But it was too late. Amelia turned around at the shriek, but she’d already tipped the kettle. There was a roar as the fire ballooned and droplets of flame shot away from the pan.
The pain in her shoulder was extraordinary as fire scorched her dress. A lock of hair that hung loose caught alight. Without thinking, Amelia grabbed at the small lick of flame by her head, unprepared for the searing agony of her hand.
“Aaaahhhh!”
It was unlike anything she’d felt before. She couldn’t breathe properly. The burn was excruciating—loud and large and overwhelming. It stretched across her entire palm and three fingers, quickly blistering.
A small whimper escaped her. Why? Why did everything have to go wrong? Was it not enough that she was stuck out here in some godforsaken backwater? Was this torture truly necessary?
She blew on the burn, trying to soothe it, but the stream of air only intensified the pain. “I…Uh…” Her thoughts refused to come together, overpowered by the sheer fierceness of the burn.
“Come here.” Cassandra grabbed her by the other wrist and towed her toward the scullery, where she dunked Amelia’s hand in a bucket of cold water. “Let it sit in there until the water warms up. I’ll go fetch another bucket.”
The twelve-year-old grabbed an empty bucket that sat by the scullery door and rushed outside.
The sudden emptiness of the room, the unfamiliar setting, the impact of the day and the days before that defeated her. Tears became huge wracking sobs. She struggled for breath.
She was lost. She was without purpose.
Her entire life she’d had one job, knowing her only value was in the power and influence she would marry into, and she’d failed.
At what point Cassandra came back in, she didn’t know. The first she was aware of it, the child was rubbing giant, gentle circles between her shoulder blades.
“It will be all right,” Cassandra said. “We can go into town and buy a pie from the bakery.”
“I…I just didn’t want him to beright. I didn’t want to beuseless.” She tried to wipe away the tears, mortified that she’d been caught in such a state. A duchess presents a calm presence at all times.
“We don’t have to tell him. I don’t tell him stuff all the time.”
Amelia looked at the girl in front of her. Cassandra’s face was sympathetic and kind and welcoming. Amelia couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her with such openness.
“It will be all right,” Cassandra repeated.
Amelia nodded. She looked for a handkerchief to wipe away her tears and the snot that was running out of her nose, but there was none in sight.
“Just use your apron. No one will know.”
Amelia laughed. Just a little bit. And wiped the corner across her face. If she was going to make a fool of herself in front of anyone in this household, she was glad it was this Asterly sibling.
Then the door to the scullery opened, and the one person she really did not want to see stood in the doorway.
“What the hell is going on?”
Chapter8
The place was chaos.
Benedict had walked into an empty kitchen on fire. The stove was alight, there was a leg of lamb on the floor, and a smoldering rag had scorched the bench. The room smelled of burnt oil and something more acrid. He grabbed a lid and put it over the pan, smothering the flames. He grabbed a cutting board and tossed it onto the still-smoking rag.
Then he’d gone in search of the girls, his heart racing.
What he’d found stopped him dead.
Tears had left sooty tracks down Amelia’s face. A chunk of her hair was missing, the ends fried. Her hand sat in a bucket of water in the sink.
His stomach churned at the sight. “What happened?” he asked, crossing the room in four strides and taking her wrist in his hand.
An angry red mark marred her otherwise perfect skin.
