The Headmistress of Rosemere (10 page)
William studied his longtime friend, his face showing what was likely genuine concern. He wanted to believe Riley. But Riley had proved to be as reckless and wild as he himself had been. Would this really be successful, or would this be yet another example of his misguided ventures?
“I would need to think about it.”
“Well, we don’t have long. Carlton’s visiting Ambledale Court at week’s end. Will you at least meet him?”
William shrugged. “I suppose there is no harm in that.”
“Good. Ride out on Saturday. He’ll be there.” Riley rubbed his hands together and rocked on his heels. “Trust me, Sterling. You’ll not regret this.”
F
IRE!”
The urgency in the word sliced the murky space between dream and consciousness.
Patience bolted upright in bed, heart pounding, pulse racing.
Was she awake? Dreaming?
With her next breath, her nose burned and tears stung her eyes.
Smoke!
Through her bedchamber window, eerie shapes of amber and black cast shadows against the painted walls. She ran to the pane and yanked aside the thick curtains. Holding her sleeve up to her mouth, she squinted, struggling to see through the smoke’s misty vapors. A crash echoed from the stable. A panicked cry followed.
Charlie! Charlie sleeps in the stable!
Plumes of fire reached into the night sky from the stable. Thick, black smoke curled even higher, lapping nearby trees and blocking the moon. Figures dashed around the glowing stable. A shout. Someone threw a bucket of water. A small body was mounting a horse.
She reached for her robe and stuffed her stocking feet into slippers. Her legs, tangled in her linen nightdress, fought to obey her mind’s order for urgency. Stumbling in the dark and struggling to maintain balance, Patience stuffed her arms through the robe’s sleeve, then the other, and grabbed the doorknob. She had to get downstairs.
Patience ran down the hall, pausing only to fling open her mother’s bedchamber door.
“Mother!” she shouted, squinting to adjust to the darkness. In the white moonlight she spotted her mother’s form beneath a mound of blankets. Patience ran to her, grabbed her shoulder, and shook it. “Mother, there’s a fire in the stable!”
Her mother stirred, mumbled, but did not sit up.
“Mother!” Patience pulled on her mother’s arm until she finally turned. “A fire! Do you not smell the smoke?”
Patience did not wait for her mother’s response. She ran back to the corridor. She needed to get down there. Down to the stable.
Down to Charlie
.
The fastest way to the stables was through the kitchen entrance and through the courtyard. She flew through the west wing, down a main staircase, and through a wide corridor to the kitchen. All was dark save for the eerie glow seeping through the paned windows. Patience ran out the back door and into the night. The combination of frosty air and choking smoke stole the breath from her lungs. The fire’s strength was even more impressive, more intimidating at ground level than from the height of her room. Almost instantly she spied George’s silhouette, his bulky frame, struggling to lead a spooked horse away from the fire.
She squinted to guard her eyes from the brightness of the blaze and grabbed George’s shoulder. “Where’s Charlie?”
The fire’s erratic light reflected from the sweat on his brow. “Sent him to Eastmore for the water wagon,” he managed between
coughs. “Probably frozen through after this winter. Cow’s inside. Take this one.”
He shoved the lead rope into her hand and ran back inside the stable. The carriage horse at the end of the rope yanked and pulled, and Patience threw all of her weight into coercing the frightened animal away from the burning stable. Finally, the horse complied, and she trotted alongside him to the pasture gate and released the animal. But when she turned, a child-sized silhouette, dressed in a gauzy gown, was running toward the fire.
Patience darted to the child and grabbed her arm, nearly knocking the girl from her feet.
The fire’s light shone on the tears on the cheeks of young Emma Simmons.
“What are you doing?” Patience shouted, determined to be heard above the roar of the fire. “Do you not see how dangerous this is?”
Sobs racked the child’s body. “Delilah!” she screamed, gasping for breath and fighting to free herself. “Delilah!”
The goat!
Patience gripped Emma’s arm and struggled to hold the child, who seemed to be made stronger by fear. “Stop! Emma, stop! I will not allow you to go any closer!”
The child pushed and squirmed until finally Patience wrapped her arms around the girl so she could not move. “George will get Delilah, I promise.” She looked back toward the house at a group of girls, clad in nightgowns and wrapped in blankets, staring at the fire. “Go with the others. Immediately!”
Patience half-carried, half-dragged the sobbing child to a respectable distance and left her in the care of one of the older girls, then ran back to the fire.
Chaos surrounded her. George tugged on the cow. Mary ran past with a chicken in her arms. Patience took the second carriage
horse to the same gate where she’d led the other animal and released her into the pasture.
In the flickering light, she spotted a wooden bucket on the ground and snatched it up. The watering trough was already empty, and the well was on the far side of the building. Thaughley River was just on the other side of a thicket of small trees. She bolted through the undergrowth toward the river, sinking ankle deep in the half-frozen mud and nearly falling to the ground more than once. She plunged the bucket into the rippling water and hurried back to the fire.
As she got closer, her eyes watered with ferocious intensity, nearly blinding her. A low-hanging branch tugged at her hair as she dipped under a tree limb, scratching her shoulder through the thin robe. Even from a great distance the fire’s heat trumped the bitter cold, and she drew as close as she dared before throwing the water on the blaze.
George, Mary, and the teachers were doing the same. Bucket after bucket of water was thrown on the fire. Over and over they repeated the action. But their efforts were of little consequence. It seemed the more they tried to tame the fire, the angrier the blaze grew, rising higher and burning brighter.
She was about to dive back into the trees when a hand caught the crook of her arm. She whirled around. George stood close, perspiration gleaming on his wrinkled brow, soot darkening his white beard.
