by Liz Fielding
‘Give me your other hand,’ he gasped.
Let go?
Put her life entirely in his hands?
In the millisecond she hesitated, another aftershock ripped through the wall and the ledge on which she was standing gave way beneath her, tearing her hand away from the wall so that she was left hanging over the empty temple.
Somehow, Jago managed to hang on, his arm practically torn from its socket as he stretched out over the chasm, taking her full weight with one hand as Miranda struggled to find some kind of footing. Slipping closer and closer towards the tipping point when they’d both fall.
Stone was crashing around them, filling the air with dust. Something-someone-was screaming. Then, mercifully, the shaking stopped, Miranda’s feet connected with something solid and, bracing her feet against the wall, between them they managed to get her over the edge.
He caught her, rolling away with her from the precipice, holding her, even as the pain exploded in his shoulder, his head. As her voice exploded in his ear.
‘Idiot!’
‘Without a doubt,’ he managed as she sucked in a breath, presumably to continue berating him. The dust caught in her throat and she began to cough. Not that she let a little thing like that stop her.
‘Don’t you ever do that again!’
‘I promise.’ He might have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much. Maybe it was hurting so much because he was laughing, he couldn’t tell.
‘I mean it! I’m not worth dying for, do you hear me?’
He heard her, heard a raw pain as the words were wrenched from her. It wasn’t just reaction, he realised. Or shock.
She truly meant what she’d said and, despite his own physical pain, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close even though she fought him like a tiger. Held her safe until she stopped telling him over and over, ‘I’m not worth it…’
Until she let go, subsided against his chest and only the slightest movement of her shoulders betrayed that she was weeping.
It was her struggle to conceal the hot tears soaking into his shirt as they lay huddled together on the earth that finally got to him.
She had every right to howl, stamp, scream her head off after what she’d been through. She certainly hadn’t shown any reticence when it came to expressing her feelings until now. In truth, he would have welcomed the promised kick, or at least a mouthful of abuse. Anything that would stop him from asking her why she wasn’t worth dying for.
He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to get that involved.
But, even as he fought it, he recognised, somewhere, deep down, that it was a forlorn hope. Her life belonged to him, as his belonged to her.
From the moment he’d reached out in the dark and his hand had connected with this woman, their survival had been inextricably linked. Whatever happened in the future, this day, these few hours would, forever, bind them together.
And they were not home free yet. Not by a long way.
‘Hey, come on. No need for that,’ He said, tugging out the tail of his shirt and using it to wipe her face, as she’d used hers to wipe the dust from his in what now seemed like a lifetime ago.
Kissing her cheek. Kissing her better.
‘Don’t!’
His kiss was almost more than she could bear. The gentle innocence of it. Almost as if she were a child. It nearly undid all his good work in putting her back together. It took what little remained of Manda’s self-control to stop herself from grasping handfuls of Jago’s shirt, holding on to the solid human warmth of his body. Clinging to the safety net that he seemed to offer.
‘Enough,’ she said, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve to eradicate the softness of his shirt against her skin. The softness of his lips.
Wiping out all evidence of her own pitiful weakness.
She hadn’t cried in years. She’d been so sure there were no more tears left in her. But this stranger had risked his own life to save her…
‘You should have let me fall,’ she said. ‘I told you to let-’
‘Next time,’ he cut in, stopping the words.
Damn him, she meant it!
She closed her eyes in an attempt to stop more tears from spilling down her cheeks, took a breath, then, when she could trust herself to speak, said, ‘Is that a promise?’
‘It’s a promise.’
‘Right. Well, okay…Good.’
‘You have my word that the very next time you’re climbing the wall of the inner sanctum of the Temple of Fire you’re on your own.’
‘What? No!’
‘Isn’t that what you meant?’
‘You know it isn’t. We’re not out of here yet and what’s the point of us both dying?’
‘No one is going to die,’ he replied with a sudden fierceness. ‘Not today. Not here. Not in my temple.’
‘I wish I had your confidence.’
‘You’ve got something better, much better than that, Miranda Grenville. You’ve got me.’
It was a totally outrageous thing to say, Jago knew. His shoulder was practically useless and the headache that had never entirely eased was now back with a vengeance. But a spluttering laugh that she couldn’t quite hold in reassured him.
‘So I have. While you, poor sap, are stuck with me. Useless at taking orders and with a trust threshold hovering on zero.’ With that she stilled. ‘I could have got us both killed back there.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. We react in the way we’re programmed to.’
‘And you’re programmed to be the hero.’ She laid her hand against his chest. ‘Thank you for holding on.’ Then, as if embarrassed by her own gratitude, she said, ‘So? What next, fearless leader? We’re not out of the woods yet.’
He caught her hand before she could move and lay back, taking her with him. Closing his eyes. ‘We rest. Try and get some sleep.’
‘Sleep?’
‘What’s up, princess? Missing your silk sheets and goose down pillows?’
‘Silk sheets? Please…’ But she shivered.
‘You’re cold?’
‘Not cold, although it is colder up here. There’s more air, too. Do you think there’s a way out?’
