Chapter 18 #2
Again and again, he called for them, parting the crowd, searching soot-streaked faces as panic welled up within him.
“Has anyone seen the Duchess of Riverdale or Lady Verity Saunders?” he asked. “Please! Have you seen them?”
A child spoke up at last. “Last I saw them, they were upstairs with us, ’elping us out of the classroom.”
Bloody hell.
Everett ran. Ran through the milling crowd, through smoke pouring from broken windows, debris falling from overhead.
If they were in the building, then there was only one way to save them.
He had to go inside. He had to try. The flames were licking higher and higher, the sound of breaking glass rising above the shouts and hollers and screams.
He shook off the hands of those who tried to stop him and raced into the burning building, determined to find them and to save anyone left within.
Or die trying.
The smoke filling the girls’ schoolroom was growing thicker and more acrid by the second.
Screams and shouts mingled with the crackling of burning wood and splintering rafters.
Sybil coughed, struggling to see through eyes that had gone watery and blurred.
It had all happened so swiftly, the fire tearing through the old structure in what had to be mere minutes.
She held her arm over her face, doing her best to breathe into her sleeve.
She had three girls with her now, and with the way the fire was raging, she knew that if they didn’t soon get the children out of the doomed orphanage and into the fresh air on the streets, they would all become trapped within.
But she couldn’t leave until she was sure she wasn’t leaving anyone behind.
“Children!” she cried out, for some of the youngest she and Verity had discovered were hiding, terrified of the cacophony. Thinking that they would be safe if they just stayed where they were and shut their eyes tightly. The very thought was horrifying.
“Children, if you are hiding, you must come out!” she called again, punctuating her cry with another cough.
“I found two more,” Verity announced, herding a pair of young lads toward her, their faces coated in tears and soot.
“The fire is spreading,” called Mr. Gritton, who had been teaching the boys when the flames had begun in the kitchen, rapidly expanding throughout the building, licking up rafters and along floorboards, burning up curtains and rugs and everything in its path.
“We can’t afford to wait any longer. We have to get out of the building before the roof collapses on us or the fire takes us. ”
Mr. Gritton had been aiding Sybil and Verity in directing the children downstairs to the door where Mrs. Stevens waited, guiding them all outdoors. She knew he was right. Sybil wrapped her arms around the girls and began guiding them toward Mr. Gritton at the head of the stairs.
“Come, girls,” she told them, coughing every few words, her voice hoarse. “We must get out of here as quickly as possible, but we mustn’t rush. Don’t trip on your hems or fall.”
Sweat dripped down her face into her eyes, making them sting even more than the smoke already had. But she managed to get all three girls to Mr. Gritton. She turned to find Verity joining them, the two lads at her skirts.
Verity was wild-eyed, her expression fraught with worry. “I haven’t found Emma.”
Worry seized Sybil. Little Emma was a sweet child, and she was Verity’s favorite. Emma was often found not far from Verity, always at her elbow when she played piano for the children.
“Perhaps she has already gone out,” Sybil suggested, mind whirling with possibilities as the smoke poured up the staircase around them.
Verity shook her head. “One of the girls told me that Emma ran to their sleeping quarters on the next floor. She was fetching a necklace that belonged to her mother, which she’d sewn into a coverlet on her bed. I have to go to her.”
Her heart dropped. “Verity, you can’t. It’s far too dangerous. We need to get everyone out of here now.”
“We haven’t time,” Mr. Gritton urged. “We need to go at once.”
A loud groaning and crash sounded below.
“You see?”
The children began crying anew.
“Go with Mr. Gritton and the children,” Verity told her. “I’ll go alone to find Emma.”
“You cannot do that, Verity.” She reached for her sister-in-law’s arm, but Verity pulled away. “Verity, the flames are worse on that side of the building. You’ll die if you go up there.”
But Verity wouldn’t be dissuaded. “I need to at least try to find her. I can’t leave her there.”
“My lady,” Mr. Gritton began, but Verity had already whirled away and was racing back into the thicker smoke.
She was heading for the staircase leading to the upper floor where the children slept.
“Verity!” Sybil cried out again.
But her sister-in-law had disappeared into the smoke.
“There’s no help for her,” Mr. Gritton said, coughing. “We’ve done everything we could. We have to go before it’s too late.”
The children cried harder.
Another loud creak sounded, followed by a series of bangs. Sybil didn’t know if it was her imagination, but the very building itself seemed to shift and sway around them. Fear laced through her.
Mr. Gritton was right.
They had scarcely any time left before the whole Children’s Foundling Hospital collapsed, taking everyone inside with it.
“You lead the way,” she told him before turning to the children. “Stay close and hold on to my skirts. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
With that, they began a grim procession down the staircase, deeper into the smoke.
They all began coughing harder, smoke filling their lungs and making it nearly impossible to breathe.
Shouts and cries blended with the haunting creaks of the house as fire ate away at its foundation and walls.
The heat was sweltering. Sybil grew light-headed, fearing she would swoon.
A huge crack sounded, and suddenly one of the rafter beams fell from the ceiling, striking Mr. Gritton in the head. He fell, crushed beneath its weight, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. The children screamed.
“Mr. Gritton,” she cried out.
But he didn’t answer, remaining eerily still beneath the burning rafter, blood trickling from his mouth.
It occurred to her, with a stunning, sickening sense of shock, that perhaps Mr. Gritton was dead. The children had begun to wail louder.
“Now, now,” she murmured, trying to soothe them despite her difficulty breathing and the horror they had just witnessed.
She gathered them to her as best she could, knowing she needed to put them before Mr. Gritton and herself. Slowly, they worked toward the doors.
Almost there. Almost. Keep going, Sybil. You can do this. You must do this.
And then, suddenly, there were arms around her, guiding her toward the door.
They were arms she recognized. A voice, too.
“Sybil, my love.”
Everett?
It seemed impossible, but through the dense smoke, she saw her husband’s face.
Everett. He was here. He had come. He was going to save her.
She tried to say his name, but it emerged as a croak.
“Come with me,” he said. “I’ve got you now. Make haste, all of you. This way.”
He guided them around floorboards that were covered in debris, toward the light of the day beyond. She coughed, her lungs burning, as they spilled out of the doorway, the children fleeing the moment they were free of the Children’s Foundling Hospital.
Suddenly, impossibly, they were on the pavements, rushing away from the burning orphanage. They didn’t stop until they were well clear of falling debris, Sybil struggling for breath.
She had to warn him about his sister.
“Everett,” she managed to wheeze. “It’s Verity. She went to the…third floor to find…one of the children.”
The horror on his face cut into her heart.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go back in and find her.”
“But…how? It’s too dangerous…the floor is…burning up. The rafters… One fell on Mr. Gritton, and it…killed him.”
“Promise me you’ll stay here and wait for me,” he said, cupping her face in his hands.
“I p-promise.”
“I need you to know something should I fail to reemerge,” he said solemnly. “I love you.”
With that shocking pronouncement, he turned away from her and ran back toward the flames and his sister, leaving Sybil struggling for breath and staring after him.
Surely he hadn’t said…
Had he?
Was she hallucinating?
Perhaps the smoke had addled her mind. She doubled over at the waist, coughing until she saw stars.
Everett had just told her he loved her, and then he had rushed back into the burning orphanage to almost certain death.