by Candace Camp
“You drifted right off there,” the maid told her. “You’d best get up and into bed.”
Alexandra tried to smile. “Yes. Thank you. I can’t imagine why I’m so tired. It must all be catching up with me. Good night, Rose.”
She stood, and the maid bobbed a curtsey and lit a candle from the oil lamp on the dressing table. “Good night, miss.”
Alexandra picked up the lamp and crossed to her bed, which the maid had already turned down for her. Yawning, she set the lamp on the narrow table beside the bed and bent to blow out the flame. She crawled between the sheets and was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
SHE WAS DREAMING THAT SHE WAS sitting before the fire. It was too warm, and she tried to move away from the heat but could not. The damper must have been closed, too, for smoke was billowing into the room, making her cough. Then the Countess was in the room with her, shaking her roughly and telling her that she had to get out of her chair.
She shook her head, saying, “No, I’m too tired.”
But the Countess would not stop. She kept shaking her and saying her name. Then Alexandra realized that it was not the Countess at all, but her mother.
She opened her eyes. And there was her mother’s face, looming over her in the darkness. But it wasn’t dark, exactly. Rather, the air was thick with smoke, and above, the smoke flames danced, racing along the tester above her bed and down the long fall of the open curtains at the four corners of the bed.
“Mother?” Alexandra began to cough as she sucked the smoke into her lungs.
Her mother was tugging at her, and Alexandra saw in dazed astonishment that tears were running down the woman’s cheeks. Everything seemed so strange and unreal. Her lungs felt on fire, and the air was thick with smoke. She was surrounded by fire, yet she could not seem to make herself move.
Suddenly several large sparks fell on the bed beside Alexandra, and the sheets began to burn. Alexandra gasped, and Rhea batted them out.
“Alexandra! Get up! What is the matter with you?” Rhea grabbed Alexandra’s shoulders, wincing with pain as her burned palms touched Alexandra.
She jerked again, and this time Alexandra managed to push herself out of bed. Rhea staggered back under her weight, and the two of them fell heavily to the floor. The fall stunned Alexandra for a moment. But the air was clearer here, and she was able to breathe in air that was not smoky. She coughed, clearing her lungs. Shakily, she rose to her feet, reaching to help Rhea. They started groggily toward the door. The smoke was so thick, she could barely see, and she fell into another paroxysm of coughing. Rhea stumbled and went down on her knees, and Alexandra leaned over her, trying to help her up.
It was hard to breathe, and the room started spinning around her. Coughing, she fell forward onto the floor beside Rhea.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SEBASTIAN LAY STARING AT THE TESTER ABOVE his bed. He was having no luck going to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was Alexandra. All he could think about was kissing her, holding her, making love to her again. They were not images that were conducive to sleep.
Sighing, he sat and swung his legs off the side of the bed. He might as well get up and dress and go to the library to see if he could find something to read. With any luck, he thought, there would be something dull enough to make him nod off.
He had pulled on his trousers and was in the process of buttoning his shirt when he stopped and lifted his head. There was the oddest smell, he realized—a smell of smoke, as if a chimney weren’t drawing properly. He glanced instinctively at the fireplace in his room, but even as he did so, his brain registered that it was a warm summer night and the fire had not even been lit.
Fear gripped his chest, and he hurried to his door and flung it open. He could see nothing unusual in the hall, but the smell of smoke was stronger. He started down the hall, not pausing to light a candle or lamp, navigating by the moonlight drifting in through the long windows at either end of the hallway. As he drew closer to Alexandra’s room, he could see wispy tendrils of smoke curling from beneath her door.
“Alexandra!” he cried, and ran the rest of the way to her room.
He flung open the door, and a thick pall of smoke rushed into the hallway. He saw at a glance that Alexandra’s bed was on fire, the tester above the bed and the heavy bedcurtains blazing merrily, and flames were already starting across her sheets and bedcovers.
