Suddenly the legs stopped kicking, the arms collapsed and the person did not move again.
Emma covered her mouth to keep her shocked gasp in. She looked up and down High Street. The area was strangely empty except for the men surrounding the body on the ground.
A large clap of thunder suddenly rent the air. Emma fleetingly thought that it was strange to hear thunder in February when it was snowing. Then a bright light pierced her eyes and the Kirk o Field building exploded.
The impact lifted Emma off her feet and tossed her backward. She thought maybe she had screamed and then thought that she couldn’t let those men know she was here, watching their dastardly deed.
Bits and pieces of stone from the building began falling from the sky. Emma stared up at them as they came hurtling toward her but she had no strength to cover her face, to get up and run.
And then she knew nothing.
—
The explosion rocked Tristan’s bed and woke him up. He hurriedly pulled on clothes, grabbing his cloak as he headed out the front door of his print shop.
People were coming out of their homes, still in their nightdresses and nightcaps, their eyes clouded with sleep. Some were hurrying toward the orange glow on the horizon, lanterns in hand.
Tristan closed and locked the door to the print shop and followed the others. They were talking excitedly, speculating as to the source of the sound that rattled the windows and the dishes in the cupboards.
Tristan listened with half an ear, his mind cataloguing the theories being tossed about.
“Had to have been a lightning bolt come from the sky,” one man said.
Who had ever heard of lightning and thunder in February.
It was snowing but it was a lazy snow, the sparse flakes drifting slowly about. The orange glow grew brighter and Tristan could just make out the lick of flames against the backdrop of the sky.
A fire.
An explosion of some sort?
“We’re under attack,” a woman wailed.
Tristan highly doubted they were under attack but it was a more plausible explanation than lightning.
The crowds became thicker once he turned left onto Blackfriars Wynd and then right onto Cow Gate. Tristan pushed his way through to find what had been Kirk o Field. The south side of it was a pile of burning rubble. He pondered the scene for a moment as the crowd pushed against his back.
Men ran forward and began digging through the rubble, looking for bodies. The night watch arrived and people cleared a path for them.
Tristan went to the back of the crowd, skirted it and walked a bit north of Kirk o Field. He crossed to the other side of the street so he could view a much larger part of the orchard. On this side the building was half blown out, half standing. There were fewer flames here. He took a few steps forward, looking intently into the night. It was darker on this side, most of the fire being on the other side of the building, and his toe caught on something soft.
He looked down to find a woman sprawled at his feet, her head turned away from him, blond hair covering her face. Her skirts were rucked up around her knees and her legs were covered with woolen hose. She had one black, leather shoe on, the other foot absent a shoe.
He crouched down and swiped her hair from her pale face to see a trickle of blood dripping down her temple. She moaned and winced then fell silent.
She was a woman of means, her gown made of the finest material. Her cloak was a velvet of indeterminate color in the dark. Even her lone shoe was of a soft leather and her woolen hose were finely woven—although one knee sported a rip and a touch of blood from scraped skin. He looked around for the woman’s companion—for a woman of such means had to have a companion—but there was no one else on the street.
However, by the sound of the crowd the next street over he could tell they were getting closer. Tristan scooped the woman up and settled her against his chest. Her head lolled back and her arm fell to the side.
He headed toward Thieves Row, away from the crowds, the fire and mostly away from the night watch. The woman bounced a bit in his arms, moaned again and fell silent. He noted that her wrist was skinned, more proof that she’d been tossed off her feet and landed a bit away from where she’d been standing.
If he was correct in his assumption, she had been standing at the corner of Cow Gate Port and Mary’s Wynd Port when the explosion occurred. She was lucky in that she’d already passed the point of the worst of the explosion.
The light from the fire dimmed and the chaos of many voices retreated as he made his way down Potter Row Port, angling back toward High Street, but farther down from where the crowds were gathering. He shifted the woman in his aching arms. She wasn’t a large person, by any means, but any unconscious person became heavy after time. He glanced down at her face but it was turned away from him, her neck uncomfortably twisted and her head hanging. Long, pale blond hair trailed toward the ground, swaying in the slight breeze.
Breathing heavily now, arms protesting, Tristan turned onto Cow Gate and skirted the backside of the Parliament building. People were still coming out of their homes and wandering about, talking to neighbors and looking toward the orange glow. Tristan stuck to the shadows and turned into the narrower wynds behind the shops. Dank, fetid air enclosed him but he trudged on, thinking only of getting back to his print shop and putting the unconscious woman down. Many times he wanted to stop and rest but he knew he couldn’t. A man carrying an unconscious woman would draw attention. Especially if the man was a lowly printer and the woman was one of means.
Luck was on his side, however, as most of the people were too engrossed in the fire and not watching what was happening near them. He turned onto High Street, Edinburgh’s main street, where most of the merchants were located and where his print shop was nestled between a fabric shop and a bread shop.
He made it to his front door and juggled the woman so he could extricate his keys from his pocket, unlock and open the door.
He only breathed a sigh of relief when the door was securely closed and locked behind him.
The front lower level was dedicated to his printing business and he walked through it quickly, knowing his way in the dark. The back of the building held the kitchen and a sitting room. But the sitting room boasted only a few ladder-back chairs and a fireplace.
He carried the woman up the stairs to his living quarters where he’d carved out a small but comfortable spot for himself.
Up here there were two bedrooms and his private sitting room, furnished with an old settee and a comfortable chair he’d procured from the fish monger when the man left town to live with his daughter in Inverness.
It suited Tristan well but he knew it was far beneath what this woman was probably accustomed to. Normally Tristan didn’t much care about appearances. He wasn’t nobility and didn’t live with or have to compete with those who had money. He was a simple man content with what he had, but for a moment he was almost ashamed to bring this woman into his living quarters.
Then he reminded himself that she was unconscious and injured and she would probably be relieved to know that he’d not left her out in the cold to die. Or worse, to be arrested by the night watch.
He laid her gently on the bed in the unused bedroom and stared down at her.
What the hell was he supposed to do with her now?
Love stories you’ll never forget
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