Chapter 31
T he flames leapt from rotting wood to paper boxes, traveling at breakneck haste. Cloth and books, papier-maché and curtains, linens and leather fed its rapacious hunger. It danced in brilliant waves, bubbled and flowed, enveloping in an instant anything in its path.
A sudden move caught Favor’s attention. As she watched, Carr rose and stumbled through the door into the outer hall. “No!” Muira screamed, seeing her quarry escape.
Raine grabbed Favor’s arm, yanking her toward the door but her feet caught in her voluminous skirts. She would have fallen had not Raine caught her up in his arms and dashed toward the hall. But the delay cost them dearly.
Muira was quicker.
She darted across the room, waving her second torch in the air, shedding a cloud of living embers in her wake. She halted in the doorway beside the huge ancient armoire teetering under the weight of half-packed crates and boxes. Madly, she feinted at them with her torch, using it like an épée.
Raine reached out to seize her and caught instead the burning end of the torch. With a hiss of pain, he jerked his hand back. Favor darted forward to deal with the madwoman but Raine caught her around the waist and yanked her back just as Muira swung the flaming brand, missing Favor’s face by inches. He pushed Favor behind him, scanning the narrowing tunnel of darkness behind the madwoman. Already, Favor could feel the heat from the growing inferno at her back.
“Let her go!” Raine demanded hoarsely.
“Nay! Nay!” Muira shrieked, dancing from side to side. “You’ll next have yer pleasure of her in hell, Raine Merrick!” Her expression grew sly; her gaze darted to the side. She touched her torch to the wardrobe’s rotting contents, setting it ablaze.
“No!” Raine shouted. Before he could act she grabbed the door of the wobbling armoire and pulled. She jumped back into the open hallway just as it crashed to the floor, choking the entrance with its flaming contents.
In the black corridor, they could see her dart down the hall, touching her torch to anything in her path. And then she stumbled. The torch fell against her skirts, catching fire to them. She shrieked not with pain but with horrific laughter. She spun her way down the hall, a burning effigy, and in seconds was lost to view.
“God have mercy,” Favor whispered.
“Hurry!” Raine shouted.
Favor looked behind them. The exit by the altar was unreachable. A wall of liquid flames undulated over the wall behind them, searing the back of her neck and shoulders. They’d only one chance. She hurled herself at the mound of burning crates, grabbing hold of any unlit portion and jerking it away from the doorway. Raine was already working feverishly, hurling crates and trunks away heedless of burning his hands and arms.
Frantically and silently they worked, side by side. Smoke, a churning black miasma, rose toward the high ceiling, already billowing as it sought another egress. In minutes it would envelop them. Already her lungs burned with the noxious fumes and her eyes streamed.
Outside in the hall, the fire had taken hold. It skittered along the floorboards, tasted the walls with hungry licks. It bloomed in orange brilliance at rotted wooden door frames and raced toward the main part of the castle.
Raine seized the edge of the toppled wardrobe and with one enormous grunt shoved it away from the door. Favor darted through the small opening he’d made, reaching back and grasping Raine’s wrist.
“Go!” he shouted, trying to pull free. “’Tis too small. Go! I’ll be right behind you!”
She let go, but she didn’t leave. She hurled her small body against the mammoth piece of furniture and pushed with all her strength.
“GO!” he shouted.
“Not”—she gritted her teeth—“without”—she closed her eyes and offered a prayer—“you!” She rammed her shoulder against the monolithic piece.
“Damn you, Favor McClairen!” she heard Raine roar, and then the wardrobe slithered a few blessed inches. He swung himself up and over the armoire, through an opening just wide enough to allow him through, turned, seized her hand, and pulled her to him.
Down the blazing hallway they ran, the snapping and crackling of the flames following them like manic laughter. They burst through the tower doorway into complete blackness, clattering and half-falling down the narrow spiraling steps to the main floor. Muira had done her job well; Wanton’s Blush was an inferno.
The castle was burning, set ablaze by a madwoman. Carr crept step by painful step along the hall, heading for his library.
