Leslie LaFoy

by Jacksons Way

  “In the carriage, John. If you'd be so kind,” she gasped as she made her way through the crowd to Lucy's side.

  “Jeb,” Lucy half-cried, half-whispered, her gaze riveted on a spot beyond Lindsay's shoulder.

  Lindsay turned, looking back for the first time. The smoke was a dense, roiling, wide column of black rising from the back of the building to twice the structure's height. Red-orange tongues of flame roared upward, leaping and snapping at the smoke, casting an eerie light over the black the world had become. Still, men moved in and out the front door. In the distance Lindsay heard the insistent clang of the fire bells. A cheer went up from the onlookers. Lindsay closed her eyes and sighed, knowing the effort would be far too little, far too late.

  “It'll be all right, Lucy,” she said, rallying herself. “You'll come to my house and stay there until you and Jeb can find another place to live.”

  “Jeb,” Lucy half-sobbed.

  “He's helping others get out. He'll be along shortly. So will Jack,” she assured the younger woman as they both scanned the crowd, searching.

  It was several long moments before Lucy let out an excited yelp and then exclaimed, “There's my Jeb! And he's got Mrs. Kowalski and her cat.” She strained up on the tips of her toes, waving her free arm over her head.

  Jeb saw them, but didn't have a free arm to wave back. With one hand, he toted a bundle over his shoulder just like the one Lindsay had brought out with her. His other hand was grasping the elbow of a tottering, heavyset, older woman who was struggling mightily to keep her hold on a yellow-striped cat who seemed equally determined to escape her clutches.

  Lindsay signaled the driver to open the carriage door, saying, “Get in, Lucy. You're on your way out of here.”

  Lucy started to obey, then stopped, her eyes brimming with tears. “Mrs. Kowalski doesn't have any family. She's old and hard of hearing and I don't think she has anywhere to go.”

  “She'll come with us, then,” Lindsay promised, removing her hat and blindly tossing it into the shadowed interior. “Get in the carriage and I'll have Jeb bring her over.” She didn't wait to see if Lucy finally did as instructed, but gathered her skirts firmly in hand, lifted them well above her ankles, and plowed her way forward through the crowd.

  God, it was noisy. And why weren't these people moving away from the fire instead of running around back and forth in front of it? It was only a matter of time—Lindsay looked up at the building. The smoke was blacker and higher. The flames wider and brighter and louder. A short time before the building was fully engulfed. This wasn't the first structure fire she'd seen and she knew how it would progress. Once the floor joists burned through, it would collapse. If it came down on the sidewalk … Her heart rose, hammering hard against her breast, and she quickened her pace, jostling and pushing with a fervor every bit as forceful as those around her.

  “Jeb!” she called above the noise as she reached her junior bookkeeper. “Lucy and the baby are in the carriage.” She pointed in the direction from which she'd come. “Take Mrs. Kowalski and the cat and join them. Have the driver take you all to my house. Tell Mrs. Beechum what's happened and that you all are staying with us until we can make other arrangements. Where's Mr. Stennett?”

  “He's right behind me!” Jeb shouted back, taking the cat from Mrs. Kowalski and unceremoniously stuffing it into the bundle. “Sean O'Malley's got a busted leg and has to be helped out.”

  “We'll wait here for the carriage to come back for us. Get out of here before it all comes down!”

  “I'll be back as soon as I can!” Jeb called as he pushed his way down the walk with Mrs. Kowalski lumbering in tow.

  “Jack, where are you?” Lindsay asked softly, still holding her skirts above her ankles and watching the smoke thicken and darken as it rolled out the front door and down the steps. “It shouldn't be taking this long.”

  SWEET JESUS AND ALL THE SAINTS, Jackson silently swore. The son of a bitch with a broken leg would have to live on the third frickin' floor and weigh at least three hundred pounds. Slinging him over his shoulder and carrying him down the stairs had been out of the question. They were mincing their way downward, the smoke thickening around them by the second, the sound of the flames getting ever louder and punctuated by the long, groaning wails of the joists and beams.

