by Rue Allyn
From the yard, she proceeded to the spinning room, covering her mouth and nose with a kerchief as she entered. Even with the machines idle, cotton dust filled the air. Tonight the scent seemed more acrid than usual. She noted that heaps of ropy bleached cotton remained in a few corners. She’d have to ask Mrs. MacKenzie to see to it that metal bins were placed in those corners for cleanliness and safety.
Mae walked the aisles between the machines looking for objects littering the floor. She’d hired a cleaning crew to pick up any trash or other items that might cause a trip hazard. Shaking her head, she bent to retrieve a large tangle of thread. The snarl was damp and oddly greasy. Cotton prepared for spinning shouldn’t smell greasy or oily. She sniffed. The scent could be kerosene or alcohol but was too faint for Mae to discern specifically. How could either substance get onto cotton?
As she shook her head over the waste and carelessness, she noticed a number of other such snarls trailing down the far side of the room and under the closest of the two doors into the weaving room. She progressed into that room. Fear knotted in her stomach. Something was definitely wrong, but she couldn’t quite figure it out. She tried to chase panic away with the thought that the cleaning crew needed better incentive. She’d consult Mrs. MacKenzie about that. The Scots woman had proven to be a fount of wisdom about how to motivate workers. At the intersection of a middle row of looms and the aisle at the far side of the room, Mae reached for yet another thready heap. As she tugged at the material, which seemed to be caught on a support for the power loom, she noticed light showing through the space where the door into the stretching room did not quite meet the floor.
“That’s not right,” she muttered to the silent machines. After the workers went home, the machines were shut down and the rooms closed for the night. Because the risk of fire was great, lights were always extinguished at closing. Besides no one was inside the rooms, so no light was required. The only reason for a light in the next room was the same as hers for bringing a lantern.
Someone was in there.
Heading for the stretching room, she pushed through the door, tossing the thread snarls to one side. A dim glow spread from the stair in the center of the room, leading to the upper floor. Cotton dust hazed the air like fog but with a scent dry as smoke. A sound thudded from the overhead storage area. She stepped inside, leaving the door open behind her.
Cautiously she hung her lantern on a nail sticking out of a post supporting the upper floor and climbed the stairs. When her head cleared the level of the second story, she paused, looking for the source of the light. The sight that met her eyes horrified her.
A man with his back to her stood over a bound and gagged James. The man was busy placing snarls of cotton thread at James’s head and feet. He’s too slim to be Carver, so who is he? How did he overpower James? Mae didn’t wonder any longer than it took her to edge onto the floor and move into the shadows cast by a huge cotton bale, watching the man all the while.
Hands now empty of string, the figure turned, picked up a spouted can and began pouring liquid all around James. Then walking backward, the man lifted his lantern from the floor. He continued to pour that liquid until he set the can down where he stood a scant foot from the stairs. The odor of kerosene filled the air. As he passed her hiding place, the light from his lantern lit his face.
“Vincent!” Shock made her speak aloud.
He turned his head and lifted the lantern, exposing her. The shadows turned his smile ghoulish. “Miss Alden. What an unexpected pleasure. Now come out of there and go sit next to Collins.”
She heard a click and saw the dark shape of a pistol in his hand. Fear for herself and James formed thicker than cotton dust in her throat. Never allow Damato to see my fear. Find some way to delay him. Alvin will be back soon and come looking. But I left a note. He won’t be in any hurry to search. I have to solve this problem myself.
Sick with worry. Mind reeling with a jumble of ideas, she moved as he instructed, noticing James’s feet were untied as she stumbled in his direction. His eyes were open too, but she could not read his expression in the dim light. She turned and sat, positioning herself with James’s tied hands just behind her. She kept one hand before her to convince Vincent she was cooperating, but her other hand was busy trying to loosen the knots binding James’s wrists.
“How did you get in? Why are you doing this?” she asked, trying to distract the man she thought a friend of the Collins-Morton family, keeping him here long enough for her to free James and together they could turn the tables.
“I? I am doing nothing here. I am sitting with my sick sister at Lydia Collins-Morton’s home. Anything that happens here tonight is the work of the irate Mr. Carver, who bribed Jenks for a key and sadly, when disoriented by the smoke and flames, burned to death in the same fire he set to kill you and Mr. Collins.”
“You killed Carver? Where is he?”
“I’m surprised you worry about him. You and Collins treated him just as badly as you treated me.”
“He was stealing from the mill.”
“Oh, come now. We both know that’s just some excuse Collins trumped up to make you think he wanted to please you. Anyone who wasn’t naïve and desperate could see his plan was to seduce you, get you with child and then cast you aside once he had full control of the Alden fortune.”
“You’re mad. Why send an announcement to the papers if he had no intention to marry me?”
Vincent shrugged. “Announcements are only worth the paper they’re written on and easily retracted. Did he ever give you an engagement gift?”
