Cinders and Ashes

by King, Rebecca

  “I think you had better tell us the truth, Amelia.” Sebastian’s voice was gravelly with suspicion.

  “I have told you the truth,” she protested, knowing very well what he was asking but was unwilling to confide in him. Not yet. Not until she had her future a bit more secure.

  As soon as he found out, he would high-handedly take decisions about her future into his own hands, and she couldn’t bear that.

  “I have seen this man, or someone very similar, and his name was Hawksworth.” She tapped her finger on the Penny Dreadful for emphasis, her own voice biting as her temper and fears grew.

  “I think Amelia is right. It does look like Hawksworth. Although this is a poor sketch, the more I study it, the more familiar the man looks,” Peter added, aware of the shimmering tension between Sebastian and Amelia.

  “We need to clarify if it is him. Then we need to discover why he allowed himself to be hung for murdering a servant. Does anyone know this Martha Bainbridge?” Dominic lifted the Penny Dreadful to read out the name. Everyone shook their heads.

  “Then we need to find out more about her as well.” He raised his eyes to stare intently at Amelia, who shivered at the cold menace in his gaze. “Unless Amelia knows Martha Bainbridge also?” His voice was hard.

  Amelia could have wept for the distrust she saw clearly written there. From her first arrival at Tingdale only a handful of days ago, the family had welcomed her with open arms. It hurt to find herself suddenly cast under suspicion.

  “I don’t know her,” Amelia murmured softly, feeling a pang of loneliness well up. Her gaze turned in mute appeal towards Isobel, only for Isobel to smile softly at her but make no move to change the subject.

  An uncomfortable silence settled around the room, as everyone studied either her or the Penny Dreadful. Suspicion and anger shimmered in the air between them. It broke her heart.

  “I have a headache,” Amelia mumbled, pushing to her feet when she could no longer stand the awkwardness. Suddenly she needed to get out of the room and be by herself for a while. Their distrust hurt. A lot.

  She wasn’t keeping secrets to herself to be spiteful or out of any personal gain. She just didn’t want to open up the Pandora’s Box of painful memories, or let Sebastian take over her life. Or her father for that matter.

  After quietly bidding everyone a good night, she quietly left the room.

  As she trudged to her room, Amelia consoled herself with the fact that Sebastian was now as safe as anyone could be. He had the security and physical protection of his brothers and Peter surrounding him, and was on familiar ground. She had told them what they needed to know to give them a start in the search for information. Without doubt, the family would move heaven and earth to help Sebastian search for the truth behind his kidnap, and attempted murder. She would help them in any way she could. She just couldn’t tell them everything.

  Carefully closing the door behind her, Amelia moved across the dusty room, shivering as the cooler air swept over her. Snatching up the blanket from the bed, she wrapped it around herself and lay upon the bed, a picture of desolate misery. The very last thing she wanted to do was cause the family to despise her. While she could fully understand, and indeed admire Isobel for her family loyalty, the memory of that small smile hurt deeply. She briefly contemplated telling them everything. All of it. But knew instinctively that as things stood between her and Sebastian, it was a bad move. He asked her to trust him. Time and again, he had asked her to place her trust and faith in him. What he had never done was trusted her to think for herself. To make decisions based on what she wanted and needed. Look at how high-handedly he had casually removed her from Glendowie, despite her protestations.

  Well, on that occasion, maybe he was right, Amelia acknowledged reluctantly. The prospect of staying there alone had weighed heavily upon her. But she also knew that as soon as Sebastian realised he had bedded a lady, albeit an outcast, he would push, prod and shove her into marriage. She wanted him to love her as much as she loved him. More importantly, she wanted him to marry her because he wanted to, not out of some misplaced sense of honour and duty. Sleep came slowly, and when she did succumb, her dreams were filled with Sebastian.

  Later that night, Sebastian found himself standing at the foot of the bed watching her. It had been several hours since she had pleaded a headache and taken refuge in her room, yet he could still see the rivulets of tears down her pale cheeks.

