by Carrie Lomax
“The carriage is ready.”
Richard’s intrusion set Harper back on her heels. Edward never blinked as his brother helped him lift their father and carry him gently down the aisle. The aisle still festooned with white garlands, dotted with representatives of England’s best families gawking at the utter catastrophe of this wedding. Shame crawled over Harper’s flesh as one by one, London’s ton stared. Her humiliation complete, Harper stood there on the dais wearing a stolen wedding dress, watching another woman’s groom carry his father’s litter.
I made a promise. In sickness and in health…
When the family had reached the door of the cathedral Harper stepped slowly from the dais. The shimmering train of the borrowed wedding gown followed her, its quiet, elegant shush mocking the morning’s events at every step.
* * *
When did my father become my enemy?
Edward sat by his father’s bedside, watching the flames in the fireplace flicker and play. For a while it had felt as though they licked his very soul. Now they were dying down and the feeling had subsided. He was able to think through the events of the day with a clearer head.
He needed to go to Harper. He knew this yet he could not force himself to go and find her. His father’s chest rose and fell beneath the duvet, a steady reassurance that life continued in the damaged form beneath. A dose of digitalis had eased the strain on his father’s heart and enabled him to sleep. The earl would have to take the drug for the rest of his life to keep the blood from thickening and causing another attack.
“Son.” The earl’s eyes were open.
“Father.”
“You stayed with me.”
“Why would I leave? I would not have left you willingly.” His father’s eyes closed.
“You married her.”
“I did.”
“You know I liked her once. When she first arrived and was the only one who could get you to speak two sentences together.”
“My throat hurt. I did not want to talk.”
The earl managed to glare skeptically at Edward.
“Yet for her, you would brave the pain. I should have seen it then. I thought she was simply good at her work. But there was more to it than that.” The earl coughed. “She connected with you when I could not. I cannot tell you how much I have resented the fact.”
Edward rubbed his temples. How to explain his anger at being dragged away from a life that he had learned to love to one that felt completely foreign? How to tell his father that the feeling had been compounded as he was ordered and coerced at every step to conform to a reality that he did not understand? He could but try.
“You didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. You wanted me to pick up where we left off fifteen years ago as though nothing had happened. I couldn’t be that boy for you. I needed you to see me as I am.”
Taxed by the effort of speech, Charles closed his eyes and struggled for the breath to speak.
“She has tried to tell me that, over and over again, your Miss Forsythe. She understood. I did not.” He choked and wheezed. “I am glad you have had her to rely upon. For everything else that I have done wrong since you came back, at least I gave you that.”
“Just rest, Father.”
“I would like to listen now. If you are still willing to tell me about your life in Brazil.”
Edward stilled. “What would you like to know?”
“What it was like to live in the jungle. Being lost. How you survived. How it felt to come home.”
Edward spoke, his voice raspy from emotion. He told of his first days wandering lost in the jungle, terrified of every sound and startled by the rustle of every leaf as he tried to find his way back to the camp over unfamiliar ground. He told of the incessant buzz of insects, the bites that turned into seeping welts. How after days of hunger and insufficiently slaked thirst he had stumbled into a net, roped like an animal.
When he finished, there was only silence and the crackle of a dying fire.
“And we had such expectations of you.” Charles coughed, startling Edward. “Assign you a nurse, put a coat and cravat on you, make you do sums like a schoolboy and you would become the perfect future earl within a matter of weeks. I have been so foolish. So blind.” Weakly, Charles reached for Edward’s hand. “I am so sorry.”
Fighting tears, Edward clutched his sire’s hand like a drowning man thrown a lifeline. He could feel his sire’s strength ebbing. He wanted to force his own physical strength into his father’s body. Wished he could will his father well.
They had wasted so much time.
“Send for my solicitor. I must see him tonight.”
Edward rose and bowed.
His brother lurked outside in the hall. “When you said we needed to take a stand, I never thought anything like this would happen.”
“I didn’t either. The doctor says anything might have triggered it. The stresses of the past few months have been cumulative.”
The sound of glass thudding against wood made him pause. In the dining room, Richard sat alone before a half-empty wine glass, picking at chicken. Edward’s stomach gurgled, reminding him that he had not eaten since breakfast.
Richard looked up. “Come and join me.” He nodded to the silent shadow of a footman.
Edward pulled out an adjoining chair and sat down. The footman reappeared with wine and a plate of simple food served cold. Chicken, bread, some wan-looking vegetables. He took one bite and immediately began wolfing down the rest.
“It’s for the best, brother. You swapped your bride for the one chosen by Father. You humiliated him—the entire family—in front of half of London. Hardly an example of responsible, upstanding English nobility. Quite the opposite, rather. What father wouldn’t have you imprisoned? What kind of steward for the estate would you be?”
Edward elected not to respond to his brother’s antagonism. “There are other ways to view today’s events. I chose a partner who would stand beside me no matter what.”
Richard waved one hand dismissively and drained his wine glass. “I highly doubt Father will see things that way.”
