by Mary Nichols
‘Miles, there is a building on fire,’ the Countess said. ‘Look.’
He was facing his mother and had his back to the direction in which they were going and had to lean forwards and screw his head round to see. ‘My God! It’s the Warburton Record.’ He thumped on the roof to tell their driver to stop. ‘Helen…’
The Earl was sitting forward, too, gazing in horror at the burning building. A fire crew with an engine were doing their best to douse the flames, but their efforts were having little effect. Around them a crowd had gathered to watch the conflagration. The carriage stopped and both men tumbled out. The whole shop was in flames. ‘Miss Wayland?’ Miles asked one onlooker.
‘No one’s seen her. We think she must be in there.’
‘Get her out,’ the Earl yelled. ‘For God’s sake, someone get her out.’
Miles was already halfway to the shop. ‘Ti’n’t no use,’ one of the fireman said, trying to prevent him entering the building. ‘No one i’n’t alive in there.’
Miles brushed him off, stood under the hose to soak himself in water and then disappeared inside the building, making for the stairs. They were well alight. Undeterred, he flung himself at them, coughing from the smoke. ‘Helen!’ he shouted. ‘Helen!’
There was no answer. He reached the landing and pushed open the drawing-room door. The room was full of smoke and a few flames were already licking round the woodwork. He crawled on hands and knees, feeling about him in the dense smoke for Helen. She was not there. He went to the next room, knowing if he did not find her soon, it would be too late, the stairs and the whole house would be gone. He almost fell over her, lying on the floor. He did not even stop to establish whether she was alive or dead, but picked her up in his arms and made for the stairs. There was no escape that way. He turned back into the drawing room. Opening the door had allowed the flames to take hold and they were spreading inexorably across the floor and licking round the furniture. Taking his burden to the window, he smashed the glass with his elbow, pushing it in again and again until all the glass was gone. Below him some men had brought a blanket and were holding it out by the corners. Carefully he lowered Helen over the ledge and dropped her into it. She was caught and rolled in the blanket to douse her burning nightclothes.
‘Now you,’ someone shouted. He looked down. It seemed a long way and there was no other blanket. Behind him the fire crackled and the smoke became thicker. It was jump or be consumed. Before he could do so, he saw their coachman whipping up the horses to drive the coach under the window. He jumped onto the roof as it passed, grabbing hold of the edge to stop himself falling off.
The carriage stopped safely away from the conflagration and he slid to the ground amid the cheers of the onlookers. Ignoring them, he dashed off to where Helen lay on the ground, still wrapped in the blanket. His father was bending over her. There were tears in his eyes, as he turned his face up to Miles. ‘To think it has come to this,’ he said in a voice strangled by emotion.
Miles squatted down and pushed Helen’s singed hair from her brow. Her eyelids flickered and he felt the pulse in her neck. She was alive, though how badly burned he did not know. Apart from singed eyebrows and hair, her face had not been touched. The extent of the burns on her body and limbs he could not know. ‘Thank God.’
The Countess, who had left the coach soon after her husband and son, came over to them. ‘She must be seen by a doctor.’
‘Yes,’ Miles said. ‘We will take her to Ravens Park and send for Dr Graham.’
Surprisingly neither of his parents demurred at this and Miles picked Helen up and took her to the coach, propping her in the corner until he was in beside her and could lay her across his lap. The Earl and Countess took the opposite seats and they left the firemen to do what they could to stop the fire spreading to adjacent buildings. The Warburton Record would be left to burn itself out. No one spoke. Miles looked across at his father, whose eyes were on Helen’s face. The hatred had gone and he looked worried to death. Miles found himself mentally echoing his father’s words, ‘To think it has come to this.’
