Calm flowed into his veins and he moved slowly back into the bog, retracing his steps. Almost immediately he saw where he had gone astray. He had turned north, heading directly for the peat cutter’s hut at the same moment Willa had turned south.
After a few minutes he found another bit of lace stuck on a long thorn, waving slightly in the evening breeze.
Pushing terror out of his head, he concentrated everything he had on the language of Lindow Moss. An evening breeze stirred like a shy spirit, bringing with it the faint scent of chamomile. He froze. Smells of bracken, bramble, and smoky peat dominated, but underneath, like a whisper of song: chamomile soap.
Willa.
Mere minutes later, he found her, just as purple light was settling into the hollows of the bog. His future wife was lying on her stomach on the very edge of what appeared to be a large bog hole covered with a mat of moss. Her head was cradled on her arms and she appeared to be asleep.
He came to a soundless stop. If Willa turned on her side, she might easily roll onto that moss beside her. Even as slender as she was, it would not support her weight. And beneath the moss … Some bog holes were straight drops of twenty feet, full of water the color of the strongest pekoe tea.
If he called her name, she might wake abruptly and plunge into the hole.
His heart skipped a beat, before he pushed the thought away and lowered himself to a sitting position. She was here, and she was alive. He could see her breath moving strands of her hair.
Gradually, the sounds of Lindow Moss replaced the thundering of blood in his ears. Curlews were calling back and forth their evening songs, their cries thin spirals of sound.
When he had his body completely under control, he edged toward her, stopping only when the ground before him turned to a springy mat of thin moss covering liquid mud. With utmost care, he shifted onto his stomach. Willa must have been lying on a little island of firmer ground. It was a miracle that she hadn’t fallen in.
His head was so close to the peat now that he could hear water flowing under the surface. The moss before him was black, and he knew before his palm brushed its rocking surface that it couldn’t take his weight. He backed up, approached her from another angle.
Failed.
Tried again. Finally he came close enough that he thought it safe to wake her. If he had to, he could lunge for her hand. They might both fall into the hole, but at least they would die together.
“Evie,” he said quietly. His voice drifted under the sounds of Lindow Moss putting itself to sleep. The curlews were drowsy now, calling irregularly. The burble of running water was louder.
She opened her eyes immediately; she had not been asleep, apparently, but she showed no sign of panic. “Oh, Alaric—I didn’t hear you,” she said, smiling without moving any other muscle.
Wilhelmina Everett Ffynche was an adventurer, whether she thought of herself as an aristocratic lady or not.
“Darling, please remain exactly where you are,” he said.
“I must,” she answered, ruefully. “If I shift my weight, everything moves under me, as if I lay on a thin mattress rocking on the waves. I seem safe enough at the moment.”
Curses exploded in his head. She was not lying on a firm island. She was, in fact, lying directly above the bog hole.
“I knew you would come,” she added.
He smiled back at her, thinking hard. He was a foot away. Inch by painstaking inch, he spread his arms forward, keeping them above the surface of the moss. “I’m going to move toward you, Evie. If I go down, do not move, do you hear me? My father’s men will find you.”
She managed to express the absurdity of that without twitching more than her eyebrows. “Why don’t you go find help,” she suggested. “I’ll wait here.”
He didn’t want to frighten her. He really didn’t want to frighten her.
“We haven’t time for that,” he said, because it was all too true. “It’s growing dark.”
“We could simply wait for morning,” she said. But she sounded uncertain.
“You’re lying on something we call a quaking bog,” he said. “The mud that holds the moss together can warm with body heat and loosen.”
Fear went through her eyes, but she didn’t let it triumph. “I suppose we’d better do something, in that case.”
“Many ladies would be in hysterics at this moment, Evie,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met whom I’d want as a partner other than you.”
“Why would I panic when I knew you would come for me?”
“And I have. Now, I’m going to keep my torso on firm ground, so that I can pull you toward me. Can you inch your arms carefully toward me?”
