As soon as she said the words, Thomas’s nose confirmed them. Nick’s gaze slewed around, but it was Loris who instinctively sensed where the threat came from.
“That way.” She moved her chin toward Linden. “The breeze is coming from that direction.”
She gave Evan a stout kick, and he took off at a pounding canter. When Thomas turned Rupert up the Linden drive, dread turned into sick certainty, for smoke billowed from the roof of his beautiful stable.
“Loris, stop!” he yelled, bringing Rupert to a rearing halt. “Jamie, stop her!”
Jamie put himself between Loris and the stable when she might have leapt from the saddle and charged into a growing conflagration. Loris swung down, and Evan trotted off across the lane, tail up, eyes rolling.
As Thomas vaulted from Rupert’s back, Beckman emerged from the stable, soot-streaked and sweaty.
“They’re almost all out,” he panted. “I couldn’t get Penny or Treasure, but the rest were either at grass, or Jaime and I got them out.”
Nick loomed up at Thomas’s side. “Penny and Treasure are in there?”
“They’re livestock,” Thomas snapped. “Do you know how fast a stable fire spreads?” This was one licking out from under the eaves, smoke billowing on each gust of breeze.
“They’re trapped in there,” Nick retorted. “Terrified and helpless. I have to try.”
He disappeared into the smoke, shrugging off Loris’s attempt to stop him.
“Don’t you dare,” Thomas spat at Beckman. “One fool is one too many. We’ll not save the stable, but get a bucket line going and maybe we can stop the fire from spreading. The ground is wet, and the cisterns full. Loris!”
She already had a bucket in each hand. “The wind will carry sparks away from the manor,” she said, “but we should wet down the roof of the carriage house. Thomas, Nicholas is in there.”
“Penny will not come out,” Jamie said. “Her stall is her safe place, her haven. She doesn’t understand what’s happening, and our Nick will end up dead if he tries to convince her to leave her baby.”
Fairly came jogging across the garden. “I was reading on the terrace and smelled smoke. Is everybody out?”
“Nick’s in there,” Loris said. “He went after Penny and Treasure, but Penny won’t leave her baby, and Nick won’t leave his horses.”
“Fill that bucket,” Thomas said.
“Fill them both,” Fairly shot back, shrugging out of his jacket. Thomas did likewise, until he was in boots, breeches, and shirt. Loris soaked every inch of him, then did the same for Fairly. The entire process took only moments, but still, Nick hadn’t come out.
“Stay low,” Thomas told the viscount. “The smoke rises, so the better air is near the ground.” He spared an instant to hug Loris, then wrapped a sodden cravat over his mouth and dashed into the stable.
“Nick! Where are you?”
“Penny won’t budge,” Nick shouted back. “Damned mare is terrified.”
Thomas was terrified too, because flames shot forth like serpents’ tongues from the hay mow.
“Get the hell out, Haddonfield,” Thomas yelled. “You can’t save them.”
“You get out,” Nick said. “I can almost—” Coughing followed. Thomas was close enough to Penny’s stall to see Nick, bent over at the waist, the mare crowded against the back wall.
The filly was tucked against her mother’s side and quivering in terror.
“Let’s push the filly out the door,” Thomas yelled. “Maybe Penny will follow.”
Nick nodded, though he was coughing continuously. Thomas passed him the wet cravat, got behind the filly, and pushed. Fairly snatched the filly’s halter, Nick added his efforts to Thomas’s, and by main strength they pushed nigh twenty stone of terrified baby horse into the barn aisle.
“Keep as low as you can,” Thomas said to Nick. “Better air. Penny’s coming.”
Between the fear of the fire and fear of losing sight of her baby, the mare had apparently decided to stick with her foal. Penny snorted, she pawed, she nearly knocked Thomas off his feet, and just when he thought the damned horse would be the death of them all, Loris loomed out of the smoke and grabbed Penny’s halter.
“Penny, settle down. Treasure is coming with us, and we’ll be away from this dreadful smoke.” Loris’s voice was as calm and soothing as cool water on a hot day, as comforting as a lullaby.
