Thank God, oh thank God!
Ranulf ran at the door and hit it with the full weight of his entire body.
It shattered.
And there was Bea, desperately pulling away the broken wood from the inside of the cabin. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s nothing,” he answered as he, too, started to make the hole large enough for her and Wenna to climb through.
Once more, the ship lurched before shuddering and settling against the rock.
Kiernan appeared and joined the effort, until Bea pushed her way through, regardless of any shattered wood still attached to the frame.
She threw herself into Ranulf’s arms, saying nothing, for her heart was too full to speak. Nor did he, because he could find no words. Yet they hugged for only a brief moment before he let go and gently pushed her toward Kiernan, who moved her along to Gareth, as if there were a fire and she a bucket full of water to put it out. Meanwhile, Ranulf helped Wenna through the door, her baby in her arms. They, too, were passed along until they all stood at the side of the ship, Bea and Wenna trying not to look at the bodies on the blood-soaked deck.
Some of Ranulf’s men laid a plank from the smugglers’ barque to the merchant’s ship, and it was across that perilous bridge that they would have to make their way to safety.
“Crawl across, Bea,” Ranulf said. “Or lie on your belly and drag yourself.”
Crawling would be faster, she thought. But…
“Wenna or her child should go first,” she declared in a tone as commanding as Ranulf’s.
He wisely made no protest. “Gareth,” he ordered, “sit on the plank and I’ll hand you the baby. Then you turn and hand it over to one of the men on the merchant vessel.”
He ordered two of his soldiers to hold the plank, then shouted across the space to one of the archers watching on the deck. “Come onto the plank and sit down, and be ready to receive the child.”
Gareth made his way a short distance along the plank and sat with his legs dangling over the sides to keep his balance. With trembling arms but hopeful eyes, Wenna held out her child to him. He took it and, twisting, handed it back to the archer, who was seated facing the same direction. Slowly, cradling the baby in one arm, using the other hand to push himself, the archer inched his way back to the merchant’s ship.
The smugglers’ ship groaned and the plank shifted. Bea gasped and Wenna cried out, but mercifully the plank didn’t fall.
Once he was close to the merchant’s ship, the archer turned and handed Gawan to one of the crew who was leaning down to take him.
“Oh, thank God!” Wenna fervently sighed when Gawan was safely on board, echoing Bea’s own thoughts and, she was sure, that of everyone else on the smugglers’ ship.
Gareth, meanwhile, came back to the smugglers’ ship, ready to help the women. “You next, my lady,” he said.
“Wenna,” she resolutely replied, reaching out to take Ranulf’s hand in hers.
Grasping her hand tightly, Ranulf nodded, so Gareth helped Wenna onto the plank. She chose to crawl, holding to the sides and going carefully toward the other ship, and her child.
“Your turn, Bea,” Ranulf said once Wenna was safely across and taking her baby from the seaman’s arms.
She didn’t refuse. Instead, she let go of his strong hand, took a deep breath and crawled as Wenna had, trying not to look at the turbulent water below, or think about the plank tipping, or the ship behind her breaking into pieces and sending all aboard into the sea.
Two men grabbed her arms and lifted her up until she was standing, shaky but alive, on the deck of the merchant’s vessel.
And then came the most terrible wait of all as the other men came off the smugglers’ ship. Ranulf wouldn’t leave until all theothers had made it safely across the narrow plank, including the men who’d been holding it steady. She could expect no less, and yet she thought her heart would beat right out of her chest as he began to crawl across the plank the way she had. She thought of his fear and prayed to God to give him courage. She saw his bloody cheek and remembered the worse wound in his side, and prayed that he would have the strength to hold on.
His face pale as a corpse, his expression grimly resolute, he kept his gaze on either his hands, or her, the entire time. Never once did he look down.
Then—oh, and then!—he was on the deck and in her arms.
She held him tight for one glorious, relieved moment before she felt his body relax against her and realized he had fainted.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHENRANULF NEXT OPENEDhis eyes, he was back in his bedchamber in Penterwell. Bea wasn’t sitting solicitously by his bedside, though. Nor was Celeste. Instead, the lord of Tregellas regarded him gravely.
