Smoke!
Zel flung open the door, coughing over the outrush of heat and dark smoke.
“Wolfgang!”
The window drapes were solid flame. The bed curtains flickered and sparked with burgeoning fire.
“Help! God, someone help!” She choked. “It’s fire!”
On leaden legs, she waded through the smoke to the bed. Hauling the counterpane off the huge bed, she groped for him, barely making out his shape in the thick darkness. She pulled at his ankles, fingers sliding down his feet. His body refused to move. Her hands edged farther up his legs but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to grasp.
Perspiration dripped down her spine and pooled beneath her breasts as she tugged at his legs, dragging him in excruciatingly slow inches.
“Wake up! Dear God, wake up! You’re too damn heavy.” Her voice screeched. “Help! Please!”
Gasping out the smoke invading her lungs, Zel grabbed his knees. Her muscles bunched as she strained, chest tight, throat seared by smoke and heat. With a tremendous heave, she yanked his naked form to the floor.
“Wolfgang!” Sobbing, she struck sparks away from his chest. “I can’t do this.” But she again gripped his knees in her arms, jerking him in short stops and starts along the deep carpet pile.
“Lady Z!” The tenor voice was a balm to her ears. Firm hands moved her aside. Jenkins and McDougall carried Wolfgang from the room. Servants rushed in with rugs and buckets of water to battle the flames.
Zel backed into the hallway, collapsing against the wall, watching helplessly as Wolfgang’s unconscious body disappeared down the stairs. She coughed, a ragged croak from deep in her lungs, feeling the tears flooding her cheeks and the tremor convulsing her body, afraid to stay where she stood but more afraid to follow down the staircase.
CHAPTER 18
CADENZA
A flourish in a solo piece near the end of a cadence or movement
“I know I didn’t leave a candle burning too close to the curtains.” Wolfgang’s words rasped against his abraded throat as he surveyed the blackened bed. He stole a glance at Zel’s tight profile. His wife’s courage had saved his life. And he’d been right to stay away from her. If she’d been sleeping with him, they both would have died. “I put out the candles before retiring.”
“Then what—” Zel interrupted herself. “Wolfgang, I heard a noise in the hall before I smelled smoke. Do you suppose—”
He took her by the shoulders, turning her from the charred and sodden mess. “No, I don’t suppose.”
“But, Wolf, you’ve been attacked before.”
“My dear, footpads and thieves don’t set housefires.”
To touch her, to look so deeply into the golden flames floating in her sea-green eyes, was a mistake. The elegant evening gown draping her slender form was torn and soiled beyond repair. One side of her head remained elaborately coiffed, the other side was a tangle of wild curls. He yearned to pull her to the wet carpet beneath them and take her amid the ashes, water, and lingering smoke. To brand her forever as his. To sear their lives irrevocably together with the fire of their passion.
Make love to her tonight and arrest Robin tomorrow. His hand was forced, as he feared it would be. Robin’s mad pursuit of revenge endangered others, including his own sister.
Wolfgang released her, whirling away, banging his leg against a heavy, mahogany table. His dressing gown caught. Yanking the cloth free, he ran his hand over the rough edge of the table. A tiny piece of fabric fell into his fingers, a soft shimmering swatch of gray.
“What is it?” Zel was back at his side, so close even the smell of burnt wood and cloth could not overpower her cinnamon-nutmeg scent.
“Nothing.” He dropped the small fabric triangle. “Only an old table tearing up my servants’ livery. I’ll have McDougall see to it when the rest of the room is repaired.” Wolfgang stretched his stiff shoulders. “We need to find other beds for the night. Even your chambers will reek of smoke.”
She twined a long, slender arm about his neck. “One bed. Stay with me tonight.”
He inhaled deeply, lungs raw, more scorched by her nearness than the flames from which she’d pulled him.
Zel didn’t wait for an answer, just took his hand and a candelabra and gently drew him through the door and down the hall. Desire swirled through him. He couldn’t fight anymore. He’d take tonight, take her love, and force himself to forget how much greater the pain would be when she turned from him.