  His eyes were burning; the tears running down his face doing nothing to lessen the painful stinging. Holding his forearm over his nose and mouth wasn't doing much good either. His lungs hurt and he couldn't get enough good air to keep his head from spinning.

  Lindsay. Had she gotten out and then stayed out as he'd told her to? He wasn't going to have the time to go looking for her if she hadn't. Surely she had a healthy sense of self-preservation. Hopefully. Good sense he wasn't so sure about.

  The man beside him missed a step and lurched sideways, slamming Jackson's body into the plaster wall and bringing his thoughts back to the immediate situation. Good God Almighty. If he didn't get the man moving any faster, they were both going to die on a second-floor landing in a New York City apartment house. He could think of a lot better ways and places he'd rather go. Maybe he should just pitch the Irishman down the last flight and tell him that a second broken leg was better than dying—because it sure as hell was.

  Jackson glanced over his shoulder and up the stairs. The smoke was too dense to see very far, the sounds of the flames and popping wood too loud to hear anything beyond them. What he needed—and needed desperately—was a second pair of hands to balance and haul the burden. He recalled the backs of the men who had pushed past him as he and the Irishman had started down the stairs. No one had paused to so much as offer to help. Jackson gritted his teeth and looked at the expanse of steps leading downward. How far they had to go, he couldn't tell. The bottom and the vestibule lay somewhere in the blanket of darkening black. It could be two steps. Or it could just as well be a hundred for all he could see. What he could see was the faint light coming in the front door and it drew him down like a beacon.

  Please let Lindsay be outside. Please let Jeb come back in and help him get this man out.

  The smoke before him rolled backward and as a human shape took form and emerged from it, Jackson's heart slammed hard and wildly hopeful against the wall of his chest. It wasn't Jeb, he realized as the man reached the other side of the Irishman. Jackson didn't care.

  The man didn't stop, though; he kept on going. Jackson turned, “No!” he shouted. “There's no time! I need—”

  The blur made him blink and flinch. The pain in his head washed the world in a wave of white and then red. Jackson heard the Irishman scream, felt him tear away from his grip, and then he heard and felt nothing at all.

  LINDSAY STARTED EACH TIME as three men ran in quick succession from the building. None of them were Jackson Stennett. She paced, breathing hard and never taking her eyes from the doorway. Something was wrong. She knew it. Jeb had said Jack and O'Malley were right behind him.

  She saw a glimmer of paleness near the threshold to the vestibule in the same instant that a man standing nearby shouted for help and dashed forward. Two others ran with him and together they dragged a large, sooty man down the front steps. Lindsay swallowed a cry when she saw that his left leg was wrapped in grimy plaster.

  “Are you Mr. O'Malley?” she asked the man as he was dragged past. “Where's Jack Stennett? The man who was helping you.”

  He gestured with his head, indicating the front door of the building and the cloud of smoke. He coughed violently and through it managed to gasp, “Stairs.”

  Lindsay's heart lurched as she stared at the entrance to hell.

  HE COULDN'T BREATHE. He was choking to death and the heat was inching closer by the second. He could see the glow of it over his head, rolling down the underneath side of the stairs above him. The rush of fire was so damn loud. And his head … Jesus. His head had to be in two pieces. He couldn't think, couldn't move past the pain.

  “Jack, where are you? Answer me!”


  A soft voice, desperate. Lindsay. Oh, God. Lindsay. She was in here somewhere. He tried to move and couldn't and he wanted to cry. A sensation penetrated his pain; a touch, a grasp by something small and weak. It moved by inches up his legs, his torso, his chest. It touched his neck and then came to rest on either side of his face.

  “Jack! Wake up! Talk to me, Jack!”

  “Lindsay,” he whispered, forcing his eyes open. Through the shimmering of his tears he saw a curtain of light amidst a cloud of black. Not Lindsay. An angel. He coughed and struggled to draw another breath into his lungs.

  “You've got to get up, Jack!”

  “Where's the man—”

  “He's crawled out on his own.” The sweet angel suddenly grabbed the lapels of his coat and yanked him upward as it shouted in his face, “On your feet, Jack! Get your feet under you or so help me God I'll roll you all the way down the stairs and drag you into the street by your pant legs!”

