Emerald Embrace (14 page)

They came to a second jump, and though he helped her down, he released her as soon as he could, caught her fingers once more, and hurried still downward. As they rushed along the path, Martise cried out in pain when her ankle twisted, caught in a crevice. She tugged her hand free and sat back upon a slab, fighting the scissors of pain that slashed from her ankle to her thigh.

“Martise, will you—?” he began angrily, then spun around. He caught sight of the pain in her eyes, then knelt before her, lifting up her foot. He ran a hand along the length of her calf beneath her skirt, and even as a sound of protest escaped her lips, he was untying her boot and removing it. He swore softly, and offered no apology, and then looked up into her eyes.

“’Tis sprained, at least, not broken,” he said irritably. “I told you that you should not have come!”

“What?” she snapped, and her eyes narrowed. “If you were not so damned all hell-bent on leaving me behind—”

“I’m hell-bent on hurrying. We’ve a great deal of land to cover while we’ve got the light.”

“It was your fault, Laird Creeghan, and that’s a fact!”

He rose, her boot in his hand, and he pointed it at her as he opposed her flatly. “You’d not be hurt if you’d stayed behind, and that’s a fact. But you’ve always got your wee nose into things, haven’t you?”

She gasped in fury and rose, and the pressure on her ankle caused her to cry out.

Then she was swept up into his arms, and his eyes softened somewhat as he stared down at her. “You haven’t the good sense you were born with, lass,” he told her.

“Set me down,” she commanded him.

“I canna do that, lass. You’ll come a little farther with me, to the caves, and there I can see you and reach you quickly if there’s a need.”

He was walking again. Involuntarily, she wound her arms around his neck. She closed her eyes against the sight of his clean-shaven jaw.

He was surprisingly agile, holding her as he scampered ever downward until they came to the sea again. From here, arms of the cliffs stretched out into the water, and Martise could easily understand why they hadn’t been able to ride here: the beach itself was totally blocked by the rise of the rock.

She saw, too, why the rocks were called the Dragon’s Teeth, for they rose before her, and far out into the water, like huge, monstrous canines, jagged and sharp and dangerous.

Bruce set her down upon a water-worn slab where she could see the waves as they lashed in.

“At high tides, the beach floods here,” he warned her. “But we’ve hours yet. I’ll be in the caves, not too far. If you need me, call for me.”

She said nothing, but stared out at the deep blue sea.

“Martise!”

Startled, she looked into his eyes.

“Do you ken? Call me if you need me.”

“Aye!” she heard herself saying. Then something about his eyes touched her deeply and she promised, “Yes, Bruce, I hear you, and I will. But what … could happen?” she asked.

He shook his head, and she realized that he didn’t know.

Still he was reluctant to leave her. Suddenly, he was walking back toward her, and then balanced down upon one knee, smoothing back a soft, wayward strand of hair. His fingers brushed her cheek, and she wanted to catch his hand and stop him. But her eyes were locked with his once again, and the sizzling amber mystique was filling her with longing, with the golden edge of his fire …

Her hand fell upon his shoulder, and she feathered her fingers through the raven wings of his hair, and she closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the fascination. She felt the salt ocean breeze against her cheeks and then the touch of his lips, caressing, soft, against hers. And she felt the heat of the sun again, too, against the damp chill of the day, for he pressed her back against the rock, and its warmth seeped into her.

“By all that’s holy,” he murmured, his lips poised above her eyes as he gently brushed them both with his kiss. “I should play the demon indeed this moment. The waves and sea become a part of it, coursing through the blood, demanding the rhythms of Eden.” His whisper was seductive, lulling.

But then his hands were upon her, pulling her up, and a taunting gleam was in his eyes as she opened her own to them. “Indeed, milady, I’ve warned that I shall have you, and that I shall. If you do not have me first.”

Her eyes widened at his insinuation, and then she realized that, rational or not, her hand was flying and she was determined to see that her palm smacked hard against his cheek.

But he caught her wrist, and his laughter was subtle, and she was suddenly pulled hard against him, aware despite all her layers of clothing and his that he was most certainly very male and very aroused, and more than ready to carry out his threat.

