Prince Incognito. Rachelle McCalla

Bardici from reaching the prone soldier. “He’s recovering. He just needs time.”

       “And then what? He’ll awaken in a fit of terror and kill us all.”

       “No, he won’t.”

       “You don’t know that. You don’t know him. Your uncle David recognized the name from his uniform. He was part of the insurgent uprising that caused all that commotion in Sardis. Don’t you see, Lillian? We can’t trust him. He’s dangerous.”

       “He’s a human being. If you toss him overboard, he’ll die. That’s called murder, and it’s illegal.” She didn’t bother to mention that it went against the Bible’s teachings. Her father didn’t share her faith, and she’d learned not to try to foist it on him.

       “It’s not illegal if it’s done in self-defense.”

       “He’s not threatening you.”

       “Not now, but if he wakes up and tries something, he could overpower all three of us. Besides, if I don’t do it, David said he’d drop everything and take care of the man himself. You saw the explosions in town. Your uncle has his hands full. He shouldn’t have to come out here and clean up the mess I never should have let you make in the first place.” The words sounded more like something her uncle David would say, and Lily realized her father was likely quoting his older brother. “One little push, Lily. That’s all it will take.” He advanced slowly until he was less than an arm’s length away.

       Lily could feel the tears streaming down her cheeks, and the rising helplessness that had overcome her when her father’s horses had begun to die. She would have done anything to save the horses, but there had been nothing she could do.

       She wasn’t going to let it happen again, especially not to a human being. “You can’t. You just can’t. We’ll put in at the next port and I’ll leave him off there. I don’t care where it is. Find me a beach somewhere, and I promise I’ll leave him, but you can’t just push him over in the middle of the sea.”

       Even as she spoke, begging for her father’s mercy, his expression hardened. He reached past her, getting his hands under the soldier’s shoulders.

       “No! You can’t!” She tried to pry his arm away. The soldier groaned and blinked. He was waking up!

       But he was too late.

       Her father shoved his shoulder between her and the half-conscious soldier, scooping his arm under him, tilting him toward the rail.

       “No!” Lily held the soldier’s shoulders, fighting to keep him on the boat.

       “Let go.” Michael pulled her hands free and got an arm under the man’s torso, leveraging him up even as the awakening man grasped the air in front of him.

       “Don’t do it!” Lily pounced atop the bench, throwing all her weight into the tug-of-war.

       Her mother gasped from the direction of the below-deck stairs. “Lily! What are you doing?”

       Startled, Lily looked up just as her father caught her by her shoulders, plucking her up and tossing her back toward her mother. She scrambled back, shocked by her father’s behavior. He’d thrown her across the boat! She found her feet as her father got his arms under the soldier and, with one giant heave, tossed him over the side.

       “No!” Lily screamed as she leapt across the deck. Kicking off her sneakers, she bounded onto the bench and leapt over the rail, diving into the Mediterranean water. A moment later she rose and looked frantically about. The sea was fairly calm, but they’d been cutting through the water at a good clip, and had no doubt passed the spot where the soldier had gone overboard.

       Spotting something white—his T-shirt, perhaps—she kicked her legs out and swam toward it, just as her mother’s screams carried through the air, and a life preserver flew past her head, its rope unfurling behind it.

       The rope splashed across her just as her right leg kicked down, catching the cord in a tangle. For one terrified instant, she realized it had twined around her leg. Then the dogged progress of the boat through the water pulled the line taught, dragging her backward with it. She tried to scream, to gulp a breath, anything, but the overwhelming force pulled her through the sea, poring water into her nose, her eyes, her mouth.

       She tried to reach the rope to untangle it, but the press of the water was far too great for her to fight against. With sinking terror, she realized there was nothing she could do to free herself. The sun had set and the night was dark. Would her parents even be able to see what had happened? Even if they quickly realized they needed to haul her in, by the time they got the boat stopped, she’d likely be drowned.

      * * *

       Shock rippled through him as he hit the water, snapping him into the full consciousness that had evaded him as he’d tried to pull himself from sleep moments before. Where was he? What had happened? Acting on instinct, he clawed upward for air, and saw the stars twinkling down from the night sky above.

       A scream caught his attention, and he saw a woman throw a life preserver. It fell just short of him, and he cleared the distance to it in a couple of strokes. Grabbing hold, he got his head up enough above the water to see.

       There were arms in the water.

       No, more than arms, there was a woman. Her leg was caught on the rope to his life preserver, and the moving boat hauled her backward through the water, facedown, helpless.

       He recognized her brown hair, her pale pink top. He’d glimpsed her before through pain-dulled eyes. It was the woman who’d given him water and made his pain go away!

       Pulling on the rope, he hauled her toward him, and looped one arm under her torso. Gently, he lifted her up and shoved the flotation device under her head. He peeled back the long brown hair and found her face just as she gasped a breath and belched up seawater.

       “Can you hold the ring?”

       She coughed, but clutched the flotation device with white-knuckled fingers.

       “Hold tight.” He knew he had to get her leg untangled, or risk her being pulled back under again. Fighting the current created by the moving boat that tugged them relentlessly forward, he pulled himself along the loose length of rope, caught hold of where it had pulled taught, and held it behind her, creating enough slack to allow him to squeeze it back past her heel, and work her foot free.

       He dropped her foot and swam back to her head, balancing himself above the life preserver, level with her eyes. “Are you okay?”

       She coughed and looked like she was trying to nod.

       He peeled back more of the sodden hair that covered her face. She really was beautiful, even half drowned.

       Whoever was running the boat had gotten it slowed down considerably, and voices were yelling something, but he couldn’t make out what.

       “Here.” He eased the woman onto his shoulder as he held tight to the rope. “I’m going to pull us up.”

       She clung to him, her head slumped against his neck, her rattling breath easing as she tightened her grip on his shoulders. “Stairs,” she said, and coughed again. “Stairs—at the stern.”

       He didn’t doubt there were stairs at the back of the boat, but he wasn’t about to let go of the rope to go looking for them. The night was too dark, the sea too vast and the boat was still cutting through the water, though more slowly now.

       “I’ve got you. Just hold on tight.” Pulling hand-over-hand up the rope, he moved them closer to the boat, until he kicked the hull with his boots and fairly walked up the side, rappelling against the sailboat.

       The woman clutched him tighter as they rose out of the water and the ship tipped slightly from their combined weight.

       “Can you climb aboard?” he asked the woman as he got one hand on the rail.

       “No. You first,” she whispered. “If I get onboard,