CHAPTER NINETEEN #3
The memorial to the fallen warrior Sir Bevil Grenville proved to be unremarkable in height or form, though the views from the top of Lansdown were good.
After a stop of some ten minutes, the ladies were assisted to remount and they backtracked as far as the signpost to Langridge, at which point they turned down the leafy lane to the little village.
The cool of the church was very welcome to Miss Brailes and Miss Newent, both of whom were feeling the heat somewhat in their habits.
Miss Brailes, her hand upon the arm of Mr Gilmorton, was perfectly happy to discourse 326upon the features she discerned, without fear of him thinking her a bluestocking.
For his part, he was simply delighted to have her at his side, and as close in spirit.
The others were less inclined to linger, and so they moved on to Charlcombe, which proved as small a community, with a few cottages of the local stone in a linear arrangement upon the side of the valley, which was very pretty.
They never reached the church, however, because as they approached they saw smoke billowing from the small windows of one of the dwellings, and a hysterical girl of perhaps eleven or twelve stood in the lane with two smaller children clinging to her skirts.
‘Ma’s gone back for the babby,’ she screamed.
The horses, already uneasy from the smell and the screaming, jibbed the more.
‘Into that?’ Mr Gilmorton vaulted from his saddle, handed his reins to Miss Brailes, and ran forward. ‘Where would she be?’ he asked commandingly.
‘Upstairs, by front window.’
He looked at the house. From his guess the fire was not yet in the upper chambers, but the smoke was starting to creep out in tendrils about the ill-fitting window frame of the single upper window.
He dragged his handkerchief from his coat, tied it somewhat ineffectually about his nose and mouth, and ran in through the open, smoke-filled doorway.
Miss Brailes let out a cry, dropped his horse’s reins and dismounted as best she could in a flurry of skirts.
‘Do not just sit there staring,’ she cried. ‘Let us be prepared to help him.’
327Mr Heanor dismounted and warned the ladies to keep back, though in Miss Brailes’ case this was pointless.
She was already approaching the front of the cottage, coughing a little as the smoke caught in her throat.
There came a cracking of glass and scarlet and orange flame spat from the broken lower window.
Her heart pounded, and her eyes watered, from both the smoke and from emotion.
She heard a crash from within, and a scream from one of the other ladies. Mr Heanor, now at her side, pointed.
‘Look!’ he cried.
Something smashed the panes of the upper window, and Mr Gilmorton, his face black-smudged, coughing and gasping, held out a bundle in his arms. His makeshift mask had slipped, though the lower part of his face was thus pale rather than blackened.
‘For God’s sake, catch,’ he gasped.
Mr Heanor ran forward, and the bundle was dropped. Perhaps Mr Heanor’s youth had not been as misspent as his adult years and he had been a good cricketer, for his catch was secure. He came back to Miss Brailes with the baby in his arms.
‘Is it breathing?’ she asked.
‘I do not know.’
‘Heanor!’ Mr Gilmorton, choking more now, yelled his name.
Mr Heanor looked round to see that this time Mr Gilmorton had a woman, limp as a rag doll, within his encircling arm.
‘Drop her feet first, Gilmorton.’
The window was not large, and manhandling an inert 328female through it was not easy.
The smoke was now eddying out from around Mr Gilmorton.
Miss Brailes, rubbing the baby’s cheek, and not knowing quite what to do to revive it, glanced up at him.
He had got the woman dangling, and Mr Heanor half caught her, half grappled her as she came down, and ended upon the dusty ground in a tangle with her skirts.
Mr Gilmorton’s face disappeared from the window and Miss Brailes screamed his name.
The smoke was choking him, and his face and hand hurt from where the flames had extended cruel fingers of heat at him as he had climbed the stairs a little before it consumed them.
It was suddenly difficult to think or move.
Caroline Brailes’ voice pierced his smoke-confused mind.
He made a great effort to rise, and half clambered from the window, but he had not enough strength to cling to the windowsill and drop slowly, and simply fell from the window, though at least not head first. It was, thankfully, not more than about ten feet, and he was too overcome to brace himself.
He landed like a sack of potatoes, and rolled over, coughing.
Mr Heanor was calling for assistance with the woman, whose clothes were blackened in places, like her face.
The daughter of the house had now appeared, crying instead of screaming, and, as the baby made a small gurgling noise, Miss Brailes thrust it at her.
She took the baby automatically, and Miss Brailes nearly tripped over her riding skirt as she ran to Mr Gilmorton’s side.
He was struggling to push himself up onto all fours, retching and coughing, but even as he gained some control over 329his limbs he became aware of the faint smell, the smell of burnt flesh.
Miss Brailes’ arms went about him as he groaned.
‘Not that, cannot bear that.’ He passed out.
Not for one moment did Miss Brailes think he referred to herself. Half sobbing, she cried out. ‘Is there a well? Water. I must have water.’
