Now that he looked at her—her fine features, her beautifully sewn cloak, he recognized that she wasn’t part of the group of staff members beside her. Rather, she was perhaps the lady of the house, yanked from her bed in the middle of the night.
Ernest took a firm step toward her and said, “Excuse me, my lady. Can you tell me what’s happened?”
The woman blinked enormous eyes toward him. It was as though she’d lost all ability to see, with her panic. She staggered a bit, seemingly drunk, although Ernest knew she was just awash with worry.
“Sir, I haven’t a clue what’s happened. Our beautiful home! Our world!” She sniffed and her lips parted, showing crooked teeth.
“Is everyone out? Is everyone all right?” Ernest felt fidgety, leaping from foot to foot, preparing fully to dive into the burning building.
“My niece. The daughter of the house… I couldn’t believe it, sir,” the woman sputtered. “She learned that the maid—one she’s had since she was a girl—was trapped inside. My niece was safe out here with the rest of us, and she just… just rushed back in! We haven’t seen her in many minutes, sir, and the fire has only grown. Look at it. It’s fully destroyed…”
“You’re saying a girl went back in?” Ernest demanded, incredulous. “How old?”
“She’s just turned 23, sir,” the woman continued. “She’s never been afraid of anything, sir, and now I’m terrified it’s destroyed her. I just… I can’t live with myself if…” She dropped her face into her palms and shook wildly, then fell to her knees.
Suddenly, the crowd outside gasped. Ernest flashed his eyes back toward the door to see a woman appear, bursting out of the front. The woman was dressed in a long, grey nightdress, and her white curls spilled down her back. It was clear that this was the maid, the woman the daughter of the house had returned to save.
“But where is she?” the woman, now on her knees, demanded, her voice a screech. “WHERE IS DIANA?”
Diana. The name seared itself across Ernest’s brain. What kind of reckless, wild individual had rushed back in to save the maid—and then successfully saved the maid—only to remain inside? The maid rushed forward, gripping her skirts. Her face was blotchy with ash.
Behind the maid, the ceiling of the foyer collapsed—just shot down to the ground, joining together the second and ground floors. Ernest staggered forward at the sound, hearing the staff and family members behind him cry out. The maid fell to the ground, her hands across her face. When Ernest reached her, she peered up at him, whispering, “She knew the ceiling was going to collapse. She told me to go first—to run as fast as I could. That she would find another way out. I saw her head back upstairs…”
As Ernest shot toward the house, he could feel the eyes of the crowd behind him, could even feel their judgment. What on Earth did he think he could do, in the raucous arms of this fire?
Once he reached the front door, he saw the devastation of the crumbling ceiling. All four walls of the foyer were completely scorched or on fire. A tapestry hung as if by a string, ready to crash to the ground.
It was clear that if Ernest wanted to enter the burning mansion, he simply couldn’t do it in this manner. He hesitated, assessing the scene. His eyes traced toward a tree located just beside him, blanketed in smoke and stretching up toward the black sky. With as much strength as he could muster, he sprung toward it, drawing his hand across the first branch. He felt like his much younger self, the boy who’d climbed trees and cried out with his friends—Marvin, Adam, and Peter, the very ones Grace insisted he no longer know—and used all his strength to barrel to the second floor. He peered into the window just beyond, noting that this part of the house still had its walls, floor, and ceiling intact.
Slowly, yet still very conscious of the passage of time, Ernest shuffled down to the edge of the branch, then drew his leg out toward the windowsill. With a rush of adrenaline, he leapt from the tree and into the window, where he crawled onto the floor. He erupted back to his feet, his eyes flashing back and forth, to find himself in a bedroom, as-yet untouched by the fire. Seeing it this way, mere minutes before it would crumble to nothingness, felt a bit like seeing a ghost. He would be the last human to ever set foot in this room.
Without wasting another moment, he hustled to the hallway, which held within it a river of smoke. He paused in the doorway for a moment and yelled out, “Diana!” but heard no answer. Inhaling the last of the half-clean air from within the bedroom, he drew his shirt over his mouth and began to stride down the hallway, unsure of what exactly he was looking for. The fire was a crisp and assertive presence near the staircase, with a very thin path between the flickering flames and the wall. If he trusted what the maid had told him, then Diana had hustled back up these very stairs but had surely not proceeded in this direction, as it was mostly blocked.
Ernest drummed up as much passion and energy as he could. His head throbbing, he thrust himself through the thin path, diving toward the far end of the hallway. He felt the flames flicker at his sleeves, singeing the fabric. Although he didn’t breathe the air, he felt sure it was filled with the smell of his own clothing, burning.
Once he passed through the wretched patch, he hollered the girl’s name again. “Diana!” But nothing echoed back. He felt the minutes passing far too swiftly, knowing that every moment that passed brought him closer to his own death. If he made a mistake, he would crumble with the mansion. The ceiling would fall over his head. He would be nothing but ash, just as dead as his father.
