by Ava Devlin
He watched her go, the swish of her best blue dress blinking out of sight as she went in search of better company than his own. He wasn't sure if he was angry or frustrated or just sad. So far, he was utterly failing to reunite with the most important people in his life in the way he might have imagined.
He found his way to the refreshment table to top up his glass of wine. It was true that everyone was in the same room tonight, that master and servant were not a function of the revelry, but it was also true that when Callum scanned the room again, taking in the people assembled, they had divided themselves by their stations, keeping like to like, the way things always were.
When the grandfather clock in the hallway released its melodic chime of midnight, it drew a cheer of satisfaction from the assembled merrymakers. No night was ever quite so hopeful as the dawn of a brand new year.
Lord Somers raised his glass, calling the attention of all assembled to him, and he smiled. Callum was uncertain he'd ever seen Gideon Somers smile like that. It was startling. He suddenly seemed a young man, which of course, he was. It was only that Gideon Somers had ever worn the somber mantle of a man well into his years, and as such had always seemed so much older than his true age.
"We've completed another year at Somerton," he announced, "and have another just beginning. As my wife tells me is tradition, once again we will release the air of a bygone year into the world and welcome in the chilly breath of a brand new year! If you'll all accompany me, let's move to the foyer."
There was a rumble of anticipation, bright smiles, and eager faces as everyone poured out into the hall toward the foyer.
Callum allowed them all to go before he followed. After all, he wasn't sure where in the procession a man like him ought to stand.
The whole thing was curious bordering on strange. Of course, he knew this was a long-standing tradition throughout Europe, but he had never once seen it performed, least of all at Somerton. By the time he arrived in the foyer, everyone had fallen quiet, raising their glasses to one final toast of the year as Lord Somers strode to the heavy double doors that led from the manor into the drive.
He flung them open to a great cheer and a hearty blast of frosty wind, laced with a torrent of snowflakes, that curled its way into the foyer.
Everyone was so taken with the cheer of the moment, that for several suspended seconds, only Callum seemed aware that something was very, very wrong.
Gideon's face changed first, his eyes darting over to where his family stood. When he turned on his heel to rush out onto the drive, he was followed closely by the barreling bulk of Sheldon Bywater, and then a trickle of bystanders.
Callum, for his part, felt frozen in place. The smell was as familiar to him as the sun rising. It was as though the world around him slowed down, grinding second by second in a sickening, syrupy lurch. He was already moving, he knew, already spurred into action borne of years of familiarity with the tang of tragedy that hovered on the cold night air.
He parted those standing in front of him, making his way through the crowd with the elegance of a man who was accustomed to chaos. The sound of the men shouting on the drive was the only sound. The room had gone deadly still, captured in frozen uncertainty as the flurries of snow wafted in from without. It wasn't until he'd reached the front of the room that the world appeared to resume its usual, frenetic pace.
"Fire," shouted one of the maids, dashing back indoors with her hands to her cheeks. "There's a great pillar of smoke in the sky!"
"Where?" the viscountess snapped immediately, gathering up her skirts to march toward the door. "On the grounds?"
"Oh, my lady," the girl moaned, turning to face her mistress with tears glittering in her eyes. "It's the township that's ablaze. There's a great orange shadow on the horizon and the smell is something fearsome. Surely everything is burnt to ash already!"
9
Heloise did not have time to stand by whilst the details of an emergency response were negotiated.
The longer everyone stood around talking and arguing and panicking, the more a fire would spread, licking its path of destruction through the close-cobbled homes and shoppes of their beloved township. Somewhere in that chaos was a heavily pregnant Abigail Collins, who might have already inhaled dangerous amounts of smoke or worse.
She pushed past everyone, her glass of champagne discarded on its side in a pile of snow. Boudicea would take only a moment to be saddled and she could be off, able to provide whatever aid she could to the township. Her silk slippers crunched in the snow, the hem of her gown dragging in the cold wetness. She barely felt it at all, instead focused on the task ahead of her.
