She made it to the other side and with all her strength, grabbed a projecting tree branch covered with debris. A backwash spun in a monstrous whirlpool only feet away. She knew craggy boulders hid underneath. Over the water’s roar, she heard the thunder of the waterfall, and couldn’t believe she had traveled so far. Her heart hammered, her chest ached. No wonder she could no longer feel her fingers. She gasped for breath, water roiling over her.
Inching her hands one over the other, she sought a stronger grip, found one, and held on for life. If she let go she would be sucked into the whorl of white water and spit out over the waterfall. She didn’t know which was worse—to have gone willingly with Roxburghe or be dashed against the rocks in a foamy, pulpy end.
Then Roxburghe was suddenly behind her, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist and lifting her out of the current. “Let go,” she heard him yell over the roar of water. “I’ve got you!”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head. She could not do it. She could not trust him. She could not go back! “You let go!”
His arm tightened on her waist. Somewhere in her brain, she knew he was standing in the water. “You need me to get to shore. We can no’ stay here. The water is too damn cold. Let go, Rose.”
His body prevented her from slipping back into the current. Yet it was that very strength and power that dissuaded her from trusting her life to him. She clenched herhands tighter, terrified of letting go of the tree branch, a lifeline in the murky depths that had become her life. Fate had taken away her rainbows and her dreams and now it would drag her the rest of the way down.
Over the roar of water, she screamed. “I will not go back with you. I—”
“You can not return to the abbey,” he shouted near her ear. “There is no place in Britain or France you will be able to hide from your father now. That is the way it is, Rose. But if you go over the falls, I go with you.”
The thought gave her pause. The idea that she might die with him, might have to spend eternity bound in death to him, sharing the black waters of an abyss or the flames of hell together, was too horrible to contemplate.
But the choice to go to her father should have been her own to make, just as the choice to let go of the branch was now. In any case, they would soon both be too weak to fight the current. Roxburghe was right about the danger. She could fight him and end up too weak to pull herself from the water before they went over the waterfall.
She loosened her lifesaving grip and he caught her in his arms. Together they struggled to the bank and crawled out of the water exhausted and half drowned. She collapsed to her knees next to him. He rolled onto his back and placed one forearm over his eyes. Over the river’s roar, she heard his labored gasps as she sucked in her own lifesaving breath. His Holland shirt had been torn across one shoulder. Like her, he wore nothing on his feet. She could still escape him.
Somehow, she still possessed the strength to make a dash for the rocks, but his hand shot out, grabbed her ankle like an iron vise and she slammed to the ground against her palms. She twisted around, ready to kick him, but he was already upon her, holding her downwith one thigh insinuating itself between her knees. She launched a dazzling attack of her own, withdrawing the dirk from a slim sheath on her hip and laying it against his throat. The action had been so clean and swift she felt a moment’s satisfaction. She met his narrowed eyes, even as her mind was immobilized by the terrifying idea he would strike her.
“I see now I erred in playing the gentleman and should have frisked you more thoroughly,” he said and spit blood. She must have hit him in the mouth.
“Gentleman indeed! I refuse to be your hostage.”
His breath brushed her cheek, but that was not all she felt of him heavy against her. “Have you ever cut a man’s throat, Rose? ’Tis messy.”
She had never maliciously harmed any creature, yet her hand tightened on the blade.
“I would not die instantly,” he continued as if to convey there was a chill in the air. “I would still have time to snap your neck. Such a lovely neck, too.”
“Do not try to be charming, Roxburghe. I am extremely angry.”
And she was cold and trembling. And frightened. She didn’t want to kill him. She wanted only to escape. As if to confirm her intention, she tightened her grip on the blade. “Do you doubt my courage?”
If he had been angry before, something else had replaced the emotion. “Nay, love. I am only debating how best to disarm you without getting my throat cut.”
He made no attempt to remove the blade from her hand. He was smart, she realized. If he disarmed her by brute force alone, he would have given her psyche room to retreat. Surrender became a powerful tool of defeat if given by choice, even if that choice was an illusion.
She didn’t resist when he finally eased the knife fromhis throat and pressed her wrist to the soft ground, into the mud and pine needles. His weight rested on his arms positioned now on either side of her head. Neither moved. They were wet and covered in slime. But it didn’t veil the heat of him. Her shirt sucked to the crevices and curves of her body, and she may as well have been naked beneath him for all the protection the thin fabric provided her. Though she was frightened, something melted inside her.
The dirk fell sideways next to her hand.
The tips of his damp hair brushed her cheeks. “I concede you handle a blade well. An interesting pastime for a sister of the abbey. Would you have really used it?”
She fixed her gaze on his face. “I ... no one has ever tested me that far.”
He frightened her and infuriated her, and she knew she should fear him. He did not move as she’d expected. Lord above, now that the shock of nearly drowning and going over the falls was wearing away, she felt a moment’s faintness. There was nothing casual in the way his eyes touched hers. She didn’t know what emotion it was he caused to rise in her.
She’d heard accounts where women were abused and violated by their captors. The infamous Kerr laird would know of such stories, too.
“Please,” she murmured, aware of her own weak response.
“Please, what?” he said in a low voice.
She stared into eyes that were wild and dangerous. She remembered in sunlight they were the color of a twilight sky. “I want you to get off me. You are ... heavy.”
