“Och!” Page mocked him. “But ye dinna have to tell me so, I think. I’m holding! God’s truth, I’m holding!”
Once again his laughter drifted down from above, and Page tried to ignore the fact that her fingers were growing weary and raw from gripping the jagged rock. She was not going to die! Not now! Jesu Christ, but she refused!
“Hurry!” she urged him, and knew she sounded afeared.
“Keep talking to me, dearlin’!” he directed her, his voice calm, though she could scarce mistake the urgency in his command. “I’ll be coming for ye anon!”
Keep talking? By the bloody saints! What in creation was she supposed to talk about?
She asked him as much, and he said, “Anything, lass... just so I know where to find ye.”
“Let me talk to her,” she heard a familiar voice say, and her heart leapt. Nay! But it could not be!
“Bluidy hell if you will!” she heard Iain deny him. “Ye’ve done enough harm as it is. Get oot o’ my way, and leave her be!”
Page was so staggered by the discovery that he’d come, after all, that she nearly lost her tenuous grip upon the rock.
She screeched as she slipped a little. “Father?” she called out. Her heart began to pound all the faster, and her vision threatened to turn black. “Is it you?”
“Aye, Page,” he answered. “’Tis me!”
She heard Iain’s curse, but was too dazed to comprehend its cause.
“You’ve come!” she cried, and squealed as her fingers slipped a little. In desperation, she released one hand and grasped out, thanking God above for the bush he placed within her reach. She used it to support her weight while her other hand searched and found a more tangible hold. She found it just in time, for the bush began to uproot.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God!” she exclaimed.
“Aye, Page,” he shouted down to her. “I’ve much to tell you, daughter mine.”
Fine time, Page thought.
“No’ now, ye willna!” she heard Iain argue with him. “Now isna the time to unburden yourself! Now get the bluidy hell oota my way!”
“In the meantime,” Page shouted a little frantically, “whilst you two argue, my hands are aching, and my feet are slipping, and I do not wish to end like Lagan, if you please!”
There was a long interval of silence, too long, Page thought, and then Iain said, “Dinna worry, love. I’ll be comin’ down now.” And sure enough, she heard him making his way down the cliffside. “Page?” he called out once more.
Page squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that he would reach her soon. The pebbles at her toes were beginning to loosen and roll free.
“Are ye certain Lagan went down, lass?”
Page swallowed at the memory of his screams as he’d fallen. He’d fallen so far and so long, and his bellow had continued for what had seemed an eternity.
“Aye,” she answered. “He’s gone!”
She heard the scuffing of his boots as he came nearer.
“We fell together,” she told him, groaning, and opened her eyes to search for his descending shadow against the cliffside. “Only I somehow ended here, and he down there!” And she added silently, thank God!
“Thank God!” he said, and his voice was nearer now. “Malcom told me what ye did—and God’s teeth! I thought we’d lost ye too, lass!”
“Aye, well...” She whimpered as her toe lost its footing. She heard the loose rocks cascade downward, dragging the cliffside, until they descended into stony silence, and swallowed convulsively as she searched out another toehold. “I... I did tell you I was stubborn and canny,” she warned him, trying to make merry.
“That ye did, lass,” he told her, chuckling softly, much closer now. “That ye did.”
And then suddenly she could see him, and her heart leapt with joy. When his face came into view, the moonlight reflecting within his wonderful golden eyes, she thought she would weep with delight.
And then suddenly he was there at her side. Page might have cast herself into his arms, but she was so afeared to move that he had to pry her free from the rock.
“I canna save ye if ye willna let go,” he advised her.
“And I will not let go until you save me!” she returned.
“Och, but ye’ve a saucy tongue!”
“Aye, well! My father’s here to take me off your hands at last! You’ll not have to endure it much longer, it seems.”
He made some sound, like a snarl, and jerked her away from the rock. When at last she was in his arms, her tears began to flow at once. She clung to him, weeping, babbling nonsensically, and all the while he stroked her head and held her close. And she didn’t know which she was more aggrieved over: the fact that she’d come so close to cracking her head upon the rocks below, or that her father had finally come to collect her.