The Bonny Bride

She felt the quiver in his belly before she heard his laugh. It was a queer sound—at this time and in this place.

“Can you just picture it, lass? If some old crone with the second sight had accosted us outside the kirk and told us we’d end up like this. Do ye ken we’d have stalked off in high dudgeon or laughed ourselves hoarse?”

“Ye’d have stalked off. I’d have laughed.”

Her quip made Harris laugh harder still. It was so irresistible a sound, Jenny could not help joining in. For a time, the warmth of that shared laughter and the contact between them held the cold, and the wind, and the darkness at bay.

Like a candle burning fitfully in its last puddle of wax, this tiny pocket of light also guttered and failed. Somehow, the cold black void oppressed Jenny even more after that sweet moment of relief. She began to shiver again and a deep weariness threatened to engulf her.

“I don’t reckon I c-c-can last much longer, Harris.”

“Ye mustn’t give up, lass. Mind about Mr. Douglas and yer wedding.”

This was the second time he’d urged her to think about Roderick, and for some reason it irked Jenny. She knew perfectly well she should be thinking about her future husband and the life that awaited her in Miramichi—if only she could hold on until daybreak. If they were not her greatest motive for living, what else could be?

Hard as she tried to focus on thoughts of her wedding, every notion in her head turned obstinately back to Harris Chisholm. From all she had learned of him in the past six weeks, Jenny knew with utter certainty that her death would haunt him. Unmerited feelings of responsibility and guilt would consume him. That was no fit way to repay the enormous debt she owed him.

“Aye,” she murmured drowsily. “I’ll do my best to hang on, Harris. For ye.”

Fighting the deadly lassitude that grew heavier and more strength-sapping with each passing moment, Harris held Jenny closer. In a futile effort to stanch the ebb of her energy, he rubbed her back and arms with increasing vigor. All the while, two brief, whispered words echoed in his thoughts and fired his desperate effort to save her.

“For ye.”

It was no dream of handsome, wealthy, powerful Roderick Douglas that stirred Jenny and roused her failing will to live. It was her feelings for him. Scarred, poor and insignificant, he still had the power to lure her back from the siren song of peaceful oblivion.

“For me, Jenny. That’s right. Hang on for me. I can’t lose ye, Jenny. Not now. I’ve been waiting all my life for ye, though I never knew it. Stay with me, lass. Jenny? Jenny!”

The pull of death was too strong. Harris could almost feel it sucking her life away. Like a giant whirlpool, dragging her into the depths of eternity. Grasping helplessly for anything that might rouse her, he lifted Jenny as high as his waning strength would allow.

And he kissed her.

Not the way he’d kissed her in his cabin on the St. Bride, a lifetime ago. Then he had taken a kiss from her. Wresting by force what he knew she would never surrender willingly. Taking some perverse satisfaction from her reluctance, for it made him the master.

This time he gave Jenny a kiss, buoyed by the improbable hope that she might want it after all. At first her lips felt cool and slack to the touch, but Harris paid no mind. He molded his mouth to hers, making it an instrument of supplication and enticement. Nuzzling, caressing, satiating, he used his lips and tongue to beseech and beguile her back to life.

What effect it had on Jenny, Harris could not tell at first. But the embers of his own strength rekindled. His heart beat faster, sending feverish blood pulsing through his veins with renewed potency.

Then he felt it.

The gentlest flutter of her tongue. A subtle movement of her lips. The pressure of his kiss, oh so delicately reciprocated. Somehow he had changed roles from the fairy godfather to the prince, with vistas of “happily ever after” opening before him.

So intent was he upon Jenny, and nursing this flicker of life within her, that Harris scarcely heard oars rhythmically hitting the water. The muted sound of voices did rouse him, however, though he could not understand the words.

Wrenching his attention from Jenny, he glanced around to find that dawn had stolen upon them. The rain had eased to little more than a drizzle, and the wind had died. Though it was still not fully light, Harris could make out the shoreline, no more than a hundred yards away. Then he saw the boat—a long canoe, approaching from the distant opposite shore.

Mustering the last crumbs of his strength, he held Jenny with his good arm and raised the wounded one in the air.

“Here! Help!” he called in a voice so weak and raspy he hardly recognized it.

A voice from the boat exclaimed, but Harris could not make out what. Confident they’d been spotted, he let his arm fall.

As the canoe drew close, Harris saw two rugged men wielding the paddles.

“Lord-a-mercy,” cried one. “These must be the folks that washed overboard of the wreck.”

With what little grasp of consciousness he still possessed, Harris wondered how they could ever haul him and Jenny aboard without upsetting their precariously balanced craft. It proved no easy feat, their efforts hampered by Harris’s ebbing strength and Jenny’s deadweight. The men were obviously masters of their strange vessel, for in time they prevailed.

“Lay down with your missus and hang on to her,” advised the older-looking of the two men.

Too weary to explain that Jenny was not his wife, Harris followed the order. The boatmen doffed their coats and laid them over the supine pair. Taking up their paddles again, they struck out for the far shore with urgent speed.

They spared breath for speech only once.

The boat had been making swift progress for some time when Harris heard one of the men gasp “Think they’ll make it?”