Lady of Skye - Softcover

Chapter 1

Lyming, Scotland
February 1847

The ferryman was dead.

There was no doubt about it. The fellow had no pulse. His skin was like ice. His pupils were dilated, his eyes glassy and staring. Reilly Stanton didn't need a medical license to tell him that this man was no longer among the living.

But Reilly wasn't the one who needed convincing. It was the wizened fisherman stooped over beside him who seemed to be suffering from some doubts.

"What's ailing him, then?" the old man asked, his breath turning instantly to steam in the cold winter air.

"Aye." The fisherman's question was echoed by several of his peers, all of whom had come to stare down at the corpse, as well as at Reilly, who'd had the ill judgment to plunge into the frigid water after the drowning man.

"I'm afraid," Reilly said, lifting his dripping head from the dead man's equally sodden chest, "that he's gone."

"Gone?" The eldest of the fishermen blinked down at him. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Well, passed on." Seeing the blank expressions on the faces around him, Reilly tried again. "Expired."

The word expired had always worked well enough on the families of Reilly's patients back in Mayfair. It was clear, however, that delicacy was wasted on these particular fellows, and so Reilly said, enunciating with difficulty through teeth that were beginning to chatter with the cold, "I'm afraid your friend is dead."

"Dead?" The old man exchanged incredulous glances with his companions. "Stuben's dead?"

Reilly rose to his knees -- no small feat, since his once fine breeches were stiff with frozen saltwater -- and looked longingly toward the alehouse. At least, it looked like an alehouse. It was the structure nearest the pier where they now stood, and through the fog Reilly could see that there was a sign swinging above the door, and warm and welcoming lights in the windows. An alehouse, a whorehouse, Reilly didn't care what it was, so long as he was soon in it, drying off and warming up before a fire, preferably with a glass of whisky in his hand.

But first, of course, there was the dead ferryman to be seen to.

"But that canna be," the toothless fisherman insisted. "Stuben canna be dead. He's never died before."

"Well, that's the nature of death, isn't it?" Reilly managed a sympathetic smile. "We tend to do it just the once."

"No' Stuben." Around the corpse, shaggy gray heads nodded emphatically. "He's gone under many a time, has Stuben, and he's no' died before now."

"Well." Reilly tried to picture some of his more learned peers -- Pearson, for instance, with his ubiquitous cigar, or Shelley, with that ridiculous silver-handled cane he didn't need -- standing on this desolate pier, arguing the semantics of death with this motley group, and failed.

Well, Pearson and Shelley had too much sense to have signed on for such an assignment. Too much sense, and nothing like Reilly's blue-eyed, golden-haired impetus.

He said, "Well, gentlemen, I'm afraid he didn't make it this time. I'm very sorry for your loss. But he was clearly intoxicated -- "

This was, of course, the grossest of understatements. The ferryman had been so blind drunk Reilly had almost asked if there wasn't some other boat he could hire for the trip across the water. But he'd stopped himself at the last minute. What was the worst, he'd wondered, that could come of a drunk ferryman? That the boat might run aground, or worse, sink?

So he'd drown in the frigid and tumultuous waters off the coast of the Scottish Highlands. So what? It wasn't as if he had anything much to live for, anyway. Christine, back in London, would hear of his drowning and would have to live with the knowledge that Reilly Stanton had died in an effort to win her love...

Of course, when the stupid man had lost his footing and slipped into the sea just as they were docking, Reilly hadn't given a thought to his own safety, much less to what Miss Christine King was going to think. He had plunged without hesitation into the icy water and pulled the old man, dead weight though he'd been, back to shore.

It was only now, standing there soaking wet, shivering like a dog, that it occurred to Reilly he'd missed yet another wonderful opportunity to make Christine sorry for what she'd done. He'd come so close to a romantic death! He could almost hear the ladies back in Mayfair:

"Darling, did you hear? Young Dr. Stanton -- the eighth Marquis of Stillworth, don't you know -- died in the wilds of the Hebrides, trying to save another man's life. I can't imagine what that heartless Christine King was thinking, slipping a man like that the mitten. She must have been out of her head. Such a self-sacrificing, noble gentleman...handsome, too, from what I hear. Poor girl is beside herself with grief."

Well, he had certainly botched it. And because the old duffer had up and died on him despite his best efforts, Reilly couldn't even write home and mention, ever so casually, about how he'd managed to save a life his very first day on the job, damn it all.

When was his luck going to change?

"I'm sorry about Mr. Stuben," Reilly said, to the ferryman's friends, "but he was well past feeling anything when he went, if it's any consolation. He was quite intoxicated. Now if you good gentlemen don't mind, I'm quite cold and wet through, and I'd like to get out of this wind -- "

"That's the thing." Several hoary heads wagged. "Get 'im out of this wind. Someone go for Miss Brenna."

"Already done," a toothless gent assured them. "Sent the boy for 'er, soon as I seed Stuben go under."

"Good lad." The eldest fisherman sighed. "Well, I'll take his head, you take his feet. Ready? Ayuh."

Reilly stood, the bitter wind throwing salt spray all around him, as gnarled hands seized the body of the ferryman and lifted it. Then the solemn-faced processional moved with maddening slowness toward the nearest structure, the one Reilly had been hoping so fervently was an alehouse.

Left alone on the dock, Reilly glanced around. Buffeted by the wind and waves, the ferryboat thudded dully against the side of the pier. His bags and trunk were still aboard it, but as he'd been the only passenger, that was all, save the ferryman's empty bottles, which rolled noisily back and forth across the deck. Other than the dead ferryman's friends and a plethora of vociferous seagulls swooping about overhead, there was no one around. Reilly hadn't exactly reckoned upon anyone meeting him, communication with the mainland being what it was, but he'd thought there might at least be someone to take his bags...

Well, never mind. There'd been a death, after all. He supposed the bags would be safe enough for now. Wrapping his cloak about him -- though the ice-encrusted material did little to shield his body from the wind -- he caught up to the dead man and his entourage. They were headed toward the only building he could see through the fog, that building in which there promised, from the lights in the windows, to be a fire if nothing else.

Reilly fell into step beside the fishermen, and when one complained of weariness, he took a turn at holding the dead man's head.

Then another of the old men, clutching his chest, stepped aside, and Reilly found himself holding not only the dead man's head, but his upper torso, as well.

Then a third fisherman bowed out, coughing with alarming, body-wracking spasms. It wasn't long before Reilly had slung the ferryman over his back and was bearing the full of his weight, while Stuben's friends shouted encouragement and approval at him. Thank God, Reilly thought grimly to himself, there was no way this was going to get back to Christine. Romantic as she might have thought his death, there wasn't anything the least romantic about this particular situation.

He stagg