‘Rebecca, thank God!’ he cried, finally spotting her kneeling silhouette against the blanket of swirling snowflakes. ‘What were you thinking?’ he vented, kneeling before her.
‘I...I...’
With that, Rebecca’s eyes fluttered closed, and she slumped forward against him.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ Liam growled, sliding one arm around her, whilst the other dug out her legs from the snow and lifted them. ‘No dying on me now. Not until I’ve given you a piece of my mind, woman.’
Liam heaved himself to his feet with a grunt, Rebecca in his arms, held tightly against him. She was frozen to the bone. No warmth emanated from her.
Incorrigible, insufferable, stubborn...
Liam quickened his pace again, his own body screaming out against the effort and the cold. His anger and frustration fuelled him onwards, and he treated the unconscious body in his arms to a colourful slew of expletives he would never have dared use whilst she was awake. It masked the desperation, and the overwhelming relief he’d felt when he’d finally spotted her in the snow.
For she was close, so very close to death. He could feel it. He had seen good men taken the same way in the mountains too many times before. She looked so pale, so ghost-like... And her breathing was slowing, the rise and fall of her chest against his telling him so.
‘No. You will not die!’ he cried, pulling her in closer. ‘Not like this. Not ever.’
And, as if the heavens had heard his pleas, Liam spotted the faint orange glow of a lantern in the distance before them.
‘There, see, almost home now.’
Warmth. A wave of thick, stifling heat. It pulled Rebecca back through the frozen fog of her mind, back to the present.
Thornhallow. Home. Alive.
She was alive. She still couldn’t move, her entire body unwilling to respond to the feeble demands of her mind, but it didn’t matter. In truth, she didn’t want to move.
‘Is the bath ready?’ she heard Liam shout.
He found me.
Yes, she remembered that—only just. A tall figure appearing in the storm like an ancient demon of legend. She’d heard his voice calling on the wind, and with the last of her strength, she had called back. And he’d found her. She was in his arms now, safe against his chest. She could smell wet wool, fur and leather, and was that his heartbeat in her ears or her own?
She was vaguely aware of others around them, but her eyes refused to open.
‘Yes, my lord,’ Thomas said, following closely behind as they made their way through to the kitchens. ‘Everything is prepared, as you asked.’
‘Oh, my lord!’ Mrs Murray screamed from down the corridor, spotting them. ‘The poor mite’s frozen to death!’
Not yet frozen... But nearly.
Now there was a thick haze of fog in her mind, a heavy dullness inviting her to sleep. To rest her cold, weary limbs, to rest her mind. She resisted, concentrating instead on how weightless she felt, how delightfully safe she was in her master’s arms.
For even in that moment, Rebecca knew the dangers of giving in.
‘Indeed, Mrs Murray, quite near to it, I fear,’ Liam shouted back, though he needed not, at the rate he was approaching the flapping cook. He spotted Lizzie and the others behind her, watching on in horror. ‘But do not fret. We will see Mrs Hardwicke to rights soon enough.’
Pushing past them and into the kitchens, Liam laid Rebecca down on a cleared table, and began peeling off his own layers of protection, most of it with his teeth as his fingers refused to cooperate.
‘Help, please,’ he said to Gregory as the boy rose from pouring the last bucket of boiling water into the copper tub set before the hearth. ‘Pattens. Boots.’
‘Aye, my lord,’ Gregory said, swiftly complying.
‘We should take care of her, my lord,’ Lizzie said tentatively from the doorway.
Liam stopped, and was about to tell them all where they could go with their suggestions, thathewould see this done, propriety or not, when Thomas stepped forth.
‘My lord, Mrs Murray and Lizzie will see to her,’ he said, in a tone that not even the King himself would have dared disobey. ‘We shall get you warmed as well, in my rooms.’
