Four lengths, five...and then six. She reached the end and grasped the ledge. Matt’s arm came around her and held again.
He couldn’t think she was drowning now. He was holding her because...?
‘Game for the next bit?’ he asked and she thought: With your arm around me I’m game for anything.
‘I...yes.’ Her teeth weren’t chattering any more. She couldn’t say she was warm but the iciness had dropped a notch. The water felt amazing. You could drink this water, she thought, and took a tentative mouthful and it tasted wonderful.
‘If the bauxite mine ever fails I can put a bottling factory here and make a mint,’ Matt said smugly.
‘Don’t you dare.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ he told her and he smiled at her again. That smile... It was a caress all by itself.
But he was a man on a mission. He had something to show her.
‘The waterfall,’ he told her. ‘We’re going behind it.’
‘We are?’
‘You can’t see anything from out here,’ he told her. ‘But if you aim to the left of centre, put your head down, hold your breath for thirty seconds and swim right through, you’ll find there’s a cave.’
‘Really?’ She stared at the innocent-looking waterfall. ‘There’s no way I can be trapped?’
He grinned at her note of suspicion. ‘You guessed it. You’ll find forty-seven skeletons in there, the remains of every single maiden I’ve ever enticed into my secret lair.’
And she thought suddenly: How do I know he’s not telling the truth? She’d known him for less than three weeks.
She’d been a fool for Brett. How could she trust her judgement now?
Except this was Matt. And Matt was smiling just a little, teasing.
‘I know you’re lying,’ she told him and he raised a quizzical brow.
‘How?’
‘Because you couldn’t possibly have persuaded forty-seven maidens to jump into this ice.’ And she turned towards the waterfall and swam.
It was a weird feeling, to think of swimming through the wall. Instinct told her to reach the tumbling water and stop. She did for a moment, pausing to tread water, feeling the spray of the falls splash on her face.
But Matt was beside her. She could scarcely see him through the mist but he touched her shoulder. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Straight ahead. Put your head down and swim. It’s narrow—you’ll feel rocks on either side—but you’ll be through in seconds.’
‘I...is it dark in there?’
‘I promise it’s not,’ he told her. ‘It’s safe as houses.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, not a centrally heated house,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s worth it. Penny, trust me?’
Did she trust him? She stared at him for a long moment. His face was blurred behind the mist of the waterfall but she could still see him. He’d ceased smiling. He was waiting for her to come to a decision—and suddenly it was about more than the trust required to swim through a waterfall.
It was about total trust.
It was about taking a step that felt momentous.
He put out a hand and touched her face, making the rivulets of water stream across his hand rather than across her eyes. Her vision cleared and she saw him as he was.
A loner. A man of strength and courage. Matt.
And something shifted inside her. Something she couldn’t name. Something that had never been touched before.
She put out her hand and touched his face back.
‘I trust you,’ she whispered and he smiled but it was a different kind of smile. It was a smile that said he was in the same unchartered territory as she was.
‘Then let’s go,’ he told her. ‘Come on, Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth. Let’s do it.’
And he put his hands on her shoulders and twisted her around so she was facing the waterfall and gave her a slight push forward.
‘Through you go,’ he told her. ‘And know that I’m with you all the way.’
* * *
Okay, it was scary. The first bit did involve trust. The wash of tumbling water as she swam through was almost enough to push her under, and then she felt the rocks on either side.
Matt had said to swim through. Just keep on going.
She wasn’t completely enclosed. She could still surface and breathe if she needed to, though the mist from the falls made that hard. It was a narrow channel through the rocks, and it was getting narrower.
But Matt was behind her. She held her breath and dived like a porpoise.
The rocks on both sides touched her shoulders. She used them to pull herself the last little way.
And emerged...to magic.
It was an underground pool that must feed out somehow into the pool they’d just been in, but at the same level. She could hear the rush of water over her head. The creek must branch, above and below. This pool was roofed, and yet not. There were fissures where the sunlight glimmered through, shafts of golden light making the surface of the underground water glimmer in light and shade.
She could see the canopy of the trees through the fissures, but only glimpses. In a couple of places the water course above was overflowing and spilling down, so rivulets of water splashed the surface of the water in the cavern. Some sort of tiny, pale green creeper was trailing downward, tendril after tendril of soft, lush vine.
And at the edges were flat rock ledges. It was, as Matt had said, totally safe.
It took her breath away.
She trod water and turned and Matt was right behind her. Watching her. And the expression on his face... He loved this place, she thought.
‘Oh, Matt, it’s beautiful,’ she breathed, and he smiled, an odd little smile she’d never seen before.
‘Beautiful,’ he agreed, and the way he said it... It took her breath away all over again.
‘I...do you come here often?’ She sounded nervous, she thought, and maybe she was, but in a weird way. It was as if the world was holding its breath. Something seemed about to happen and she wasn’t sure what.
‘Just when I need to,’ he told her. ‘Even Donald doesn’t know about this secret place. Isn’t it great?’
‘It is,’ she breathed. ‘So...your forty-seven maidens?’
‘Okay,
