Cates, Kimberly (29 page)

"Gotten what out?"

"My mother's necklace." The words were a raw wound inside her.

"You mean you could've roasted like a blasted Christmas goose!" Adam raged. "Look at that fire! Most people prefer to... wait until actually
in
hell before... drowning in flames. Or did you think you could walk right through them? St. Juliet at the stake?"

Cruel—the words were cruel—or were they born out of sheer terror, furious helplessness?

"Damn it, Juliet,
look
at it!"

He grasped her by the shoulders, forcing her to see the fire leaping at the window panes, thrusting red-gold fingers out beneath the sashes. Even the roof was being consumed.

Grief ground down on her, as she saw flames reflected in the window that had been her bedchamber's. And she knew with stark certainty that her mother's treasured chain of lilies was nothing but a pool of molten gold.

"It was all I had left," she choked out, tears pouring down her cheeks. But the necklace was gone.

Gone. Just like everything she had loved, her father, Jenny, this house. Absurd to feel as if the house had been a kind of friend, to be missed and mourned, but from the instant she'd painted the angels above the front door, she'd felt as if she'd finally found somewhere to belong.

Juliet flinched as someone touched her arm, looked up to find Elise, her eyes huge and haunted and glistening with tears.

"J-Juliet? How—how did the fire start? Do you think it was my fault? I'd washed some things for Fletcher, hung them to dry near the hearth..."

"No. It wasn't your fault, Elise." The enormity of the atrocity jolted through Juliet. "When Adam and I ran in from the garden house, there was... was someone in Angel's Fall..."

"But the new locks—" Violet said, bewildered. "Fletcher claimed Cuchullain himself couldn't break them."

"I left the door unlocked myself." The words seared Juliet's conscience. "When I..."

When she trailed Adam into the garden, hoping to seduce him.

"You left the door open, and someone sneaked in?" Isabelle demanded. "Didn't you see them? At least catch a glimpse so we could go to the authorities?"

"No," Juliet said, her cheeks hot with shame and desolation. "I didn't—I couldn't—wasn't aware until it was too late. They had already carried out their plan."

"Plan? You mean to say someone did this on purpose?" Felicity gasped, bewildered. "Who could have done such a vile thing?"

A tremor rocked Juliet. "Someone who hates me."
Enough to burn it,
her mind finished,
burn it down.
And she had given them the perfect chance.

But who could have set the fire?

As if in answer to her question, a roar started in the street beyond the garden walls, a cacophony of voices, people pouring in through the open gate.

Juliet stared into the sea of faces, the knowledge someone had despised her enough to do this awful thing paralyzing her, sickening her.

Who? Who had set the fire? Destroyed every dream?

It could be any one of these people who loathed her with such deadly venom.

"Oh, Papa," she whispered inside. "Papa..." Was she praying for a miracle from the one angel she knew heard her every prayer? Or was she begging for the forgiveness he'd always offered her so readily.

What had she been thinking, casting aside her responsibilities, her every belief, wandering out in her nightgown to lie with Adam in the garden house? A man who didn't love her. She had failed again, failed completely.

Was this fire her punishment?

If so, it was a horrifyingly harsh one. She wouldn't be the only one to suffer. Every woman who had been under her care would be hurt by this. And she could do nothing to help them. She had nothing left to give.

"The roof is going to go!" Came a voice with a thick Cockney accent.

Juliet turned to see it cave in, crushing everything below. She watched, numb as the spectators flung themselves at the fire, dousing it with bucketfuls of water, the fire brigade joining in the battle.

They didn't know there was nothing left to fight for.

Angel's Fall was gone.

Ever since he'd charged up to Angel's Fall, Adam had been doing his damnedest to blast Juliet out of the place. Even as he'd held Juliet in his arms, making love to her with tender fury, he'd been planning to sweep her away from here, to take her somewhere safe. But he couldn't have outflanked her more brilliantly than this fire had if he'd spent a year plotting strategy.

Angel's Fall lay in ashes. She'd have no choice but to leave it now, leave London. Yet as Adam trudged out of the smoking ruin, the others who'd fought the fire plodding in his wake, it was damned hard to feel anything like triumph, or even a dull satisfaction. Especially when his smoke-stung eyes found Juliet.

