As he got closer, he saw her bound hands had grabbed the willow fronds, but the current was winning. It was greedily flowing around her, each new surge ebbing higher and higher as she struggled to stay afloat. For one heart-stopping moment, her face disappeared under the surface, only to emerge again a few seconds later spluttering as she fought to stay afloat.
Jake battled to swim alongside, wrapping one arm tightly around her as he, too, grabbed the ancient willow, but her woollen winter skirts were like an anchor, sucking her down until he could barely hold her face free of the river. She gasped for air and swallowed a mouthful of river instead, her eyes staring helplessly up at him from beneath the icy tomb. Terrified. She didn’t want to die.
Yet he was losing her. He wasn’t strong enough. She had trusted him to save her and he was failing, just as he always failed when people stupidly depended on him. He stared back at where his fingers gripped the branch. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Fate’s last cruel joke at his expense. He should just let go and let the angry river take them both. Selfishly he didn’t want to live without her. Knew he wasn’t strong enough to carry that burden. Knew his heart only beat for her.
‘We’ve got you!’ His eldest brother Jack’s voice boomed through the despair. He was waist deep in the water, his other hand locked tightly in Joe’s. Behind him was Jamie. Strong as an ox and braced round the same gnarled branch Jake had scrambled along all those years ago.
His brother grabbed his collar and pulled, freeing Jake to finally let go of the willow. He wrapped both his arms tightly around Fliss and kicked for all he was worth, until his feet scraped along the river bank and his lungs burned from the exertion. Together they dragged her to safety.
Except she wasn’t safe.
She lay on the ground like a wet rag. Pale. Frozen. Deathly still. Jake stood back to allow Joe to do what he was trained to do, knowing in his unworthy heart it was futile.
‘She’s not breathing, is she?’
‘There’s water in her lungs.’ His brother’s face was grave. Joe turned Fliss’s head and river water spewed out of her slack mouth. Then he turned her head upright again and pushed on her chest. When the trickling stopped he bent and began to blow deeply into her mouth while Jake stood powerless and broken, the pain in his own chest so severe he wished he had let go of the branch so that he didn’t have to face the future without her. Knowing he’d failed her when she had needed him the most.
His eldest brother’s arms went around his shoulder. He didn’t offer platitudes or false hope, simply his strength, and as he had all those years before Jake leaned on him and wondered how the hell he was supposed to cope with this. His heart was bleeding. His life now meaningless. Tight bands of pain corded around his body and he wished they’d strangle the life out of him and get it over with.
‘This is all my fault.’
‘No, it isn’t. You did all you could.’
Which was never enough. It was all so hideously familiar. Damn fate and its twisted games! Damn it all to—
Her violent coughing and spluttering was the most beautiful sound Jake had ever heard and he dropped to his knees and wept. He didn’t care who saw it or what they thought, he just scrambled towards her and gathered her close while she caught her breath, smoothing her wet hair from her chilled face and telling her how much he loved her.
Close by, Bella and Jamie were bent over Leatham, then Joe joined them, too. All Jake could do was pray for his friend because he couldn’t let Fliss go. From somewhere, a dry greatcoat was placed around his shoulders and he used it swaddle her in. After several long minutes, her arms wrapped around his neck. ‘Oh, Jake...’ Her voice was so weak, hoarse from her ordeal, but hearing it healed his broken heart instantly. They still had today and tomorrow and for ever.
‘I thought I’d lost you.’ She was going to be the death of him and the light of his life. A life he now couldn’t wait to get started on. A new life with a wife and a home. Children perhaps. Love. Laughter. Light. ‘What were you thinking, woman? Throwing yourself overboard...’
Her finger pressed against his lips softly, silencing him and she smiled. ‘You do have an uncanny knack of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, Jacob Warriner. I trusted you implicitly to save me.’ One frozen finger brushed a tear from his cheek. ‘I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.’
Epilogue
Markham Manor—February 1830
‘Jake. It’s time.’