The big horse lunged forward, Treasure following on a panicked squeal. Daylight loomed mere yards away, when an enormous crash sounded from above, and sparks flew in all directions.
* * *
Penny mostly dragged Loris out of the barn, Treasure capering at her mother’s side. When Jamie jogged over to take hold of Penny, Loris was aware of two things.
First, her shoulder was on fire from within. Penny’s panic had wrenched something the wrong way ’round, and pain screamed down Loris’s arm and across her back.
Second, Fairly had given the filly a slap on the rump and turned back into the smoke and flames.
And neither he, nor Nick, nor Thomas had emerged.
Loris snatched a bucket from the nearest man—the housemaids, the footmen, everybody was on hand now—and doused herself from head to toe.
“You can’t go in there,” Beckman said, his voice a rasping growl as he blocked Loris’s path to the stable. “If I let you go in there, they’d all three take turns killing me.”
“Assuming any of them survives,” Loris said, dodging around him. “And they’ll kill me if I let you go back in there.”
She dropped to her knees and crawled to the open door, though more crashes and billows of smoke came from within. The heat was brutal, the thought of losing Thomas more painful still.
“Thomas!” she bellowed. “Follow my voice! The door is this way. Can you hear me?”
“Again!” came from the inferno within. “Where are you?”
“This way,” she shouted. “Come this way, toward me. Stay low and keep coming! You’re almost out, keep coming!”
Coughing sounded close to the door, then Thomas and Fairly loomed out of the smoke, both men bent low, each with one of Nick’s arms draped over his shoulder, an insensate Nick dragged between them.
“He’s alive,” Thomas gasped. “Took a bad rap on the noggin.”
They eased Nick to the ground, and Fairly hunched over him, hands braced on his knees.
Loris flew into Thomas’s embrace and held on tight with her one good arm. She was furious that his beautiful stable was going up in smoke, but grateful to her bones simply to hold him.
“You would have gone in after us,” he whispered, arms lashed around her. “You would have risked death—”
“I could not lose you,” she replied, nose mashed to his soaked collar. “I could not stand by and lose you like this.”
The bitter tang of smoke clung to Thomas’s wet clothing; here and there holes had been charred in the fabric, and a few feet away, Nick, now on his hands and knees, coughed viciously. A pandemonium of passed buckets, shouts, and loose horses was underscored by a distant rumble of thunder, but in Loris’s heart, all was well.
Thomas was safe, Nicholas, Fairly, Beck, Jamie… all safe. The horses, safe. Not a life lost, not a keepsake or memento taken without warning.
Thomas’s arms remained about her as he barked at two of the dairymen to get Nick into the shade. He sent Harry to the manor to fetch Fairly’s medical kit. A half-dozen small boys appeared from the direction of the pond, and Thomas set four of them to bringing trays of ale and cider down from the manor’s kitchen.
Two others, he dispatched through the woods to retrieve the magistrate. When Matthew Belmont’s name was mentioned, all of Loris’s relief fell away, to be replaced by a nagging, corrosive dread.
Papa was in the area, she was almost sure of it.
“I’m fine,” she told Thomas, though she might never be fine again. “You can let me go.”
He peered down at her, his face grimy, his blue eyes
more brilliant than ever. “Are you ready to let go of me?”
What an awful, portentous question. Loris had been clutching him with the arm that hadn’t been injured, and nobody had spared them so much as a glance. She took a step back.
“I’ll have Cook start sandwiches,” she said, rubbing at her wrenched shoulder, “and Nicholas should be taken up to the house.”
“You’re hurt,” Thomas said, as if she’d not spoken. “Damn it. Fairly, get over here!”
The viscount came at a trot from Nick’s side. “You bellowed?” Even the viscount’s voice was roughened by smoke.
“Loris is injured, and I will kill whoever set this fire. See to her, and I’ll have Nick brought up to the house. Beckman looks the worse for wear as well.”
“Beckman breathed too much smoke,” Fairly said, “as you have. I’ll want to see to your burns, Thomas, so appoint Jamie to manage the buckets and come along like a good fellow.”
