Echoes in Stone (14 page)

“Tonight you’ll die, Jezebel, just as Lily died. The fires will purify you, expiate your sins. You’re a harlot, a woman of sin. Only fire will cleanse you.” Susanna laughed, a hideous sound from her grim, misshapen mouth.

Jessa closed her eyes, covering them with her arm to protect them from the fire, which was now unbearably hot and bright. The pounding of the galloping horse’s hooves stopped. A splintering crash brought Jessa upright in her bed.

Her room was ablaze.

“Jessa! My God Jessa, get out of there!”

As before, strong arms scooped her from her bed. Dash. Somewhere in the last minutes she’d stopped dreaming and awakened into a nightmare world. She gasped, drawing acrid smoke into her lungs. The fire climbed her bed curtains, threatening to engulf the bed.

The bed where she’d lain only seconds before.

Dash pressed her face to his chest, crouched, and staggered to the door with her through the clouds of black smoke.

Raucous confusion greeted her as Dash burst into the hall. Maids and footmen darted about with blankets and buckets of water.

“Her nightgown. My God, her nightgown!” That was Mrs. Penrose’s voice. Jessa found herself dropped to the floor, wrapped in a rug, rolled about. Hands beat at her before she was unwrapped and once more swung in the air. She was transferred to another pair of waiting arms.

“Winston, get her out of here. Take her to the other wing. Get one of the maids to stay with her. Under no circumstances leave her alone.”

Dash turned back toward the flames in her room. She tried to call out to him, to stop him, but her throat was raw, her voice harsh from the smoke she’d inhaled.

“Lily! Dash, Lily is in there! Dash, dear God, Dash, you have to save her!”

He didn’t even turn towards her. It was if she’d made no sound at all.

“We’ve got to get this fire out before the whole wing goes up. Go, dammit! Get her away from here. Cook!” Dash shouted commands as if he were back on the deck of one of his ships. “Go with Winston. See how badly she’s burned. Do what you can for her. I’ll be there as soon as we get these flames out.”

He turned back to organize the bucket brigade that was passing water along the hall. She reached for him, but Winston carried her away in the opposite direction. She pounded on his shoulder, screaming for Lily.

Winston shook her, ignoring her thrashing. “Stop talking such nonsense. Lily is dead, dammit! She’s not a part of this.”

Jessa, stunned by the manservant’s vehemence, stilled in his arms. Of course. A nightmare. Lily’s nightmare. Lily had died in a fire. Like this one.

“Let him be, Miss Palmer,” Winston said. “He has work to do and has no time to worry about you right now. You’d only be a distraction to him. This time, it could be a fatal distraction.”

He shifted her in his arms. “I told you to leave, Miss Palmer, before you brought further grief on this household. But now, it’s too late. I can only hope no one dies this night because of you.”

18.

…perhaps this was all just a show…

IN SPITE OF the calamitous night, Jessa knocked at the nursery door at precisely 10:00 the next morning. She was stunned when the captain himself opened the door.

“Jessa! I hadn’t expected you to keep our appointment. If I recall last night, I specifically told you to stay in bed this morning and rest your arm.”

“Good morning yourself, Captain. If you’ll recall, I told you it was a simple burn. Certainly not enough to keep me lying abed.”

She looked past him, then smiled. “And certainly not enough to keep me from visiting with Holly this morning.”

He stood in her path, his right arm stretched across the doorframe. A sling contained his left arm.

Thank God, someone had thought to snatch her trunk from the fire. Her nightclothes had been destroyed, but the rest of her wardrobe was intact. Holly’s nursemaid, Gwenna, had delivered her breakfast this morning, applied a salve to the burn that seared the length of Jessa’s arm, then carefully helped her into a day dress, protesting all the while that the Captain would have her head for allowing Jessa out of bed.