But Alexandra was not in the bed; he could see that much. He glanced frantically around the room, and his gaze fell on the two bodies lying on the floor a few feet from the foot of the bed. He ran to Alexandra and picked her up, carrying her from the smoky room. He bellowed for help as he laid her gently on the floor, then went into the room for the other woman.
Coughing and fanning away the smoke, he bent over her, surprised to find that it was not a maid or Aunt Hortense, as he had assumed, but Alexandra’s mother. He picked her up and ran into the hall, where Aunt Hortense and Willa were crouched beside Alexandra. Several servants came pounding up the stairs and stopped, gaping at the scene before them.
“Stop gawking, you idiots!” he roared. “Can’t you see the room’s on fire? Get some water—now!”
They jumped to do his bidding as Sebastian went to Alexandra, moving aside her aunt and the Countess’s companion and pulling Alexandra down the hall, out of the doorway.
The servants pounded into the room with buckets of water, and Aunt Hortense and Willa went to Rhea to minister to her. Sebastian knelt beside Alexandra and lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his chest.
“Oh, God, don’t die on me now, love,” he whispered, feeling for the pulse in her throat. He could not hear her breathing, so he draped her limp form forward over his arm and thwacked his open palm against her back until she began to cough.
“Thank God. That’s it. That’s my girl.” He cuddled her to him again, running his hand down her hair and back and raining kisses over her sooty face and hair. “Stay with me. I couldn’t bear to lose you now.”
Alexandra coughed, and her eyes fluttered open. She saw Sebastian’s face looming over hers, streaked with soot and torn with anxiety. “Sebastian?”
As she said the word, she gave way to a fit of coughing. Sebastian held her as she coughed out the smoke that had overcome her. Finally, with a sigh, she settled in his arms. It felt deliciously warm and safe there.
“Thank God you’re alive,” he murmured against her hair. “I was afraid I had lost you, love. I don’t know what I would have done.”
“What did you say?” Alexandra asked, sitting up and turning to face Sebastian as the import of his words sank in.
He looked at her oddly. “I said I was afraid you were dead.”
“No, the other part—did you call me ‘love’?”
“Yes.” He frowned in puzzlement. “Alexandra…are you all right? You seem a little muddled.”
“Did you—did you mean it? Calling me your love?”
“Yes, of course. Surely you must realize that I love you.”
“No. No, I don’t. You never said a word about it.”
“But, darling…why else would I want you to marry me? Do you think I would marry any woman who came along?”
“But that was because of the scandal. Because everyone knew we had been together that night after the balloon took off.”
“I have weathered scandal before.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “If I was willing to run off with a married woman and earn the polite world’s contumely, do you honestly think that a little gossip would frighten me into marrying someone I didn’t want to?”
“Not when you put it that way,” Alexandra admitted. “But I thought, since I might be the Countess’s granddaughter and you are fond of her, that you would feel you had to marry me. Besides,” she argued, “you never spoke a word about love. Only about the scandal and my reputation.”
“I was trying to persuade you,” he retorted. “I didn’t think my love would do so. You don’t seem to reciprocate the
feeling, so it seemed better to present the practicalities.”
“Not reciprocate!” Alexandra stared at him in astonishment. “Can you honestly be that obtuse?”
He gazed at her for a long moment. “Are—are you saying that you do? That you—”
“Yes! Of course! I love you!”
“Alexandra…” He pulled her to him, his arms wrapping tightly about her, and kissed her. When at last he raised his head, he looked at her, his hand caressing her soot-smeared cheek. “Then you will marry me?”
Alexandra frowned, a chill coming over her happiness. “But there is still the problem of—oh!” She sat up straight, pulling away from him. “How could I have forgotten? Mother! She was with me in the bedroom. I saw her, leaning over my bed.”
“Yes. I pulled her out, too.” Sebastian nodded toward where Rhea lay on the floor a few feet away, Hortense and Willa beside her.
Alexandra turned, pulling away from him, and crawled to her. “Mother?”
Sebastian followed, crouching beside the others. “How is she?”
Aunt Hortense shook her head. “She is breathing, but she’s unconscious. Her hands are burned. I cannot imagine what she was doing in there.”
