Pausing, she gnawed at her lower lip. “I also wrote to Mr. Darlington and Amelia and asked them to come here.” A smile trembled on her mouth. “If Elizabeth is out there, we’ll find her and the answers you seek. I promise.”
Erik shook his head but whether in disbelief or amazement, Christine did not know. Yet, suddenly the world seemed less bleak than it had when she climbed the stairs to the tower, barging in like Attila the Hun prepared to do battle on his behalf. He wrapped her in his arms, so close that she found herself no longer afraid.
“You honor me, Christine. I…I do not know what to say.”
“I love you” would be a start.
I love you would be a beginning.
“Da!”
Erin’s voice came from the stairwell.
Erik stepped away from Christine. His daughter’s blond head appeared in the stairwell, then suddenly she was standing in the doorway. Wearing a red dress and white pinafore, her face lit with a smile. “Da!” she ran across the room and flung herself into her father’s arms.
Her nurse huffed up the stairs. “Lady Erin!” Her face red with exertion, Mrs. Whitman caught her hand on the door. “I am sorry, your grace. The lass heard ye had come home and couldna’ wait to see ye.”
Erin wrapped her arms around her father’s neck. He picked a cobweb out of her hair. “And where have you been playing this morning?”
“She has been following the dreadful cat, running through the servants’ corridors. We found her in the kitchens again.”
Erik tipped his daughter’s chin. Then peered over at Christine. “Your cat is a bad influence, madam.”
Mrs. Whitman cleared her throat. “Boris is downstairs waiting for you. Mr. Hodges is here. Since I was on my way up, I said I would inform you.”
Still holding his daughter, he walked to the doorway. “Tell my sister I am back and would have her join me later for lunch.”
Mrs. Whitman cast a brief glance at Christine. No doubt expecting Christine to be the first one to tell Erik his sister was in the village with her mother. Christine knew in her heart she needed to tell him about Becca.
But first, she had something else important. “Mr. Hodges is here about the road, Erik. That is where I have been the last few days. We found something.”
“Do you want to tell me what we are looking for?” Erik’s voice came at Christine from the ledge above.
She tented her hands over her eyes. “Take the rope,” she suggested. “I’ve latched it to a solid root. It will hold your weight.”
He worked his way down the slope. “And if it does not?”
She looked over the ledge at the river twenty feet below. Fast white water spumed up against the slimy face of the rock. “Then you will end up down there. Though it does not look too deep, it does lead to the waterfall.”
They’d left their horses tied to the lower branch of a tree, and tramping through newly leafed oakbrush, walked down the hillside to where part of the rock face had slipped away into a river below. Shreds of talus rattled beneath his steps. She looked over her shoulder just before she moved lower on the slope.
She had been taking him along the rift in the road toward the sound of the waterfall. Two days ago, Christine had taken one look at the cracks in the now impassable road and recognized that more than the most recent spate of storms caused the damage. She stood and followed the narrow rim until she had found what she was looking for and sat. The evening air was cooler near the river.
Erik suddenly dropped down on the ledge beside her, sending scree over the edge. “Lord, Christine—”
“Look here.” She pointed to a slim crevice in the rocks on her right.
He leaned around her. “What am I looking at?”
“A cavern, Erik.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “If that is a cavern, then it is the bloodiest smallest cavern I have ever seen.”
“Put your hand over this place here.”
She helped him remove his glove, edging his hand across her lap to reach the crack. She knew he felt what she had felt, a strong draft, which meant air entered from some other access, picking up speed and strength as it funneled into the narrow crevices seeking an escape, much in the way air escaped from a hole in a hot-air balloon, following the path of least resistance.
They were a quarter mile from the cliffs and ancient drover trails she had been working around these past weeks. Now more convinced than ever a lava tube of some sort interconnected this entire area, she felt the excitement in her voice as she spoke, despite the grimness of the news. “A fissure has appeared since your crew repaired the road.”
He scooped up a handful of scree in his gloved hand, letting it slide through his fingers. She knew a visual inspection of the road had been performed before he’d left for Dunfermline. “Fractures must have been present deeper down in the rock. If I were a bird, I could look down upon this entire region and give you a more thorough assessment.”
He slung away the dirt. “Are you bloody telling me we might have some geological disaster in the making?”
“No. But this area is part of old volcanic terrain. Fissures have probably been present long before water began threading through these cliffs. This kind of rock formation is ideal for an underground aquifer that has probably been feeding the loch for eons. My guess is that the railroad opened something akin to a dam. The pressure has leveled off in recent months, but not before doing damage. The only thing we can know for sure is that there is a cavern beneath us.”
She turned to assess his silence and found him looking down at the river. The river fed the waterfall. “I have already looked in the area behind the falls,” she said. “There is no cave entrance.”
“Is this entire area in danger of collapsing?” he asked.
“From what you have told me, some of it already has.”
He swore, then lay back against the incline. She joined him. Shoulder to shoulder they both stared up at the sky. He didn’t speak for a long time. Then he turned and rose on his elbow. A cloud smothered what remained of the sunlight passing over them. “What happened to Becca while I was gone?” he asked. “I saw the look Mrs. Whitman gave you.”
