I am officiallyin love! I have finally found my prince! Lord Anthony Argyll is perfect in every way. He’s handsome and charming, and while he isn’t rich and will never inherit anything, he is so eager to do good in the world he is determined to work for the government…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 21
“… fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…” Vee counted all the heads in a blind panic as each orphan raced off of the ice amid what had to be half of London. “Three are still missing!” She shouted this to Galahad who was still out on the ice looking for her charges. A quick scan of all the frightened faces lining the bank revealed exactly which three weren’t there that should have been. “Tommy, Sydney, and Billy!”
Galahad nodded and searched the chaos for them, cupping his hands as he called out their names.
The reverend dashed toward her. “Are we all present and correct?”
She shook her head. “We are still waiting for Mr. Tubbs and the Claypoles. The little ones?”
“Are all mustered over there out of harm’s way with my wife and Mrs. Witherspoon.” He pointed farther up the path, and she allowed her gaze to leave the ice for a moment to check that it was so.
That few seconds was all it took to lose Galahad in the melee. “Take the others to safety while I…”
The reverend’s fingers gripped her arm and yanked her back from the edge. “It’s too dangerous, Vee!” She knew that but could not stand by impotent when he was on the ice for her. “You must stay here.”
“Get the others to safety!” She tugged her sleeve away, shaking her head in apology as she plunged into the fray. “Galahad! Tommy!” She was shouting into the wind, her urgent calls swallowed by all the others. Mothers. Fathers. Husbands. Wives. Brothers. Sisters. All frantic. All carrying or dragging loved ones to safety. It was a fight getting through them, but all at once she did, only to be confronted by a different kind of chaos in the middle of the lake where the ice had fractured.
Only the brave ventured there. The selfless or the desperate. Dotted like statues and frozen in fear; their focus all converged on one precise spot. One sported a ginger mop of hair, so she raced toward that like a woman possessed.
“Sydney! Oh my God, Sydney!” One down, only three to go. “Get back to the shorenow!”
His body static, his eyes as wide as saucers, he shook his head. “Not without my bruvver!” He pointed to an enormous patch where the shimmering arctic blue-and-white ice had been eaten by the familiar murky turquoise of the Serpentine. Crouched upon a floating shard the size of a rowing boat were the other two boys. Tommy first. Billy tucked right behind him. Six feet away and flat on his belly on the jagged edge of the hole was Galahad.
“No sudden movements…” His voice was calm and reassuring in the strange eerie silence that now cloaked them. “We’ll do this as many times as we need until you catch my sleeve.” Up until that moment, Vee hadn’t noticed he was coatless. “Don’t panic if you miss the first time and if you don’t, don’t yank it, ya hear?”
Tommy nodded, his freckled face more serious than she had ever seen it.
“I’ll count to three and then I’ll throw.” Tommy nodded again, sucking in air as Galahad counted. “One… Two… Three…” He whipped his coat out across the channel and the boy whimpered as he missed it. “Never mind… That was just a practice run… If Billy holds you tight around the waist, you can reach a bit farther.”
Billy didn’t waste a second doing as he was told, and the coat was gathered up again by Galahad, wrung out, and rolled into a corded spiral. “One… Two… Three…” Out it snapped again and this time Tommy caught it, the precarious ice boat rocking back and forth in protest. “Stay still… Let it settle…”
Like the boys, and everyone around them, Vee held her breath until the chunk of ice calmed and Galahad made them all wait until the water beneath it was still, too, before he began to pull them in. Slowly.
Inch by painful inch.
The second he grabbed Tommy’s fingers, she rushed forward to help, only to be stayed by several pairs of hands—including Galahad’s—when the surface beneath her skates creaked menacingly.
Vee stopped dead, and for the first time looked to her feet. The ice, which had been so opaque and robust nearer the shore, was as translucent as glass out here in the middle where the afternoon sun had melted it.
“We need to keep the weight to a minimum.” Another man ushered her back. “We need to keep it spread out.” He pointed to the human chain waiting patiently to assist in the rescue.
She nodded, petrified, barely daring to breathe as she edged backward until there was no sign of the ominous bubbles of water visible through the reassuringly thicker ice beneath her feet. Then watched, impotent, as Galahad alone carefully eased first one boy, then the other from one dangerous piece of the ice to another. Only when Billy was safe and painstakingly being passed from hand to hand toward her did she sag in relief.
She hugged both boys close, shivering more from the fear of whatmight have been than the cold. “Go back to the bank slowly. One at a time.”
“Y-yes, Miss M-Merriwell.” Poor Tommy’s teeth were chattering, and his brother quickly stripped off his coat to wrap it around him. As the much thinner Billy was practically blue with cold, she gave him hers, then turned to where she assumed Galahad would also now be heading toward her.
Except he wasn’t.
He was still perched on his knees at the thinnest edge of the ice issuing calm instructions again.
That was when she realized that her boys weren’t the only ones left stranded by the failing ice. The little, ragged chestnut seller was, too, and to her complete horror, the much farther-away and smaller shard of ice that he was clinging to for grim death was sinking.
“Try to keep still, little fella.” How Galahad could sound so controlled when the situation was so perilous was a mystery, but he was as cool as the ice around him. “Give us a minute to make a line long enough.” The few men who remained were frantically tying together coats, cravats, and scarves to span the thirty feet between the boy and the man, but by her best guess it was still several feet too short. “At worst, you’ll have to swim for a little bit—but we’ve got you.”
“I can’t swim, mister!” The boy’s breath sawed in and out as his grubby face crumpled with terror. “I can’t swim!”
