Starting toward the lines of servants fighting the fire, she caught a glimpse of the familiar hooded and cloaked form running at top speed from the door where Maximilian had entered the engulfed building. He vanished into the dark. “Oh, no,” Eugenia groaned, her panic flaring anew. “Max.”
No one was throwing water on the inferno at that end. Running toward it, Eugenia was forced to slow her pace when she came across a number of mares and foals bursting through the door, running free and loose. She tried dodging their running bodies and slashing hooves, but they were bolting past without seeing her. When the last one dashed past, leaving her still standing, Eugenia went running through the door.
The heat was intense. She was coughing smoke from the fierce hot air. It crisped her skin, and the cobbled stone beneath her feet burned through her stout shoes. Holding her arms up to shield her face from the flames, she screamed his name. “Max!”
All about her, the wooden beams and walls of the stalls were burning and flames were eating into the roof over her head. To her right, the stalls collapsed inward upon themselves with a crash, the bright orange and yellow flames were reaching for her, hungry. “Max!” She could not see him. She knew he had not come out the door she had entered through. Perhaps he had left by the other door. Running down the aisle, coughing, half blinded by heat and smoke, Eugenia found the far door blocked.
Skidding to a halt, she stared, dumbfounded. It had been not just closed but jammed shut with rakes and pitchforks. Max had not left through that way. Turning, she ran back the way she had come. “Max!” Hurrying down the next aisle, Eugenia discovered her gown on fire. Slapping the flames out with her hands, coughing, peering through her smoke and heat torturing eyes, she hurried on. She turned a corner and found him.
Maximilian lay on his belly and face on the cobbles, unburned as far as she could see. But he was unconscious, nonetheless. Dropping to her knees, she rolled him over. Blood oozed down from his brow, his eyes closed, but he made a snorting, choking noise as he breathed.Smoke.Eugenia did not like that. “Max,” she shouted, half lifting him by his coat. “Wake up, you have to wake up.”
He did not. Glancing around, she realized that if she did not get him out quickly, they both would burn to death. The flames ate their way closer, and the roof would collapse at any moment. When it did, it would rain blocks of burning wood down upon them both. Lifting his legs, Eugenia set them to either side of her hips. Like a mule in harness, she braced her feet against the floor and pulled. Maximilian was a big man and heavy, but her urgency lent her a strength she did not know she had. Pulling him across the cobbles, she headed toward the blocked door. It was the closest one.
The fire had beat her to it. The door, engulfed, had partly collapsed, leaving a gap she might be able to get through. But the wooden handles of the tools still crisscrossed the opening. Flames surrounded the entire doorway, so even if she knocked them down, the inferno still could catch them in its embrace. “Bloody hell,” she cursed, coughing. Dropping Maximilian’s legs, she sought for something she could use to open the gap wider and permit them through. Casting about, she found a pile of blankets that the grooms had no doubt planned to put on the mares that night. They had not yet caught fire, though they smoked and no doubt would catch at any moment.
She grabbed one to use as a shield and ran at the door. She crashed through it, inhaled a fresh gasp of crisp cool air, then ran back for Maximilian. She covered his face and upper body with the blanket, grabbed another and cast it over her head to drape over her. She seized his legs in her grip once more, leaned against his weight and pulled him toward the burning doorway. Flames were licking at them both, grasping at the blankets, trying to eat through them. Nearing the end of her strength, coughing until she thought her lungs would burst in her chest, Eugenia dragged Maximilian’s dead weight into the clean, cool air.
Voices shouted, dimly heard through the thick blanket. Eugenia stumbled, unable to see, to breathe, and dropped Maximilian’s legs. She felt hands on her, ripping the wool from her, from Max, pulling them both away from the heat of the inferno, still close enough to catch them in its savage embrace. Unable to see, coughing, her head spinning, she was fighting the hands that helped her.
“Max,” she moaned, trying to find him, to see if he was still alive. “Max.”
She fell to her hands and knees, seeing through her tear-filled eyes Maximilian’s still body. People surrounded him, lifting him, carrying him from her sight. “Max.”
Eugenia collapsed onto her face, unable to see, to breathe, and let the darkness take her.
Chapter 34
Consciousness returned slowly.
Maximilian incrementally opened his eyes found himself staring at the ceiling. For a long moment, he did not recognize it, had no idea where he was. He heard low, murmured voices a short distance from him, though they seemed unimportant. The only issue that mattered at the moment was trying to discern his whereabouts. He frowned and ascertained how much he hurt. His face hurt, his head hurt, his entire body ached in places he had no ideacouldache. He raised his hand to put against his head and discovered it swathed in white bandages.
“What the –” he began. He could not remember what had happened.
The voices stopped murmuring. “He is awake,” one of them said clearly.
Turning his face toward them, he observed the room was dark and illuminated by a single lamp. “What happened?” he croaked; his throat hurt. He was in his own chambers and lay his own bed.
“Lie still, Your Grace,” said Mr. Leary, entering the circle of light. “You nearly died in the fire.”
“Fire?”
Then he remembered. The foaling stable on fire. Rushing in. Releasing the panicked mares and foals from their stalls. Herding them toward the doorway. The man in the hood striking him in the head with a brick.
He tried to sit up, panicking. “Oh, God. My horses. Are they all right?”
More figures merged into his sight – Nigel Curry and Horace Creighton, the Duke of Dentonshire. “Yes, Your Grace,” Nigel said, his voice low. “The horses are all right. The building burned to the ground, however.”
Maximilian fell back, breathing hard. “Thank God.”
He saw the three men exchange long looks, their expressions concerned, sober. More than a burning building and an injured Duke warranted, he thought. Buildings could be rebuilt. “Was anyone killed?” he asked.
“No,” Dentonshire said, his eyes not meeting Maximilian’s. “Not yet.”
“What does that mean?”
None of the three could look at him. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
At last, Nigel stirred. “It is Miss Betham, Your Grace.”
