Untamed Hearts (A Highland Hearts Novella) (Entangled Edge) (12 page)

“Aye, find the boy,” Bart said. “This concerns him, too.”

“What concerns him?” Will asked.

Captain Bart smiled broadly. “I’ve come to take you home to the
Queen Siren
.”

…

Jonet wrapped her arms around Will’s middle as they rode through the damp forest. A quick check of the castle and village hadn’t uncovered Stephen, so the small search party had split up to comb the surrounding forests and mountain passes. Even though they rode in silence broken occasionally by calling the lad’s name, Jonet’s mind whirled.
Home to the
Queen Siren. There hadn’t been time to question the pirate captain, but the man had seemed confident that Will could leave Scotland. Leave Scotland and leave her.

Jonet’s stomach turned in on itself, and it was all she could do to hold back the sob that threatened to explode from her.
Bloody hell!
She’d just found him, found the freedom to enjoy a man, an honorable, caring man. She blinked to quell the tears.

“I can’t imagine what has changed that would make it safe for me to return to sea,” Will said. Jonet’s eyes widened. Could he read her mind? He ran a hand across hers and glanced over his shoulder. “Your heart is pounding into my back, and you haven’t said a word.” He grinned at her, and she let her eyes close and smashed her face into his back.

“The crew must miss ye. And yer father,” she mumbled, her fingers curling into his shirt. “And ye must miss the sea.”

“I know the sea,” he said and shook his head. “All this earth and green.”

“Ye’re already riding a horse,” she pointed out. “Charissa seems to really enjoy running through the wildflowers. And everyone loves yer cooking.”

And someone here loves you
, she wanted to scream. Aye, love. She swallowed hard but couldn’t keep the single tear from running down her cheek. The thought of Will leaving back to the sea without her…it tore at her, physically hurt.

“Aye,” he said. “True. Like I said, though, the captain might be a bit too hasty. I have to hear why he thinks it’s safe. King Henry still has a bounty set on my head, as far as I know. I assumed I’d hide for a year or more. After all, I made a pledge to help put a new roof on your orphan’s home.”

“Aye, ye did.”

Will looked through the dense forest. “Stephen! Come out, lad!”

Jonet forced herself to breathe. Nothing was determined yet. She still had him here, and a year was a long time. She hugged him tightly, and he ran a hand over her arm.

“Stephen!” His deep voice barreled through the undergrowth. “Where are you, lad?”

Jonet watched the ground as they passed, searching for signs. Broken twigs, a print in the mud, anything to tell them they were headed in the right direction. “Why do ye think he ran away?” she asked.

“Margery embarrassed him, but it was more than that.” Will glanced left, then right. “The boy feels he doesn’t belong here. He was raised at sea and taken against his will. He’s angry.” He breathed fully, Jonet feeling the widening of his chest. “Captain Bart would be good for him.”

“Were ye an angry boy?”

Will chuckled darkly. “Obnoxiously so, but the captain wouldn’t put up with it. Got me playing drums and threw me down in the kitchens when I couldn’t keep my opinions to myself.”

“So ye learned to cook.” She smiled against his back. How like her pirate not to just wallow in anger but to do something productive.

“Aye. At first I threw everything that wasn’t poison together in hopes of making them regret putting me down there. The first couple of meals were horrible.”

She laughed. “When did ye start trying to make something good to eat?”

“After they made me eat my own concoction.”

She chuckled against his back. “Why didn’t ye run away?”

“I was stuck on ship. Nowhere to run away to at sea.” He held a hand cupped to his mouth. “Stephen! Answer me, lad! Captain Bart’s here; we can go home!”

Her stomach ached like he’d hit her in the gut. From laughter to paralyzing worry with one phrase. Lord, she needed to toughen herself.

They rode for a few more silent minutes. “Before the captain came along,” Will said slowly, “I didn’t have a home.”

“He found ye like the children ye save, right?”

Will nodded. “In the stinking hull of a slave ship, shackled and forgotten. I was too dangerous to keep up on deck. I caused havoc. Even the other children didn’t talk to me for fear of being beaten for knowing me. I was alone. I know what alone feels like.”

Lord, so did she. So alone for so many years. She’d finally found Ann and some friends. Aye, she knew. “Stephen!” she yelled. “Stephen!”

