She scrambled to her feet. “Yes.”
“I will go first,” Strathmore hollered over the tumult. “Arden, put her between us. We need to stay together, stay calm, and move toward the door as quickly and efficiently as possible. Ready?”
Strathmore had endured the hells of torture and imprisonment. Of course he would be cool and calm in the midst of a deadly blaze. Once more, Lucien was grateful for his brother-in-law, a man he was quickly coming to admire.
“Lead the way, Strathmore,” he hollered, planting his hands on Hazel’s waist. “Here we go, darling,” he said into her ear. “Hold on to Strathmore, and I will hold on to you.”
There was no time for her to respond, for Strathmore had already begun moving. Time was against them, so too the flames and the thickening of the deadly smoke. His lungs burned, and the three of them were gasping for air. The heat was intense as they meandered slowly through the path they had just taken, avoiding fallen floors and beams, working their way around a fresh blaze.
Finally, at long last, they reached the doorway. The cold, crisp air of late autumn was a welcome burst on his face and in his lungs. Strathmore guided them into the street, and the three of them collapsed as one, gasping for breath, shuddering coughs wracking them all.
But alive.
Mercifully, blessedly,alive. Lucien looked toward his brother-in-law, nodded his thanks, then gathered Hazel in his arms. He buried his face in her hair, not giving a damn who saw his unseemly display of emotion. Not giving a damn about the tears streaking down his cheeks.
All he cared about in that moment was the woman in his arms. Words failed him, so he didn’t say a bloody thing. He simply held her close, relishing the pounding of her heart against his chest, the way she clutched him back. Now that he had her where she belonged, he had no intention of ever letting her go again.
“Tilt your headback, sweetheart.”
Hazel obeyed Lucien’s command, tipping her chin toward the ceiling. She offered no protest at his term of endearment, just as she had not offered any protest when he had held her in his arms for the carriage ride back to Strathmore’s townhouse. Just as she had not protested when Lucien had announced to his worried sister upon their arrival that he would attend Hazel in her bath.
Brother and sister had indulged in a private exchange just out of earshot. Presumably, Violet had argued against the scandalous notion of Lucien assisting an unmarried female whilst she was nude, submerged in a tub. Also presumably, Lucien had run roughshod over his sister’s protests. In the end, Lucien had escorted Hazel upstairs, drawing the bathwater for her and undressing her himself, before joining her in the tub.
His every touch had been reverent but practical. He had stripped her dress, chemise, stockings, and drawers away and plucked what remained of the pins binding her hair. He had scrubbed her skin free of the soot and smoke, though she felt certain the awful, putrid scent of it would never leave her. After the shock and tumult of the day, the presence of his powerful body at her back, surrounding her in the warm, lavender-scented water, was precisely what she needed.
Gently, he worked a lather into her hair now, his long fingers kneading her scalp.
“Is your cheek paining you?” he asked, his tone grim.
She had not seen herself in a mirror, but the pain in her cheek and jaw was enough to tell her she suffered bruising from Mulroney’s slaps. “It is well enough,” she said, closing her eyes as he continued his massage.
His hands upon her, after all the hell she had endured, felt like pure heaven.
“I would kill them again if I could, for what they have done to you.” His voice was a low growl now, and she did not doubt he meant what he said.
It was the first acknowledgment she had received that Mulroney and Flannery had perished in the fire. “Are you certain?”
“Certain that I would tear them apart with my bare hands?” he asked. “Christ yes. I will hurt any man who hurts you. It kills me that I was not able to protect you as I should have.”
“Certain they are dead?” she elaborated. “That the two of them died in the fire?”
Lucien cleared his throat, continuing his tender ministrations. “Yes. When the Fire Brigade doused the flames, two dead were discovered in the rubble. Two men meeting the descriptions of Flannery and Mulroney were found side by side, buried beneath fallen debris. The man acting as lookout, and who also caused the blast when he saw the arrival of Scotland Yard, was captured as well before he could escape. He is the same man I chased at the hotel that day when Mulroney and Flannery attacked you. You are finally safe now, thank God.”
Hours had passed in the wake of her rescue from the burning warehouse. As the Fire Brigade had arrived in their steam fire engines, she, Lucien, and Strathmore had been swept to the periphery of the scene. A physician called for by Winchelsea had attended all of them there in the street. They had answered the questions of Scotland Yard. And then at long last, they had returned, all three of them, to Strathmore’s home.
Lark House still required additional safety measures in an abundance of caution, Lucien had explained, in the wake of the incursion and planting of the bomb in her chamber. And that was how she had managed to find herself ensconced in a hot, restoring bath, the Duke of Arden waiting upon her as if he were her personal servant.
“I am not glad they are dead,” she said at last, a tremor in her voice she wished she could have suppressed, “though I am grateful they cannot harm anyone else. But I would not wish such a demise as what they suffered upon my greatest enemy.”
“They left you tied to that chair, knowing you would perish in the flames, those craven bastards,” he reminded her. “It is only fitting they received the end they would have forced upon you.”
Lucien was right. Mulroney and Flannery had consigned her to die in the fire. And if the fire hadn’t begun when it had, they would have killed her themselves in another fashion. But she had no wish to dwell upon that now. The evils of others would be answered for, and she had faith in that, if not human nature.
She was a Pinkerton agent, after all.
But she had much to be thankful for, because she had failed herself today, and unquestionably, she would have died in the fire as Mulroney and Flannery had intended, had it not been for the selfless intervention of Lucien and the Duke of Strathmore. Though she had thanked them both profusely in the street, gratitude rose within her again now, and she could not contain it.
“Rinse,” he said then, and she felt the lukewarm caress of water bathing her head, washing the suds free. Once, twice, thrice. He sifted the heavy strands of her hair, cleansing any lingering traces of the trauma she had faced earlier that day.