Did the township have an organized fire brigade? She did not know.
The stables were low lit and eerie in the night. Several of the horses were aware of the smoke, and were snorting and crowding in their stalls as the air filled with thick tension and unease. A piebald stallion she didn't recognize was pushing against his stall door, eager to be free of this flammable enclosure, lest the fire come any closer. Two of the geldings were tossing their heads, moaning in fear as the smell grew ever stronger.
By the time she'd led Boudicea out into the open and hurled her saddle onto her back, her fingers had begun to go numb. The task of securing the buckles and harnesses was far more difficult with stiff knuckles and chattering teeth, but she was too determined to stop and consider the wisdom of pushing forward.
If her brothers hadn't come into the stables at that exact moment, she might have completed her mission and gone tearing into the night with nothing but the clothes on her back to protect her from the brutality of a Yorkshire winter.
She didn't know how many times Gideon said her name before she heard him. To her, it seemed as though she were floating in a trance of pure instinct, aware of nothing but her goal, and the next she was shot through with discomfort and pain as the cold shot through her limbs. The only warmth was her brother's hands on her cheeks, as he said again, "Hel!"
She blinked at him, licking the dryness of her lips as her senses came back to her. "Gideon, I must go," she whispered, blinking up into the intensity of his gaze.
He was startled by her behavior, she could tell. His brow was furrowed into deep rivets of concern and he still did not release her cheeks from his grasp. "Heloise," he said, the softness of his voice doing nothing to detract from the fact that his words were a command. "Go inside and put on your boots and cloak. Tell Alex what supplies to bring along and he will collect them immediately. Alex?"
"Here!" her other brother replied breathlessly. "Graham and Robbie are readying a few of the faster mounts. Dr. Garber will ride ahead with Sheldon and Laughlin. The rest will need to be managed by Rosie."
Gideon gave a curt nod, letting his hands slip from Heloise's cheeks to her shoulders. He looked hard into her face, as though he might suss out any lingering irrationality from the glint of her eyes. "Go with Alex," he said again, giving her a gentle nudge in her brother's direction. "Boudicea will be saddled when you return."
"Come on, Hel," Alex said, gesturing in the direction of the house.
Heloise followed, gritting her teeth against the pain in her feet as a thousand tiny needles of cold erupted with every step she took. Once they were inside and had sent one of the maids for Heloise's boots and cloak, Alex listened carefully to her instructions and turned on his heel to head back into the darkness with an alacrity that brought a little more alertness back into Heloise's limbs.
Later, she couldn't remember at all the process of bundling up against the cold, nor of retrieving her mount from the stables. It was as though in one moment she was looking into Alex's face and the next she was hunched forward, reins in hand, as Boudicea galloped breakneck toward the township, a single lantern swinging from the saddle hook to light their way.
The scent of burning wood reached much farther than Heloise would have imagined. She had not even covered half of the distance between Somerton and the township before her eyes and nose were sti
nging with the bitterness of it. She wondered, as she spurred Boudicea faster, how much of the flurry surrounding them was actually snow. It seemed to her just as likely that the ghostly white flecks that wove through Boudicea's mane and sprinkled along the threads of her cloak were the ashes of the things that were already beyond saving.
At some point, she had returned to that state of heightened necessity in which she could not feel the cold. She imagined that if she were still in her wet slippers, with bare hands and shoulders, alone on the path of snow and ice, that she might have felt much the same sense of disconnected calm that was grounding her just now. If Gideon hadn't come to stop her, she might have caught her death out here, driven purely by her primal impulses, without care for sensibility.
She would have been no good to anyone with frostbitten toes and an onset of hypothermia. Thank God for Gideon's utter and complete inability to be swept away on a torrent of irrational emotion.
She had expected to see a dull glow of raging red and orange as she drew nearer to town, perhaps with flames licking high into the sky as they consumed rooftops. Instead, a spray of glowing red embers seemed to mingle in with the snowfall, creating the kind of fearsome beauty that is reflected in all of the world's greatest dangers.