‘Part of the roof has gone. Look, you can see a few stars.’
‘Oh…’ Then, eagerly, ‘Can’t we press on?’
‘We need to recover a little before we attempt another climb,’ he said. He needed to recover. ‘And when the eagle collapsed it took part of the floor at this level with it. It seems solid enough here, but…’
‘We could take more pictures.’
‘If we wait, we’ll have daylight,’ He said. ‘There’s no point in taking any risks.’
‘I’m not sure about that. It’s easier to be brave when you can’t see the danger.’
‘Trust me.’
‘You keep saying that.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess it makes sense,’ she said, but not with any real enthusiasm and who could blame her? ‘It’s just this place. It gives me the creeps.’
‘Afraid of the dark?’ He released her hand. ‘Come on, cooch up,’ he said, holding out his arm so that she could curl up against him, ‘and I’ll tell you a bedtime story.’ She ignored the offered comfort, keeping her distance. He went ahead with the story, anyway. Telling her about the people who’d built the temple. The way they’d lived. What they had worshipped.
He thought she’d be happier if she knew that they didn’t go into for bloody sacrifice. That their ‘fire’ was not a thing to fear. How, when the moon was full, they’d built a fire on the altar at the heart of their temple, then heaped the huge night-scented lilies that bloomed in the forest on to the embers so that the eagle could catch the sweet smoke that was carried up the shaft and fly with it in his wings as a gift to the moon.
‘How can you know all that?’ she asked in wonder.
‘They carved pictures into the walls, drew their ceremonies in pictograms. And laboratories have analysed the ashes we found under centuries of compacted leaf litter.
’
‘But that’s really beautiful, Jago. Why didn’t the guide tell us all this?’
‘Because the guide doesn’t know. I haven’t published any of my findings.’
‘But what about-’
‘Enough.’ He didn’t want to think about Fliss. He was angry with her, angry with Felipe, but most of all he was angry with himself. This was his fault. If he hadn’t been so stubborn, so intent to keeping the world he’d uncovered for himself…‘It’s your turn,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you’re running away from.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘W HO said I was running away?’ she demanded.
‘“Time out”?’ Jago offered, quoting her own words back at her. ‘That’s a euphemism if ever I heard one. Not checking your messages? Not sending postcards home?’
She drew in a long slow breath and for a moment he thought she was going to tell him to get lost. That it was none of his business. But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all for a long time and when, finally, she did break the silence, it was with just one word.
‘Myself.’
‘What?’
He’d been imagining a job fiasco, a family row, a messy love affair. Maybe all three.
‘All my life I’ve been running away from this horrible creature that no one could love.’
It was, Jago thought, one of those ‘sod it’ moments.
Like that time when he was a kid and had poked a stick into a hollow tree and disturbed a wasps’ nest. It was something you really, really wished you hadn’t done, but there was no escaping the consequences.
‘No one?’ he asked.
Her shoulders shifted imperceptibly. Except that everything was magnified by the darkness.
‘Ivo, my brother, did his best to take care of me. In return I came close to dragging him to the brink with me. Something I seem to be making a habit of.’ There was a pause, this time no more than a heartbeat. ‘Although on that occasion I was in mental, rather than physical, freefall.’
‘You had a breakdown?’
‘That’s what they called it. The doctors persuaded him to section me. Confine me under the Mental Health Act for my own safety.’
And suddenly he wasn’t thinking sod it. He was only thinking how hard it must be for her to say that to a stranger. Actually, how hard it would be to say that to someone she knew well.
Mental illness was the last taboo.
‘You both survived,’ he said, mentally freewheeling while he tried to come up with something appropriate. ‘At least I assume your brother did, since you’ve just been godmother to his sprog. And, for that matter, so did you.’
‘Yes, he survived-he’s incredibly strong-but it hurt him, having to do that.’
And then, as if suddenly aware of what she was doing, how she was exposing herself, she tried to break free, stand up, distance herself from him.
‘Don’t!’ He warned, sitting up too quickly in his attempt to stop her. His head swam. His shoulder protested. ‘Don’t move! The last thing I need is for you to fall back down into that damn hole.’ Then, because he knew it would get her when kindness wouldn’t, ‘I’d only have to climb all the way back down and pick up the pieces.’
‘I told you-’
‘I know. You fall, I’m to leave you to rot. Sorry, I couldn’t do that any more than your brother could.’
For a moment she remained where she was, halfway between sitting and standing, but they both knew it was just pride keeping her on her feet and, after a moment, she sank back down beside him.
‘You remembered,’ she said.
‘You make one hell of an impression.’
‘Do I?’ She managed a single snort of amusement. ‘Well, I’ve had years of practice. I started young, honing my skills on nannies. I caused riots at kindergarten-’
‘Riots? Dare I ask?’
‘I don’t know. How do you feel about toads? Spiders? Ants?’
‘I can take them or leave them,’ he said. ‘Ants?’
‘Those great big wood ants.’
‘What a monster you were.’