“She was awake. She woke me up,” Alexandra said. “She said my name, and she tried to pull me out of bed. She put out the sparks with her hands, that’s why they’re burned.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“We need to get her back into bed,” Sebastian said practically. “Let me carry her there, and Miss Ward can clean and bandage her burns.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” The women stepped back as Sebastian bent and picked up Rhea.
Alexandra walked behind Sebastian as he carried her mother down the hall. Although she still felt groggy, her brain was beginning to work.
“What happened?” she asked as Sebastian laid her mother on her bed.
“What do you mean?” Aunt Hortense said as she poured water into the washbasin and carried it to the bed.
“I mean why was my bed on fire? Why was Mother in the room?”
“I don’t know.” Aunt Hortense dipped a cloth into the water and wrung it out, then began to wash Rhea’s face and, very gently, her arms and hands. “All I can think is that for some reason Rhea finally came out of her coma. Perhaps she smelled the smoke and that was enough to snap her out of it.”
“Remember how she squeezed my hand today when I was talking to her?”
“She must have been close to the surface,” Aunt Hortense reasoned. “Tonight she woke up. Probably she smelled the smoke and followed it to your room.”
“That’s how I came to find you,” Sebastian added. “I began to smell smoke, and when I went into the hall, I saw the smoke coming out around the door.”
“But what happened? Why was it on fire?”
Sebastian shrugged. “I don’t know. I presume you must have left a candle burning. You were very sleepy tonight, remember.”
“I didn’t have a candle burning. I had an oil lamp, and I distinctly remember blowing it out.”
“Are you saying—you think this was another deliberate attack on you?” Sebastian’s eyes flashed silver in the darkness, and he turned, and strode to the door and threw it open. “Murdock! Murdock! Dammit, man, where are you?”
Murdock appeared in the doorway a few moments later, coatless, his hair disheveled, breathing hard. “Fire’s out, my lord,” he reported. “Bed’s ruined, and it damaged the room a bit, but no major harm.” He cast a glance toward Alexandra. “Is Miss Ward all right?”
“I’m fine, Murdock,” Alexandra assured him, going to the door. She had become rather fond of the square-set man over the days he had been guarding their house. He was intensely loyal to Sebastian, and thereby, she had found, intensely loyal to her. He was hardly what one would picture as a valet, but Alexandra felt sure that he was, as Sebastian had said, a good man to have on your side in a fight, and certainly that was more important than any refinement of manner. Even Aunt Hortense had approved of the man, saying that if she hadn’t heard him speak, she would have sworn that he was an American, not a Britisher.
Murdock nodded toward her. “Glad to hear it, Miss.”
“Murdock, could someone have gotten into the house tonight?” Sebastian asked. “Miss Ward is certain that she did not leave a light burning. That would mean that someone must have sneaked in and set the bed curtains on fire.”
“No, sir. Couldn’t nobody have got into this house tonight—or any other night since I’ve been here.” He turned toward Alexandra somewhat apologetically. “I’m sorry, miss, I’m sure you’re right about the lamp, but I don’t see how anyone could have got past me and my men. I have a footman patrolling the outside of the house continuously, three shifts of them, three hours each, so they don’t get sleepy. To keep things right and tight, I patrol, too, half a lap behind him, just to make sure and keep the footman on his toes. Halfway through the night, Punwati relieves me. Ain’t nobody getting past us, miss.” He patted his side, where a pistol was stuck through his belt. “We keep a watch during the day, too.” He paused, frowning. “Not so tight, of course, but a footman makes the circuit every few minutes. And the house is full of servants. I don’t see how anyone could sneak in during the day and hide till nightfall, either.”
“No,” Alexandra agreed. “It sounds very thorough. I am sure you and Mr. Punwati are doing a wonderful job.” Alexandra frowned. “But I know I blew out the lamp.”