“This way. There isn’t a room ready and the smoke won’t be as bad downstairs.” Wolfgang guided her down the stairs, opening the first door off the landing. Scooping Zel up into his arms, he strode into his book room, elbowing the door closed behind them. He took the candle from her and deposited it on a corner table. A smile brushed her lips as he pushed aside ledgers, papers, and the little jade centaur and sat her down on the massive lacquer desk.
Wolfgang ran his fingers over the smoke and water stains on the delicate silk of her gown, then reverently removed the ruined garment and underclothes. Leaning over her, he traced a smudgy line of soot down her jaw, throat, and breast to where the gray ash ended in clean, white skin inches above an invitingly peaked nipple. Groaning his surrender, he ripped open his dressing gown and pressed his bare chest to hers, the coolness of her skin singeing his flesh. Sliding her closer, arms around her shoulders, he parted her thighs with his hips.
Satan’s horns, the days of abstinence had fanned the flame of his need for her so high he feared he might do her harm in his haste. Gulping in breath after breath of cool night air, he steadied himself.
“Are you ill?” She broke his grip, hands braced against his shoulders. “You must rest. I heard that smoke can damage—”
Pulling her back to him, Wolfgang smothered her protest with his mouth.
Zel pushed off his chest. “Let me send for a doctor.”
“No!” He wrapped her arms around his neck, holding her hands at his nape. “I don’t need a doctor.” He shifted his head. “Look at me.”
Her eyes glowed molten in the flickering candlelight, seeming to look for something in his eyes. He lowered his lids, breath caught in his throat. “I need you.”
She put a hand to each side of his head, drawing him back within range of her lips. But he moved more quickly, taking her full lower lip between his teeth, hard enough to leave an imprint when he abandoned the lip to thrust his tongue deep into her mouth. Slipping his hand between them, he found her heated core.
“You’re ready,” he whispered, adjusting his hips to prepare for entry. “And the devil only knows I am.”
Wolfgang moved against her, slowing himself, stirring the embers, allowing the hot spots to spark and flare. But Zel, clearly impatient with gentleness and caution, arched to him, grasping his hips, pulling him roughly into her, incinerating his pretense at control.
Plunging to the hilt, he reached deeper and deeper inside her with each wild stroke. Like kindling offered to a bonfire, he burned hot and fast, oblivious to her response until her cry intermingled with his shout, reverberating in his ears. He fell against her, spent, reduced to a clump of lambent cinders.
“Remus! Mouse!” Zel strode from the breakfast room down the hallway shouting into the open doorways. “Where is that damn dog? Did someone let him out earlier this morning? He never misses his bacon.”
“Lady Zel!” Maggie’s high shriek came from the library. “He’s here. Oh, God!”
Zel rushed through the imposing, dark room, pushing aside the goddess Kali and her many arms to kneel by Maggie. Her hand brushed over the dog’s back, as her head went to his chest. His heart beat slowly. His lungs unsteadily filled and emptied.
A sickly sweet smell curled about her nostrils. Laudanum. “He’s been drugged.” She laid her cheek against his closed eyes.
“Drugged? Remus?” Maggie’s incredulous voice echoed her own thoughts. “Who would want to hurt him?”
“Who …” Zel stroked the shaggy coa
t. He whimpered, eyes fluttering open. She hugged the limp form to her. “Mouse! Oh, you big, silly thing.”
“Is he coming around?”
Zel ruffled the hair over his eyes. “He’s tough. He’ll recover.” She stood slowly. “But why give a dog laudanum?”
The fire! She tried to breathe through the growing constriction in her chest. Wolfgang! He could still be in danger. Lifting her skirts, she ran up the stairs, barreling through his dressing room door.
“Madam?” He smiled at her coolly as Jenkins made the finishing touches to his smoke-scented toilette.
