“I can see the top, Mama!” he called after what seemed like forever.
Callie paused for breath, cooling her burning palms against her wet skirt, and looked up. Almost there. Thank goodness! She heaved a huge sigh of relief. With any luck it would not be far to Lulworth.
Gabriel Renfrew rounded the bluff at a gallop. The narrow cliff path was barely visible yet Gabe didn’t slow his pace. One misstep could send them over the edge but both rider and horse knew the path well. They’d ridden it almost every night for the past few weeks.
Cold salt air bit into his lungs. The storm was closing in, fast.
Trojan suddenly broke stride. Gabe looked up. “What the devil—”
A child stood directly in his path, staring and terrified. Horse and rider were almost upon him. There was no time to stop, no place to maneuver. On one side rocks rose steeply among scraggy bushes, on the other lay a plunge to certain death on the rocks below.
“Get off the path!” Gabriel shouted. He hauled on the reins, felt Trojan’s muscles bunching in the effort to slow enough to stop before the child was trampled.
The little boy didn’t move, was frozen with fear. There was no time to think, only react. “Get down!” Gabe yelled as he prepared to jump his horse over the child.
But as Trojan rose, leaping high in blind obedience to the command of his master’s hands, a woman erupted from nowhere and with a scream flung herself at the child. It was too late—his horse was already in the air, clearing, Gabriel hoped, both woman and child. Did he feel a thud as he flew? It happened so fast he couldn’t be sure.
He flung himself off his still-moving horse and ran back. He could hear something crashing down the cliff, sending stones and rocks rolling down. He hoped to God it wasn’t the woman. The child, he was sure, had gone in the other direction, away from the edge.
In the darkness he could just make out a huddled female shape lying on the very edge of the cliff. Thank God it wasn’t her he’d heard falling. But if she moved an inch…
He was three paces away when she started to stir. Before he could reach her she moved, tried to stand, and slipped toward the edge.
Gabe hurled himself forward, grabbed a handful of wet clothing, and dragged her back.Wetclothing? “Stay still,” he barked. “Don’t move.”
“Where is—?” She batted his hands away and scrambled to her feet, looking around frantically. “Nicky! Nicky!” she screamed.
“Don’t move!” he ordered sharply. “You’re right on the very edge of the cliff.”
She stared, horrified, at the edge.“Nicky!”She breathed. She swayed forward, peering over.
“He didn’t fall,” Gabe said firmly, easing her back again. “If Nicky is a small boy, he’s all right.”
“H-how do you know?” She was stuttering, almost past speech.
“I saw him run off that way.” Gabe pointed further along the path.
“Run off? Oh God, he must have been terrified. What if he goes over the edge in the dark!” She started along the way he’d pointed.“Niiicky!”
“He’s all right, I’m sure,” he began in a soothing voice.
“Niiicky!”she screamed again.
“I’m here, Mama.” The voice came out of the darkness. “The bandbox rolled away. I had to chase after it.”
“Oh, Nicky! I was so worried.” The woman pushed past Gabe and wrapped the child in a damp embrace.
“Mama, you’re all wet!” said the boy, and with a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob she stepped back. She caressed the boy’s hair gently.
“Are you all right, darling? That horrid horse didn’t kick you, did it?”
“No, it jumped right over the top of me—like flying, like Pegasus. But you pushed me, Mama, and that’s when I dropped this.” The boy lifted the bandbox. “It rolled away. It nearly went over the edge, but I stopped it.”
“How clever of you,” she told him shakily, starting to recover from her fright. “I don’t suppose you saw my slipper, too, did you? I dropped it somewhere.” She was shivering quite badly, Gabe saw. Cold, or reaction, or both.
“I told you he was all right,” Gabe said.
She turned on him in fury. “Don’t speak to me! If you had hurt one hair of his head with yourcriminallyirresponsible behavior, I would—I would—” Her voice cracked and she hugged her boy convulsively.