* * *
Helen came round to find herself lying in a strange bed and the Countess sitting beside it, watching over her. ‘What happened? Where am I?’ she croaked, and found that talking hurt her throat. She seemed to be hurting everywhere, particularly her hands and arms. She looked down at herself. She was wearing a white linen nightrail which was certainly not her own and her hands and arms were bandaged. A nurse was sitting in a chair by the window. The room was large and beautifully furnished, certainly not a hospital ward.
‘Oh, you are awake. Thank the good Lord,’ the Countess said fervently.
‘Where am I?’
‘You are safe, here at Ravens Park.’
‘Ravens Park?’ she queried and struggled to sit up, only to find it brought on a fit of coughing that hurt her chest. She sank back again. ‘How came I here? How long have I been here?’
‘Two days. We brought you here in our coach. I am afraid there was a fire. Do you remember?’
‘Fire?’ She had a vague, terrifying memory of smoke and flames and searing heat and being trapped. ‘What happened?’
‘We do not know how it started, but I am afraid your home has been completely destroyed.’
‘Destroyed?’ she echoed, thinking she must have misheard. ‘All gone?’
‘Yes, and you would have been gone, too, if we had not been passing in our coach—Miles went in to rescue you.’
‘He did? Then I must thank him. Where is he? Was he burned? Oh, tell me he wasn’t burned.’
The door opened and Miles peeped round it. ‘I heard voices. May I come in?’
The Countess hesitated, but then smiled. ‘It seems you are half in already. Come and see, Miss Wayland is awake and smiling.’
‘Thank God.’
In seconds he was beside the bed and stood looking down at her. She swept her gaze over his face. He looked pale and there were dark rings round his eyes as if he had not slept. He had a bandage round his head and more on both hands. ‘You were burned, too?’
‘Only my hands and a small patch on my forehead. And like you, I have lost my eyebrows.’ He smiled as he spoke. ‘But we will both recover them, never fear.’
‘How did you manage to rescue me? The stairs were alight. I was trapped.’
‘I found you on the floor of your bedroom and dropped you out of the window into a blanket being held to catch you.’
‘I’ll never forget the sight of Miles at that window with the flames all round him,’ the Countess said. ‘It was terrifying. I thought he would die, that you both would die…’
‘How did you get out?’ Helen asked him.
‘Greaves, our coachman, drove the coach under the window,’ the Countess told her. ‘Miles jumped onto its roof.’
‘You were very brave,’ Helen said.
‘Not I,’ he said. ‘I did not relish having to jump from that height, but Greaves was quick-witted enough to see how he could help. It was an exceptional piece of driving, considering he had to get close and the horses were terrified of the fire. But he did it and I jumped and hung on until he could stop safely.’
‘Thank God,’ Helen said fervently. ‘If you had lost your life trying to save mine, I do not know what I would have done.’
‘But we are both alive and will recover, so think no more of it.’
‘You are both very kind, but whatever were you thinking of to bring me to Ravens Park? The Earl…’
‘He was there when the decision was made to bring you here,’ the Countess told her. ‘I think he is sorry for what has happened and anxious you should be looked after.’
Helen could hardly believe that, but could not question it because there was a knock at the door and a maid entered the room and bobbed a curtsy. ‘If you please, my lady, Lady Somerfield and Miss Somerfield are downstairs.’
The Countess rose. ‘Tell the ladies we will be down directly, Janet.’
�
�I must go,’ Miles said to Helen. ‘We will talk some more later.’ He nodded at the nurse, who rose and came to stand beside the bed. ‘Look after her,’ he said. ‘She is very precious.’ Then he followed his mother from the room.
Helen watched the door close on him and sank back into a bed more comfortable than any she had ever known, but she was restless. He had called her precious —she wondered how he could do that, when he was, in all probability, betrothed to someone else? And that someone was downstairs waiting for him. He was simply being kind to her because of what had happened. It had no more significance than that and she was being foolish to torment herself with that when there were far more important things to occupy her mind. What was she going to do? She had been in a mess before, but now it was infinitely worse. Her home and business had gone. How had that come about? She had gone round the downstairs rooms as she always did when she shut up shop and came upstairs for the evening. The fires had been doused and no candles or lamps had been left burning. It was true there were books and a great deal of paper, but it would have needed something to ignite it.
