Anne Barbour (32 page)

“Nell! I see ye there. You’d better come away, else I’ll give ye what fer!”

“Wot the bloody ‘ell d’ye think ye’re doin’, Flossie Twigg? Ye ain’t got the brains of a dishmop!”

At Billy Bricks’ first words, the audience of women had swung about as one, and now the hope that had glowed on their features turned to expressions of fear and despair.

“Sir!” Hester’s clear voice rang out over the room. “If you have concerns about our programs, we shall be more than happy—

“We don’t have no concern!” shouted Billy Bricks. “We jist want you t’ shut yer gob and go back to yer rich house and yer rich life and take yer rich gentlemen friends with ye! And don’t come back no more puttin’ ideas inta our female’s heads.”

The mob of men roared their approval of this philosophy and surged forward. Thorne found himself flung against the wall as he made a vain attempt to reach Hester. Elbowing his way forward, he at last reached the podium, where he swung about to face the men, who had by now drawn their cudgels from beneath their coats and were beginning to use them on the women. Screams of panic filled the air.

The footmen from Bythorne House were giving a good account of themselves, as were Carver, John Wery, and Lord Bracken. Of Trevor Bentham, nothing could be seen. Thorne turned to add his bit to the fray, but was soon beaten back by the sheer weight of the opposition. Hester still stood at her lectern, exhorting the men to leave or face probable disciplinary action by the forces of law, sure to arrive at any moment, drawn by the sounds of the fracas.

Thorne thought she was probably right in her estimation, but there was no telling how soon help would arrive. Struggling to the nearest window, he saw that it looked out over an alley, in which there was parked a large, straw-filled wagon. He beat his way to Carver, who was trying to protect the person of Lady Barbara, while inflicting serious damage to a small-eyed giant who was apparently trying to dismember him.

“The window!” gasped Thorne, removing an impediment in the form of a club-wielding behemoth. He explained in a few words what he fondly termed his “plan of action,” and Carver turned away to signal Wery and Lord Bracken. In a few minutes, the gentlemen had corralled their frightened ladies and began unobtrusively to help them from the window into the wagon below.

Meanwhile, Thorne continued his progress toward Hester. She had left the podium and he knew a moment of sheer panic when he could not locate her. A few minutes later, he found her some distance away. He swore fervently. Wouldn’t you know it? The little twit had plunged into the fray and was now belaboring a thug four times her size. As Thorne watched, she attacked the man, taking him so much by surprise that she was able to wrench away from him the stick with which he had been beating a terrified young woman. Taking up the cudgel, she began beating him about the head and ears. At the moment, he was cowering before her, his hands covering a bald head and a pair of very large ears. However, Thorne knew this state of affairs would continue only until the fellow had recovered from his surprise.

Yes, he had glanced up at her from under his protective covering and his mean little eyes were red with rage. Dropping his arms, he retrieved his club by the simple expedient of swinging his hand cross Hester’s face, knocking her to the ground.

With an inarticulate growl, Thorne sprang past the bodies in his path. He had almost reached Hester’s assailant when a scream from one end of the room drew his attention. He noted, to his horror, that someone had knocked over a branch of candles from the buffet table. The floor had been strewn with straw, which immediately flickered into a greedy blaze, and within seconds a small fire began to feed on the room’s furnishings.

Thorne turned again to the man who had attacked Hester. He had swung back to his original prey, and Thorne grabbed him, swinging him about and flooring him with one blow to the center of his face.

“Hester!” Thorne cried, horrified, as he bent to cradle her in his arms. “My God, Hester, are you all right?”

A low moan was his only answer, but after a moment, she struggled to a sitting position. He began to lift her, but at that point yet another agitator caught sight of them and with a call to his cohorts surged to where they stood. By now, voices were rising in panic around the room, which was beginning to fill with smoke. Unheeding, the men advanced on Thorne and Hester. Thorne, wholly concerned with shielding Hester from further assault, contented himself with swinging out when the opportunity presented itself, thus accounting for several of the bruisers. By dint of sheer strength and determination on Thorne’s part, and with some fierce but admittedly ineffectual assistance from Hester, they at last reached the relative sanctuary of the area just behind the podium.

