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Matt met her at the door, his sports coat in his hand. She hurried to lock up and they raced out of the garden, not sparing a thought for the fact that her landlords might see her sprinting by with a man in the morning.

“They might have closed off some of the streets by the time we get there,” said Matt, unlocking the passenger-side door of his car for her. “If we have to walk in, it’ll be easier if we take one car and drop it as close as we can. You can take my keys if you need to get to work.”

She nodded, although she wasn’t sure it would be necessary. Work was coming to her.

chapter forty-nine ADELE

October 1907

Adele had lived in California long enough to hear of fires and what they could do. She had seen plumes of smoke that rose above the crests of the mountains like unnatural clouds, scenting the entire San Gabriel Valley with burning wood, and not long after she had moved to Pasadena she had learned of the devastation that a house fire could bring when the rogue sparks from a stove burned down an entire block of wooden houses in the poorer part of the city. Still, fire seemed not to touch the rarefied earth of South Orange Grove Boulevard.

However, nestled in the foothills of Altadena, Rosewood House was a very different matter.

The unmistakable scent of wildfire had broken whatever tenuous thread had strung between Adele and Macalister. They jumped back. He snatched up his lantern and rushed down the porch steps to the drive, and she grabbed her lamp and followed right on his heels. He raced out to the dirt road, stopping in the middle of it to look about.

“Can you see anything?” she asked, peering into the darkness for the faintest hint of flickering orange light.

He was up on his tiptoes, straining to look beyond the tree line.

“Nothing,” he said. “The wind’s carrying from east to west, but we should check the rest of the grounds.”

“The orchard,” she said, knowing that there was a pile of drying brush lying on the edge of the property there.

They hurried back to the house, rounding the side on the shortest path to the orchard. Macalister wrenched open the gate, and without a word they split to hurry between the rows of trees to check that nothing had caught.

Finding nothing, they worked their way across all three acres of Adele’s land. She swept her eyes across the darkness that fell just outside her lamp, looking for the telltale flicker of orange that would signal that the fire had reached Rosewood House.

When at last they returned to the front of the property, having found nothing, Adele let out a long breath. “We’re safe.”

“For now,” he said. “It’s hard to say without knowing where the fire is and what the wind’s going to do.”

She looked out into the darkness again, trees engulfed in inky black. “What do we do?”

“Only one thing we can do. Keep watch. As soon as it’s light, I’ll get up on the roof and clear the gutters,” he said.

“What about water?” she asked. “Can we wet everything down?”

Even in the dim light, she could see the skeptical look on his face. “I can give it a try. It’ll be hard without other men to share the work.”

“What if I help?” she asked.

He raised a brow. “You want to pump buckets of well water and then haul them around so I can climb up on the roof and douse every-thing?”

“Will it give Rosewood House a chance of surviving if the fire comes closer?” she asked.

“If the fire crests that ridge,” he said, pointing in the darkness to where she knew the landscape dropped away, ceding to one of the many canyons that dotted the foothills of Altadena, “best you can do is get on your horse and ride as hard as you can back to town. Don’t stop to try to hitch the buggy, just get out of here.”

“And if it doesn’t reach that crest?” she asked.

“There’s still risk of the wind carrying embers,” he said.

“Then wetting everything down might help. If an ember falls and there’s nothing for it to burn except wet leaves and wood…”

“First light,” he said. “We’ll get to work at first light. Until then, we wait.”

The ember burns and burns as it floats through the air, buffeted by the wind. It dances, wild and dangerous, through the sky.

Where will it land?