Читать книгу The Highlander's Maiden - Elizabeth Mayne - Страница 9

Glencoen Farm was clearly in the travelers’ sight when the little girl from the skating pond came screaming and tumbling down the track, out of breath and too terrified to speak clearly.

She got out the words “ice broke” “Auntie” and “Ian” before she took off running for the farmstead, howling like a banshee again.

“What the devil?” Alexander Hamilton sputtered, confused by the child’s terror -and slurred Gaelic words.

Robert Gordon understood the child’s terror-driven message. Dropping the measuring cord in his hands, he turned and bolted back the way they’d come, running for dear life to the top of the first hill and up the twisting path to the high meadow. Pines hid the pool from sight, but he ran onward at full speed, dread building with each pounding step across the stony ground for what his eyes would find when the pond came into view.

It was worse than he’d had scant heartbeats to envision. The mountain pool had no skaters on its glistening, windswept surface. The southern corner of it thrashed with a froth of broken, disturbing shards of ice and the fractured glare of lights reflecting from it.

Broken ice, treacherous footing and no purchase anywhere, Robert stopped at the edge of the rocky pool, mentally assessing what he saw. A solid sheet of ice extended forward from his boots thirty feet. From there to the southmost bank, it had become a mire of sharp, fragmented shards. The young woman and the boy struggled to stay afloat at the edge of the solid sheet. Their heads bobbed up and down in his sight, competing with chunks of ice for space on the surface of the pond.

Robert shed his weapons, belt, sporran and plaid. In two quick jerks he removed his boots, flung off his cap, then his jerkin, and went out on the still firm ice. He felt the shock of the terrible cold underfoot.

He sighted the girl as she vainly struggled to put the little boy onto the slippery ice ahead of her. It broke, and he went under again only to be grabbed by her, and caught by her, forced forward and onto the ice again. Their dark wools performed that slow, exhausted dance over and over again as he watched, gaining only inches and losing vast ground as more and more ice shattered underneath them.

Likewise, Robert’s progress toward them felt like a snail’s dance. His heart dropped when her last effort put the boy on a floating island of ice, but caused her to sink in utter exhaustion as the island tilted and wedged under the remaining sheet of solid ice on which Robert made such laggard progress.

The child began to scream pitifully at having lost sight of his aunt. Robert picked his next steps carefully, eyeing hairline stress marks in the fractured sheet as he lay down on his stomach and inched onto the ice floe. He caught the boy by his sodden clothes and firmly tugged him off the icy island.

He turned the startled child in the direction of the shore, telling him calmly, “Stop yer bawling. I’ll fetch yer aunt. Go this way to the shore. Go!”

Ian found new hope. The other stranger was stretched out on the ice near Ian, holding open arms that promised safety and warmth only a few feet away. Beyond him, Ian’s father rode into sight with all his men from the farm, laying a whip on the horses hitched to his hay wagon. “Da!”

Robert took one look back, making certain Alex was close enough to reach the small boy to get him if the ice should break again. Satisfied, Robert shed his kilt and slid feetfirst into the ice bath. He sank to the bottom, his eyes open, actively searching for the girl among the water weeds and shards of ice that followed his quick descent.

The cold stopped his heart and his breath instantly. He found her on the bottom, struggling to remove her weighty woolen cloak from her neck. Pale white fingers clawed at her throat, unable to manage the simple work of unfastening a corded frog and eyelet. The most beautiful cloud of red curls billowed around her like an angel’s halo, sparkling with silvery bubbles of trapped air.

The maiden’s blue eyes were stricken wide with terror. She startled as he made eellike progress to her. He caught her under her arms, pulled her to his chest and kicked his legs hard, trying to lift them both to the surface. She didn’t budge. She was caught on something.

He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He let go of her and raced to the surface, broke it and took huge gasps of air, filling his lungs to capacity. Alex was there at the edge of the ice, concern written all over his long face.

“What’s wrong, Robbie?”

“She’s trapped. Give me your dirk.”

He pressed the blade into Robert’s palm instantly.

Robert plunged downward, swimming back to the bottom, feeling the length of her legs for her feet. He found the trapped foot and the skate wedged into the rocks, and, pushing the billowing wools aside, slit the laces of her boot clean to the top and hauled her foot free of the shoe.

Her arms floated out at her sides as he again gripped her chest, drawing her close, then he kicked for all he was worth and rose to the surface. Their heads broke water. Robert gasped for air as she fell limp against him. Fluids ran from her nose and mouth. Her lungs rattled in a faint reflex as Robert tightened his arm around her chest, expelling fluids.

