Her Wicked Proposal novel Chapter 77

Pain...excruciating darkness... stars...blue...

Cedric's head throbbed as he fought to get away from whatever was dragging him deeper and deeper into the sea's vast depths. His strength was rapidly fading and his lungs would explode unless he could get to the surface. His shirt tore and the binding that had trapped him to the wreckage was gone. He fought as though nothing in his life had mattered until now.

All he could see was Anne's face, and his desire to live. His desire to see her looking up at him with love and endless wonder. New strength flooded his limbs. The water stung his eyes, burned them like hot pokers, but he kept swimming toward that brightening point of light that he knew had to be the surface.

When his head burst above the water, he sucked in a loud, agonizing breath. A shocking white glared into his eyes, and he blinked, raised one hand as he treaded water, and looked about...looked...as gray shapes appeared in the fog.

"What in God's name?" Pieces of wood bumped into his shoulders as he breathed in the thick smoke. That was what made things gray. Not his blindness, but gunpowder smoke and burning wreckage.

He could see! Not well, but by God he could see! He started to laugh, but choked as he breathed in the smoke.

He saw several longboats drifting through the ship's wreckage. The one closest to him had several people in it, all of them facing away, their backs to him. A woman was in the middle, and her soaked dark hair hung to her waist.

Anne! She was alive. Not yet strong enough to call out, he started to swim toward the boat before it left him behind. As he drew closer he recognized Godric, Ashton, Charles, Lucien, even Jonathan on board. Just beyond them two ships, the HMS Ranger and Ashton's merchant vessel Black Lily, were drifting around the wreckage of the Maiden Fair. The entire League and Anne were on that boat, all staring silently at something he could not see.

Dread filled him. What had happened? It had to be something horrible, something he couldn't bear, if it had struck his friends and wife speechless. When he reached the longboat, he swam around to the side. He clung to the edge of the boat and searched the floating wreckage, trying to spot whatever had devastated his friends.

Anne's face was strewn with tears, and Charles had a comforting arm around her shoulders. Cedric forced his gaze back to the sinking ship.

They must think I'm dead...

It was Jonathan, the one nearest to him, who slowly turned his head and saw Cedric clinging to the side of the boat.

"Cedric!" His startled shout made everyone jump.

Jonathan rushed over to where Cedric gripped the side of the longboat. Exhausted, Cedric latched onto the younger man's arms and allowed himself to be hauled aboard.

No sooner had he righted himself did Anne launch herself at him, sobbing incoherently. They fell together in a wet mess.

Ashton wiped at his eyes and cleared his throat. "We thought we'd lost you." There was a rough catch in his voice. Everyone looked too strained, too devastated.

The admission of how much he was loved, not just by Anne, but by his friends as well, struck his heart.

"Takes more than a burning cottage, horse thieves, piratical slavers and an exploding ship to kill me, eh?" he teased, trying to ease everyone's pain.

Charles chuckled. "Right. Should have known better than to think that could take you down."

Cedric looked down at Anne, who stared at him with that look he'd hoped to someday see. An endless wonder in her eyes, and love, so much love, that simply seeing it now gave him wings enough to fly.

"My heart," he whispered, feeling suddenly shy, so damned shy of his own wife. It was as though he was looking at a familiar stranger. He'd grown so used to her touch, her taste, her scent. To see her, finally see her again after so long in the dark...

She raised a hand and stroked the backs of her fingers across his cheeks.

"Don't cry," she begged him. "Please don't. If you do, I won't be able to stop."

"To hell with it." He buried his face in her neck, curling his body around hers, clinging to her. His heart, his love, his other half. They were alive and safe.

"I can see you," he kept saying as he wept. Never in all his life would anything be as beautiful as his beloved Anne and his dearest friends. The last five months had been an awful nightmare.

But I've finally woken up. He brushed his lips over Anne's, tasting the sea and her tears.