I Thee Wed (28 page)

T
HE smoke began to thicken dangerously in a matter of seconds. Francesca had backed as far as she could from the burning doors, but the pollution had already filled the upper portion of the high-ceilinged laboratory and was pooling lower every minute.

For the first time thankful for her own short stature, Francesca kept low and tried to think past the panic simmering in her blood.

She had tried to leave immediately after hearing the shattering of glass as it impacted the large wooden doors, but the metal latches were already sizzling hot to the touch. Still, she had pressed as close as she dared, shouting for help with increasing alarm. Then she'd been forced to scramble back from the burning substance spreading from beneath the door.

Next she had tried the windows. It hadn't been difficult to break the glass, but the heavy grilles framing the panes had been made to discourage thieves from helping themselves to the priceless laboratory equipment. She was not strong enough
to snap them, even after snatching up Judith's heavy gloves to protect herself from the broken glass.

The airway provided by the broken window pulled heartily at the black smoke, funneling it to the outdoors. This made it impossible to breathe the fresh air as she had hoped to do.

The stone floor was still cool and the air there relatively pure. Francesca crawled beneath one of the marble laboratory tables and hugged her knees to her chest.

Someone would come. Someone would see the rising smoke—except that it was full night outside.

Someone in the house would spot the flames—though Sir Geoffrey and the others were still out and she'd sent all the footmen on luggage- and rabbit-related errands!

They would surely return shortly, but fire was a swift and dangerous creature. It killed quickly, by asphyxiation if not actual burning.

She began to cough, even as low as she was. The smoke tore at her throat and lungs and made her eyes stream with tears.

The flames had consumed the doors and were now climbing, licking upward, always upward, until the ceiling and beams had caught eagerly.

Francesca stilled the overwhelming panic that swept her. She had to find a way to get clear air, or she would not survive long enough to be rescued.

Something like a tube, or a pipe, that she could put through a window—

With shaking hands, she began to rip frantically at the gleaming copper distillation device. Wrenching with all her might, she managed to disconnect one end of a yard-long stretch of piping.

She put one foot against the device and yanked with her entire body. The pipe came free.

With her pipe clasped in triumphant hands, she began to move toward the windows, but the black smoke hung so low
in the room that she could not find them. All she could see were the flames above her head.

Instead, she crawled across the floor to the drain set in the paving.

It was no wider across than her spread hand, but if she could get the cover off, she could push the end of the pipe down the drain, into cool, clear airspace.

Someone will come. All I have to do is survive until someone comes.
She wrapped her hand around the pipe, then began to feed it into the open drain. The last crook of the pipe refused to go into the hole. Francesca compromised by rolling into a ball on her side and putting her lips to the pipe.

Dank, cool air filled her lungs. It smelled of pond scum and earth. It was wonderful.

The brightness of the burning ceiling made her turn her eyes away. She pressed her cheek to the stone floor and threw one arm over her face to shield herself from the scorching heat from above.

She could breathe, but how long could she bear the heat?

No one was coming, were they?

Orion, I need you. Please come.

Please hurry
.

*   *   *

I
T HAD TAKEN
Orion far too long to obtain a hackney cab on the Strand outside Somerset House. A steady stream of Fraternity members poured from the hall, some furious, some still laughing at the fall of Sir Geoffrey Blayne.

Orion beat out two fellows who had paused to reenact the bit about the “doltish perambulators” by ducking around them and frankly stealing their ride home.
Terribly sorry, chaps, but I have a woman to kiss!

He smiled as he gave the driver the address of Blayne House and settled back into the worn velvet cushions of the carriage. His lovely Francesca awaited him there, with her dancing grace and easy laughter. She would be furious with
him, he had no doubt. However, his plan included abject apology, followed by many, many kisses.

He would kiss her protests away, and soon her fury would be diverted into passion, and she would melt against him in the way that meant she was entirely his.

Orion didn't know what they would do after that, and frankly he didn't much care. They could go raise bunnies in Shropshire for all it mattered to him. He simply knew that if his future did not include that delicious woman, he didn't want it!

The traffic impeded the progress of the cabbie until Orion, tapping his fingers impatiently, opened the door and stepped out of the slowly inching carriage.

“Oy! Ye can't just go—”

Orion tossed the man a coin without even checking the denomination and began to run, ducking the moving carts and carriages with all the practice of a misspent London childhood.

Once he reached the sidewalk, he stretched his long legs and ran eagerly. A mile passed. Then another half mile. Then he turned the corner and passed the park where he and Judith had strolled just a few days and a hundred years before.

Judith would be just fine, he assured himself as he ran. Better to be disappointed in a possible engagement than married to someone who longed for another—and always would!

Francesca, Francesca. Her name sounded in the pounding of his boots on the cobbles. His beautiful, joyous, magical Francesca.

