Baroness in Buckskin (18 page)

“I’m sure I never said—”

“Or,” he continued, “perhaps she has taken Miss Lydia’s hints to heart, and deduced, quite rightly, that Richard belongs to you.”

“To
me
?” echoed Susannah.

“It is you to whom he is promised to marry,” Peter pointed out reasonably. “If you are concerned about his breaking faith with you, I can assure you that you need not be. Miss Hunsford is surely aware of this, and has therefore set her sights on my humble self. I suppose I must be flattered that she found me preferable to Sir Matthew or Mr. Langley.”

Susannah made no reply to this sally, but glanced over his shoulder at the subject of their conversation. Miss Hunsford was now partnered with Lord Ramsay, and as Susannah watched her twirling about the room in the arms of her own betrothed, the heiress looked up and laughed at something he had said. It was very strange, really. From the moment Lord Ramsay’s letter had reached her in Kentucky, she had indulged in glorious dreams of arriving in England to discover that the man she had accepted sight unseen was in fact the embodiment of her every romantic fantasy. And sure enough, after that first unfortunate meeting, Richard had proven to be just the sort of man with whom any young lady might fall deeply in love.

What she had not expected, what she could never have anticipated, was that she would fall deeply in love with his steward instead.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,

Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burned.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
King Henry the Fourth

It was a pleasantly weary Ramsay family that assembled around the dinner table that evening. Conversation was lively, for the morning’s dancing-party must be discussed in detail, with Susannah congratulated on all sides for her performance, and Peter roasted roundly for being the object of Miss Hunsford’s amorous interest. From the dancing-party to the approaching ball required only a step, but here, it must be noted, the discussion lost much of its liveliness. Susannah lapsed into un-characteristic silence, while Jane appeared pale and tense, Peter grew thoughtful, and Richard, at the head of the table, voiced his opinions with tight-lipped stoicism. When a flash of lightning briefly illuminated the room, followed by the rumble of thunder, the younger members of the party seized with gratitude upon the opportunity to turn the subject.

“It appears you will need to send the Aunts home in your carriage after all, Richard,” Peter observed.

“It does, indeed,” he concurred.

“Oh, would you, Richard dear?” pleaded Aunt Amelia. “I hate to ask you to send your coachman out in this weather, to say nothing of your poor horses, but I cannot like the thought of walking back to the Dower House.”

Aunt Charlotte glanced toward the window, which rattled with the force of the raindrops against the glass. “I have always been of the opinion that a little rain never hurt anyone, but I can’t say I would care to walk home in this storm, either,” she remarked.

“There is no question of your doing so,” insisted Richard. “Of course, there is a third alternative. You are free to stay here until the storm subsides, if you wish.”

“I should not like to put you to any trouble,” objected Aunt Amelia without much conviction.

“It is no trouble at all,” Jane put in. “If you should care to spend the night and return to the Dower House in the morning, the rose saloon can be prepared for you in a trice.”

“Well—” dithered Aunt Amelia, glancing uncertainly at the window, “if you are quite sure—”

Before she could finish the thought, the door to the dining room burst open. All eyes turned to see Wilson, clearly labouring under some strong emotion, framed therein.

“Begging your pardon, my lord—ladies—” he began disjointedly. “It’s the physician. He says—”

The physician, it seemed, was perfectly capable of speaking for himself. Mr. Calloway brushed past the butler and addressed Richard. “It was a lightning strike, my lord. I was just passing by on my way home from a call when I saw it. Send every able-bodied man you can spare to fight the fire, for it would be disastrous if the flames were to reach the Home Wood.”

Richard was on his feet in an instant. “Yes, but
what
was struck by lightning? Talk sense, man!”

“Fairacres,” Mr. Calloway said. “The old manor house is ablaze.”

Susannah looked at Peter, and found him sitting as if turned to stone. “Peter?” she called softly.

“We’ll be there at once,” Richard promised. “See to it, will you, Peter? Doctor, I would be obliged to you if you could hold yourself in readiness to treat anyone who might be injured in fighting the fire.”