Mae tried not to let the answer show. There’d been no time for gifts. She didn’t need them to know the truth of James’s proposal.
“No? Well, why invest in a lie? I certainly wouldn’t.” Damato lifted his lantern. “You should have accepted my offer. Much better to be a wife than a whore or a corpse, don’t you think?”
“I’ll marry you. You don’t have to destroy the mill.”
“You’ll jilt your lying fiancé and never say a word of what happened here?” Vincent laughed. “Forgive me if I doubt you. Only a fool would accept that promise.”
“Then I’ll pay you, once I’m married. No one needs to know about tonight’s events.”
He sighed. “But that would be only part of the fortune. Since you have two other sisters, I don’t need you to get what I want.”
He would try on Edith or Kiera what he’d tried on her? She could not allow a homicidal maniac to get near her sisters. “What do you want?”
At last the knot binding James came loose.
“I want everything, the entire Alden fortune and this property most of all. I’ll make plenty of money leasing it to the city of Boston and collecting tolls when they decide to build that new bridge across the Charles. Now I’m afraid I must be going. Goodbye, Miss Alden.”
He tossed the lantern in the direction of the kerosene pool just beyond James’s head, then fled down the stairs.
As the lantern flew through the air, James rose, lifted Mae to her feet and rushed them toward the stairs, all in one move.
Behind her glass shattered. Heat roared at her back from kerosene and cotton dust bursting into flame.
They dashed down the stairs with the fire on their heels.
James ran for the open door to the weaving room. She saw Vincent running in the same direction on the other side of the room. Mae lifted her skirts and gave chase, but could not move fast enough.
Vincent sped through the door first, with James a foot behind. The wooden slab banged shut behind him. When Mae finally reached the door, she struggled with the sticky latch for a few seconds. She could hear the sounds of a fight, grunts of pain, the crash of equipment and a gunshot. She turned, thinking to use the door at the opposite end of the wall, but the fire had already spread down that side of the room and was licking up the door’s edges. Would she die here, just steps from James?
A bloodcurdling scream replaced the sounds of fighting.<
br />
She had to get through to James. She steadied her fingers and, with patience she didn’t feel, manipulated the recalcitrant latch. The door swung open, and she saw James lying in the aisle between her and the door shared by the spinning and weaving rooms. As she rushed to his side she saw the burning heap that blocked the door to freedom. From there flames spread out in every direction following the snarls of cotton thread she’d dropped earlier and beyond, eventually joining with the fire that had broken through from the ceiling on the far side of the room.
What in the world?
James first. Once she knew he was all right, she’d figure out the rest. She knelt by his side found his pulse, saw he was breathing, then dropped to the floor, relief flooding her.
But relief was short-lived. They had to get out, and unconscious, he was too heavy for her to move on her own.
She dropped her head into her hands at the same time she heard a moan. Lifting her head, she saw James’s eyes open.
“James, what happened?”
“Shot,” he mumbled.
There was no blood on the front of his shirt. Mae struggled to lift him until she found the entry wound on the upper back side of his shoulder. The bullet was still inside him.
His body sagged, so heavy she couldn’t hold him. She let him slide back to the floor. His eyes closed, but he was still breathing.
“What do we do now?”
“Get out.”
She almost didn’t hear him whisper over the roar of the fire on the second floor.
“You’re injured.”
“Got to try.”
She nodded and clung to him. “Vincent?”
James shook his head. “Dead. He had a second lantern stashed down here. He managed to light it, but I knocked him down. The lantern broke. He had so much kerosene on his hands from spreading it around the building that he caught fire. I tried to get him to the floor, smother the flames, but he panicked and ran. He’s over there.”
James tipped his head in the direction of the blocked door.
Mae swallowed hard. The same fate awaited them if they didn’t move soon.
“We have to get out of here. Can you stand if I help you up?”
He grinned, his teeth white against his soot blackened skin. “I’ll give it my best try, but what good will that do?”
“I have my keys. If we can make it to the doors on the far side of the stretching room, we can get out that way.”
“How far is that?”
“I don’t know. Three hundred yards, maybe more.”
“I don’t like the odds. We won’t move very fast. You should go without me.”
“I go with you, or not at all.”
“You can’t always have your way, my heart.”
“I’ll have it this time, or it won’t matter anymore," she insisted.
"Promise me you’ll save yourself, if I pass out again.”
“James—”
“Promise.”
“Very well. I promise I’ll take care of myself.” She’d take care of him too.
“You’re being evasive, but I don’t have the strength to force you.”
She gave a cock-eyed grin. “Very wise. Now let’s move. There are water buckets midway down the wall of each room. We can use those to help us survive until we make it to the back door.”
They struggled, flames growing around them, but she managed to get him on his feet. With James leaning heavily on her, they shuffled their way back into the stretching room. Smoke and flame filled the space, and Mae despaired of finding the precious water bucket.
James coughed and sagged more heavily on her.
“Keep moving,” she encouraged. “We’re closer than we were.”
