He did, gingerly this time, feeling the spirits burn a path to his belly. “Warm,” he murmured.
Drawing a shuddering breath, Kendra blinked back her tears. “I’ll warm you in a minute.”
She tied off the makeshift bandage, a blessed tightness that seemed to pull him back together, both his body and his mind. Memory rushed back, and with it some of the anger at her for interfering. But, too, he remembered his thoughts as he’d sunk beneath the water. Thoughts of love, from a man who’d been certain he didn’t believe.
Later. He would think about all of this later.
As she struggled to tug down his shirt, he levered up and found himself surrounded by horses. Niall had roped the four dray animals together to pull the wagon, and their own three mounts trotted behind. They were making good time.
Trick’s feet were braced against a chest—the single chest they’d wrestled off the doomed ship. One chest saved out of twenty-three. He dropped his head to a makeshift pillow fashioned from his soggy surcoat. The rain had stopped, and the sun was struggling valiantly to peek between broken clouds.
“There.” She drew up a blanket to cover him. It felt warm, then warmer still when she crawled beneath to cuddle up to his good side, sharing the heat of her body.
Heavenly. He was in heaven, after all.
“The ferryman gave it to me,” she said.
“Gave you what?”
“The blanket.”
“After you puked all over his floor,” Niall added from the driver’s seat up front.
“Nice of him.” Trick laced his fingers with Kendra’s. “Especially considering he lost his boat.”
Fresh, warm tears wetted his almost-dry shirt where her head nestled on his shoulder. “We lost them,” she said, the words soft and regretful. “Gregor and Rhona and the treasure.”
“But we didn’t lose each other.” He squeezed her hand. “I think,leannan, we can thank God for that. And Niall.”
“Nay,” his brother called back. “Thank her. She’s the one who pulled you from the water.”
Stunned, he gasped. “How?” He was twice her weight, at least.
He sensed rather than saw Niall’s shrug. “I managed to get to the boat, was dealing with the shifting chest. The next thing I knew she was leaping over my head.”
“That wave.” Kendra’s voice shook with memory. “It was like a mountain. It came down, and you disappeared for a moment, then I saw you go over the side. It looked like you were riding a waterfall. I’ve never been more scared in my life.”
“I know the feeling,” he soothed, remembering the sight of her with a knife at her throat. “Rhona and Gregor? Did you see them, too?”
“No,” she said. “We never saw them at all. They were there, they and the boat, and then they weren’t. By the time I got you aboard, there was nothing where that ship had been but an eerie calm patch on the surface of the water, dotted with bits of debris.”
Slowly he nodded, feeling an overwhelming weariness suddenly swamp him. Sweet Mary, she’d saved his life. Because she’d disobeyed him—because, in spite of his protests, she’d flown into that boat like an avenging angel—she’d been there, and she’d saved his life….
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
But Trick was already asleep.
Sixty
IT WAS NEARINGmidnight by the time they arrived at Duncraven, cold, hungry, and—at least on Kendra’s part—exhausted.
Trick’s long sleep in the wagon bed seemed to have gone an amazing way toward restoring his strength, and Niall clearly found his second wind as they neared the castle, itching to tell his father all about the adventure of a lifetime. But she hadn’t slept a wink on the bumpy ride, too caught up in wonder that they were all alive, tempered by a wrenching regret that her own part in the day’s events had led to its tragic end.
While Trick and Niall went straight to fill Hamish in, she begged off and dragged herself upstairs, wanting nothing but a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.
She’d almost accomplished the first when Trick came in, a platter in one hand and two goblets in the other. Quickly she slid deeper into the water, crossing her arms over her breasts. No matter that he’d seen all of her before—no man had ever seen her bathe. It seemed different. Private somehow. And too intimate, considering what she’d put him through today.
He shouldn’t want to see her at all.
