Suzanne Robinson (7 page)

“An advisor?”

“A gentleman to take the burden of business from you, Miss Grey.”

“Mr. Poggs, I have advisors in New York, San Francisco, and London, but I make all the final decisions. If you have difficulty with that fact, say so now so I can get somebody else to do your job.”

The threat of losing so rich a client nearly sent Mr. Poggs into a faint. Gentleman advisors were never mentioned again. After a couple of weeks of working with Kate, Poggs treated her with respect instead of polite tolerance.

Mr. Poggs was to dine with them and then stay the night at an inn before departing for London in the morning. Dinner was therefore pleasant for Kate. When Mama complained too often about being slighted by Lady Juliana, Kate could talk about her latest clipper ship with the solicitor. Unfortunately, Mr. Poggs left early, and she was doomed to another evening in the drawing room with the ladies.

Of the three, Ophelia was the most trying, for she flitted from sofa to chair to window like a demented nuthatch. Usually, after a morning spent in the arms of her marquess, she was dreamy and disgustingly self-satisfied. Now she twisted her giant handkerchief like a washrag, chewed her lip, and paced. As she walked, Kate kept expecting a collision. Her cousin’s skirt pushed at a Chinese vase on a pedestal. It veered toward the Meissen tea set. It attacked a bronze andiron in front of the fireplace. When Ophelia swirled around in one of her abrupt changes of direction, the hoop bobbed. Kate thrust her teacup onto an end table, dived from the couch and swatted at her
cousin’s skirt as it touched the flames. Ophelia jumped and made a squawking noise.

“Kate, what are you doing?”

“Saving you from being burned.”

Mama and Aunt Emeline joined in a chorus of “Oh dear.” Ophelia scooted away from the fire, thanked Kate, and began her flitting again. Half an hour later she was still at it, so Kate excused herself and retreated to her room.

In a short time she was curled up in bed, maid dismissed for the night, a book cradled in her lap. It was
Romeo and Juliet.
Heroes and love were safe as long as they were on paper. Outside, the storm clouds that had been moving in all day dropped their load of rain. A rumble of thunder made the window shutters clatter, and the wind whipped raindrops against the panes. They sounded like pins thrown against glass. The last words she saw before falling asleep were appropriate for the stormy night. “These violent delights have violent ends,/And in their triumph die.”

Kate surfaced from an unremembered dream with something poking her in the ribs. Fishing the book out from the covers, she lowered it to the floor. Outside, the storm had grown more violent. Water hurled itself in sheets at the windows. Kate was hauling the blankets up over her head when she heard a loud squeak. It came from the warped floorboard directly opposite her door. She knew that because she had to step over it when she was sneaking around trying to avoid afternoon callers.

Curious about who would be up in the middle of the night, she wrapped a blanket around herself and tiptoed to the door. She opened it a crack and fitted one eye to the opening, but all she could see was a hooped skirt—a darker, swaying blob in the darkness of the hall—as it headed for the front staircase and disappeared.

Kate shut her door and hurried back to the warmth of
her bed. Ophelia was prowling about, and it didn’t take much imagination to guess why. A few minutes later, Kate’s suspicions were confirmed by two separate squeaks of the floorboard.

“No more sense than Hamlet’s Ophelia,” Kate muttered to herself. “I suppose it’s too much to expect.” She punched her pillow several times, but her annoyance kept growing. “Sneaking about, bringing him here with Mama and Aunt Emeline just down the hall.” She shoved her head under the pillow and rammed it against her ears as though it could keep away thoughts of the man and woman next door. “She’ll pay for it, sure as eggs.”

The ticking of the porcelain clock by her bed and the wind-blown rain kept her awake for an hour before she finally drifted back to sleep. It was two o’clock when the floorboard squeaked again, jolting her awake. This time she groaned and jerked the covers over her head, then turned on her stomach and made herself recite from the
Iliad
until she dozed.

In her dream she was smothering. Kate gasped and coughed herself awake. The feeling of smothering became terrifyingly real. Smoke, gray and hot, curled and billowed into the room from beneath her door. Leaping up, she shoved her feet into slippers. As she pulled on a dressing gown, she scurried to the door and pressed her hand to it. Cool. After all the fires in tinderbox San Francisco, she knew better than to open a door without testing it.