  Even through the gloom he knew she was crying in her sleep. His heart ached to reach out and hold her. To give her the comfort he sensed she needed. But his mind urged him to be cautious. He had learned from her revelations earlier that she had some connection with Eastleigh. Only nobody knew what. Until she trusted him enough to tell him, he couldn’t discount the possibility she knew Ballantyne far more than she was letting on.

  Until he had evidence otherwise, he couldn’t even discount the horrendous possibility she was even related to Ballantyne. After all, why had he been going through Glendowie when he jumped from the carriage? Why take him to Scotland? Until he knew Amelia’s links to Ballantyne for certain, he couldn’t allow himself to be drawn by his deepening affection for her.

  He had already developed deeper feelings for her than he had ever felt for any woman before. That alone disturbed him greatly. He wasn’t certain how he would deal with the possibility that she was in cohorts with Ballantyne.

  With a soft curse, he turned and quickly left the room, returning to his nightly watch of the house.

  He had just returned to the downstairs parlour for the third time, when the sound of shattering glass ricocheted through the still night air.

  With a curse, Sebastian spun on his heel and took to the stairs, two at a time.

  “What is it?” Sebastian shouted towards Dominic, who appeared at the far end of the upper hallway, still tugging on his breeches.

  “I don’t know, but it was up here somewhere,” Dominic replied, turning to order Isobel out of bed. Within moments they were joined by Peter and Edward.

  “Fire!” Peter shouted, tugging at Sebastian’s elbow as they raced towards Amelia’s bedroom.

  “Amelia!” Sebastian shouted, pushing the door to her room open. The grey wall of smoke within immediately encased them all in its suffocating blanket. Blinking the stinging out of his eyes, Sebastian tried desperately to peer through the thick gloom towards the bed.

  He could see very little through the thick fog, other than the fierce orange flames that encased the lower end of the four poster bed.

  “Amelia!” he shouted, fighting the hands that held him back. “Answer me!” His voice pleaded with her, as he fought the unfamiliar panic that suffused him.

  “Wait!” Peter tried to tug him back, eyeing the rapidly encroaching flames on the bed. “Use this.”

  Sebastian was encased in a wet blanket and he immediately shuffled through the darkness towards the orange flames. The last time he had seen her, Amelia she had been rolled up in a thick woollen blanket. If the flames had caught her feet, she would be burned alive. The flames on the four-poster bed had already begun to hungrily consume the canopy and wooden posts.

  “Amelia, darling, answer me,” Sebastian’s voice ordered as he coughed against the acrid burning in his throat. It seemed to take forever to reach her. Eventually, reassured by the feel of Peter’s hand at the back of his shirt waiting to guide him back towards the door, he reached her.

  “Get her off the bed!” Peter growled as the four poster made a sudden cracking sound. “NOW!”

  Within seconds of lifting her into his arms, Sebastian found himself practically yanked off his feet as he was dragged towards the door. The spot he had been standing on seconds before was now covered in the burning canopy.

  He was vaguely aware of Dominic and Edward racing past him with buckets, before the soft hiss of flames being extinguished was deadened by the thickening of the smoke around them.

  “Downstairs,” Isobel cried, as soon as she saw Sebastian sta
gger into the hallway, an unconscious Amelia in his arms. “We need to get her into cleaner air.”

  Without hesitation, Sebastian ran down the stairs, pausing only when they reached the drawing room. Reluctantly, he set his precious burden down on the plush chaise.

  “Leave her with me, she will be fine,” Isobel ordered, pushing Sebastian to one side to ease aside the blanket.

  “She isn’t moving,” Sebastian choked around a cough, as he eyed the unresponsive face of the woman he loved.

  “She has a lump on her head. See?” Isobel lifted a small clump of hair off Amelia’s head to reveal the growing lump on her temple. “She will have a headache when she comes round.”

  Isobel had never seen Sebastian so upset, and tried hard to offer the man reassurance. Despite her own nagging worries.

  “If she changes, I want to know,” Sebastian ordered, giving his sister-in-law a hard look.

  Within a moment he was gone.

