota’s body.

“Sir, I think you should know—” Isobel broke off whatever she had been about to say and leaned away to look behind him.

“She won’t hear, little one. What is it?”

“Do you remember that Cristina said Mariota sacrificed her own life trying to help push me to safety?”

“I do,” he said. “If it’s true, I’m glad she showed such courage, but I did think it sounded a bit out of character.”

“It isn’t true,” Isobel muttered.

“Tell me then.”

“She . . . she was trying to climb up me.”

Stifling an urge to swear, he said, “I don’t think she realized how much such an action imperiled you, little one. As I see it, the one constant thing was that she thought of no one but herself. She rarely seemed to have the slightest awareness that her actions might have consequences to others.”

“Is that why she never seemed really sorry, even when she said over and over again that she was?”

“I believe so. Something was not quite right with her, I think.”

“She wasn’t mad,” Isobel said stoutly.

“Nay, not mad, just not the same as normal people.”

“You won’t say that to Cristina, will you?”

“I think she knows,” Hector said.

“But she doesn’t! And . . . and I think she needs to go on believing Mariota did something good in her last moments, sir. To believe that may ease her pain.”

“I’ve noted before that you are wise beyond your years, Isobel, and so you are—wiser than most grown folk, I think.”