Floating in the ever-rising water that filled the bottom of the shallop was a tin of peppermints. She’d planned to drop one of the candies into the toe of each child’s Christmas stocking. Now she simply dumped the brightly colored mints into the swirling water and began scooping with the empty tin.
Seawater was pouring over the sides so quickly that she couldn’t keep up. Margaret knew it wasn’t her imagination that the small boat was riding lower in the crashing waves.
She glanced toward Thomas. He stood, bent over the rudder, using all his strength to keep them heading toward the shoreline.
“Not much farther,” he yelled, and Margaret had a moment of hope. Perhaps they would escape a watery grave. She quickly tossed a tinful of frothy liquid overboard.
The next moment she looked up to see a wall of water descending on her. Her scream only forced her to gulp a mouthful of saltwater. Then she was falling, swirling about in the churning foam.
“Margaret!” Thomas leaped to the side of the boat and stared over the side. He could see nothing but gray, icy water. “Margaret!” He gave one fleeting glance toward the shoreline. “Oh, hell,” he yelled as he jumped overboard.
Thomas thought he was cold before, but now the chill was numbing. He forced his arms and legs to move. The saltwater stung his eyes and he tried to keep some orientation as to which way was up as he searched through the churning water, but he could see nothing. His lungs burned and felt ready to explode. Knowing he should try to make it to the surface, Thomas’s mind rebelled. Just one more second...
“God’s blood, boy, the wench is there, by your hand.” As unbelievable as it was Thomas knew he heard a voice yelling in his ear. His arm jerked out, almost of its own accord, his fingers tangling with something silky. Maggie’s hair.
He pulled, grabbing for more to hold on to. When his hand found her arm he hung on tight and kicked. Pushing against the turbulence, he forced them toward the surface.
His first gulp of air was painfully sweet. Then he thrust Margaret up above the crashing waves. He didn’t know if it did any good. She was limp and unconscious. He hoped it was only that. If she were dead.... Thomas didn’t want to think of that. He did his best to keep her head above water, a near impossibility, as he twisted around looking for the boat. It was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t even tell which way the shore was. The waves were so high that at first he couldn’t see anything but water and more water.
Then a spear of lightning lit the heavens, illuminating a staggered array of windswept palmettos. The vision was gone before he could be certain it wasn’t just that—a vision of his imagination. But Thomas kicked, sending him toward the spot.
It seemed as if he’d been in the water forever. He couldn’t feel his arms and legs and only hoped his brain was sending out the correct signals to get him moving toward shore. The white-capped waves buffeted him around, negating much of his progress.
Thomas tried as hard as he could, but the edges of his world were turning gray and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He tried thinking of his family. Of how devastated they would be when they heard of his death. Of how he should have planned to go home for Christmas. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. They’d all gather in the parlor, his mother and father, his sister Merry and her brood.
Then his disoriented thoughts wondered to the woman he was towing. Margaret Howe Lewis. She was a strange one. Desperate and impassioned. About what he didn’t know. Whatever her cause. Whatever the reason she’d kidnapped him, he’d never know. Just like he’d never see those full lips smile. He’d never kiss them.
Inexplicably the thought saddened him. It made him almost as sad as never seeing his family again. Foolish. Foolish. His mind was leaving him. Just like his arms and legs already had. He tried to tighten his grip but wasn’t even certain he was still dragging Margaret with him.
He couldn’t go any farther.
The water felt warm... almost soothing. Like when he was a boy and floated on his back in the blue-green waters beyond the breakers. He’d stare up at the clouds and imagine he was drifting up. Now he’d drift up with Margaret. Maybe he’d see her smile then. Maybe....
“God’s blood, boy, you’re almost there. A Blackstone doesn’t give up.”
“What?” Thomas jerked his eyes open, when he heard the voice again. The same one that had told him to reach out to find Margaret. Gone was the warm water and the comfortable, safe feeling. His arms and legs were so cold, they burned and he was fighting a cruel and unforgiving sea. “Who’s there? Who said that?” Thomas used precious strength to yell into the storm. The only response was the howling of the wind, the roar of the sea.
