Chapter Thirteen
Roasted In Wrath
“Wake up! Wake up!”
“Uuungh,” said Darcy.
“No! Get up!”
“Uuungh,” said Darcy again, but excruciating pain in his ear had him jerking up from sleep before he knew what he was about, and he was awake and flailing, eyelids flying open though he could not immediately make out what he was looking at.
His heart thumped, one huge beat, then pounded so loudly he could hear it throbbing through the angry, anxious voice demanding his attention.
His hands hit something solid, slapping away his assailant.
The thing… person with the annoying voice…
whatever it was fell away from him, making a shocked, gasping noise.
He threw up a hand to his ear to rub away the pain.
“Are you awake? Get up! Hurry!”
He blinked to clear his sight. Miss Elizabeth.
By all that was holy, Miss Elizabeth. Seemingly wreathed in fog, her face reddened, her voice high and sharp, and her eyes very bright with…
with something. Fright, or anger, or frustration.
All three, perhaps. What was she doing in his study?
What was… He coughed, and his eyes drifted closed.
Her voice muted, as though someone had filled his ears with candle wax.
“No! Do not—”
His other ear this time. A vicious, twisting pain, but it brought him to himself.
He tried to raise a hand again, but this time he could not feel more hampered if he were pushing his arm through an entire barrel of thick honey.
He had to take two or three sharp quick breaths to settle himself. The air bit at his throat and chest.
He coughed again, stared at her for an instant. Looked past her. The hearthrug was alight, burning coals scattered across it, yellow flames licking over the fine Persian wool. The fire made sucking, greedy noises, not unlike lips smacking together over a tasty treat.
That was wrong. That should not be happen—
“Get up!” She visibly set her jaw, her expression Hecate’s glare, all wide eyes and tense mouth. She had one arm extended, her hand on his ear. She had a strong grip. Another vicious twist.
Pain was a remarkable clearer of bewildered heads.
Not fog.
Smoke.
“Get up! Please get up—” She coughed, her slight body bending at the waist as she leaned forward and took in a gulping breath.
No time to talk. No time to think. They had to get out.
“Out!” He surged to his feet, head spinning unpleasantly, and grasped her arm.
He had meant to hasten her out of the room, but he stumbled on the first step as if he were a child learning to walk. She wriggled free of his grip in an instant and put her arm around his waist, pulling him to the door.
He choked. Fought off the strange lassitude afflicting his legs, and stumbled along beside her.
She was too slight to take his weight, too delicate, but somehow they staggered through the doorway together.
He had the presence of mind to close the door behind them, cutting off the billow of smoke reaching out to catch them with fingers of thick, roiling vapour.
The air was clearer. Cleaner. But the door, ancient thick oak as it was and hard as iron, would not hold for long.
Still leaning on Miss Elizabeth, he reeled towards the Great Hall, both of them coughing and gasping. “Rouse the house. Must rouse—”
She glanced at him, nodded, and slipped out from under the arm he had laid across her shoulders, and darted into the library.
His support lost, he leaned against a convenient wall.
What in Hades was wrong with him? He could not possibly be foxed on two glasses of brandy!
He shook his head to clear it, tensing every muscle in his neck, and pulled in the first full clean breath for several minutes.
She was back in a few moments. “Rang,” she said, breathing as hard as he was himself. “Night footman.”
She must have rung the bell with all the verve of the church ringing a tocsin, for behind them the service door banged open, and the night footman charged through it at a run, shielding the flame of his candle with one hand to prevent it flickering out.
“Fire!” Darcy roared. “Rouse the grooms and get buckets. Miss Elizabeth—”
“I will warn everyone upstairs.”
“Get them all outside if you can. Send the menservants to join the grooms.”
“They know what to do.” She nodded at him. “They practise.”
He rubbed at his chest to ease the burning in his lungs, turned to the footman who had enough presence of mind not to gape for more than a second before springing away. Miss Elizabeth was already running towards the Great Hall.
Darcy eyed the study door, giving himself time to catch his breath.
The smoke around it was thickening, but it still held.
Shouts came from behind the servants’ door, from the quarters Mr Reynolds and his wife shared at the back of the house: the footman must have woken them.
Reynolds appeared, pulling an worn banyan over his nightshirt with one hand, a horn lanthorn in the other. He was at Darcy’s side in an instant.