He shoved the thought from his mind and continued to wander through the hallways. The ceilings were tall and regal, showing the incredible history of the building—one that was growing more and more lost by the moment. He swept past an enormous painting, one that would soon melt away. On it, a beautiful girl of around 15 or 16 posed alongside an older man, perhaps her father. No mother stood in sight. With a lurch, Ernest had to imagine that she, too, had lost her mother, as he had when he was 13 years old. His memories of his mother were glossy and unsure, like images that arise of memories of your dreams.
Ernest barrelled forward. The smoke had increased significantly, and his eyes burned with it, making it difficult to keep them wide open. He called Diana’s name multiple times, almost as a song, now, but never heard an answer back.
Finally, when he reached the end of the next hall, something caught Ernest’s eye. He yanked to his right to find a woman stretched out in the corner in a white nightdress, as though she’d collapsed. Her black hair swept down her back in wild curls, and her feet were stained with ash. He shot toward her and fell to his knees, placing two fingers at her wrist.
“Don’t do this to me, Diana,” he pleaded, as though she owed him anything at all. “You have to stay alive.”
A faint pulse raised itself up to her skin, pressing feebly against his fingers. He heaved a sigh of relief. She was still alive, at least for the time being.
“Come on,” he muttered to himself. As gently as he could, he moved Diana to her side. As he did, her face came up fully before him: a long, delicate nose, supple lips, long lashes. His heart burst against his rib cage. Downstairs, he heard the sound of another ceiling crashing in toward the floor. The entire building would be on the ground within minutes.
With the last of his strength, Ernest heaved Diana into his arms. For a moment, he thought she stirred, but then her head was cast to the side. He drew his hand beneath her head, catching it right before it fell too far. He felt he was transporting an important vessel.
But he hadn’t a clue how to get out of the house. Back where he’d come, fire had filtered through the hallways, growing hungrier as it expanded. He burst in the opposite direction, careful to keep Diana against him. He turned his head right and left as he passed various rooms, trying to stay abreast of his exact location, based on the exterior of the house. But it seemed that this far down, the trees no longer extended their branches to the windows.
At the very end of the hallway, Ernest found a small sta
ff-only staircase, one that circled down the side of the mansion. Carefully, he pushed open the door, ensuring the staircase wasn’t awash with smoke. He coughed and ventured onto the concrete steps, carrying Diana slowly down the staircase. With every step, he prayed he wouldn’t lose his balance. In the event that he did, he knew he’d have to fall backwards, rather than forward, saving Diana and perhaps injuring himself. It was the only way.
Finally, he reached the bottom and tore his shoulder into the side door. He burst into the dark night of the side garden, still thick with smoke. He cut through it, darting toward the front of the house. When he appeared to the staff and family members near the outer cropping of trees, he felt every single eye upon him. No one made a single move.
When he neared the crowd, he chose a nearby tree and laid Diana delicately across the grass. As he did, he smoothed her hair to either side of her decollate face, gazing at her. Hunched over her, on his knees, he realized he was holding his breath. Every inch of his heart felt frozen with the pure beauty of her. He’d never seen someone quite like her.
But lately, Ernest had been surrounded with the concept of death. He’d watched his father disappear from the world. One moment, he’d been upright and laughing with Ernest in his study, his belly quaking. And the next, he’d whittled away, turning green and then a grisly, pale yellow.
Ernest drew back, his heart squeezed with fear. There was nothing that promised this impossibly beautiful woman would stay around for long, nothing that assured him she would live. He had to guard himself.
There was simply no telling where this life would take him.
The woman Ernest had initially encountered approached from the side and fell to her knees beside him. She shook violently and reached for her niece’s hand with her sandy, aging one. Ernest shuffled to the side a bit, blinking up as an older man, the very same one from the painting, limped up from the crowd. He looked rickety and fatigued, perhaps sickly. He stabbed the cane in his right hand into the mossy ground beside Ernest, blinking down at his daughter.
“My Christ,” he murmured.
In the silence, Ernest hurriedly ripped his jacket from his shoulders and bundled it up. He lifted Diana’s head from the grass and tucked the jacket beneath it, making it into a kind of pillow.
“Why did she go back in, Renata?” the father asked, his voice low and harsh. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
“You know how difficult it is to stop her from doing anything!” Renata, the aunt—and, assuredly, the sister of the man—returned. “She has a mind of her own.”
“But it could have killed her. Perhaps it did,” the man hissed.
Ernest couldn’t tear his eyes from the young woman’s unconscious form. With each blink, he imagined a near-impossible reality, one in which she awoke and found him equally handsome, equally heroic, equally interesting. For reasons he couldn’t fully divulge, even to himself, he felt he already knew what her voice sounded like. Yes, she was a complete and total mystery to him. And yet, he also knew something staggeringly beautiful about her: she’d risked her own life to save the maid’s.