‘I did my best,’ she assured him. ‘I actually managed to get expelled from three prep schools before I discovered that was a waste of time since, if your family has enough money, the right contacts, there is always another school. That there’s always some secretary to lumber with the task…’
‘You didn’t like school?’
‘I loved it,’ she said. ‘Getting thrown out is what’s known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
In other words, he thought, crying out for attention from the people who should have been there for her. And, making the point that whatever happened he would be there for her, he put his arm around her, wincing under cover of darkness as he eased himself back against the wall, pulling her up against his shoulder.
‘Are you okay, Jago?’
She might not be able to see him wince, but she must have heard the catch in his breath.
‘Fine,’ he lied. Then, because he needed a distraction, ‘Ivo?’ It wasn’t exactly a common name. ‘Your brother’s name is Ivo Grenville?’
‘Ivan George Grenville, to be precise.’ She sighed. ‘Financial genius. Philanthropist. Adviser to world statesmen. No doubt you’ve heard of him. Most people have.’
‘Actually I was thinking about a boy with the same name who was a year below me at school. Could he be your brother? His parents never came to take him out. Not even to prize-giving the year he won-’
‘Not even the year he won the Headmaster’s Prize,’ she said. ‘Yes. That would be Ivo.’
‘Clever bugger. My parents were taking me out somewhere for a decent feed and I felt so sorry for him I was going to ask him if he wanted to come along.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I wasn’t criticising you, Jago. It’s just that I know my brother. He never let anyone get that close. Not even me. Not until he met Belle. He’s different now.’
‘Well, good. I’m sorry I let him put me off.’
He’d meant to keep an eye out for him, but there had been so many other things to fill the days and even a single year’s age gap seemed like a lifetime at that age.
‘Don’t blame yourself. Ivo’s way of dealing with our parents’ rejection was to put up a wall of glass. No interaction, no risk of getting hurt. Mine, on the other hand, was to create havoc in an attempt to force them to notice me.’
‘That I can believe. What did you do once you’d run out of the livestock option? Kick the headmistress?’
‘Are you ever going to let me forget that?’
‘Never,’ he said, and the idea of teasing her about that for the next fifty years gave him an oddly warm feeling. Stupid. In fifty hours from now they would have gone on their separate ways, never to see one another again. Instead, he concentrated on what really mattered. ‘Tell me about your parents. Why did they reject you both?’
‘Oh, that’s much too strong a word for it. Rejection would have involved serious effort and they saved all their energy for amusing themselves.’
‘So why bother-to have children?’
‘Producing offspring, an heir and a spare, even if the spare turned out to be annoyingly female, was expected of them. The Grenville name, the future of the estate had to be taken care of.’
‘Of course. Stupid of me,’ he said sarcastically.
‘It’s what they had been brought up to, Jago. Generations of them. On one side you have Russian royalty who never accepted that the world had changed. On the other, the kind of people who paid other people to run their houses, take care of their money and, duty done, rear their children. They had more interesting, more important things to do.’
What could ever be more important than kissing your kid better when she grazed a knee? Jago wondered. The memory of his own mother kissing his four-year-old elbow after he’d fallen from his bike sprang, unbidden, to his mind. How she’d smiled as she’d said, ‘All bet
ter.’ Told him how brave he was…
He shut it out.
‘Chillingly selfish,’ he said, ‘but at least it was an honest response. At least they didn’t pretend.’
‘Pretence would have required an effort.’ She lifted her head to look up at him. ‘Is that what your parents did, Jago? Pretend?’
Her question caught him on the raw. He didn’t talk about his family. He’d walled up that part of his life. Shut it away. Until the scent of rosemary had stirred a memory of a boy and his bicycle…
Lies, lies, lies…
‘Jago?’
She said his name so softly, but even that was a lie. Not his real name. They were alone together, locked in a dark and broken world, reliant upon one another for their very survival and she had a right to his name.
‘Nick,’ he said.
‘Nick…’
It was so long since anyone had called him that. The soft sound of her voice saying his name ripped at something inside him and he heard himself say, ‘I was in my final year at uni when I was door-stepped by a journalist.’
She took the hand that he’d hooked around her waist to keep her close and the words, coiled up inside him, began to unravel…
He could see the man now. The first to reach his door. He hadn’t introduced himself, not wanting to put him on his guard. He’d just said his name. ‘Nick?’ And when he’d said, ‘Yes…’ he’d just pitched in with, ‘What’s your reaction to the rumour…’
‘My father was a politician,’ he said. ‘A member of the Government. A journalist knocked on my door one day and asked me if I knew my father had been having a long-term affair with a woman in his London office. One of his researchers. That I had a fourteen-year-old half-sister…’
He caught himself. He didn’t talk about them, ever.
‘Oh, Nick…’ She said his name again, softly, echoing his pain. He shouldn’t have told her. No one else had used it in fifteen years and to hear it spoken that way caught at feelings he’d buried so deep that he’d forgotten how much they hurt. How betrayed he’d felt. How lost.
‘That was when I discovered that all that “happy families” stuff was no more than window-dressing.’
She didn’t say she was sorry, just moved a little closer in the dark. It was enough.