Elizabeth Grayson (10 page)

“Is anyone inside?” she heard someone shout.

“Three children in bed on the second floor,” another voice answered. “Their mother wasn’t able to get them out.”

Two men grabbed up feed sacks, wet them in the water trough, and sprinted toward the house. Ann’s heart skipped a beat when she recognized Chase was the second one.

She opened her mouth to call him back, but just then someone jammed the handle of a water bucket into her hands. After that, Ann was too busy to either shout or breathe. She took up the rhythm of the line, grabbing a bucket from the man at her left and thrusting it toward the woman on her right, grabbing, turning, and passing. Grabbing, turning, and passing.

As she worked, the strange peachy light in the house’s downstairs windows glowed brighter. Smoke poured out the broken door. The roof began to steam.

Ann’s eyes stung, and her throat was peppery from the smoke. Between passing one heavy, sloshing bucket and the next, Ann watched for Chase. Why in God’s name had he gone charging into that burning house? How could he hope to find the Fletcher children when it must be all but impossible to see in there?

Ann was sweating and gasping for breath when Chase finally burst out the front door. A cheer erupted from a hundred throats as he stumbled toward her, clutching a child against his chest.

Ann’s knees wobbled with relief at the sight of him.

“Find this girl’s mother!” he instructed as he thrust a child of three or four into her arms.

Ann instinctively clasped the child against her, then reached for Chase. It surprised her how much she needed to touch him, to feel him strong and solid beneath her hands.

Chase didn’t give her the chance. He spun on his heel and bounded back toward the house.

“Chase!” she shouted, her heart in her throat. “Don’t go back in there!”

But even if Chase could hear her above the roar of the flames, he paid no heed. He grabbed the blanket someone offered, draped himself in the folds, and ducked through the door.

“Chase!” Ann cried, wondering why he suddenly mattered so much to her. “Be careful!”

The fire was chewing through the structure inch by inch. Flames licked up the interior walls and clawed out the broken windows. She could see the fire scaling the stairs. Soon the entire place would be engulfed.

And Chase had gone back inside.

Finally Ann turned her attention to the child Chase had entrusted to her. The girl’s round, freckled face was smudged black around her nostrils and at the corners of her mouth. She whimpered, wheezed, and coughed— then vomited all down the skirt of Ann’s best gown.

Ann’s own supper backed up in her throat. Her ears buzzed. The inside of her mouth went velvety, but somehow she managed to hold herself together until her head stopped reeling.

She fished a handkerchief out of her sleeve, mopped the baby’s tear-streaked face and then her mouth. “What’s your name, dear?” Ann managed to ask her.

“M-m-marfa,” the girl wheezed and began to cry.

“Well, you’re safe now, Martha. I’m going to take you to your mother.”

They found Mary Fletcher on the far side of the picket fence, lying on the bed of a hay wagon. The blackened folds of her skirts had been turned back, and the doctor was bathing and binding the burns on her legs.

“Oh, Martha!” Mary sobbed at the sight of her daughter. Martha wailed hoarsely and reached for her mother.

Ann lifted the sobbing child into the wagon, and Mary wrapped the girl up tight in her arms. While Martha sniffled and coughed and wailed, her mother stroked and patted her, making sure she’d come out of the fire unhurt.

As the doctor finished bandaging Mary’s legs, he turned to Ann. “Is Martha all right?”

Ann thanked God for the bit of nursing she’d done at school. “She seems to have breathed a lot of smoke, and she was sick a couple of minutes ago.”

He nodded as if that was normal. “Any burns?” “None that I was able to see.”

Just then, Mary Fletcher clasped Ann’s hand and drew her closer. “Have they—” Ann saw the sick terror in the other woman’s eyes. “Have they found my other children?”

Ann tightened her hold and did her best to reassure her. “My—my husband and another man are getting them out.”

“They’ll be all right, Mary,” the doctor put in from where he’d begun bandaging one of the volunteers.

Though Mary snuggled her daughter close, Ann could see the impatience and dread in her eyes. She clasped Mary’s hand a little tighter and fought to keep her fear for Chase from interfering with the comfort she was offering Mary.

Then Ann looked back at the house and her heart froze inside her. Flames shot through the second-story windows. Fire gnawed at one corner of the roof and ran in hot orange streaks along the eaves.

