Cynthia Bailey Pratt (13 page)

It would be difficult to say why, but she felt as if someone had left the room only the moment before. There was no trace of anyone, but still she had the feeling. Water from dishes, neatly stacked on the drainboard, dripped into the dark greasiness of used wash water. She smelted a thick odor of oil and tobacco. Knowing that Helena had not left the kitchen so, Jocelyn said disgustedly, “Men!” She shook her head and went back up the front stairs. The house was utterly silent, except for a bumping noise over her head.

Helena jumped and let out a little shriek when Jocelyn walked in. “Did you see anyone? I can’t imagine why I am so nervous. It’s silly.” She straightened her shoulders and grimaced, as though ordering herself to be brave.

“Do you want to take this picture of your mother?” Jocelyn gave Helena a miniature painted on ivory that she had taken from the chest of drawers.

“Of course, I couldn’t leave her behind. I was forced to abandon many things in Switzerland, but never this. Like your picture of your father, it is all I have.”

Jocelyn removed several pairs of stockings from Helena’s bureau drawer while Helena brought out two round gowns from the wardrobe. Jocelyn asked, “Was your brother fond of his stepmother?”

“I can’t say. Whenever he speaks of her, which isn’t often, he speaks respectfully. I don’t think Nicholas has ever been fond of anyone. Some people are like that.”

“You and he deal together well enough. Except for when he is unreasonable, like tonight.”

“Oh, he usually doesn’t fuss. As long as I don’t trouble him with trivialities, and serve his meals on time.” She closed her valise and opened her hatbox. “I will still come over to fix them, I think. I am sure he will be more reasonable in the morning, and Mrs. Penhurst cannot be trusted with food. She can’t keep from burning things, and not just the parlor curtains.”

Perhaps it was only because Helena mentioned fire, but Jocelyn could have sworn she smelled something burning now. She looked quickly at the lamp. It gave a gentle light with little smoke. She said, “I think one hat will be enough, Helena.”

“I shall take this little cap ...” Helena stopped and sniffed the air like a rabbit on a misty morning. “Do you smell something . . . strange?”

“I think so,” Jocelyn answered. “Mrs. Penhurst isn’t here this evening?”

“No, she never comes at night. Also, her sister, the one in town, is about to have her baby, and Mrs. Penhurst went to be with her this morning.”

Helena took up the lamp and opened her bedroom door. Tendrils of smoke curled and writhed in the wavering lamplight. She gasped. Jocelyn looked past her. A curious roaring came from downstairs, as though a wind struggled indoors. They were both gasping now, for the air was oppressively hot.

A shattering crash came from below, and they felt the floor lurch beneath their feet. Startled into sudden life, Jocelyn drew her friend back into the bedroom, closing the door.

Helena stood in the center of the room, saying, “What? What is it?” Jocelyn looked out the small window under the eaves. Fire illuminated the lawn below, not the homelike glow of a hearth seen through a window, but savage flames crackling with glee as they overleapt themselves. The noise increased. She found it difficult to think.

Helena coughed as the air filled with smoke. Pushing a low table out of her way, Jocelyn fought the window sash, panic rising in her throat as she strove to open it. Finding the trick of it after what seemed hours, she flung open the window, gulping in a mouthful of fresh air. It steadied her.

She caught Helena by the arm. “Come along; we’re going out the window.”

“What?”

“Come on, we’ll have to jump.”

“Jump? But we’ll kill ourselves!”

Jocelyn placed a firm hand on her friend’s head, pressing down so it wouldn’t strike the sash. “The lower level is on fire. Look.” She pointed at the light on the grass. “We can’t get out that way. So jump.”

Half-in and half-out the window, her foot braced against the small table, Helena hesitated. “I can’t,” she said in a tone of the greatest conviction and began to back toward Jocelyn. The lamp on the floor burst with a tinkle of glass and the oil spilled in a widening river.

Jocelyn saw Helena’s white face and rolling eyes. Soon she would refuse to do anything but cower in the corner while the flames came for her. Struggling with her own fear, Jocelyn knew that in another moment she’d be hammering at Helena, forcing her out. Jocelyn gathered all her self-control and said reasonably, “If you don’t jump, how am I to get out?”

Helena bit her lip, nodded once, and crawled the rest of the way out. There was a tiny sill under the window. She brought her legs under her and rested on the ledge, looking down. An unbelievable fact from an old class ran in her head. “The earth is twenty-six thousand miles in circumference.” The entire planet seemed to be below her.

