Chapter Twenty-six

Phillip had to leave him there to climb back onto the rocks at the point and wave his coat at the villagers. The rain had ended, the fires were out, and many of them had left the beach. A few remained though. He jumped and waved his coat like a madman until at last he saw one point in his direction. Another waved back.

Phillip yelled, uselessly, of course, his words pulled out to sea. “Come on! I found Carne. Come help me.”

They must have understood, for they pointed and waved and mimed going to him. Yet it seemed hours before a group of men came overland and descended a pathway from the cliff above. He watched them come, grateful they’d understood enough to bring a stretcher.

Robin came along at the rear. He hauled Phillip up and away from men covering Carne with a blanket and hefting him onto the stretcher. “Best to stand back and let them work. We know how to do rescues around here.”

“Did anyone else get lost in the storm?”

“Hardly a storm. Just a bit of rain.”

Phillip growled and decided the sound was as good as anything Carne could manage. Please be all right, Carne. Make that sound when you see me again. Then smile again. Please, please.

“Did anyone else get lost in the drizzle?”

Robin grinned, obviously pleased he was willing to go along with that sad sense of humor. “No, but Mitchell and Gwalather had a bit of an ‘accident’ when they arrived at shore. That big ox Mitchell attacked and beat crippled old Gwalather, then his father too. Mitchells’ cove ain’t far, so everybody heard the clamor.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “I told what I knew about it all, and some men went to gather up all three of ’em. Constable Jacobs too. They’re all sittin’ in jail till the village decides who done what and who owes what.”

Phillip would’ve been interested in the story of small-town justice taken into the villagers’ own hands if he hadn’t been much more involved with watching the rescuers lash Carne to their makeshift stretcher composed of two long bars with canvas slung between. They went up the cliffside path toward a waiting wagon.

Phillip huffed after them, far behind. Yet he also stopped when the men came to an abrupt halt before they got to the wagon.

Had Carne died? What was wrong? Phillip took a few tentative steps forward, dreading the truth.

And then the man following just behind Carne called to Phillip, “Treleaven is asking for you.”

Phillip closed his eyes. He knew crying or jumping up and down like a madman or doing a jig would be a questionable response. He made an attempt to call upon a quiet dignity he’d never possessed. When he opened his eyes again, he beamed at the backs of the men trudging toward the wagon. He bounded after them and their patient.

By the time he reached them, Carne had closed his eyes again. But he muttered, “Phillip?”

“Here I am,” Phillip said. “These men have come to your aid.” He kept his tone brisk, hoped Carne understood that they had witnesses, and that otherwise Phillip would lean over him, kiss him, and stroke the hair from his forehead. And maybe box his ears.

They pushed the stretcher onto the wagon, and Phillip climbed up to sit beside it. A thin man with a bowler hat knelt next to the stretcher on the other side. He laid his ear on Carne’s chest then ran his hands up and down his body. A moment later he reached across Carne and offered a slender hand to Phillip.

“I’m Hammett. I usually take care of animals hereabouts.”

Phillip shook Hammett’s hand. “Any relation to Robin?”

“A cousin, once removed, I think it’s called.”

Phillip wanted to demand a human physician, but decided to be diplomatic. “What’s wrong with Mr. Treleaven besides that scrape on his side?”

“He may have fractured his arm,” Hammett said. “He’ll need some stitches on a couple of cuts, but nothing so deep he’s lost blood. Oh, and he’s had a great wallop on the head. He’s probably swallowed more seawater than is good for a man. He’ll be coughing it up for a while.”

“I’m here,” Carne said, eyes still closed. “No need to talk about me as if I’m one of your usual patients, Hammett.”

The veterinarian tapped the side of the stretcher. “No need at all if you promise to stop snarling.” He looked at Phillip and grinned. “But there’s small chance of that, eh?”

Phillip began to laugh and had trouble stopping. He pressed his hand to his mouth and blinked away the hysterical tears that sprang to his eyes.

Someone offered a canvas tarpaulin for shelter, and the driver got the wagon moving. The veterinarian put a blanket around Phillip’s shoulders. “Bit of shock, I think. You’re shaking like a wee terrier. But we’ll have you both home soon with a fire on the hearth to warm you. You’ll be as right as rain in no time.”

As right as the cold rain that still trickled from the sky. The rain was wonderful. The stormy afternoon was wonderful. The wagon jolting over muddy ruts hard enough to make Carne groan was wonderful. Phillip could find fault with nothing, he was so grateful to have Carne alive and more or less well beside him.