Suddenly, Ernest whipped his head toward the father, feeling an overzealous wave of energy. “It’s imperative that a doctor is sent for. There. That servant. He looks sprightly enough. And the horses, they’ve been saved?”
The old man nodded and cranked round to look at the servant, who had been staring at them anyway. “You heard him, boy,” he croaked. “Go retrieve the doctor. My daughter’s life is at stake.”
Ernest returned his eyes to Diana, swiping his handkerchief across her cheeks and forehead. The aunt drew her own handkerchief from her pocket and drew it along Diana’s hands and feet and ankles. A light rain pattered over them, sizzling against the fire.
“We really can’t thank you enough for going back in, sir,” Renata said, her voice sounding as though it was caught in her throat. “I couldn’t have imagined going in myself. I was overcome with fear. And Diana’s father—here, Lord Chester Haddington, of the landed gentry—he’s far too ill for any such heroism.”
At this, Lord Harrington dropped his chin to his chest, seemingly aghast at his own shortcomings.
“It’s quite all right. It was the least I could do,” Ernest affirmed. He’d never felt anything more genuinely in his life. For this strange moment, he’d forgotten that Rose and Grace awaited him in the carriage. They could have been a million miles away.
“How did the fire begin?” he asked, stitching his brows together.
Lord Harrington turned toward his mansion, gripping the cane with both hands. “It’s difficult to say. And I daren’t pass judgment,” he said, his voice heavy with a sigh. “I’ve lived here my entire life. I was born upstairs. And my father, he, too, was born in the same room that I was. The estate has been passed down, first son to first son, for four generations. And now, it’s gone. Although I suppose I didn’t have a proper heir to lend to it…”
“Brother, this isn’t your fault,” Renata chirped. She drew a sharp line with her eyes toward the servants, seemingly preparing to cast blame.
But Lord Harrington spoke over her, his voice far louder than his frail body should have allowed. “I didn’t imagine anything like this. Ever, in my life. After the death of my wife, I thought, surely, the devastation was over. But only more was coming. And perhaps more will still come.”
Ernest felt these words across his shoulders, a weight. He pressed his lips together for a moment, pondering, before saying, “I know precisely what you mean, my lord. I’ve just lost my father, after losing my mother thirteen years before, during the birth of my sister. I’ll be praying only for more goodwill to come to your family.”
Diana’s father’s face was stoic, difficult to read, almost stony. He gazed at Ernest, almost incredulous, before saying, “Those are kind words, son. But I don’t believe they’ll allow for us to have a home in the near future, will they? My god, I’ll have to send the servants away. Some of them have been with me all of their lives. This has been their home as much as mine…”
Ernest burned with a level of confidence that he could hardly recognize in himself. He thought about his massive, echoing estate, all the more empty in the wake of his father’s death. As his father—and now he—was an earl, the rooms were mighty and many, the dining hall was grand and suited many.
“There simply isn’t a reason that the lot of you couldn’t come reside with me until you figure out what to do next,” Ernest offered. He felt he should have stood during these words, yet nothing could have ripped him up from his stance beside Diana, the beautiful.
Lord Harrington and his sister exchanged nonplussed glances. Ernest cleared his throat, sensing he needed to clear the air with a bit more information.
“I’m terribly sorry, but my name is Lord Ernest Bannerman. I’ve been named the new earl of the region,” he continued. “My estate is quite grand, as you can imagine. Perhaps it hasn’t the nostalgia of this, your burning home. But it’s a warm place to rest your head for the time being, and I would be grateful to host.”
This time, the look exchanged between Renata and Lord Harrington was a bit clearer.
“The earl!” Renata marvelled, blinking back toward Ernest. “I can hardly imagine such a thing. How did you come to find us? How did you come to—to our burning home, of all places…”
Ernest’s lips parted as he prepared to explain everything—the carriage passing by, the fire in the distance. But as he did, his eyes focused just beyond Lord Harrington, where the wretched, scrunched face of his fiancée appeared just beyond the tree. She gripped her skirts, lifting them high as she marched through the grass. She’d never been particularly keen on the outdoors, and now was no different.
But a second later, Rose burst ahead of Grace, her face determined. She swept toward Ernest, dropping immediately to her knees, regardless of the muddy grass, and gazing down at the unconscious woman before them. Her lips formed a round O before she spoke, “My goodness, Ernest. What did yo
u do?”
“He went in after her,” Renata called, before falling into a sort of guttural, horrific cough.
Rose returned to her feet, glancing to and fro. She stared down at Ernest, eyebrows low, and demanded, “Have you ensured these people have water? They surely need it. All that smoke.”
A Seductive Lady Rescued From Flames (Historical Regency Romance) Page 3