Surely to God no one had got in and set the fire deliberately? But why? And did they not know she was sleeping upstairs? But if someone had done it, they had effectively ruined her as surely as that summons for sedition. Without the building and its contents, there could be no sale and without a sale, she could not look for anywhere else to live. She had no money, no clothes, nothing. She did not even have the wherewithal to start again. Nor, she thought grimly, to pay a fine if that was the punishment in store for her. Her thoughts went round and round until she was dizzy, but she could see no way out of the coil she was in.
Why was she here instead of in the Warburton infirmary? Why had the Earl agreed to it? Had he had a change of heart? If he had, it was too late, much, much too late. She turned her face away from the nurse who was busy with her dressings and let the tears flow. ‘Now, now,’ the woman said sharply. ‘It is nothing to cry over. You are alive, that is the main thing, and you are being well cared for here. Not many of the Earl’s standing would take in a penniless stranger and treat them like royalty. You should be grateful, not weeping.’ ‘You would weep if you had lost everything,’ Helen said. ‘And the Earl of Warburton is no stranger.’
* * *
Miles was seated in the drawing room, making small talk with Lady Somerfield and her daughter, though Verity had very little to say. She seemed subdued, as if she would rather be anywhere but where she was. He tried smiling at her, but she did not respond.
‘I hear you have given house room to that newspaper woman,’ Lady Somerfield was saying. ‘I must say, it is very noble of you, Dorothea.’
‘We could not abandon her once Miles had rescued her, could we?’ the Countess said. ‘She had been burned and had nowhere to go. It was the Christian thing to do.’
‘To think Miles risked his life and went into the inferno to save her does not bear thinking about,’ her ladyship continued. ‘I am sure no one could have blamed him if he had said the flames were too great.’
‘That would have been cowardly,’ Miles put in. ‘No one, least of all me, could stand by and let another human being burn to death if they had the means to save them. I am only thankful I was there to do it.’
‘You were very brave,’ Verity put in, looking at his bandages. ‘Were you badly burned?’
‘No, not badly at all. I am assured the injuries will heal. And some of them are cuts caused by breaking the window with my elbows. Luckily, my sleeves cover those.’
‘But you will be scarred?’
He sighed. They were back to that, were they? Why could the silly girl not accept that not everyone was perfect and imperfections were part of a man’s character? Love did not see them in any case; love was blind. But they were not talking of love, had never even mentioned it. ‘I cannot tell. It will only be my hands, not my face. This…’ he pointed to the bandage round his head ‘…is simply there to attract sympathy. There is nothing behind it.’
She seemed relieved. ‘But your face is red and your eyebrows are singed.’
‘Are they? Have no fear, my looks will be back to normal in a day or two.’
‘We are assured there is no permanent damage,’ the Countess put in. ‘Miles will be able to call on you as promised in a few days.’
‘How long is Miss Wayland staying?’
‘She will stay as long as necessary,’ Miles put in quickly. ‘She is destitute and we cannot turn her out of doors until proper arrangements have been made for her.’
‘I do hope it will not be long,’ Lady Somerfield said. ‘Having her here is bound to attract gossip and that will mortify Verity. She is upset enough as it is.’
Miles turned to Verity. ‘Are you upset, Miss Somerfield?’
She looked from him to her mother and back again.
‘I do not think it is quite proper to have an unmarried lady—’
‘Not a lady,’ her mother interrupted.
‘An unmarried woman of business, a tradesperson,’ Verity went on, ‘staying here when…when…’ She could not go on. Miles suspected she had forgotten the drilling her mother had given her before they came.
‘Having her here was not Miles’s doing, but mine,’ the Countess put in. ‘Miles has had some business dealings with her in the past, that is all.’
