Peckwood fled—Colin on his heels, growling like an animal.
But Graham didn’t care. All that mattered was the woman on the ground. The pale face. The still body. He grabbed her up, clutching her to his chest, cradling her in his arms. “Please—” His voice broke, a gut-wrenching sob rising to his lips. “Amelia! Don’t go. Don’t leave me. I cannot live in a world without you.”
He pressed his brow to hers, his feverish. Hers cold. She lay still against him. Eerily still.
Closing his eyes, he whispered raggedly against her cheek. “God, please. Do not take her. She is too bright. Too beautiful. Take me instead.”
“Graham?”
His name was torn and broken, more guttural than anything, yet the loveliest of music to his ears. He snapped open his eyes. Amelia blinked like a hurt bird, unsure if it could fly, or even if it should try.
Air rushed out of his lungs. “Thank God!”
Though everything in him cried to crush her tighter against him, to never let her go, he carefully set her down, shoring her up with an arm about her shoulders. She needed air and space to recover. A moment to collect her wits.
A moment cut brutally short by a bloodcurdling screech. “Lambert, help!”
“Me-lee!” Colin thundered.
Graham pivoted towards the cliff. There, near the edge, Peckwood stumbled backwards, the heel of his right foot perilously close to the line between life and death. One more shove from Colin and the doctor would plummet into the abyss, body bouncing against jagged limestone until it finally splashed into the dark waters of the Avon. A fitting end. One well deserved.
But an end that belonged to God alone.
As if reading his mind, Amelia faced him, her once dulcet voice now raspy and ruined by Peckwood himself. “Graham, stop him. Stop my brother.”
Without any idea of how to do so, he dashed ahead. As much as he would like to see Peckwood reap the fruit of his labours, suffer at the hand of the man whose mind he’d cracked, this wasn’t right.
“Colin! Back away.” Graham held out his hand, just as Amelia had earlier. “Come with me. Your sister is safe. I will keep her safe,wewill, you and I, for always.”
The big man’s head swung his way.
Their eyes met.
Recognition sparked in the last glimmer of day’s light, and sweet relief gushed out of Graham in a long breath.
“Me-lee. Love!” Colin pounded his fist against his chest, but then he suddenly arched backwards with a howl. He swung his arm wide, slapping at his back as if trying to smack something between his shoulder blades—yet the only thing he connected with was Peckwood.
The doctor stumbled, grabbing onto the big man’s arm to keep from tumbling over the cliff. Colin lifted the man from the ground and shook him off, pitifully crying about bugs.
As soon as Peckwood hit the dirt, he scrambled to his feet, shaking his head and taking a step towards Amelia. Good heavens! Was the man simply trying to get away or seriously thinking of going for her again?
Colin’s gaze shifted from the doctor to his sister, then back again. “Nooo!”
He turned and plowed into Peckwood.
“Colin, don’t!”
The scream ripped out of Amelia’s bruised throat as she charged ahead, stumbling dangerously close to the edge where her brother flew over.
Graham’s fingers wrapped around her arm. “Don’t look!”
Too late.
She caught the last sight of Colin’s huge body hitting a rock far, far below, an instant before that giant of a man slipped into black waters. And just like that, he was lost to her. Her strong, brave brother, lost in darkness and distance.
Forever.
“No!” Amelia threw back her head and raged. “Not my brother!”
