Page 70 of How the Duke Saved Christmas

The ice cracked beneath her, and she froze with a loud gasp.

Susannah cried out again. Clara took a deep breath for courage and slid herself forward, straining to stretch her arm toward the little girl. Susannah reached for her, and Clara clasped her frozen fingers in her hand.

Clara lay on the ice with her arm extended into the freezing water to keep Susannah from sinking. But the water was so terribly cold, and the little girl was exhausted from trying to scramble out of the water. Clara didn’t have the strength to lift her out of the water, neither did Susannah have the strength to rescue herself.

With every passing heartbeat, Clara felt the little girl slipping away from her into the unbearable cold.

“Help us!” she screamed into the woods. “Dear God—help us!”

“Clara!” Michael’s deep voice boomed through the trees, loud with panic as he raced toward the pond. He slid to a stop at the edge of the ice and stared, stunned. “Christ!”

He hurried forward across the ice as quickly as he dared with the smooth soles of his riding boots slipping on the glass-like surface. He held out his arms from his sides to keep his balance.

“Michael!” Clara called out. “Susannah fell through the ice—I can’t pull her out!”

“I’ll save her.” When he came as close as he could standing on his feet, he dropped to his belly and crawled forward to the circle of broken ice that had widened from Susannah’s frantic attempts to pull herself out. But fighting the cold and the weight of her wet clothes only added to the little girl’s exhaustion, and she could barely keep her head above the water, couldn’t lift her arm at all now to reach toward them to be saved.

Her frozen fingers slipped out of Clara’s grasp, and she sank beneath the black surface.

“No!” Clara cried.

Michael rolled off the ice and into the water after Susannah.

He grabbed her by the back of her coat as she sank toward the bottom of the pond and yanked her upward. She let out a loud sobbing wail of fear as her head broke the surface, and she gasped in deep lungfuls of air. Michael took her beneath the arms and heaved her onto the ice beside Clara, who grabbed the girl to her in a desperate attempt to warm her.

But when Michael tried to climb out of the water, the thin ice broke beneath his hands. The brittle layer wasn’t strong enough to support his heavy weight. Every time, he attempted to heave himself out, his hands broke through, and he slipped once more down into the water.

“Michael!” Panting down her fear, Clara let go of Susannah and slowly lowered herself onto her front to more evenly distribute her weight across the ice. She reached out as she slid herself forward one last foot toward the edge. He was growing exhausted, every attempt to climb out of the ice claiming more and more energy— Dear God, he was turning blue!

She made a desperate grab for him. Her fingers clutched his hand and kept his arm extended across the ice so he couldn’t sink beneath the surface, but she possessed nothing close to the needed strength to pull him out of the water or into the thicker ice where he might still be able to rescue himself.

“What are you doing?” His teeth chattered between each breathless word. “Let go of me and take care of Susannah.”

She tightened her hold on him. “I amneverletting go of you, do you hear me?” Despite her determination, she couldn’t stop a tear from breaking free and trailing slowly down her cheek. “I won’t let you go.” She swallowed back a sob. “I love you too much.”

He forced a grin and clenched his teeth as violent shivers racked his body. “Say that…again.”

“I love you,” she sobbed out, “you exasperating, infuriating, aggravating—”

Shouts went up from the woods. A group of grooms from the stable ran toward them. The men scurried carefully across the ice. One of them snatched up Susannah and ran with her back to the house. The rest of the men reached the center, dropped to the ice, and formed a chain with their bodies, with the lead man held at his ankles by the man behind him. He grabbed for Clara’s ankles first to pull her back from the open water.

“No!” she cried out as her hand slipped away from Michael, and he sank down into the water.

Once she was safely away from the water and thin ice, the men moved forward again. The groom in the lead leaned far out over the water to grasp Michael by the collar of his jacket and held him above the water. Then he shouted over his shoulder, and the chain of men pulled him away from the broken ice, dragging Michael along with him. He gave a loud groan of exertion, hauled Michael out of the water, and dumped him unceremoniously onto the ice.

Michael rolled onto his side and began to cough and shake violently.

“Michael!” When Clara reached for him, one of the grooms scooped her into his arms to carry her off the ice and toward the house. She twisted in the man’s arms and hit her palms against his shoulders to make him take her back, but he ignored her and kept hurrying toward the house as fast as he could. “Michael!”

Over the groom’s shoulder, she could see him lying so deathly still on the ice, his eyes closed and unconscious. One of the rescuers grabbed him beneath his arms and another took his legs. Together they lifted his body to carry him off the ice.

It was the last glimpse she had of him before she was carried into the woods and out of view.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Day After Christmas

Clara rested her head against the back of the wing back chair Thomas had positioned next to Michael’s bed and pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. She was utterly exhausted. Two nights in a row without sleep, with this second night a hell compared to the heaven of the first.