  Dawn was edging over the horizon when the filthy and exhausted men stumbled into the kitchen. Although it had been completely destroyed, they had managed to contain the fire to the one room.

  While they had been fighting the flames, Amelia had come round but couldn’t remember anything. Although she had a bruise the size of a goose egg on her temple, and a raspy cough from the acrid smoke, she appeared to be otherwise unharmed. She tried to keep a brave face on her condition, she really did, but in reality she knew she fooled nobody.

  Her head ached fiercely each time she moved, and it seemed to take all of her energy just to think. That wasn’t discounting the heavy burning in her lungs. It was difficult to breathe without coughing all over the place.

  “I’m sorry,” Amelia rasped after a particularly heavy bout of coughing.

  “We need to get you out of this smoky house, and back to Tingdale,” Dominic said softly, eyeing the paleness of the cheeks, and the brave show she tried to put on for everyone’s benefit.

  Although the events of the night had been worrying for all concerned, it did confirm that Amelia had no involvement in any of the events that had happened to Sebastian. For that he was very grateful.

  “We will leave immediately. I think we have everything we need for now. If we need to do any more searching, we can come back for the day with armed staff,” Sebastian declared with a yawn and a cough. “Amelia needs clean air and some rest.”

  Amelia frowned. “I feel fine,” she muttered with a glare. “You don’t have to leave on my account.” She wondered if this was going to be another of those occasions when Sebastian’s inherent air of command took hold, and was unsurprised when she got her reply.

  “I’m not. I think if we stayed, none of us would rest properly. There is only one of us who can realistically keep watch at night. Even then, we can’t watch all of the windows all of the time. Last night was too close. You could have been killed. At least at Tingdale, the house can be heavily armed and we have a full complement of serving staff to act as extra eyes and ears,” Sebastian added. The dark circles under Amelia’s eyes and the blackening bruise on her temple made him intensely angry. “We will leave as soon as we have packed the things we need.”

  “All done,” Peter replied. “Edward is out front with the carriage now. Hughes rode one of the horses back to Tingdale when we got here, so Edward is going to drive the carriage with the ladies inside.”

  Within moments, Amelia found herself swept into Sebastian’s arms. “I can walk, you know,” she mumbled, eyeing the red lines of his eyes. Whether they were from smoke or tiredness, she wasn’t certain. She wondered where he got his stamina from.

  “You already have a lump on your head from the bottle that was thrown through the window,” Sebastian replied, carefully navigating the steps at the front door. “You need to rest.”

  “Bottle?” Amelia tried to raise her eyebrows, but winced as her bruised temple protested.

  “Peter found it lying on next to the bed in your room. It had some kind of accelerant in it. Undoubtedly it was thrown through the window and started the fire. It landed on the bed – you – apparently, and lit the bedding it landed on.” Sebastian shuddered to think of the possible repercussions, had Ballantyne succeeded in firing the house.

  Amelia felt her stomach drop as she glanced briefly at the imposing edifice of Edenvale Manor with a shudder. In happier circumstances, it would be a delightful family home. With tall towers on either side of the Jacobean facade, it was simply beautiful. If somewhat creepy.

  She was glad when Sebastian placed her carefully upon the squabs inside the carriage, pausing to stare at her intently.

  “Are you really alright, Amelia?” His voice was soft, as his bloodshot eyes tenderly searched her face.

  “I’m fine,” Amelia replied gently cupping his lined cheek, the soft pad of her thumb wiped a small smudge of smoke off his cheek as she smiled tenderly at him. Without hesitation she leant forward and brushed her lips against his in gentle reassurance. “I’m fine.”

  Sebastian returned the gesture briefly before resting his forehead head against hers for several moments. Seeking the physical reassurance she was indeed hale and hearty, before reluctantly drawing away.

  “I’ll just be outside.” He motioned towards the window next to her. “If you need to stop or anything, just let me know.” He glanced back and waited until she nodded her agreement, before handing Isobel into the carriage and closing the door with a snap. Within moments they were off.

