“Someone dragged me, but I tripped and fell. I couldn’t get up, and then I started to faint, but your voice… your voice—” She started coughing violently.
Behind them, a mighty creaking sound alerted Kenneth to the urgency of their escape.
“Come,” he called and lifted her into his arms.
With Joanna pressed tightly against his body and her right arm wrapped around his neck, he rushed to the door. They had to get out before it was too late. Smoke, not the flames, was the biggest danger at this stage of a fire. He’d read so much about fires and how they spread over the years that he knew this above all else.
He saw the outline of the door that had admitted so many illustrious guests, the same door that also served as the gateway between the rabble and the aristocracy—elevated now to the gateway between the inferno behind them and the sanctuary of the night before them.
As they emerged from the billowing smoke, a chorus of cheers and gasps greeted them. The men from the fire brigade had arrived, as had neighbors, who’d lined up with buckets filled with sand and water.
“Joanna!” Sally screamed, her voice raw with desperation.
Kenneth could not see her among the crowd but knew she’d come to them soon enough.
“Sally?” Joanna whispered in his arms. She looked up at him with questioning eyes.
Kenneth smiled at nodded his chin toward Sally, who was rushing toward them. “She’s over there. She is well, and so is Rosy and your friend Judith,” he said. Then, he put Joanna down, holding onto her waist as she found her balance. “You’re safe now,” he reassured her, relief flooding his voice.
“Thank you,” Joanna croaked. “I thought I was going to die. I thought it was the end, and if not for you, it would have been.”
A lump filled his throat, and his fingers dug into the fabric of her dress. “I only did what had to be done,” he said as the feeling of hopelessness and pain of the past assaulted him again, taking away the relief he’d felt at seeing her unharmed.
“No, you did so much more. All these people… and you were the only one who came back for me. The man who…” She shook her head. “There was another man, and he was trying to help, but the second we were separated, he rushed away. I called for him to return, to help me, but he didn’t.”
Anger rushed through Kenneth as he remembered the inebriated man. He would’ve had a few choice words with him were Joanna not in need of his help. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her closer to him, and steered her through the crowd. “We need to get away from the building. The fire is spreading fast.”
“Of course, of course,” she whispered, her hand holding onto his arm.
The sensation of her hand on his arm, the closeness of her body, and the tenderness in her eyes should have been a balm to his soul. Yet, they invoked the opposite. For as they navigated the crowd to reunite her with her family, he understood two things at once. He had lost his heart to her, and he had almost lost her forever.
This was exactly what Kenneth had been afraid of all this time. To love someone, only to be wrecked by grief and despair again. He could not allow it to happen. He could not allow his heart to love. He would never survive if he was robbed of her presence by circumstance.
No. What he had to do was leave her now so that the rupture of their agreement would be at his discretion—within his control.
As he passed her off to her elated sisters, he swallowed hard and then, while they were distracted, slipped into the crowd—and walked away from the only woman he had ever loved. For good.
CHAPTER 17
“Ican’t believe Almack’s will be closed for the Season! Now, where am I to meet a gentleman?” Rosy complained as the family sat together in the drawing room, five days after the tragedy.
Joanna looked at her youngest sister, shaking her head. Of course, Rosy’s sole complaint was about the loss of her favorite locale for the Season.
“Perhaps at one of the dozens of other balls that are bound to take place this Season?” Sally replied sharply. “A little compassion would not be amiss, Rosy.”
“I have compassion!” Rosy replied in a whiney tone that she always used whenever she felt falsely accused. “Can’t I feel bad for Almack’s and its patronesses while also feeling sad about losing out on my joy and entertainment?”
Sally rolled her eyes as she looked at Joanna, who let out a chuckle.
“Girls, there has been enough drama these last few days,” the Earl interjected, his gaze lingering on Joanna. “Luckily, the fire brigade was able to contain the fire to the ballroom. It could have been a lot worse. Nobody died, and even those who were caught in the fire are recovering. Like our Joanna.”
He smiled at her, and for a split second, she thought she saw the man who had played with her and Sally when they were little, had brought them sweets and entertained them with tales of his youth.
He had been genuinely worried about her these past few days, she knew this. He was, after all, her father. Indeed, when she and her sisters had returned home, their parents had greeted them outside the front door, enveloping them in hugs the moment they alighted from their carriage.
Still, Joanna had to remind herself that he was the same man who had cheated on her mother, who’d almost forced her into a marriage with a man she didn’t love. She looked away as Rudy ambled in from the adjacent music room. The puppy walked with his tail up, confident as if he owned the manor. She patted the space beside her, and he leaped up, settling next to her with his black and white face on her lap.
“Father is right. At least nobody died. We should consider ourselves lucky in that regard. Besides, the patronesses alreadysaid that they would see to it that the building was renovated post haste,” Sally pointed out.
