Leath didn’t do him the courtesy of standing for his departure. Instead, he drew a folder of papers closer and began to read.
He dismissed Harry like a tradesman. Keeping a rein on his temper, Harry turned on his heel and marched out, back straight as a ruler even as despair battered him.
Kent Coast, late March 1828
The small boat tossed like a cork in a whirlpool. Pen hunched in the stern, soaked and clinging to the gunwales with frozen hands. Cam and Captain MacGregor rowed like demons to steer the dory toward the dimly visible coast, a mere line on the horizon.
The wind whistled past, ripped at her hair and the cloak she’d grabbed to save her modesty before Cam had rushed her on deck. It provided little defense against the thrashing waves and the horizontal rain. Her teeth chattered and after half an hour of this hell, she could no longer feel hands or feet.
She couldn’t bear to look behind at the empty space where Cam’s magnificent Windhover had once commanded the sea. The ship had gone down with astonishing rapidity moments after Cam had flung Pen into the tiny craft they now shared. The fall had left her bruised, but grateful to be above the waves, not below. The sick chill that she’d felt watching the graceful yacht sink like a stone still thickened her blood.
Two crewmen hadn’t made it. Pen had hardly known one, but the other had been a cheerful presence. If she survived this ordeal, she’d mourn his death. Of the two remaining sailors, one had been hit by the falling mast. Moaning and barely conscious, he huddled beside Pen. The other crewman Williams bailed madly in the bow. The strange dim light of the stormy afternoon revealed his losing battle. With every second, they wallowed deeper.
Bile flooded her mouth. Not sea sickness. Sheer terror.
Except that the Thornes were famous for courage, if not good sense. Stiffly Pen uncurled her cramped limbs and crouched at Cam’s feet. She began to bail with her hands.
“Pen!” Cam’s voice was thin in the wind, although he sat so close. She’d thought the noise in the cabin was deafening. Here, she could hardly summon thought, it was so loud.
She met his eyes. Not long ago, they’d fired cruel words at one another. Through the driving rain, his expression defied their destruction. He reached down and produced a tin dish. For the first time since they’d met again, no shadows darkened his smile. Ridiculous as it was in the middle of a tempest and with drowning likely, she smiled back.
“Good for you,” he said.
Such simple praise. He’d said it so often when they’d been children and she’d bowled a straight ball or taught one of her mongrel dogs a trick. The accolade warmed her heart, on a day cold enough to freeze lava. She stared into his eyes and realized that if fate decreed her death, she couldn’t ask for a better companion.
Then she started to bail furiously. The boat climbed each wave, then descended with a nauseating thud. Thunder cracked again and again. She was soaked to the skin. Her hair clung to her face like sticky icicles. The air she inhaled was jagged ice. Her hands didn’t seem to belong to her. Still they went on. Dip and throw, dip and throw, dip and throw.
She reached a point where anything more than rote movement was beyond her. Somewhere in her soul, she knew that Cam was here. With death breathing wet and cold down her neck, his nearness meant the world.
She didn’t look up. There was little point. Visibility had worsened until it was like heading into a cloud. Still she kept going. Dip and throw. Dip and throw. Dip and—
The boat crashed into something and the world turned topsy-turvy again. For an instant, Pen stared up at the lightning-riddled sky. Then choking darkness engulfed her as she sank beneath the waves.
Chapter Twelve
Cam surfaced to a wave smashing into his face. The capsizing boat had tossed Pen free. That had been the most terrifying experience in a day of terrifying experiences. Spluttering, he searched the wild seascape.
Nothing.
He dived, opening his eyes against stinging salt and cold, but saw only gray and black. Sand churning in the water abraded his skin. He stayed down until his lungs screamed with pain. Then he kicked toward the surface, gulped for air, and went under again.
He bobbed up, gasping, to watch the upturned boat shatter into jagged spears of wood against the rocks. The impact was loud enough to rise above the wail of the wind and the roar of the waves.
Cam couldn’t see his crew. He had a sick feeling that Oates, the injured man, wouldn’t make it.
“Pen!” he shouted, but the wind whipped the cry away.
The sea wouldn’t take Pen. His thoughts extended no further than that. Nothing, not even nature’s fury, would gainsay his claim.
The current shoved him closer to the jagged rocks. He’d gone beyond the point where he cared about his safety.
Down he went into freezing darkness. Up through the swirl. A glimpse of sky. Coughing to clear the water splashing into his face. Snatching air. Down again. Hands closing on an empty universe of ocean.
No lithe female body. No obstinate woman who drove him to madness. And made him feel more alive than anyone else ever had.
His legs turned to rubber. His arms lost the strength to pull through the water. Still he dived. Still he searched.
So spent that even breathing tested him, he surfaced once more. A sensible man would save himself now that it was clear that she was lost.