“Of course, my lord, but if you’ve no objection, I should like to ride to the vicarage first, and have Mr. Cummings organize a second party of men.”

Richard nodded. “Yes, an excellent notion.”

Susannah jerked to her feet like a puppet on a string. “You will need us to have hot water and bandages ready, won’t you, Doctor? And Cousin Jane, we had best make sure there is refreshment for the firefighters—coffee, perhaps, and sandwiches. They may have a long night ahead of them.”

Everyone at the table stared speechlessly at their American relation’s cool assumption of authority—everyone except Peter, who managed a strained smile. “Thank you,” he murmured.

“Cousin Susannah is quite right,” Jane pronounced, finding her tongue at last. “Richard, Peter, you must lose no time. If you cannot save Fairacres, at least you can ensure that the fire does not spread. We ladies will be in the kitchen, if you should have need of us. Come along, Aunt Charlotte, Aunt Amelia.”

Jane shepherded the Aunts from the dining room in the wake of Susannah, who had already disappeared through the door and was no doubt halfway to the kitchen.

“Thank you, Jane. Wilson,” his lordship addressed the butler, “go below stairs and collect every man-servant who can be spared. Peter, run to the stables and have the groom hitch up two wagons—one to convey the pump to the river, the other to carry the men. While you are there, saddle Diablo for me and Sheba for yourself. I shall join you there directly.”

“Of course.” Peter cast his napkin aside and rose from the table, pausing only long enough to take one last quick gulp of wine from his glass before setting out for the stables.

He soon discovered that the news had preceded him, for the stables were in an uproar; he realized belatedly that the stable hand who had taken charge of the physician’s horse had lost no time in spreading the word.

“Mr. Ramsay, sir, is it true what Jem says about Fairacres?” the groom asked urgently.

“Yes, it’s quite true,” Peter said. “Even if we can’t save the house, we must prevent the flames from reaching the Home Wood. We need a wagon to convey the pump down to the river, and another to carry the men who will soon be—ah, here they come now.”

Sure enough, a cacophony of male voices penetrated the stable walls, and a moment later more than a dozen men entered the building, a cross-section of the domestic hierarchy that represented all ranks from the butler down to the youngest pot boy. Peter summoned three of the stoutest footmen to assist him, and the four of them lifted the cumbersome pump and its hoses onto the back of the wagon while the groom hitched the huge draft horses to the traces. Once this task was completed and the wagon sent on its way, Peter ordered the remaining men into the second wagon, which soon departed the stable in the wake of the first.

“Good man!” pronounced Richard a short time later, entering the stable to find his horse saddled and waiting.  His voice echoed strangely in the stable, which was empty of all but Peter.

“I sent the others ahead,” Peter said, noting that his cousin had taken a moment to change into more serviceable garments. In his own eagerness to save Fairacres, he had set out in his evening clothes, which would probably be ruined long before morning. Still, if only the house might be saved, he would count their loss a price well paid. He turned back to Sheba and gave a last tug to the girth of the saddle. “We should be able to overtake them easily enough.”

“Then let us do so.”

The two men swung themselves into the saddle and set out at a canter—as fast as they dared over open country in the dark, lest an unseen rabbit hole bring them to grief before they ever reached the blaze.

They saw the smoke rising above the treetops long before the house itself was visible, a billowing black cloud eerily tinged with orange. Peter’s breath caught in his throat as they cleared the wood and emerged onto the meadow where he and Susannah had ridden only a couple of weeks earlier. The picturesque manor house was hardly recognizable, replaced instead by a scene straight from the pits of hell. Flames shot forty feet into the air, casting into silhouette the figures of the men who had dismounted from the wagon so that they looked like demons dancing about a bonfire. Richard flung himself from the saddle and tied his terrified mount at a safe distance, looping the reins loosely in case their efforts at containing the blaze should fail and the horse should have to be removed quickly. His actions jolted Peter out of his horrified trance, and he quickly followed his cousin’s example, looping Sheba’s reins about a low-hanging tree limb as he murmured calming words—although whether these were intended to comfort his horse or himself, he could not have said.