Willa nodded. Even that minute movement made the surface billow beneath her. Slowly, slowly, she inched her left arm out from under her head and straightened it.
“That’s it, darling,” Alaric murmured.
Willa gave him a lopsided smile. He was lying flat, his fingers outstretched toward hers. But behind his eyes …
“I am not Horatius,” she reminded him. She’d been lying on this undulating mattress of moss for a good hour, and she could feel where it was thick, and where a mere tangle of weeds separated her from running water.
“I know you’re not,” he said. His tone was encouraging, but his eyes were stark.
She shifted her weight slightly in order to reach her right arm toward him. One hip dipped low and she paused, waiting until her quaking bed quieted again.
“You have unerring instincts for the bog,” Alaric said, his voice drifting toward her. “You could have been born on Lindow Moss.”
“Does the house you own lie alongside the bog as well?” She reached her arms forward, but a gap still divided their hands.
“We can sell it,” he said, terse. “Do you know how to swim, Evie?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Lavinia and I have swum in the sea at Brighton.”
“Glide one arm forward toward me, pretending that you are lying on the surface of the water, like this.”
She imitated him, reaching forward with the right side of her body. It caused a violent rocking on her blanket.
“Easy,” Alaric said, so quietly it was hardly more than a breath. “Easy … Now little by little, staying level, swing your hip to the left.”
“I didn’t gain any ground,” Willa told him, a moment later, having attempted it.
“You will,” he said. His eyes held her, fiercely, as if he could will her over that last half-foot of bog.
“I believe my rump is caught,” she said.
“What?”
“My cork rump.” She managed a smile. “I suspect that the strings that hold it around my waist are caught on some twigs.”
“That cork rump,” he said, stunned. “It’s keeping you afloat, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps? When I tripped, my arms and legs went through the moss, but I popped back up. Yet I can’t seem to move forward. Or backward.”
Alaric made a slow, sinuous movement and reached for her.
“Is your weight moving onto the moss?” Willa asked with a pulse of sick fear. “You don’t have a rump to hold you up!”
Another movement, so delicate that it scarcely sent a ripple across the surface. Alaric had perfect control over every muscle, she realized. As he moved, his weight didn’t tip to either side.
“I’m all right,” he reassured, his voice low. “I have a good grip of a hassock with my knees. Not ideal, but sufficient.”
One more movement, so slow that she scarcely saw it, and his hands closed firmly around her outstretched fingers. Willa’s smile trembled. “Hello, darling. I’m—I’m so glad you came for me.”
“I will always come for you,” Alaric stated, matter-of-factly. “Now, I mean to skate you along the surface toward me. Can you bend your knees so that your feet are raised above the surface?”
“I’m afraid I would be made—oh!” she exclaimed. “I believe I understand.”
“It will remove the drag of your feet, and your cork rump will prevent you from sinking. I shall give you a good tug to free the strings. On my nod.”
Willa kept her eyes on Alaric’s. “If I fall into the water,” she asked, “will you please stay safely where you are?”
“You didn’t answer when I asked you the same question.”
“My answer is no.” The truth of it came from her heart. Alaric was hers and she was his, and if one of them was lost, the other would go as well. “Perhaps it was best that my parents died together,” she added, a sudden thought.
“We are not going to die,” Alaric said firmly. His hands tightened on hers. “Now, Evie.”
Instantly she bent her knees, pulling her legs up at the same moment that he pulled her sharply toward him. The rump’s strings broke free and she skimmed the rolling surface of the bog like a hoop across a lawn. He flung himself backward and they rolled together onto relatively solid ground.
Alaric’s arms closed tightly around her and he buried his face in her hair. Willa was trembling all over, shock making her feel more frightened than she had been a minute earlier.
After a while, she took his face in her hands. “You saved my life, Alaric.”
His expression in the darkening twilight was agonized. “One of my readers tried to kill you, Evie. Tried to kill you.”