She closed her eyes, breathing rapidly. "I can't do it," she said. "I can't do it. I know I can't."
He said nothing, no arguments, no advice or encouragement. When she opened her eyes, he was still watching her steadily.
"I'm afraid," she said in a trembling voice.
He waited.
"There must be some other—" She swallowed, hearing the pleading in her words. "I can't. Oh, God, I have to, don't I?"
His eyes were infinitely patient.
"I have to do it," she said. "We can't live without that knife."
"I won't let you fall," he said quietly.
"I have to do it." She couldn't quite conquer the quiver in her voice. "I will."
He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard. Olympia leaned against him, twisting her fingers in his shirt as if she were holding on for life itself already.
But she was the one who broke the kiss, working free of him with sudden resolution. If she was going down there, she wanted to do it and be done with it.
Sheridan seemed to understand, for he let her go immediately and hefted the rope. Carrying it to the edge, he lowered it over to measure the distance and nodded, hauling it back up.
"Come here," he said. "Take off your cloak. I'm going to tie this end to your waist, but that's only a safety measure. You won't have to hang on it." With brisk, efficient moves, he pulled the rope around her as she stood shivering in the wind. "You can trust my bowline knot, too," he said as he pulled it tight with a little jerk. "I've had a hellish lot of practice."
Olympia giggled nervously.
He gave her a little shake. "For God's sake, you think all the wrong things are funny. Someday I'll teach you a proper sense of humor."
She heard herself titter again, as if it were someone else making that ridiculous high-pitched noise.
"Breathe," he ordered, and Olympia realized with a start that she hadn't been. She rook a deep gulp of air.
"Slow and even. That's better." He caught the rope near the other end and reached down. Olympia was too terrified to even question him when he drew up her skirt in a bundle and passed the line between her legs, around her hip, up between her breasts and over her shoulder, then down across her back, padding it with her cloak. "Now. Left hand here. Right hand here. Try it. Move away from me; let the rope slip around you as you go. See?"
She shivered, feeling goose, bumps rise on her bared legs. "Are you just going to stand there and hold it?"
"No. I'll have it tied to me and braced around my back, like this."
"You shouldn't tie it. What if I fall? I'll pull you off."
"It'll save me throwing myself after you in remorse." He touched her icy cheek. "I said I wouldn't let you fall, mouse."
She looked up into his eyes, her fingers trapped together and twisting. She wanted to lean on him, to be gathered into his arms; she wanted warmth and safety and home.
But the wanting wasn't having. There was no one else to do for her what she refused to do herself, and no one else to believe in if she wouldn't believe in him.
She closed her eyes and opened them. "You won't let me fall," she said. "You won't let me fall."
"Not while I'm tied to the other end, by God."
The hysterical giggle bubbled up again. She swallowed it and moved toward the cliff edge.
The first horrifying moments, when she had to get over the brink, almost undid her. It was easy enough to let the rope slide around her on flat ground, but when she had to put her weight into it, it tightened around her painfully, tearing her palms as she held herself against the pull.
But just at the edge, a strange sense of detachment came over her. Though the icy wind scored her legs, her body seemed to lose its shaky weakness, to grip and balance with a strength she hadn't known she possessed. She planted her feet and leaned backward, out over the water, finding security in thin air as the rope supported her.
She knew better than to look below. The last thing she saw before she inched down the rough black wall of the cliff itself was Sheridan's face, set in a grin that might have been a grimace as he braced against her burden. Then there was only black rock that passed in a long blur of cold and pain and effort.
Fifteen steps down, she reached the knife. She was afraid to let go and retrieve it, but her body seemed to have a more phlegmatic attitude, having gone to the trouble to make this trip. She opened her last two fingers and snatched at it. It swayed out of reach. She bit her lip and moaned angrily, grabbed again and caught it.
