Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

N umb with shock, Arne stared down at Maeve as she lay limp and unconscious in his arms. A surge of powerful emotions began to rush through him, but before he could even begin to feel them, let alone understand them, one of his fellow rescuers grabbed him by the arm.

"She's alive, but there are still people in the water. We need ye to come and help us get them to shore," he shouted into the roaring wind. "Come on!" The man ran off down the beach once more and plunged into the dark, frothing waters with his friend. Arne looked after them then back at Maeve's pale face. Despite his mixed feelings about finding her after she had deserted him and Thorsten three years before, he found himself reluctant to leave her. What if she died?

An elderly woman standing over them with a lantern in her hand seemed to guess what he was thinking. "I'll keep watch over her, lad, ye go and help the others," she told him, jutting her chin towards the other rescuers. "There are many poor souls out there who need ye."

That convinced him, and he stood up. "Thank ye," he shouted to her then turned and rushed back to find more of the shipwrecked passengers. After about half an hour or so, they could find no more bodies, alive or dead, and those they found, they laid out on the sand. More help came from the village, and slowly, the living were separated from the dead and ferried slowly to the inn.

When Arne got back to Maeve, he was relieved to see the old woman still with her, and that she was alive. He thanked the old lady again for her kindness and then picked Maeve up in his arms. She weighed hardly more than Thorsten and was as cold as a block of ice. Confused, he stood for a few moments, looking around, wondering what to do.

They were too far from the castle for him to take her there. He looked up towards the lights of the inn and the dark shapes moving slowly towards it through the sheet of rain and darkness—the survivors. He knew he had to get Maeve out of the rain and cold soon, and though he knew the inn must be filling up rapidly, he decided he should take her there anyway. Even if he could not get a separate room for Maeve by herself, then he could take her into his at a pinch.

He only had a single bed, so it would mean he would have to sleep on the floor. It was a minor inconvenience in the circumstances. Nevertheless, he had mixed feelings about being in such close proximity to her. On the one hand, he was overwhelmingly excited to see her again, on the other, resentful of what she had done to him and Thorsten.

But what choice did he have? He felt he could not just leave her to the uncertain care of strangers. Besides that , he thought as he slogged towards the inn after the others, shaking the rain from his face, if and when she wakes up, I have plenty of questions I need answering.

Inside the inn he found a chaotic scene, with the shivering survivors being given brandy, hot tea, and blankets to warm them up. The noise was almost deafening, with so many people clamoring for attention. He decided he would take Maeve straight up to his room and settle her in the bed. Then, he would come back down, get some tea and whisky and blankets and see if he could find a healer to come and treat her.

He had to fight his way through the crush to the stairs at the back of the main room. On the way, his attention was drawn to a poignant scene involving a young couple who, judging by their appearance, had just been pulled from the wreck and narrowly avoided death. Both stood drenched and shivering with cold in the midst of the crowd, and they were embracing each other tightly, water pooling on the floor by their feet.

As he passed, Arne noticed that they were holding between them a small boy who looked to be about five or six. The child was clinging to them tearfully, his small body shaking violently, his clothes dripping, and his dark hair plastered to his pale face.

With Maeve clasped to his chest protectively, he mounted the stairs and hurried up to his chamber. He laid her gently down on the bed, made sure she was breathing regularly and then turned to light a candle before going back down to the main room for help and supplies. But just as he lit the candle, filling the room with a dim orange glow, Maeve suddenly shuddered and began to cough violently, making him start.

Water spewed from her mouth as she convulsed, her body wracked with explosive coughing as her lungs tried to rid themselves of the suffocating liquid. In between bouts of coughing, she gasped, struggling to pull in air. Alarmed for her, he quickly put his arm under her back and moved her forward a little, so he had room enough to pound on it with the heel of his hand as hard as he dared, each blow expelling more water from between her lips.

"Maeve, ye're safe, ye're gonnae be all right," he said, his heart clenching painfully in his chest, strangely elated to see she was awake and, therefore, alive. "Can ye hear me?"

She heaved in great gulping breaths, her entire body shuddering, and he tried to hold her, to steady her with his arms. For a moment or two he was terrified she was having some sort of fit and was about to expire in his arms. But after a few minutes, thankfully, she seemed to finally be able to breathe once more, inhaling and exhaling deeply and more regularly. He was beyond relieved, believing the water was out of her lungs at last.