The shouts of panicked people and the popping of wood as it split from heat and pressure cascaded over her, at once overtaking the steady thrum of hooves on earth. A curtain of smoke hung thick in the air as Heloise rode through the gates of the township. She had intended to ride directly for the clinic, where she might save valuable medicines and materials that they would surely need amidst this disaster. However, it was immediately clear that the clinic was at the center of the devastation, unreachable amidst the chaos.
"Lady Heloise!" called a voice from below, drawing her attention down in a snap of panic. It was elderly Mrs. Collins, her charge's mother, still in her night-rail with naught but a silk cap to keep her head warm in the snow.
Heloise slid off Boudicea without a second thought, reaching for the other woman's hands. "Where is Abigail? Is she hurt?" she demanded.
"She's in the house," she replied, panic raw in her throat, her eyes large and bright. "I wasn't strong enough to move her. Please, help us, Lady Heloise."
"Are my brothers here?" she shouted, squeezing tight to the older woman's fingers. "Did they arrive ahead of me?"
She nodded, seemingly too stunned in her shock to even cough away the smoke that curled around them. "The church," she said. "I saw Lord Somers at the church. He couldn't hear me calling. My daughter! Someone must help her!"
"Take my horse to the church and send one of the men to your house." Heloise glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of the Collins house, but could make out very little through the clouds of smoke and steam. She turned back to Mrs. Collins with urgency in her voice. "I will meet them there. Go inside and be warm, or you will make yourself sick."
She handed the reins over, squeezing the other woman's hands and awaiting a sign that she had understood her instructions. As soon as she was given a hint of a curt nod, she spun on her heel and charged through the shroud of smoke, in the direction she knew the house would be. She lifted the neckline of her cloak up over her nose and mouth, ducking between masses of people who were either fleeing in terror or attempting to help others. The two were indistinguishable from one another in the thick of the panic.
She thought she heard someone call her name, though of course it was impossible to tell as she drew nearer to where the fire had burned the hottest. While there were still glowing ghosts of the fire that had raged here amidst the beams that still stood and the rubble on the ground, it appeared that the ferocity of the fire had been stamped out, either by the efforts of the townspeople or the aid of the snowfall.
Regardless of whether or not the fire was still burning, the smoke still had a choke hold on the town square, hanging in a cloud so thick that it was hard to keep one's eyes open, much less breathe the air. Hel forced herself to inhale through the cloth of her cloak, squinting through the acrid veil as she trudged onward, twice almost losing her footing to sliding steps. The cobbles were hard and smooth with ice that had formed from the snow on the ground having rapidly melted and then refrozen in a dark and deadly slick.
The Collins house appeared at last, though from this distance and in the dark, she could not tell how damaged it might be. What she did know is that smoke could be fatal to even a strong and healthy person if breathed too deeply, and Abigail at the end of her pregnancy was in a particularly precarious state.
"Alex!" she called, hoping her voice would carry through the confusion, that Mrs. Collins had stayed true in her task. She ripped down the cowl, so that her voice might project farther, and called again. "Alex! Gideon! I'm here!"
She stomped through the remainder of the terrain leading up to the little cottage, calling again and again as her voice went ragged and raw in her throat. When she reached out to turn the knob on the door, she cried out in pain, jerking her hand back as the heated metal sizzled at her hands. She bit down on her cry, looping the hand under the material of her cloak and forcing the knob to turn. She had to apply the full force of her body to get it open as the wood groaned and split in protest. When it finally gave way, she toppled forward onto her hands and knees onto the threshold of the home.
"Heloise!" the voice came again, somehow smothered beneath the ringing in her ears. "Where are you?"