She struggled against his arms, but he held her close, and his kiss caught hold of her lips then, hard, rugged, as forceful as they were persuasive. She tried to fight him, tried with fury, and yet her strength waned and the taste and the scent and sheer power of his touch prevailed in the end, and he killed her then at his leisure, tasting her lips, knowing them with his tongue, with the gentle graze of his teeth. And then he was tenderly holding her against him, and his murmur touched her ear softly.

“Do I hold the rabbit or the hawk? The seductress is always there, bold, fighting, demanding. And you should know the ways of the world, and the ways of men, and yet then again I think that I am misled, that there is innocence there. Who are you, Martise?”

She pulled away from him, dismayed. Her hand flew to her throat, and she stumbled back upon the rock, wincing as she placed weight upon her ankle. “Mary’s—Mary’s sister!” she cried out. “You—you must remember that!”

He arched a brow to her, and it seemed that a golden gleam came down to hide all the emotion within his eyes. “I try,” he said quietly, then turned toward the caves, pausing. He cast his head back and closed his eyes against the sun, and then he opened them again and turned back to her. “You must try to remember it, too,” he said.

But before she could begin to ponder the true meaning of his words, he was gone, heading into the caves.

For the longest time, she simply sat there on the rock, listening to the sound of the surf. She was falling in love with him, she thought.

She could not be.

And yet she was.

Her thoughts about Bruce faded when she realized she was staring at a piece of fabric that seemed to trail from behind a rock, perhaps sixty feet away from her.

She hadn’t seen it before, she was certain.

Then she noted the tide was rising, and she thought that perhaps the rise of the water had loosened something behind the rock.

She stood slowly, and then she felt as if her heart congealed. Fabric … it could be Clarissa behind that stone.

Or her body.

Martise inhaled on a sharp gasp, but then quickly came to life. Hobbling on her sprained ankle, she made it as fast as she could across the sand. She rounded the huge rock and then her hand flew against her mouth to hold back a scream when she saw that the fabric indeed housed a body.

But it was not Clarissa’s.

Beneath her, pinned by the weight of the rock, lay a man. He was clad in the simple garb of a sailor. His graying hair was flat against the sand, tangled within it. The fabric she had seen had torn free from his pants where his leg had been snapped like a match, and now lay at an awkward angle, the bone protruding.

His shirt, too, was stained with blood.

For a moment she thought she would be sick.

She closed her eyes and remembered the days in Richmond at the hospital when she had tended the battle-injured. When she had smelled the rot of gangrene. When she had heard the horrible screams of the men as such injured legs were amputated.

She fought the nausea, and then she opened her eyes, determined. She fell down on the sand beside him, trying to remember any little thing she had learned from the doctors.

Then she wondered why she had worried. The man was obviously dead.

She pressed her fingers against his throat and laid her head on his chest. She jerked up, certain he had a heartbeat.

But there was little she could do for him here. She ripped open his shirt and saw that the wound had torn his lower abdomen. She sat back and ripped at her petticoat. He was heavy, and it was difficult to move his upper body to bind up the wound, but she tried to do just that.

Then she started to scream. “Bruce! Bruce! Please! I need you.”

The man was alive; he was still bleeding. Fresh marks of blood welled into the bandage and she ripped more material to pack the wound more tightly.

“Bruce!”

The man’s eyes opened. Unfocused, dazed, they stared into the sun. The man cried out.

And then he glanced at her, and his eyes were filled with fear and terror.

“It’s all right,” Martise tried to assure him. “I’m trying to help you. Please, lie back. We’ll get more help. We’ll splint your leg. It’s going to be all right.”

But he opened up his mouth and screamed again. Martise leaned forward, using her skirt to mop at his forehead. “Please, it will be all right. It will be all right.”

He was trying to say something. She leaned low against him as his lips moved and no sound came. There was only a whisper. She couldn’t understand him.

And then she thought that she did.

“Creeghan,” he mumbled.

She couldn’t have heard him correctly; it was her imagination. She tried to talk to him again, to keep talking, to say anything. “It’s going to be all right…”

But it wasn’t. The tide was coming in, and the man was still stuck beneath the rock.