  They had barely pulled out of the gates of Edenvale Manor when Sebastian appeared at the side of the carriage, sitting astride his huge chestnut horse. Across the other side of the carriage, Amelia spied Dominic trotting along, lost in conversation with Edward.

  “I don’t want to speak out of turn, Amelia,” Isobel murmured from her seat across the carriage. She had been observing the silent interplay between Amelia and Sebastian as he rode alongside, and wasn’t oblivious to the deep affection between the pair. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Amelia’s gaze turned toward Isobel, and she was acutely aware of the new, slightly uncomfortable distance between them. Despite it only being two days, the return carriage ride to Tingdale was entirely different than the one they had taken on their way to Edenvale Manor. The easy familiarity, the female camaraderie that had sourced their friendship was now replaced with a wariness that Amelia hated.

  “I promise, Isobel, I have no intention of hurting Sebastian in any way.” She knew if she had any hope of future friendship with the lady opposite, she had to be honest. “If I am completely honest, it isn’t without some sense of self-preservation that I cannot take Sebastian into my confidence. You know how strong willed and determined he is.” Amelia glanced at the commanding presence of the man riding so straight-backed and aristocratic alongside them. His mere presence bespoke command and authority. “He makes a decision on something and doesn’t stop to listen. I am afraid I will be swamped with his good intentions if he should learn everything.”

  “Everything?” Isobel murmured with a quirk of her brow.

  “It isn’t anything heinous or anything like that. It is certain knowledge of my background that will change things between us. I don’t want Sebastian to be married to me because he feels it is his duty. I want him to want me, for me.” Amelia fought the urge to cry as Isobel suddenly reached across the carriage and encased Amelia’s cold hands in her gloved ones.

  “I understand, truly I do,” Isobel murmured, feeling the other woman’s worries acutely. It resembled her own worries and concerns so closely; it made her shudder with the painful memories of those uncertain times.

  “I thank you for your kindness. Please understand that I love Sebastian. Truly I do. But until I know for certain he feels the same way because of whom I am, not what I am then we can have no future.” Amelia sat back against the squabs with a shiver. “For one thing is certain in all of this, if Sebastian doesn’t feel the same depth of feeling towards me as I do for him, then it will be I who will be very deeply hu
rt when I leave.” Her eyes met and held Isobel’s across the carriage as they shared a moment of feminine understanding.

  “He loves you. He just doesn’t know it yet,” Isobel declared, glaring out of the carriage window at her brother-in-law. “Men can sometimes be so dense.”

  “Does he? I think he feels a certain responsibility towards me. Even feels he sort of owes me for saving his life. But love? I don’t think so.” Amelia didn’t add that while Dominic had declared his devotion to Isobel when faced with a dire situation that had threatened her very life, Sebastian had done no such thing with Amelia.

  Surely if he feared for her life, he would have declared his love if he felt any?

  Her head began to pound with the strain and worry of the endless problems, and Amelia frowned, rubbing her temple tenderly.

  “Are you alright?” Isobel asked, leaning forwards in concern.

  Amelia didn’t have time to reply before the carriage rumbled to a stop, and Sebastian yanked the door open.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded, nudging his horse sideways until he stepped off his horse and directly into the conveyance.

  “Amelia doesn’t feel well,” Isobel murmured, draping her friend in another blanket.

  “I’m fine. My head hurts a bit that’s all. It is alright to continue, I will be fine,” Amelia murmured, aware when Sebastian sat down on the squabs beside her. His large hand caught and held on to hers, and he rubbed her cold fingers in his large ones as he spoke softly to Dominic through the open window.

  Within moments the carriage began to move again. Amelia opened her eyes against the heavy thumping in her head, and peered at Sebastian.

  “Are you not riding?” She knew the answer. Wild horses wouldn’t get him out of the carriage at that moment. The stubborn tilt of his chin and defiant glint in his eye spoke volumes.

  “I’m not going to spare Isobel’s blushes, Amelia. Come here.”

  Without further ado, Amelia was tugged along the seat until she lay against Sebastian’s side, her head resting against his shoulder.