Charlotte laughed. At last, she had bettered Miss Bassingthwaite! She sat up rather dizzily, wincing at the pain. Her wound did not seem too terrible, but she frowned upon seeing the astonishing amount of blood. Bixby was going to be most displeased when he came to do the laundry.
An unhappy butler posed the least of her problems, however. The sitting room was worryingly alight. Alex had smashed the tables to which Tom and Vicar Dickersley had been chained, and both pirates were dragging the vicar toward the door. Lady Armitage pushed past them, intent on escape. Charlotte tried to incantate a braking phrase to stop the old pirate, but smoke swirled into her mouth, making her cough. Lady Armitage pulled open the door and ran out.
“Alex,” Charlotte called out roughly. “She’s getting away!”
Alex looked up. Upon seeing her blood-stained form, his eyes blackened with emotion. Charlotte would have found it wonderfully flattering were they in more pleasant circumstances. As it was, she might swoon, but not from romance.
Alex dropped his side of the vicar and, with three great strides, was across the room and crouching before her, grasping her arms urgently. “Are you all right? Where are you hurt? Charlotte?”
She grimaced. “I’d be better if you weren’t squeezing exactly whereshe stabbed me. I’m fine. Let me go; I need to chase her. She still has the amulet!”
For a moment she thought he would argue. She watched emotions wrestle with his countenance until at last something dark and fierce triumphed. Looking at it, Charlotte did not know whether to be awed or frightened. He brought her to her feet and started pulling her toward the door.
“I’ll go after Armitage,” he said. “You get out. Take Tom and the vicar to safety. Promise me, Lottie.”
It was a sensible plan. He had more chance of overcoming Lady Armitage than she did. As a witch, she approved it.
As a woman, she clutched his coat, trying not to cry. “Promise me you will stay safe too.”
He grinned with his usual flippant wickedness. “Of course. I know what I’m doing. This is a regular day’s work for me, darling. Now out!”
He gave her a little shove, and for once she obeyed without further debate. Rushing over to the vicar, she took up the shoulder Alex had dropped, and disregarding her pain, began helping Tom to haul the man out of the room. The effort was made difficult by the weighty chains, not to mention the sight of Alex dashing up the stairs in pursuit of Lady Armitage, smoke swirling behind him. Charlotte forced herself to just focus on breathing.
A footman ran past, his arms full of silverware. As he barreled down the stairs toward the ground floor, Charlotte realized there was no hope of getting the unconscious vicar down those stairs in time. “We’ll have to go out the window!” she shouted to Tom over the crackling of the fire.
The young pirate glanced at the window then back at her, his eyes wide. “It’s too high!”
“Not for a witch.”
“You don’t mean to use magic? But you’re a woman; we’ll be too heavy for you.”
In lieu of answering that, Charlotte threw a dark, sorcerous word at the window. Glass exploded outward, along with a portion of the wall. As Tom stared agog, she gave him a smile as polite as a witch’s besom with every device extruded.
“Out you go, young man.”
“I think you should—”
Alas, his manly opinion was lost to posterity as he suddenly jolted up from the floor and, along with the vicar, swept on out the window. Charlotte waited, counting in her mind, as Tom’s scream informed her of how long the descent took. She gazed up the stairs to where Alex had gone. Everything in her yearned to follow him. But smoke was filling the corridor, and she knew she would be foolish to remain inside. Running to help Alex would be like Tom telling her how to do magic.
And yet, leaving him was agony.
She should have persuaded him to come with her. Never mind the amulet—nothing mattered, nothing, if Alex was not safe.
But such thoughts were neither sensible nor dutiful, and although Elizabeth Bennet might sympathize with her, Charlotte knew most heroines would not. They would tell her to run away and let the man save the day.
And so she climbed onto the windowsill, muttering magic reluctantly. Smoke billowed around her. Heat stroked her back. The house was shuddering as it began to rise, and Charlotte clutched the window frame lest she fall before she could fly. The world had become a blur—she was capable of tears after all, it seemed, for they filled her eyes, blinding her with grief and terror.
I do love him, she thought.
Damn.
She could not leave, regardless of good sense. If love made a pyre for her this morning, then so be it. Turning back carefully on the windowsill, she prepared to run upstairs—to save Alex, and herself along with it.
But magic was not sentimental. It had no heart or heroism. With a witchy calm that felt altogether callous, it tossed her out to the wind.
Alex staggered, colliding with a wall. The house was rising—and at the same time he could have sworn something was falling, dragging his heart down with it.Let it be Charlotte, he prayed. Let her be leaping to safety.
And then he continued on along the corridor, because he’d been a pirate all his life and he knew the fate of the world (not to mention the fire consuming Armitage House) was not going to take a break, drink a cup of tea, read a magazine, while he managed his emotions.