Her mane of hair was clinging to her face, itself slick with rain, and now with regurgitated seawater. He pushed it aside. His touch seemed to spark a reaction, for with what looked like an immense effort, she turned to look at him.

In the flickering light of the candle, her eyes were naught but dark pools. He thought he saw the glint of tears in them but dismissed the thought since she was drenched with water anyway.

"Maeve, can ye hear me?" Arne asked again, holding her closer and willing her to speak, his warring emotions more tumultuous than the storm raging outside. He was certain she was aware of him then, for she clutched at his arm weakly and mouthed something. But though he bent to her lips to hear what she was trying to say, he could not make it out. Her voice was not even a whisper. He realized the seawater she had swallowed and then thrown up had stolen it away for the time being.

She tried to speak again, and again, he bent to listen, straining to hear, waves of excitement rushing through him. But nothing came, and then suddenly her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell back limply against his arm, losing consciousness again.

"Damn!" he exclaimed, worried as well as disappointed. He slipped his arm from beneath her back and laid her head gently down on the pillow. He waited a few moments, looking down at her anxiously, to make sure she was breathing peacefully. It was at that moment he realized she was not wearing a cloak or gown of any sort, and whatever she had been wearing on her feet had gone. In fact, she was dressed only in her stays, petticoat, and shift.

Could the sea have torn off her outer clothing, he wondered, frowning in puzzlement as he pulled the coverlet over her. Then it occurred to him that she could have seen what was coming and had prepared for it as best she could by discarding anything she was wearing heavy enough to drag her under. Whatever her faults, he knew Maeve to be both brave and determined. It seemed likely to him that that was what had happened, and he could not help the flicker of admiration he felt for her then.

As he left the room and went downstairs to go and find supplies and get medical help, he asked himself what had driven her to make such a desperate effort to survive when all must have seemed so hopeless.

He had to wait nearly an hour for the healer to find time to get around to helping Maeve. Finally, he showed her up to his room.

"She's fainted," the healer, whose name was Meg, explained as she bent over Maeve's insensible form outstretched on Arne's bed. "Bring me more light, lad," she commanded with a wave of her hand.

Arne scrambled to find extra candles, finally locating a handful of them in a box on the mantel. He lit all of them and stuck them about the room, brightening the atmosphere considerably. "That's better," Meg told him, still inspecting Maeve.

Feeling helpless, Arne returned to the bed and hovered over them both, watching the healer as she lifted Maeve's eyelids one by one and peered into her eyes, then laid her head against her chest for a few minutes before straightening up.

Meg was a strange figure to behold, though several of the locals downstairs had assured him she was extraordinarily gifted. She was the size of a child, a wisp of a woman, with white hair as fine as cobwebs. She was clad in an oversized garment of rusty black, and she carried a battered leather medicine bag with string for a handle, which she had placed by the hearth. She spoke in a strange, high-pitched voice like a little girl's.

But odd though Meg undoubtedly appeared, there was something innately calm about her and the way she looked at Arne with her large blue eyes reassured him.

"She's gonnae be all right then?" he asked, finding himself eager to hear it was so.

Meg nodded, revealing uncannily strong white teeth. "Och, she's young and

strong. Aye, she'll be fine, lad. But she'll need plenty of lookin' after and rest before she's back on her feet properly. It'll be a few days yet. I'll give her a strengthening draught tae help her get some peaceful sleep. 'Tis the most healin' thing fer her now."

She turned her strangely old yet unlined face up to his. "Well, lad, seein' as ye're here, ye might as well make yersel' useful. Ye can get these wet things off her and get her warm. Have ye any spare blankets up here?"

"I dinnae ken, but I'll look fer some," he said, flustered by her request to remove Maeve's clothes.

"Try over there," she told him, pointing with her eyes at a wooden chest in the corner. "While ye dae that, I'll go and stoke up the fire."

He nodded and, while Meg went off to poke at the hearth, he went to look in the chest. Two blankets were neatly folded inside. How the hell did she ken they were there?

As if she had heard his thought, from her station by the fireplace, Meg chuckled and said, "I've seen many a patient at this inn. I ken where just about everythin's kept around here."

Feeling there was something uncanny about the healer, Arne removed the blankets and took them over to the bed. As he stood looking down at Maeve, he could see her breasts clearly outlined through the translucent material of her shift. The tips were the same deep raspberry color he remembered. A wave of embarrassment suddenly washed over him at the thought of undressing her completely and seeing her naked again.

