Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  Please, God, let his wife stay out of trouble.

  “She’s real bad off, miss.”

  Felicity knelt down beside a little girl who was holding the hand of an elderly woman. A younger boy was with them, sitting on his heels and crooning a bedtime song.

  “Is this your grandmother?” Felicity asked. The old woman’s translucent skin had been torn off her brow like paper, but she was conscious and moaning.

  “Oh, no, miss, we ain’t got no gran, do we, Andy?”

  “No, miss,” the boy said, wiping his nose down the length of his sleeve. “Betts and I don’t have a gran.”

  “Well, then, you’re being very kind to someone else’s grandmother, and I’m sure they’d be very happy to know it.”

  She covered the woman with a man’s coat to keep her warm, wrapped a flannel bandage around the woman’s forehead and comforted her.

  When she moved on to the next victim, Betts and her little brother followed on her heels. She soon had them expertly tearing bandages for her from the clothes that had scattered across the carnage when luggage burst open.

  “Your mother and father, Betts, were they on the train with you? Have you found them?”

  “No.” Betts lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug. “We’re alone, miss.”

  “Well, your parents will be proud of you for being a great help. Will you stay here and make more bandages for me?”

  Andy nodded gravely. “On our word, miss.”

  She left the two children to work among the shocked and the injured, and walked the track and the embankment looking for stragglers who might have been thrown. Her throat and nostrils seemed coated with the metallic taste of blood, her lungs filled with sick-making plumes of burning oil.

  The sight of a bloodied knee usually made her sway on her feet, but this was different. It wasn’t the gore that coiled her stomach into her throat, it was all the helpless suffering: the weeping children and their terrified parents, the sight of a courageous young woman cradling an elderly stranger.

  She had begun to hear stories of a man who had taken command of the horror. She hoped that her hardheaded husband would help this brave hero who had sent her a half-dozen women to help sort out the severely injured from those who were merely dazed and scraped.

  She caught sight of Claybourne as she came to the edge of the embankment, a giant silhouette against the roiling fire. He was standing on top of the tilted side of the third-class car, the very same car she’d have been traveling in had he not insisted she ride with him. She ran forward, wondering where the passengers had gone, how they had escaped such a twisted wreckage.

  Then she heard the keening coming from within. Dear God, there were people trapped inside!

  “Mr. Claybourne!” She ran to the car and stepped up onto its wheel, about to insist that he hurry. But as the words formed, she noticed the huge hammer and the thick rail spike in his hands. He could have been one of her father’s railway construction workers. She was struck dumb by the sight.

  “Hey, Claybourne!” A man scrambled toward him on his hands and knees along the side of the listing car. “Over here! We’ve found a breach. Saw a finger poke through. Looked to be a child’s.”

  Her husband shouted orders, and the other men scrambled into position as if he were a general and they his regiment of battle-hardened soldiers.

  Hunter Claybourne—taking charge of the rescue effort? Was he the man that everyone had been praising? The hero? Not possible. What was in this for him? Perhaps he’d discovered a way to salvage something from the disaster. George Hudson’s railway line would certainly be a penny on the pound bargain after this.

  Claybourne was moving like a man possessed, as though he were riding the scaly spine of some vengeful dragon. She watched in awe as he shoved a makeshift crowbar between two pieces of siding, as he bore down on it repeatedly with all his weight, exhaling great grunts of air each time.

  Flames crept up the embankment, engulfing the brush and scrub alders, gaining ground even as the straggling crew tried to flag out the blaze. She felt utterly helpless, could only wait for the injured to be rescued.

  “Add the other,” he shouted. The man beside him wedged an iron brace into the gap that Claybourne had just created. Still another length of bracing was added, and more pressure applied by the other men until a rivet popped and the siding came loose from the beam.

  A cheer went up and she held her breath as her husband and his crew bent the metal siding backward to give access to the inside.

  Claybourne knelt over the gap. “Christ! The hole isn’t big enough!”

