The Mad Earl's Bride Read Online Free PDF

toward its heart, and his efforts to struggle for footing where there wasn’t any only sucked him in deeper.
    Still, the muck had climbed only as far as his hips, and an assessing glance told Gwendolyn that this patch of mire was relatively narrow in circumference.
    Even while she was studying her surroundings, she was moving toward the mare, making reassuring sounds. She was aware of Rawnsley cursing furiously, in between shouting at her to go away, but she disregarded that.
    “Try to keep as still as possible,” she told him calmly. “We’ll have you out in a minute.”
    “Get away from here!” he shouted. “Leave my horse alone, you bedamned witch! Run, Isis! Home!”
    But Gwendolyn was stroking under the mare’s mane, and the creature was quieting, despite her master’s shouts and curses. She stood docilely while Gwendolyn unbuckled the stirrup strap, removed the stirrup iron, and rebuckled the strap. She looped one end of the rope through the strap and knotted it. Then she led the mare closer to the bog.
    Rawnsley had stopped cursing, and he was not thrashing about so much as before. She did not know whether he’d come to his senses or was simply exhausted. She could see, though, that he’d sunk past his waist. Swiftly she tied a loop at the free end of the rope.
    “Look sharp now,” she called to him. “I’m going to throw it.”
    “You’ll fall in, you stupid—”
    She flung the rope. He grabbed . . . and missed. And swore profusely.
    Gwendolyn quickly drew it back and tried again.
    On the fifth try, he caught it.
    “Try to hold on with both hands,” she said. “And don’t try to help us. Pretend you’re a log. Keep as still as you can.”
    She knew that was very difficult. It was instinctive to struggle when one was sinking. But he would sink faster if he fought the mire, and the deeper he was, the harder it would be to pull him out. Even here, where it was safe, the soggy ground was barely walkable. Her boots sank into mud up to the ankles. Isis, too, must contend with the mud, as well as her master’s weight, and the powerful mire dragging him down.
    Still, they would do it, Gwendolyn assured herself. She looped the reins through one hand and grasped the stirrup strap and rope with the other.
    Then she turned the mare so that she’d be moving sideways from the bog, and started her on the first cautious steps of rescue. “Slowly, Isis,” she murmured. “I know you want to hurry—so do I—but we cannot risk wrenching his arms from their sockets.”
    H E COLL APSED AS soon as he escaped the mire, but Gwendolyn had to leave him while she returned to the bridle path with Isis. Though the horse had been good and patient through the ordeal, she was restless and edgy now, and Gwendolyn was worried she might stumble into the mire if left unattended. One could not look after horse and master simultaneously.
    By the time she’d settled Isis with Bertie’s gelding, retrieved a brandy flask from the saddlebag, and hurried back to Rawnsley, he had returned to full consciousness. To extremely bad-tempered consciousness, by the looks and sounds of it.
    His black mane dripped ooze from the mire, and he was cursing under his breath as he shoved it out of his face and dragged himself up to a sitting position.
    “Devil take you and roast you in Hell!” he snarled. “You could have killed yourself—and my horse. I told you to go away, curse you!”
    A mask of grey-green slime clung to his face. Even under the mucky coating, however, his features appeared stronger and starker than in the miniature. This was a hard, sharply etched face, while the painted one had been sickly looking and puffy.
    The rest of him was not sickly looking either. The earl’s bog-soaked garments clung to broad shoulders and back, a taut, narrow waist, and long legs—and every inch of that was solid muscle.
    The reality was so unlike the picture that Gwendolyn wondered for a moment whether someone had played a joke on her,