“Becca is suffering nightmares. Mrs. Brown spent two days with her.”
Erik sat up. The skin across his cheekbones seemed to grow taut. His wrist laid across his knee, he looked away. She pushed herself up. “You once told me your sister was the last to see Elizabeth alive. What did Becca see the night Elizabeth vanished?”
Shaking his head, he studied his hand. “I can only conclude she saw me arguing with Elizabeth. I can’t explain what else Becca saw or didn’t see that night for she has never spoken of it. She was young and the doctors feel the entire ordeal traumatized her. My sister has always believed in my innocence, but at a great cost, I fear.”
Christine brought his hand to her cheek and wanted desperately to tell him everything else. “Erik…”
Talus suddenly trickled down the slope from above them. Christine looked up and saw movement among the trees. Then it was gone. Beside her, Erik had not moved. “Your men must be walking around wondering what has happened to you,” she said. “We should probably be starting back.”
Erik stopped her as she reached for the rope. “Wait. I sent my men back already. No one should be up there.”
Christine’s hand froze on the rope. “Maybe one of the horses has got loose.”
He jerked the rope taut as if testing it. It held. He tugged again.
“Erik…”
“Wait here.”
“I will not. Are you armed?”
He arched his brow. “Allow me to check my boot for the blunderbuss I keep stashed there.”
“That isn’t amusing, Erik. I am serious.”
“As am I. Wait here.”
Without using the rope for counterbalance, he started to stand. She snatched at his cloak to stop him. Something in the trees moved across the light. Miss Pippen suddenly lumbered into view. The tension draine
d from her muscles. And she fell back against the incline.
“Oh, lord…’tis only my horse.” She held a hand to her heart. “I must not have tied her securely. For a moment I was afraid.”
“Fear is healthy, madam,” he said, his eyes still on the ridge. “There is a reason I do not want people roaming about these hills alone.”
“We are not alone. We’re with each other.”
He smiled faintly, then looked off the edge behind him. Something in his stance made her uneasy. “What is it?” she quietly asked.
Erik was clearly as conscious as she of the fact neither of them had a view of the place where she had anchored the rope. If someone had been up there…
“Have you ever swum in freezing water?”
His tone held faint amusement. Was he joking with her? Or was he taking the edge off his own discomfiture? His mouth crooked, as if he hadn’t been uneasy, too. “I only ask because the river is bone-chilling cold.”
Christine hiked up her skirt and tucked it in at her waist, making it knee length. “In that case, I should go first, your grace. I’m lighter. You can catch me.”
Without waiting for him to argue, she took three quick steps up the incline. She didn’t trust the rope and would not allow him to go first. She dug her half-boots into the talus. She held her breath, half afraid as she stretched for the first handhold in the rocks. “Dammit, Christine,” she heard him say.
Then Erik gave her a foot up and she found a solid grip. He knew she was right. If the rope’s integrity had been compromised, it was best that she go first since she was lighter. Besides, a person could find enough places to grab on to without taking hold of the rope in order to make a safe ascent. They weren’t on a cliff, after all. Erik would follow easily behind her.
To her left she caught a glimpse of a jagged edge of rock and stunted trees. Her hand held fast to an odd-shaped rock that cut into her palm. It took her only a moment to realize what it was as it came loose in her hand. And then her foot slipped. She grabbed the rope and it took all of her weight. Erik would make sure she did not fall.
The thought had barely crossed her mind when the rope snapped.
Chapter 18
Erik hit the frigid water and went under. Sucked down by the undertow, then pulled by the current and the weight of his clothes, he bumped against the rocks. His feet finally found purchase against the slippery bottom, and he rose. The water was glacier cold. The river went barely to his chest, but standing was not simple as he at once searched for Christine, unsure if she had followed him over the bank’s edge. She had fallen from the slope and he remembered shoving her forward into the incline. His effort to save her had been his doom. The momentum caused by that action had shoved him backward into the river.
With an oath, he wiped the hair out of his eyes and braced one boot against the rocks to keep from being swept underneath again. He struggled to remove the clasps on his cloak. He still wore one glove. Over the roar of the river and the waterfall in his ears, he sought to orient himself, realizing the current had dragged him down the river and to the opposite side. It might as well have been a mile from where he’d been when he’d gone over the ledge. He couldn’t get back there. Even if he weren’t wearing boots, he would not have been able to climb the lichen-infested rock.
He finally worked the sodden cloak off his shoulders. The current took it from his hands. He made it to the high bank at his back. He looked around for a handhold. And didn’t find one.
He thought he heard Christine’s voice. He looked over his shoulder and saw her on the opposite bank. Relief warmed him. She had not fallen. Though her hair and gown were damp with mud. Her soggy clothes clung to every line of her body. He wasn’t even going to ask how she had made it this far downstream.
“I am hurt you did not jump in to save me, love,” he called out.
“And drag us both under?” Her voice trembled. “You are taller than I am. At least you can stand.”
