Read Online Lorelie Brown by An Indiscreet Debutante - Free Book Online

and farther and his hands stretching out until he felt it. Silk. Cloth.
    A ribbon that snapped.
    He swam again. On one deep stroke, his arm hooked widely.
    He got her by the neck. Didn’t matter. Better him to suffocate her than her to drag in a wheezing lungful of water.
    She fought him. Goddamned fought him. Nails flew out with slow drag under the water and scratched the length of his arm. He had to readjust his grip. Eventually he had her in one arm, across the shoulders, and somehow they’d sunk to the blasted bottom again.
    His toes squished through muck before he found purchase enough to propel them both toward air. He kicked and stroked with his one free arm. Their heads broke the surface at the same time.
    Gasping, clinging weight made the swim to shore take entirely too long. His kicks tangled in her skirts. She weighed as much as three grown men. Once he’d gotten far enough in, he walked them the rest of the way.
    He collapsed to the grassy bank, all but dropping Lady Vale beside him. He was fairly sure she was weeping. Through his own whooping breath, he could barely tell.
    Now that the immediate danger was over, he was lost. Looking up at the gray-blue sky through the canopy of the very tree which had abandoned its post so badly.
    Miss Vale dropped to her knees beside them. Her attention went to her mother first, clutching at her shoulders. “Are you well?”
    Lady Vale cracked a sob, her tears rising with her volume. She leaned up on one elbow. A series of coughs wracked her. “I…I think so.”
    Miss Vale’s fingers dug into her mother’s shoulders hard enough to leave dents. She shook. Her mother’s head bounced in the air. “How could you?” she cried. “Reckless and awful and—”
    Ian scrambled to his knees. The arm he wrapped around her shoulders protested abuse against the already vicious scrapes over his forearms. He yanked her back anyhow. “Miss Vale! Stop this.”
    Nothing got through to her. “Horrible woman, how could you? How could you scare me like that?”
    Lady Vale started crying again. Her eyes were pale spring versions of her daughter’s verdant green.
    “Miss Vale,” Ian repeated, but she was still trying to grab her mother. “Lottie!” he said sharply.
    She jerked, her entire body flinching. Her gaze flew to his. “She shouldn’t have!”
    She hardly made any sense herself, but he wasn’t about to point that out. He framed her jaw in one hand. If anything, he was making her look at him. Making her focus. “It’s over. She’s safe. It’s all well.”
    “It’s not well. She isn’t well.” When she shook her head, tendrils of reddish hair curled around her neck, dipping down into the shallow opening of her bodice.
    Ian realized suddenly, terribly, how close they were. They pressed together from knee to shoulder. He curled over her, his strength absorbing her. Her shoulders were slender, but she wasn’t insubstantial. Beneath her lean curves there was potency. The bottom he had his arm wrapped around was firm. Pliable.
    He folded his fingers over her shoulders and carefully set her back enough so that he could breathe.
    His lungs would never recover from this day.
    Lady Vale collapsed into a wet, sopping pile. Though she buried her face in her arms, broken sobs could be heard. Her weeping was the likes of which he’d never known before. He wanted to scramble away, find the nearest way out because he thought his own heart might break. Lottie seemed versed in what to do.
    Her arms curled around her mother’s back, and she pulled the older woman up enough to tuck into her lap. “Come, Mama. I’m sorry.”
    Lady Vale shook her head, face pressed against the poof and pile of Lottie’s skirts. “You were right.”
    “I can be both right and sorry.” Over her mother’s head, her eyes met Ian’s. She dug up a wan, lost smile, but it wasn’t like her normal ones. This one he wanted to frame with his own lips and make it go away.
    He didn’t have time for this.