But Georgina Bayard moved. She ran around Amy and punched Fate right in his square jaw. Destiny took one horror-filled look at Georgina’s raised-and-shaking fist and he just melted back into the mist.
Amy blinked, turned, and looked at Georgina who was just sitting next to her. She wasn’t staring at Amy, like Amy thought she might be. Instead, the other woman was looking down at the water.
Her expression changed suddenly, her dark slash of brows frowning together for a brief instant before she looked up. “I think the tide is rising. Look.” She pointed at the water, which had risen and was only about an inch from the rock shelf where they sat.
“Itisgetting higher. What should we do?”
“Leave.” Georgina started to move.
Amy got to her knees and dusted off her skirt, which seemed a futile effort since her clothing was tattered like rags. She shook her head, looked up, then froze. A second later she jabbed an elbow into Georgina’s ribs.
“Ouch!” Georgina flinched and scowled at her. “What did you do that for?”
Amy nodded at the mouth of the cave and she heard Georgina, who was on all fours, inhale sharply.
Standing at the entrance to the cave with eerie lantern light cast over her was a little girl with curly golden hair. She was dressed in a white high-necked nightgown with lace at the hem where her pink bare toes peeked out and curled over the edge of a flat rock. She looked like an angel who had appeared out of the mist.
For just a second Amy blinked, thinking what she saw was just a vision. But the angel child was all too real.
The look on the child’s face, however, was anything but angelic. She scowled at them as if she faced the devil and his entire horned and cloven army. Then very slowly the child raised her small hands and aimed a large quivering pistol right at them.
Chapter Seventeen
I’m not denying that women are foolish. God Almighty made them to match the men.
—George Eliot
“The woman is a perfect match for you.”
“I don’t need a woman.” Calum scowled at Eachann while they worked their way through the thick forest near the cove. He stopped to bat a low branch out of his way, then had to swipe a shower of dew and pine needles off his face and head. He glared at Eachann’s broad back while he picked his shirt clean.
Eachann turned to face him. “Not even a woman who is a victim?” He clapped Calum on the shoulder and got that goading grin on his face. “What happened to you, brother? And here I thought you wanted to single-handedly save the world from injustice.”
Calum’s nerves were worn thin and he told Eachann in a foul but explicit term what he could go do. But his brother wore an expression he knew only too well.
Stubborn. Pig-headed. Too damn smart. Every trait that got Eachann in trouble, which usually meant Calum was in trouble right along with him. Like now. “This woman is just what you need.”
“How would you know what I need?” Eachann laughed. “I know better than anyone else.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Fergus.” Eachann stood in the center of the woods, looking as keenly attentive as a staghound waiting for the wind to bring the scent of game. Calum moved to join him and his boots sunk deeply into thick mud. He looked up. The mist hovered in the trees above them as if the thick spruce branches were arms ready to drop the heavy fog right on their heads.
Scowling, he stood there and impatiently picked pine tar from his hair. The stuff was like molasses. He looked down at his hands, then tried to wipe them clean with his handkerchief. It stuck to the tar on his palm. He shook it a few times and watched the white handkerchief wave from his palm like a flag of surrender.
Now Eachann was walking around the clearing, obviously looking for signs of the women. After a few steps he paused and shook his head. “They’re not here either.”
“Why are we standing around? Instinct is no way to find anyone. We need to comb the area from the house in a methodical way. Use thorough patterns so we cover every inch of ground. There have to be footprints somewhere around here.”
Eachann spun around and began to walk back toward the quay as if he hadn’t heard a word Calum had said. So Calum shouted after him. “We’ll never find them this way. They could be anywhere.” Calum tried to pull his boots from the sucking mud. There was a loud slurping pop. “Hell and blast!” He glanced up at Eachann’s back. “You should have left things as they were. This is the most foolish trick you’ve ever pulled!”
Eachann just kept walking, but his voice traveled back. “I’d be willing to wager half my stable that had you been where I was, and had you seen what I saw, you’d have rescued the lass faster than I did.”
Calum jammed his handkerchief into a pocket and went after him. “It would serve you right to lose those horses of yours. I just might take that wager.”
“No. You won’t.” Eachann’s tone was certain.
“Aye, I will.”
The stable was Eachann’s territory, and to Calum’s never-ending surprise it was usually clean. But it was in sore need of some organization: a well-planned workspace, a sense of order, and everything stored in its proper place. There were plenty of times when his hands itched not with pine tar, but with the need to fix up Eachann’s workplace.
