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attempting to pull her toward him. He shifted one gloved hand to her calf, then placed his other hand on her lower thigh.
    She released an immediate squeal of maidenly protest, followed by a storm of even stronger outrage. Ignoring her objections, he slowly inched his way up her leg, pulling her closer to him. To his dismay, she was much heavier than she had appeared. Finally he realized why. As he was desperately struggling to keep his foothold on the tangled shrub—which might give way at any second—she was using both her hands to clutch her bulky carpetbag above her head.
    Amazement, fury, and disbelief gripped him in turn. “Let go of that damned bag!” he shouted.
    “What?!” came back her muffled reply, her voice buried beneath the layers of her skirt and petticoat.
    The shrub gave again, sending them both sliding another inch forward. Nicholas’s back was breaking, his arms ached, and his shoulders burned as though they were about to be wrenched from their sockets. “Drop the bloody bag!
Now
, dammit!”
    His words appeared to have finally sunk in, for she released one hand while swinging the bag with her other, as though to fling it away from herself. But rather than allowing it to drop, she hurled the bag upward with all her might.
    The carpetbag flew full force directly into his face.
    Nicholas released a startled roar of both pain and anger as the rough canvas bounced off his nose and cheek, then catapulted from his shoulder to land with a heavy thud on the path above them. After delivering yet another curse in a long stream of heated profanity, he jerked her to him, finally managing to catch her around the waist. Holding her thus with one arm, he extended his free hand and shouted in a tone that was not to be ignored, “Take my hand!”
    Miss Alexander obeyed instantly, blindly reaching upside down through the tangle of her skirts to grope for his hand. Nicholas caught her palm in his. No sooner had she bent forward, straining to a half-sitting position, when his glove, slick from the rain and mud, slipped from his hand. Her body hurled backward once again. If not for the grip he had maintained on her waist, she would have tumbled to her death.
    The woman gave a startled, panicked cry and reached for his hand again almost instantly, this time without any prompting from him. As her bare hand struck his, Nicholas tugged her forward. Using his body as a human bridge, she scrambled clumsily over him, reached the narrow path, and pulled herself up. He followed immediately, digging his fingers into the rock and mud as he scaled the cliff after her. She tugged at his shirt and trousers as he climbed, doing her best to assist him. Finally, with all the grace and dignity of a pair of drunken monkeys falling out of a tree, they reached the ledge.
    Too exhausted to move, breathing hard, they lay sprawled out side by side in a current of mud. Neither one spoke as the rain pelted their bodies. They didn’t have to. The silence between them carried a mutual, unspoken emotion: astonishment. Pure, unfettered astonishment that they were still alive.
    Nicholas had no idea how long they stayed like that, but gradually he became aware of a change in the weather. Like most storms in the region, this one had swooped down with a sudden, violent intensity out of a clear blue sky, only to vanish almost as quickly as it had come. The rain, which had poured down in torrents only minutes earlier, now began to soften. A light, misty drizzle blurred the horizon. The ground seemed to steam, almost purr, with luxuriant relief at the passing of the storm. The chirping of birds and the sounds of animals thrashing about in the bushes filled the air once again.
    Nicholas rolled over onto his side, looking at the prostrate form of Miss Alexander. “I trust you’re unharmed?” he asked.
    She waited a beat, then shifted experimentally. Looking thoroughly dazed, she slowly sat up and opened her eyes. “I believe I lost my hat,” she