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Wouldn’t they?
She felt her body go limp, feeling like a heavy weight she had to carry, rather than something that her soul inhabited. She was still sinking; she was sure of it. How far down did it go? And if she’d managed to take off those extra 30 pounds, would she still have sunk as fast? Surely not. She heard her ex-husband’s voice in her head, “Nice going, Chubby. Maybe if you weren’t always stuffing your face, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”
It was then that she had to fight the urge to cry.
Surely she would be found, she rationalized. But when?
She heard the sound of dogs barking in the distance, excited, overlapping canine voices, and thank God they were growing closer.
“Here!” she yelled. “Help me! Please!” She wanted to lift a hand and wave it to attract attention: maybe the dogs had an owner. Maybe they were ridiculously well-trained rescue dogs like the Saint Bernards they had in the Alps that wore little wooden casks of brandy strapped to their collars.
Mmm. Brandy. Nice and warm in her throat.
The idea made her laugh, short, self-mocking rasps that convinced her that the shock was sending her crazy.
Three dogs came tearing down the hill towards her, large tan and black German Shepherds, all so excited that spittle flew from their mouths. They were accompanied by a man, tall and dark-haired, moving quickly beside them, yelling commands in French. Immediately, they pulled up short, just at the edge of the bog, where the brilliant green carpet had so deceptively lured her in.
She recognized the man at once: Corbin Durant. He’d changed clothes since their encounter this morning, having replaced the muddy, disreputable looking sweats and filthy running shoes for jeans and a t-shirt. His feet were clad in rubber boots, almost as if he was prepared to wade through muddy water, and in one hand he held a coil of rope. He stopped just short of the edge of the bog, clearly knowing where it began, as did the dogs, who began pacing excitedly around the perimeter.
Melanie felt a mixture of relief and chagrin. She was being rescued! Yay! But it was by Durant, who had already been both witness to and victim of her stupidity once today. She wondered if she’d ever be able to look him in the eye.
“Just what the hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded, one hand on his hip. “Walking into un marécage as if you have not a care. Did this look like a sensible route to you?”
As glad as she was to see him, and as vulnerable as she felt, flat on her belly and soaking in muck, she was immediately irritated. “Maybe I didn’t know it was a marécage when I stepped into it!”
He pointed, looking just as irritable as she felt. “Those leaves, those flowers, they grow in water, you see? One look at it, you should know there was water below.”
“How should I be expected to know this?” she protested. She briefly wondered if it would be terribly painful if the bog just swallowed her up right now and spared her further humiliation.
He gave her a sideling look. “From what I heard, Madame Meyer, your young son, he would have.”
“Leave Rhys out of this!” she snapped.
His lips curved in a sardonic smile. “If he had been on the edge of this bog, he would not have gotten into it.” He looked so pleased at his stupid joke that she wished one of her hands were free so she could smack him.
But she inhaled—wincing at the putrid smell and taste of mud—and did her best to stay calm. “Now that you are here, Mr. Durant, do you think you can help me get out of it? We can discuss my stupidity at length later.”
He seemed to have calmed down a little, now that he’d gotten a few zingers off his chest. He lifted the coil of rope he held at his side and waved it around. “We will have you out in a moment—as long as you don’t thrash around too much.” The tone of his voice made it clear that he thought she was exactly the kind of idiot to thrash around too much. That would probably make her sink like a rock. Just how far down did this marécage thing go? The idea that she might soon find out whether the center of the Earth really was hollow made her bubble with laughter, but the backsplash made her instantly regret it. She could taste the grit, feel it grind between her teeth.
He gave her another sharp look, making her struggle to quell the urge to yell, I’m not crazy! at him. Nearby, the dogs paced, not daring to breach their orders and enter, but looking remarkably jealous that she got to romp in the mud while they didn’t.
Corbin began uncoiling the rope, then knotted the end of it several times and swung it towards her, as accurately as if he’d pitched baseball in high school. The large, knotted end landed right in front of her, splashing another spray of mud on her face.
“Now,” he said, speaking more slowly and gently than he had since he’d arrived, as if he was talking to a skittish animal, “I want you to grasp it with one hand, slowly. Then the other. And don’t try to stand, okay? You will only sink farther.”
She grabbed the rope as instructed, remembering as she did so how lousy she’d been at tug-of-war in middle school. The only reason she was ever chosen for a team was because she was chubby enough to be a good anchor.
“Do you have it?”
She nodded, not risking talking in case she got herself another mouthful of muck.
“Hold tight. Allez, on y vas.” He began to pull, leaning back, putting his weight into it, and for a humiliating moment she wondered if she was so heavy that this man would need to call for help. The counter-suck of the jealous, possessive mud wouldn’t make things any easier.
But Corbin Durant was large and powerfully built, and for an irrational moment, even as the mud protested and then reluctantly ceded possession to him, she noticed how long and strong his arms were, the way the muscles along his forearms corded as he pulled. It was, objectively, a fine sight.
What’s wrong with you?she chided herself. You’re halfway towards drowning and all you can think of is this guy’s biceps?
She felt solid ground under her as he dragged her back onto the grass, and was immediately assailed by the three gleeful animals, who pounced upon her as if she was an old friend, until their master barked an order and they backed off with well-trained obedience.
