“You…you cannot go near the fire,” she said after a minute. “It is too dangerous.”
“Nothing will stop me,” he said, backing up from her. “Josiah, do not let her back into the house. Understood?”
“I give you my word,” Lord Dodge called back to him.
Francis ran inside, disappearing a second later. When Phoebe stepped forward, intent on following him, Lord and Lady Dodge stopped her.
“Trust him, my friend,” Lady Dodge said, taking her hand. “He will find Louisa.”
* * *
Francis ran into the house when he passed people on the stairs, all the staff that were running to get out, along with the maids and the butler.
“Has anyone seen Louisa?” he cried, but all the maids shook the heads, and most didn’t even bother replying, all too afraid by the mention of a fire.
“You,” Francis found one of the footmen at the top of the stairs. “Find volunteers to fight the fire. We must stop it from spreading.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the man said hurriedly with a bow and ran off.
Francis ran across the corridor, heading straight for Phoebe’s chamber. The nearer he got, the worse the smell grew, until the burning was thick and cloying at the back of his throat. He went to take hold of the door handle, but he found the knob hot to the touch. Swearing under his breath, he adjusted and put the sleeve of his jacket over the doorknob, before pushing the door open.
The sight that greeted him made him waver in the doorway, as though his legs had become wobbly and built out of nothing but air beneath him. Half the room was in flames, the bed was engulfed and furniture around the bed were quickly taking hold. The smoke was seeping out of the windows, but it did not stop a cloud of this thick black smoke building at the top of the room and hovering on the ceiling, like a monster clinging to the ceiling molds.
“Louisa!” he called her name and then coughed from inhaling the smoke.
Behind him, there were footsteps of people running. He turned his head back to see footmen were approaching, carrying buckets of water and great troughs too, no vessel was too big, even though some vats had to be carried by two or three men at a time.
Looking away from them, Francis covered his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and stepped into the room. The heat was instant and grating against his body. He squinted his eyes against the brightness of the light and gritted his teeth, looking around the room as the first footmen followed him in, ready to fight the blaze. He darted his head back and forth before finding something curled up at the side of the room.
“Louisa!” he called her name again, lowering the sleeve from his mouth just enough to be audible. She lifted her head off the floor a bit, before coughing and falling back down.
He ran toward her, thankful the fire had not yet caught the corner of this room and hauled her to her feet. She was dazed, in a half unconscious state.
“What happened to you?” he asked, but he didn’t need an answer. The roar of the fire and the catcalls of the footmen stopped him from hearing her even if she had given an answer, and the bruise that was developing on her temple told him what he needed to know. She had been struck and knocked out.
He dragged her out of the room, urging his men on with words as he passed them before they were beyond the door, then he hauled Louisa up into his arms and carried her through the corridor, down the stairs.
“He was here.”
“He? Who’s he? Was it the Viscount, Louisa?” Francis asked. She coughed a few times, with soot on her clothes and on her face.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice all creaky. “Someone was in the room. They struck me, then everything went black…I didn’t see them.”
“Whoever started the fire must have struck you,” he said knowingly as they reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried to the open door.
The second they were outside, Francis heard Phoebe calling for her friend. He carried Louisa all the way to Phoebe, where she was then placed on the ground. Diana and Josiah fussed around the maid, with Mrs Goodman shouting at the other staff for the stable boy to be sent for the physician at once, just as Phoebe reached out for Francis.
“You saved her,” she said, clinging to him. “Thank you.”
“You do not need to thank me,” he said, looking her over her repeatedly.
All that mattered to him was that she hadn’t been caught in the fire. With the flames being set alight in her room, then there was the chance that whoever had started the fire was hoping to hurt Phoebe, and Louisa’s entrance into the room had just been ill timed.
He glanced over his shoulder, aware that all the staff were nearby, but with their gazes upon the house and the smoke that was curling out of the window, he felt a little liberty to do as he wanted, without them noticing. He lifted Phoebe’s hand quickly to his lips and kissed the back.
“Thank god you were not in that fire,” he whispered to her, feeling a tightness in his throat at the idea. “It’s just too horrifying.”
“I am well, Francis,” she said reassuringly. She was about to turn back to Louisa and attend her maid when Francis pulled on her hand another time.