“Wolfgang.” Zel tried to steady herself and ignore the distance he was re-erecting between them. She had awakened with surprise earlier this morning in a strange bed devoid of his presence, only his scent and the indentation in the bed where he had lain lingered to remind her of the night they’d shared. Quickly donning the dressing gown he left draped over a chair, she had dashed eagerly down the hall into his chambers. His icy rebuff as she interrupted his bath had felt like a slap to the face. How could he make love to her with such a wildfire combination of passion and tenderness last night and push her away only hours later?
Now, ready for his coldness, she tossed back her head and met his eyes. “Someone is trying to kill you.”
“Me, my dear?” He waved Jenkins away.
“Remus was dosed with laudanum last night.” She watched Jenkins close the door behind him and continued, “Someone set that fire last night and knew they had to get Remus out of the way to do it.”
A steel spark briefly flickered in his eyes, before he smiled again and patted her hand. “That hound of yours must have raided the housekeeper’s medical supplies.”
“You aren’t telling me everything.” She eyed him warily. “It’s more than the fire. How could I be such an idiot? The wound at the first house party. The cut on your head after we returned to London. The footpads, if that’s what they were, outside your home.” She touched the scab on his lip. “The new scratches and bruises and now the fire.”
“Zel—”
“Don’t ‘Zel’ me.” Her voice moving rapidly up the scale, she shook his arm. “What in God’s name is going on?”
Pulling free of her, he threw himself onto a silk-cushioned settee, his tone tight and so low she could barely make out the words. “There is nothing you need to know.”
“Someone is trying to kill you. And you decide not to tell your wife.”
“Lucifer’s spawn! I’ll take care of this myself.” His cool look faded as the anger spread across his face.
“I thought we were a partnership.” A matching heat burned a trail up her chest, neck and cheeks.
“Some things are none of your bloody business.” His voice flared.
“Attacks on my goddamn husband are my bloody business.”
Wolfgang lurched to his feet, bending over her until his face was only inches from hers. “Hold your tongue, madam wife!”
Icy fingers of anger and fear gripped her spine, but she held her ground. “I’ll say what I bloody well please, my lord.”
He grasped her shoulders, the thunder in his voice echoing the storm brewing in his eyes. “You’ll keep that sharp little nose out of things that don’t concern you.”
“Now we get at the truth.” She scowled back at him. “You’re no different from any other man. You spout a few words of equality to hook me, but when it comes down to reality you treat me worse than a child—either keep me in the dark at arm’s length or threaten me.”
Squeezing her shoulders, he lowered his voice. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“I know only too well what you’re about.” Zel wiggled under his grip. “You are hurting me.”
“Sit down and listen.” Wolfgang released her.
Unbalanced, she sprawled onto the settee, glaring at him. “Your most obedient audience, sirrah.”
“Goddammit! I’m sorry!” He raged, towering over her, fists clenched at his sides.
“A damn shouted apology doesn’t count.”
The effort he made to control his anger showed clearly in his tense jaw and slivered eyes. “Zel, I am sorry. There are things I wish I could tell you.” He ran his hands roughly over his face. “But I can’t.”
Zel made no effort to lower her own voice. “Keep your secrets—”
“Please, Zel …” He leaned toward her, hand extended.
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, ignoring his outstretched hand. It would be easy to surrender to his touch, to forget herself in his big warm body. She couldn’t set aside the rift between them, wouldn’t allow herself to forget that he might now be giving her access to his body, but other than a crack in the doorway last night, he was still denying her his heart and mind. “You make choices that keep us apart.”
“Would that I had choices.” He sank onto the settee beside her, staring into her eyes as if to read her soul.
Closing her eyes, she shook her head fiercely. “No, I don’t believe that.” Zel felt him move toward her and tore open her eyes, jumping up from the settee. “Don’t touch me again.”
She looked back from the doorway, feeling the pain in his eyes deep in the pit of her own stomach. But she knew he wouldn’t reveal the cause of that pain, couldn’t ask her to share it, and didn’t know that sharing it, no matter what it was, would hurt her far less than this damnable estrangement.
Shutting the door softly behind her, she stood, silent and still, waiting for him to come to her. But there was no sound from the adjoining room. Zel felt as helpless as she had trying to pull him from the fire. She could not control then whether he lived or died any more than she could now change his unwillingness to bridge the distance between them.