“Come on,” he snapped. “Let’s get out of here.”

Elsewhere, the combatants were beginning to abandon any notion of mayhem in favor of escaping the flames that were now rising along the walls of the room, consuming the window hangings.

Unfortunately, the path to the chamber’s only exit was blocked by a mass of struggling bodies and a fairly substantial wall of fire. The panic level was rising perceptibly, and Thorne turned Hester back toward the window from which the party from Bythorne House had made their escape. He looked down to see that the group was still in the alley, staring anxiously upward. Sounds of running feet and calling voices sounded from the street in front of the Blue Boar, and an armed contingent of constabulary could be heard inside the building, approaching the stairway. It was obvious that for the moment their presence only added to the general atmosphere of chaos at the doorway.

“Come on,” said Thorne again. “I see no reason why we should be here when the rescue squad comes rushing in. They will no doubt scoop up everyone present, and I don’t think you would enjoy an evening in the constable’s office.”

Hester shuddered. “No, indeed. But, the fire . . . Thorne, the others will be trapped!” Unceremoniously, Thorne dropped Hester from the window into the waiting arms of Gussie and Lord Bracken.

He turned to survey the shambles about him. So far, few of the crowd surging about the room had thought to avail themselves of the two windows that overlooked the alley, but persisted in flinging themselves against those who were trying to exit the doorway. These persons were hampered by those attempting to enter the room.

By now, the flames had risen inside the room, and the smoke was making it difficult to breathe. Visibility was reduced to a few feet on either side of him, but ahead he could hear the screams of those trying to escape. Blindly, he groped before him, grasping at the clothing of a woman who turned a terrified face toward him. At another time, he thought fleetingly, he would have passed her by, unseeing, but now she became the immediate center of his universe.

“Come!” he grated. “This way!” He lurched with her toward the window and assisted her through the opening. Returning, he repeated the procedure, this time with a mother and child. After the third or fourth person had been thrust to safety, the crowd began to perceive his efforts, and many swung away from the door.

Some of the men, who moments before had been beating the women unmercifully, now, either in shamed repentance or an urgent desire to escape the attention of the police, began to help the frightened females. The crowd surged toward the windows and in a few moments both men and women were dropping from them like rain to the ground below.

At last, a quick glance around indicated to Thorne that the room was empty. Breathing a choked sigh of relief, he swung a leg over the windowsill and was just about to plunge to the street when he heard the sound of frightened sobbing at the far end of the room.

The room was almost unbearably hot now, and the smoke seemed a living entity—a monster that clawed at his eyes and burned his throat. Making his way toward the sound, he discerned a ragged figure lying prone on the floor, trapped beneath one of the heavy tables, which had collapsed on him. He could not have been more than ten years old, and it was obvious that he could not move.

Thorne was aware that the chamber had become a death trap, but it did not occur to him to do anything other than wrestle with the table. He looked about, but there was no help.

“I’m stuck, mister,” whimpered the boy. “I can’t move my legs! Please help me! Noo-ooo!” he screeched. “Don’t go away!”

“I shan’t leave you,” Thorne assured him. “I’m just going to find something I can use for leverage. I have to lift this table.”

Lifting a nearby chair above his head, he brought it crashing to the floor. He picked up one of the resulting shards of wood and began prying the table away from the boy’s legs. He was forced to stop for a moment to beat at the flames that nibbled at his trouser legs. Damn! He must get out of here!

“Now,” he said at last, “when I tell you, try to pull your legs away. Can you do that?”

“Yessir!” gasped the boy, flailing at the nearing fire.

“Right.” Thorne strained at the table with the chair leg. “Now!”

With a supreme effort, Thorne heaved the table up, and in the next instant the boy had swung his slender body out from under its weight. Scooping him up, Thorne ran for the window, marveling at the fragility of the slight frame in his arms. A violent crash behind him told him that the ceiling was giving way, and with a single, fluid motion, he swung the boy and himself through the window.

Below, Hester scanned the window with anxious eyes. Where was he? She had watched with her heart in her throat as he helped one after the other of the women to safety, only to dart back into what seemed like certain death. What could he—oh! There he was! On trembling legs she ran to the wagon where Thorne was even now standing upright and brushing himself off.

