“La petiteis mine,” came a roar. “I made her.”
Jack whirled to witness the Frenchman stand, yank the knife from his gut and lunge in frenzy – death bestowing vigour.
Defenceless, Jack prepared to parry with a forearm, but a pistol crack ruptured the air, ricocheted from the towering cliffs andLa Chauve-Sourisslammed to the Cornish cove.
To one side, a shadowed figure flung back his sodden hood.
“I’m indebted, Sewell,” Jack yelled, head whipping back to the open sea.
“The name’s Mason, my lord.”
Jack reeled on the shale. “Bloody hell, your sister–”
“He strangled her,” Mason snarled, face tormented. “I’ve waited years for this day.”
Another scream carried on the wind and Jack spun, stumbled forward, shale becoming sand. Beyond the rocks to the left, the small boat brutally pitched, wholly at the sea’s mercy, a figure of grey floundering at its bow.
Without thought, Jack yanked off his boots, threw them aside and ran to the water’s frothing edge.
“No, Winterbourne,” shouted Mason. “Help is coming. You’ll drown.” But Jack took no heed, wading into the merciless waves.
No one would drown this day.
“Snap, damn you,” Tamsyn shrieked as she drew her bound wrists back and forth, desperate to sever the rope before a wave could steal the boat and upend her into the torrid ocean.
When Jack had hurtled towards them, deliverance had seemed so near, but a savage duel had ensued, and the surf had dragged her small boat further into the hellish sea.
But she’d known this boat.
It belonged to old man Thomas in Treloor; she’d played in it as a child and the wooden seat lifted to reveal his stash of brandy within.
The bottles had smashed to smithereens but she’d buy old man Thomas a whole damn crate if the broken shards cut through the rope and she survived this night.
A stab of glass and she cried out, shifted and sawed again. Wind whipped her sodden hair into writhing snakes, lashing her cheeks and forbidding sight.
With a desperate last wrench, her wrists snapped loose, and she shook off the rope, grabbed the oars from the bottom of the boat and shoved them to their rowlocks. She prayed Jack lived as she bid to cut a swathe, unable to see ought in the gushing rain.
“Damn sea, let me through,” she yelled as a wave tossed her yet further from the cove, an avalanche of saltwater slapping her face for the impudence, and she coughed, spat, cursed.
Her shoulders burned with the tussle, but without oars she was as good as dead, and she clung on, fingers trembling with a deathlike grip.
Watching the sea, she spied a cresting wave and let the boat ride it, using one oar to guide her left and with luck to the safer waters that swirled by Morhogh’s Point. The outcrop appeared treacherous but she knew these seas; behind it, undercurrents eddied and rocks protected causing a pool of easier navigation.
Not far and she dipped an oar but the relentless waves stole any rhythm. Over and over she plunged and drew back her arms, but made no headway, the angry sea stealing all toil. All strength.
The sea snarled, and the boat plummeted into a calmer trough of water but Tamsyn shuddered and closed her eyes, knowing all too well what that meant. She dared to turn, to face the spitting wave consuming all before it, looming, hurtling toward her, unstoppable and–
Bitter water deluged the old boat, wood splitting, oars lost, and Tamsyn screamed loud as she tumbled into the abyss.
Searing cold numbed her legs and hitched her breath. She could swim but not in these petticoats which dragged and tangled, catching in her fingers as she sought to tear them asunder. Another violent wave dragged her below, water filling her mouth and nostrils, and she flung her arms up, kicked out her legs.
She caught the surface, seized a desperate gulp of air, and closed her eyes as a wail of water rolled her beneath once more.
“No!” Jack roared as he fought the swell with all his might, never closer, too far, the rain spitting spines as he ploughed through.
Not Tamsyn. Not like this. Please not like this.
“Tam–” Water flooded his throat and he hurled it out to push ever onward, heart thundering with fright. A lone wave-tossed oar glanced his head, and he heaved breath to dive, refusing to think on the futility. He’d dive until he found her. Until his power and energy was spent and he joined her in the restless depths.