He didn’t think he’d ever been so angry. How dare someone yell at him like that and make him go through this torture. He should—“Ouch! Damn it!” Thomas’s knee hit something hard that sent pain searing through his body. When his free hand flailed out he encountered sand. The shore! He didn’t think he had the strength to stand, but after crawling forward, he managed to push to his feet.
And Margaret was with him. Thomas dragged her onto the beach, pulling her far enough so that she was out of the pounding surf. But the rain still pelted both of them.
“Margaret!” Thomas dropped to his knees in the sand. Her face was ashen in the surreal light of the storm. Thomas brushed aside the strands of sodden hair and bent close, listening for her breathing. He could hear nothing.
“Margaret,” he yelled her name again, cursing the storm and the woman, rolling her onto her stomach with hands that were numb with cold. “Margaret.” He kept calling her name as he pushed on her ribs. Over and over again. “Damn it, Margaret, wake up!”
When she started coughing he didn’t think he’d ever heard a sweeter sound. “Oh God, Maggie.” He twisted her around bending her over his arm. Hugging her lithe body to his when she finally stopped retching up seawater.
Her eyes were large and dazed as she looked at him. She’d lost the spectacles during their ordeal. “Cold,” she mumbled before shivers consumed her.
What was he thinking? They might have survived the sea, but they were far from safe. They were both soaked to the skin, and freezing. If he didn’t find them some shelter, they would surely die of exposure.
But there was nothing. Nothing.
Thomas staggered to his feet, squinting through the rain. Perhaps under the trees—Lightning again sizzled the air. He stopped and stared hard. It wasn’t possible, but he thought he saw...
Scooping up Margaret he stumbled forward. It had to be a mirage. They couldn’t be so lucky as to come ashore near a small cabin. But as he struggled closer, Thomas realized, impossible or not, it was true.
Even in the storm-darkness he recognized the place. He’d been here often enough as a child. First with his father to visit the ancient Indian, Natee, then later by himself.
There was a ramshackle porch that kept most of the rain off Thomas as he pushed through the door. He knew there’d be no one there, Natee died nearly ten years ago, passing on to the Great Unknown as he’d called it.
Inside things were much as he remembered. One shuttered window allowed very little light inside, but Thomas knew the room. It was sparsely furnished, the way Natee liked it. A table and chairs were off in a corner beside an old wood stove that Thomas and his father brought down here after the old Indian complained of the cold the winter Thomas was eleven. Natee had rebelled against using it until Devon Blackstone, Thomas’s father, started a fire, demonstrating how much warmer the cabin was.
The pile of bedding in the corner was leaf-littered, but Thomas didn’t think Margaret would even notice. He set her down gently, then looked around for a way to start a fire. There was kindling stacked by the stove, bone dry as if it had been there for the decade since the old man’s death. Thomas imagined it had. He found some matches, then held his hands out toward the warmth radiating from the dusty iron as the flames licked up around the wood.
After shaking out the bedding, freeing i
t of as much debris as he could, he arranged a pallet close to the stove. Even after moving Margaret onto the blankets she continued to shiver beneath her sodden clothes. Deciding it was for her own well-being, Thomas leaned over and began unfastening the score of tiny buttons that marched down the front of her coat. His hands were still numb and fumbling. She hung limp-armed as he lifted her to remove the soaked garment. Her blouse, with its mutton-leg sleeves also sported an array of tiny buttons that challenged Thomas’s near frozen fingers.
He expected to tackle her corset next, but there was none, only a woolen undergarment that started at her neck and covered her arms. With this she wore a pair of woolen knickerbockers. Thomas had undressed his share of women, but he’d never uncovered such a strange and decidedly unprovocative hodgepodge of underclothing.
Which was just as well, he told himself, because he wasn’t interested in anything but warming up the indomitable Miss Lewis. Still, as he stripped her bare, he had to constantly remind himself of that. Swallowing, forcing himself to remember they’d just barely escaped with their lives, Thomas flipped a moth-eaten woolen blanket over her.