Though she should still be wearing mourning for Lily, she’d decided her niece already had enough gloom and darkness in her young life. She swept her pale lilac skirts back with her left hand, ducking under the arm the captain used to block her entrance.

Quick action had limited the damage to a small section of Tremayne Hall. The stone walls had helped contain the fire to only her bedroom, but other than coughs from the smoke, and minor burns, no one other than she and the captain had suffered real injury.

“Auntie Jessa.” Holly pointed at her. “You gots a sling on your arm, just like Papa!”

“That’s right, Holly.” Jessa bent down, allowing Holly to come closer to inspect it. She’d fashioned a mauve scarf over the sturdy sling and bandages that held her arm stiff against her waist.

Holly patted Jessa’s hand in a great show of sympathy. “Does it hurt, Auntie Jessa?” she asked. “Papa says his don’t. He said he weared the sling to remind me not to bump it today. Is that what you did, too?”

Jessa smiled at her little niece. “That’s exactly why, Holly. It doesn’t hurt a bit, but it need’s a little time to get better. But my sling’s much prettier than your father’s. Do you think it will do?”

Holly crossed chubby arms across her chest, then put one finger to her lips, considering. Jessa smothered a laugh. She’d seen Dash make this same gesture.

“Yes, I think it is very pretty, Auntie Jessa,” she finally said. Holly ran her hand over the silky material, rubbing it between two pudgy fingers, grinning up at Jessa.

“I agree, Holly. Aunt Jessamine looks quite charming this morning.”

The rumble of Dash’s voice, just behind her, startled Jessa. She rose, turning to face him. She gave him quick head-to-foot appraisal, as he’d so often done to her, then she gave him a cheeky grin before turning back to Holly. She smiled at the little girl who watched the interplay between the adults.

“I do believe your father looks rather dashing himself, this morning, although he isn’t wearing a pretty scarf with his sling. What do think, Holly? Should I fetch one for him? I have a rather nice pink one, with little blue flowers. Do you think your father would look well in pink?”

Holly chortled, Jessa laughing with her. They both looked to the captain for a response.

He pretended to glare at them, then laughed. “I don’t think pink is quite my color, Holly. Too bad Aunt Jessa doesn’t have a blue scarf. I’ve always thought I looked quite handsome in blue.”

Jessa grinned at him cheekily. “Oh, but Captain Tremayne, a woman never travels without a full complement of scarves. I’m sure I have something blue. I’ll be right back.”

She returned to the nursery a few minutes later, waving a scarf as if it were a flag. The scarf was blue. It also had bright triangles of red, orange, and green.

Dash made a great show of refusing the carnival-colored fabric, until he had Holly doubled over in gales of childish laughter. He finally conceded defeat. He sat, pulling Holly onto his lap, allowing them to drape the brilliant square of silk over and around his sling.

When they’d finished decking out the captain, Holly stuck out her lower lip, pouting. Nothing would do but that Jessa get another scarf to fashion a loose sling for Holly as well.

For the next hour, Jessa and Dash entertained Holly. They played dolls with her, then gathered around the child-sized table for a tea party. The tiny toy cup looked ridiculous in Dash’s large hand, but he gave no hint of embarrassment. He pretended to sip tea and eat invisible cakes with great relish, keeping up a constant stream of chatter that kept them all in gales of laughter.

Where had this cheerful, playful man been hiding? An ember sparked in the center of Jessa’s chest. Her lips twitched into a smile as he settled Holly on his lap in the rocking chair, perching a pair of gold-framed reading glasses on his nose. Wrapping his uninjured arm around her, he enlisted the child’s help in holding a book as he read to her.

Jessa settled on the floor at his feet, content to watch this bear of a man read a book about a flying horse to the tot in his lap. Holly leaned against his broad chest, sucking her thumb.

For this little while, Jessa forgot the reason they were all draped with colorful scarves. She forgot she’d come to rescue the trusting child from the arms of a beast. The child was well-fed, happy, and looked content with her father.

