The Bonny Bride

“Why?”

Harris struggled to sit up. “Why?” he echoed her question. “Because my arm hurts like hell, and my head hurts like hell, and I feel queer—like I don’t know what I might say or do next. I want to rest, without ye gawking at me and fretting every time I feel a twinge.”

Contrary, stubborn fool of a man! Jenny could feel herself shaking with the effort to contain her vexation. No one had ever made her feel with the intensity Harris Chisholm did. Whether it was rage or pity or…anything else, he always provoked such explosive emotions in her. She hated it.

“Ye’re too proud to give in to yer pain before a woman? Is that it? Well, go right ahead, for I don’t care. Moan. Groan. Bawl like a wee babby if ye want to. I swear I won’t think any the less of ye for it.”

“Because ye couldn’t think less of me than ye do already?”

Jenny hesitated a moment before replying. The words that came out surprised her. “No,” she said softly. “Because I think the world of ye, and nothing’ll ever change that. First ye made my dreams possible, by letting me come on the St. Bride.”

Though she knew she should speak of Roderick Douglas at this point, Jenny’s lips refused to form his name. “Then ye taught me how to read. Ye’ve no idea what a gift that’s been to me. I owe ye so much. Let me do this one wee thing by sitting with ye tonight.”

He collapsed back onto his pillow so abruptly, Jenny started toward him in alarm. “What is it, Harris? Are ye all right?”

She leaned over him, relieved to hear his breath coming rapid but even. Then, before she knew what was happening, Jenny found herself encircled by Harris’s sound arm, and being pulled down to him. She didn’t struggle, for it might reopen his wound. At least that was what she told herself. His lips blundered over her lower face until they found hers.

Her first true kiss from a man.

Jenny and Kirstie had discussed this vital subject often in recent years. On those rare occasions when she’d lingered awake for a moment before falling into an exhausted sleep, she’d imagined herself being kissed by Roderick Douglas. This was nothing like the gallant, tentative salute she’d dreamed of. Harris kissed her deeply, voraciously, the way a man dying of thirst would consume cool, fresh water.

His mouth tasted of rum. It felt hot. So hot, that when his lips touched hers, Jenny half expected to hear them sizzle. His kiss, his arm tight around her, and the oddly pleasurable feel of her bosom mashed against his chest, made her body tingle with strange, intoxicating sensations.

Then, as unexpectedly as it had begun, it ended. Harris wrenched his lips from hers and pushed Jenny back. She staggered away from his berth, breathless and disoriented. Fortunately, she managed to light on the stool. Her body throbbed with frustration and the stirring of a slumbering hunger.

All was quiet in the cabin, save for their ragged breathing.

At last Harris spoke, in a voice hardly above a whisper. Raw. Bitter. And dead weary. “That’s the only payment I want from ye, Jenny. I know ye’d never give it to me, so I’ve gone ahead and taken it. Yer debt’s square now. No need to hang around here any longer smothering me with yer pity.”

“Pity?” Jenny fairly shrieked. Anger was the only safe outlet for the combustible mix of emotions she barely understood. “Of all the things I feel for ye at this minute, Harris Chisholm—and I don’t recognize half of them myself—I can assure ye there is not a scrap of pity in the lot.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised, and more than a little curious. “What all do ye feel for me, at this minute. The bits ye recognize, I mean.”

“Rage,” Jenny spat, “and in-dig-nation, for a start.”

“That’s all?” he asked, his tone bleak and hollow.

No. There was more, much more, and Jenny longed to tell him so. After that kiss, she did not dare. No matter what her intense, confused feelings for Harris Chisholm, it made no difference. She meant to marry Roderick Douglas and nothing was going to stand in her way. It would be cruel to encourage Harris to think otherwise.

“I’m grateful to ye, of course.” Safe enough to admit that much. She’d be a hard-hearted little wretch to feel less. And maybe that’s what it was, after all. A profound sense of gratitude and the habit of spending day after day in close company. Jenny could almost make herself believe it.

