was aching all over, battered from the onslaught of falling masonry, fresh cuts oozing from his arms where the sharp edges of several bricks had caught him. He felt the warm, sluggish seep of the blood. He looked around. They had been more than lucky this time. One of the roof beams had fallen from two floors above, spearing the ground not three feet away from them. He shuddered to see it.
“You saved my life again.” Merryn sat back on her heels, resting her battered hands in her lap.
“You saved mine, too,” Garrick said. They stared at one another. “It could become a habit,” Garrick added.
She gave him a hesitant smile. “Well … Thank you. Again.”
“My pleasure.” He raised his brows. “Have you noticed anything?”
“Only that you look extremely disheveled … Oh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I can see you properly!”
He could see her, too. In the narrow shaft of light that now penetrated from above she looked like a dusty angel. Her hair was almost white with dirt, a stiff, tousled halo about her face. Her skin looked unnaturally pale under its coating of grime but her eyes gleamed as bright as sapphires. She was filthy, her skirts in tatters, the skin of her hands and arms chapped and rubbed raw, but in a heartbeat she had regained all her courage and confidence. Garrick felt his heart jerk with admiration. Gently bred women were not raised to deal with disasters such as this. When danger struck they showed whether or not they had that core of steel and Merryn had shown character through and through. She had been brave beyond measure.
Her brow had wrinkled. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”
Garrick hastily wiped the smile from his face. “Um … You, too, look most … disheveled.”
She frowned. “You were laughing at me. How ungallant!”
“You are right, of course,” Garrick said. “A gentleman should never make adverse comment on a lady’s appearance.” Yet still he could not take his gaze from her. The light was growing stronger all the time, illuminating the streaks of dirt on her face and the tracks of those fierce, angry tears she had shed when she thought she might have lost him. Her hands, as small and capable as the rest of her, were punctured with faint blue bruises among the cuts. Garrick raised a hand as though in a dream, and brushed away the smudges of her tears with his thumb. He heard her breath catch and felt her skin warm beneath his touch. He pushed the filthy hair away from her face. The back of his fingers brushed her cheek and she made the softest sound in her throat and turned her face against his caress like a cat seeking the sun.
He cradled her head in his hand and drew her forward for his kiss. This time it was not a kiss in anger or passion. It was gentle and sweet but so deep that when he let her go he found he was shaking. They gazed at one another, the moment spinning out, the dust motes dancing in the light that seemed to surround Merryn like a halo, and then she turned away and her face was in shadow and instead of pulling her back into his arms and kissing her senseless, as he ached to do, Garrick let her go.
The latest fall of masonry had revealed what had once been a chimney and now it stood straight and tall among the debris of tumbled walls, offering a tantalizing glimpse of light and sky. It seemed a very long way up.
“I assume,” Merryn said, looking up, “that we have to climb out of here?”
“Yes.” Garrick cleared his throat. “We do.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Merryn had already started to scramble over the rubble at the base of the chimney. Before Garrick could say anything she was reaching for footholds, clambering up like a monkey, clinging to impossible ledges and giving him a most enticing view up her skirts at the same time. Garrick felt distracted, hot and confused, left behind by her sudden energy. He had to make a very deliberate effort to get to his feet. His whole body seemed to rebel against movement.
Ten feet above him Merryn stopped and looked down. A shower of grit and small stones rattled past Garrick’s head and he flinched.
“What are you waiting for?” she said it again. She sounded impatient. Garrick thought that it was probably not the moment to tell her that ever since he had fallen out of a tree at the age of five, he had been afraid of heights.
“You will probably have more difficulty than I …” She had started to climb again and her voice sounded faint and far away. “Because you are much larger than I am.”
“Thank you for that,” Garrick said. He set his jaw. He had to do this. Was he to sit here and wait for Merryn to climb out and fetch help? That would be intolerable. She had been afraid of the dark. He disliked heights. Neither of them could pander to their fear. Another rattle of stone had him clenching his teeth so tightly they ground audibly. He knew he had to concentrate on each handhold, each foothold, on climbing steadily toward the light. He could not afford to think about falling or to allow even a flicker of fear to loosen his grip as Merryn slipped and slithered above him, one foot swinging free of the wall, her skirts filling out like a bell.
It seemed to take forever. Twice Garrick slipped and thought he would fall, and saw Merryn’s face, pale and strained, staring down from above him. Finally he was up at the top, his palms slippery with sweat, his heart racing, and he could feel the air on his face and it was fresh and cold, a whole world away from the dark, dank prison below. Merryn offered him her hand to pull him out of the chimney and he took it and felt the strength in her and saw her wide smile and he looked around and the world rocked and he almost fell.
They were on what was left of a roof. Garrick felt a little dizzy. Merryn’s hand tightened on his. She gave him a brilliant smile, lit up with relief and excitement. “We’re free!” she said. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
“Marvelous.” Garrick dared not look down. As far as he could tell the roof had fallen by perhaps five or six feet during the flood, which meant that they were still a good twenty-five feet from the ground since these houses were built tall and narrow, crowding toward the sky. Instead of looking directly down, Garrick fixed his gaze on the reassuring sight of the steeple of St. Anthony’s Church a few streets away. The sky behind the church tower was the palest white blue of early morning and beyond that, for street after street, he could see the skyline of London with its jumbled mixture of spires and towers, slates and tiles, stretching away to the frosty green hills beyond. The river curled like a lazy gray snake to the south, mist wreathing its banks, with tiny bridges and the smudge of roads barely visible in the dawn light. It felt very cold up here on the roof with the winter wind nipping at his exposed skin.
“You are very pale.” Merryn sounded concerned. “Are you sure you did not hurt yourself on the climb—”
“I do not care for heights.” Garrick bit the words out and saw her brows rise.
“Oh.” Her tone changed. “Oh, dear. And we are on the roof.”
“Quite.” Garrick forced a smile. “My father used to take me up on to the roof of Farnecourt when I was a boy,” he said. “He asked me what sort of a man I was if I could not even look down at the ground without turning green.”
Merryn’s face registered vivid disgust. “What a very disagreeable person your father was,” she remarked. She drew her knees up and laced her arms around them. “A pity he is dead. I should have liked to give him a piece of my mind.”
“That,” Garrick said, “I would have enjoyed.”
He could see that Merryn was looking down and he felt his stomach
