Chapter 9
He beat her back to that ridiculous great hall. She hurried in, out of breath, from the far depths of the house’s kitchen—and what a smelly wreck of a place that was—to find him posed en guard in front of a rust-coated, one-armed suit of armor.
“I’m pretty sure you could take him.”
He spun. For one second she surprised a moment of boyish happiness on his face and it froze her in place. “I’m really good with opponents that can’t move,” he said. “Find anything interesting?”
“Three mouse carcasses, an entire library of chewed up books, and a whole lot of bat droppings. You?”
“How did you get all the interesting stuff on your side?”
“Nothing useful at all?”
“Only the torture chamber. A complete collection of chains, manacles, and rotting leather. Interested?”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“You’re no fun at all.”
“Maybe when we get to know each other better,” she said. “So what next?”
“Nothing left but the tower.”
“The tower?” She hoped he didn’t notice the way her voice pitched up; one’s throat closing had that effect.
He shrugged. “We should probably have gone there first. The clue did mention ‘nest.’”
“But…the whole place is the nest, isn’t it?”
“If they’re sending us to a nest, I’m guessing they’re sending us as high as they can.”
She’d suspected at the very start of this venture that she’d be forced to do things that were out of her area of expertise. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? But really, shouldn’t one have an opportunity to work up to such things?
“It’s getting dark,” she pointed out. “Shouldn’t we wait until morning?”
“I found a couple of torches in the hall. Should give off plenty of light.” He grinned. “And atmosphere.”
“How clever of you.” Darn. “Won’t it be dangerous?”
He smiled wider, more cheerful than she’d seen him since they’d begun. In his element at last, she thought unhappily.
“Let’s just go take a look, shall we?”
He’s obviously scouted the tower already.
Jim, unhesitant, moved through a series of narrow tunnels that were completely confusing Kate’s unreliable sense of direction. Once she accidentally brushed up against a wall, shuddering when her hand came away wet.
“What?” he asked after she surreptitiously swept her hand down his back.
“Excuse me,” she said quickly. “Did I get you? There was a bug—most annoying—and I was simply trying to shoo it away. It didn’t bite you, did it?”
“A bug? What kind?”
“Does it matter?”
“I…no.” He continued down the narrow hall, a wide, dark smear marring the back of his shirt. Kate suppressed a twinge of guilt. It was not as if his clothes were perfectly clean to begin with, not after all the abuse they’d taken already. Why not protect her own?
The passageways grew darker. The narrow slits that served as windows, allowing brief glimpses of the crashing waves below, grew farther apart. Finally Jim lit one of the pitch torches, throwing flashes of inconsistent light around them, making the rest of the tunnel-like hallway look even darker in comparison. Only a few minutes later they ended up in a small round room at the base of a narrow stairway that clung to the wall and spiraled up into nothingness.
“It’s about damn time.” He stamped on the bottom stair, the sound echoing hollowly above them. “Seems solid enough.”
Kate tipped back her head. The torchlight gave her a view of only the first few turns of the narrow staircase. The rest disappeared into blackness until far, far above there was a narrow pinprick of starlight. Her head went light.
“Looks like the roof’s gone,” Jim went on, completely matter-of-fact, a businesslike catalogue of the situation. “And there’s not much of a railing left, so it’d be best to hug the outside wall. Keep your hand on the wall and you should stay away from the edge.”
“I really think it’d be wise to wait for morning.”
Holding the torch high in one hand, he turned to her. Shadows and light danced across his face, making the angles sharper, the hollows deeper. The torchlight was harsh, orange-red, reflecting an unholy glow in his eyes. It made him look dangerous, unpredictable, a devastatingly handsome creature of the night.
She hated danger. A heart that was already beating too hard knocked even more furiously, and yet her growing fear was edged with a sharp excitement that tingled in her fingertips, her toes, other places. She was alive, in a way that her safe and carefully comfortable world had never allowed.
“There’s not much point in it,” he told her. “The torch gives enough light to see at least the next couple of steps. If they become unstable we’ll have to reassess, but the danger’s pretty much the same either way.”
“Hmm.” It was easier, she discovered, not to think about it—the narrow walls and thick darkness that pressed too close, the empty space that spired overhead—if she thought about him instead. And, with that excuse, she watched him, the way she wanted to anyway. Light flickered in his eyes, turning the rich brown to gold, burnished his hair to fire. His mouth—how beautiful it was, the way he formed the words, a gleam of even white teeth that she found herself awaiting, breathless and fascinated.
“Stay close behind me,” he said. “I mean it, Kate. This is no time to ignore me as you’re wont to. And keep up against the wall.”
She could do this, she told herself, even as panic fluttered high in her chest. She had to do this.
“You don’t have to go,” he said, his voice soft, almost kind, and it nearly undid her. If he’d challenged her, insulted her, the affront of it would have prodded her up at least a half dozen stairs. This only made it harder.
“Yes I do,” she whispered. A year ago, she would have remained on firm ground and used all her wiles to prod him into doing as much of the work as she could. But her life was different now. It, and she, had to be different now.