Helena felt frozen to the little piece of stone. If she let go, she would fall crushingly down upon the earth and in the same instant float up to heaven. She heard Jocelyn choking behind her. Helena shut her eyes tightly and pushed off into space.

There wasn’t a long way to fall. The earth seemed to reach out strong arms to her. Helena knew she found her eternal resting place.

Mr. Fletcher, blissfully holding the woman he adored in his arms, was shaken from his happiness by a valise falling to the ground quite close to his beloved one’s head. “Oy!” he shouted, looking up.

He saw Jocelyn half-in, half-out the window. Mr. Fletcher put on duty once more like a cloak around his shoulders. He tenderly lay Helena Fain in a safe spot behind a headstone for protection against falling sparks. Boldly ignoring the danger, he returned and held out his arms for Miss Burnwell.

The instant Helena jumped, Jocelyn had put her head out of the window to see if she was all right. She was surprised and grateful to see her cousins’ tutor falling to his knees, his arms filled with Helena’s fainting form. She had expected him to look up, if only to give thanks for Helena’s deliverance, but he didn’t. Jocelyn had called and hallooed, but the sound of the fire swallowed up all lesser noises.

In desperation, Jocelyn had sought some way of attracting his attention. A vase, two books, and a set of hairbrushes that Helena had not packed had sailed out the window, but Mr. Fletcher paid no heed. Finally Jocelyn had thrown out the valise.

If Mr. Fletcher had not been there, she would have hurled herself into space as Helena did, risking the consequences of broken limbs or even death, but as long as the tutor was there, he should make himself useful.

Jocelyn scrambled the rest of the way onto the narrow ledge and looked over her shoulder. The paint on Helena’s bedroom door bubbled. The heat was of such intensity that the oil-soaked sisal mat on the bedroom floor was beginning to smoke in sympathy with the rest of the house. She could feel the heat on her face and back. Commending her soul to God, Jocelyn jumped. She knocked Mr. Fletcher to the ground.

Jocelyn got up. Her bones ached and she tasted blood from her bitten cheek, but she was otherwise unharmed. Mr. Fletcher had the wind knocked out of him and lay gasping on the grass. Jocelyn helped him to his feet, then turned to watch the fire. The glass in the windows burst like an artillery barrage, showering them with splinters.

“We’d best get away,” Mr. Fletcher murmured breathlessly.

They huddled beside Helena bulwarked by the stout granite grave markers of early Libermorians. “I do hope the church won’t catch,” Jocelyn said, brushing mud from the skirt of her plain blue pelisse. She seemed to have lost her bonnet.

Having regained his breath, Mr. Fletcher said, “I can hear the bells ringing. Help will soon come.” Jocelyn listened but heard nothing.

Sternly the tutor looked at Jocelyn and said, “It was very foolish of you to waste time over Miss Pain’s valise. Miss Burnwell. You should have been saving yourself.”

“Yes,” Jocelyn said dryly. She began to say something more when the windows upstairs shattered. She decided to let the matter rest. They were all safe now.

While waiting, Jocelyn considered an idea. “Mr. Fletcher,” she asked, “why were you following us?”

“I ... I wasn’t,” the tutor stammered.

“No?”

“I was—”

“Please don’t tell me you were reading Gray’s
Elegy
in an actual churchyard.”

A slow smile spread across Mr. Fletcher’s attractive face. “No, Miss Burnwell. I wouldn’t tell you that.”

“Well, then?”

“I was watching over Miss Fain.”

“Watching over her? What do you mean?” She’d realized some time ago that Mr. Fletcher was probably fond of her friend, but this seemed to be carrying things to an extreme.

“I suppose now that Fain is dead, I can tell you something of my mission. On the other hand, perhaps, it would be wiser—”

“If you don’t wish for me to lose my mind, Mr. Fletcher, you will tell me exactly what you are talking about.”

Mr. Fletcher had often heard her take that tone with the boys. Every time it had taken him back to his nursery, and he knew from long experience that the voice of an angry woman was unanswerable save by the truth. “I’m talking about Fain.”

“Mr. Fain!”

Mr. Fletcher knelt beside Helena. His expression was all tender devotion, but his words were filled with stern adherence to duty. “I suppose now that he’s dead ... for some time now, my superiors have suspected Mr. Fain of being implicated in activities of a treasonous nature. More than that—”

“Your
superiors?” Jocelyn exclaimed, interrupting.

