Chapter Fourteen #2
“Don’t get near!” Felix barked, holding her tightly.
“Felix!” She threw herself at him, hugging him tight, letting her tears flow. “You came back. You came back!”
A grunt, a growl, breaking glass.
Felix kissed her. “Stay here.”
Every muscle in her body screamed to keep him tethered to her side, but she released him. Then followed him. Flames licked at the conservatory windows. If smoke were a harbinger, flame was the tragedy it announced.
Two men grappled on the ground some ways away from the house. Freddy and…
“Mr. Smith,” Caroline hissed. Had he done this?
“I said stay back,” Felix yelled, throwing his arm out toward her. He inched toward the fight, and when Mr. Smith had Freddy pinned, Felix leapt, tackling Mr. Smith and pinning him to the ground with a solid bone-crunching punch. And another. And another.
Hair wild and fist flying, Felix did not seem likely to let up. Until Freddy, surging to his feet, pulled him off.
“We need ’im able to talk, my lord.” Freddy dragged Mr. Smith toward the gardens, and Felix stood, turning at the same time to face the house, flames reflected in his eyes.
Without warning, he ran for those licking at the conservatory windows.
“Felix, no!”
If he heard her, he didn’t show it. He threw open the door and dove in. Tried to, his arm raised to his face, the heat drenching him in orange.
She tried to pull him back. “No, Felix. Don’t!”
“That’s your dream!” He smelled like smoke and his gaze was glued to the fire, his blue eyes leaping with the conflagration. “I won’t let it burn.” He shook her off and disappeared into the smoke.
The last thing Felix heard other than the creak of burning wood was his wife’s voice wailing for him not to be a nodcock.
He grinned, the excitement of danger pumping his blood. God, he loved her. And he wasn’t about to let some damn fire set by a fool with a fist where his heart should be ruin her dream.
His first thought on seeing smoke rising from Hawthorne?
Good. Let it burn.
His second thought?
Caro. His heart had almost stopped. But then he’d seen her on the drive, pacing.
She’d tried to run, but Freddy and Miss Polly had caught her, tried to hold her back before she’d slipped from their grasp.
He’d watched her dart around the side of the house, too, toward the flames. Brave, bold Caroline.
He coughed, the smoke burning his eyes. How had the man started the fire? This room had been cleaned out over a week ago, debris and tangled, dead plants tossed—
Oh hell. He saw it through the haze. A pile of old roots and dry limbs, burning with glee. Smith had set that aflame easily. And it had burned bright and hot. Quickly. Already dwindling, but its arms reaching up the walls.
He cast about for something to do, something to fight with.
Buckets! Christ. Not entirely full. But he didn’t hesitate to fling their contents at the walls first, to dwindle the flames licking there. Progress. But the pile of discarded, ancient shrubbery still blazed. What else could he use?
He couldn’t stay much longer. Coughing now, eyes watering, throat on fire.
There! A bloody broom. From the cleaning. He snatched it up. Not the best implement, it would burn, too. But what could he do before that?
On one side of the conservatory, glass windows ran from floor to ceiling.
He tossed the buckets at the windowpanes closest to the flames.
Heard his name in his wife’s voice when the bucket punched a hole in one.
Damn, this had better work. The flames were too hot to get as close as he was.
Much too hot. He did it anyway, reaching out with the broom, sweeping molten death toward the glass, sweeping it outside.
Again. Again. Again.
Hell.
The broom on fire now, flames licking up the handle.
Again, again.
He yelped in pain and threw the broom down and ran for it.
When he hit the cooler air outside the conservatory he hit his knees, and hands wrapped around his arms. So many hands, dragging him away from the house as he squeezed his eyes tightly against the pain and coughed up every organ in his body.
Air cooler now, grass beneath him a heaven, the lap beneath his head even better. Was there anything better than heaven?
He opened his eyes.
Ah, yes, there was. Caroline.
“Horrible man,” she sobbed, pushing hair away from his forehead. “Terrible man. I hate you. How could you do that?”
“Because I love you.” His voice more of a croak than anything else.
She cried harder, leaning over him, her tears washing his face.
He’d known even as a lad that kissing could change a life. So he’d rejected her request to keep himself safe. Couldn’t run from your heart, though, and what he’d known instinctively as a young man was slamming back into him—Caro was in his heart, was the whole damn organ.
“I am yours,” he said around coughs. “Mind, slightly charred body, and what’s left of my gutted soul— yours . I-I knew it as soon as I knew you. At the Lyon’s D-den. Not a man. Not a stranger. Not just a friend.”
“ Shh .” She wiped soot off his face. “ Shh . Do you hear the horses? It’s the bucket brigade. They’ll have the water engine. Shh. Thank goodness I paid for the insurance. Part of my plan. Shh, Felix.”
“You’re the keeper of my goddamn heart, Caroline.” Difficult to speak, but words worth the pain. “I love you.”
He did hear the horses now, and Caroline’s attention jerked away from him. “He’s swept out a mass of something that was burning like a sinner in hell!” someone called out.
Felix coughed, gaining her attention again. “I said I love you, Caro.”
“Of course you do. Oh.” She lowered her head, covering his face with kisses. “I love you, too, you fool. Don’t you ever, ever do that again.”
“Don’t set the house on fire again.”
She laughed through her tears, and he reached up to stroke her cheek, wipe the sorrow away. “That is the first time I’ve faced danger and wanted to live. Thank you. You gave that to me.”
“Stop, Felix.”
He closed his eyes, and her hands fluttered about his face. “Someone get a doctor!”
A small slap to his cheek shot his eyes open.
Caroline glared down at him, those thick, lovely brows demanding obedience with their downward slant. “Don’t die!”
He found the strength to reach out and smooth them. “Don’t plan on it”— cough, cough —“love.”
“That is one plan I refuse to make.” Her eyes glittered beneath a sheen of tears. “I won’t let you die, Felix.”
“I wouldn’t dream of fighting you on it. Stubborn woman.”
Her chin lifted, but her lips softened. “I am stubborn. A valuable character trait. Remember that.”
He tried to laugh, found his throat too raw for it.
He didn’t mind. Nothing could hurt him now.
Not even looking into the windows of Hawthorne.
They used to be filled with ghosts, but they were empty now, and he…
didn’t want them to burn. He wanted her to fill them up with happiness.
And hope. And with that thing Caroline did best: love .