  Unable to stand idly by, she had climbed onto the side of the car and was already peering into the hole. “Let me go down there, Mr. Claybourne,” she said.

  “Absolutely not.” He tried to brush her away, but she clung to his arm and the buckled metal of the panel.

  “If they’re injured in there, I might be able to help.”

  “No! You’ll be roasted alive.”

  “Blast it, Mr. Claybourne! Look around. I’m the only one who’ll fit inside.”

  His face glistened a red and black amalgam of sweat and soot and dancing flames. He suddenly laced his fingers through her hair and cradled her head between his hands, said something she didn’t catch, then planted a rough kiss on her mouth. He tasted of oil and gritty cinders. His eyes were bright as he studied her for the briefest span of time.

  “You’ll come up from there when I command it, Mrs. Claybourne. I’ll have no argument from you on this point.”

  Felicity nodded, hoped she meant it. “I promise.”

  He gathered her hands in his, raised her feet above the opening then lowered her into the darkness. A hand caught her from below, tugged on her skirt.

  “Help us, miss!”

  “Clear the way, please,” she said, wriggling her feet but never doubting that her husband would hold her until she was safely landed. “I can’t help anyone until I’m all the way down.”

  “Be careful, wife,” Claybourne shouted as she touched down. He was only a pale orange glow from above, and then he disappeared and the hammering and straining began again above her, more furious than before.

  “My mother …” came a feeble voice in the darkness, “she’s bleeding awful bad.”

  Someone took Felicity’s wrist and whimpered, “Please … I can’t see.”

  “I think my arm’s broke,” wailed another.

  “We’ll get to everyone,” she said, trying not to think of the flames that threatened just outside their metal prison. The children would fit through the hole as it was. The injured would have to be hoisted out. She gathered the children together and called out to her husband over the ringing sounds of the tearing metal.

  “Mr. Claybourne!” His head appeared and she lifted one of the children. “Take him! Please!”

  “How many?” he shouted as he grabbed the boy’s scrawny arm and hauled him up.

  “Six more children. Maybe two dozen others!” She and the man who had helped her into the car now handed up the children one at a time, straining under their weight. Claybourne’s growling gave her hope, even as the temperature rose inside the iron box. At least there was no smoke.

  “Come out now, woman!” he hissed. “We’re losing to the fire! And we can’t make the hole any larger.”

  “But you must, Mr. Claybourne. They need help in here. I can’t leave them.”

  “I said come! Now!” His voice was a fearsome roar that reverberated inside the car. He reached down and made a swipe toward her with his powerful arm, but she was far out of his reach and thankful that he couldn’t fit his shoulders through.

  “We both have work to do, Mr. Claybourne. Make a sling. You’ll have to drag the rest out.” She left him to his blazing anger and crawled among the injured. Most looked as broken as the benches and the sprung baggage.

  She bandaged a young man’s eyes, and stabilized a woman’s broken arm against her chest. The inside of the car was growing hotter. Sw
eat ran in rivulets off her brow and down her back. She knew she ought to be frightened out of her mind, but Hunter Claybourne was up there with his crowbars and his hammering, a man they were calling hero, and she was positive that he wouldn’t let her or anyone else die.

  “Mrs. Claybourne!” Her husband was looking down on her, fiend-featured in the red-tinged shadows. “Damn your eyes, woman! Here’s your sling; now put yourself into it. I’ve lost three men to the heat.”

  But she was already fitting an injured woman into the blanket hoist. “We don’t need a panic down here, Mr. Claybourne. Now, hoist away.”

  He did as she’d asked, dragging the frightened woman to the hole in a single movement.

  Her husband had taken on the guise of an avenging angel, a contrast so completely at odds with the craven fiend of a few weeks ago. He dropped the sling at her feet and she loaded another passenger.

  “This was to be your car, Mrs. Claybourne,” he said through his teeth, as he hauled the man out of the stifling car. “You would have been one of the bruised and battered.”