Opening the portal a crack, Kate choked on the smoke that swirled around her. She slammed the door shut and raced to the commode where she wet a towel and tied it around her nose and mouth. By the time she opened the door again, she could hear shouting from below stairs. Giving herself no time to panic, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled into the hall.

Breath-clogging smoke engulfed her. Snapping and hissing sounds came from the right, the direction of Ophelia’s room, as well as heat and the dancing light of flames. Kate turned to her left and inched toward her mother’s room. She could hear screams above the steady crackle and hum of the fire. She caught sight of Mama huddled in the doorway of her room trying to keep Aunt Emeline on her feet. Kate pulled on her mother’s arm.

“Kate! Thank God.”

“Get down and help me with Aunt Emeline, Mama. There’s not much time.”

Sophia coughed, but managed to choke out Ophelia’s name.

“The fire is in her room,” Kate said. “We have to get out. Hurry!”

Kate tugged, and Sophia had no choice but to follow. Together they crawled down the hall, half-carrying Emeline through the growing miasma. On the landing the air was clearer, and they could stand. They met the butler and Turnpenny racing up the stairs. Nightcaps askew, white nightgowns sodden with water splashed from the pails they carried, neither stopped.

Plunging down the staircase, Kate was almost tripped by more men hauling water. When she and her mother and aunt reached the front door, maids threw blankets around them and they were rushed out into the chilling rainstorm. They were quickly drenched by sheets of rain as they ran around the house to the stables. Servants took charge of Sophia and Emeline. All three of them gagged, choked, and shivered for long minutes.

Finally, with her lungs and skin burning and her blanket trailing behind her, Kate went back to the house and ran upstairs, holding her wet towel to her nose and mouth. In the hall the smoke was so thick she had to crawl again. She’d been cold in the rain, and now she felt the heat of the fire on her wet skin. She bumped into Turnpenny
making his way down the hall checking each room. The coachman steadied her.

“Miss, I can’t find Lady Ophelia. I fear she’s still in her room.”

“You keep looking,” Kate said. “I’ll see if she went outside.”

Ophelia wasn’t outside. Drenched servants rushed past her carrying silver, paintings, and furniture. Maids wept or helped lift water, but no Ophelia. As Kate searched, her dread grew, and pictures of her cousin burning alive kept leaping into her mind. Her stomach roiled and her legs grew weak, and she bolted back into the house and upstairs.

Turnpenny had given up. He was throwing buckets of water with the rest of the menservants, and Kate could see a wall of flames where Ophelia’s door used to be. Turnpenny yelled at her.

“It’s no use, miss. We can’t get to Lady Ophelia’s room.”

Kate screened her face with her hands and coughed.
Oh God. Oh God, no. Dear Lord, please no.
Feeling her strength drain away in the face of horror, Kate made herself leave the inferno.

Stumbling over the skirt of her gown, she lurched out of the house and across the lawn to fall against the side of the stables. She doubled over, her hand clamped to her mouth. Trembling and sobbing, she huddled against the wall and finally dropped to her knees. She could feel a great wail building inside as she imagined Ophelia burning. Desperate, she clamped both hands over her mouth to muffle the sound, and let it out.

The scream filled her mind, tore at her throat. She gulped in air as another keening sob gathered from deep inside her body. They kept coming, one after the other until she lost count.

Some time later, a gust of wind whipped a lock of wet
hair across her face, and she dragged it out of the way. Her cheek pressed to the wall, she pounded the brick with her fist. The impact scraped skin from her hand, and she caught her breath. She couldn’t stay there whimpering. Ophelia was dead, but there were others who needed help.

Clawing the wall, she managed to stand. She took several breaths, wiped her face on her gown, and picked up her blanket. Hands shaking, tears still falling, she joined the Maitland House staff in filling water buckets.

She didn’t know how long she stood in the rain and pumped water. All she did know was that her hands were as numb from the cold as her feelings were from shock. She kept her attention on the repetitive motions of raising and lowering the pump handle, until the clatter of hooves and wagon wheels broke her concentration.