  It was Lindsay. “I told you to stay out,” he said as he felt his head being hefted off the stairs.

  “And I told you I don't listen well.”

  If she dropped him, his head would come off his shoulders; he was sure of it. Jack desperately struggled to get his legs under himself. He felt her shift her hold on his coat, felt her body come fully against his side. “Lindsay, get—”

  “Put your arm over my shoulders,” she commanded, roughly taking it and accomplishing the task for him.

  He clung to her because he had no other choice, because he believed in her strength. They careened down the stairs, at the edge of out of control, only a half-breath away from falling. The pain in his head blinded him, made him sick to his stomach. They stopped when they careened into a wall.

  “Jesus.”

  “One foot… in front… of the other,” she gasped, coughing and choking as she pulled him forward. “We can … do … this.”

  He went, no longer breathing, just moving because Lindsay MacPhaull wouldn't let him lay down and die. It was beginning to rain fire.

  “Few … more … steps.”

  They pitched forward. He sensed it rather than felt it, and there was nothing he could do to save them. He heard their bodies hit wood, but there was too much pain to feel any more. His awareness began to gray around the edges and Jackson welcomed it, knowing that inside the mist, pain ceased to matter, ceased to exist.

  Lindsay moved against him and he vaguely understood that she was trying to crawl from beneath his arm. If she had the strength to struggle, then she had the strength to get out alive. He had to give her that chance. Jackson focused his attention on the arm pinning Lindsay down, on getting his body to move at his command. He willed movement and nothing happened. And then there came the sound of distant voices. Lindsay stilled and in the next second he was being borne upward. He went without resistance, surrendering to the sweet promise of the mist and knowing Lindsay was free.

  THE RESPITE FROM PAIN was too short by a thousand years. He came to as a fresh wave of searing red shot through the back of his head. He'd just barely clawed his way through it when his chest heaved and smoke scraped its way upward and out. There was no stopping the inevitable. He gagged and choked and coughed, finding some meager solace in the fact that he was still alive and had the physical wherewithal to roll onto his side before he unceremoniously threw up in the gutter. And when it was done, he lay there, his eyes closed, breathing and thinking wildly that he needed to find Lindsay, needed to be sure that she'd gotten out, too. He knew he had to get to his feet. Actually doing anything about it, though, seemed to take more mental acuity than he could marshal.

  “Oh, Jack. You're bleeding.”

  Lindsay. And she was right there. Judging by the even, calm sound of her voice, she was faring better in the aftermath than he was. He breathed a sigh of relief. A realization slowly nestled around his brain; she'd called him Jack. He touched his tongue to his parched lips and managed a small smile.

  “Let me see where you're hurt,” she said, touching the side of his face and then running her fingers ever so lightly through his hair. A lover's touch.

  Jack frowned and, reminding himself that Lindsay was Billy's daughter, said, “It's my head.”

  “Yes, I can see that much already.”

  “Prob'ly isn't as bad as it feels. Or looks. Heads bleed like a son of a—” He bit off the rest, reminding himself that he really needed to watch his language around her. Lindsay was a lady, and his mother had taught him manners. He carefully rolled onto his back. Lindsay knelt beside him, her golden hair tumbling over her shoulders and made bronze by the smoke and soot, her face smudged and tearstained. Her dress was torn and singed and blackened with ash. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. If he'd been capable of moving with any deliberate speed, he'd have pulled her into his arms.

  “You need stitches. We'll get you home and send for Dr. Bernard. In the meantime, though …”

  Jackson watched as she rose to her feet. Had she pulled the back hem of her dress between her legs and tucked it into the front of the waistband? How'd she know that washerwoman trick? As he contemplated the mystery, Lindsay pulled the skirt edge free from her waist. She didn't, however, instantly drop it for the sake of modesty and propriety. No, not Lindsay. Instead, she shoved the dress fabric out of the way, grasped the flounce of her petticoat with both hands, and pulled in opposite directions. The seam gave way with a loud protest. She repeated the process until the flounce separated completely.

  “I can't very well let you bleed all over the inside of the carriage,” she explained, smiling as she once again knelt beside him on the walkway. She folded the strip of cloth in half and then placed the end against his forehead, adding, “The stains would never come out of the upholstery.”