Although he’d been on tenterhooks waiting for those words for three long weeks, they still caught him by surprise. He quickly rolled to sit, but fell out of the bed instead.
‘Right! Right! Don’t panic!’
‘I’m not panicking, darling. You are.’ She was shaking her head and smiling at him as he stuffed his legs into his boots. Then laughed as he stalked to the door. ‘Clothes, Jacob?’
He looked down at his body. Nude except for the Hessians he had jammed on the wrong feet, he smiled, too. ‘You’d think I’d be more prepared fourth time around, wouldn’t you?’
He tried to be calm as he dressed, tried to ignore the way her pretty face contorted with each contraction and kissed her softly as he went to raise the troops. Each of their three children had been born in Markham Manor. It had become a tradition and they had travelled up from Mayfair a month ago to be with his family for the birth.
Flint was holding the fort in his stead at the King’s Elite. Lord Fennimore had made Jake his successor when he had finally retired last year. In Jake’s opinion, it should have been Leatham’s job. His brave, selfless friend had always been the better spy. But Seb had been lured away by the Prime Minster himself and was helping to create an entire police force for London, so Jake now found himself with the responsibility of the ever-expanding secret service they had created together. To his greater surprise, he rather enjoyed it.
He paused briefly outside his brother’s door, wondering if he should wake them at this ungodly hour, then realised Jack would have his guts for garters if he didn’t. Jack had quite exacting standards and took his responsibilities very seriously. Those same morals now made him a well-respected magistrate. A man who judged men solely by their deeds rather than their reputations and understood what it meant to be poor.
He tapped lightly. ‘Jack, Letty. It’s time.’
A few seconds later his brother’s dark head appeared, grey now just at the temples but still fiercely handsome. ‘Have you sent for the others?’
‘Footmen are winging their way to their houses as we speak.’ Houses which all stood within the walls of the estate. ‘They won’t be long.’ They never were.
* * *
Several hours later and three of them were pacing the floor of the Great Hall, while Joe was irritatingly calm and watching them with amusement as he polished his spectacles. Spectacles his scholarly eyes now needed all the time.
‘I thought you said that this labour would be quick!’ Snapping at him made Jake feel less helpless. He’d been banished from the birthing room by a very stern Bella some time around dawn, instructed in no uncertain terms to leave this to the ladies because he was getting in the way and all his pacing and hand wringing was stressing his poor wife. When the wives all ganged up together, there was no arguing with them.
‘It’s only been three hours.’
‘It feels like three weeks! Why don’t you go and write a paper or something!’ While his practice was still loyally based in Retford, Joe was now one of the leading lights in the Royal College of Physicians and his words of wisdom were relentlessly hung on by medical students the length and breadth of the land. His calm brother merely grinned in response.
The distant newborn cry had Jake breaking into a run, but he was met at the door by Cassie and Letty. The two sentries took their guard duty very seriously. Their folded arms and firmly planted bodies wouldn’t let him pass. ‘You can’t come in unt
il Bella says so.’
‘The hell I can’t!’
‘Oh, let the poor thing in.’ Fliss’s voice, strong and healthy, filled him with relief. The door opened and Jake practically floated in, mesmerised by the sight of the fuzzy dark-haired bundle in his exhausted wife’s arms. She held out the baby and he took it. Cradling it close. Behind him he felt his brothers, all peering over his shoulder to see the latest addition to the growing Warriner brood. The baby’s eyes opened and stared blurrily at him. Deep blue, not the usual blue of a newborn—Warriner blue.
‘I told you so.’ Joe grinned and held out his hand and Jack huffed before smacking a pound note into it.
‘One of these days, one of us has to produce a child with their mother’s colouring!’ But alas, now all seventeen of their combined children were Wild Warriners through and through, thankfully the only thing they had inherited from their troublesome ancestors.
