Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)(103)

As the strength ebbed from his arms, he began to shake. He turned his concentration inward, focusing on that steady beat of his heart. The heart that loved her so very much. He wasn’t dead yet. Not so long as that heart kept beating.

Thump. Thump. A worrying pause. Thump.

Something landed on his arm, and he jerked reflexively, losing another fingerhold.

“Jesus, Ashworth. I’m trying to help.”

Bellamy. It was Bellamy, come to help. Oddly enough, Rhys didn’t feel especially rescued.

“Take my hand,” Bellamy said, waving the suggested appendage in Rhys’s face.

“Like hell I will,” Rhys managed to growl. “I’m heavier than you. Unless you have a solid foothold to brace yourself against, you won’t lift me up. I’ll just pull you over.”

“A valid point.” Bellamy lowered himself onto his belly and peered down past Rhys’s dangling feet.

“Don’t suppose there’s a convenient outcropping a foot or two beneath me?” Rhys ventured.

“No. The only thing beneath you is certain death.” Bellamy shot to his feet and began digging his boots into the soil. “Back to the first plan. There’s a ridge here. I’ll brace my boots. You take my hand.”

“It won’t work.”

“It’ll have to work. Do you have some better idea?”

Rhys had to admit he didn’t. “All right, then. On three.”

“After that trick in the carriage?” Bellamy shook his head. “I don’t trust you with counting. Just give me your hand.”

His right hand had the more secure grip, so Rhys shifted his weight as far as he could to that side. Then he gingerly stretched up his left.

The instant he did so, two things happened. Bellamy’s grip locked around his left wrist. And Rhys’s right hand began losing ground. Grit crumbled under his fingernails as his splayed fingers slid down and down. Both men swore in unison. If Rhys lost that grip, he’d be dangling by one hand, a dead weight at the end of Bellamy’s arms. Bellamy wouldn’t be able to hold him for long, much less pull him up.

Rhys clawed wildly for a new grip. Nothing. His fingers only slid closer and closer to the edge.

Stomp.

Rhys roared with pain as Bellamy stepped on his right hand, pinning it to the ground with his boot. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. “Holy Christ.”

“Come on, then,” Bellamy grated through his teeth, tugging on Rhys’s left arm. “Up with you.”

The hand currently grinding beneath Bellamy’s boot hurt like hell. But at least it wasn’t sliding anymore. By flexing the muscles in his arms and abdomen, Rhys was able to hoist himself up enough to swing a leg over the cliff’s edge.

A few grunting, heaving seconds later, he lay on solid ground, rasping for breath and staring up at the bright blue sky. Alive.

“Bloody hell.” Bellamy joined him, collapsing on the rock-strewn grass. “I’ll say this, Ashworth. Things are never dull when you’re around.”

The little finger on his right hand stood out from the rest at an awkward angle. Rhys blinked at it, dazed by the familiar pain. “I think you broke my finger.”

“I think I saved your life. And that’s after you kicked me in the arse, thank you very much.”

“Where’s Cora?”

Bellamy tilted his head toward the upslope. “Her ankle’s turned, I think. Driver looks like hell, but he’ll live.”

Rhys pinched his mangled little finger between thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand. Gritting his teeth, he yanked the broken digit straight out, then drew a breath and forced it back in its proper alignment, wincing at the bright slice of pain.

It was just as he’d told Faraday. The mending always hurt worse than the breaking.

He looked up to see Cora and the coachman limping down the slope.

Cora approached the cliff warily, took a peek over the edge, then reeled backward, pale and panting. “La.”

Rhys took in the driver’s torn clothing and scraped arms. In the accident, he must have flown straight off the driver’s box. “Are you well?” he asked the coachman, pushing to his feet. “The horses?”

The driver nodded. “All safe, my lord.”

“What the hell happened?”

“The traces just snapped. First the right side, then the left. Once they were gone, the splinter bar couldn’t hold. A clean break between coach and team.”

“Sabotage,” Bellamy breathed. “Faraday was right. Someone’s out to kill me.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe Faraday himself. Maybe he had someone working on this while you were enjoying your tea and shortbread.”

“Or maybe,” Rhys said, “the traces just snapped and not everything is about you.” He scoffed at the idea of Faraday’s decrepit servant crawling under the carriage with a file or rasp. “Bad luck, plain and simple.”

His curiosity finally overcoming his dizziness, Rhys peered down over the cliff. The ground fell away steeply. Far below, the sea chewed on the twisted wreckage with jaws of rock and wave. The entire coach had splintered to pieces. No man could have survived that fall.

Feeling suddenly breathless, he gave his cravat a vicious tug. The magnitude of the past few minutes’ events began to sink in. “Good God,” he said wonderingly. “I almost died.”