She leaned closer, as close as she dared, holding her breath.
Praying.
Bull did not emerge, victorious.
Another prayer.
He still did not come bursting from the water like some glorious Poseidon, toga and all.
With a shaky inhale, Rosie murmured, “Bull?” as if that would help. To no surprise, it did not. She slid one foot out onto the ice and leaned again. “Bull? Oh, God, Bull?—”
Beneath her, the ice creaked ominously, and she jerked back onto solid ground.
Her father’s curses, usually such a comfort, hovered just out of reach as her terror took over, and all she could do was pray.
“Oh God,” she whispered, panic starting to rise. Then, for good measure, she did it again. “Oh God, oh God. Please…” Her heart was beginning to beat too frantically, her breathing too desperate. She glanced over her shoulder at Lord Tittle-Tattle’s house, already too dim in the dusk. “OhGod.” What was she supposed to do? “Oh God, Bull!”
The river.
The road.
The river.
Rosie glanced back and forth.
There was no one on the road, no one on the river, but the river—it went downstream, yes?Allwater went downstream, sooner or later. Ithadto. The river. The river was flowing, underneath the ice.
She took a hesitant step to the side, still clutching the suitcase to her chest…then another.
A suddencrackjerked her attention to the left, downstream, and in the distance, in the dim light…the snow-covered ice gave a heave, as if something had been slammed into it from beneath.
Bull.
She gathered up the skirts of her traveling gown and began to run.
Bull!
“Bull!” Rosie called stupidly, as if he could hear her. “Oh God, oh blistering shitenuggets, whereareyou?”
He was alive, she told herself. He’d been alive a mere moment before, when he—or the masked man—had crashed upward against the ice. He would survive. He would come back to her. He would?—
When the ice cracked again, she had just finished sucking in a big breath of air. With nothing else to do, she screamed—unhelpfully, it turned out.
Because farther down the riverbank, farther than she could have run in the time since he’d gone under, her Bull had broken through the ice. His dark shape scrambled, then flopped for the bank, pulling himself out of the icy water as he steamed.
Alive.
Not bothering to waste breath on yet another useless instinct, Rosie threw all her energy into reaching him.
She did so just as he finished pulling his shoulders and torso across the bank, slumping there, sucking in great gasping heaves. Was there ever a more beautiful sound? Rosie fell to her knees beside him, reaching for his shoulders, pulling, tugging him out of the cold water.
He was safe. She could breathe again.
“Thank God. Thank God,” she kept repeating as she did her best to pull him the rest of the way to safety. “Thank God you are alive. Did he get stuck under—no, do not answer that.Youare alive! Thank God. Are you hurt?”
It was no surprise he didn’t speak, the way his jaw was clenched so tightly as he did his best to help her lift him. Once Bull had staggered upright, she began to pat him as though checking he was still all there, and realized she’d dropped the briefcase at his feet.
“We have to heat you up, Bull.”
