The Bonny Bride

After the suffocating squeeze of the companionway, Jenny gulped in deep drafts of the briny wind, grateful to be out in the open at last.

“We must get to a lifeboat!” Harris bellowed.

His words barely penetrated the howl of the wind and the frantic babble of voices around them.

After a few faltering steps, Jenny felt the solid bulk of the ship’s railing. Clinging to Harris with her right hand, she closed around the railing with her left and followed him.

“It’s just up ahead!” Harris called back to her as a great billow hit the barque and doused them both with seawater.

Coughing and sputtering to catch her breath, Jenny lost her hold on the railing.

Another breaker followed, driving the St. Bride against another treacherous sandbar. Jenny’s feet slid on the slick boards of the deck. She felt herself tumble against the rail and over into a black void.

At the last instant, she loosed her hold on Harris. She owed him better than a watery grave with her.

Chapter Six

“Jenny!”

Harris felt her pull on him cease abruptly. He heard the retreating sound of her scream as she fell overboard.

He knew he had not a second to lose. The St. Bride might pull free of the bar at any moment and be driven far from where Jenny’d gone over. Some flicker of logical self-interest pleaded with him that it was useless to go after her. In a storm like this, Jenny was surely lost.

Even as his heart acknowledged the futility of it, Harris dove into the sea.

Into the roiling waves he slammed. The salty, silty sea forced its way into his nose and mouth. It stung his eyes. Retching the water from his lungs, he fought his way to the surface, letting the breakers carry him where they would. Struggling for every precious breath, he vaguely sensed the St. Bride’s looming shadow moving away from him.

“Jenny!” he hollered again, straining to catch her reply no matter how feeble. “Jenny, where are ye, lass?”

He called and called, scarcely mindful of the swells that washed over him. Even after his rational self had abandoned hope, he continued to cry out her name like some plaintive last lament.

“Harris?”

It was scarcely more than a sigh on the wind, and he wondered if his drowning mind was playing tricks on him. Or perhaps her departing soul coaxed him to a final voyage with her.

He did not care.

She had called his name and he must answer.

“Here, Jenny! I’m here. Can ye come to me, lass?”

“Harris!” It was louder this time and definitely closer. A human voice, choked with fear and exhaustion. No flying angel or echo in his mind, but a lass of flesh and blood struggling to stay afloat.

Battling the opposing billows, he struck out toward the sound, desperately roaring her name whenever he could catch breath enough.

Then, suddenly, she was there. The only other living being in an endless storm-tossed night. Forgetting the need to stay afloat, forgetting his own name in the dizzying relief of finding her again, Harris clasped Jenny to him. She did not even struggle as they subsided beneath the waves and into the relative tranquility below.

And so they might have ended, had not Harris felt his foot strike solid firmament. Surely, it could not be…

With the last ebb of his strength, he anchored his feet to the sand and straightened up. To his amazement, his head and shoulders cleared the surface of the water—at least in the troughs between waves. His wounded arm blessedly numb, he pulled Jenny’s head free of the water, too.

Together they sputtered and strained for air until Harris was able to gasp, “I can touch bottom, Jenny! We must be near the shore.”

“Shore? Then we’re saved!” Clinging to him as though she never meant to let go, Jenny began to laugh. And sob.

Harris held her tight—marveling at how natural it felt to have her in his arms, wishing the moment would never end.

But like all sweet things, its time was finite.

As Jenny’s weeping calmed, Harris sensed her shivering. Until then, he’d been too preoccupied with staying afloat to notice the temperature of the water. It was surprisingly warm. Warmer than the rain that continued to lash them. For all that, it was cooler than their bodies and slowly it was leeching the life from them. They needed to reach land and find shelter.

“We have to get out of the water before ye get any colder.” Harris took a tentative step or two in each direction, trying to figure which way led to shallower water, and eventually to shore.

“What I wouldn’t give for a bit of light,” he muttered. His own teeth began to chatter.

Cautiously he made his way forward, heartened to feel more and more of his chest and back exposed to the air. Bared to the howling wind, the parts of him above the surface felt more chilled than those beneath.

“There, I can touch bottom, too!” cried Jenny. “Come on Harris, the beach can’t be much farther.”

They wallowed several steps more before Harris realized what was happening.

“Hold on, Jenny. Come back this way, lass. The water’s getting deeper again.”

“No, it isn’t.” she protested. “It can’t be.” A plaintive note of exhaustion in her voice told Harris she recognized the truth even as she denied it.

“This must be one of those sandbars the ship fetched up on,” he said. “God knows how far it is to shore, or which way.”

“What can we do?” wailed Jenny. “We have to find land.”

“So we will,” replied Harris with far greater assurance than he felt. “We just have to hang on here until we’ve enough light to see the way to shore.”

“How l-long do ye k-ken that’ll be?”

“I haven’t a notion, lass. It feels as though this night’s lasted a thousand years, already. There’s two things we need to do if we’re to last till sunrise. We’ve got to keep as warm as we can and we’ve got to keep awake.”

“How c-can we k-keep warm? It’s not like we can light a fire or pull a blanket around us.”

Harris tugged her toward him, wrapping his arms around her once more. “This is the only warmth we have, Jenny. Now rub yer hands on my back, like I’m doing to ye. As for keeping awake, we’ll have to help each other there, as well. We’ll talk. Do ye mind how fast the hours went by when we got to work arguing over something in one of Walter Scott’s books?”

“Aye.” Jenny didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Ye’re right about keeping warm, though. I feel a mite warmer already.”

So did Harris.

Not just warm, but positively hot. In one part of his anatomy at least. He felt a rush of exasperation with his carnal nature, almost as intense as the rush of straining pleasure in his loins. Here he stood, poised on the brink of doom, yet his body perversely yearned to procreate. He prayed that Jenny, in her innocence, would not grasp the import of the eager bulge in his trousers.

“What will we talk about, then?”

Her question brought Harris back to himself with a start. What were they to speak of? Not the situation in which they found themselves, surely. Not their slim chances of surviving the night. Not this awkward but necessary embrace and the sensations it provoked…in him at least. They needed to occupy their thoughts with something far removed from this storm-swept strand. Preferably something warm.