He took the five steps at the entrance to Blayne House in a single bound. He pushed the door open so hard, it rebounded on the wall behind him.

“Francesca!”

He ran up the stairs. Her bedchamber door stood slightly open. He burst through and stopped in the center of the room.

The luxurious gown of gold silk was displayed on the coverlet, along with Calliope's book of botanical illustrations.
On the writing desk was his quill, the bright blue macaw feather he had given her when hers snapped. Orion reeled—the rest of the room was devoid of her presence. The doors to the wardrobe were flung open, revealing empty shelves and hooks.

The message was clear—Francesca was gone, but she did not take with her anything that reminded her of Orion. The dress she wore the night she told him she loved him. The quill. His sister's book.

Gone? How could she be gone already? It took his mother and sisters days to pack for a journey!

He left the empty room behind him, running for the stairs. One place where he could always find Francesca—wherever there was food!

But the kitchens were cold and dark. Orion ran through the cookery and the bakery and larder and even ducked into the scullery.

The scullery was not as dark as the rest of the kitchens. The orange glow in the room made Orion step through the doorway and into the room to look through the small window.

His breath caught and his body froze at the sight of the laboratory. The great barnlike building was violently aflame, lighting the entire grounds behind the house with the blaze!

Orion raced from the scullery. None of the distance he had traversed this evening on foot felt as long as the mere yards out to the gardens and the laboratory—

And Francesca.

He didn't know how he knew. It wasn't logical. All her things were gone. By all the evidence, she had clearly left Blayne House, yet he knew she was there, in the center of that hellish blaze.

He stopped just short of the flames, throwing his hands up to guard his face from the heat. The great doors were gone, the charred and burning planks fallen this way and that on the lawn before the building. The opening gaped, a great flaming mouth to a burning cave.

A servant ran up to him with a bucket. “Sir, we sent someone to fetch the fire brigade, but . . .” The young footman's voice trailed off as he gazed hopelessly at the laboratory. “Himself has lost his mind, he has. Sittin' on his arse in the cutting garden, laughin' away like a bedlamite!”

Orion wasn't listening. Francesca. He turned to the footman and snatched the bucket of water from his unresisting hands. Without hesitation, Orion poured half the water over his head, soaking his hair and clothing. Logic could not help him now. Only Worthington madness would do.

Full combustion, just as she had warned him.

Still holding the half-full bucket, he walked into the fire.

D
AWN light streaked the sky. Black coals glowed red in the blackened rubble of the laboratory. The stone walls still stood, a mocking shell holding nothing but a family's pain.

Attie stood just outside that skeletal edifice, her green pupils vivid in her reddened eyes. Her skinny arms were wrapped tightly about her shuddering form, but her pale cheeks were dry. Attie didn't cry like other people.

Castor and Lysander helped Archie into the rubble, kicking aside the worst of the still-scorching timbers. “I want to see,” Archie said. His lined face sagged as it never had before, having always been held up with his wistful smile.

“You don't.” Lysander's voice was flat and rough, but his expression was rigid with tension. “You truly don't.”

Castor held his father about the shoulders without speaking.

Iris drifted about the garden. Judith watched Orion's mother smile at a blue butterfly fluttering through a stream of smoke. She looked to where a very weary Miranda, whom she'd just met but liked very much, was seated on the edge of
the fountain, her cheeks wet with tears. “Does she understand that her son is gone?”

Miranda shook her head. “She doesn't want to. So she won't see it. She has a rather special mind.” Miranda held out a hand to Judith, who took it briefly. “I'm sorry about your cousin. Were you very close?”

Judith looked away, gazing at the garden instead of the blackened shell of the laboratory. “No . . . but we might have been, someday. She . . . I liked her. I simply didn't like me.”

Asher, who had not left her side since she had kissed him, pulled her close to his side as if to protect her from her losses.

When she and Asher had returned to Blayne House last night, prepared to challenge Sir Geoffrey to cancel his plans to force her to wed Orion, they had found the house in shambles, the front hall sooty and muddy and strangers running through it with axes and buckets.

Following the fire brigade through the house, they had emerged in the garden to see the laboratory engulfed in flames. “Papa!”

One of the footmen heard her cry. “He's sittin' in the poppy patch, chucklin' away,” the man told her with disdain. “The mad bugger burned his own shop down!”

“What? I don't believe you!”

The footman held up the top half of Papa's cut crystal brandy decanter. “Do you believe this? He shoved his cravat in for a wick and tossed it at the door.”

“But he's not hurt?”

The footman stared at her. “He's just fine, if bein' mad don't count. The other bloke, Worthington, ran into the fire and didn't come out. Nutters, all of 'em!”