Turning his back he removed his own wet clothes, hanging everything as best he could over the table and chairs so they’d dry. Then trying not to recall the way she’d looked lying naked on the pallet, Thomas slipped in beside her.
He lay perfectly still listening to the fury of the storm, the crackle of the fire, the sounds of her chattering teeth. Or was that his own? Even out of his wet clothes and with the fire, he was chilled to the bone. And he was sure she was, too.
He was doing this for her own good. Thomas kept telling himself that as he inched toward her. She came willingly when he reached for her. Wrapping his arms around her Thomas cuddled her body against his. Heat seemed to blossom between them. Closing his eyes he tried to sleep, but all he could think of was the feel of her... and the unexplained voice he’d heard earlier.
Thomas woke with the uncomfortable feeling someone was watching him. It only took a slight twist of his head to realize someone was. Margaret Howe Lewis stared at him, her soft gray eyes dream shadowed. It was barely dawn, and he could still hear the drumming of rain overhead. The cabin was chilly, the fire burned down, but Thomas did nothing about adding more wood. He simply stared back, entranced.
Not entranced, Thomas corrected. Women didn’t entrance him. He responded to them on a physical level. And there were times he’d been captivated by their beauty. But entranced? Ridiculous. Still, he couldn’t seem to look away, and although she was definitely prettier than he’d first thought, it wasn’t that that held him.
Thomas couldn’t say why he lay there, staring into her eyes, hardly able to breathe. No more than he could reason why he risked his life to rescue a kidnapper, or why he heard a voice while doing it.
Then she smiled, a soft, sleepy smile and he felt a tightening around his heart. He remembered thinking of her smile when it looked as if they would both die. Thinking he never saw it, and never would. Knowing now that braving the stormy sea was worth it.
But he’d wondered other things, too. What it would be like to kiss that mouth. To gently suck the full bottom lip. Thomas shifted toward her, hardly aware of what he was doing until the feathery whisper of her breath caressed his chin.
When his lips touched hers, Thomas could swear he heard bells. Damn, he was going to have his physician check his ears when he returned to Charleston. She tasted like no other woman, felt like no other woman. His tongue wet the sensitive seam between her lips and she opened to him like a flower to rain.
The kiss deepened, and Thomas luxuriated in her innocence. His arms tightened and beneath the blanket her body molded to his. Her breast was soft and fit his hand perfectly. Thomas trailed his lips down her cheek, and across her stubborn chin. Her skin was smooth, smelled citrusy-sweet and he couldn’t get enough of tasting her.
Her sigh sent his desire soaring. Thomas never wanted a woman so much. “Maggie,” he whispered her name as his fingers found the curved valley of her waist. “Oh, Maggie,” he murmured as he captured her mouth again.
Her only response was another sigh, this one even fainter than before. Something about the sound made Thomas pull back and stare. Her head rested on his arm, her hair a wild array of curls. Her lips were moist, her eyes closed. And she was obviously asleep.
Asleep!
He was so hard he hurt, so aroused he could barely breathe, and she... she had fallen asleep. He wanted to shake her, to call her name until her eyes opened and she finished what she started.
Except she didn’t start it. He did. She probably had never been truly awake. Which made him... what? It was bad enough that he was trying to make love to a woman who’d kidnapped him, but to do it while she slept?!
Thomas flopped onto his back, his free arm, the one she wasn’t using as a pillow, thrown over his eyes. He was going crazy. There was no other explanation for all the weird things that had happened to him since Margaret Howe Lewis first woke him.
“What... what happened?” Margaret sat up with a start. Her voice was even huskier than usual and her throat was sore. Thomas Blackstone sat across from her, watching, one leg bent, his forearm resting on his raised knee.
He stared at her intently. “You fell out of the boat,” was all he said.
“Oh, my goodness.” Margaret dragged her fingers back through a tangle of unruly curls and glanced around the cabin. When she looked back at Thomas his gaze shot up to her face. “I don’t understand? How did we get here?”
