Page 23 of Rejected
No. I cannot even speak the words inside my own mind.
It is beyond ridiculous.
It is beyond terrifying.
She looked frantically out of the window. As she leaned further out, a cold blast of wind hit her, andshe shivered; she was wearing nothing but a stupid, flimsy gauze nightgown that Meg had insisted was ‘proper’ for a viscount’s daughter staying ‘in London for the season’. Still, she had had to have a fire in her room, and a robe-de-chambre besides to keep herself from freezing. In her writing frenzy, she had forgotten the robe, and she could now feel the cold pierce through to her bones.
The water of the stupid decorative lake would be even more freezing. Only yesterday, Sir John had been inviting them all to skate on the ice next Christmas, declaring that the ice had barely thawed earlier this month. The water was still in icy temperatures.Lethal.
Without making a conscious decision, Jo found herself flying down the hall with nothing but a candle in her hand to illuminate the way. She took the stairs of the wide, carpeted staircase, three at a time, and ran out the front door without bothering to call a servant. At some point during her hurry, she must have abandoned her slippers, as they were only slowing her down, and her bare feet were now padding on the wet grass, until they brought her to the edge of the water.
The rower, now very clearly Teddy, was pushing the oars furiously, his boat slicing the waters as it flew further and further away from the shore. He was in deep waters, far too deep to be able to stay alive in the water for very long if he were to upset his small boat by his violent rowing.
I drove him to this.My rejection cut him too deep, and now he’s going to… the way he’s rowing, he might fall into the water and—
She could not complete the thought, it was unthinkable.
She had to do something.
She tried to call his name but her throat had closed up in terror. She just stood there, on the frozen shore, watching helplessly as Laurie kept rowing like a madman.
With silent screams tearing her throat to shreds, Jo stepped into the shallow water, and the cold cut her breath short. The water was absolutely arctic. She grit her teeth and stepped further, up to her ankles. Her stupid, useless nightgown billowed around her, being no use at all against the frigid water. If anything, it was getting quickly dragged down around her, icy cold quickly spreading through the flimsy material and climbing up her legs.
A sudden flash of a memory snapped in her head: the frozen water closing over her head when she was fourteen. Her hand clutching Amy’s frozen fingers. Laurie screaming bloody murder in the distance. Then nothing but darkness.
It’s not like that, she told herself. The water was up to her knees now. She was so numb with cold, she stumbled, and nearly fell in.
I cannot fall into the icy water again. I will definitely die this time.
Maybe it was a different kind of falling that she feared altogether, but she could not help the terrorthat gripped her both for her own sake and for Laurie’s.
She bit down on her lips so hard she drew blood, and forced herself to open her eyes—she had closed them involuntarily at the memory the cold water evoked.
He won’t be here to save you this time.
He will never be here again.
“Laurie…” she murmured, his name a strange, foreign sound on her lips. A name she had spoken more times than her sisters’, more times than her own.
But no sound came out of her lips.
…
Frozen by fear, Jo just stood there for what felt like hours but was probably a few seconds, knee-deep in icy water, shaking, and helplessly watched as Teddy rowed in the lake wildly, sloppily, as if he had no concern over his own safety. She wiped her cheek; it was wet. Why on earth was she crying?
The splash of the oars grew louder, more furious. Jo’s eyes were blinded by tears and panic, and she couldn’t tell whether he was coming out or rowing deeper into the murky waters. Terror gripped her.
And with terror came anger. No, not anger. She had felt anger hours ago, when he would not stop proposing or kneeling in front of her in that pathetic manner. Now, it was transforming into rage.
She should not even be here.
She should be safely tucked into her desk, writing like a madwoman into the first light of the morning, not standing in a lake with nothing but a transparent excuse for a nightgown between her and the inky water. She should be wondering what she would have for breakfast, and how she and Papa would fare on the long, rattling journey back home, not wondering whether it would be she or Teddy who would drown first.
If the foolish boy wanted to disappear into the lake, then he was welcome to. He was at fault for all of this. Now that she needed him more than ever, he had gone and ruined everything. Their childhood, their friendship and her whole world, in one fell swoop.
The moon moved out of its cloudy mantle once again, briefly illuminating the silver-glass surface of the water.
She waded just a step further in, and the bottom of the lake abruptly fell away, as if opening into a dark, cold abyss. Her feet slipped, and she felt the coldness of the water rising up to her chest, stealing her breath completely. She gasped, and squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for going under.