His eyes were swollen nearly shut. A red haze obscured vision that kept fading and then resolving itself. His nose was broken and his head echoed with dull noise. Pain lanced his side with each breath he took. He ignored the pain just as he ignored the deeper agony of being duped by his son—with the aid of that little Scottish heathen.
He’d no time for that now. Already the air in the stairwell behind him shimmered with heat, the vanguard of the blaze that followed.
The few guests left emerged wild-eyed from the rooms where they’d been carousing, befuddled and stupid as lemmings on a cliff. Wild-eyed and uncertain, they stood frozen, mouthing inanities and pleas for help. Carr ignored them. A few of his footmen screamed for water. Fools! No water could save Wanton’s Blush now.
He made it to the door of his library, and with swollen hands fumbled for the key in his pocket and fit it in the lock. A roar like hell’s hound boomed above him. Suddenly the ceiling a few yards behind him collapsed. Fire rose like Adas unchained and surged from the burning timbers, pounced upward, gorging itself on rich tapestries and gilt-framed masterpieces.
Carr ground his teeth in impotent fury and pushed the library door open. He’d little time. Less than little. He lumbered across the room toward the ornately carved mantel and, gritting his teeth in agony, fit his fingernails beneath a tile and pried it up. He shoved his hand down into the revealed compartment and fished until his hand closed on a packet. He removed it, stuffing the bundle beneath his shirt.
He looked at the door leading to the hall. Tendrils of smoke crept beneath it in gentle exploration, insidiously delicate. He turned and hobbled quickly to his adjoining bedchamber, bent on retrieving at least the gold he kept in the trunk beneath Janet’s portrait. The thought of Janet brought a snarl to his lips, twisting the cut lips painfully. He reached for the handle and thrust the door open.
The sight that met his gaze sent him reeling backward, gasping and clutching at his chest.
Janet stood beneath her portrait.
She was silhouetted by the fire he insisted always be kept burning in the hearth of his private chambers, posed in profile, her hands folded at her waist. Her chin was tilted up at an angle as though she were studying the picture; a small smile curved her soft lips.
“No!” he whispered.
“Leave here, Ronald.” Her voice seemed to come from within his own head, echoing and dim, soft and implacable. She did not turn to face him. Her figure wavered slightly. “Leave here now.”
She’d come to save him.
Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, obeyed the haunt’s advice.
“It’s barred from outside!” Favor shouted, clawing at Raine’s arm as he banged his shoulders again and again into the small door at the foot of the tower stairway. It was pitch black; only a sullen sliver of light beneath the door gave any illumination. “We have to go back up—”
“No! We’ll die up there!”
He’d been working to open the door for ten minutes, though it felt like hours. The stone tower had as yet stood proof against the blaze’s fury but soon the fire would find entry and they would be burned alive at the tower’s base.
“Favor,” he said urgently, “I need something with which to pry the hinges off. See what you can do, I’ll keep battering at this.”
Nodding, Favor scrambled back up the stairs, her hands feeling about for anything to use as a pry bar, her feet sliding over the width of the steps for anything that might be lying there. Halfway to the second story she almost impaled herself on a sharp edge protruding from the wall. She groped until she caught hold of a curved piece of metal. It was an old iron banister some worthy McClairen had fitted along the steep staircase and promptly left to erode. Double blessings on his head.
Favor wrapped her fingers around the cold metal and twisted. The railing moved and she heard plaster pieces falling. She leaned back against the central core of the spiral staircase, braced her foot against the wall and heaved back with all her might. With a distinct snap, a heavy section of metal came loose in her hands.
Panting and triumphant, she clambered down to Raine. Patting her way down his arm, she found his hand and slapped the three-foot section of metal in his palm.
“Now, please, get us out of here,” she said.
“Yes, Milady.” His tone told her he was smiling. She heard him feeling for the hinge, the scrape of metal against metal as he fit the end beneath the hinge, and then a grunt as he shoved.
The metal snapped.
For a second neither spoke.
“We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” she asked quietly.
In answer she heard his shoulder strike the door with a loud boom , the sound reverberating through the small enclosure.
“Please, Raine,” she said. “If we have to die here, I don’t want to die without feeling your arms around me once more.”
Boom!