“In my study, Reynolds. Wake the house.”
Reynolds hitched up his banyan and ran all the way the Great Hall, Darcy following. Dashing to a door in the wall at one side, Reynolds jerked it open, diving into the closet behind. He reappeared dragging a great metal gong hanging from a frame on wheels.
“Let me.” Darcy took the mallet from his hand. “Be ready to organise the men.”
“Fitzwilliam! What on earth?” George Wickham bounded down the stairs towards him, in his shirt sleeves, with no cravat, trying to pull on his coat as he ran.
“Fire!” Darcy called back.
He swung the mallet with all his might. The gong let loose with an echoing clang-clang-a-clang boom of tortured metal clamouring through the silent house, the voice of a giant roaring its alarm.
Darcy shook his head against the quivering the gong’s metal jangling had set up in bones and muscles, lifted up the mallet, and slammed it against the gong again. Another great metal roar crashed its way throughout the house.
George came to a halt beside him. “Fire?”
“In my study.” Darcy could hear more people now, the rapid pattering of footsteps, and voices harsh with alarm. “We must rouse the house.”
He lifted up the mallet. Swung it against the gong again.
And again.
And again.
Like all large houses, Pemberley was vulnerable to fire, and like most sensible masters, the Darcys guarded against it.
The staff were trained to respond swiftly, from housemaids dousing chimney fires with buckets of water and sand, to the grooms and gardeners trundling a fire pump up from the stables.
A long line of men with fire buckets heaved water from the lake to keep the pump’s reservoir full, or to toss through the window onto the conflagration within.
A second group relayed water from the kitchen pump to soak the study door to prevent it from catching alight.
They were lucky. Caught early, the fire was fully quenched within the hour and did not spread beyond his study.
The room was a shell of scorched stone. The windows had been broken to allow water to be thrown on the flames, the panelling and bookcases were ash, his desk a few charred spars that crumbled at a touch, the brandy bottle a pile of overheated glass shards.
At least the stout oak door, blackened and weakened as it was, had held and stopped the fire’s spread.
Darcy surveyed the damage from the doorway, Reid at his shoulder. Inside the smoky room, George oversaw the last dampening down of the embers.
“Damnation.” Darcy rubbed at his eyes, feeling the stinging. “I fell asleep, I think, and the fire… I do not know. The fire was low, and the coals should not have fallen far enough forward that they ended up on the hearthrug.”
“You are lucky not to be hurt. Or worse.” Reid’s mouth was so tight, it was a wonder he got the words out at all. He closed his hand over Darcy’s shoulder in a brief, fierce grip.
“It was Miss Elizabeth. She woke me. Though what she was doing wandering the house at that hour, I cannot tell.”
Reynolds appeared at his side before Reid respond. “The family is in the yellow parlour, sir, awaiting you. Orders for the men?”
Darcy glanced through the broken windows to the men—gardeners, grooms, footmen—milling about on the lawn, stacking the empty firebuckets into piles or hanging them on the old firepump ready to stow it all away, laughing and chatting now the danger was past. They must be feeling the chill now their wild activity had stopped.
Most only had trousers and coats pulled hastily over thin nightshirts.
“I will come and speak to them in a moment, to thank them. No one is hurt?” Darcy sighed at Reynolds’ assurance that all were uninjured. “Thank God. Ensure they have meat and drink before they find their beds again. Is the cook up?”
“Yes, sir. Victuals are set out in the servants’ hall, ready.”
Of course. This house was very well run.
“Excellent. They are all to rest tomorrow, too, as much as we can spare them, and, Reid, please ensure everyone is given an extra week’s wages. They did sterling work this night.”
And so he told the menservants, going out onto the lawns and overcoming his natural reticence to shout his thanks and gratitude. He sent them off to the promised food and ale before collecting Reid and George, and walking to the yellow parlour. If only he were not so tired and filthy.
He coughed as he walked, as he had done on exertion for the last hour.
It would be a few days, perhaps, before he cleared all the smoke from his lungs.
Which reminded him: he was hale and would recover swiftly, but Miss Elizabeth’s health was more precarious following her illness. He stopped and called Reynolds to him.