“I found the cabin after we got to shore.”
“We? Did you fall into the sea also?”
“No.” His response was curt. Thomas concentrated on keeping his eyes focused on her face. “I jumped in after you.” Her expression made it clear how surprised she was. But apparently she believed him, for she didn’t question it. She just continued to sit, the blanket pooled around her waist, her beautiful breasts bare. Thomas squirmed, forcing himself to look away as he pushed to his feet.
He walked to the door without looking back. “They might not be completely dry, but I think it best you put your clothes on,” he said before pushing through the door. He knew the exact moment she realized her state of undress. Her anguished cry startled a gull perched on an overturned bucket. Thomas just shook his head, wishing he could keep his body under control.
He walked down to the shore where the slow-moving river merged with the sea. As a child he used to come here often to sit and think. He glanced around but his seat for those soul-searchings, a cypress log, was gone, probably washed out to sea by a storm like the one last night.
Today the sea, like the sky, was calm and clear. The air smelled sweet and held just enough chill that Thomas wished his kidnapper had allowed him to bring a jacket... or that he had the old hunting shirt that Natee fashioned for him out of deerskin.
Thomas shook his head and leaned against the scaled bark of a palmetto. He was standing right here the day he decided to make the family rich again. He’d come to talk with Natee after hearing his parents talking about money. It wasn’t a topic they usually discussed, at least he hadn’t heard them before. But they seemed very serious, and his mother was crying.
Natee said money and possessions weren’t important, that the only thing a man needed was the earth and sky, the ever-flowing sea, and now and again, a good woman. But Natee was different from anyone else Thomas knew. His father said the old man was descended from a Cheraw Indian who had befriended Thomas’s pirate ancestor, Jack Blackstone. Thomas admired and loved the old man, but he also knew their philosophies and worlds were different.
Thomas’s father lost nearly everything in the war. And Thomas had regained it. It was as simple as that. Thomas spread his legs and stared out toward the horizon.
That’s the way Margaret found him. She hesitated a moment and took a deep breath. “You could have told me.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Thomas looked her up and down, then arched his brow. “P
erhaps I preferred not to.” He enjoyed the peach blush that colored her cheeks.
“I suppose, you... undressed me.”
“There was no one else to do it, and you were soaked.” He watched as she swallowed and nodded.
“I understand.” Margaret was trying her best not to let this bother her. After all, she was a progressive thinker. And there were so many more important things that had happened, her modesty meant little in the scheme of things. At least that’s what she tried to tell herself. But the very idea of this man seeing her, touching her. A vision of lips, hungry and devouring, of bodies straining, flirted with her mind and Margaret shook her head to dispel it. But the illusion wouldn’t disappear entirely. She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that. It made her all warm inside despite the chilled air, and Margaret didn’t think that’s the way she should be feeling about someone she despised.
Except she didn’t despise him.
If nothing else, she owed him for her life. Of course, now that he was free of her kidnapping, she had a strong sense that she would somehow pay for his plunge into the sea. Despite that, she knew what she must do. Squaring her shoulders, Margaret took a tentative step forward. “Thank you,” she said, her expression serious. “For saving my life.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “You are most welcome.” Thomas turned back to stare out across the water. “You’d never know by looking that last night the sea was a foaming tempest.”
“No you wouldn’t. What do you plan to do with me?” Margaret saw no reason to prolong finding out.
“Do?” Thomas shrugged. He really hadn’t given it any thought, though he knew he should. But this place was so haunted by memories.
“I know what I did was wrong, and am willing to suffer the consequences.” Perhaps once he’d satisfied his vengeance on her, Grace could talk to him about the orphanage. Margaret should probably have had the Negress do it in the first place. Grace certainly would have come up with a better plan than kidnapping.
Thomas glanced back over his shoulder. “That’s very generous of you. Of course you really don’t have much choice now that you’re not holding that revolver.”
Sea of Christmas Miracles Page 3