She glanced back down the dunes. The wind carried screams, and shots were being fired. ‘Whatever you say, I’ll not go. There are survivors.’
Butcher shook her. ‘You must go now, or you will die on this beach. I cannot protect you. Do you want me to waste time dragging you back home, or do you want me to get back to the beach and save who I can? Their blood will be on your hands if you stay.’
He pushed her up the dunes towards the path back to Kildara. When she was almost out of earshot, he shouted. ‘And while you throw accusations at me, you might want to talk to your husband about how that ship came to be wrecked this night.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Anger was a fist around Cullen’s neck. He tried to swallow it, but the sight of the ship slipping into the waves fuelled a blinding rage. Few of the crew and passengers would make it out of the wreck alive, and if any made it to shore, they faced a brutal welcome. One sailor washed up close to him, near dead from drowning, and weak from battling the surf. Several men set upon him with their fists and boots, pounding the life out of him. Cullen rushed to tear them off and got a pistol in his face for his trouble.
He swept out his own pistol in a flash. ‘Leave him be,’ he snarled at Heap.
‘What’s it to you, Macaulay? He’s nobody, and there’s pickings for all.’
‘I said, leave him be,’ snarled Cullen, walking closer. The other men backed away, and Heap cursed and rushed off down the beach in search of easier targets and richer pickings. His natural cruelty led him to murder, but his greed meant he had to get to the items washing up onto the sand before they were carried off by the many folk who had come down to see what they could salvage. Heap couldn’t shoot them all.
Heavy rain began to fall as Cullen hauled the stricken sailor to his feet. ‘If you can walk, go that way, up the beach. If you can run, then run,’ he shouted.
The man coughed and spluttered out water. ‘I cannot. I have no strength.’
‘Then you will die on this beach this night,’ said Cullen, giving the man a shove towards the dunes. The wretch tottered forward and soon became lost in the downpour. Something brushed against his leg. A corpse, face down, hands out. He could just make out a stain darkening the water around it as the last of the light began to die from the sky. Beaten to death, most likely.
Cullen stared down the beach. A flash of something pale caught his eye, like a light dancing on the water. He ran towards it, dodging scavengers and thugs, until he could make out swathes of white fabric floating and swirling in the chop. It seemed to be just a bolt of cloth that had floated free, until a pale hand reached up out of it.
Cullen plunged into the sea. Thousands of icy needles pricked his skin all at once, and his lungs strained for air as he swam out from the beach. A pale face rose out of the water and sank back down. It was a woman, and she was drowning. Cullen kicked desperately against the crashing breakers, muscles aching with cold.
He reached out his hand to grab her, but all he met was the fabric of her dress, which gave under his hands. The light was gone, and he had to feel for hair, limbs, anything to grab onto. A hand grasped his arm, fighting, pulling him under. Her sodden dress was heavy, a terrible drag on her body. Cullen twisted free and took hold of the woman, pulling her back to his chest so that she could not drag him under. She screamed in terror, but a wave washed over her face, and she spluttered and stopped fighting.
It seemed to take forever to get to the beach, and the woman grew heavier with each kick of Cullen’s legs. They had drifted along, almost to the rocks, by the time he felt sand under his feet and managed to drag her out of the water. There was no timeto catch his breath. He had to get her clear before Heap and his thugs dispatched her, like the others.
Cullen hauled the woman to her feet, threw her over his shoulder and hurried towards the dunes, his feet sinking in the wet sand and shingle, every breath an ache in his throat. He feared a shot to the back with every step. He had tethered his horse behind a hedgerow, out of sight, and thankfully, the beast was still there, yanking at its halter with every crash of thunder and flash of lightning. With the last of his strength, Cullen threw the woman onto the beast’s back. He took a look back the way he had come. There were others he might save, but the woman was shivering uncontrollably and close to succumbing from the cold. She would not survive if he did not get her before a fire.
With a curse to release his anger, Cullen headed for Kildara. It was only then that he considered the welcome he would get. Last time he had seen Lowri, she’d aimed a pistol at his heart.
***
Cullen crashed into the cottage, bearing the woman towards the fire. Lowri was seated before it and sprang to her feet.
‘What is this? What have you done?’
‘She survived the wreck. We must get her warm. Quick, lass, get blankets. I fear for her. The lass was in a dead faint once I dragged her from the water.’
Lowri followed his orders and dragged blankets off the bed. ‘Is she even alive?’ she cried.
The woman’s flesh was blue with cold. Cullen lay her before the fire, grateful for its warmth. A mass of sodden pale hair covered her face, and Cullen gently tore it away to reveal a thin face of astonishing delicacy. For an instant, he thought he might be touching a corpse, so still and pale was she. But then the lassmoaned, and her eyes fluttered open. They were the vivid blue of a kingfisher’s wings and bright against her pallor. Then they rolled back in her head, and her eyelids fluttered closed. For an instant, Cullen was frozen and helpless, but then Lowri’s voice intruded.
‘We must get those clothes off her. Look how she is shivering.’ She knelt beside him and began to unfasten the woman’s clothes. ‘Quick, help me,’ said Lowri as she tore open the woman’s bodice. Her shift clung to her skin, showing everything underneath – the soft rose of her nipples and the curve of her full breasts.
‘I should not,’ he said, meeting Lowri’s eye in shame.
‘Don’t be a fool. We have no time. Cut them off, if you have to.’
Cullen was reluctant to cut the garments as they were of fine fabric, embroidered with little flowers and sewn with tiny seed pearls. ‘This dress must have cost a king’s ransom. Is it a wedding dress?’ he asked, for he knew little of such things. But it was so lavish, and the ivory fabric screamed purity and virginity.
‘Whatever it is, you either tear it off or it becomes her shroud,’ snapped Lowri, tugging the skirts down. Cullen tried not to look at the blonde nest of hair between the woman’s legs as he hauled her torso up to tear down the sleeves of the bodice. Her skin was icy to the touch.
‘The poor soul is young, barely out of girlhood,’ tutted Lowri, hauling her shift over her head.
Cullen felt ashamed, dirty, a lecher for staring at the helpless, now naked, woman. Lowri rubbed the lass all over vigorously with a blanket, and then, to his relief, laid a dry one over her. She slapped the lass’s cheeks, none too gently.
