She waited as time seemed to spin out in endless moments.
And Tom stood there, watching the sands take her, and made no move to help her at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GARRICK HAD LOOKED everywhere for Merryn, asked everyone he had seen and had drawn a blank at every turn. With each empty road and every negative response his anxiety for her had grown, desperation lending his steps even greater speed as he had searched everywhere he could think.
All he could see was Merryn’s stricken face and the blank shock in her eyes as she had reproached him.
“I had nothing of him left,” she had said of her brother. And he had remembered the long, dark night in the beer flood when she had told him that sometimes she could not even remember Stephen’s face, that he was slipping away from her even as she desperately tried to hold something of him to her, to keep his memory alive. He knew that this business of the child was one thing that she could never forgive him for. She had said that she never wanted to see him again. He understood that. But even so he had to know that she was safe.
He had been searching for her since the previous day, tracing her steps to the White Lion in Holborn where the landlord remembered her taking the Bath Flyer, driving hell for leather on the Bath Road, calling at the White Hart in Bath, following her trail to Shipham, becoming more and more anxious for her with every mile that passed because he knew that when she discovered the whole truth as surely she would now, it would shatter her illusions once and for all and destroy her world. Bradshaw had been as slippery and deceitful as Garrick had known he would be, swearing that Merryn knew nothing of the child and that he himself had no interest in the scurrilous gossip that Harriet had carried to him. Garrick had sensed the man was lying about something but in his haste to find Merryn he had let Bradshaw go.
Now he paced the courtyard of the inn in Kilve. As a last resort he had assumed that Merryn would return there intent on taking a carriage home, intent at least on getting as far away from him as possible. He had waited ten minutes, in an agony of impatience and doubt, and a further ten barely able to contain his feelings. And now, another five minutes later, he knew that something was wrong. He could feel it. The unease prickled along his skin and nagged at his mind.
The ostlers were unharnessing his carriage horses, leading them to the stables and rubbing them down. Suddenly Garrick made up his mind.
“Saddle me up your best horse,” he said abruptly to one of the gaping grooms. The anxiety grabbed at him again. “Quickly, man!”
The ostler was looking dubious. This was a country inn, after all.
“The best, your grace?” he queried.
“Now!” Garrick snapped.
The best horse was perhaps not quite as highly bred as those in the Farne stables. In fact it looked suspiciously like an Exmoor pony and he was afraid that his weight would prove too much for it. However it was no broken-winded nag, Garrick saw to his relief, and it proved game enough when he turned it on to the coast path and gave it its head. The stones flew from its hooves. The thunder of the surf was in Garrick’s ears and the whip of cold air on his face, and the ride should have been exhilarating had fear not held him tight in its grasp now, a dark formless dread that told him that something was terribly awry.
He saw the blue of Merryn’s gown from the cliffs and immediately changed his course to go down onto the beach. There was someone with her; Garrick could not see clearly what was happening but they were by the water’s edge. Merryn appeared to be on her knees …
Then two things happened at once. He recognized Tom Bradshaw when Tom began to run. And Merryn did not move.
With a muffled oath Garrick set the horse to the edge of the cliff, scrambling and slithering down the precipitous slope until they reached the beach. Thank God, he thought, this was an Exmoor pony. It looked as though it took such inclines in its stride every day of the week. It was not even pulling for breath. He urged it to a gallop and the little creature responded, the sand flying. On the way he passed Bradshaw running away as fast as he could. Bradshaw took a shot at him, the bullet flying so close that it passed through the horse’s mane. Garrick did not even pause. His entire being was focused on Merryn, on reaching her in time, on saving her. His heart was thumping.
He reined in six feet back from the edge of the water so that the horse did not become mired in the quicksand, too. He cut the reins.
“Keep still,” he said to Merryn. “Don’t move.” There was no time. She was already up to her thighs in the sand, then her hips, her waist. Her face was white as chalk, her eyes huge, terrified. But he could not allow himself to think of that. He could not allow himself to think of her fear, or feel his own. He had to concentrate. He knotted the reins into a loop with hands that were absolutely steady.
“Listen to me,” he said, and saw her give a tiny nod. “I’m going to throw this to you. Slip the noose around your body and hold on tight.”
Merryn did not respond. Her eyes were blank.
“Do you understand?” Garrick said. He injected a hint of steel into his voice. “Merryn.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Another wave broke around her and Garrick saw her slip an inch deeper, two inches. The sand was almost up to her armpits now. In seconds she would be gone. The fear clawed at his throat, paralyzing him for a brief second. To lose Merryn now would be intolerable, eclipsing everything else that had happened in his life, driving out light and love forever. When Purchase had confronted him about his feelings for Merryn he had denied that he loved her. He had believed it. He had thought himself too tarnished and bitter to love. He recognized his mistake now in the seconds before he was about to lose that love forever.
He could see the horror in Merryn’s eyes. It filled her whole being. The sand sucked at her and she slipped another inch. She opened her mouth to scream. Garrick knew she was on the very edge of hysteria and that if she gave in to it she would be lost. She would sink in an instant and be smothered, drowned in sand.
“Merryn,” he said. “I love you. Don’t leave me now.”
Her gaze jerked up to his. Her breathing calmed a fraction.
He threw the makeshift rope.
She caught it and slipped the loop over her head and the breath left Garrick’s lungs so fast he felt dizzy.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
The snow was swirling, blinding him now. He pulled harder than he had ever pulled in his life before and felt the resistance. He pulled again, almost wrenching his arms from their sockets, and then another wave broke and he felt the sands shift and move and Merryn came free to her waist, then her knees, and then she was sprawling on the sand in a tumbled heap, half conscious, as Garrick lifted her with hands that shook so much now he could not keep them steady. He held her close against his racing heart and pressed his lips to her hair.
“I am sorry,” he said. “If you cannot forgive me—” “Be quiet, Garrick,” Merryn said very clearly. Her eyes opened. She reached up and cupped his face in her hands and kissed him and then Garrick was kissing her back, over and over, desperate, famished kisses as though he would never let her go.
THEY DID NOT TALK on the way back. The horse was tired now and carrying a double weight and Merryn felt colder and more tired still. Garrick had wrapped her in his jacket and though she murmured a protest and tried to shrug it off