He wrapped both his hands around Carne’s, not worrying about how that might appear to Hammett. The man would assume it was for warmth only. Phillip’s teeth chattered in staccato rhythm along with Carne’s, and that was wonderful too. They were in perfect sync. And, if he had his way, they’d continue to move and breathe and be together for a long while to come.

*

Carne’s body felt as battered as Crowder’s boat. Every muscle and bone ached. But he didn’t mind. It meant he was alive. And he didn’t mind the cold because it made Phillip hold his hands to keep them warm. He passed in and out of consciousness, waking every time the wagon wheels hit a rut and jolted him from his drowse.

The next time he came fully awake, they were carrying him into the house. A flurry of activity, enough to make his head spin, happened all around him. Someone lit a fire in the stove and put a kettle on. He sat up, then carefully rose to his feet with the support of a couple of men. Hands removed his sodden clothing, making him wince as they jarred his arm. Someone toweled him dry while Hammett rechecked his arm, pronounced the limb sprained rather than broken, and wrapped it from wrist to the elbow.

His lungs and throat ached as if someone had scraped them with barnacles.

Roger Peters offered him a large mug of heated whiskey. “It’ll drive the cold out of every nook and cranny,” he promised. “You’d better have one too, Professor. In fact, I think we could all do with a drink. Bring out more mugs, Robin. And you, Angrove, go fetch another bottle if you’ve got one.”

Phillip helped him into a shirt. “Your nightshirt won’t go on over your bandaged arm so I thought this and a pair of drawers would do.”

Carne blinked away dizziness and held out his good arm to help. Only then did the formless cloud of dread hanging over him take distinct shape. He’d been so grateful to survive and equally grateful that Phillip hadn’t left that he’d forgotten to ask one very important question. “What happened to Billy Crowder?”

No one had to answer. Their downcast gazes told all.

A fleeting memory of his lungs burning, limbs thrashing in thick water, and the surety that he would not ever breathe air again washed through Carne. He shivered, knowing exactly what Billy’s last moment had been like—and what his own tas had felt at the candle-guttering end of his life.

“My fault,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have taken on that second crate, and I should’ve been more careful maneuvering around the Shite.”

“No more your fault than Billy’s. There was two of you on that boat.” Peters poured more into the mug Carne barely recalled sipping from. “Could have happened to any one of us.”

“The sea will take her pound of flesh now and again,” Angrove added.

Phillip tugged on his arm, leading him toward the bed. “Best lie down.” He drew open the covers and urged Carne between the sheets. His body shook so hard, it made his chest ache. Hammett made him take a pill probably meant for a horse, and Peters coaxed him to drink more whiskey.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Carne to lose consciousness again.

The next time he woke, the bedroom was quiet and still. All the men were gone except the one stretched out beside him, keeping him as warm as an oven. An arm and leg stretched across his body, heavily weighing him down, and the rumble of snoring vibrated companionably in the air of the firelit room.

He’s here! Phillip is here! Carne’s spirit rejoiced and capered like a child dancing round a maypole. All that foolishness about sending him on his way for his own good and pledging to keep him safe—what had that been about? What mattered was them being together, no matter what, no matter where they had to live in order for that to happen.

Any remaining fears Carne had felt about desiring a man, the ones drummed into him through twenty-eight years of living, had been scoured away by the sea that had nearly taken his life. He could see clearly what mattered now. Well, maybe not so clearly as the room was quite dark. But he could certainly feel Phillip there. He stretched out his arm, the one that didn’t throb as if it were crushed in a vise, and touched Phillip’s bare arm thrown casually over his chest.

Sometime during Carne’s rescue and transport by stretcher, one of the men had told him how Professor Singleton had gone out, all by himself, climbed across the rocks around the point on the south side of the cove in order to find him. He’d singlehandedly crossed that treacherous ground and searched in the near dark to find Carne, then signaled for help. The city man had been determined and nothing short of heroic.

That’s Phillip, Carne had thought. Tenacious as a dog after a bone. And I love him for it. I love him.

He’d thought it on the stretcher and he thought it again now. Words he felt he truly understood for the first time in his life. Of course he’d loved his family, but that was different. This was the sort of love that made one person choose another and wish to spend the rest of his days on earth with them. The sort of feeling he’d, unfortunately, never had for Bea, though he admired and liked the woman dearly.

He would tell Phillip this. Not now, when his friend was snoring sweetly. But when they were both wide awake and not in peril in a cave or the ocean. Carne would proclaim his feelings without blushing or ducking his head or using less powerful words such as I care for you. He would proclaim I love you and perhaps, if he was very lucky, Professor Singleton would say it back.