Edward shrugged. “Father has sent for his solicitor. He should be arriving shortly—and then we’ll learn our fate. Yet I am still the heir by birth. You cannot change that, no matter how much you wish to.”
The under butler entered and announced the arrival of their guest.
“We’ll know the truth of Father’s intentions if the solicitor has Yaris in tow.” Richard grinned, but there was no gloating in his demeanor. Instead, he looked troubled.
“What’s wrong?” Edward asked.
“Where is your wife?” Richard asked softly.
“With her sister and grandmother.” Edward tipped his wine back and finished it as unease set in. He ought to be with her—especially if he was about to be hauled away in a straitjacket on his father’s orders. Yet if his father was planning to have him committed, he had given no indication of it earlier, when he’d asked to hear Edward’s story for the first time since being released from the cage months ago.
Richard poured his brother a glass of wine. Edward raised it in salute. His sibling poured the dregs of the bottle into his own glass, then drained it without ceremony.
“Are you certain?” his brother asked.
The hair on Edward’s neck prickled. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Because this afternoon she believed herself married to you, yet you’ve not spoken with her since your shambles of a wedding.”
“It was chaotic while leaving the church,” Edward replied. “I’ll send round to Baroness Landor’s.”
“Why not go yourself?”
“I will. I’ll leave after the doctor says he’s safe for the night. Father has greater need of me tonight.”
Richard lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “If you think you’ll still have your freedom. No need to worry, however. I shall ensure you receive excellent care once you’re locked up. What else are brothers for?”
/> “Sod off, Richard.” Edward narrowed his eyes at his sibling. “There are moments when I almost believe there’s a human heart buried under all the layers of cynicism, selfishness and greed.”
The butler returned at that moment to summon Richard.
“You’re wrong on that score,” Richard declared, pushing away his empty glass. “I’ve a perfectly decent human heart. It’s not buried—you simply can’t see it, and have never been able to, brother.”
Edward didn’t follow his brother when the butler announced the arrival of the solicitor. His unease mounted. What if Harper had been waiting somewhere for him all these hours? She would’ve been horrified at how badly their plan had turned out, and he’d left her standing there in a stolen bridal gown, inconclusively married and utterly ruined, before a crowd of angry aristocrats. Now that the terror of his father’s imminent death had passed, the urge to run out into the afternoon and find her gnawed at him. He went to the foyer to find his jacket and hat.
Something huge crashed down the stairs behind him. Edward leapt aside as a grandfather clock rolled down the stairs and shattered across the foyer, broken and spewing springs and bits of twisted metal every which direction. Disheveled and red-faced, Richard glared at him from the landing.
“Careful, there’s broken glass—” Edward started, thinking there had been an accident.
“You.” Edward’s head snapped up. He finally absorbed Richard’s seething, furious face. “You and that conniving bitch. You’ve convinced him that Briarcliff needs saving from me. Our father has taken every step possible to prevent me from imprisoning you. He thinks you and that peahen Forsythe can run an earldom better than I, who was raised to the task.” Richard laughed hollowly. “You will ruin it, Edward, faster than anyone. You’ve been taken in by that ordinary little sparrow, which just goes to show how bloody gullible you are.”
Richard leaped over the railing, landing hard on his feet. He picked up a chair and smashed it against the silk wallpaper. He threw it into the dining room, barely missing lodging the broken chair in the sconce on the wall opposite. Then he picked up the chair leg that had fallen off and smashed the tall mirror in the hallway.
“Father has always loved you best,” he raged. “Why couldn’t you just stay lost?”
Richard shoved past him. The front door slammed open and a gust of cool air rushed in. Bits of shattered glass tinkled in the draft. The entire rampage had taken only a few moments. By now, there were servants gathering to assess the damage.
“Do you smell that?” a footman asked Edward as they approached the landing.
A moment later, they saw it, too—a gray curl of smoke.
“Fire,” Edward said hoarsely. Then he bellowed, “Fire! Everyone, get out of the house. Fire!”
Chapter 28
Edward ran up the stairs toward the smoke curling thickly in the air. The fire raged directly outside his father’s bedroom door. His only thought was his father lying pale and helpless on the bed. He began to choke. Through the smoke, he saw red flames licking the heavy drapery, eating their way along the thickly carpeted hall. One wall was engulfed, and the fire was spreading fast. In a moment, it would be too late to get to his father.
He dove to the earl’s bedroom door and threw it open. The flames literally roared higher, fed by oxygen from the open window. Both began coughing uncontrollably while the smoke curled into the room around the door.
Charles was struggling to sit up. He managed to throw one pillow. Edward stuffed it beneath the door, blocking the worst of the encroaching smoke.
“This is a death trap,” Edward said grimly. “We have to get out.”
“We must raise the alarm. The servants on the fourth floor must have a chance to escape.” His father tugged on clothing with weak fingers.
Edward went to the window and stared down at the thirty-foot drop to the rear yard. There was not a single thing to hold onto—not a tree branch, not a drainpipe, nothing. Windowsills spaced too far apart to be useful cast deep shadows onto the flagstones below.