He coughed again. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”
She pressed her lips together and surged forward, forcing him to step with her as she edged along the aisle between the smoldering wall and the inferno of machinery.
She kept one eye out for the bucket and the other eye on James. His head lolled, and he began to slide from her grip when she nearly stumbled on the pail.
She eased him to the floor, then tore cloth from her dress, soaking it in water and plastering the wet fabric over his nose and mouth.
She repeated the process, using the second rag on herself. By then, James’s eyes were open once more.
She lifted the cloth from her face enough to speak. “Can you go on?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.” She reached for him and once again wrestled him to a standing position.
Eternity could not last longer than it took for them to dodge embers, brave flaming barriers and finally arrive at the outer door of the stretching room only to find the metal latch twisted and misshapen by heat.
For the first time in her life she cursed her petite frame. It had allowed her to hide from her grandfather’s wrath in the most unlikely places. Now, even if she’d had tools and the strength to break through the door, she didn’t have the height needed to supply leverage for the effort.
She lowered James to the floor where he promptly slid into unconsciousness. She lay down beside him. Then she pressed her lips to his cheek and covered him with her body. She listened to the thud of his heart grow ever fainter until that precious sound was swallowed by the clang of fire bells. Help was coming, but would it arrive soon enough? The bells were still distant, and the roar of the approaching flames made hearing difficult. She was hot and impossibly weary.
Tears pooled in her eyes from grief and smoke, but she refused to let them fall. She would die without seeing her sisters. That would be bad enough, but worse, James, too, would be killed. The workers would lose their jobs because the manufactory would be in ruins. The school and dispensary would close. Her sisters would lose their inheritance. Grandfather would truly win. Her love for James would die with them. All because she’d been vain and foolish enough to imagine she could solve problems with a little courage and sacrifice. Foolhardiness, more like.
She stroked James’s forehead. “I’m sorry, my love, so very sorry. I should have listened to you.”
“Yes, you should have.”
She opened her eyes and stared into his sooty face. “How long have you been conscious?”
“Long enough to know you aren’t going to marry me for convenience or sacrifice.”
She gave a raspy laugh. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about my motives for marriage.”
“Precisely. You love me, and I love you; that’s the end of it.”
“Oh, James.” She could restrain the tears no longer.
His arms circled her, pulling her closer. His lips found hers. “I love you,” he whispered against her mouth.
She’d already given him her love. Before she gave up her life, she would give him her kiss.
The fire raged, and the beams fell. They lay together as the world burned around them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mae woke to pain in almost every limb and a breath-stealing ache in her chest. If she hurt, she must have survived the fire.
James? She had to know. Had she lost all reason to live or was her love still alive? She opened her eyes and saw light, but everything else was a blur. A big brown splotch just beyond where she lay must be her armoire. That oblong of light was probably her bedroom window. She was at home.
Where was James? She forced herself to sit up and tried to call out, but only wracking coughs emerged. Was she dying? Would she join James in the hereafter?
A soft touch fluttered on her shoulder. “Shh. Lay back. Drink some water.”
“Lalie?” The name was less than a rough whisper.
“Lay back. I’ve fluffed the pillows.”
Mae yielded to the gentle pressure, felt the edge of a glass against her lips and drank. She was thirsty, but swallowing hurt.
The glass was removed, and a weight settled beside her on the bed.
“You may have more water in a bit. Hugh said not to overdo it at first. Does you
r throat hurt?”
“James?” Mae managed to croak as she nodded. Her eyesight was clearing.
“Shh. Don’t talk.
Even though talking hurt almost as much as swallowing, Mae would not be denied. “James?” she ground out again, and she beat her fist against the bed.
“James is alive. Now will you behave?”
Mae let herself relax and nodded.
“My brother suffers from smoke inhalation, too. He has a few burns, as you do. Nothing too serious or that will leave scars, save on his back. Hugh removed the bullet and stitched up the wounds James received when fighting with Vincent, but otherwise, James is in better shape than you.”
Mae lifted her brows.
“You received another concussion when the upper floor fell in on top of you. Hugh is concerned, and will be very unhappy if you don’t obey all his instructions.”
“Want to see James.”
“He’s sleeping. We brought him here because it was easier for Hugh to have you both in one place. I’ll bring James to see you the minute he’s able to move about. Now rest. Your job is to get well.”
Mae didn’t want to rest, but her body had other plans. The small conversation had exhausted her, and even as she opened her mouth to protest, her eyelids drooped.
She closed her mouth. Why bother? James was alive, recovering, and would be with her soon. Yielding to her body’s demands for rest was easier and more productive than trying to wheedle her way out of bed.
That pattern repeated for another two days. The only difference was the person keeping her from James. Either Lalie, Lydia, a nurse or one of the servants was always present when Mae woke. Always forcing her to drink and eventually to eat.
By the third morning she regained her voice and her head stopped aching. She woke and found James seated beside her bed.