He coughed. “It’s too far gone, Miss.”
Her instinct screamed to ignore him. She turned to go back to the river, but his arm stopped her again, his grip tighter this time. “Miss Creighton. You must stop. Someone will get hurt.”
Patience tried to breathe, but the smoke was so intense, each breath burned tighter than the last. The teachers and staff were standing in a group behind them. She watched as the giant orange
and amber tentacles devoured the structure. The far side of the building had already collapsed in a charred and fiery heap.
She pressed her eyes shut. She could not watch the burning. Her thoughts turned to her father. He’d taken such pride in the school grounds. Would he have been able to prevent this? Would he have handled it differently?
Defeat was apparent. She looked back at Rosemere, grateful for the broad distance between the two buildings. For the time being, there was little danger of the fire spreading. The fire cast odd, long shapes on the school, and she looked to the second floor. There she could see the silhouette of someone watching from a window. Her mother.
She turned back to the stable and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. A sob nearly choked her.
It might only be the stable, but it symbolized so much more to her. The school—her home—was dying . . . she was losing her father all over again. And regardless of her efforts, she was powerless to save it. She looked back at her mother’s form. Powerless to save so many things.
Behind her, the girls had gathered in the courtyard. She knew them so well. She scanned their faces, then frowned.
Something was wrong.
She began to count.
She counted again.
Suddenly, with a jolt as jarring as first seeing the fire, panic bubbled up as sharply as if the blaze had scorched her skin.
Patience cried, “Where is Emma?”
R
iley’s departure had been as sudden as his arrival. But the visit had been the distraction William needed. Ready to give way to slumber, William stood and stretched the kinks from his still-sore muscles.
The sound of a horse’s hooves echoed on the drive.
“Mr. Sterling!” The sudden shout of his name by a youthful voice rose above the thunder of pounding hooves.
Interest piqued, William hurried from the library, the heels of his top boots clicking on the vestibule’s stone floor. Not waiting for Cecil, he unlatched the wooden front door and swung it open on iron hinges. The faint scent of smoke and burning wood struck him as odd. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck prickled.
“Mr. Sterling!” The boy slid from the horse’s bare back and ran toward him, eyes wide. It was the boy from Rosemere. He wore no coat, no shoes. Black smeared his cheeks. His breath came in ragged huffs.
William grabbed the horse’s bridle to steady the anxious animal. “What is it?”
The boy thrust his arm in the direction of Rosemere. “Stable is burning, sir. George sent me to fetch the water wagon.”
It was at that moment the pungent odor of burning wood smacked him. William drew a sharp breath as every muscle in his back tensed. “Burning?”
“It’s almost to the ground, sir.”
“What about the house?”
“Not yet, but George said to get the water wagon right quick.”
William sprang into action, the memory of the girls he had seen on the lawn earlier flooding his thoughts. Lewis, alerted by the commotion and the smoke, ran from his quarters inside the stables, pushing an arm through a woolen coat and jamming a hat on his head.
With sudden energy and purpose, William sprinted toward Lewis. “Fire at Rosemere! Go to the coach house and prepare the wagon and drive it over. I am going to ride out.”
The scent of smoke chased him into Eastmore’s stables. Inside, the animals shifted and moved, uneasy as the vapors entered their space. One kicked the side of a stall. Another whinnied. Guided by the light of one weak, flickering lantern, William hesitated as he passed Slaten’s stall. The racehorse flared his nostrils and tossed his black head, as if eager for an adventure. But it was Angus, steady and sure, that William needed. He headed toward the chestnut. Angus blew air through his nostrils, his head high, anticipating the ride.
William tossed a saddle on the animal’s back and secured the girth with an experienced hand.
The horse followed him into the increasingly thick night air, and within seconds William swung his leg over and settled himself in the saddle. With a sharp shout, William urged the horse into a
trot, then a gallop, willing the pounding of the hooves on the icy ground to drown out fear’s hammering chant.
Frost blanketed the earth in white diamonds that flashed by at an unreasonable speed, but William noticed little of it. Increasing alarm trumped rationality, blinding him to anything other than the task at hand: getting to Rosemere as soon as possible.
William urged the beast to race even faster. He ducked lower and cast a fleeting glance over his shoulder, fully expecting to see the outline of Eastmore’s water wagon breaking through the tree line. But nothing followed.
With every hoofbeat the scent of burning wood intensified, quickly snuffing out the last of the clean air in his lungs. And then, as he crested Wainslow Peak, he saw it: billows of amber-hued smoke curling into the black sky, fiery embers replacing the space where the stars should have been.
He approached the stable from behind, plunging his horse into the forest’s shadowed thickness. He guided Angus through the thicket and emerged on the other side, pulling his horse to a sharp halt as the view unfolded before him.
Intense heat rushed at him, and black shadows darted before him. He stopped behind the stable to figure out where to go when he heard a shrill cry, a scream. He strained to hear. Even above the fire’s roar, he was sure he heard it.
There! There it was again!
Angus, already grown skittish by the fire, refused to move closer. Instead of fighting with the animal, William swung himself down. And listened. He walked toward the stable.
The cry was coming from within!
Holding his forearm to his face to block the intense heat, William ran to the back gate and flung it open. With a quick glance upward to watch for falling beams, he scanned the room of fire. “Anyone here?”
A child’s scream. Then a whimper.
Amid the rubble and burning straw he found what he sought: a panicked child yanking furiously on a rope fixed firmly to a goat.
Without another thought William snatched the child up in his arms. She wailed in protest and tightened her grip on the rope.
