Page 10 of Transporting a Ruthless Highlander
Gavina stood up with her back to the wind and looked at the land in front of her, realizing that something about it looked familiar. She recognized the stretch of coastline since she had sailed past it countless times before, but she had never actually stood on it. She began to walk toward the line of trees that stretched along the edge of the beach. Her boots were full of gritty, waterlogged sand, and she was still being battered by the rain and wind, but she knew there was shelter somewhere nearby since this part of the coast had always looked to be thickly wooded.
Suddenly she heard a noise, a weak moaning like a creature in distress. At first, she thought it might be a seal, then she realized that the sound was human, a man’s voice, and it was calling her.
“Captain…” the voice groaned weakly. “Here…here…help me.”
She looked around and saw Struan looking up at her from the middle of a tidal pool. The water was almost up to his neck and becoming deeper all the time; he was reaching out for her, pleading for assistance before his head dropped into the water again. He was too weak to hold it up.
Gavina dropped to her knees and crawled over to him, amazed and grateful that he was still alive. “Struan?” she breathed. “Thank God ye are still alive. I thought everyone was dead.”
“Help me,” he moaned, grimacing painfully. “My leg. It’s trapped.”
6
Gavinalooked at the rocks for a moment. There were four of them, but one of them was too big for her to lift. She reasoned that she could push the others out of the way since they were a little smaller, but for that, she would have to kneel in the water.
“I will do my best,” she said grimly, wondering if the situation could possibly become any worse, but she quickly realized that it could. Gavina took her boots off to step into the pool, and immediately her feet were stung by the icy burn of the seawater. She gasped with shock, but then, before she could give herself a chance to think about it, she plunged her hands into the pool. However, this time it did not hurt at all since they were already numb. She pushed at the smallest rock with all her might and felt it shift enough to allow Struan to move one of his feet.
“Try to pull it out now,” she ordered as she moved her hands to the next rock, which she managed to inch forward a little.
Struan obeyed her and tried to pull his leg up. He could not feel his feet, but when the rock finally loosened its grip, it was so sudden that his leg shot upward toward his chest. He was then able to tug the other foot out of the grasp of the stones.
Gavina moved to his shoulders and, putting her hands underneath his armpits, dragged him out of the pool and onto the sand, then she paused to rest. She was surprised that she had managed to move him at all. It had taken every ounce of her strength.
Struan lay where she had left him, breathing heavily and watching her. She had been magnificent; he could not have imagined any other woman managing to do the same thing, despite her slender build. Now they were going to have to find shelter and some way to heat themselves, but he was not sure that he would be able to move for a while.
“Thank you, Captain,” he said gratefully, smiling at her weakly. “You saved my life. I thought my time had come.”
Gavina was sitting blowing into her cupped hands to warm them up. “It was nae more than my duty,” she said gruffly. Then she frowned and looked around herself. “But dinnae be too sure o’ yersel’ yet. We will have tae find shelter and start a fire, but at least the storm seems tae be passin’.”
They looked upward to the sky to see that the gray clouds were scudding away and the wind was dying down. The sky was not blue but a hazy white, which was a distinct improvement.
“Thank heavens,” Struan breathed, sighing with relief. “I do not think I can take much more of this.”
“We need tae find cover,” Gavina observed. “Can ye stand up?”
Struan raised himself to his knees, then got to his feet with Gavina’s assistance. He wobbled for a moment, then managed to take a step forward.
“Under the trees,” she instructed. She took his arm and slung it over her shoulders, then they stumbled up the beach into the shelter of the pine trees that grew around the edge of it. Gavina sat Struan down with his back to the trunk of a tree, then looked around for something dry to wrap him in, but there was nothing. The only thing they could be thankful for was the relatively mild temperature of autumn, for a winter storm would surely have killed them. Although the day was slowly improving, the wind had not yet died down, and in their wet clothes, they were both in danger of freezing.
“Sit an’ rest for a while,” she instructed him. “That stormy weather might come back, an’ ye will need a’ yer strength just tae stay warm.”
Struan had not the strength or the will to argue with her. For once, all he wanted to do was to lie down and be taken care of. He watched her as she moved down the beach picking up small pieces of driftwood for kindling and bigger pieces of the ship’s wreckage for fuel. She had not asked for his help, which was just as well since he was too weak to give any. However, it seemed that she could manage well on her own without his help.What a woman,he thought admiringly.
Gavina was well aware that she was being watched, but she refused to let it bother her. There was a job to be done, and she would do it, as she had always done. She kept her mind focused on picking up the materials she needed for the fire, trying not to look at the bodies. She had covered each one up with their clothing as best she could, but she still imagined that they were staring at her reproachfully from underneath their makeshift shrouds.
Finally, when she had enough firewood, Gavina brought it under the tree and began the tedious process of lighting it. With such waterlogged wood, she knew that she would have to use much more kindling, so she searched under the trees for dry twigs and pine cones, both of which made excellent fire starters.
She made a spark by crashing two stones together, but she had to repeat the action a few dozen times before she managed to coax a flame out of the kindling. The wood sizzled as it burned, gave off the clean, aromatic scent of pine, and it was absolute bliss to sit with her toes almost in the fire, enjoying the delicious sensation of thawing them out. Then she heard her stomach rumbling and was abruptly aware that she was ravenously hungry.
She turned to speak to him. “Struan—” she began, but he could not hear her. He had slipped onto the ground and was lying very still with his eyes closed. Gavina squealed in fright as she squatted in front of him, then she tentatively put out a hand and felt the pulse at his neck, letting out a sigh of relief when she found it steady and strong. She did not know whether he was unconscious or asleep, but all she could do was drag him a little closer to the fire and hope he woke up soon. She was not a doctor and had no way to help him, but they both needed food. Perhaps he was weak from hunger.
One of the few things for which Gavina had been grateful to her abusive father was her ability to scavenge food in the oddest places. He had almost reduced them to starvation a few times by gambling away most of their money, but since they lived by the sea, she had always been able to find seaweed and shellfish to eat.
She had her own rod and tackle too, and had kept them both fed while he idled his time away in wasteful and depraved pursuits. Her father was allegedly a cobbler by trade, but she had never seen him mending any shoes.
Sometimes she had been able to sell a bit of her catch for a few pennies to buy herself some clothes to wear, but they were always someone else’s cast-offs. She was proud of the fact that everything she had and everything she had ever achieved had been done through her own efforts, and now it was standing her in good stead.
She was using her survival skills again, scrambling over the rocks and picking off as many limpets and mussels as she could and putting them into the pockets of her breeches. She gathered up armfuls of seaweed and brought them back to the campfire, where she found that Struan was beginning to stir.
