The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,33
outward to the river.
Because of you. Because I cannot bear to be next to you. Because I cannot lose my heart again to the man that only wants to crush me. Crush me like he once did.
She shrugged, not looking at him. “The solitude is what I am resigned to. It is fine. It is safe.”
“But why be resigned to something you don’t want?”
His words washed over her with a low rumble of heat that cut through the sounds on the bridge and her look whipped to him. “What—”
Her voice was cut off, the air slammed out of her lungs in one blow as something hit her from the side.
A body. A body ramming into her, barreling between her and Wes.
Her grip on Wes broke and she fell backward.
Backward, out of control, just as her left arm was jerked up. Hard. Tearing away from her body.
She looked up. Not Wes.
A man she’d never seen before, tearing at her arm.
No—tearing at her reticule.
The ribbon upon the purse ripped and he yanked it away from her, in the same instant shoving her against the railing of the bridge before he ran, disappearing from her sight.
Nothing in front of her now except the flurry of cloth and skirts and boots as she flipped over the railing, her legs flailing up over her head as she dropped over the side of the bridge.
Her arms—her hands—scrambled, desperate for anything to stop her fall.
Her right wrist caught on the crux of a baluster meeting the horizontal stone. It jerked her body to a stop, her legs swinging in the air, all her weight pulling on the fine outer bones of her wrist.
The river beneath her. The swirling waters angry. Hungry. Desperate to devour her.
Hell. The tide, her skirts. She would sink and never be found. The Thames did not give up its bodies. Not easily.
Her wrist slipped between the balustrade and the stone. Down to her hand, her fingertips, her last hope scraping across the stone.
“Laney!” Wes’s thundering voice hit her and she looked up. “Your hand!”
Dangled over the edge of the railing, Wes stretched his right hand down to her. Steel. Steel in his eyes, in his look.
Her fingers slipped and just as her body was about to sink through the air, she swung her left hand up to him.
Close. It had to be close enough.
A growl ripped through the air and he lunged downward, clamping his hand about her wrist.
He caught himself on the railing, righted his weight and yanked her upward.
Sheer strength in his arm. Pulling her straight up from the bowels of hell. From her lungs suffocating with water. From thoughts leaving her head. From death.
One fluid motion was all it took for him to pull her entire body up from the edge of the bridge.
He always was the strongest of men.
Wes dragged her over the railing and clasped her to his body, his arms wrapping her, pulling her into an iron cage of safety.
Moments, he stood there, holding her up, for her legs couldn’t do that on their own. The whole of London moving about them, not paying them any mind.
Stillness in the chaos.
{ Chapter 14 }
A stupid choice, saving Laney instead of going after the box.
The only choice, really.
He never would have let her fall. Never.
He didn’t even watch the thug run off the bridge with her reticule and the box. Didn’t think to chase him. Not when Laney was hanging by her fingertips, seconds from falling into the river.
She was more important than the damn box.
And just like years ago, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
Including complicating his life tenfold.
He now had to find that blasted box somewhere here in London—possibly already on a ship leaving port. The box would surface again—it always did—but he wasn’t looking forward to what he’d have to do to get it into his possession.
Wes closed the front door to his townhouse, watching the slump of Laney’s shoulders as she shuffled into his lower drawing room and sank onto the settee, tugging off her pelisse and bonnet with trembling fingers.
All he had wanted to do since she went over the side of the bridge was to get her back here. Get her back to safety. Get her to where he had control of their surroundings.
A breath to steady himself and he followed her into the room, going first to the windows that faced the street and pulling the gauzy curtains, then to the sideboard where he poured himself a healthy dram of