With some gratification, Thorne watched the boy scamper away into the throng before jumping to the ground. He turned to Hester and the others who waited in the alley. He cast a sidelong glance at her. Aside from a burgeoning bruise along her cheek she seemed none the worse for wear, and her eyes seemed to catch the glow from the burning building.

‘Thorne! Are you—?”

“Yes,” he replied hastily. “All’s well that ends well, and all that. In the meantime, let us get out of here—now.”

It was many minutes, however, filled with exclamations of outrage, condemnation, and gratitude for their escape, before the party from Bythorne House set off for the sedate environs of Mayfair. Thorne, who had traveled in his curricle, insisted on conveying Hester, over her protest, while the others mounted their various vehicles.

“What will happen to those women, now?” she asked brokenly. “Oh, Thorne, I was just beginning to reach them! I saw hope in their faces—and now—” She caught herself. “I do thank you for appearing when you did, however.”

Thorne was silent for a moment, and at length brought the curricle to a halt in the shadow of a grove of trees that formed a bit of parkland in the area of Mayfair they had just entered. He turned to her and took her hand in his.

“Hester,” he said in a voice harshened by smoke and an emotion Hester dared not name, “you seem to believe that there is help for these young women. That they possess within themselves the means to gain their own salvation.”

“Yes, I do,” replied Hester stoutly, making an urgent but wholly unsuccessful effort to free her hand.

“Then,” he said softly, “do you not think it is possible for yet another worthless scrap of humanity—one who has squandered the blessings of a lifetime, to find a like reclamation?”

For an instant, Hester simply stared at him, openmouthed.

“Dear God, Hester, do you think a man could not remain in your presence for all these weeks without undergoing some sort of—metamorphosis?”

“I thought you had succeeded remarkably well in retaining your individuality—my lord.”

“Hester, confound it, I’m trying to propose here. Could you not at least listen to me?”

Across from him, in the confines of the curricle, Hester stared at him, blank-faced. Propose? Now, what maggot had entered his brain? Was he so bent on seduction that he would use the time-honored means of the oily-tongued roué to gain his ends? Yet, he had nothing of the rake about him right now. His clothes were in tatters, and his hair was a sweat-soaked mop, greasy with smoke. He looked, in fact, thoroughly discommoded—rather as though he were ready to explode.

“P-propose?” she whispered, cursing herself for the inanity of her response, as well us for the wild shaft of hope that surged through her.

“Oh God, Hester. I know I am making the most fearful mull of this, but I love you. I’m not sure I even understand what that means, but I know that I want you—only you— forever—and I want you to want me. I want to marry you in a church full of candles and well-wishers, and then I want to take you home and make babies with you.

“Hester,” he continued softly, as she continued to gape at him, “I want to be with you as you strive toward your goals. I am in awe of your dedication, and I will not be an impediment to you. I believe I can even be of some help. I—I want you to be happy.”

By now, the hands that were so firmly grasped in Thorne’s were trembling so badly that Hester thought he must feel her heart beating in their rhythm.

Talk was easy, she told herself. Thorne appeared to be sincere, but then, was not the appearance of sincerity one of the chief tools of a rake? No. Gazing into his eyes, she could not doubt the genuineness of his declaration.

Thorne had been tested tonight—literally in a crucible of fire—and he had risen magnificently to the crisis. Incredible as it seemed, the Earl of Bythorne had developed a social conscience.

But did he truly love her? How could she believe that he was ready to abandon his beautiful bits of muslin to settle down to hearth and home with the plain Miss Hester Blayne?

As though sensing her doubt, Thorne leaned toward her. “It is my understanding,” he murmured, “although I have little experience in the matter, that when a man tells a woman he loves her, there is a hidden clause in there somewhere about ‘forsaking all others.’ My darling, you caused me to start my forsaking some time ago. You have taken over my heart to such an extent that there is no longer room for anyone else, nor even the desire to explore the possibilities of same. I fear I shall become one of those most tedious of fellows, a faithful husband—and it’s all your fault.”