‘Never mind the colouring. What is it?’ Jamie limped forward, leaning on the incongruous floral cane his talented third daughter Thea had painted for him. Like Jack, he was greying slightly too, and just like Jack it only improved his appearance. He and Cassie still created magical children’s books and remained perfectly content to spend every minute of every day in each other’s company.
‘A girl.’
‘Two from two, then. Pay up.’ Joe held out his hand again for Jamie to slap another pound in it, then flapped his winnings in the air. ‘Never argue with science, boys. A girl was inevitable.’
Jake had no words. They all smiled as he staggered to sit still, cradling the precious bundle. Already, he loved his daughter unconditionally, just as he did the other three. But really! Fate seemed determined to give him an apoplexy with yet another cruel joke at his expense.
‘I am the father of four daughters.’ He was doomed.
Jamie grinned and patted him on the back. ‘And I’m the father of five. Between us we have ensured that the little girls now outnumber the little boys.’ Jack and Joe had four sons each. All carbon copies of their fathers. Competition between the two sexes was fierce as each child was stubbornly competitive—just like their sires. ‘I’m rather glad I lost that pound now. We have the bigger team.’
But Jamie didn’t understand. He’d never been a rake like Jake and still slept the blissful, restful sleep of the ignorant. The man illustrated books, for pity’s sake. He and Cassie had constructed a perfect, fairy-tale world in which good always triumphed over evil. But Jake lived in the real world. He’d played an active part in it. A very active part. He knew every single way a rake could waylay one of his precious daughters and worried about it constantly. He was already schooling the eldest two on what tricks to look out for. In a year or two, if he could keep it a secret from Fliss, he was going to teach them all how to shoot a gun and how to kill a man with their bare hands...
His wife squeezed his hand in understanding. She saw the way he tossed and turned at night when all the messy and complicated feelings intruded his dreams and his vivid imagination played with him. ‘It will all be all right, Jake. You’ll see. This one will be as feisty and fearless as her sisters.’
‘And her mother.’ He kissed her softly and they both gazed in adoration at the tiny miracle they had made. Yet another blessing in a life filled with them.
The lovely moment was interrupted by the heavy sound of an army stomping up the stairs as the children arrived back from the village. Jonathan and Serena had volunteered to take them all to the bakery to get them out from under the adults’ feet, but the first Warriner to arrive was Edward, Joe’s studious second son. His nose was bloodied and the wire rims of his spectacles were twisted out of shape.
He smiled at Bella, displaying the charming gap from where he had recently lost his two front teeth. ‘Chivers says we have a new cousin!’
‘Oh, good gracious! What happened to you!’ His mother began to fuss, then they all stared agog as the rest of their children filed in, in various states of dishevelment. Even the little ones clinging to Jonathan and Serena’s near-adult hands sported scuffed knees and torn clothing. Sixteen battle-scarred next-generation Warriners with fire burning in their distinctive bright-blue eyes and steel in their spines.
‘Have you all been fighting again?’ Letty asked sternly. ‘Could you not give it a rest on today of all days?’
Sixteen heads shook in consternation; all denying what they did noisily every single day.
‘Not this time. That nasty blacksmith’s son and his gang took Nick’s toffee apple.’ Edward grinned at his companions as he retrieved the sticky confection from his pocket and held it aloft in his grubby, grazed hand like a trophy. It was covered in twigs, leaves and enough grit to render it inedible. ‘But we hunted them down and we got it back.’
‘Of course we did.’ Jonathan ruffled the younger boy’s hair affectionately, as was his right as the leader of this new pack. The future. Their legacy. ‘And that boy is an idiot as well as a bully. Surely every nodcock with half a brain knows by now? When you mess with one Warriner, you mess with us all.’
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story
you won’t want to miss the other books in
THE WILD WARRINERS quartet
A WARRINER TO PROTECT HER
A WARRINER TO RESCUE HER
A WARRINER TO TEMPT HER
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE KNIGHT’S FORBIDDEN PRINCESS by Carol Townend.