“Go get her, McDougall, or I will.”
“Mr. Fleetwood, I believe she is resting.”
“She never rests during the day, get her.”
“Robin, I’m here.” Zel stood at the top of the steps. “You do not need to disturb the entire house. Come up to the drawing room.” She smiled as Robin took the steps two at a time. “Eager to see me, dear brother?”
“Heard about the fire. Are you all right?” At her nod he grabbed her arm, pulling her urgently down the hall. “I need to talk to you.”
Zel called behind her as they entered the gold-and-green room. “McDougall, send up some tea.”
“Need something stronger. Brandy, McDougall.”
“Tea, McDougall.”
“Fine, I’ll drink your damn tea.”
“Come in. Sit down.” Indicating a chair, she dropped onto the silk-and-teak ottoman beside it. “What has you so upset?”
He sat stiffly, running his slender fingers through a lock of hair hanging over his ear. “Don’t know why you ever got involved with that man.”
“Robinson Fleetwood, you drag me in here because you need to speak to me and all you wish to do is complain about my husband?” Zel yanked at his cravat when he tried to stand. “If you have something more to say, then say it.”
“Let go, you’re ruining my Waterfall.”
“You are becoming a fop.” She released the neckcloth, and Robin flopped back into the chair.
“You are a cruel taskmaster.” He put his hands protectively over his cravat. “I’ll tell all. Don’t mangle my linen.”
“Here is your reprieve now. Saved by McDougall’s efficiency.” She turned to the maid hovering in the doorway. “Pay no mind to us, Polly. Bring in the tea and you may leave.”
With the tea steeping on an inlaid teakwood table, Zel returned her attention to her brother. “Speak up.”
“It’s that devil, Northcliffe—”
“Robin!”
“He’s a rotter.”
“I won’t listen to any more name calling and innuendo.” Zel tried to catch his eyes. After her fight with Wolfgang only hours before, she was in no mood to listen to Robin’s complaints and gossip. “Can you not try to get along with Wolfgang? He is trying to be a friend,
even an older brother, to you.”
“Don’t trust him.” Robin fingered the disheveled neckcloth. “I can show you good reason why you shouldn’t either.”
“More stories about his deceased wife or relations?”
“No, this concerns you directly.”
She sighed, resting her elbow on the arm of his chair. “I’m listening.”
“Friend invited me to Brooks’s—”
She cut in, temper piqued. “Robinson, are you gambling?”
“This was days ago. Besides I’m not playing deep.” He touched her arm lightly. “Northcliffe is.”
“Wolfgang rarely gambles, deep or otherwise.”
“Call it deep when he’s playing with your reputation and affections.” Robin’s full mouth was tight and grim.
Zel stretched her arm out, plucking at his sleeve. “I don’t understand.”
“At Brooks’s I ran into an old gaming comrade I was certain owed me money on a horse race. When he disputed the date and the participants, I thought I could prove it in the betting books.” He paused. “Give me some tea. My throat is dry.”
She poured two cups of tea, adding the preferred amounts of cream to each, waiting for him to continue.
Robin took a sip of the hot liquid. “I came across a wager. It was dated right after that first house party you went to, Lady Selby’s. Aunt Diana’s friend.” He sipped more tea. “You know, where you met him.”
“And the wager?”
“It said, ‘Match all comers. Earl of N. will bed Miss F. before the season is out.’ And it was signed ‘WJWH’.”
She sucked in a breath with a soft, sibilant hiss. “No.”
“Zel, I saw the entry myself.”
“It must be a coincidence.” She tried to slow her speech. “It does not mean anything, it’s only initials.”
“I’m sorry, Zel, but it fits too well.” Frowning, Robin set down his tea. “He is the earl of N. You are Miss F. And his full name is Wolfgang John Wesley Hardwicke, WJWH. There couldn’t be any other men at Brooks’s with exactly that title and those initials. The timing is right. And it explains why he continued to pursue you despite your rebuffs.”
The Wedding Chase Page 34
