They Gave the Doomed Duke the Wrong Bride novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Frostmere

Everard went after him before I could stop him.

He went down the shore at a limping run, one hand clamped to his side.

I grabbed a lantern and followed.

"Ned!" Isobel's voice cracked behind me. "Ned, the ice!"

Out on the lake the dark was total.

The lantern showed me snow, and ice, and Everard's footprints going out.

Then a sound I'll hear for the rest of my life.

A long, low groan from under my feet.

"Stop," Everard said ahead of me. "Bryony, stop there. Don't come further."

I stopped.

He was twenty yards out, down on his knees.

Beyond him, Ned stood alone on a gray patch of ice where the snow had blown off. I could see the black water through it.

He was crying so hard his shoulders jerked.

"Go away," he said.

"I will," Everard said. "In a minute. Lie down first. Flat, like a fish on a plate. The ice holds you better."

"I don't care."

"I know. Lie down anyway."

Ned didn't move.

Everard lay down on his belly on the ice.

He was bleeding again. I could see the dark patch spreading on his coat in the lantern light.

He crawled forward a yard.

The ice groaned.

"You left," Ned said. "You went to the border when I was five. You said you'd come back for my birthday."

"I said that."

"You never came back. Then they said you were dead and Mother stopped eating. And then you came and you were Rook, and you were the best thing that ever happened on the whole road, and it was a lie."

"It wasn't a lie," Everard said. "The fish were real. The spear was real. I liked you better than anybody I'd ever met, and I didn't even know you yet. That part was true."

Ned wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was afraid."

The lake went quiet.

"You're not afraid of anything," Ned said. "I saw you in the ravine."

"I was afraid of men with swords finding out who I was and hurting you for it. And I was afraid that if I told you, you'd look at me like you're looking at me now." His voice cracked. "Ned. Please lie down. I can't lose you on a lake. I'd have to tell Mother, and she slaps very hard."

Something that wasn't quite a laugh came out of Ned.

He lay down.

Everard crawled the last yards and caught his ankle, and then his coat, and pulled him slowly back across the gray ice into the snow.

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