“Kate—”
“I should go first,” she said, spewing the words so there was no time to change her mind mid-sentence. She focused her attention on the tiny triangle of light that illuminated his neck, the wedge of skin exposed by his open top button. No chance of looking at the stairs that way. “I’m lighter, so if a step breaks, it probably won’t do so quite as abruptly. And you could catch me.” She swallowed hard. “Probably.”
“I’ve never let someone in my party go into an unknown situation first.”
“Jim.” She lifted her gaze higher, looking directly into his eyes. “If you go down, you’re going to go down hard and fast. There’s no way I’m going to be able to stop it. And then I’m going to be stuck on that damn staircase until someone finds my dusty bones because I’m going to be too scared to move.”
There. She’d admitted it. And he didn’t sneer, didn’t tease, didn’t leave her behind. Just nodded and stepped aside for her to mount the stairs.
She took a deep breath and moved forward. And couldn’t help but stop, just at the base, as her foot refused to lift.
Then he was behind her, close enough for her to feel the warm wash of his breath against her neck as he spoke. He took her hand and placed it against the cool, rough stone of the wall. “Keep your hand against the wall,” he said softly. “It’ll keep you from getting too close to the other edge.”
She nodded, struggling to draw another breath. She gathered up her skirts in her free hand, told herself to concentrate on the fact that Jim was behind her, not that there were dozens of stairs shearing sharply up ahead of her, and took one slow step. She flinched, half expecting the wood to crack beneath her.
“There you go,” he said. “The first one’s always the hardest.”
“Hmm.” She was pretty sure the farther the floor got beneath her, the harder they were going to get, but she appreciated the attempt.
At t
he rate she ascended the stairs, they’d be lucky to reach the top by midnight. A step, a quick seizure of panic before she waited for it to collapse, a sigh of relief, and then a few moments to gather herself for the next one. And the next. Jim didn’t say a word, his warmth and even breathing a reassurance behind her. She concentrated on that, and on the solid cold bulk of the stones against her right palm—who cared if they were slimy now? They were stable. But the stairs seemed to narrow as they ascended, the walls coming closer, darker, until her breath began to labor. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more—the dark, the close quarters, the yawning emptiness she knew fell only a foot or two to her left—and she reminded herself by the second not to look that way.
“Oh!” She forgot herself for an instant, yanking her hand away from the wall to wave it wildly in front of her face, clawing at the thick drape of spider web she’d just walked into.
“Kate.” He was tight behind her in an instant, right arm around her waist, the solid reassurance of his bulk firm against her back. She felt the flare of heat from the torch and realized an instant later that neither one of them was touching the outer wall. She slapped her hand against it.
“Don’t let go, you fool!”
“You let go first,” he reminded her, calm, reasonable. “Are you all right?”
All right? All right was not her first choice, no. But she was no longer in immediate danger of pitching into hysteria, either. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There was a spider web, and—”
“Spiders?” He shuddered, body vibrating against hers. “I’m glad you’re in front.”
“You’re afraid of spiders?” She dared to twist slightly, peering at him over her shoulder.
“Afraid of spiders? No.” He frowned. “More like terrified. Of spiders and beetles and flies and every other of those damn, creepy little things.”
“Really?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to read him. “But there had to have been a lot of insects in the jungle.”
“No kidding. Big crunchy black things with veiny wings; crawly little ones with a thousand legs that kept wiggling into my shoes.” His arm jerked in reflex, tightening around her. And she realized they were very, very close, wrapped in the darkness, bound by their precarious position, his mouth mere inches from hers. “Why do you think my last expedition was to the Arctic?”
“I—” She was no longer sure exactly what was the cause of her breathing difficulty. Wasn’t sure whether it was worse to blame it on the tower or his nearness, and which weakness promised more danger. “That’s not true.”
“You think you’re the only one with fears, Kate?” His mouth was sober, serious. “Or that fears are always reasonable, or amenable to explanation, or easily willed away?” He shook his head. “They are what they are. You can face them or not. That’s really the only choice.”
She still couldn’t decide if he was telling her the truth. There were no outward signs of panic; his voice was even, his arm around her steady. And if perhaps his breath was a bit labored, she thought that maybe, just maybe, it had as much to do with her as a few fragile strands of web.
But it didn’t really matter if he’d confessed his phobia merely to soothe hers. It worked. She hesitated longer than sanity dictated in telling him that, because she wasn’t quite ready to surrender the feel of him close to her yet.
“I don’t want to hurry you,” he finally said. “But are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” she said reluctantly. An instant later his arm dropped, he moved back down a step, and she was once more facing forward.
Thirty more steps. Enough so that Kate began to feel the strain of it, short of breath from the exertion instead. Darkness pressed in from all directions. She’d lost track of how far they’d come, had no idea how much farther they’d yet to go.
“Are we nearly there, do you think?”
“Not yet.”
Automatically she looked up, searching for that sliver of sky that might give her a clue. At the same time, her right foot came down and hit air.
