The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [124]
But Olivia was here, somewhere. Five years before, he had not entered the Channel’s frigid, treacherous waters to save Alfie. He could not have saved Alfie. But he could make it down this bloody passage. He would not allow another person he loved to die gasping for air.
Another gulp of air and he heaved himself forward again, trying, against his body’s protests, to think. He had to find Olivia and get her to one of those windows. They were tiny, too small to push her through, but if he could hoist her up to the window on his shoulders, she would be able to breathe. Air on the ground was damnably short, even with his nose pressed against the stones. In fact, the relentlessly calculating part of his brain informed him that he would die in minutes if he did not breathe some fresh air.
Another breath. The bleak truth of it came with tingling in his extremities. He would not survive this. He would not find Olivia, nor save her. His lungs burned, telling their own story.
Still, at least this time he knew that he had given it his all: he hadn’t stood, powerless, on the dock. He had thrown himself into the water.
He forced himself to crawl forward again, and then he heard a strangled woof. He reached out, thinking he’d touch fur, and felt a bare arm instead. A limp arm.
A window. He had to get her to a window. Indeed, he had to get them both to a window. He felt up her arm, panting her name, but had to stop in order to dip his head to the stone floor once again. He sucked up what air he could, choked, tried again. Olivia was lying facedown, which might have saved her.
He refused to think about the other possibility.
She lay halfway across a threshold. He tried to peer into the room, but oily black smoke obscured everything. But Lucy had barked at a window . . . without further thought Quin took another breath, then he staggered up and hauled Olivia’s slack form into the room. His body overruled him in a desperate attempt to find air. Dropping Olivia, he sucked in a gulp of smoke and doubled over, coughing so hard that he felt as if his ribs would break.
Black dots floated before his eyes, and he stumbled forward, hitting some sort of soft pallet. He leaned against it for a second, trying to gather strength. He knew the window was up there; if he could hoist Olivia onto this thing, he could put her face close to it.
They would have to abandon the little air there was at ground level. But the logical part of his brain registered that his loss of vision wasn’t only due to the smoke. His sight was closing down along with his lungs. They would not survive unless they got to that window.
He crouched down, took in a breath, managed to roll Olivia’s limp body over his shoulder, and staggered to his feet. It was a sign of his diminished mental power that he felt no surprise when a ladder appeared just where he needed it. He put a foot on the lowest rung.
Lucy. He propped Olivia against the ladder, reached down and felt fur, picked up the dog by the scruff of her neck.
The black dots were swirling now, like a storm coming in at sea. How much time did he have before unconsciousness? A minute? Less? He snatched Olivia’s skirt, dropped Lucy into it, and stuffed the fold of cloth into his mouth, holding the dog between them.
He forced his second foot onto the ladder. His thighs felt like steel bars, inflexible and impossibly heavy. But he pushed himself up and up again, until at last he toppled Olivia on top of the pallet. There was the window. Bless you, Lucy, he thought.
Lucy rolled free, scrabbled to her feet, and tottered toward the fresh air. Quin sucked in one lungful and then pulled Olivia across the pallet, putting her mouth next to the bars. She had not moved. She was utterly limp.
Dead, he thought. She was dead.
“Come on, Olivia,” he said, his voice coming in a rasp. “Breathe, damn it, breathe!”
But her face lolled against the bars. He could see no signs of life.
A tearing pain seized him. His heart was cracking, breaking right there in the smoky