The smoke in the room thickened. A single wood door was all that stood between them and the inferno in the hall. They were running out of time. Edward had to do something. At last a white-capped head poked out from one of the windows upstairs. It was Mrs. White, the housekeeper. Her expression was at once confused, frightened and authoritative.
“What’s this? I smell smoke,” she called down, spying Edward’s and Charles’ heads out the window.
“The house is on fire, Mrs. White.” Edward found his voice was strong enough to reach her.
“Dear God!”
“Get everyone out of the house. The front stairs are blocked, try the servant’s stairs. They may be passable yet. Go. Get help. Now!”
The housekeeper’s head disappeared from the window.
“Richard,” Charles said low, upset and frightened and trying his best not to show it. “I cannot believe he would do such a thing.”
“Come. We’ll make a sling. I can at least save your life.” Edward began wrapping his father in the bedsheet. Reaching up, he ripped the curtains down in a shower of plaster. Far off, a bell clanged. An alarm. At least the other houses might be spared.
Edward ripped the curtains into thick strips. The pillows beneath the door smoldered. Harsh smoke blackened the ceiling.
“Stay low,” he told his coughing father. The earl nodded and shrank to the floor. His skin had turned a worrisome ashen color beneath the pallor brought on by his earlier attack. Edward fashioned a cradle out of the bedsheet. Then he tied the strips of fabric together and fastened them to the bed rail.
The makeshift device might hold. It had to. Red streaks appeared around the sides of the door. The door was being reduced to ash. Carefully Edward scooped his father over the sill and began to lower him. The fabric strained and popped, but it held. Behind him, the bedroom door cracked and gave way. The fire popped and roared hungrily. His shirt was hot against his back.
The earl wiggled and touched one foot to the ground below. He collapsed in the rear yard. A footman ran over to help him stand, but Charles would not be moved away from danger. Instead, he raised his face to the window where flames licked behind Edward. Sparks singed his hair as Edward slid over the sill and began to descend.
Fingers of flame reached for the window behind him. The torn curtains were burning through. The footman pointed and yelled.
Edward braced for impact on the paving stones below.
A sudden drop, and gravity pulled his body earthward. Rough linen scraped his palms. He held tight. His descent stopped as abruptly as it had begun. His body slammed against warm flesh and cold limestone. Charred bits of shirt stuck to his back. He rolled over. Couldn’t sit up.
High above him, the roof was engulfed with flames. A ladder rose above him, out of view. Someone screamed.
A tug at his arm. “We must get away from the flames, your lordship.”
With difficulty, Edward rose and limped away through the garden. Behind them, the great house burned. The roof began a slow collapse.
“Back! Everyone, back!”
The crowd stepped back as one, fleeing to the opposite side of the street. Only one man did not step with them. Charles.
“Father?” Edward stepped forward and caught the earl as he collapsed.
* * *
He arrived at the baroness’s house at dawn, covered in soot and ashes.
“I thought I was rid of you,” said the baroness crisply, eyeing his dishevelment.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” Edward reeled on his feet. Her grandmother paled as he described the fire and the earl’s death.
“Everything is gone. The fire brigade contained it from spreading, but there is nothing left of the house. Even if we can arrange for new lodgings immediately, we must have somewhere to store the body.”
“Body?” The baroness’s characteristically sharp tongue was silenced by the sight of the earl’s body lying rigidly on the fire wagon outsid
e. A crowd of mourners had followed the grim procession through the finest streets of London. News had spread quickly, but the rumors had flown faster. Viola appeared in an ankle-length wrapper. Her hand flew over her mouth at the sight of him.
“Where is Harper?”
“I thought she was with you?”
Viola and the baroness shook their heads as one.
Edward stumbled. “She wasn’t in the carriage when I arrived home. We thought her presence might upset Father.”
The baroness regarded him accusingly. “You left her at the altar? The plan was to make a stand together. You won’t have made your point by abandoning her there.”
“No one thought Father would collapse, either.” He rubbed his eyes. The sky was graying with imminent dawn.
“How did you think she would get home?” Viola demanded.
“I didn’t think. I was worried about my father dying. He did die, thanks to…” No. He would keep that close. Let everyone believe it had been an accident. He did not want to lose his brother, too.
The damned earldom. It was nothing but a burden and a source of division.
“Let the poor man rest. You will have time to mourn your father. For now, if you don’t have your burns tended to, you may well join your sire sooner than any of us would like.”
Someone pushed him into a chair. A cup of something awful-tasting tipped into his mouth. Edward swallowed. Then a doctor began to peel back layers of charred, scabbing burns. Embers had burned the skin of his back and part of his upper left arm. Though not deep, the wounds would pain the newly made earl for some time to come.
“I must find Harper,” he muttered, but pulled under by the laudanum, he slept and dreamed of fiery fingers clutching at him.
Reality was more fearsome than any dream when he woke.
“Where is Harper?” he demanded upon waking, wincing as he tried to leverage his way out of bed. Someone had cropped his singed locks close to his head while he slept and scrubbed the worst of the soot away too. Yet the stench of fire clung to him like brimstone.