  Billy had been a goddamned fool to leave her behind. She was made of the stuff that made a man proud to call her his own. It served Billy right to have lost that pleasure, that admiration from other men. She'd been left behind to fend for herself and she'd done all right. She was good and strong and brave. And if it weren't for Lindsay MacPhaull's grit, he'd be deader than a damn doornail right now. He owed her and he owed her big.

  “I'll do right by you, Lindsay,” he said. “I swear it on Billy's grave.”

  She kept her attention focused on wrapping the strip of petticoat around his head as she answered quietly, “Thank you. But I never doubted that you would.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LINDSAY OPENED THE FRONT DOOR of the house and stood aside as Jeb and her coachman half-guided, half-carried Jackson Stennett inside. The Texan was, without a doubt, the most pigheaded man she'd ever met. Perhaps “pigheaded” wasn't the right word, she mused, as he tightly thanked the men for their assistance and stepped out from beneath their arms. “Prideful,” she decided, was the right word, as he stood swaying on his feet and tried to look as though nothing was wrong with him. She wondered how long he could maintain the charade before he fell flat on his face. Not long, she guessed. Under the coating of soot, his face was very pale.

  Blood had dried on his shirt and the bandage had soaked through above the wound. It needed to be cleaned and she needed to do what she could to ease his pain before she did anything else. There was no way to count the number of lives he'd saved that morning, no way to tell him what a decent and honorable man she considered him to be. He deserved to be treated well and kindly.

  She was about to suggest that they retire to the kitchen so that she could see to his head, when Lucy came running down the stairs to throw herself into Jeb's arms and shower his face with kisses. A long familiar sadness settled into Lindsay. There were some who were destined for love and happiness in life, she told herself, turning away politely, and there were some who were put on earth to serve selflessly and responsibly. There was no sense in regretting destiny. It was a waste of time and effort. She knew that.

  Mrs. Beechum provided a welcome diversion, entering the foyer and saying crisply, “What a morning you've had, Miss Lindsay! W
hat a sight you are.”

  “You don't know the half of it,” Jackson said, scrubbing his face with his hand and managing a smile.

  “We need baths,” Lindsay said. “Desperately. And would you send someone for Dr. Bernard? Mr. Stennett needs stitches in the back of his head.”

  “I'll see to fetching the doctor,” her coachman offered as he headed for the front door.

  “Would you care for the detailed version of how I've dealt with it all?” Mrs. Beechum asked her. “Or would you prefer the summary?”

  “Is any of it pressing?” Lindsay asked, eyeing Jackson and thinking that he needed to be off his feet as soon as possible.

  The housekeeper sighed. “I'm afraid that all of it demands immediate attention, Miss Lindsay.”

  “I suppose details would be better,” Lindsay admitted, resolving to get through matters as quickly as she could. “And don't think to spare me the problems. They have to be dealt with sooner or later.”

  “Mrs. Kowalski and her cat have been put in the lavender room. She won't let the cat out. She says that it will run away if she does.”

  This was more important than taking care of Jack? “It probably would.”

  “Need I point out the potential unpleasantries in having the animal confined?”

  Deal with it and go on, Lindsay. “We need to get a large pan of some sort from the kitchen and have the gardener fill it with dirt and take it up to Mrs. Kowalski's room. That should take care of any potential problems in that regard. We'll just have to say a prayer for the curtains and upholstery and hope for the best.”

  “Mrs. Kowalski is of the Jewish faith. She's informed me—quite nicely, I'll admit—that she keeps kosher.”

  This was something of a problem—at least as she understood the practice of keeping a kosher kitchen and diet. “Oh, dear. Does Emile know anything about how this is done?”

  “He swore—in French, I believe—and then suggested lying to her.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jack lean his shoulder against the wall, fold his arms across his chest, and cross one booted ankle over the other. The light in his eyes told her that he was finding the situation amusing. If he was feeling well enough to enjoy it all, she decided, then perhaps he wasn't hovering as close to death as she'd thought. Buoyed by relief, she said, “We'll think of something, Mrs. Beechum. Next problem?”