The Knight’s Forbidden Princess
by Carol Townend
Chapter One
1396—Castle Salobreña in Al-Andalus—a watchtower overlooking the port
The eldest Nasrid Princess was feeling rebellious. Today, she was using her Spanish name rather than her Moorish one. Today, she was Princess Leonor. She was supposed to be taking her siesta on a pile of tasselled cushions by a latticed window, yet sleep was miles away.
The two other Princesses were dozing nearby. Thanks to the Sultan’s orders, the shutters of the pavilion were firmly closed and, unhappily for the three Princesses, the breeze was too weak to work its way through the lattices. The heat was suffocating.
Leonor lifted the edge of her veil to fan herself and the chink of ruby and pearl bracelets echoed softly around the pavilion walls. With each breath, the gems decorating the fringe flickered like fireflies, and tiny rainbow-coloured lights danced over the tiled floor. Leonor frowned at the evanescent colours, at the brilliant arabesques patterning the pavilion walls, at the script flowing neatly over the door arch. ‘There is no victor but God,’ it read. Her frown deepened. As if she or her sisters could forget. ‘No victor but God’ was the motto of the Nasrid dynasty.
We are in prison. Our father has imprisoned us at the border of his territories. Will we ever be free?
Princess Leonor itched to toss her veil aside, but her father, the Sultan, may blessings rain upon him, had forbidden it. The three Nasrid Princesses were not to be stared at.
In truth, the Sultan himself was the only man alive to have seen their faces. Men in general, including even the hand-picked guards on duty outside their apartment, were forbidden to look at them. To all intents and purposes, the Sultan’s daughters were invisible. Sometimes Princess Leonor felt as though she didn’t actually exist. It was as though she had winked out of sight, like a real firefly.
She gripped her fan. It had been an age since she and her sisters had heard from their father. Did he intend to keep them locked out of sight for ever? The thought of spending her whole life in a jewelled cage was unbearable; something had to change.
Since Leonor was the eldest Nasrid Princess, perhaps it was up to her to see that it did.
She drew in a breath of warm air and gazed through her veil at a beam of light slanting through the latticed shutter. The shutter—yet another barrier to keep her and her sisters safely out of sight—was pierced with pretty stars. Leonor loa
thed the sight of them. Dust motes hung in the air. The light quivered and was darkened by a swiftly moving shadow.
A seagull outside? An eagle? It was too hot to move.
If I open the shutter, I could see the harbour below.
Not that Leonor was meant to do that. It wouldn’t do for the Sultan’s daughter to lean out of the watchtower window; it wouldn’t do for a Nasrid princess to be seen.
But the heat! Holy heaven, she was melting. If she opened the shutter, just a chink, there would surely be some breeze. The latch was within reach, the latch that she and her sisters were forbidden to lift. Dropping her fan, Leonor stretched out her hand. Even the metal was warm.
She hesitated, picturing the castle walls straggling downhill towards the sea. The pavilion was situated in a remote tower overlooking the port—this window had to be well out of the guards’ line of sight. Who would know if she opened the shutter?
If anyone on the quayside glanced her way, all they would see was a veiled woman in the distance.
Leonor lifted the latch and pushed at the shutter. Light poured in. And sounds! Sounds that the shutter had muffled—the braying of a donkey, the cry of a gull, the creak of a rope. Her pulse quickened. Silk rustled as she pushed to her knees. She leaned her elbows on the embrasure and looked out.
The wind toyed with her veil. She could smell salt and fish. And down there—seen through the film of her veil—the harbour teemed with life. There were so many people! Ordinary people who walked freely about her father’s kingdom.
Out to sea, a ship moved steadily across the water. Hampered by her veil, Leonor couldn’t see the detail, just the shape of it, its sails filled with wind. Even the ripples on the water were blurred by her veil.
Her throat ached. Gritting her teeth, half-expecting the heavens to fall, she reached for the hem of her veil and tossed it over her head.
The heavens didn’t fall, but she blinked. Everything was so bright!
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