There was no fight left in her. None. Her arms were limp and legs wooden as Robert gripped her chest securely and cut the heavy cloak loose before it sank them both. He let the cloth drop, then tossed the knife back to Alex and conserved his strength to keep them next to the firm edge of ice.

Alex had his own finely woven tartan stretched out like a rope for Robert to grasp. The men from the farm had planks laid out across the unstable ice and rope to finish the rescue.

Sweet Jesus save us, Robert prayed fervently as he moved the woman enough to tie the rope around her chest. If she was breathing at all, it was as shallow as a sleeping baby.

Robert knew why, too. The icy cold did that, robbed the body of all its strength and numbed the brain worse than 100-proof whiskey. His own deft fingers slowed down to abominable dexterity.

“Here, now!” he commanded. “Wake up, lass! We’ll have you out of here in a trice.” He grasped her chin, lifting her face, and marveled over her sweet, freckled beauty. Her cheek fell against his shoulder and water lapped at her jawline. They had to get out of the icy water soon. Alex hauled on the rope with all his might but it wasn’t enough to pull her out of the water—not in her sodden woolens. It was taking too long!

Some other sense told Robert to lend her what he could of his own supply of warmed breath. Her slackened mouth offered no resistance as he covered her full, colorless lips and filled her flooded lungs with his own warmed breath.

That action roused her more than his underwater rescue. Her eyelids fluttered open, her gaze fixed on his eyes and remained there. Again, Robert laid his mouth upon hers and breathed for her. That awoke her from her numbed lethargy, bringing forth a cough and a veritable flood of water bubbling up from her chest.

“Good, good!” Robert let her head rest on his shoulder. He stroked her cheek and throat encouragingly, treading water between breaths.

When the bubbling cough stopped he gripped her chin fast and breathed again into her mouth, giving her the only warmth he could under such intolerable conditions. The same gurgling expulsion of the pond’s water from her chest followed.

Alex held his place, flattened out on the planks of wood stretching across the ice. “Robert, they’ve got the ropes secure, man. Can you hold on? Is the woman tied?”

“Aye!” Robert released her chin and let her head fall to his shoulder as he adjusted his own hold on the rope and the familiar plaid of his companion. “Tell them to pull us out, now. Quicklike. You know how much I hate cold baths.”

“Aye,” Alex muttered to himself, backing off the ice on hands and knees, knowing that when the horse pulled, all hell was likely to break loose on this ice.

He was right, too, to anticipate that the whole pond would shatter at the intrusion of the horse-powered rescue. Euan MacGregor cracked his whip. His lead horse lurched, then pulled, pushing the remaining sheet of ice backward up the bank till it wedged on rock and the weighty human burden at the end of the secure rope came free of the water and slid across the ice, cracking what was left all the way to the shore.

Horror etched Euan MacGregor’s broad face as he knelt over his young sister-in-law, untying the tightened bad knots under her limp arm.

“Get my children away from here,” he said over his shoulder to his men. “Cassie’s dead.”

“Nay, she isn’t.” Robert let go of the heavy blanket someone had thrown around him and reached for the woman one more time. “She’s just frozen, the poor brave thing.”

He gathered Cassie into his arms once more, opened her slackened mouth and kissed her with life and breath once more. Her fingers fluttered over her sodden dress, then her arm lifted to reach up and touch his face softly before weakly pushing him away so that she could cough and breathe on her own again.

Without the slightest compunction, Robert turned her over and helped her to expel more water onto his lap. His efforts were rewarded by her first sputtering intake of breath. Granted it was no more than a short, choking breath that was followed quickly by another deep and raucous cough. The involuntary motion was started anew and continued, one labored breath after another.

“She’ll be all right,” Robert said confidently. His large hands rubbed between her cold shoulders blades to warm and soothe her. Her eyelids fluttered and her cheeks began to pinken, losing the bluish color of drowning.

Euan MacGregor laid another blanket on her. That helped greatly, but Robert knew getting her out of the wind and the elements would help best.

Euan sat back on his heels, realizing that a miracle had taken place before his eyes this day. He kissed Cassie gratefully on her cheek, thanking her for his son’s life, then gathered her and the layer of horse blankets into his huge arms and lifted her out of the lap of her savior.

“Bring the wet traveler along and his friend,” he briskly told his men as he moved his sister-in-law to the bed of the wagon. “He’s earned a place at my board whenever he wants for a hot meal.”