Yes, please , Loris wanted to say. Come away from this awful destruction that my own father might have wrought.
“The magistrate will soon be here,” Thomas said. “Rain might obliterate critical evidence at any moment, and Jamie is wild to look after Penny and Treasure. My place is here.” He brushed a cool, smoky kiss to Loris’s cheek. “I’ll join you at the house when I’ve finished with Belmont. You and Nicholas are my guests until we determine how the fire started.”
In other words, Thomas already suspected arson.
“Give me a few more minutes with Nicholas and Beckman,” Fairly said. “I want to have a look at the shoulder, Miss Tanner, so away with you. Sutcliffe will fret about you if you’re underfoot, and he’s a prodigiously good fretter where the ladies are concerned.”
Loris accepted her dismissal with a meekness she didn’t feel. The fire might have been started by moldy hay, a spark from Jamie’s pipe, a lantern allowed to burn too low.
But it hadn’t been. She knew in her bones this fire hadn’t been an accident.
* * *
People saw what they expected to see. A drunk learned this early, and Micah Tanner was no exception. He’d learned to impersonate a sober fellow when a good quantity of spirits sloshed through his veins.
Then one day, he’d realized that even with a good quantity of spirits sloshing through his veins, he was mostly still sober. He’d set out to find exactly how much gin was required to render him drunk, and the answer had been a miserable, stinking lot.
He led his horse into the Trieshock livery stable, and because the hostlers were all busy, he saw to taking off the gelding’s saddle and bridle himself.
“I’ll be free in a minute, Mr. Henry,” one of the lads said as he led a team of wheelers past.
“Almost done,” Tanner replied. “There’s work enough for all in this heat.”
He offered the groom the smile of a fellow used to hard labor in all weather, and hoisted the saddle and pad from the horse’s back. The groom had expected to see a down-on-his-luck older fellow, possibly a schoolmaster between posts, maybe a tenant farmer from up north visiting a relative in the area. They’d exchanged a few words about the weather, about the monstrous Pavilion over in Brighton, about what a mess the Corsican had made of France.
Micah Tanner, the dapper, jovial, outgoing land agent from Linden, would not have seen to his own horse, would not have tarried in the heat for any reason when a drink was to be had elsewhere, would probably not even have risked his very neck to collect one headstrong, independent daughter before leaving England forever.
Micah was not proud of that fellow.
Manfred Henry, however, was a different creature entirely. In the two years since Tanner had acquired his new identity, he’d learned to put the drink aside before inebriation beckoned, to listen more than he talked, to make do with serviceable clothing and a serviceable horse, and to work.
He could repair harness, for example, and did so in exchange for his horse’s keep. He could shear sheep, pick grapes, teach at the dame schools, cut thatch, and drive sheep and cattle. All manner of skills he’d only observed or dabbled in had become necessary for his continued well-being.
Something else was necessary too. Loris must rejoin her Papa, no matter the risk or inconvenience to him. The time had come to set matters to rights, for Tanner did not like what he’d heard regarding the situation at Linden.
“Sorry, Mr. Henry,” the stable boy said, jogging down the stable aisle. “That Mr. Chesterton wants his horse again, and Mr. Timms says this time we’ll have our coin of him, because he has a satchel with him.”
“Good riddance,” Tanner muttered, low enough that only the lad would overhear. “I don’t envy the man’s horse.”
The poor thing had been cantered right up to the stable yard in a heaving lather just as Tanner had set out earlier in the day.
“I don’t envy Chesterton, if he tries to cheat old Timms,” the groom replied. “Brighton won’t be far enough if Timms is of a mind to track him down.”
Many a ship left from Brighton, though, and soon, Micah Tanner and the daughter he’d missed for too long would be on one of them.
* * *
Thomas was an experienced man of business, a titled lord, and a hard worker. He knew how to push himself, how to take command of chaos, how to force his mind to attend to details when exhaustion or emotion tried to distract him.
He did not know how to sit on the shady bench, stay out of the way, and merely watch as others threw bucket after bucket on the smoking, steaming wreck of the stable.
