“I told ye, I dinnae have it,” Bull said mildly, holding his arms out farther to prove the truth.
The thief stared at him a moment too long to be comfortable, then did something unexpected; he shifted his aim. Away from Bull. TowardRosie.
“Then she must have it. Give me the portrait.”
And Bull saw red.
In that moment, he knew—heknewthe bastard wouldn’t live through this. The bounder couldn’t threaten Bull’s woman and expect Bull to cooperate.
As the thief lifted the gun, shifting his aim so Rosie was more at risk, Bull acted without thinking.
Like his namesake he lowered his head, spread his arms, and lunged forward with a wordless roar of instinctive rage, expecting with every heartbeat to hear the loud retort of the gun, to feel the bullet carving into his flesh.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, and it would be worth it to know that Rosie was safe.
But it never came. Time sped up again as Bull slammed into the other man. Only then, when they were both flying backward, did the man pull the trigger, and the gunclickedas the hammer slammed into an empty chamber.
It hadnae been loaded?
He had just enough time to wonder if the next chamber contained a round before the pair of them hit the snow hard, knocking all breath from Bull’s lungs. Without consciously commanding them to do so, his fingers delved into the bastard’s pocket, the ancient skill instinctual in his quest to learn more about his enemy. His gloves made the technique clumsy, but his fingers closed around a piece of paper. Bull was already tensing to roll, to push himselfupright so he could slam his fist into the other man’s throat and kick the gun from his hand?—
When the ice of the frozen river gave way beneath them.
Fook.
Bull had just enough time to suck in a lungful of air, and crush the paper in his fist, as the pair of them plunged into the icy flow of water beneath. The masked man fought him in the icy darkness and Bull did his best to grab for the man’s hands to prevent him from escaping underwater. He rolled and thrust the bastard toward the ice above them, cracking it…before being swept downstream again.
By this time, the adrenaline was seeping from his system and the cold was seeping in. Air—he needed air, but all around him was freezing death. Bull could feel his movements turning sluggish, and in one last-ditch effort, he drew up his knees beneath the heavy overcoat and kicked the other man in the stomach, thrusting them apart.
The move unfortunately caused Bull to roll, and he spent a few frantic moments trying to determine which wasupin the arctic blackness. Fooking hell, it wascold. His boots were too heavy, and the overcoat was now dragging at his limbs. Shite, even his gloves were making it difficult to swim…
Gloves.
He was wearing gloves. Gloves holding…paper?
Rosie was wearing gloves. Rosie, up there with the painting, probably worried about him. She was wearing gloves, and a ring. What ring? His ring? Why did the ring matter? Why did Rosie matter?
Nay, she matters.
Bull floated down the frigid river of nothingness, his limbs heavy and useless, his lungs screaming for air as he was battered by the bank and the shelf of ice above, and he thought of Rosie.
Rosie.
His rose.
She mattered. She mattered, and she was waiting for him.
Mustering the last of his strength, Bull curled his fingers into a tighter fist around the paper and slammed them upward into the ice.
His Rose mattered.
When Bull went through the ice, grappling with their masked robber, Rosie didn’t scream. Not because she wasn’t terrified, but because it had all happened too quickly.
And then, once he’d disappeared beneath the water, there hadn’t seemed a need for it.
Instead, clutching his briefcase to her chest—the briefcase Bull hadn’t taken back from her after they’d left Lord Tittle-Tattle’s home, the briefcase which held their most important piece of evidence—she stumbled toward the river’s edge.
The hole through which he’d tumbled was jagged and raw, the water below lapping at the edges of the ice as if lookingfor a way out. The ice was thin—too thin to bear her weight, definitely too thin to bear the weight of two men.