Judith was quite sure there was only one thing that Orion Worthington would die for.

Francesca.

She had lost them both, as had all these people around her, strangers who had become like her family in these last hours, ties forged by bonds of grief.

No one had held her answerable for her father's misdeeds. That tore at Judith, for she most certainly blamed herself. She had missed her father's public shaming last night because she had lost herself in Asher's kisses. There was no way Orion could have known how close her father's irrationality skated on the edge of madness.

I should have seen it.
She held tight to Asher's hand.
I should have realized that someday he would do something terrible.
The poppies always loosed his rage—and last night's debacle at the presentation hall would have brought on the rage to end all rages!

The Worthingtons' cousin, Bliss, emerged from the house with a glass of water for Miranda. After seeing to the pregnant woman, Bliss came to stand with Judith and Asher as they overlooked the search of the rubble.

Bliss was a comely girl, her blond looks as warm and inviting as Judith's were restrained and cool. Her wide blue eyes took in the scorched rubble of the Blayne family honor with solemn gravity.

Then she looked at Judith. “Your father didn't know anyone was inside.”

Judith blinked. “What?”

Bliss tilted her head back toward the house. “He's awake again but still talking about unicorn dung and flaming brandy. He's waxing quite confessional. However, it's clear that he thought he was burning down an empty lab. No one has told him differently yet.”

Judith closed her lids briefly. Her eyes felt hot from the tears and the night full of flames. “It doesn't really change anything, though, does it?”

Bliss gazed at her evenly. “I would want to know, if it were my father.”

Judith nodded. It did help, a little, to know that her father's failings did not include premeditated murder.

Bliss turned away with what Judith had come to think of as typical Worthington brevity of farewell. Then she turned
back. “Also, perhaps you ought to consider scouring out the fountain.”

Orion's eldest brother, Dade, had forged farther into the wreckage than the others. Judith saw him tossing rubble and burned timbers aside. Then he bent to pull a large slab of blackened marble up with his bare hands, his wide shoulder muscles bulging. “I found them,” he called over his shoulder, his voice strained from the effort of lifting.

Asher left Judith's side, bounding over the fallen timbers to help. Lysander, Castor, and Archie scrambled closer as well. It took four men to pull away the remains of two marble tables.

Soon they were all gathered around the single nonscorched area of laboratory floor. The slabs of marble had been tented over the area, blocking it from the flames.

“Oh my, they do make a handsome couple.”

Judith turned in horror to see Iris standing next to her. Her blue eyes were vague and dreamy as she gazed down at the two bodies in the rubble.

Judith supposed that Mrs. Worthington could not be blamed for her fantasy. Orion and Francesca, though soot-stained and singed, really did look as if they had merely chosen a decidedly odd place for a nap.

They lay wrapped in each other's arms on the floor, nose to nose, with Francesca's smaller form curled up like a child while Orion's longer body formed a C-shape around her. Francesca's singed hair covered both their faces.

Archie moved to his wife's side and passed one hand over his wet eyes while he held her hand in his other one. “Let's step away now, dearest. Make way for the boys to—”

Cough.

Then a deeper
cough-cough
.

The gathered mourners watched with stunned shock—all but for Iris, of course—as one of Francesca's small, soot-covered hands moved. It traveled up Orion's arm, then shakily moved to push back Francesca's hair from both their faces.

Orion's hand moved up to catch Francesca's smaller one in his.

“I think we're being rescued, Chessa.”

“About bloody time,” she said hoarsely from under singed locks of hair. “I need a visit to the outhouse.”

That was when the shocked watchers let out varying cries of delight and celebration. Attie scrambled into the valley left by the debris and threw herself onto Orion.

“Oof.”
Orion gave Attie a weary squeeze, then pushed her off. With Lysander's help, he rose stiffly to his feet. Then he reached for Francesca.

She clambered shakily upright, then leaned into his arms, twining her own around his back. “Mr. Worthington, I fear our tryst has been discovered.” Her voice was a dry rasp.

He sighed and held her close, although his arms could scarcely move. The two of them were reddened and scorched, and Francesca was going to have to cut off a great deal of hair, but they were quite miraculously alive. “There's no help for it, then. You're going to have to marry me.”

She leaned her head back. Her smile was a white flash in her soot-coated features. “Say it again. Practice makes perfect.”

His laugh was hardly more than a wheeze. How magical was a world with Francesca in it! He would face a thousand firestorms to keep her right where she was. “I love you, Chessa. I cannot live without you. Please, say you will wed me?”

She opened her lips to reply—and her stomach growled loudly enough for all to hear. Amid the laughter and the helping hands and glasses of cool water, Orion never did hear her response.

Iris came to embrace him gently. “What a pretty thing she is,” she said to him. “Your children will be very attractive. Maybe they will get her eyes, hmm?”