Will angled the horse up a thin path. “This seems to be traveled more.” He pointed to a broken twig on a bush.

“It’s fresh, see the green,” Jonet said. “Someone’s passed here over the last day.”

Will looked up where the path wound. “Into the mountains?”

“There are caves up there,” Jonet said. “Caves with huge drops in the dark, pits that could kill a man. Stephen!”

“Blast,” Will cursed. “That’s bloody hell where I’d go.” He urged the horse forward faster, and Jonet noticed more broken twigs and a few footprints in the soft soil. A ray of sun caught Jonet’s eye. It was going down. Soon the path would be cast in shadows.

“These mountains are not safe at night,” Jonet said and yelled again for the boy.

“And he may have been out here last night,” Will said. “Damn it all, I should have watched him closer.”

Jonet rubbed his back, her face heating with guilt. If he hadn’t been so concerned about her, he may have paid closer attention to Stephen. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He turned in his seat to look down at her, his thumb coming up to her cheek. Lord, was there a tear there? He wiped across it, frowning. “You’re crying.”

“I didn’t mean to keep ye away from the children.”

“Hmmm…would I rather spend time wooing a lovely Highland lass or convincing a foul-tempered lad to give this life a chance?” He shook his head. “Jonet, you have nothing to be sorry for. The boy is old enough not to wander off. He made his own stupid choice. We are just going to try to save him from it.”

“Like Captain Bart saved ye,” she said.

He cupped the side of her cheek and brushed a kiss across her lips. “Aye, like the captain saved my sorry arse.”

They rode farther up into the mountain terrain calling for Stephen, and the sun rays continued to lengthen until they disappeared behind the range. A movement to the right in the underbrush caught Jonet’s eye. Will stiffened and pulled the horse to a halt. They sat still in the shadows. Jonet felt Will unsheathe his dagger.

A pair of yellow eyes stared at them from the woods, and the hairs on her nape stood up. Wolf. “Is it Meg’s pet?” Will asked.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “It travels alone or with its mate,” she said glancing around at the darkness.

Will clicked to the horse, and it moved forward. The wolf followed alongside without attacking or running off. It made a whining noise, and Will stopped Bart again. The horse’s ears flicked nervously, and he sidestepped. Will held the reins tight.

“All right, you have our attention,” Will said evenly and looked directly at the beast. The wolf came out from the shadows into the twilight. It was huge and gray with seemingly soulless eyes.

Jonet gasped softly. “That’s Meg’s wolf. She calls him Nickum.”

“A Gaelic name?”

“Aye, it means mischievous.”

Will chuckled softly. “Well, then we should get along fine. What do you want, Nickum?”

The wolf whined and trotted off to the left a ways, stopped, and looked back at them.

“I think he wants ye to follow him,” Jonet said.

“Seems like it,” Will said, shaking his head. “Do you know where Stephen is? God’s teeth, I’m talking to a blasted wolf.” After clicking and cajoling, the horse, Bart, finally moved off the main path to follow the wolf into the darkening forest. The sound of a waterfall could be heard up ahead. Would a thirsty boy have heard it?

Nickum made sure they were following and led them at a fast pace around bushes and trees until the sound of falling water made it difficult to hear anything else. The trees opened up, and the shadows lessened so that they could make out a ledge and a series of rocks and waterfalls down into a dark basin below.

“Stephen!” Will’s voice cut through the roaring power of the thawing springwater running off the mountain.

Nickum ran ahead, his nimble feet carrying him to a cliff that leaned out over the falls. Moist, chilled air hovered around them as they dismounted. Will grabbed his rope off the saddle. Jonet tied Bart to a tree and followed Will up the slick, moss-covered rocks and dirt. He continued to call for the boy. Nickum barked low in his throat, his nose pointed to a rock outcropping below a pool of water that must have been created by eons of mountain water carving away at the rock. A lump lay on the outcropping, water coursing around it.

Jonet could scarcely say it, but she didn’t have to.

“Bloody hell, Stephen!” Will yelled and leaped up into the carved pool of frigid water. The boy must have fallen from it onto the outcropping. If he’d continued down the slope… Jonet shivered as she looked straight below into the dark abyss of plunging water.

“Be careful!” Jonet yelled, but her words were swallowed in the constant, rushing roar.

Will waded to the edge of the rock pool above the boy. The drop was too far to reach. He looked all around, turning in a tight circle and stopped as he studied a wide-spreading tree overhead.