“Gratitude.” Harris sighed. “That’s almost as dry a crust as pity.” His voice grew hard. “Stay then, if ye won’t go, Jenny Lennox. But mind ye leave me be or I won’t be responsible for my actions. If ye come near this bed again, like as not I’ll kiss ye again. And I might not stop there.”

Stubbornly Jenny held her place. He only meant to frighten her away with his talk, she was certain. Still, the notion of him kissing her again, and following it with even more intimate liberties, made her cheeks smart.

Her heart raced in time to the brisk bounce of the ship. Evidently that sou’wester the captain smelled on the morning breeze had blown up.

Time passed. Jenny did not know how much.

Wind screeched through a hundred tiny chinks in the upper hull. The timbers creaked in chorus, as though each sought to part violently from the others. On the deck above Jenny’s head, footsteps fell in a heavy, lurching rhythm. It took her back to that first night on the St. Bride, when she’d cowered in her berth, certain she’d never survive the night’s storm.

Perhaps she wouldn’t have without Harris. She recalled the gentle dispatch of his touch. The soothing timbre of his voice so close to her ear. The comforting fact of his presence.

“I’m sorry, Harris,” she murmured to herself. “I never meant to lead ye on, I swear it. I’d not hurt ye for the world.”

“Don’t fret yerself, lass.”

She nearly jumped a foot when his words of reassurance pierced the din of the storm. She’d assumed he was asleep.

“I’ve a heart of shoe leather,” he continued. “Like as not, I only fooled myself about how I feel. Ye’re the first lass who’s been more than civil to me. What with all the love talk in Mr. Scott’s books and ye being such a bonny wee thing…”

“Aye, that’s likely all it is,” Jenny hastened to agree. “The next lass who passes the time of day with ye will make ye forget all about me.”

Somehow, that thought did not sit well with her, though she could not puzzle why.

Just as Jenny had decided to put the whole matter from her mind, the rapidly moving ship came to an abrupt, shuddering halt.

She plowed across the narrow cabin and onto the berth with Harris. He gave a sharp hiss of pain as she landed on top of him. The lamp went crashing to the floor, where it sputtered for a moment before going out.

“Damn!” cried Harris. “We’ve run aground.” Pushing Jenny off him, he groped for the floor. “Where’ve ye put my boots?”

With a muffled report of rending wood, the barque lurched forward again.

Reaching down into the darkness, Jenny retrieved one of Harris’s boots.

“I have the other.” She heard him call as though from a great distance.

She sensed his contortions, trying to pull on the tight boots with an injured arm.

“We’ve got to get on deck,” said Harris.

Before they could scramble out of the berth, the St. Bride once again fetched up against something solid. This time Harris fell on Jenny. As the breath burst from her lungs, she felt the soft scratch of his unshaven cheek against her forehead. One of his knees pinned her legs apart. When she raised her hand, it brushed the warm flesh of his chest through his open shirtfront. Some lunatic impulse within her wished they had hours to roll around on this narrow berth.

As the barque strained between the force of the storm wind in her sails and the pressure of the sandbar on her hull, Harris clambered up and hoisted Jenny to her feet. She gasped to feel water soaking into her shoes. There must be a good three inches of it already seeped through the floorboards, and rising fast.

“This way.” Harris grasped her right hand and latched it to the waistband of his trousers. “Don’t let go, ye hear? No matter what happens.”

They staggered toward the cabin door. Jenny hoped that was where they were headed, at any rate. It was impossible to make out anything in the dense darkness of the barque’s hold. Jenny fought to master her mounting panic at the thought of being trapped below decks. At least she had Harris with her this time.

She would trust him with her life.

As Harris pulled the cabin door open, someone fell through from the companionway.

“Have a care what ye’re doing!” cried a voice. Jenny recognized the gruff, bass rumble of Mr. Tweedie, the cobbler from Wigtown. With a splash, the man regained his feet and fought his way out into the passage once more.

Harris followed, towing Jenny along behind him.

The tight companionway boiled with frantic shouts and grunts and the press of bodies anxious to escape the seawater flooding the lower decks. Jenny clutched Harris for all she was worth as he plunged ahead. They stumbled up the steep stairs, bursting onto the deck at last.