What would Luke say if he had told him about Lady Charity?
CHAPTER 5
The fire was clawing in the air. It didn’t seem to matter how much Seth recoiled from it, the flames just kept on growing. It was a demon, fully risen from hell, come to ensnare the entire building and everyone in it.
“Arthur!” he raged, his voice booming. “Arthur, speak to me, man!”
Yet Arthur did not answer. Seth had already spent many minutes shouting for his father, but unable to find him, he had now shifted to looking for his dear friend and Luke’s brother, Arthur.
“Arthur!” he bellowed once more.
Still, there was nothing.
Seth pushed through the nearest door, driving his shoulder against it. The black smoke that filled the air clamored at his lungs, making breathing almost impossible. He gasped, his body lurching forward with his hands on his knees. His eyes watered as he tried to breathe cleanly and failed.
Arthur was in this room. He had left him here not long before. He had to be here.
Yet the flames had grown so much on one side of the chamber, it was near impossible to see anything but the blinding orange glow. The heat that came off those flames was scorching, singeing Seth’s skin.
“Arthur!”
He jerked his head around. That was when he saw it. A figure on the floor, the torso partially visible beyond the desk. The rug was coiled up underneath him.
“No...” Seth dropped down to Arthur’s side and turned him over. The dark auburn hair was seared, black in places, and the face was covered in soot. “Arthur, speak to me. Wake up, man.”
Yet Arthur did not stir. Not even his eyelids flickered.
Straining to his feet, Seth’s young body was still slight in build, but the determination more than anything else helped him to carry his friend. He flung Arthur over his shoulder, standingbetween the flames, and began to lumber toward the door, back the way he came.
The journey to the door of the club was long and seemingly never-ending. Around every corner, there were fresh flames, fresh heat. When he burst through the door that led outside, the flames caught him. He felt them burning around his neck and under his chin, scolding him. He cried out at the pain and dropped Arthur onto the ground.
Coughing and spluttering, he reached for Arthur’s neck, trying to ignore the burning pain in his own throat. There was no flutter of a heartbeat, no pulse. Seth rolled Arthur onto his side and plunged his hands against his friend’s thorax, trying to urge him to breathe again. He did it repeatedly, desperately.
Still, Arthur did not breathe.
Instead, he felt a pressure building around his own throat and it began to choke him…
Seth’s eyes shot open as he burst out of the chair. His hand went to his neck first, feeling for that burn. He tore off the cravat and threw it to the floor nearby, revealing the scars across his neck and chin.
Shelby looked up blearily from his place on the hearthrug, his long face just visible in the moonlight through the window.
“It was just a dream,” Seth muttered to himself. “Just a bad dream.”
No. It was a memory.
He tried to sit down again, his eyes meeting Shelby’s across the room. How often in the darkness had the memory revisited him? Repeatedly, time and time again.
Shelby stretched and returned to his slumber, laying his long face down on one of his front paws. Seth envied the hound, wishing he could find peace so easily.
Hanging his head forward, Seth took three deep breaths, trying to clear the memory from his mind for good. The night the Aldenbury Club had burnt down changed everything for him and Luke. They had both lost two people they loved that night: Arthur, Luke’s brother, and Seth’s father, Percival Colborne, the late Duke of Axfordshire.
“It’s over,” he whispered into the air again. “It’s over.”
Moonlight was fading. Seth should really reach for a candle and light it from a tinderbox. He knew that, yet he had no real wish to start a flame now. He was uncomfortable with them at the best of times, for the memory of the fire that night was still too strong. Too painful.
“Her father started it. He is the cause of it all.” Seth suddenly moved to his feet. The nightmare had made him anxious and angry, in need of vengeance for the unnecessary deaths.
Lady Charity was not responsible, but she was daughter to the man who was. He had to talk to her, for some strange reason, in that moment. He felt the urge to find her, to demand to know what she knew of the situation.