Frantically, she began to tear at the material that was caught and pinning him down.

And then Bruce appeared.

“Martise!”

She was not sitting upon her rock, and so she thought that she heard a note of anxiety in his cry. “Bruce, over here! Please, help me!”

He was there in seconds. His tall black riding boots slashed through the water, and he swiftly assessed the situation. He rolled back his sleeves and set his strength against the boulder.

She watched as the cords in his neck tightened, as his face strained, as the muscles within his arms rippled and tautened out like whipcords. The rock didn’t move. But then he braced himself and pushed again, and the huge boulder moved over several inches.

The man was free.

“His leg!” Martise warned, looking about frantically. They had left the area of any ground that resembled woods, but Bruce disappeared into the cave again and returned almost immediately.

She wondered how he had found a length of split lumber so easily, but it did not seem the time to ask. As he gritted his teeth against the pain he would cause the injured man, Bruce straightened the leg, snapping the bones into place.

The man screeched in agony.

Then he passed out, and Martise took more strips of petticoat to bind about him, and when she was done and the leg was secured, Bruce carefully caught him by the shoulders and pulled him from the path of the oncoming tide.

“You can go for Ian and Conar and Peter,” Martise said. “I’ll stay here with him—”

“Aye, lass, but I think we need the doctor here. That’s severe. And he’s suffered more injury than the leg, I’ll warrant. A man gnashed by the rocks seldom breathes again.” He drew off his black frock coat as he spoke, placing it around the man. “Aye, stay with him, and I’ll send Conar to bring Dr. MacTeague, then we’ll move him with the doctor’s supervision.” He paused just a moment. “He’ll probably lose that leg. I’ve seen such wounds before.”

“Yes,” Martise agreed, then looked up at him, startled, wondering where he had come across such a woefully shattered limb before.

He was already leaping up the rock, graceful, agile for his size.

Martise bent close to the man’s chest again. At first, she did not hear a heartbeat. Then she caught the faintest murmur, and she sat back, relieved.

There was nothing else she could do.

She was sodden and wet from her foray into the rising surf. Her feet were drenched, as were the hem of her skirt and what remained of her petticoats. She shivered fiercely. The daylight was leaving them. The surf was still rising, and a bitter chill seemed to have settled over the sky. She looked up. It would rain that night, and the air would become cooler.

She looked back to the sailor. “Live!” she whispered to him. “Please, live. You must tell us what happened, why … it happened. And why you whispered the word ‘Creeghan’ to me.”

Creeghan. Because Castle Creeghan had brought about his downfall?

Because the great laird of Creeghan … had what?

She swirled around when she heard a sound on the sand. Bruce had come back, and Conar was with him.

“Ian has ridden for the doctor,” Bruce said. “It should not be long.”

“It had better not be,” Conar muttered. “Watch the tide, Bruce. It will be up to the cave in another hour.” He rubbed his hands together, shivering in the wind. “How he’s made it this long is surely a miracle. Bejesu, Bruce, but ’tis freezin’ here!”

“Aye, that it is,” Bruce agreed, and his gaze landed upon Martise, who still shivered and shook. Then she gasped out a protest as he reached down and swept her into his arms. “Lord Creeghan, whatever—”

“I’m taking you into the cave, out of the wind,” he told her with an angry crack to his voice. “We’ll have you down with a bad ankle and pneumonia if you don’t listen to some sense.”

“But the sailor—”

“Conar is there. We’ve a blanket to set over him. Martise, there’s nothing you can do!”

He was right. As they entered into the darkness of the cave, she unwillingly tightened her hold upon him. He slowly, carefully set her down, and then rose to tower over her.

“Are you all right there?”

She nodded.

“I’ll go back out, then.”

She could see him and Conar by the sailor. They sat on either side of the man in the sand, their knees up, elbows rested upon them. Their voices were low. She could not hear their words, and leaned her head back against the stone and listened to the wind.

It was growing shrill. Passionate, raging, and shrill. It swept through the cliffs, and it seemed to cry and moan and to have a haunted life all of its own.