Chase was in there somewhere, searching for Mary’s other children, risking his life for people he’d never met. It was the bravest thing she’d ever seen anyone do.

And the most foolhardy.

Then a tall man pushed his way through the gate. The steaming blanket draped around his head and shoulders made it impossible for Ann to tell if it was Chase. Whoever it was, he was carrying a boy of five or six.

Ann’s throat filled with grateful tears.

“This tyke yours, ma’am?” the man asked Mary and hefted the lad into the wagon bed.

It wasn’t Chase’s voice. This wasn’t Ann’s husband.

Mary grabbed the boy and wrapped him against her. “Oh, Jack!” she sobbed. “You’re safe!”

“I’m”—the boy’s thin chest heaved—“sorry, Ma!” Tears scored thin, white streaks down his sooty cheeks. “I’m sorry. I tried to get out.”

Mary buried her face in her son’s tumbled hair, then hugged both her children tighter. “It’s all right, Jackie boy. Nothing else matters now that you’re here with me.”

Ann watched the three of them clinging together. A family, not yet whole, but bound together. A family taking comfort among themselves.

When Ann began to feel as if she were intruding, she turned to the man who’d brought Jack out. His shoulders were hunched and his breathing was as labored and ragged as the boy’s.

She grabbed his sleeve. “Did you see”—fear squeezed the words up her throat—“anyone else in the house? Did you see my husband?”

“It’s like hell in there,” was all he said.

She turned from the horror in his eyes and pushed through the gate. As she crossed the yard, the grass crackled beneath her shoes, alive with bits of glowing ash. The smoke rolled over her like lines of breakers. The house wavered and shimmied in the heat.

It’s like hell in there.

“Chase?” she whispered. “Oh, Chase.”

The house beams creaked and groaned. The walls bowed. Someone grabbed Ann’s arm and dragged her back.

Through a film of grimy tears, Ann watched Mary’s home disintegrate beam by beam. The roof sagged. The timbers howled and shuddered. The walls crumbled slowly, one at a time. As each one fell, it sent up a shower of angry sparks.

Chase might have rescued little Martha, but that hadn’t been enough for him. He’d gone back into that inferno, and he was dying there, searching for Mary’s last child.

Ann clasped a hand across her mouth. She’d been wed to Chase Hardesty for less than a week, to someone who’d proved tonight he was a far better man than she’d given him credit for. And now she was his widow.

But then, from somewhere behind what was left of the house, a man reeled out of the darkness. As he wavered across the yard, the steaming blanket slid down around his shoulders. Ann recognized the shape of his head and wild, damp fluff of his hair.

Chase.

She began to run and reached him just as he stumbled to his knees in the brittle grass. His shoulders shook with coughing. As he fought for breath, he curled his body around something clasped against his chest.

Three of the townsmen dragged them back away from the flames and, as they did, Chase offered up what looked like a wad of rags. One of them took the bundle and pulled open the cloth.

Ann heard a baby whimper and knew Chase had saved Mary’s youngest child.

“You got the baby out!” Ann cried and cupped his face. “Oh, Chase, you saved the baby from the fire!”

He gave a quick, jerky nod, then reached out and dragged her against him. His frantic energy broke over her. “I came so close—” He gasped and ground his damp, blackened face into her shoulder. “So close to not—finding him. I searched”—he knotted his fists in her clothes—“every inch of those upstairs rooms. I—tried—” His voice broke. “—so hard. But I couldn’t...”

He bound her tighter. “Oh, Annie, I came so close— to giving up.”

Ann all but drowned in the wild boil of his fear and relief as it rolled over her. No woman with a heart beating inside of her could deny Chase Hardesty the comfort he was seeking. Ann wrapped her arms around him and rocked him against her. She splayed her hands against the bow of his shoulders, stroked his crinkled hair.

His skin was hot and wet against her throat. He reeked of sweat and smoke and the residue of terror. She shut her eyes and held him, thanking God in silent, jumbled prayers that this strong, brave man had come through the fire.

“It’s all right,” she crooned to him. “You got that baby out. All the children are safe.”

Chase went still in the circle of her arms.
“All the children?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

His muscles loosened. The last of the energy seemed to drain out of him. “All of them,” he rasped deep in his throat. “Oh, dear God! I didn’t think we’d get all of them.”

