Page 17 of Mail-Order Viscountess

“The ice won’t hold you.” His voice cut through the wind and her panic. “You’ll go through too.”

She didn’t care. Clara’s scream still echoed in her head—that terrified sound that cut through every rational thought. Her sister was in that wagon, and the wagon was sinking into water black as death.

“I have to—” She wrenched away, gained a single step before Thomas hauled her back again. Her boots scrabbled against the ice, slipping. “Clara!”

James had reached the horses’ heads, fighting to keep them focused as they screamed and threw their weight against the traces. The front of the wagon stayed on solid ice, but the back end tilted lower with each passing second.

At the front of the bed, Clara’s head rose above the tarp. Kate couldn’t breathe as her sister climbed up on the bench, Rose following close behind. As James fought with the horses to pull the rig out of the churning water, the two women slipped from the death trap and crept onto the ice.

Past the horses. All the way to the safety of the far bank.

Kate’s lungs burned, her breath coming in sharp gasps that tore at her throat. Clara stood on snowy ground now—alive, whole, not drowning in black water. The relief hit so hard her knees buckled. Only Thomas’s grip around her kept her upright.

Then the ice beneath her feet shifted.

Not a crack—not yet—but a slight movement that sent her stomach plummeting. Every instinct in her screamed.

“Ease backward.” Thomas’s voice came urgent near her ear. “Slow. Don’t run.”

Her body craved to run. To bolt toward the bank, toward safety, toward anything solid. But her boots stayed planted, frozen by fear as much as sense.

“Kate!” Clara’s voice carried across the ice, high and terrified. “Get off the ice!”

She took one step backward. Then another. Each movement felt like walking on glass about to shatter. The snow swirled thicker, coating her eyelashes and blurring everything beyond a few feet. She could barely see Clara anymore—just a dark shape on the shore.

And the wagon. Had the horses pulled it out of the water?

She couldn’t tell through the snow. The shapes had dissolved into a gray and white blur—horses screaming, James shouting, the dark bulk of the wagon…but she couldn’t tell if it was tilted at that horrible angle.

Another step back. Thomas moved with her, his hand locked around her waist now. His breath came hard beside her. A glance up showed his face had gone pale beneath the bruising. But his grip never loosened.

Another step. Her heel caught on something—a ridge in the ice, maybe, or just her own clumsiness born of terror. She stumbled, and Thomas’s arm tightened around her middle, keeping her upright.

“Steady.” His breath hit her cheek, warm against the biting cold. Then, under his breath, “God, help us.” It sounded almost like a prayer.

Kate swallowed. She’d stopped looking to God a long time ago. Stopped expecting Him to answer.

And yet Thomas spoke like help was as real as the frozen earth under her boots.

They kept edging backward. The shore felt impossibly far away, though it could be only a few more steps. Every handsbreadth of ice between here and solid ground might as well have been a mile.

The wind shifted, and for a moment the snow cleared enough that she could see the distant shapes more clearly. James had gotten the horses under control. And somehow…miracle of miracles…they’d pulled the wagon up onto solid ice. The rig eased forward, one slow step at a time, to cover the final distance to shore.

Rose stood with Clara on the far bank, both of them dark silhouettes against the swirling white.

Safe. Clara was safe. The others were safe. Even their belongings.

The knowledge should have brought relief, but all she could feel was the wrongness of the ice beneath her feet and the way Thomas’s breathing had gone ragged beside her ear.

Her boot hit something solid—not ice but frozen earth covered in snow. The shift registered somewhere in the panic clouding her mind, and her knees gave out completely.

She hit the ground hard, the impact jarring through her already-sore hip. Snow cushioned the fall some, but not enough to keep her teeth from clacking together.

Thomas went down beside her—or maybe she’d pulled him down. His arm still gripped her waist, his weight heavy against her side.

“Are you hurt?” His voice came out tight.

Was she? Everything ached, and yet she could feel nothing, her body caught in that strange numbness that came after terror.