Thomas was just about to start throwing buckets himself when a blond fellow on a gray mare cantered up the drive. The mare had the fit, lean, tireless quality of an experienced hunter; the man on her back bore the same air and his seat was excellent.
“You’re Sutcliffe?” he asked, swinging down. “Matthew Belmont. Apologies for making your acquaintance under such circumstances, but I wanted to see the situation for myself before the heavens opened up.”
Brisk, businesslike, but not presuming, and not a fool either, thank God. Every time Thomas pictured Loris, poised to fly into the stable and rescue him, he felt sick all over again. Belmont would get to the bottom of this fire, and then Thomas could sleep at night.
“Mr. Belmont, my thanks for your prompt arrival. Sutcliffe, at your service, though somewhat the worse for the day’s events.”
“Any casualties?” Belmont asked, loosening his mare’s girth and slipping off her bridle.
“Not a one, not a horse, not a cat, not a stable lad,” Thomas replied, “and that bothers me.”
Belmont hung the bridle over the back of the bench, and the mare, apparently accustomed to this routine, began to graze in the oak’s shade.
“You’re bothered by a backhanded miracle, Sutcliffe?” Belmont asked, stripping off his gloves. “Let’s have a look while you explain yourself, lest we’re caught in another much-needed downpour.”
Belmont led Thomas on an inspection of the ruins. The magistrate was rangy and weathered, probably five years Thomas’s senior. Thomas recalled him greeting Loris at market, and Loris had seemed genuinely pleased with the squire’s company.
Matthew Belmont was not a young man, not hot-headed.
Not married, either, and though he looked like he’d seen many a winter gale or blistering summer day, Belmont was attractive in the way of the blond, blue-eyed gentry who’d been working the Sussex land for centuries.
“I’m not sure there’s much to see,” Thomas said. “My stable is a complete loss. The horses Beck and Jamie didn’t get out, Nick, Fairly, and I were able to save. No serious injuries, I hope, though Miss Tanner’s shoulder will pain her for a while, and Nick took a blow to the head.”
“A hard head,” Belmont said, peering at the blackened timbers pointing skyward. “Your fire started near the roof; otherwise, the remains of the barn would be top heavy, not bottom heavy.”
Thomas needed to be up at the manor, making certain that Loris’s shoulder injury was minor,
and yet he also needed to be here, where answers might be found.
“How can you tell where a fire starts?”
They’d walked around the entire ruin and now stood upwind of the stable, and yet the scent of smoke was thick in the air.
“When a fire starts low,” Belmont said, shading his eyes, “the roof often survives as part of the burned shell. We wet the buildings down from the outside and leave the fire to consume the center. But you have no roof left, and your main cross-beams have fallen in, though two of your walls are standing.”
“You conclude from that the fire started high?”
“Not only that,” the squire went on, starting on another circuit of the barn’s foundation. “The prevailing wind here—such as it’s been of late—is from the south, which means the fire, had it started externally, might have left the south wall standing, unless the flames originated at or outside the south wall. Your south wall is partly standing, and yet your east and north walls are not. The conflagration was not wind-driven—the flames were not pushed from south to north—therefore, the fire was initially confined to the inside of your barn.”
Across the garden, a flash of blue suggested Loris was on her way back to Thomas’s side. She was in clean clothes, her hair brushed and braided. Thomas’s worry subsided a grudging inch, for surely, if her shoulder were badly injured, Fairly would not have allowed her from the house?
“So the issue becomes, how did somebody gain access to the barn,” Thomas said, “assuming one of my own staff didn’t set the fire.”
Belmont wiped his brow with his sleeve. “Excellent question, and how did that person gain access to your hayloft, specifically?”
Thomas brought to mind the image of his stable as it had been at the start of the day, an elegant, serviceable establishment that maximized the comfort of its inhabitants and the efficiency of its operations.
“The hayloft had three points of access,” Thomas said, “not counting the hay port door itself. You could climb to it from the ladder beside the hay port out front, use the ladder inside the barn, or using the third ladder, also outside, enter onto the back of the mow.”
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