She screamed, pitching forward. The tiny blur of star she’d just located streaked across her vision and disappeared as she fell. But she plunged only inches before Jim caught her, hauling her back to safety. Back, once again, against him.
“Kate. Kate?”
Dimly, she heard him call her name, but it seemed far away. Her breath caught in her throat; she couldn’t pull it in, push it out, and her heart raced like a cornered rabbit’s.
“Kate?” His mouth was right against her ear. She made a slight motion with her head, all she could manage. The ocean roared in her ears, taking her down. Down. Oh, God.
“Kate.” He spoke sharply now, breaking through the heavy darkness enveloping her. “Kate, you’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Her limbs were stiff, frozen into position.
“Kate, do you know where you are?”
“Jim,” she managed. It sounded hollow, distant, as if someone else had said his name.
“Good. I’m sorry, I should have been watching more carefully. The stairs have been so solid that—”
“No. I wasn’t watching.” She couldn’t let him blame himself.
“But—”
“No!”
The sea pounded, sounding nearer than it was, the rhythm vaguely soothing, blending with the more labored sound of their breathing.
“We’re closer to the top than the bottom,” he finally said. “It’s only one step—the next one’s fine, can you see? We might as well keep going.”
“No!” The hysteria that had been seeping away boiled back.
“It’s all right,” he said, soothing as a stablehand calming a rattled horse.
“If that one broke, what makes you think the next one won’t, too?”
“It didn’t just break.” He held the torch out, casting flickering light before them, and the sight of the gaping hole had her swallowing hard to keep her bile down. “See? Nobody’s foot just went through that. Somebody smashed it away, just like the drawbridge. Just a little deterrent. The rest of the steps are fine.”
“Just a little deterrent?” If she could have brought herself to move she would have slugged him.
“Yes. If they’d wanted to hurt someone, they would merely have weakened the step, so someone would actually fall through, instead of completely removing it so anyone going up would notice it was gone. They just want you worried, discouraged, and slowed down.”
“It worked.”
He gave her a quick, warm squeeze. “Did I ever tell you about the time the Doc and I nearly got cooked for dinner along the Maranon?”
“You’ve never told me anything, Jim, and truthfully, at any other time I’m sure I’d be fascinated, but at the moment I just don’t care.”
He chuckled warmly. “We can’t stay here all night, Kate—”
“Why not? I’m rather fond of this step. Perfectly comfortable. Don’t see any reason why I should move.”
“The treads aren’t very wide. You can step over easily, as long as you keep your skirts out of the way.”
“No.”
“Here, I’ll help you—”
“No!”
“Okay. Not going up. I understand.”
He started to loosen his hold and she clutched at his arm, pressing it against her waist. “Don’t let go!”
“I bet you never had to say that to a man before.” He sighed. For a moment, he rested his chin on the top of her head, a layer of warmth spreading over the panic.
“Jim?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks for being nice about this.”
He lifted his head and Kate wondered why she’d said anything. “I learned a long time ago that yelling at someone had a troublesome tendency to make things a whole lot worse.”
“Oh.” There was no kindness in it then, merely expediency. She straightened, taking some of her weight off him. Her knees wobbled but held. “You can release me now.”
“Really?”
Her bravery l
asted about half a second. “No.”
“Can you turn around?”
“That’s going to be a problem, too. And before you ask, moving in general is going to cause some difficulty, so you might want to take that into consideration.”
“If we move down you’ll get closer to the ground with every step.”
“Closer to the ground. I like the sound of that.”
“Thought you might. All right, here’s the plan. I’m going down a step—”
“Jim!”
“Just one, I promise. Only a few inches. I won’t even have to let go of you. Then, when I’m there, my feet firmly planted, I’ll guide you back. Ready?”
No, she wanted to say, but she could not admit to him that she could not do something so simple. She’d humiliated herself already.
She held her breath the whole time. But Jim was as good as his word, his support unwavering, his calm presence utterly comforting.
“There,” he said when she’d eased down to the next step, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Yes, it was. “It was pitifully slow and you know it.”
“Ready for one more?”
This time she almost meant it. “Ready.”
It seemed quicker going down than it had coming up, and it did, indeed, get easier each step of the way. So much so that she was almost—almost—sorry when they reached the bottom.
They’d barely hit ground before Jim let go and stepped away, as if he couldn’t stand to touch her a moment longer than he had to.
He turned half away from her, the torch he still held lighting the tense line of his jaw, his set mouth. “Better get started back,” he said.
“No.” She’d already forced them to waste half the night. That was enough. “You go on up. I’ll wait here.”
He half-turned toward the stairs, then stopped. “No, let’s get you out of here.”
“You’re not really going to make me face that moat again, are you?” She forced a smile, blessing the amount of practice she’d had. He came closer, peering at her a bit too closely, and she felt her smile start to wobble. “What’s the matter? Afraid of all those nasty spiders without me to clear the way for you?”
A Wedding Story Page 10