Which he told himself was ridiculous, for it suddenly struck him that he knew every inch of Maeve's body as well as he did his own. Memories flooded back of their lovemaking, sometimes tender, sometimes fierce. Images flickered through his mind of the times they had lain together naked, forcing him to relive those moments when he had caressed every part of her with his mouth and hands, worshipped her with his whole body, delighting in her moans of pleasure, and thrilled by her loving, passionate touch upon him.

A snort of soft laughter came from the healer. "Get on with it, lad, before she freezes tae death," she chided, adding logs to the fire from the grate and wielding the poker with an expertise that seemed to beguile the flames, making them leap and crackle until they blazed almost unnaturally brightly.

Terrified she really had read his mind, Arne's cheeks burned with fresh embarrassment, a heat he knew he could not blame on the rising temperature of the room. "Aye, sorry," he mumbled, horrified by the erection that had suddenly sprung up in his trews.

It seemed to him like a cruel joke that his body should betray him thus, for it clearly still craved Maeve's, even after all she had done to him. Frantically willing his state of arousal to abate, afraid Meg was aware of it too, he forced himself to focus on the job at hand.

His heart in his throat, he bent over Maeve and gathered her bedraggled mass of hair gently in his fist, moving it aside. He slid his arm around her back, feeling the fragile bones beneath the flesh as he lifted her gently. He leaned her limp body against his chest, enclosing her in his arms as he reached behind her and began unlacing her stays. The beating of her heart against his chest and the feel of her soft breasts pressed against him did nothing to help tamp down his shameful ardor. But he gritted his teeth and persevered.

It was difficult to loosen the laces of her stays because the water had melded the knot tightly. Plus, he was trembling so much that his fingers felt like sausages, too big and clumsy for the delicate task. In the end, in frustration, he unsheathed his dirk and sliced through the knot, and was finally able to pull the stays from her slender waist. He carefully draped them over the arm of the bedstead to drip onto the wooden floorboards below, where they formed a small puddle.

Next, he laid her back down on the pillow so he could untie the string of her petticoat. That he managed to achieve without the use of his knife. He began peeling the petticoat down from her waist with feelings of both wonder and dread, for he could only guess at the effect her nakedness was going to have on him. He swallowed hard, already able to clearly see the dark, triangular patch of hair he was so familiar with defined at the hinge of her thighs, beneath the water-logged fabric of her shift.

Oh, God save me from mesel'!

As her legs were revealed to him, still clad in their cotton stockings and garters, he vividly remembered the many times he had run his hands up and down them and kissed her behind her knees to hear her laugh. Or parted her thighs to feast upon her gaping sex and make her scream his name.

Stop it! Get a hold of yersel', man.

Hoping to God Meg was too busy with whatever she was doing by the fire to hear what he was thinking, he carefully removed the petticoat and put it with the stays. He removed the garters and rolled down Maeve's stockings, adding them to the soggy collection now hanging from the bedstead. As if on cue, Meg came and gathered them up and took them off to dry over the back of a chair by the fire.

At last, Maeve lay before Arne in nothing but her wet shift. She might as well have not had stitch on for the effect it had on him, for he just could not stop himself from hardening again. He paused for a moment or two, summoning all the self-control he could muster, telling himself not to look, that he was almost done, before lifting the hem of her shift and gently pulling it up over her motionless body.

Averting his eyes, he laid it aside with the other things, and then, as quickly as he could, wrapped her in the blankets and pulled the coverlet up over her again. He breathed a silent sigh of gratitude when the slender white body his own so patently still desired finally disappeared beneath the covers.

Meg pottered over and collected the shift, taking it off to dry with the rest. "Ye're soaked yersel', lad," she observed when she had hung it up and began rummaging in her medicine bag. "Ye should get changed before ye get a chill."

"Aye, I will." Glad at the excuse to move away, keeping his back turned to conceal his embarrassing condition, Arne walked awkwardly over to his saddlebag by the door and took out a dry shirt. He pulled the wet one over his head, rubbed his face and hair with it, and then threw it to the floor before putting on the fresh one. He heeled off his boots, which he had so thoughtlessly run into the sea wearing and changed his socks. He felt immediately better but decided to wait until Meg had left to change his trews.