The scent pulled him over to the window, where he might let in some fresh air to disperse the smell. As he looked out upon the darkened landscape of his home, however, his stomach plummeted. It was not as dark as it should have been. A strange, orange glow shimmered off to the right, where the East Wing was situated. It was not a normal light, but an almost living one, that wavered and pulsed. Above it, he found the plumes of black smoke he had expected to find rolling away from the fireplace.
“Fire…” he hissed, cold dread seizing his chest in a vise of panic.
Arabella,came his second thought. The East Wing belonged to the women of the household, and as a female guest, she had been placed in one of the chambers there.
It broke the immobilizing spell of his terror. Turning on his heel, he raced out of his bedchamber, banging on every door he passed to ensure there was not a soul left sleeping.
“Fire!” he bellowed. “There is a fire in the East Wing! Fire!”
His father opened a door up ahead, bleary-eyed and visibly confused. “What are you howling about?”
“There is a fire, Father!” Henry shot back. “Get everyone out!”
Immediately, his father’s demeanor shifted to one of action. As Henry ran on down the wide hallway of the upper landing, passing the staircase that led down to the entrance hall, he was relieved to find a few members of the household staff milling about in bemusement.
“Fire!” his father roared behind him. “Bang on every door. Make sure no one is left inside. Every able-bodied man, fetch buckets and begin filling them from the troughs and wells. We must put this fire out!”
The staff jumped to his command, while Henry ran on. His father could contend with putting the fire out, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, Arabella, Cassie, and his mother. If the fire had crept too high, too quickly and secretly, he feared their way out might be blocked. No amount of water could help them, then.
Tearing through the heavy double doors that separated the East Wing from the rest of the house, Henry skidded to an abrupt halt and his forearm flew to his eyes, immediately stung by a thick veil of smoke. Pulses of orange glowed through the black, making him aware that the fire had already reached up to this floor. The intense heat that bombarded him, reminding him of his awful days on the battlefields of France, confirmed the fact.
Ripping away a strip of his nightclothes, he searched for water. An elaborately decorated vase stood on a nearby end-table, and though it was not ideal, it would have to do. Hurriedly, he soaked the material in the water and wrapped it around his mouth, tying it tight at the back. Next, he tossed aside the singed white roses and doused himself in the entire contents. He did the same with a second vase, containing the wildflowers he had picked for his mother a couple of days ago.
Soaked to the skin, he charged into the fray, wincing as the inferno surrounded him, while the smoke obscured his path. Above the crackle of the fire, and the terrifying sounds of wood splitting and objects falling, he struggled to listen for any voices coming from the hallway beyond—a cry for help that would let him know Arabella and his mother were still alive.
“Mother!” He pounded on the first door he came to, relying on memory instead of sight. “Mother, are you well?!” He reached for the doorknob and hissed through his teeth as the scorching metal burned his palm.
Undeterred, he twisted it and leaped into the chamber, bringing a sea of smoke with him. His mother cowered by her armoire, the doors open, as if she had intended to lock herself inside and hope for the best.
“Come to me!” Henry yelled. When she did not move, he sprinted to her and hauled her to her feet. Snatching up one of the coverlets and drowning it in his mother’s basin of washing water, he threw it over his mother’s head and scooped her up, carrying her out of the bedchamber and back into the hallway.
Heart pumping furiously, he coughed and spluttered the entire way to Arabella’s chamber. Behind him, a deafening crash made the floorboards tremble. The East Wing was crumbling, and if he did not hurry and think fast, he would be buried beneath it, along with the woman he loved and the mother who had given him life.
“We are going to die, Henry,” his mother whispered in panic, clutching him as though she were an infant and he was her father. “I did not smell the smoke until it was too late. Oh, My Boy, why did you come for me? You should have saved yourself.”
Henry held his mother tighter. “Never, Mother. I will not let any harm come to those who are dear to me.” He remembered his promise to Arabella. He had vowed to take care of her, and if he could not save her this night, he knew that broken vow would go to the grave with him. Sooner, perhaps, than he had thought.
“One that we shall all take to the grave.”He shuddered, recalling Arabella’s unease after he had spoken those words. Could she have known, somehow, that something bad was about to befall them?
At Arabella’s door, he set his mother down and grabbed the doorknob, knowing what to expect. The ferociously hot metal seared into his already blistering skin, making it hard to grasp. It would not open, no matter how hard he turned it. Evidently, someone had locked it.
“Arabella!” he roared. “Arabella, open the door!”
When she did not come to let him in, a bizarre sense of calm overwhelmed him. The panic and terror vanished in the blink of an eye, replaced with a dogged determination. It was the same sensation that had come over him while staring down a horde of enemy soldiers. Fear lent itself to mistakes, and those who made mistakes did not survive.
Fumbling in the smoke for a chair he knew was there, he used it as a battering ram. With all the breath still left in his lungs and all the strength still left in his muscles, he charged the door and slammed the chair into it with full force, over and over again. Until, at last, the door gave and swung inward.
“My Lord!” Cassie, who sat by the window with Arabella, jumped up. “Was that you knocking? We thought something had fallen! We didn’t know it was you!”
Henry pulled his mother into the bedchamber and pushed the broken door back into the jamb. Thin tendrils of smoke snaked through the splintered gaps, though it did not matter. There was no way they would be able to escape through the hallway, anyway. That crash that he had heard behind him had likely plowed right through the floor, creating a crevasse they would not be able to bridge. Even if it had not, the fire was blocking the hallway up to the servants’ stairwell, and the staircase that led down from the East Wing—it curved down from the room where he had found the vases of roses and wildflowers. He could not risk the flames spreading into the other side of the house by doubling back, through the thick double doors that he had closed behind him.
I did not realize, as I was doing it, that I was sealing us in… and sealing our fates.
They were trapped.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Arabella stirred, feeling foggy and disoriented. The strong scent of smoke singed her nostrils and the dull sound of voices echoed around her, but it was as though she were still in a dream, and could not make contact with those in the waking world.
