Coughing from the smoke-glazed air, Devon ducked back into the carriage. He found Winterborne pulling shards of glass from his hair, his eyes still closed¸ his face scored with a mesh of bloody scratches. “I’m going to pull you outside and guide you to the river’s edge,” Devon said.
“What’s your condition?” Winterborne asked, sounding remarkably lucid for a man who’d just been blinded and had his leg broken.
“Better than yours.”
“How far are we from solid ground?”
“About twenty feet.”
“And the current? How strong is it?”
“It doesn’t bloody matter: We can’t stay here.”
“Your odds are better without me,” came the calm observation.
“I’m not going to leave you in here, you arse-witted bastard.” Devon gripped Winterborne’s wrist and pulled it across his shoulders. “If you’re afraid you’ll owe me a favor after saving your life…” With effort, he towed him toward the open doorway. “… you’re right. A huge favor.” He set a foot wrong and they both stumbled. Reaching out with his free hand, Devon grabbed hold of the doorway to secure their balance.
A lacerating jolt pierced through his chest, momentarily stealing his breath. “Christ, you’re heavy,” he managed to say.
There was no reply. He realized that Winterborne was fighting not to lose consciousness.
With every excoriating breath, Devon felt the stabs in his chest lengthen into an unbroken shrill of agony. His muscles locked and spasmed.
Too many complications were piling up… the river, the cold, Winterborne’s injuries, and now whatever was causing him such pain. But there was no choice except to keep moving.
Gritting his teeth, he managed to tug Winterborne upward and out of the carriage. Together they splashed into the water, which caused Winterborne to cry out in agony.
Clutching him, Devon struggled to find purchase, anchoring his feet into the gluey river bottom. The water was higher than he’d estimated, reaching well over his waist.
For a moment the shock of cold paralyzed him. He concentrated on forcing his locked muscles to move.
“Winterborne,” he said through gritted teeth, “it’s not far. We’ll make it.”
His friend replied with a succinct curse, making him grin briefly. Laboring against the current, Devon waded toward the reed bed at the riverbank, where other survivors of the accident were crawling out.
It was hard, exhausting work, the mud sucking at his feet, the frigid water sapping his coordination and shutting down all feeling.
“My lord! My lord, I’m here!” His valet, Sutton, was standing at the river’s edge, waving to him anxiously. It appeared he had climbed down the escarpment from the derailed carriages still poised on the bridge.
The valet plunged into the shallows, gasping at the bone-chilling temperature.
“Take him,” Devon said brusquely, dragging the half-conscious Winterborne through the reed bed.
Sutton locked his arms around the other man’s chest and pulled Winterborne to safety.
Devon felt his knees give out, and he staggered among the reeds, fighting not to collapse. His exhausted brain worked to summon his last reserves of strength, and he lurched toward the bank.
He stopped as he became aware of frantic, high-pitched cries. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that passengers still occupied one of the compartments of a flooded carriage that had landed in the river at a diagonal tilt.
They hadn’t been able to break open the locked door. No one had gone to help them; the survivors who had made it out of the water had collapsed from the cold. Rescuers were only now just beginning to arrive, and by the time they made it down the embankment, it would be too late.
Without giving himself time to consider it, Devon turned and sloshed back out into the water.
“Sir,” he heard Sutton call out.
“Look after Winterborne,” Devon said brusquely.
By the time he reached the carriage, he was numb from the waist down and struggling through a haze of confusion. Through pure force of will, he fought his way into a compartment of the carriage, through the space in a wall that had been torn by the force of the accident.
He went to a window and gripped a brass rod. It took immense concentration to make his hand close around it properly. Somehow he managed to wrench it free of the wall, and waded through the carriage to plunge back into the river.
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.