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Her grip on Wes broke and she fell backward.
Backward, out of control, just as her left arm was jerked up. Hard. Tearing away from her body.
She looked up. Not Wes.
A man she’d never seen before, tearing at her arm.
No—tearing at her reticule.
The ribbon upon the purse ripped and he yanked it away from her, in the same instant shoving her against the railing of the bridge before he ran, disappearing from her sight.
Nothing in front of her now except the flurry of cloth and skirts and boots as she flipped over the railing, her legs flailing up over her head as she dropped over the side of the bridge.
Her arms—her hands—scrambled, desperate for anything to stop her fall.
Her right wrist caught on the crux of a baluster meeting the horizontal stone. It jerked her body to a stop, her legs swinging in the air, all her weight pulling on the fine outer bones of her wrist.
The river beneath her. The swirling waters angry. Hungry. Desperate to devour her.
Hell. The tide, her skirts. She would sink and never be found. The Thames did not give up its bodies. Not easily.
Her wrist slipped between the balustrade and the stone. Down to her hand, her fingertips, her last hope scraping across the stone.
“Laney!” Wes’s thundering voice hit her and she looked up. “Your hand!”
Dangled over the edge of the railing, Wes stretched his right hand down to her. Steel. Steel in his eyes, in his look.
Her fingers slipped and just as her body was about to sink through the air, she swung her left hand up to him.
Close. It had to be close enough.
A growl ripped through the air and he lunged downward, clamping his hand about her wrist.
He caught himself on the railing, righted his weight and yanked her upward.
Sheer strength in his arm. Pulling her straight up from the bowels of hell. From her lungs suffocating with water. From thoughts leaving her head. From death.
One fluid motion was all it took for him to pull her entire body up from the edge of the bridge.
He always was the strongest of men.
Wes dragged her over the railing and clasped her to his body, his arms wrapping her, pulling her into an iron cage of safety.
Moments, he stood there, holding her up, for her legs couldn’t do that on their own. The whole of London moving about them, not paying them any mind.
Stillness in the chaos.
{ Chapter 14 }
A stupid choice, saving Laney instead of going after the box.
The only choice, really.
He never would have let her fall. Never.
He didn’t even watch the thug run off the bridge with her reticule and the box. Didn’t think to chase him. Not when Laney was hanging by her fingertips, seconds from falling into the river.
She was more important than the damn box.
