VIOLET JUMPED up from where they were eating. “The children!”
Splashes and screams followed.
Icy fear gripped Ford’s heart. Boots and all, he made a running dive into the river.
But the splashes were playful ones—on Rowan’s part, at least. And if Jewel’s shrieks weren’t exactly in fun, they weren’t pleas for rescue, either. It was obvious both children knew how to swim.
The shock of cold water helped Ford regain his wits as he gathered Jewel and Rowan to him, one in each arm. He should have given his niece more credit, he thought wryly. She was much too clever to leap to her death. And if she was less than pleased with the outcome of her prank, perhaps it would be a lesson learned.
Moments later he’d hauled them ashore, no harm done. But by the time they were back on the barge and sailing for home, Violet was on the verge of hysterics.
“We shouldn’t have left them!” she wailed, wringing her hands. Ford had never seen anybody wring their hands. Not in real life. He’d thought people only wrung their hands in plays.
And they hadn’t left the children—they’d been watching them the entire time. He’d been there within seconds, he reminded himself, struggling to hold on to logic in the face of hysteria. There had never been any real risk of drowning.
So why was his pulse still beating double-time?
He drew a deep breath. ”All’s well that ends well,” he told Violet philosophically, wondering if a philosopher had actually said that. But if she knew, she was in no state to inform him.
Jewel was equally hysterical. “There were fish in there!” Her entire body shuddered, and not from the wet and cold. “Fish! Slimy fish!”
Rowan was hysterically laughing at Jewel, and Ford…well, if he hadn’t felt a need to act as the lone voice of reason, he’d have been hysterical along with the rest of them.
“Of course there were fish,” Rowan crowed between snorts. “You goose,” he added with undisguised glee.
Ford suspected he’d been waiting to call Jewel a goose since she’d called him one on the swings. Pouring water from one of his boots, he rather sympathized with the boy.
Women. Ford would never understand them. For a moment back at the inn, he’d thought he had finally made sense of Violet. He’d seen that she was driven by a deep-rooted ambition not unlike his own. That warm flash of connection had felt so surprising and welcome, he’d made an offhand jest about men and marriage—just a silly jest! But it seemed to have shocked her, or angered her. Or both.
Criminy, why did women have to take everything so seriously?
As they neared Trentingham’s dock, he sighed and tipped his second boot. Water ran out, along with a tiny sliver of silver.
“Another fish!” Jewel screamed.
Rowan snickered.
Violet moaned.
And Ford knew he wasn’t going to get an answer to his question.