“I love you, Raine. I want you to know that.”
“God!” His roar was part fury, part supplication.
“Please—”
Strong arms caught her up in a fervent embrace. Lips salty with blood and sweat touched hers in a kiss so tender that tears sprang to her eyes.
“I love you, Favor McClairen Merrick. I would have done everything in my power to make you happy. I swear I would.”
“Where would we have gone?” she asked, an unnatural calm overtaking her. How could she feel so content in such a hell? A benefit of loving, she imagined.
“America?” he said, sounding as if he, too, struggled to reconcile himself to this fate but fared far worse than she. “Perhaps … India. Yes. I think India.”
“It’s warm there, is it not?” she asked wistfully. “I never realized how much I like to be warm until I’d returned here.”
“I promise, you would have never been cold again,” he swore in a rough voice.
“I should have dressed in silk saris and lain beneath white canopies and fed you pomegranates.”
“No, sweet one,” he replied in a hushed voice. “I would have fed you pomegranates and kissed the juice from your lips.”
“Then I should have been the first woman on earth to have grown fat on pomegranates,” she said, smiling softly.
He did not reply and she felt a shiver pass through him, heard the hiss of a breath drawn in pain. She hurried on, determined to take him away from this black place and, for a brief moment, to the brilliant future they would never know.
She touched his mouth, trying to soothe him. “And how many children would we have had?”
“Dozens.” His voice was hushed. “All with shining hair and fierce dark brows and … Oh, God, I cannot do this. I will not do this!” He pounded his fist against the door.
Silently, it swung open.
She stared as Raine grabbed her hand and pulled her out after him. They were in the front hall, leading to the main staircase. Part of the ceiling had fallen in midway. Flames shot from the hole above and curtained one wall in a sheet of rippling fire.
A footman carrying an empty sack ran far ahead of them and disappeared into the dining room. A scullery maid emerged shrieking from a doorway, beating at the fire climbing up her skirts but refusing to drop the silver tray she carried. She wheeled back into the room from whence she came and was lost to sight.
They stopped. They needed only to make it past the blazing mound of plaster and wood that the ceiling had dumped in the corridor. The heat was intense, scorching their cheeks and singeing their hair. They were so close; they’d need only to turn the corner to be at the front door. But the pile was deep and the flames engulfing it were high.
Abruptly, Raine spun her around. He clutched handfuls of her satin gown and with a mighty jerk, tore the heavy skirts off her. He scooped her up, tossing her over his shoulder and with a muttered oath, ran straight over the pile of burning debris. On the far side he dropped her, slapping his smoldering boots before motioning her ahead. She took hold of his hand. A few more yards. They turned the corner leading to the front entrance.
There, impossibly, set on the floor directly in front of the door to the outside, stood a life-sized portrait of Janet McClairen. Some hand must have set it there, barring that portal. Yet who? It was afire, the painted canvas curling at the corners, little yellow flames lapping from the edges in toward the painted visage, burning away the beautiful one-sided smile, the haughty nose, and the gorgeous too-knowing eyes. As they watched, thunderstruck, Janet’s face disappeared exposing the backing and secured to it a large leather satchel. Then the backing, too, caught fire and the pocket dropped from where it had once been lodged.
“Raine …?”
He knelt and quickly retrieved the heavy leather bundle, untying the thong and lifting the flap. A fierce Celtic lion the size of a man’s hand glared up at him with marble-sized ruby cabochon eyes.
“McClairen’s Trust,” Raine murmured.
“Do you think that … that someone put it here just for you to find?” she asked. The flames behind them were growing nearer.
Someone had. Raine gazed at the empty picture frame, a scowl hardening his features and then, just as the fire had burned away Janet’s lovely visage, the frown disappeared from his face replaced by tenderness and warmth and fierce certainty. He retied the bundle and thrust it inside his shirt.
“Raine?” Favor asked again.
“Aye,” he said. “I do. My mother, Favor. She gave it to us as a wedding present and that belief I will carry to my grave.”
He held out his hand. She took it.
Together they walked out of the burning castle and down the granite steps and past the huddled, whimpering queues of guests and servants.
And they did not look back.