She was aware of other people now, local people from their homespuns, who had come from the fields when they saw the plume of smoke.
She turned Mr Gilmorton over and rested his head and shoulders in her lap.
A man was coming, bearing two buckets and intending them for the blaze, but he brought one to her instead.
She undid the handkerchief that hung about Mr Gilmorton’s neck, for it was larger than her own, and dipped it in the water and then bathed his face, speaking his name.
She told herself it was but a swoon, and he was breathing, but that breathing was laboured.
The water left grey streaks upon his face, but revealed one cheekbone reddened and some hair and an eyebrow singed.
The sleeve of his coat was smouldering, and his right hand was both black and blood-raw upon two of the larger knuckles.
She blinked away tears. She was vaguely aware of Lord Orlando’s voice raised in command to the persons gathered about to form a chain for the water, though in truth they needed no man to tell them this, let alone some supercilious fellow on a horse.
Mr Heanor was bellowing for anyone who might know the location of the nearest doctor.
Mr Gilmorton coughed, and his eyelids flickered.
330‘Mr Gilmorton, oh Mr Gilmorton,’ she murmured, with huge relief.
He looked up at her. His eyes were red from the smoke. For a moment or so he seemed confused, and then he realised where he was and what had happened.
‘What must you think of me?’ he whispered, and coughed again. He was having trouble thinking, but the one thought that was clear was that he did not wish Miss Brailes to think badly of him. As he saw it, he had fainted for no good reason.
‘I think you are the bravest man I ever met, Mr Gilmorton,’ she said, very softly, ‘and I am inexpressibly honoured … to … love you.’ Her violet-blue eyes were full of what she had dared express in the word.
He had never seen that look in a woman’s eyes before, and it seemed to take away what little breath he had in his lungs and make his chest tighten even more.
He stared at her. Had he heard her aright, or had the smoke addled his hearing as it blurred his vision?
He said nothing, and kept staring, as two large tears coursed down her cheeks, which were themselves a little grubby where she had wiped soot-stained fingers.
He swallowed hard, and tried to take a deep breath.
‘You are beautiful,’ he sighed.
‘Caroline, what are you thinking?’
There had seemed but the two of them in the world for a minute or so, but Frederick’s voice interrupted them.
‘Caroline. You cannot stay there … His head … Most indelicate.’ He sounded peeved.
She emerged from the private world of just two, and 331glared at him. ‘Mr Gilmorton is injured. He cannot ride back to Bath.’
‘Can. Give me a little time.’ Mr Gilmorton refuted her statement.
‘Well, you ought not,’ she amended. ‘If you are so determined, you can ride as far as the first place where a vehicle may be hired, and you will at least complete the journey being driven. You cannot go through the streets in this condition, sir.’
‘Disreputable?’ He coughed once more, but managed a very small smile.
‘Highly, and liable to make ladies of a delicate nature resort to their vinaigrettes. This,’ she added,’ is the very first time I have ever regretted that I do not carry one.’
He closed his eyes, and the smile widened.
‘Has he swooned again?’ asked Frederick Brailes.
‘No. If he is to ride, you must assist me to get him up.’
‘But I will get smuts upon my coat.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Frederick, be a man.
’ She lost her temper with her brother, who looked very affronted, but obeyed, and reached down as she propped Mr Gilmorton into a fully sitting position, where he remained, gasping, for a minute or so.
Then, with groans and coughing, he was helped to stand and led by Miss Brailes to his horse.
How he mounted unassisted she did not know, but assumed it was such a habit from years on campaign that it was almost an involuntary action.
She noticed Miss Newent was absent, and remarked upon it.
‘Oh, she has gone off to the rectory, or vicarage, whatever it is, to see if the incumbent possesses a gig or 332other horse-drawn vehicle.’ Lord Orlando sounded bored. ‘Heanor says the woman ought to be taken to the hospital in Bath, and the infant also.’
If she wondered why Lord Orlando had not himself gone upon this errand, she did not ask, and when Miss Newent returned, with the clergyman and his gig, her reproachful look at his lordship said a lot.
Frederick Brailes hailed her as some sort of heroine, which his sister thought silly, since she had ridden but a couple of hundred yards unaccompanied, but Miss Newent blushed, and demurred softly.
Mrs Chasewater applied herself to soothing Lord Orlando’s irritated nerves all the way back to Bath, and Miss Brailes was distressed to find that no form of vehicle could be hired until they were so far into Bath that it was, as Mr Gilmorton said, quite pointless to do so.
She did, however, maintain that they must go first to The Circus, and deliver him to his door, and take the horse back to the livery stable on his behalf.
Her brother grumpily called her ‘a managing female’, but Mr Gilmorton, recovering a little, murmured something about ‘a guardian angel, with a touch of “avenging” thrown in’.