  She helped another man across the rubble. “Are you saying, Mr. Claybourne, that you saved my life by bullying me into riding with you?”

  “Whatever my methods, damn it, they worked. Now, hurry!”

  “And if I had refused your invitation?”

  He snorted. “Then I’d have torn my way into this car with my bare hands, Mrs. Claybourne.”

  She touched her thumb to the back of her wedding band, a new and surprisingly weighty presence in her life. She felt suddenly lighthearted, and very much in awe as she looked up into his frowning face. “I think you have, already.”

  Claybourne growled at her each time he lifted another victim from the railcar, but the system was working and only a few remained.

  “Hurry, Claybourne!” The panicked shout had come from somewhere outside, beyond her husband. “Another oil tank has split. We can’t hold back the flames.”

  “Out, wife!” Claybourne bellowed. “Get into the sling! Now!”

  “There are two more before me, Mr. Claybourne. We can do it!” Felicity steered a young man along the bank of upright benches, hoping that he hadn’t lost his sight for good. Claybourne yanked the young man skyward, and nearly unseated the last young woman in his hurry to haul her through the hole.

  “Sit down now, Mrs. Claybourne!”

  “Yes, I’m coming, Mr. Claybourne.” The heat had grown tremendous, and she was light-headed enough to think she saw flames eating through the rear of the car.

  “Bloody hell, woman! Into the sling.”

  “Yes sir.” As she was about to sit down, a mound of clothing moved in the corner—and then it moaned. She’d missed someone.

  “Wait, Mr. Claybourne!”

  “God damn it! Now!”

  But she stumbled away from the sling, coughed into the hem of her skirt as she untangled the woman from the pile of debris and led her into the safety of the canvas sling.

  Her eyes stung and her ears, too, as the car began to fill with smoke and Mr. Claybourne’s constant bellowing. She coughed in a fit and tried to see through the coming darkness, but the world had become much too hot and much too close. And sounded of wrenching metal that seemed to be hammering on her skull.

  “Felicity!”

  As she heard her name called from some brighter place, she wondered where the enormous, dark angel had come from, and how he’d managed to find his way through the flames and the smoke.

  “Damn fool of a woman!” Hunter’s heart had been crammed into his throat all the while he’d been tearing away the last of the metal sheeting with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed. Now he leaped into the smoke-filled railcar, and found her just where he’d seen her fall. He yanked her into his arms, wanting desperately to hold onto her.

  “I’m all right, Mr. Claybourne!” She started coughing and struggled against him. “Let go!”

  “Be still, wife, or you’ll kill us both!” He kissed her forehead even as he put her into the sling. He didn’t want to think about how glad he’d been to hear her impatient little voice, squawking at him through the smoke.

  He watched her rise up, damning the smoke that stung his lungs, cursing his wife for being the most bullheaded creature ever put on this earth. When he was brought out of the hole, he found her on the ground, bent over on her hands and knees in the bushes, retching and coughing.

  Hiding his immeasurable fear inside his righteous anger, he left her to her misery, wiping the sting of smoke from his eyes, and dismissing the tidal wave of relief that blocked off his breathing.

  The little fool would live. And he couldn’t remember ever being so exceedingly happy in all his life.

  Two hours later a steady whistle sounded in the distance, but Hunter couldn’t muster the strength to join in the cheer that went up as the others ran toward the rescue train steaming in from Blenwick. The engine and a passenger car chugged to a stop a hundred yards from the wreckage. An old locomotive and a rattle-trap railcar, but they would do the job.

  “About time,” he whispered, his throat scraped raw with the smoke and his shouting. He’d barked enough orders in the last few hours to last him a lifetime. They had only listened to him because they thought he knew what he was doing. He had discovered early in his life that people were sheep, constantly searching for a shepherd, too timid or uncertain to claim the title for themselves.

  Hunter was grateful for his wife’s command over the injured, for the way she had rallied after he’d rescued her from the railcar. She had a flair for ordering people around, and not even the bystanders had been left without a task.