‘And do these business dealings involve you spending time in her bedchamber?’ Lady Somerfield demanded. ‘The maid who admitted us told us that was where you were when we arrived.’
‘Miss Wayland had only a few minutes before regained consciousness,’ Miles said, hardly able to disguise his anger. ‘I went to see how she fared. My mother and a nurse were also in the room.’
‘And how does she fare?’
‘She is going to recover, but she was more badly burned than I. Her clothes were on fire.’
Verity shuddered. ‘How dreadful. No clothes and everyone looking at her. I could not have borne it.’
‘She was not conscious of it,’ Miles said. The more he saw of Miss Somerfield, the more he realised how empty-headed she was. It was not her fault, but the way she had been raised. ‘And we were all too busy putting out the flames and wrapping her in a blanket to worry about her lack of covering.’
‘But you saw her without her clothes…’
‘So I did. Let us hope fervently that you will never be put in such an embarrassing situation.’
The irony of his words was lost on her. ‘No, indeed,’ she said.
‘I think we have said enough about Miss Wayland,’ the Countess put in. ‘Would you like a second cup of tea, Constance. Or another cake?’
‘No, thank you.’ Her ladyship rose to go. ‘Come, Verity, we must not outstay our welcome. Unlike some. We shall expect you at Gayton Hall in a few days, my lord, and perhaps by then your visitor will have departed.’
The Countess rang for a footman to show their guests to the door and when they had gone, sat back in her chair with a heavy sigh. ‘Do you know, Miles,’ she said, ‘I do not particularly like Lady Somerfield. She does not have an ounce of human sympathy in her body.’
He had been on his feet to bid farewell to their callers, but now he sat down facing her. ‘It is Verity I feel sorry for. She does not want to marry me and is trying to find excuses not to do so and all she can come up with is how scarred I am.’
‘And you do not want to marry her, do you?’
‘No, Mama, I do not.’
‘You cannot marry Miss Wayland, you know.’
‘Miss Wayland has nothing to do with how I feel about Verity Somerfield. She is too immature and silly. If we married, I should soon lose patience with her. It would not be fair to her.’
‘I do not see how you can get out of it now. Everyone knows you have been courting her and to withdraw suddenly will create a scandal. And it would definitely anger her father and yours.’
‘I do not consider a couple of reciprocated calls and a dance or two courting, Mama.’
‘I am hoping Miss Somerfield finds enough strength to stand up to her father and reject me. I am quite prepared to act the disappointed suitor if it saves her face.’
‘How are you to bring that about?’
‘I do not know. I might be able to if I could see her alone, but her mother sticks to her like treacle and she looks to her ladyship for the answer to every query as if she could not think for herself.’
The Countess smiled. ‘Most likely she cannot.’ She paused. ‘I wish I could do something for you, but your father is determined. I tried to reason with him, but he says he expects you to obey him.’
‘He has made that very clear to me. Perhaps when we call at Gayton Hall you could draw her ladyship away for a few moments to leave me to talk to Verity.’
‘She will think you are going to propose.’
‘I cannot think of any other way, can you?’
‘No.’
He was at an impasse. Two autocratic husbands, two acquiescing wives and an obedient daughter who could not see beyond the superficiality of a wedding and becoming Lady Cavenham, were almost impossible to overcome. But overcome them he must, or leave Ravensbrook and Warburton altogether. With Helen? Oh, how he would like that, but the subsequent gossip would kill his mother and there was still the not-so-little problem of that trial hanging over Helen’s head. Besides, Helen herself would not let him do it.
The fact that his father was distraught when he saw that fire and his words said over the unconscious Helen—’To think that it has come to this’—had him wondering if the old man had had a change of heart. He knew Helen was being nursed under his roof and, though he had not been to see her, had raised no objection to her being there. If he could get to the bottom of that, he might find some answers. He excused himself and went in search of his father.
