Lancaster leaned closer. “What is that? A cat’s skull?”
She edged past him. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s still little bits of…stuffing inside it.”
“Stuffing, hm?”
She rubbed her hand furiously against her skirt.
“Why don’t you wait out in the sun while I check the rest of this cave.”
It didn’t take long. A few more bones lay scattered about. An ancient bird’s nest and some mouse droppings.
“There’s nothing here, I’m afraid.”
She nodded, but he could see the disappointment in her eyes. “Best to move on then. Maybe we should split up. We’d make better time.”
“Not a chance.” When he joined her and dared to look toward the ground, Lancaster regretted it. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that the trip down would be more harrowing than the journey up. And the rope wound around his waist proved a complete waste without a tree to anchor it to. None of the rocks here looked sturdy enough to support a child, much less two adults.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “You follow.”
When she nodded, he took a deep breath, turned his back to the ocean, and eased down to his knees. Four feet later, he finally exhaled. It couldn’t be more than another three yards, after all. “All right, Cyn. Slow and careful now.”
She dropped a leg over the edge, far too casually in his opinion, then searched around for a toehold for a good thirty seconds. His arms ached with the urge to reach up and help, but there was nothing he could do but hope that if she fell, he would cushion her landing.
Finally, she found a steady perch and eased her body out into open air.
Her hiked skirts dragged even higher. The tops of her mended stockings showed now, then her bare thighs, trembling with strain. Thank God Mrs. Pell had come through with the stockings. Those naked legs had played a significant role in his fantasy last night. Of course, he could see beyond the stockings now.
Perched on the side of a cliff, hanging by his fingertips, Lancaster forgot to dwell on the height and began to dwell on Cynthia’s thighs. One of her boots pointed as she lowered a leg. The other knee bent.
The hem of her chemise tightened to a band at an awkward angle, then gave up and inched higher.
Lancaster narrowed his eyes, studying the sunlight glow off the silk of her inner thighs. The muscles flexed, pointing a line upward. His eyes followed….
“All right!” Cynthia called, startling him from his disrespectful reverie. “You can move lower now.”
In the end, his guilt proved his undoing. Mind swirling, he stepped blindly down and found nothing but air beneath. His other foot slipped. His hands, sweat-slick for some reason, lost their grip on the rock. He was falling.
The sound of the wind rushing by his ears diminished Cyn’s scream to the cry of a startled bird. Her face grew smaller. The waves roared louder.
And then everything stopped.
The world stopped, and he went on, still alive despite the complete cessation of sound and light and air.
Air. He couldn’t breathe.
His mind exploded in a melee of fear. He couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly he could feel it, the rope tightening around his neck. He wanted to claw at it, but there was no air left to power his arms. His lungs burned until the ache rose up to meet the fire at his neck. He was dying. Again.
“Nick.” The ringing bell sounded strangely like his name.
“Nick!” Now a chorus of voices shouted, each one barely overlapping the other, drawing his name out for miles.
Something landed hard on his chest. Light flared back to existence. Cold air rushed into his lungs.
“Nick. Oh, God, Nick.”
The dark blob hovering over him sharpened into the shadowed oval of Cynthia’s worried face.