The storm was passing when several men rode into the stable yard, followed by a wagon carrying more. As a stable boy took her place at the pump, Kate gathered her sodden blanket around her and ran to meet the newcomers. The lead man hauled back on the reins of his horse and bent down to her.

“Is everyone safe? Where is Lady Ophelia?”

It was de Granville.

Kate wiped the sweat and rain from her face and clutched her blanket to her neck. “She was caught—caught in the fire.” Her voice sounded dead and far away. She turned and headed for the house.

De Granville swung off his horse. He ran past her without a glance and disappeared inside the house. Kate kept her attention on putting her feet down and picking them up, putting them down and picking them up. The rain had faded to a drizzle when de Granville reappeared. His face was blackened, and the moisture made tracks through the smudges on his cheeks.

The marquess called to someone named Fulke. As
Kate reached the front steps, the marquess and another man were talking hurriedly with the Maitland butler, Crossthwaite. Kate stood on the porch in a daze watching the Marquess of Richfield try to save Maitland House.

At last she gathered her wits and crept back inside and upstairs. Quick work and the help of the rainstorm had confined the fire to the area around Ophelia’s room, but the flames had burned through to Kate’s room before the servants and the marquess’s men could completely subdue it.

The hall past her room was a charred, black cavern. Kate passed several men on their way out, carrying jagged pieces of wood. As she walked, the floor got warmer and warmer, but she kept on, her gaze fixed on the hole where Ophelia’s door used to be.

A white silk wall loomed in front of her. She looked up at the Marquess de Granville. His face was smeared with grime and sweat, and the shirt, soaked by perspiration and rain, clung to his chest. In the light of a nearby candle, his eyes took on the luster of the green in a stained-glass window. Kate stepped to the side, intent on finding Ophelia, but the marquess put his arm across her chest.

“It’s not safe. But we were lucky. The fire burned through the roof and the rain helped put out the flames.”

She shoved his arm away. “You went in.” She took another step, but her arm was clasped by long fingers.

“Your mistress is dead. There’s nothing left that a woman should look upon.”

Kate yanked her arm free. Tears started and wouldn’t be stopped. “I know she’s dead. She didn’t come with my mother and Aunt Emeline and me. I’ve known she burned to death ever since we got out of the house.”

Ignoring the marquess’s apologies, Kate hurried back down the stairs and out onto the porch. Sophia and Aunt Emeline were there. As she approached, her watery vision revealed the marquess talking to her mother. Kate
stopped in confusion, then realized that the man before her wasn’t de Granville. He was older than the marquess. She wiped her eyes and took in the upright posture, silver strands in the black cap of hair.

Behind her she heard the thump of a boot. Those tensile fingers gripped her arm again. She was about to object when the older man spoke.

“Alexis, I have offered the hospitality of Castle Richfield to the Maitland ladies.”

The fingers on her arm tightened. Kate looked up at the finely etched brows that drew together, the slightly squared chin. Down-curved lips formed words.

“Damn and blast you, Fulke.”

Alexis stood motionless, his hand clamped around a strange woman’s arm. Wind blew in his face, but it didn’t cool the flush in his cheeks. He released the lady while he battled for control of his temper. Ophelia was dead, and he couldn’t find within himself anything resembling grief. The war had taken it all, and he was ashamed.

His control was little better than it had been in those horrible days of weakness after he first returned from the Crimea, and now Fulke stood in front of him and openly invited this family of social mountain goats into his home. He wanted to shout at all of them that the dead woman was one of his lovers and he didn’t want her family and its sorrow invading his already somber domain. Instead he inclined his head and murmured an apology. Fulke jumped in to save him.

“My cousin has only recently recovered
from wounds and illness gained in the war.” Fulke bent over the snuffling Emeline and patted her hand. “I fear his strength has been taxed and that makes his manners less than they should be. With your permission, I will see to having you moved.”

During Fulke’s speech Alexis noticed that the young woman in front of him was shaking her head. He should apologize for mistaking her for a servant, he told himself.

“Miss, I don’t know your name.”

The lady turned, and Alexis found himself being examined by a pair of brown-gold eyes and with all the thoroughness of a headmaster.