His shoulders heaved, and he bent forward, coughing with the effort to draw more air into his lungs.

“Easy,” Ann whispered, her own voice raw with breathing smoke. “Don’t fight so hard. It’s going to be all right now.”

Rue materialized over them, hovering, fiercely protective, wavering and unsure of himself.

“Water?” she said.

Rue went off without a word.

Across ten yards of trampled grass, the house shrieked and groaned, shivered and wailed. Ann and Chase watched it settle into a smaller mound of blazing rubble.

In Chase’s tearing, smoke-red eyes Ann could see what it had been like in there: a maze of shifting smoke, of scouring flames, and blasting heat. She saw that he’d felt trapped, wild with desperation, crazed with hopeless-ness. She saw his terror of failing. She felt the shudders take him and tightened her hold.

“I couldn’t find that baby,” he gasped. “I crawled through those upstairs rooms, feeling my way, knowing I’d never—”

“But you did,” she insisted. “You got those babies out. I saw them with their mother. It’s all right, Chase; you can let it go.”

He nodded, coughing resonant and belly-deep. He hunched forward, exhausted and shaking. Rue came with a canteen of water and Chase drank it down in one long swallow.

They were still kneeling in the grass when one of the townsmen came to get them. “Mrs. Fletcher has asked to see you,” he told them. “They’ve taken her to the house across the street.”

When they arrived, Mary was lying in bed in a room to the left of the door. She had the baby cuddled close in her arms. Martha lay with her head tucked into the crook of her mother’s shoulder and smiled shyly at Ann when she saw her. Jack was curled up asleep at his mother’s side, his arm splinted and tied across his chest.

Ann watched the four of them, understanding in a way she might never have understood before what Chase had given Mary Fletcher.

The woman on the bed reached out and caught Chase’s hand. “You saved my children, Captain Hardesty,” she said and blinked back tears. “I’m glad to see you got out safe as well.”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Fletcher,” he assured her.

“I have so very much to thank you for,” Mary nuzzled Jack’s hair, then hugged Martha and the baby closer. “I never expected to see my wee ones again. I thought they were lost, but you and Mr. Matthews...” Her voice faltered and her eyes filled. “You went into that house and brought them back to me. You risked your lives, and I’ll be grateful for what you did as long as I draw breath.”

“I did what any man would do,” Chase answered.

Ann knew he’d done a good deal more than that. She slid her hand around his wrist and squeezed it gently. She felt him start a little at her touch, and a wave of unexpected protectiveness moved through her.

“You just rest, Mrs. Fletcher,” Chase said and turned to go.

As Ann passed the bed, Mary snagged the drape of her skirt between her fingers. “You take good care of him!” she admonished in a whisper. “See that you give him a fine, strong son!”

Ann hesitated, then slowly raised her hand to her belly. “I—I’ll do the best I can,” she promised.

As they came in sight of the
Andromeda,
the passengers and crew members still milling on deck bounded across the gangway and swept Chase back onto the boat in a flurry of congratulations.

Ann trudged along behind. The furor that had buoyed her up abruptly drained away, leaving her staggering with weariness. Her shoulders ached from lifting buckets. Her head was fuzzy, and she smelled of sweat and vomit. Halfway up the landing stage, she ran out of energy. She stopped, swaying, not able to move another step.

Cal Watkins and Barney came trotting down to claim her. Cal gave her his arm to lean on and Barney nosed his way through the crowd to a crate where Ann could sit and rest herself.

She just sat for a time, too exhausted to think or move as stories about the fire buzzed above her head. But once she got her second wind, Ann saw that Chase looked even more weary than she, and was wavering on his feet. In the lantern light she could see the angry red burns speckling his face and hands. His hair crinkled at the ends and his eyebrows were singed to stubble. Deep holes pockmarked his once-fine coat, which probably meant there were burns on his chest and shoulders.

Chase clearly needed tending, and Ann could see that no one was going to look after him unless she did it herself.

She heaved to her feet and wended her way toward where Chase was standing. “If you come up to the cabin, I’ll see to those burns,” she offered.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Absolutely fine.”

But he didn’t sound fine. His voice scraped when he talked and his breathing was shallow and rusty. She recognized a tightness around his eyes, and knew that whether he was willing to admit it or not, Chase was in pain.