“Nay,” Jonet said softly.

But Will quickly knotted the end of his rope and threw it up toward a thick branch. The rope splashed back in the water, and he fished it out, trying two more times before getting the rope all the way over the limb. He jumped up and grabbed the dangling end and tugged. The rope caught on the branch overhead, and he tied the end together with an intricate knot that slid when pulled.

“Will!” she yelled, her hands clasped. He looked to her and nodded, their gazes connecting in the last light of day. He knew to be careful. She held her breath as he tied the rope around his waist and began to lower down to the boy. He controlled the descent with the other end. She’d never seen anything like it. Jonet watched where she stood along the bank, her slippers wet in the moss and mud. A little farther. She held her breath as Will reached the stone outcropping. As soon as he stepped down, he grabbed the boy, lifting him like a sack of wet grain over his shoulder.

Jonet couldn’t tell if the boy was breathing. He certainly didn’t look to be conscious. How long had he been out there in the freezing water? Nickum stood near the rope in the above pool. They would have ridden right past the waterfall if the wolf hadn’t stopped them.

Jonet leaned forward, watching Will struggle to climb up the rope with Stephen over his shoulder. He slipped, the tie around his waist catching him. Jonet shuddered and ran up to stand with Nickum. Could she reach the boy if Will lifted him to her?

“Will,” she yelled down and waded into the water. The current yanked at her heavy wool skirts, sending chills all over her body. It was freezing, but she was already wet, and she wasn’t going to let Will struggle alone. She grabbed the taut rope and made her way to the edge, her feet catching and sliding on the rocks below the surface. How the hell had he walked out there so effortlessly?

Will yelled at her, but she couldn’t hear. She closed in and leaned down to offer her hands. She panted in the icy water, her legs already numbing. Stephen’s head brushed her fingertips, and she started grabbing at air until she felt something to hold onto. The boy’s shirt collar. Jonet reversed her pull, tugging the boy with all her power. She pushed underwater with her feet against the rocks, backing up. Nickum came closer and bit into the boy’s collar, his massive strength much more than Jonet’s.

Jonet let go as Nickum continued to pull his limp body to the edge. She felt the boy’s warmth as he passed. Thank the Lord, he was alive.

She stood up, trying to see Will as he pulled on the rope, the branch overhead bending. Could he get up? Should she help him? She waded back over, his yells lost in the water.

“Will, can I help?” she called, and her foot caught in a crevice. She fell forward, splashing into the water. The icy flow engulfed her, and she gasped, inhaling water. The pain in her chest burned with ice, and she flailed, jerking her legs, trying to get her feet under her again to push upward. As her foot came dislodged, the current that had been building behind her took over, slamming her forward.

Jonet screamed, a gurgling cry as the mountain water carried her, bumping and scraping over the ledge, over and down into the black abyss.

…

The scream echoed through Will’s head.
Jonet!
Her body fell over the ledge he’d just handed Stephen up to. He leaped toward her. His fingers brushed numbly along her form as she continued in the sweep of water. “Nay!” he roared, louder than the rush around him. “Nay! Jonet!” But she was gone into the dark waterfall below.

Could she even swim? Was she even conscious to try to fight the deep eddies he’d seen as they ran along the edge to reach Stephen? Time seemed to be rushing by as fast as the black water while his mind worked too slow. He had to reach her, had to save her. Nothing else mattered.

With a quick glance to see Stephen on the dry edge with Nickum, Will lowered down as far as the doubled line of rope would go. It bit into his middle. He unsheathed his dagger from his calf and straightened as much as he could. With one slice, the rope snapped. He threw the dagger from himself just as he plummeted, his arms around his head.

Water engulfed him as he hit, and he sunk until he could straighten and kick toward the surface. Blinded by the dark, he thrashed his arms around, searching for a warm body. He surfaced and gasped a lungful of air while kicking off his boots. He glanced around frantically, desperate to see. What if he couldn’t find her? What if she never smiled or laughed at him again. What if the spark in her eyes were dulled, frozen in d— Nay. He wouldn’t think it. His chest burned, his body numb in the cold. Still he pushed his arms against the currents, waving them underwater.
God, help me find her!
Had he ever prayed before? Not since those days long ago in the slaver’s hold.
God, please!