He touched his hand to a cut on his forehead. His fingers came back with blood. “Hell.”
“I see a place to your left, Erik. The bank is lower.”
She was correct. Erik finally found a handhold. After fighting the current, he pulled himself up on the river’s slippery stone bank. The sharp edges of rocks shoved against his hips and elbows as he rose to his knees. He’d injured his thigh as well, he realized. His trousers were torn. The cut did not seem too deep. He struggled to get to his feet, surprised at how weak he felt. He faced Christine on the opposite bank, his eyes at once searching the road above her.
“I want you away from here now. The river parallels the road for about a mile. Follow it,” he said. “When you get out of the woods, you will see Sedgwick Castle.”
“What about you? I am not leaving you.”
“Unfortunately, my way back to Sedgwick Castle will take longer. I have to find a place to cross.”
She pressed her palm to her chest and looked up at the sky. “You’ll need to dry your clothes, or you could suffer a deathly chill. You need a fire.”
“And what do you propose I use for matches?”
“Once when I was on a dig in Australia, Papa used two sticks to start a fire,” she said unable to hide the tremble in her voice in her failed attempt at humor.
His temper softened. She didn’t want to leave him. “Is there any place you have not been, leannanan?”
They both laughed at the absurdity of their conversation. He looked back toward the point where they had been standing, then up the steep hill toward where their horses were. Neither of them wanted to be the first to admit the possibility someone had been up there and cut the rope. Christine remained on that side of the river. He wanted her away from here as quickly as possible.
“It will be dark in a couple of hours. You will need every minute, or you won’t make it back before nightfall. Go, Christine. I will be all right.”
“Erik…”
“Go and get help.” His voice came out sharper than he intended.
He did not plan to stand there while she could still be in danger. He wanted her safe and gone from this place. “If I make it back to Sedgwick before you do, I will be most unhappy.”
“I will bring back help.”
He walked with her until they were each forced by obstructions to move from their respective banks. “Now go. Stay parallel to the river until you get to the open.” His shout carried across to her.
Then she was running, and a moment later gone.
Only then did he stop and lean against a large rock outcropping. Blood warmed his leg where it trailed down his thigh into his boot. The effort to open his trousers sapped some of his waning strength. He had torn a gash in his thigh. Watching the road for movement, he set his teeth against the length of his shirt and ripped out a strip of cloth, then bound the gash. After a while he climbed the bank and began working his way toward Sedgwick Castle.
Erik didn’t know at what point over the next two days he realized he might die, that the curse would prove true after all. He suspected the idea began to take root shortly after the sun went down the first day, and he’d come out of the woods in a remote area near the cliffs just as a gust of cold wind hit him. Then the storm hit and he’d huddled in the shelter of a rock overhang away from the trees, pounded by the rain. Even in August, the evenings could be cold, and Christine had been correct about the life-threatening chill, especially coupled with wet clothes and the loss of blood. The injury on his leg had been worse than he’d first thought. It should have been stitched. He wrapped it instead in the river-water-soaked cloth he’d ripped from his shirt. A mistake.
With blurred vision and a debilitating headache, he knew he was in trouble when fever set in the next morning. Worried about Christine and lacking the patience to wait for someone to find him, and wondering why they had not, he chose to cross the river. The worst that could happen was that he would end up at the levee site a few miles away and his men would fish him out before he found himself eventually
dumped into the sea. If he had been thinking rationally, he would have realized the error of his judgment.
The worst that had happened was that the river was a cold bitch and wanted to kill him. He made it across, but not before the current had swept him a half mile, and he had been slammed against rocks hidden beneath the surface and broken his ribs—or at least it had felt that way to him as he clung to the other side, with water rushing over him. He’d climbed up onto the bank and remained where he’d fallen for a day.
He’d awakened just before sunset and first glimpsed Elizabeth standing on a distant grassy knoll, watching him. He remembered staring at her and feeling nothing—not even surprise. He’d often heard that the angel of death visited a person just before he expired. Elizabeth had found her true calling then.
Then he’d awakened to discover a blanket lay across him. Yet, even with the added warmth, the shivering would not stop, and he forgot to care that a ghost did not carry blankets.
Erik remembered little after that. Somehow, his men had found him. He remembered Christine holding his hand, then discovered it was Elizabeth who sat beside him in the cart—no, not Elizabeth—Lara, his mind realized.
But then maybe he had imagined all of it, because when he awakened again, a blazing fire burned in a hearth, and it was his mother sitting on the chair beside the bed. His first thought was that he had truly descended into hell.
His movements stirred her, and she pressed a cup to his lips. It was daylight, and from the comfort of the bed, he guessed he was in his own room. His head and arm ached with a dull throbbing pain.
“Erik…” She softly coaxed him to drink. “You must finish this. The doctor does not want you moving about.”
He pushed the cup from his lips. His weakness weighed down his limbs. “Fook the doctor.” His words, little more than a rasping whisper, hurt his throat. “Where is my wife?”
“Erik…please. Won’t you accord me some manner—?”
Beauty and the Duke Page 26