She thought of her mother in her room. It seemed so odd that Rhea had awakened just at the moment that her bed curtains had caught on fire. She thought of tales she had heard of madmen setting things afire, their warped minds drawn by the crackling flames. They could not know, after all, what had been fermenting in her mother’s confused mind during the long period of unconsciousness. And perhaps, she thought, Rhea had not been unconscious the whole time. She remembered her mother gripping her hand this morning.
But, no! What was she thinking? Her mother was a trifle off, perhaps, but she wasn’t mad in that way. She would never try to hurt Alexandra, no matter how fevered her mind might turn. Besides, she reminded herself, Rhea had tried to save her from the fire. She had awakened Alexandra and pulled her from the bed, had beaten out the fire with her bare hands when it lit on Alexandra’s sheets. Alexandra felt ashamed for thinking such a thing even for an instant.
“Perhaps Mrs. Ward woke up.” Willa spoke, surprising everyone. They all turned to look at her, and she blushed but went on. “Of course she would want to see her daughter. So she lit a candle and went down to Alexandra’s room. Maybe as she leaned over to look at her, her candle caught the bed curtains on fire. They would probably have been in flames in an instant. So she tried to awaken Alexandra.”
Alexandra felt a wave of relief wash through her. “Of course! That makes sense. Much more so than that someone could have sneaked into the house past the guards.”
It was also much more reasonable than the coincidence of Rhea awakening at the precise time that Alexandra’s room caught on fire.
“Yes, that explains it.” Alexandra could hear the relief in her aunt’s voice, and she wondered if she had had the same doubts about Rhea that Alexandra had. “A simple accident.”
“It was my fault,” Willa went on, her voice laced with guilt. “I should have kept better watch over Mrs. Ward.”
“You cannot possibly stay awake watching over her all night,” Alexandra pointed out reasonably. “You sleep in her room so you could hear if she needed something. No one could expect you to do any more.”
“Yes, but I was so heavily asleep,” Willa said. “I generally don’t go to sleep that early. But tonight, my head was incredibly heavy. I could scarcely keep my eyes open. Then I slept so deeply that I did not even hear Mrs. Ward leave the room! I should have heard her. I should have awakened.”
“Nonsense,” Aunt Hortense said stoutly. “You had no way of knowing that Rhea would awaken tonight, or that she would take it into her head to go visit Alexand
ra. None of us did. After tonight, we shall make sure that someone is up with her all night. We shall take shifts.”
“Yes,” Alexandra agreed, but her mind was only half on her aunt’s words. A chill had run through her at what Willa had said. Willa had been unusually sleepy tonight, just as she had been, and she had slept heavily, finding it hard to wake up. Alexandra remembered how groggy she had felt when her mother woke her. She had felt almost…drugged. What if she really had been drugged? And Willa, too? What if someone had made sure that both she and Willa would be sound asleep tonight?
She pushed the thought away. It was too terrible to contemplate. For if someone had drugged their food or drink with the intent to keep her and Willa asleep, then that meant that it had been done by someone inside the house, a bribed servant or…Her eyes went to Aunt Hortense, then to her mother, lying in her bed. But, no, she was thinking crazily, more crazily than her mother at her worst. They were her family, the people who loved her most in the world!
Aunt Hortense would never harm her. It didn’t matter whether Alexandra was a Ward or not. And her mother’s oddness would never have risen to such extremes.
“There is no need to keep going over this,” Sebastian said peremptorily. “Miss Ward, Miss Everhart, I suggest that you bring in another cot, and both of you spend the night here with Mrs. Ward. I shall post Murdock outside your door the rest of the night. That way you will be here to tend to Mrs. Ward if she needs you, and I can be assured that the three of you are well-protected. Alexandra, you are coming with me.”
“Sebastian!” Alexandra protested as he put his hand under her elbow and more or less propelled her from the room. “What are you doing? Where are we going? I want to stay with my mother.”
“Nonsense. You’re dead on your feet. What you need to do is get some rest. Let Aunt Hortense, who has not almost been killed tonight—for, let me see, the fourth time, or is it the fifth?—let her take care of your mother. You may sit up with Mrs. Ward tomorrow.”