Frightened that she would drop it, she worked it under her fingers, one by one, until it hung around her arm. She called out to Sheridan to pull her up. Nothing happened. She hung there, and suddenly became aware of the pounding sound of the surf far beneath her. She called again, more sharply. Panic hovered behind the strange wall of indifference.
The rope tightened on her. She took a step just in time to take advantage of the upward pull, and then another. Her heart pounded, louder than the surf. The cold air tore at her throat. Two, three, four…she lost count, wanting to stop and rest, but she dared not fail to respond to the rhythm of the lifting pull. One more step, and one more, and one more, and abruptly she could see Sheridan over the top. He was really grimacing now, angled on his heels and sliding the rope around his braced back, hauling in time with her steps. She pushed her knee over the edge and fell forward, clinging to the knife as she scrambled onto the flat.
"I did it," she cried. "I did it!"
He dropped the loose rope and reached her, falling onto his knees and enveloping her in a choking embrace. He was heaving for breath.
"I did it," she mumbled against him.
"Did it…" he gasped, squeezing her. "And…jolly damned…splendid…it was."
He kissed her ear, and all she could hear was his heavy panting; all she could feel was his arm pressed hard across her back as he held her. She leaned into his shoulder and noticed it was trembling, just before the world went fuzzy and darkness came up to cradle her.
Seventeen
* * *
Wind screamed around the hut, the voice of winter in mid-July, hissing in the roof and sucking smoke up the chimney into the howling dark. Olympia stirred at the watery contents of the bucket—seaweed and mussels, seaweed and limpets, seaweed and clams—seaweed and goose when she could catch it, which wasn't often. The main flock had fled the winter weeks ago. She stared at the fire, worded and restless.
Napoleon rustled, preening, and then waddled sleepily across the hut to settle himself on his tummy next to her.
"Yes, I know," she crooned, for something to fill the windy silence. "Aren't you a handsome fellow?"
Napoleon gurgled in soft agreement. The penguin had molted at last, his soft silver down falling out in bedraggled patches, until a most elegant black suit with a white waistcoat had emerged, enhanced by a stylish topknot of long red-and-yellow feathers. He graciously divided his patronage between Olympia and Sheridan, accepting a limpet or a small fish from either with enthusiastic cries and dips and bobs of his ornamented head. When they left each day, he followed a few yards, crying, slogging along in his determined waddle with his flippers outspread for balance. Nothing deterred him; he climbed over rocks in his path instead of skirting them, hopping and skidding down the other side on his knobby pink feet. Then, as if suddenly resigned to abandonment, he would stop, turn around and sit down to await their return at the door of the hut, where he could dive beneath the canvas to escape the rapacious rooks.
She smiled at him, glad of the company as he settled against her skirt. The night was black and lonely, and worry was beginning to turn to fear.
Outside, there was a faint sound above the wind. Olympia lifted her head sharply. She closed her eyes with a sigh of relief and joyful anticipation when the noise resolved into the crunch of footsteps on snow-covered sand.
Leaping up, she jumped over Napoleon, who scrambled aside and nipped at her with an indignant squawk. She untied the canvas at the door, poking her be
ad into the freezing gloom. "You're late! I was just about to go looking."
The dark bulk outside solidified into a tall form. Sheridan swung the bag of peat off his shoulder and dragged it through the door. "I spent the afternoon in one of those charming burn-pits. Lord, why'd they ever bother to invent pool halls when the world's got delightful places like that?"
"Dear God!" As he limped into the firelight, she saw that he was covered with mud, his coat wet and his face marked with dirty slashes. "Oh, dear God." She threw her arms around him and pressed her face against his damp chest, holding onto him as if he might vanish from her arms at any instant.
He rested his cheek on her hair. For a long moment he held her close.
"You aren't hurt?" Her voice was muffled in his coat.
"Twisted my ankle." He kissed the top of her head. "Not badly. I finally managed to dig myself a reasonable slope and crawl out of the beastly place."