Once on the scene, Richard lost no time in taking charge, shouting to make himself heard over the roar and crackle of the conflagration as he oversaw the unloading of the pump. Peter, not content to operate in a purely advisory capacity, grabbed one end of the hose and dragged it down to the river’s edge, wading out knee-deep in order to plunge the mouth of the hose well below the surface. If the water was cold, he didn’t notice; he was thankful to have some occupation. For surely anything was better than standing about staring helplessly at the inferno that represented the death of all his worldly ambition.

* * *

For the Ramsay ladies, the night was less active, if no less stressful. Upon reaching the kitchen ahead of her cousin and aunts (no difficult task, as two were elderly and the third dependent upon a crutch to aid her in descending the stairs), Susannah snatched a coarse linen apron from a hook on the wall and tied it on over her gown. She spied the two fragrant loaves of bread intended to feed the family the following day and set upon them with a knife, slicing them up and making sandwiches from whatever cold meats and cheeses she could find—an act of vandalism which would surely have enraged Antoine, had he been present to witness it. But, perhaps thankfully, Antoine had been pressed into service as a firefighter—a waste of his talents to which he might have objected strenuously, had he not deemed the prospect of being left out of the excitement a fate far worse.

Alas, having completed this task and overseen the brewing of coffee and the heating of water for any medical needs that might arise, there was very little for Susannah to do but wait and wonder, and recall with vivid clarity the expression on Peter’s face when he’d first learned that Fairacres was ablaze.

“You’ve worked so hard, Susannah,” Jane observed, jerked from her own reverie by the sound of the kitchen clock tinnily chiming two. “Perhaps you should lie down. We will wake you when the men return,” she added quickly, anticipating the girl’s ob-jection, even if she could not fully comprehend its reasons.

Susannah shook her head emphatically. “No, I couldn’t. Please don’t ask me!”

Jane did not press her, and the ladies lapsed once more into silence.

The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east when the sounds of masculine voices outside, followed by the stamp of footsteps on the stoop, signalled the return of the firefighting brigade. A moment later the door burst open and the kitchen was invaded by men: dirty, sweaty, exhausted men who reeked of smoke.

“Richard!” exclaimed Jane, and it said much for her own emotional state that she forgot to address him by his title in front of the servants. “Is everything all right?”

“Where is Peter?” Susannah asked, searching for his familiar face in the mêlée.

“That depends upon your definition of ‘all right.’ Thank you, Aunt Charlotte,” Richard said, accepting a steaming cup of coffee from his elderly relation. “The manor house at Fairacres is gone, but we were able to prevent the fire from spreading. The vicar and his party arrived with a second pump, so we used it to saturate the trees bordering the property, containing the blaze until it burned itself out.”

 “Here, Richard dear, have a sandwich,” urged Aunt Amelia, pressing one into his hand.

“Where is Peter?” Susannah asked again.

“Miss Hawthorne,” the physician addressed Jane, “I am sorry to report that young George Hastings suffered minor burns on his hands. If you are not worn off your feet already, I wonder if you might assist me in cleaning and treating the wounds.”

“Yes, of course,” Jane said at once, recognizing the name of Ramsay Hall’s second footman. “Bring him here to the table, where the light is better.”

There followed a series of difficult maneuvers intended to transfer the suffering footman through the crowded kitchen to the heavy deal table usually reserved for Antoine’s use.

“
Where is Peter?
” demanded Susannah, deter-mined not to be ignored any longer.

“Peter?” Richard scanned the teeming kitchen from his superior height. “I don’t see him. He was with us when we reached the house; I daresay he must have stopped to clean the mud from his shoes. No doubt he will be along presently.”

Susannah did not wait to hear more. She snatched one of the cups of coffee Aunt Charlotte was dispensing, pushed her way through the crowd of men to the door, and opened it. Just as she had expected, Peter sat on the stoop, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his shoulders slumped in a posture indicative of deepest despair.

“Peter?” she addressed him softly. “I—I’ve brought you some coffee.”