She might as well have been stranded on a solitary island of grief. The women she'd tended so lovingly had withdrawn into the shadows. Even loyal Elise stood apart, as if some invisible wall had barred her from offering comfort. In a way, Adam supposed that it had. Never, in all the time Juliet had been at the helm of the haven for courtesans, had she ever revealed her own vulnerability, her own pain. Or the heart-rending fragility she kept hidden beneath the resolute jut of her chin and the fierce determination in her angel-blue eyes.

This Juliet was a stranger to the women she'd loved so long.

She was curled up on a stone bench, one of those ridiculous statues silhouetted against the dawn behind her, the makeshift toga concealing its naked marble glory soot-blackened and askew. The cloth of her nightgown was singed, her hair a tangle of wild golden curls. But it was her eyes that slayed Adam—wide blue pools of despair in a face that had always been alight with hope.

Bloody hell, what was it about dreamers like Juliet? Like Gavin? When they were flitting about all sunshine and star-drunk you wanted more than anything to dash the dreams from their eyes, force them to face the bleak reality everyone else had to confront. But when the same dreamer was forced to gaze into the heart of the storm, their beautiful illusions torn away, it was like watching the last star in the heavens flicker and fade to darkness.

Exhaustion and stinging burns, smoke-seared lungs and soot-gritty eyes should have consumed Adam at the moment, but they were nothing in comparison to the empty aching hole the sight of this shattered angel carved into his soldier's heart. But he had the right to go to her now, hold her, comfort her, offer his love, unworthy as he was, in place of her broken dreams.

His imagination swelled with images of his dark-haired babes nursing at her breast, clambering about her skirts and pressing sticky kisses to her cheeks, making her forget the ugliness of this fire, those who hated her. He would love her until he banished the last wisps of this disaster from her memory, and would fill her heart with the laughter and love she deserved.

"Juliet?" Her name cracked in his raw throat, and she looked up like one awakened from a nightmare, only to find reality even more horrible. He reached out to her, but she evaded his touch, forcing herself to her feet. She was trembling, so fragile he was afraid the brush of the wind would make her crumble to dust. He tried to catch her eye, but she was staring past him, at the other men who had battled the fire, a bedraggled army tramping behind him from the fray.

Juliet raised a shaking hand to her cheek, brushing away a stray tendril that clung to the last of her tears. And Adam felt as if a blade twisted in his heart as she approached Mr. Smythe, the man who had led her neighbors in battling back the inferno.

Adam sensed the effort it took to draw the tattered remnants of her dignity about her. God in heaven, how could she look so infernally beautiful, ethereal, despite this hell? A fairy queen whose magic kingdom had been set upon by dragons of the most virulent kind.

"My papa always said to look for some hint of goodness even in the most terrible of misfortunes," she said in a soft voice. "That way we could hold God's comforting hand in our worst trouble."

Adam started forward, wanting to scoop her into his arms, away from this place, these people who could hurt her. "Come on, Angel, we have to—"

"No, Adam. I have to—to tell Mr. Smythe..." She turned back to the scrawny merchant, her features vulnerable as the first flower of spring in a winter wind. "I want to thank you for... for proving that Papa was right. I know you've not been pleased to be our neighbor, but when the house was afire, you came to help... to try to put it out."

"Of course we did," Smythe said.

Her lips struggled to form a brave smile. "It's just as Papa says. Love does triumph over hate in the end. I'll never forget your kindness."

"Kindness?" Smythe's eyes all but popped from his head. "Bah! You think I all but roasted myself to a cinder out of some blasted notion of Christian charity? It's my own house I was trying to save. If the fire had gotten out of control, it could have devoured everything I own!"

"Aye," Cyrus Morton snarled, "we waited long as we dared before we pitched in, made sure that this den o' harlots would be burned to rubble."

A sword-thrust would have been more merciful. Adam could see the words cut right to Juliet's heart. What little color had stained her cheeks faded away, her lovely angel's face bleak, her celestial eyes barren, broken. "You... you mean you..."

"Said it in plain English," Smythe sneered. "Not that you'd understand. I only regret that you and your sin-spawned women weren't inside it when the roof fell! 'Course there's always time for whoever did this to finish the job."

