The Highlander's Maiden. Elizabeth Mayne

Ian screamed as he went down into the icy pool.

      Millie scrambled onto the icy rocks, terrified by the sight of the ice closing over Ian’s head. “What do I do? Ian!”

      “I’ll get Ian! Get help! Get your skates off and run, Millie. Run!” Cassie raced to the fracture.

      The little girl moved quicker than Cassie could speak, catching hold of the buckles over her boots as an entire sheet of ice tilted crazily under Cassie, sending her skidding downward into a shockingly cold ice bath.

      “Get your father!” Cassie screamed one last instruction before she, too, plunged under the ice.

      Cassie’s arms and legs thrashed against the cloud of ice shards that accompanied her descent, in a failed effort to swim. Her cloak and heavy wool skirts rose as she sank. Then they tangled around her arms until she touched the rocky bottom. There the cold water was crystal clear save for a cloud of dark mud stirred up by Ian’s violent thrashing. Cassie bent her knees and pushed against the bottom to propel herself more quickly to Ian.

      The little boy was trapped under a huge slab of unbroken ice. Even with the momentum of a firm thrust of her legs, getting to Ian quickly seemed to take Cassie an eternity in her heavy clothes. She grabbed the boy and pulled him to her, swiveling, looking for the hole in the ice, out of breath and as desperate for wind in her lungs as he was.

      Ian’s fingers clawed at her, tearing at her billowing hair. His shoes, skates and knees pounded her as if he were trying to walk to the surface on a ladder made of her very body.

      Their heads broke the sparkling surface at the same time and the cold air on their water-chilled skin was a second shock as they each gasped for wind. “Whisht, shh, shh, now, laddie,” Cassie gasped, lifting him above the water’s surface so he could breathe deeply. “I’ve got you, sweetheart, be calm. It’s only water.”

      He coughed out mouthfuls of water, choked and gasped and sputtered like a floundering fish. While he got his wind back, Cassie looked for Millie and carefully gauged her own precarious position. Millie was nowhere to be seen, but the ice under the rocks where she’d been standing was intact. Her gleaming skates and the two apples lay negligently cast aside on the rocks. That gave Cassie a moment’s deep relief. One child was safe.

      Ian, still thrashing, became heavier by the moment. Now how was she to get herself and Ian out of the mess they were in?

      Cassie had nothing to grab hold of near her. As Ian came to his senses, he took a breath and coughed more normally. His little arms and legs clamped onto her body, limiting her own movements severely.

      The coldness of the water had ceased being important. In fact, it almost felt warm compared to the air above the water. “Ian, let go of my arms. I’ve got to swim to get us out of here, sweetling.”

      His jacketed arms clutched her so tightly, he strangled her. He was crying, too, a frightened little boy, and no wonder that—trapped under the ice as he had been. Cassie hugged him a moment longer as tightly as he hugged her, using her strong legs to keep their heads afloat. Her skirts and cloak tangled in her legs. Their weight, along with her boots and skates, made every circling motion an effort.

      Mentally, she prayed, Millie, Millie, sweetheart, run as fast as you can!

      The silence of the mountain pool paid a credit to its isolation. If she and Ian were to be rescued, she had best see to getting them out of the water herself.

       Chapter Two

      Glencoen Farm was clearly in the travelers’ sight when the little girl from the skating pond came screaming and tumbling down the track, out of breath and too terrified to speak clearly.

      She got out the words “ice broke” “Auntie” and “Ian” before she took off running for the farmstead, howling like a banshee again.

      “What the devil?” Alexander Hamilton sputtered, confused by the child’s terror -and slurred Gaelic words.

      Robert Gordon understood the child’s terror-driven message. Dropping the measuring cord in his hands, he turned and bolted back the way they’d come, running for dear life to the top of the first hill and up the twisting path to the high meadow. Pines hid the pool from sight, but he ran onward at full speed, dread building with each pounding step across the stony ground for what his eyes would find when the pond came into view.

      It was worse than he’d had scant heartbeats to envision. The mountain pool had no skaters on its glistening, windswept surface. The southern corner of it thrashed with a froth of broken, disturbing shards of ice and the fractured glare of lights reflecting from it.

      Broken ice, treacherous footing and no purchase anywhere, Robert stopped at the edge of the rocky pool, mentally assessing what he saw. A solid sheet of ice extended forward from his boots thirty feet. From there to the southmost bank, it had become a mire of sharp, fragmented shards. The young woman and the boy struggled to stay afloat at the edge of the solid sheet. Their heads bobbed up and down in his sight, competing with chunks of ice for space on the surface of the pond.

      Robert shed his weapons, belt, sporran and plaid. In two quick jerks he removed his boots, flung off his cap, then his jerkin, and went out on the still firm ice. He felt the shock of the terrible cold underfoot.

      He sighted the girl as she vainly struggled to put the little boy onto the slippery ice ahead of her. It broke, and he went under again only to be grabbed by her, and caught by her, forced forward and onto the ice again. Their dark wools performed that slow, exhausted dance over and over again as he watched, gaining only inches and losing vast ground as more and more ice shattered underneath them.

      Likewise, Robert’s progress toward them felt like a snail’s dance. His heart dropped when her last effort put the boy on a floating island of ice, but caused her to sink in utter exhaustion as the island tilted and wedged under the remaining sheet of solid ice on which Robert made such laggard progress.

      The child began to scream pitifully at having lost sight of his aunt. Robert picked his next steps carefully, eyeing hairline stress marks in the fractured sheet as he lay down on his stomach and inched onto the ice floe. He caught the boy by his sodden clothes and firmly tugged him off the icy island.

      He turned the startled child in the direction of the shore, telling him calmly, “Stop yer bawling. I’ll fetch yer aunt. Go this way to the shore. Go!”

      Ian found new hope. The other stranger was stretched out on the ice near Ian, holding open arms that promised safety and warmth only a few feet away. Beyond him, Ian’s father rode into sight with all his men from the farm, laying a whip on the horses hitched to his hay wagon. “Da!”

      Robert took one look back, making certain Alex was close enough to reach the small boy to get him if the ice should break again. Satisfied, Robert shed his kilt and slid feetfirst into the ice bath. He sank to the bottom, his eyes open, actively searching for the girl among the water weeds and shards of ice that followed his quick descent.

      The cold stopped his heart and his breath instantly. He found her on the bottom, struggling to remove her weighty woolen cloak from her neck. Pale white fingers clawed at her throat, unable to manage the simple work of unfastening a corded frog and eyelet. The most beautiful cloud of red curls billowed around her like an angel’s halo, sparkling with silvery bubbles of trapped air.

      The maiden’s blue eyes were stricken wide with terror. She startled as he made eellike progress to her. He caught her under her arms, pulled her to his chest and kicked his legs hard, trying to lift them both to the surface. She didn’t budge. She was caught on something.

      He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He let go of her and raced to the surface, broke it and took huge gasps of air, filling his lungs to capacity. Alex was there at the edge of the ice, concern written all over his long face.

      “What’s wrong, Robbie?”