  God, he was tired.

  “I say there, Mr. Claybourne!” The stout Blenwick stationmaster wheezed as he approached, wheeling his arms to stay upright amid the debris. “There you are, sir. A team from Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate has come by the post road from Durham.”

  “Already?”

  “I wired them as soon as I heard. When I mentioned your name, sir, they said they wanted to talk with you about the accident.”

  The inspectors would be vastly interested in anything associated with George Hudson, especially an accident such as this. Another brush with the Board of Trade could only enhance his own position. Meath would doubtless be impressed to learn of his involvement.

  He glanced around for his wife, a reaction that had become quite automatic and inordinately pleasing in the last few hours—despite the fact that she looked, from head to toe, like a sooted-up chimney sweep.

  There she was now, herding a group of children past the wreckage toward the rescuing railcar. She paused at the door, and raised her hand to shield her eyes against the first gilding rays of the sun. He was overly delighted that his ring had made it through the long night, and still encircled her finger. She smiled at him, and even from this distance, his quixotic heart took a mad tumble against his chest.

  “Damned woman,” he muttered.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Never mind. Show me to the inspectors.”

  Felicity settled Andy and Betts safely into the train, tucked them together in the same seat, covered their skinny limbs with her battered shawl she’d found near their first class railcar.

  “Thank you, miss!” Andy stretched up to hug her. “You’ve been ever so kind. Hasn’t she, Betts?”

  “My most favoritest angel,” Betts said through sleep-heavy eyes.

  “And you children have been ever so helpful!” She kissed both of the smudged foreheads. “And don’t forget to tell your parents how brave you both were.”

  Betts dipped her head at the compliment, and shared a solemn countenance with her brother. “We won’t forget to tell nobody about you, miss.”

  The whistle blew, and she felt suddenly guilty for leaving the children on their own. But their parents were no doubt waiting at the station in Blenwick, terrified and relieved that neither had received more than a scratch in the accident. And she’d promised the inju
red passengers that she would help collect their belongings and have them waiting at Blenwick Station.

  The train lurched forward in warning.

  “Take care of each other,” she whispered, hurriedly kissing them again before stepping out of the car onto the landing. A belch of smoke rolled into her face.

  “Jump, for God’s sake! Here!”

  She looked down through the gritty cloud to find her husband striding along the embankment, steaming like a locomotive, keeping pace with the train, his arms extended as if he were one of those Italian circus performers, waiting to catch her as she flew through the air.

  “Jump, damn it!”

  She would have stepped off the barely moving train in her usual manner, but he caught her around the waist, whirled her out of the way of the car, and slung her under his arm like a sack of potatoes—all in a single, fluid motion.

  “Put me down, Mr. Claybourne. I can walk.” She kicked her legs and tried to meet the ground with her foot. He merely held her tighter and kept walking.

  “What the hell do you think you were doing?” he asked, his chin squared off, focused on the wreckage ahead of them.

  “I was bidding farewell to the injured,” she said.

  “You were trying to kill yourself.”

  “Poppycock, Mr. Claybourne.”

  He finally set her on her feet next to an empty flatcar that had remained on the track, but leveled a soot-blackened finger at her. “The train was in motion, Mrs. Claybourne. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  She smiled because he was hovering like a storm and thundering at her. “I used to jump from trains all the time when I worked with Father. Jump, tuck, and roll—that’s the trick. Oh, and it helps to be relaxed, and not to land in a briar patch. I did that once. Was plucking thorns from my … well, from everywhere for months.”

  “Your father let you jump from moving trains?”

  “He taught me how.”

  “The damn fool!”

  “It was part of the job, Mr. Claybourne; part of engineering a well-laid track, part of evaluating the final product.”

  “You’re married to me now. Don’t let me catch you leaping from a moving train ever again.” With his sinewy, sooty arm extended above his shoulder in a gesture worthy of a member of parliament, he looked like an orator.