“Mr Reynolds, send a groom at dawn tomorrow to Buxton, and ask Dr Barrow to attend Miss Elizabeth as soon as may be. She, too, was in that foul smoke. I hope and pray she will not relapse as a result, but we had better seek the doctor’s advice to prevent it.”
“Lizzy?” Dismay clouded George’s smoke-dirty face. “What on earth was she doing there?”
“She woke me. I might be dead, but for her.”
George gaped at him, muttered something Darcy did not quite catch, and increased his pace, Darcy and Reid at his heels.
Miss Elizabeth, his stepmother, and Georgiana were in the yellow parlour, along with the older woman who was Georgiana’s governess. Georgiana was huddled into her mother’s side, eyes heavy. Mrs Darcy sat erect, as usual. Miss Elizabeth, seated on her other side, looked as weary as Darcy felt.
“All is well,” Darcy announced, as he entered. “The fire was confined to the study and has been extinguished.”
To a chorus of relieved sighs and thanksgiving, George went at once to Miss Elizabeth, and took her hands in his. “My dear girl, I had no notion you were anywhere near the fire!”
“I could not sleep… on my way to the library when… smelled the smoke.” Miss Elizabeth’s voice had lost its usual musical tone and she spoke in short, breathy bursts.
“You are not hurt?”
“Not in the least…. Only tired.” She smiled up at him, and George bent to kiss her hand. Her pale face flushed a rosy pink, but those fine eyes of hers were dull with weariness and discomfort.
“Thank God,” George said, so fervent his tone was a true prayer. “Thank God. We could not have borne it, Lizzy.”
“No, indeed. We must give thanks no one has been hurt this night.” Darcy turned to his little sister, and said, gentling his tone, “You look tired, Georgiana. Go back to bed. All is safe.”
Georgiana nodded and yawned. The governess came to her side at once.
Darcy’s stepmother approached. “You are truly unhurt, Fitzwilliam?”
“Yes. Quite unhurt.”
She held his gaze, then nodded and the smile she gave him surprised him. She might smile so on Hugh or Georgiana. “Thank heaven.” The hand she had put on his arm pressed down briefly before she turned to her daughter. “Come, Georgiana, we are better out of the way. Lizzy?”
“Of course, Aunt.” Miss Elizabeth visibly fought back a cough as she rose.
“Miss Elizabeth.” Darcy stepped forward. “Let me thank you, before you go. If you had not woken me, it would have gone ill for me, I fear.”
She smiled then, something of her usual brightness back. “Then we should be… thankful I was wakeful… The fire was but newly…. begun, I think.” The smile grew a little arch. “You were deeply asleep…. hard to awaken…I am glad to be of service.”
He bowed. He could think of nothing to say or do to show his gratitude. She could not be offered a monetary reward, the way he rewarded the men. He should do something, but he was at a loss as to what.
She paused beside him, a frown creasing her brow, and said, so quietly the other ladies would not hear, “I thought I heard someone… go out of the library hall… through the servant’s door …at the other end.”
“The night footman? Although he should have been in the servants’ hall, not wandering about, otherwise he would never hear a bell if he was called.”
Her frown deepened. “Oh, it is likely nothing… and it was the footman... I am sorry…. I am refining… too much upon it.” She coughed again, putting a hand on her breast for a moment as if it would ease whatever discomfort she felt. “I shall go up…. Good night, gentlemen.”
George caught her hand for a moment, and pressed it. “Keep one of the maids with you, Lizzy, and send her to me if that cough grows worse. I will ride to Buxton for the doctor tonight if need be.”
She smiled. “I am well, George… I assure you. Do not…. be anxious. Good night.”
Both of them watched her go. Darcy squeezed his eyes together for a moment as if to squeeze the weariness out.
“What do you think she heard?” George asked.
“Probably, as she says, the night footman. In truth, I do not know. Nor can I tell how I slept so deep, or why she had so much trouble waking me. Two glasses of brandy would not usually sink me.”
Reid gave him a sharp look. “I slept hard myself. It took a footman to get me up and out.” He turned and glanced at the door, left open to allow fresher air to waft through the house from the Great Hall and the main door beyond. “The air outside revived me…” His voice trailed off, and he frowned.
Then George said, in a tone of surprise and consternation, “Where the devil is Hugh?”