“Yes.” Mr. Fletcher turned up the lapel of his coat and removed from the inner facing a thin strip of dull metal. Jocelyn took it. Holding it to the light of the fire, she saw incised upon it in tiny figures a five-digit number and the words
Engaged upon the King’s Service.

Fletcher a spy, too? How many of them were dodging about Libermore tonight? “Then you have been under my uncle’s roof under false pretenses?”

“Well,” he said with a wry smile, “I would not have otherwise stayed on as tutor to your cousins. Flesh and blood could hardly stand it without orders.”

Jocelyn acknowledged the truth of this with a brief smile. More seriously, she asked, “What exactly is it you suspect of Mr. Fain?”

Mr. Fletcher gently removed his identification from Jocelyn’s fingers and replaced it in its secret pocket. “I can’t divulge that information, Miss Burnwell.”

“What information can you divulge, sir?”

“None, except that I was happy to have been of service to you and to Miss Fain.” He looked at his love.

Jocelyn wanted to ask what his superiors thought about their men conceiving a tendre for the sisters of criminals, but another idea was in her mind. “Tell me,” she asked. “Does everyone . . . that is, do all your colleagues carry ...” She gestured toward his chest.

“Yes, Miss Burnwell. From the highest to the lowest of us, we all carry the mark of the king’s favor.”

Jocelyn was afraid that must be his answer. She pressed her fingers to her forehead. Perhaps Hammond simply had not wished to volunteer . . . but Jocelyn saw again the air of simple pride with which Mr. Fletcher tendered his strip of metal. She realized she was shaking uncontrollably.

Mr. Fletcher said, “I fear you must have injured yourself when you fell. Lie down on the grass until the doctor can ...”

She shook her head. The temptation was very strong to take Mr. Fletcher into her confidence, but it battled uselessly a stronger desire to see Hammond and force an explanation from him. He had drawn her into a mystery and thus far refused to answer her questions. The little information he’d given her in her bedroom only led to the creation of more questions in her mind.

Instead of telling Mr. Fletcher all, she asked, “I wonder where Mr. Fain is now?”

“I believe he is in there,” Mr. Fletcher said gravely, pointing toward the burning building.

Helena, emerging from her faint in time to hear the question and its grisly answer, gave a little scream and grasped at Mr. Fletcher’s sleeve. Jocelyn took the girl’s hand and patted it. “No, Helena, please don’t faint again. We need to have you awake.”

Helena struggled upright and leaned against the young man. “Oh,” she whispered.
“Mon pauvre frere.”

In a convulsive movement Mr. Fletcher put his arms around the girl’s waist and pressed his lips to her white face. Helena turned to him, misery filling her throat like a great stone. She clung to him desperately. “Never mind, Helena,” he murmured as he rocked her in his arms. “You have me, you know. I’m here. Never mind, darling.”

“I know,” Helena said softly in answer, her tears hidden against his chest.

Embarrassed, for these intimacies were not for her ears, Jocelyn got to her feet. “I’ll see if anyone’s come to help yet.” The two people huddled on the grass paid no attention.

Flames leapt out the shattered upstairs windows to catch on the roof. It would not be long before all but the original stone walls would be destroyed, and they would be so blackened and charred as to prevent anyone’s rebuilding. Shaking her head at the frightful waste, Jocelyn made her way to the road, shards of glass tinkling under her wooden pattens.

Already, a small group of men formed a line between St. Agnes’s Well and the church, passing two or three buckets between them. Wisely they ignored the hopeless task of saving the vicarage and wetted down the trees and grass between the doomed building and the church. More people ran up to help every moment. Bill Gallagher grabbed her arm and excitedly told her the new fire exhaustion engine was coming from Libermore. Soon there would be enough people to start actively trying to prevent the church itself from catching.

Mr. Quigg sprinted over to talk to her, his voice creaking with excitement. He helped her remove the larger pieces of glass from her curls. She asked about the boys, certain Arnold had again broken bounds. Under the present, exciting circumstances she could hardly have expected him to remember prudence. Her only hope was that he would not run into Constable Regin.

“They’re ‘bout the place sommers,” Quigg said. “Look fer where’s the most mischief to be done.” He dropped his voice and said harshly, “Haven’t seen t’other one about.”