"That's enough, you bloody fool!" Adam snarled, one hand shooting out to collar the merchant by the throat. A black haze of terror jolted through him at the possibility that even greater danger might await Juliet in the shadows, the evil that had consumed Angel's Fall not yet sated. Slade wished like hell for the days when he could have snapped the idiot's neck and rid himself of the black surge of fury swirling in his veins.

"Adam, no." Juliet's hand closed on his wrist, such a small hand to battle the lions of injustice. "It doesn't matter what they say." Her voice broke, and he could feel the disillusionment flowing through her like poison.

"Damn it, they're pompous imbeciles! Just get the hell out of here, all of you bloody vultures, or I swear to God, I'll—" The threat died on Adam's lips. The dread warrior Sabrehawk had spent a lifetime flinging himself into battle over such incidents. But suddenly it seemed so blasted futile. What could he do to mend the disaster that had befallen Juliet tonight?

Cracking the heads of these sons of bitches might make him feel a hell of a lot better, but it wouldn't raise the walls of her house again. Beating them to a pulp wouldn't erase their words from her memory. But knowing that didn't calm the violence storming in the dark places inside him.

He shoved the scrawny idiot away from him, still half afraid he'd slam his fist into the man's face. But Smythe ran like a rabbit, the other neighbors darting away, eyes wide with fear. Hell, they should be afraid. Adam was starting to scare the bejesus out of himself.

There had been only one other time he felt this raging sense of futility, this killing helplessness, this depth of fury. The day Gavin had strode into the lair of his most cruel enemy intending to trade his life for Adam's own.

Sucking in a steadying breath, Adam turned back to Juliet, every fiber of his soul wanting to cradle her in his arms as he had hours before, comfort her as best he could with his rough warrior's hands.

But he stopped reaching out to her midmotion, his hands still empty the instant he saw the expression on her face. Frigid, brittle, her eyes glittered at him with something akin to loathing. Adam felt it pierce to his very core.

"Don't touch me!" she cried.

"Juliet, I know how—how you must feel," he said, wishing to God he had Gavin's gift for knowing the perfect thing to say to salve a wounded heart. "And I'm damned sorry, lady—"

"Sorry?" she demanded, incredulous.

"That this happened." He waved an awkward paw ineffectually at the rubble. "I'm sorry that those blasted curs said what they did."

"At least Mr. Smythe and Mr. Morton were honest. Why don't you have the decency to tell the truth as well? Follow the two of them to the nearest pub to celebrate. Find Mother Cavendish—I'm certain she's cracked open a keg of gin in honor of the fire, and I doubt she'd mind sharing."

"Juliet, I'm not rejoicing."

"You should be. Isn't this exactly what you wanted all along? Angel's Fall closed down, me packed off to God knows where, out of the way?"

There was enough truth in the words to sting. But they struck him like a blow after the closeness they'd shared a few hours ago. Adam's cheeks heated. Hell, she was right. He'd wished Angel's Fall to perdition on numerous occasions. So why the devil did he feel as if his heart had been torn out of his chest? Because he still felt the press of kisses on his skin, the delicious yielding of bodies and souls. "It's no secret that I wanted you out of here, away from London, somewhere safe. But I didn't want the house to burn. Surely you have to believe that."

"Do I? Ever since you arrived here I've heard tales of your ruthlessness. The brave Sabrehawk resorting to all sorts of unspeakable things."

"The heartless Sabrehawk. Hell, who knows, maybe I even started the fire." He struck out with the black humor that had ever been his shield; his own dreams, so fragile, so precious, conceived in the magic of the garden house were crumbling to ash.

"I was a fool to believe—believe that love would triumph over hate." A wild broken laugh tore from her lips. "To think, I actually thanked those men for... for putting out the fire when they really wished us all dead. What a blathering fool I was."

"Juliet, stop this." Adam grasped her arms, unable to bear it. "They're sanctimonious pigs who don't matter a damn."

"And what are you?" Tears welled up in her eyes, her chin jutting up. "Don't you dare pretend that you regret this! If I hadn't been chasing after you in the garden house, I could have stopped the fire." A world of guilt contorted her face.