Orion sighed. His mother was a Lamarckist.

Iris wandered off to pick poppies. Orion turned to go to
Francesca before someone else came to touch him to make sure he was truly alive.

Judith and Asher Langford stood before him. Judith's eyes were very red, and as she gazed at him, she let out a small, broken sound. She pressed a hand over her lips, but her guilt-ridden eyes spoke volumes.

Orion shook his head. “It wasn't your fault. You were just trying to help your father. You need not have to feel shame for your part in it.”

“The engagement was a ruse, or rather it was supposed to be. I think when he realized how brilliant you are, he wanted to keep you around forever.”

Orion was too weary to let the news disturb him. “It is my own fault I fell for it. I should not have considered such a cold-blooded arrangement.”

Judith bit her lip and nodded. She began to turn away, then suddenly turned back. “I was supposed to burn the assistants' notes, once I had copied them into Papa's handwriting. I didn't burn yours. They're in my—”

“I'll get them!” Attie popped up between them. “I know right where they are!” She ran off on swift, skinny legs.

Orion ducked away, looking for Francesca. He saw her sitting next to Miranda, as she dolefully examined the ends of her hair. Then his brother Castor touched his shoulder. Orion winced. His body ached all over.

“Lysander and I are glad you both made it out alive,” Castor began. Beside him, Lysander loomed silently. The entire family was accustomed to speaking for Zander. Cas went on. “But we can't figure it out. I can see that the marble tabletops protected you from the worst of the heat. It was a good idea to tent them together like that, but how could you breathe?”

Orion grinned at his inventor brother. “Copper piping. Floor drain. Go suss it out. I want Chessa.”

Enlightened, Cas pulled Zander away to go examine the scene again. Orion headed to where Miranda sat, but Chessa was gone.

Dade caught him then. “It took four of us to move those slabs,” he said. “It would be impossible for one man. How did you do it?”

It was strange, but Orion remembered that it had seemed quite possible at the time. He would be very sore, very soon, he could tell—but he shouldn't have been able to do it at all. Orion looked his eldest brother in the eye. “Magic.”

Dade blinked. “I don't know what you mean.”

Orion shook his head. Dade had never been in love. He didn't understand how a man could move a mountain to save the woman he loved. Orion gave Dade a wry grin. “Maybe someday you will.”

Then he spotted Francesca finally, standing alone at last. She stood by the charred rubble, looking thoughtful. He forced his tired body to move quickly, reaching her side before he lost her again.

He put his arm around her waist from behind, out of affection and also to make her hold still. “We made it out alive,” he murmured, thinking she was reliving the terror they'd felt, clinging to each other while the fire blazed around them and not knowing if they could survive the dangerous heat.

She leaned back into him. “I know. You were magnificent, heaving those tables over.”

His muscles would make him pay for that for days. He smiled down into her hair. “You were brilliant, tapping into the drain system for clear air.”

“That was clever, wasn't it?”

He could hear the smile in her raspy voice. When he had jumped through the flames, shouting her name, she had screamed for him as loud as she could, but she'd obviously screamed her voice away. For a horrible few minutes, he hadn't been able to find her.

Shaking off that terrible memory, Orion dropped his face into her scorched and smoky hair. “You didn't answer my question,” he whispered.

“What question was that, Mr. Worthington?”

Orion smiled. His iron-willed Chessa. He hoped she would lead him a merry chase for the rest of his life. Turning her gently to face him, he took her hand in his. Then he dropped to one knee before her.

Her eyes widened. She hadn't expected it, he knew.

“Miss Francesca Penrose, it is not enough to tell you that I love you.”

She bit her lip. Then the gesture transformed into a wistful little smile.

“I love that you can't go to sleep at night, just like me,” he began.

Her smile widened until he felt that the sun had broken through the clouds.

“I love that you have strong opinions and that you have no trouble telling me you think I am wrong.”

Orion heard a muffled hoot from Cas behind him and knew that his family was watching. It didn't matter. “I love that you name your specimens. I love that you are kind to my family. I love your bread. I love your
lasagne
and your Bolognese.” He smiled softly just for her. “I love your iced seed cake.”

She developed a dimple in one cheek at that.

“I love your unconquerable spirit.” He kissed the tips of the fingers he held in his hand. “I love the way you dance.”

He heard Iris sigh. “It's just like a play!”

Orion went on before Archie could begin quoting the Bard. “And most of all, I love the way you kiss me as if we were the only two people in the entire world.”

With that, he tugged gently on her hand until she sat on his knee. She took his seared face gently in her cool, sooty hands.

“Like this?” Then, as if no one watched them at all, she kissed him with such tender passion that it made his heart thrum faster at the same time as it made the world slow to a stop.