Page 162 of A Scandal for the Beastly Earl

"What about you?"

"I'm checking the nursery wing."

"Lucien said to stay..."

"Lucien's not thinking about the fact that there are multiple fires. Can you smell it? It's coming from different directions."

Cordelia's eyes widened as she realized Arabella was right. The smoke wasn't coming from just the west wing.

"Harrington," she breathed.

"He's here. Has to be. This is planned."

"We need to..."

"We need to get everyone out. Go!"

Cordelia ran, and Arabella moved as quickly as her condition allowed toward the nursery wing. The smoke was thicker here, and she could hear crackling that sent ice through her veins.

The hallway stretched before her like a tunnel, smoke billowing from beneath doors, the wallpaper already beginning to curl from heat. Six weeks of peace had made them careless. They'd dismissed Porter's connection to Harrington, hadn't questioned why two footmen would disappear on the same night, hadn't considered that Harrington's escape from custody might mean immediate danger.

Now the house was burning, and she was eight months pregnant, struggling through smoke toward crying she could definitely hear.

"Is anyone here?" she called again.

"My lady!" Jane's voice, from the servants' stairs. "The back stairway is blocked!"

"Come through here!"

Jane appeared with three of the younger maids, all coughing and terrified. One of them, Betty, barely sixteen, was crying hysterically.

"He locked us in," she gasped. "Thomas locked us in!"

"Thomas the footman?"

"He said it was for our own good, but then we smelled smoke."

"Get to the main stairs," Arabella ordered. "Get out! Now!"

"What about you, my lady?"

"I'm right behind you."

But she wasn't, because she'd heard something else—someone coughing from the direction of the storage rooms. The smoke was thicker here, the heat more intense. Her eyes streamed, her lungs burned, but someone was trapped.

"Hello?" she called, then coughed as smoke filled her lungs.

"Help!" A voice she didn't recognize. "Please! Anyone!"

She found Porter, the missing footman, tied up in a storage closet, smoke seeping under the door. His face was streaked with tears and soot.

"Lady Blackthorn! You shouldn't be here!"

"Neither should you." She worked at his bonds with fingers that shook—from fear or smoke, she couldn't tell. "Harrington?"

"He made me help. Threatened my family; my mother, my sisters. He said he'd burn their cottage if I didn't...I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Apologise later. Run now."