Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
James felt a tug on his feet, and he was pulled out of the hallway, all the way into the drawing room. He was turned over, and a body, a little one, covered him and beat on him with small hands.
“Your hair, your hair,” the little body said, slapping at his head.
It was Catherine. He put his arms up to hold her to him. “Upsidaisy,” he murmured.
“Let go of me. I put out the fire on you, but you have to let go of me.”
He still held her fast.
“Be not afraid of greatness, Jamie.”
That seemed reasonable to him. He allowed his arms to fall to his sides, and she was gone.
When he let her go, she was off him in a flash and feeling around on the floor for the foil she had dropped when she heard the shot and saw James fall into the flames.
She found it, got to her feet, and walked towards the passage between the drawing room and the bedchamber. A few flames still licked on the floor, but the oil from the lamp had mostly burnt away. It was a stone floor. The fire would not spread.
She could see Roger Siddons beyond the hallway, in the bedchamber, kneeling on the floor, the painting in front of him. She couldn’t tell if the painting had been damaged. She couldn’t see the pistol.
But then he saw her, and she saw the pistol because he raised and leveled it at her.
“Roger,” she said and walked towards him, holding the foil behind her back.
“Cath,” he said and stood up and backed away.
She walked through the passage and into the bedchamber.
“You always were very daring, Cath,” he said and smiled. “Very much of a risk taker.”
“Not really.”
“And you’ve grown out of your fear of me, I see.”
“I was never afraid of you, Roger.”
“Really? This painting you hate so much says otherwise.”
“You’re holding a single-shot dueling pistol. I don’t think you’ve had time to reload.” She whipped the foil out from behind her back and lunged and a flick of her wrist knocked the pistol out of his hand. “Surrender to me, and I won’t kill you.”
“Um, Cath,” he said. He was looking at her feet. “You’re on fire.”
It was true she felt some warmth around her ankles.
She looked down for a moment. The hem of her dress was burning.
She had caught fire from the few remaining flames in the passage.
Stupid. She should not have confronted Roger.
She should have dragged James out of the rooms .
. . and then what? Would she have been able to get them both to safety?
Some movement. She looked up. Siddons had grabbed a long object from the floor. It looked like a poker. He swung it at her, and she ducked.
“You better get those clothes off, Cath, or you’ll go up like a torch.”
She lunged forwards with the foil, but he parried with the poker.
“Know this, Roger. I was never—”
A series of blows, she tore his trousers, she saw blood.
“—afraid of you—”
He was so much taller than she, so much stronger.
“—I was afraid of—”
She lunged and pointed the foil upward towards his neck, as high as she could.
“—myself.”
She pulled the foil back.
A startled look on Siddons’ face. He put a hand to his neck. The hand disappeared in a fountain of bright blood, and he fell to the floor.
She dropped her sword and fell to the floor herself and rolled, beating at her dress and her petticoat.
The flames had destroyed the cloth up to her knees, but she finally put them out.
She grabbed the candle from the mantel and ran through the small passageway.
There were no flames now. The lamp oil had been consumed, and, as she had expected, the fire had burnt itself out on the stone floor.
“Jamie. Jamie!”
He was sitting up on the carpet of the drawing room, holding his head, but when she rushed to him, he stood and said, “Where’s Siddons?”
“He’s dead. Where were you shot?”
She saw blood on his legs, his abdomen, his chest, his shoulders, his face.
She wanted to examine him, to run her hands over his body to check him for wounds, but he clutched at her and lifted her up and said “Kate, oh, Kate, are you all right?” and covered her mouth with his so she could not answer.
He kissed her. She kissed him back. He kissed her more. She put her hand in protest over his mouth.
“Jamie, put me down and let me look at you.”
He complied, and she ran her hands quickly over his abdomen and back, his buttocks, his legs.
He stifled a laugh when she touched his knees.
Catherine felt a measure of relief. A man who could stand, who could kiss, who could be ticklish was a man unlikely to have a serious injury.
“Kneel down.” He obediently knelt and rested his hands on her waist as she checked his chest and upper back and shoulders.