Then again, perhaps this was all just a show Dash put on for her benefit, so she’d pack up her belongings and leave. Jessa chewed her lower lip. Her burned arm, her violent illness—these couldn’t be passed off as mere imagination. She refused to believe Susanna was a figment of her imagination either. The danger was very real in this dark household.

Someone was lying to her. She couldn’t leave until she found out who.

DASH PEERED OVER the top of the glasses perched halfway down his nose, watching the woman seated on the floor in front of him. They needed to talk, and soon. He wanted to finish the conversation they’d begun in his study last week.

Before he’d lost his head and kissed her. Before they’d both been victim of some mysterious stomach ailment. Before Jessa’s bedroom had been set on fire.

The fire had been deliberately set, of that he was certain. An effort had been made to make it look as if it were an accident. The twisted, blackened remnant of Jessa’s pewter bedside lamp had lain on its side by the side of her bed, as if she’d accidentally knocked it over.

But it wasn’t likely. The room had reeked of lamp oil. In digging through the charred remains, he’d found the intact glass globe from the lamp under the bed where it had rolled. It had been removed, probably lost under the bed in the dark. Had the glass broken, the sound would have woken Jessa, who would have raised an alarm.

She wasn’t meant to wake up. She was meant to die in the inferno. Just as Lily had died.

Dash tucked Holly’s wriggling warmth closer. Dear God, what evil stalked him, stalked those he loved?

Something hot ignited under his ribs. The heart he believed cold and dead flickered like a disturbed ember. He’d just included Jessa in the tiny circle of those about whom he cared. He refused to think it was love. He’d given up that emotion years before. No. What he felt for Jessa was no more than duty. And protectiveness. He had an obligation to see to it the woman stayed safe in his home.

And if her kisses set a fire roaring in his blood, well—that was no more than lust.

19.

…it wasn’t his lordship who was the monster…

THE NEXT FEW days passed uneventfully. Jessa spent most of her time in the nursery with Holly. Occasionally, Dash would join them, but was often away on estate business. Her dinner was most often eaten with Holly, or alone in her room. No matter how quick she was, listening for his footsteps in the hall, or his horse on the drive, he managed to evade her. He’d made no opportunity to continue their interrupted conversation.

Did he think if he avoided her long enough, she’d give up? Go away? He didn’t know her if he thought that. Each day he put off talking to her about the situation with Holly only strengthened her resolve.

Her sling had been removed after three days. She’d always bear the mark of that night. There was no help for it. The flames had scorched her skin from shoulder to elbow. It didn’t concern her. The burn hadn’t gone deep. It was already no more than a darker pink line of puckered skin along her arm.

When not with Holly, Jessa spent her days wandering about the enormous house. She particularly wanted to go into the great towers that stood at either end of the front portion of the manor. With Dash gone so much, she broached the subject to Mrs. Penrose when she’d found her polishing silver one morning.

“Those towers aren’t safe, Miss,” the housekeeper told her. “The doors are kept locked. I’m sorry to say, the past generations of Lord Tremayne’s family were a profligate lot. They didn’t do much to keep the manor in good repair, especially the parts they weren’t using. They lost their other estates in gambling or on horseflesh or speculative ventures and such. They only hung to this one because it was entailed.”

Mrs. Penrose held up a spoon, admiring it. “Most everything you see about you now,” she said, “is the captain’s doing. Poor man. When he came into his inheritance, there weren’t much left. All the silver, and most of the china, had been sold off.”

She pointed to the deep red walls of the room with its polished walnut crown moldings. “There used to be all sorts of paintings on these walls. All gone. His lordship said the faded places on the wall depressed him. This is one of the first rooms he refurbished, painting over those empty places, since he couldn’t afford fancy wallpaper. All that work for nothing. He and the mistress never gave parties, never had guests, rarely used this room. Even then, the captain mostly took his meals as he does now, in his study or the morning room.”