Cold-Hearted Rake

As he used the bar to pry at the door of the locked compartment, he heard screams of relief from inside. The door opened with a protesting groan of metal, and passengers crowded the opening. Devon’s bleary gaze took in a middle-aged woman holding a squalling baby, two weeping girls, and a boy in his early teens.

“Are there any more in there?” Devon asked the boy. His voice was slurred, as if he were drunk.

“None alive, sir,” the boy said, shivering.

“D’you see those people at the side of the river?”

“I th-think so, sir.”

“Go there. Take the girls arm-in-arm. Keep your sides to the current… less for it to push against. Go.”

The boy nodded and plunged into the river, gasping at the intense cold that reached up to his chest. The frightened girls followed with shrieks, clutching at his arms. Together the trio moved toward the riverbank, steadying one another against the current.

Turning to the terrified woman, Devon said tersely, “Give me the child.”

She shook her head wildly. “Please, sir, why —”

“Now.” He wouldn’t be able to stay on his feet much longer.

The woman obeyed, weeping, and the child continued to wail as he curled his little arms around Devon’s neck. His mother gripped Devon’s free arm and stepped from the carriage, letting out a shrill cry as she plunged into the water. Step by step, Devon hauled her through the river, the weight of her skirts making progress difficult. He soon lost all sense of time.

He wasn’t quite certain where he was, or what was happening. He couldn’t be sure that his legs were still working; he couldn’t feel them. The baby had stopped crying, his hand groping curiously over Devon’s face like a migrating starfish. He was vaguely aware that the woman was shouting something, but the words were lost amid the sluggish pulse in his ears.

There were people in the distance… hand lamps… lights dancing and bobbing in the smoke-blistered air. He kept pushing on, impelled by the dim understanding that to hesitate even for a moment was to snap the last thread of consciousness.

His mind registered a tug at the child in his arms. Another stronger pull, as he resisted briefly. The child was being gathered up by strangers, while others had come forward to help the woman through the sludge of reeds and mud.

Losing his balance, Devon staggered back, his muscles no longer obeying his commands. The water snatched him instantly, closing over his head and dragging him away.

As he felt himself carried by the current, his brain hovered over the scene, observing the slowly spinning form – his own – in the inky water. He couldn’t save himself, he realized with dazed surprise. No one was going to save him. He had met the same untimely fate as all the Ravenel men, leaving far too much unfinished, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care. Somewhere in the rubble of his thoughts, he knew that West would manage without him. West would survive.

But Kathleen…

She would never know what she had meant to him.

That pierced his failing awareness. Dear God, why had he waited, assuming he had time at his disposal? If he could have had five minutes to tell her… bloody hell, one minute… but it was too late.

Kathleen would go on without him. Some other man would marry her… grow old with her… and Devon would be nothing but a faded memory.

If she remembered him at all.

He struggled and flailed, a silent howl trapped inside. Kathleen was his fate, his. He would defy all the hells that ever were to stay with her. But it was no use; the river bore him steadily away into the darkness.

Something caught at him. Tough, sinewed bands twined around his arm and chest like some monster from the deep. An inexorable force wrenched him painfully backward. He felt himself gripped and held fast against the current.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” a man growled close to his ear, gasping with effort. The secure grip tightened around his midriff, and he began to cough, spikes of agony driving through him as the voice continued. “You’re not leaving me to manage that bloody estate on my own.”

Chapter 17

“The train must have been late,” Pandora said crossly, playing with the dogs on the receiving room floor. “I hate waiting.”

“You could occupy yourself with a useful task,” Cassandra said, poking away at her needlework. “That makes waiting go faster.”

“People always say that, and it’s not true. Waiting takes just as long whether one is being useful or not.”

“Perhaps the gentlemen have stopped for refreshments on the way from Alton,” Helen suggested, leaning over her embroidery hoop as she executed a complicated stitch.

Kathleen looked up from an agricultural book that West had recommended to her. “If that’s the case, they had better be famished when they arrive,” she said with mock indignation. “After the feast Cook has prepared, nothing less than gluttony will suffice.” She grimaced as she saw Napoleon settling into the billowing folds of Pandora’s dress. “Darling, you’ll be covered with dog hair by the time the gentlemen arrive.”

“They won’t notice,” Pandora assured her. “My dress is black, and so is the dog.”

“Perhaps, but still —” Kathleen broke off as Hamlet trotted into the receiving room with his perpetual grin. In all the bustle of holiday preparations for that evening, she had forgotten about the pig. She had become so accustomed to the sight of him following Napoleon and Josephine everywhere that she had begun to think of him as a third dog. “Oh, dear,” she said, “something must be done with Hamlet. We can’t have him wandering about while Mr. Winterborne is here.”