"Here!" she cried, though she could not stop to find her way to that voice, not when Abigail was in here, possibly dying. She squeezed her eyes against the stinging tears streaming down the sides of her soot-stained cheeks as she crawled forward. She coughed to dislodge the heavy film of soot that coated her mouth and throat, feeling with her hands as she edged forward. "I'm here!" she called one more time, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper in her throat, and then, desperately, "Abigail?"
She could make out what appeared to be a human form, slumped in a heap on the side of the bed that Abigail shared with her mother. From this distance, she could not tell if the body had the tell-tale rising and falling of a person still breathing, only that it was cloaked in white and collapsed on its side. "Abigail!" she called, her voice breaking into little more than a rasping plea. "Can you hear me?"
In her focus on the other woman's limp body, she had not heard a second person enter the house. It wasn't until strong hands had wrapped around her middle, hauling her up to her feet, that she realized she wasn't alone in this dire, desolate situation. She spun, expecting one of her brothers to be standing before her, her arms already rising to embrace him with gratitude for finding her. It was too late to pull back by the time she realized that the man in front of her was Callum Laughlin.
"Callum," she breathed, her voice drowned under the cacophony of the night.
His eyes were dark and wild, his breath coming in great, heaving gasps. He had discarded the cravat and coat he'd worn at the dinner table, looking far more the man she remembered in an ash-smeared shirt that clung to the sheen of sweat on his body. She felt light-headed, like she was looking at a ghost, and forced herself to unclench her hands from where they were balled into his shirt.
He clasped her wrist, jerking his head toward the door to the cottage and turning to take her from danger. When she jerked her arm back, he spun in disbelief, looking fit to toss her over his shoulder if it meant getting her out of this house.
She shook her head, taking two steps back and lifting her arm to point. She attempted to scream "Help her!" but realized that no sound came from her lips.
He looked over her shoulder, his eyes widening in alarm, and pushed her behind him, gesturing that she should leave the cottage immediately and wait outside. Any other time, she might have argued, but she found herself stumbling backward, desperate to once again draw breath from the open night, even one so bathed in the smell of ruin.
She stumbled out into the square, pulling the cowl back up over her face and forcing herself not to take great,
gulping breaths of air. After all, even out here, the air was still thick with smoke. The blast of cold wind that swept between the houses was some small mercy, though there was little she could do to take advantage of it, frozen to the spot as she was with fear thick and terrible in her throat.
It only took a moment for Callum to appear in the threshold. Abigail was cradled in his arms like she herself was the baby, her head limp and resting against his chest. He burst from the cottage amidst another gust of smoke and sparkling flecks of fire-lit air, taking care with each step, as though he were not himself fleeing certain death.
"Abigail!" Heloise breathed, rushing forward to meet them. "Is she alive, Callum? Tell me she is alive."
He nodded, his face set in a grim mask that appeared completely devoid of emotion. He brushed right past Heloise, his pace keeping its same steady speed as he carried this woman to safety. He did not even look at her, instead keeping his dark eyes locked straight ahead, on the path to safety.
"We must go to the church," Heloise told him, scurrying to match his gait. She had to hoist the cloak and her skirts up in her fists to keep up with him, but she would not be left behind as her own charge was taken from her. If he noticed that she was struggling to match his gait, he gave no indication of it, set in his task with all the blank commitment of a gargoyle at vigil.
She told herself she was not hurt by being ignored as though she didn't exist, though his blank disregard had sent a pang of something painful ringing in her chest. It was silly, wasn't it? She did not want his affections. She cleared her throat, hoping that some of her volume would return as they passed into cleaner air, but still spoke in a strained, hollow little voice quite unlike her own. "Her mother is at the church," she continued. "And Alex is to meet me there with medical supplies."
Abigail's body finally seemed to give a shudder as proof of life, though she did not raise her head nor open her eyes. Her short brown curls, which had been clean and glossy this morning, were matted to her cheeks. Her face was bright pink from the heat and her lips cracked and bleeding. The first thing they must do once she was settled was to give her hydration and cool her skin down.
