Felix or no Felix, husband in her bed or husband gone from her bed forever, she still had… a plan.
Cold things, plans, nothing like the warm strength of her husband’s muscle wrapped around her all night long, shifting as she shifted, rolling and turning with her, chuckling at her neck with a hot puff of breath.
She rose and dressed slowly, rummaging through the trunk she’d brought out to house her clothes.
She missed him. He’d been gone a single day, and she’d suffered a single morning waking without him and shemissedhim. Missed his quiet determination to meet the challenges of every day head-on. Missed how she could make him smile when no one was looking. Missed how he gave her some of his confidence just by believing in her more than she believed in herself.
What was she going to do when she did not see him for months at a time? Years?
She didn’t even know if he loved her, if he were willing or able to love her. After so much loss… He cared, even if he did not love her, he cared for her. She knew it, was convinced of it. That was something, at least, a foundation to work from. The question remained, though: What to do with a caring husband, a hurting husband? She’d failed to consider what might happen if the one man who cared for her was the one man who hated beinghere. At Hawthorne. This house grated so harshly against Felix’s soul, he slept outside its walls.
She could not force him to live here.
Live without him, then?
She pressed her palm over her wailing heart. Also no good.
Then… sell Hawthorne? Find another house. Possible, yes. Even after all her hard work here. She had a supportive husband who would champion her endeavors, after all. She could start all over.
Or perhaps hire someone she trusted to live at Hawthorne and manage it.
But who?
Caroline dropped into a chair and inhaled deeply as she tugged on her stockings. She inhaled again. Something smelled… off. Wrong. Quickly, she finished tying her garters and pulled on her half boots then rushed outside, inhaled deeply. Coughed.
Smoke. There in the sky on the other side of Hawthorne—a gray, curling omen.
Caroline ran. Through the garden, into the house. “Polly! Ruth!” Bodies ran toward her, took shape as a haze of smoke rolled into life at the end of the hallway behind them.
“Oh, my lady, you’re safe!” Polly hugged her.
“Have the others arrived yet?” Caroline asked.
“No,” Ruth said. “They’re all in the village still.”
“Freddy? Pat?”
“Here, my lady!” Behind her came Freddy’s voice.
“You need to get out of here now,” Pat said. The two men ushered them outside, and Pat ran toward the stables. “I’m off for help!”
“Where is it?” Caroline demanded. “How did it start?” Her feet were heavy. She couldn’t leave. Couldn’t let this happen.
But Freddy was pulling her, not letting her have her way. “Don’t know. You have to move away from the house, or his lordship is going to have my head.”
Felix.At least he would be pleased if Hawthorne burnt to the ground.
“It’s in the back of the house somewhere,” Ruth said. “It was coming from that direction.”
She nodded and spoke aimlessly. “Thank you for not leaving. With Felix.”
“Didn’t feel right,” Freddy said. “No matter how much the widow’s payin’ us.”
“I have to do something. I can’t donothing,” Caroline wailed. “I cannot!”
“You can’t dosomethingeither!” Polly held her other arm. She was trapped by her maid and the footman, trapped by circumstance.
“Do you know what happened? An unattended candle?” Surely there was some reason to this chaos. “A kitchen fire?”