Olympia thought of the pits, where old signal fires set by the sealers had taken hold in the peat bog and burned for months deep underground. A small hole hidden beneath a tussock could be the entrance to a muddy mantrap fifteen feet deep and thirty wide. "I should have gone looking," she exclaimed. "I should have gone."
"Not at all. I enjoy digging my way through mountains with a barrel hoop."
She hugged him hard. "I'm so sorry."
"I'm hoping you had a prior engagement with a goose." He touched her hair. "I reckoned you'd get around to me by tomorrow, but I didn't fancy spending the night ankle-deep in cold water." He gave her a squeeze. "I've got better plans for the evening."
She lifted her face. He smiled down at her, his eyes silver and glittering in the firelight, his face marked with black streaks like some demonic jester. He lowered his head, meeting her lips, his kiss hard and ruthless as his arms tightened around her. Olympia shared the taste of mud and sweat, and thought it as sweet as scones and butter.
She was sorry when he let her go and sniffed in the direction of the hearth. "Seaweed?" he asked glumly.
Olympia thought of a joke. "Potage à la Maloon Anglais."
He grimaced instead of laughing, which was typical of his reaction to her jokes. "Again? We had that last night." He limped past her and sat down in the sand by the fire. "I'm going to advertise for a new chef if you don't start showing some enterprise." He picked up his big clam shell, tilted the bucket and dipped out a steaming cupful. He drank it down without pausing for breath and wiped his mouth. Napoleon puffed out his feathers, shook himself and huddled in the far corner. Sheridan tossed a thatch of woven tussock grass over the penguin to block the firelight. Napoleon made a clicking coo, rustled once and was silent.
"There are ten crabs," she said.
"The deuce you say." His face brightened. "You're an angel."
She lifted her cloak from the sand, untying the ribbon that held the woolen bundle together. Sheridan took it, peering carefully inside the wriggling package at the crabs netted in a mesh of twisted tussock grass which she'd braided with sealskin strips around a frame of oar pieces. "Blow me—look at that."
"I baited it with goose tripe," she said.
With gingerly moves, he tipped the net and shook a hapless crab into the bucket, one, and then another, snatching his fingers away just in time to avoid the pincers of the third as it tumbled into the steaming water. When six were splashing amid the seaweed, he retied the bag and set it aside, always careful to save something for tomorrow.
"An angel," he said again.
Olympia clasped her hands behind her back, blushing faintly.
He looked at her sideways. "Come here, angel," he said softly.
She crossed the little hut and sat down beside him. He held her close, touching her chin with a grimy hand. "Don't ever come looking for me in the dark, my mouse. I'm a pretty tough bird. If I can't hold out for help till daylight, I wasn't going to make it anyway."
Olympia rested her head on his shoulder. The strength of her feelings was frightening; the idea of losing him unthinkable. In this place, her whole world came down to him. She might have survived by herself now, with the hut he had rebuilt and the food they had learned to find; physically she might have lived, but everything inside her would die.
It seemed strange that she'd ever thought him cowardly and wicked. Sometimes when he was away from the hut, cutting turf or digging far down the beach for clams, she remembered the jewels, but it almost seemed now as if that had happened to someone else, someone as distant from herself as the white-gloved figure in the gold-and-blue uniform was distant from the man who sat beside her in a torn and muddy coat, poking impatiently at the fire with one hand and holding her close with the other.
He gave her another squeeze and stood up, drinking deeply from the canvas water bag he'd sewn from a piece of sail. Peering with one eye into the tiny mirror balanced on a rocky shelf, he tried to rinse his face.
Olympia laughed when he turned around. "Now you're a proper blackamoor." She pulled a piece of linen petticoat from their careful stash of cloth and wet it, standing close to him to wipe the smears of mud from his cheek and jaw. While she raised herself on tiptoe to reach his forehead, he warmed the inside of her wrist with light kisses.
She allowed herself to lean against him. He bent his bead as she worked, nuzzling her temple and then her cheek. She gave up on the washing, parting her lips in anticipation as his long eyelashes brushed downward and his arm slid around her waist.
