of her lungs, watching in horror as the men’s feet were suddenly dangling in air. Realizing what was happening, Gil and Exmoor crawled toward safety. But the ground gave way beneath Gil’s legs, the rocks and earth flowing from beneath him almost like a river, and he slid backward, his hands scrabbling for purchase.
“Gil!”
Richard, who had reached stable ground, turned around as Gil slid slowly over the lip of the cliff, the spray from the Falls beside him rising around him like a cloud. Richard crawled over to the edge and peered over it.
“Hold on, I’ll help you!” he shouted, reaching one arm over the side.
Nicola prayed frantically as she watched. The muscles in the earl’s back bunched, and she could see his shoulder move. Then there was a brief cry, and Richard went limp, his arm still dangling over the side.
Nicola’s stomach fell to her feet, and she sat down hard, her knees suddenly too watery to support her. She could not speak. Slowly Richard edged back from the cliff and rose to his feet, turning around.
“I am sorry,” he told her. “He couldn’t hold on. I tried, but he slipped out of my grasp. He is gone.”
CHAPTER FOUR
NICOLA TURNED AWAY FROM THE FALLS, her eyes blinded with tears. The memory of that day ten years ago was as clear as if it had happened yesterday. She could still remember the sick, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach as she sat there, staring numbly at the cliff’s edge. Shock and disbelief had swamped her. Her heart was already stricken with grief, but her mind could not yet grasp the facts. Gil couldn’t be dead!
Then a new thought had entered her mind, and she had jumped to her feet, shaky but filled with hope. “Maybe he didn’t die! Maybe he’s down at the bottom of the gorge—hurt!”
“Impossible. He could not have survived the fall. You know the rocks around there.”
“But there is water, too! He could have fallen into the water.”
“No. You must not go down there. It would be too horrible a sight.”
But she had ignored Richard, running to her horse and clambering onto it to ride down and around to the entrance of the gorge. Once she reached the mouth of the gorge, she rode back up its length to Lady Falls. It was the only way to get to the area below them; the walls of the gorge were too precipitate beside the Falls. But it took an inordinately long time, and by the time she reached the spot below the cliff where Gil had fallen, it was late afternoon, and the high walls of the gorge cast deep shadows all around the pool where the waterfall emptied.
There was no body on the rocks or ground, though she and Richard, who had insisted on accompanying her, had searched all over, clambering over rocks. Nor could she see Gil’s body in the pool, dug deep by years of erosion.
“Nicola…let me take you home. This is fruitless. Surely you can see that. His body is either at the bottom of the pool or it was swept downriver. In either case, the boy is long since dead. If the fall didn’t kill him, he surely drowned. Please…”
“He’s not dead!” she had shrieked. “He’s not! I know it! I would feel it if he were. He’s alive! He fell into the water and must have been swept down the river, but he could still be alive. He just got out farther downriver.”
They rode back through the gorge at a much slower pace than they had taken coming in, searching the narrow river and its banks for sign of a man. There was no sign of him. It was almost dark by the time they reached the mouth of the gorge, and Nicola had allowed Richard to escort her home. “I am sorry,” he had said as he helped her down from her horse at Buckminster. “I was angry, yes, but you must know that I never meant him to die.”
Nicola had nodded numbly.
“I tried to save him. You saw that. But our hands were wet, and we couldn’t hold on. He slipped out of my grasp.” When Nicola said nothing, he went on. “I will send for the magistrate and tell him what happened. Don’t worry. I will make sure that your reputation isn’t harmed by it. We cannot let anyone know that you were out there with a groom.”
“I don’t care about my reputation!” Nicola had snapped. “And he’s not dead! I know it.”
“Of course.”
He had spoken quietly to her mother, who later insisted that Nicola drink some nasty tonic that a doctor had given her. Nicola had then gone to her bedroom, certain that she would never be able to sleep, but wanting some blessed solitude while she waited out the long, dark night. She had been surprised to find that she went to sleep almost immediately, and the next day, when she woke up, it was almost noon. She realized then that her mother must have given her some of her laudanum, doubtless on the Earl’s suggestion.
Shaking off her grogginess, Nicola had ridden back to the gorge and searched it from one end to the other in the daylight. But there was no sign of Gil. She went back home, hoping that there had been some word from Gil that he was all right, but there had been no message for her. She refused her mother’s tonic that evening and as a consequence spent a long, restless night, remembering each detail of Gil’s plunge off the cliff and repeating to herself all the reasons why Gil might still be alive. He was young and healthy, and obviously he had fallen into the water instead of onto the hard rocks. The pool was deep, so he would not have hit the bottom. And he had told her that he was a strong swimmer. He had to have survived. He had to.
But as the days passed and no word had come from Gil, the knowledge that he must be dead had weighed more and more heavily upon her. If he were alive, she knew that he would have contacted her somehow. She had managed to think of reasons why he might have delayed contacting her—he was delirious, perhaps, or lying unconscious somewhere, or had broken his arm so that he could not write. But as time went by, even those gloomy hopes faded.
Day after day she had waited, and no message had ever come. Nicola knew then that Gil was indeed dead. She had sunk into depression, not eating, not sleeping, refusing some days even to get out of bed.
The magistrate had come and asked her a few gentle questions, and she had told him that yes, the Earl had reached down to grab Gil, but he had slipped out of Richard’s grasp, that yes, it had been an accident. She had realized after a time that the magistrate believed that Nicola and Richard had been out for a ride together, with Gil along to take care of the horses. She had started to protest, but then she realized that it didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
One day, two weeks later, her aunt had come for a visit and swept Nicola back to London with her. At first Nicola had not wanted to go, still clinging to a faint, desperate hope that one day Gil would get in touch with her. But her aunt had refused to take no for an answer, and Nicola had realized finally that she could not continue to stay here, soaking in her misery, surrounded by all the places and things that reminded her of Gil and their brief love.
She had taken one last ride up to Lady Falls to say her farewell to Gil. She had stood for a long time at the edge of the Falls, looking out over the green gorge, then down, following the silver spray of water to where it splashed into the gorge below. Finally, she turned away, and as she did so, a flash of gold just below the rim of the gorge caught her eye. She looked again, her eyes focusing on the small, thorny bush that grew out of the cliffside less than a foot below the edge. She spotted the wink of gold again, and she dropped down onto her knees at the edge of the cliff, her heart beginning to pound. There, caught in the thorny foliage, was the ring Gil had given her. When Richard had torn it from her neck and tossed it away, it