Finally, she found the wound in the burnt hair on his head. A four-inch-long graze that was bleeding copiously.
“Help me take my dress off.”
He obligingly lifted what remained of her dress and helped her pull it off, and she balled it up and held it to his scalp.
“It looks like a graze. Do you hurt anywhere else?” She saw some areas of redness on his chest and on his thighs. His leg hair was singed.
He was feeling her legs. “Your petticoat is incinerated.”
“Yes, but I didn’t get burnt. But you did. Oh, Jamie, your beautiful hair.”
“It will grow back. How . . . how is Siddons dead?”
She closed her eyes. “I killed him.”
Roger was gone. Forever. It didn’t make it easier that it had always seemed inevitable it would end this way.
That she would be driven to this. She had never once pictured it the other way round, that she would die at the end of Roger’s sword or pistol or chokehold.
It had always been her killing him. Her exacting the price of her torture.
Her rebelling against the hold he’d had on her.
Yes, of course, she would have done the same to anyone who tried to hurt the beautiful man who was on his knees in front of her, holding her and bringing her head down to cover her face in kisses.
But it had been Roger. She had been an understudy, rehearsing in her head for so long, and she had finally stepped into the role.
That of a murderer.
The painting was blackened, but James pointed out the face and upper body were still visible and identifiable.
They burnt the rest of the painting in the fireplace in the drawing room.
First, Catherine used James’ razor to slice the canvas to ribbons, and James used the poker to bash the frame to bits.
Catherine made a dressing for James’ head out of the remains of her petticoat.
James dressed and gave Catherine a pair of his breeches and a shirt, and she put them on and was so dwarfed by them that they laughed together.
Their laughter was tinged with hysteria.
They both tried not to look at the body lying on the floor of the bedchamber when they went to get clothes from the dressing room.
The long case clock in the drawing room chimed. Once. They waited. That was all. It was only one in the morning. No one had come in response to the pistol shot.
They left the rooms and walked to Catherine’s house. They encountered no one. He held her hand as they walked, something he had never done before. How small her hand was. How good it felt to be linked to her, even in the midst of this horror.
“You won’t have been there,” he said. “I killed Siddons with my foil when he trespassed to steal the painting, which I had already destroyed. It’s all very close to the truth.”
“Yes.”
“And we will need to stay apart for a while. I want no association between you and Siddons’ death. I don’t want it to come out that you might have been involved in any way.”
She hitched up the breeches she was wearing with her free hand and said nothing.
“What was that you said to me when I was dazed and holding you and you wanted me to let go?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why I said it.”
“But what was it that you said? I can’t remember.”
“It’s from Twelfth Night. The line is Be not afraid of greatness. And you know how it goes on. Some are born great—”
“—some achieve greatness—”
They finished together, “And some have greatness thrust upon them.”
He looked at her. She smiled at him. His Viola in oversized breeches and her little, scorched boots.
A carriage rolled by, one street over. Someone leaving a ball early or going to one late. It might even be Lady Huxley’s ball tonight. One year since they had met.
“Thank you for saving me, Kate.”
“You and I both know you would have been in no danger if it weren’t for me and my stupid wish to be rid of that painting.”
He squeezed her hand. “I hope you know I would do anything for you.”
She nodded and kept walking and did not drop his hand.
“But why haven’t you answered my letters?” he asked.
They had arrived at her house, and she mounted the steps and knocked on the door. She looked down at him standing on the pavement.
“I’ve answered all your letters.”
Chelsom opened the door. “Mrs. Lovelock, I’m glad you’re back, I got halfway to Tothill Fields, but I forgot to bring money for the bond and I could not find any ready cash—”
He broke off when he saw James standing behind her.
“No need, Chelsom,” Catherine said. “And His Grace was not here tonight, and I never left the house.”
“Yes, Mrs. Lovelock.”
She turned to James. “After the magistrate, you’ll get your head seen to.”
“Enfield will make sure of it. Don’t worry.”
She laid her hand along his cheek, and he clasped it there, reluctant to let her go, wanting to remain close. After long seconds, she took her hand away and went into the house.