It was gentle for a moment, the kiss: a slow, warm outline on her lips. Then his arm tightened and his mouth opened over hers, tasting deep, driving out the cold and the wind and the gray desolation, spinning everything down to one hot, delicious center. He held her close, strength and comfort, the steady fire that kept her alive and leapt into blazing flame when he touched her.
His hands slipped down, spreading beneath her, rocking her against him so that she could feel his body's excitement. She stirred her hips in provocative answer, knowing what he appreciated—knowing all kinds of things that he had taught her. They were alone: she could do anything, he anyone, please herself and him without shame. She found she was passionate and eager…and best of all, she found the restless, miserable emptiness that had haunted her life and driven her dreams of glory filled with something much simpler.
She was happy. Here in this barren place, hungry all the time, cold and damp most of it, where every day was an effort to survive until tomorrow—she was happy. She was glad to wake up under sealskin on the sand, when it meant waking up in his arms. She was anxious to look for food, when she knew he would smile and congratulate her and eat a few meager crabs as if they were manna. She felt lucky to sacrifice her petticoat in order to wipe mud from his face, when he would kiss her as she did it.
He made a sound of pleasure, took her cheeks between his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. "A difficult choice," he murmured. "Food or frolic."
"Both," she suggested.
"Certainly. One at a time, or together?"
She closed her hands over his and pulled them gently away. "You need to eat. You must be starving."
"I'm always starving." He tried to catch her back, but Olympia sidestepped. "Very well, Mama. Dinner first."
A meal of crab and mussels seasoned with seaweed left her full and contented, a feeling she knew would be all too emphemeral. After they'd finished, she built up the fire and stacked the peat he'd brought that day to dry. Sheridan lay back on the sealskins. He'd taken off his damp clothes and hung them near the fire, so he sat bare-chested, propped up on a fur-covered boulder, with the extra skin thrown across his legs.
He was exhausted: she could tell it, in spite of his earlier enthusiasm. As she finished cleaning up their few utensils, he sat drowsing in the firelight. By the time she had checked the signal fire outside, carried the bucket down to the windswept beach and brought back a pail of wet seaweed to keep the extra crabs alive, he was fast asleep.
She stood for a moment, watching him. His dark head tilted ov
er one shoulder, shadowing the muscled curve of his arm. She gazed at the pulse in his throat and the little scar that cut his eyebrow—memento of a splintered gun casing in a French broadside at Trafalgar. They made him seem achingly vulnerable; so easily lost—an inch of space, a second of time—a fall down a deeper hole, and it might have been a broken neck instead of a sprained ankle. He knew that, and yet he went every day to search out the fuel they needed to keep the hut warm and the signal fire lit.
Often at night, he played on Fish's harmonica, teaching her songs and sighing over her struggles to carry a tune. Sometimes he even made up new ones, right at the moment, melodies and words about something that had happened that day, while Olympia sat before the fire and listened to him, rocking softly in time.
Tonight, she only wanted him to sleep. She tried to finish her work quietly, but the scrabble of unhappy crabs in the tin pail made him sit up with a soft snort. He leaned his head back, rubbing his eyes.
Olympia straightened from carefully arranging the net over the pail to prevent escapees. Sheridan lifted his arm in invitation. "Princess. Come give me something to stay awake about."
She pulled off her wet boots and socks and set them to dry, snuggling her feet down into the fur beside him. He pulled her against his naked warmth, his fingers working on the buttons of her dress, his mouth exploring her ear.
Olympia smiled and touched his hand. "Rest tonight."
"I'm not tired," he whispered, kissing the side of her throat.
"Liar. You're too tired for this."
He slipped his fingers into the open back of her dress and ran his thumb down her spine. "I'd be dead before I was too tired for this."
She caught his other hand as he reached for her and rested back against his shoulder, gazing down the length of his fur-covered legs to the fire. "Think of something else. If you could be anywhere in the world," she said, "where would you like to be?"