A hand reached out and caught her wrist. “Get down here,” Stephen ordered, his head poking over the lip of the cliff.
She shook her head and tried to escape, but his hand was like a vise. “I can’t.” She reared back violently, her hair falling into her eyes. “I’m afraid of heights, of falling.”
Once the admission was out, she couldn’t take it back. She glanced up at him, sure his eyes would reflect disgust at her weakness, but Westman’s blue eyes met hers with unwavering solidity. “Yes, you can, Josephine. It’s no different from climbing out of your window. You can do it. I’ll catch you.”
The bullets had stopped, but Josie heard another sound far more distressing. The men were climbing up the rocks. She could hear their boots scraping on the granite and the muffled curses that followed.
“They’re coming,” she squeaked. Her limbs were shaking, but she forced herself back to the edge of the cliff, back to Westman and his steadfast faith in her. She would scoot over the edge and join him. He had done it, so why couldn’t she? And he would be there to catch her. She wouldn’t fall.
But when she looked down again, when she saw that drop, her body rebelled. “I can’t do it,” she said, pulling away again. Lord, but she was a coward. Her grandfather would have been so disappointed.
Westman didn’t let go of her, and his grip on her wrist was punishing. She could hear the men coming closer, knew time was running out.
“You can do it,” Westman said. “Look at me, only me, and you can do it.”
His gaze met hers and held, and she forced herself to ignore the approaching voices and the sheer drop and stare into his blue eyes. She had once thought she could stare at them for days. Now she would test their power, and her own courage.
She inched closer to the lip, closer to Westman, felt the ground open into empty space beneath her shoulders, and wanted desperately to look down.
“Look right here,” Westman demanded. “Right here.”
She had hated his protectiveness, had never thought that she needed that kind of care. Now she knew she’d been wrong. She needed him, needed at this moment to be taken care of, and there was no shame in that. It didn’t make her weak or unequal. It made her human.
She stared into those blue eyes, darker than the sky on a clear day but lighter than the deep of the ocean. His strong hands grasped her under her arms, supporting her.
“I have you,” he promised her. “Come to me.”
She stared into those eyes, as blue as a placid lake or a tiny, speckled bird’s egg. Her eyes locked on his, she allowed him to lift her and pull her over the edge. For a moment, it seemed his balance, and thus hers, teetered. For an instant, she feared they would crash over the cliff into the hungry waves below.
And then he had her, and she was burrowed into his coat, safe and warm and surrounded by the smells of horse and earth and man.
Like a baby, she clutched his coat and held on. She could feel the tears stinging behind her eyelids, fighting to be free, but Josie didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried when she was eight and broke her arm after a fall from a tree, and she wouldn’t cry now. But she thanked God he had been there to save her—that he would be there to save her.
“Josie,” Westman whispered. She felt his finger under her chin and grudgingly allowed him to lift her face from its safe cocoon. She was once again staring into those calm, sure eyes. “We can’t stay here. They’ll find us. We must move down.”
Josie chanced to look down and the feeling of falling overwhelmed her. She clutched Westman as her body was shocked into rigid fear.
“Josie,” his voice was low and calm. Listening to him speak, she would have thought they were alone in bed, making slow, leisurely love, with all the time in the world. And yet above her, she could hear the men climbing the final few feet.
“I have you. I won’t let you fall. We must climb down. There, see that ledge?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t look down,” she whispered, fighting the nausea that churned her stomach at the very thought.
“Then just listen.” His voice soothed and placated. “There’s a wide ledge, perhaps three feet, just a short climb down. I’ll lower you onto the ledge and then come down after. I’m betting there’s a space underneath the ledge, a place we can hide.”
“You’re betting?” she said, trying to keep her voice from jittering. “I don’t think this is something I want you to wager on.”
“Oh, come on.” His voice had turned teasing. “I thought you liked adventure. Let’s take a risk.”
She opened her eyes. “You know what? I don’t think I like risks anymore. I would much prefer to be home practicing my embroidery. Yes, I think that’s what I want to do.”
He grinned at her. They were hanging on to the lip of a cliff, a deadly drop beneath them, and he was smiling. “Too late. I’m lowering you now.”
He took her hands in his, and she clamped her teeth together, trying to force some of the famous Hale courage into her blood. Where had it all gone now that she needed it? What had the Morning Post called her? The Unflappable Josephine Hale. Lord, she felt distinctly flappable right now.
Westman wedged himself closer to the rock at their backs, then hands clamped securely on her, he lifted her.
She let out a small squeak—just one—and dropped. She tried very hard to watch her feet and only her feet. The dark water churning below her was nothing. It didn’t matter. The ledge Westman had told her about was inching closer. Her dangling feet almost touched it. Another inch. There.
