Page 54 of The Lady’s No Angel

She smiled up at him. “Me either, providing Toby is unharmed. Good luck.”

“You too.”

Turning away from her, he walked around the barn, searching for the best way up. It wasn’t a tall building, but there were few handholds. His fingers skimmed the cold, slippery stone as he searched for purchase. Low as it was, and painted by the rain, it might as well have been a sheer cliff face. Finally, he got lucky. A large stone jutted out, enough to give him a foot up. He set his boot against the wall and hauled, muscles burning, fingers biting into the rough edge until he could get himself high enough and hook an elbow over. The tiles were greasy beneath his palms and brittle with age, making him fear he’d fall straight through if he dared put his weight on them. For a moment he hung there, listening to the rain pattering on the tile, then he took a breath and heaved himself up, flattening his body to the pitch of the roof.

Glancing down, he saw Angel’s worried face staring up at him and smiled that he was ready. She nodded, and he watched as she hurried around the building. Milly met her by the door, and between them they took the pickaxe, turning it upside down and using their weight to thrust it deep into the damp soil to the far side of the door. Once it was firmly planted, Angel tied the rope she’d brought around it, about a foot from the ground.

Satisfied it was strong enough, she glanced up at the roof before hurrying back to the hay.

Knowing it would likely take her more than a few strikes to light the oil, Hart began crawling across the roof, praying under his breath that the tiles would not break, the timbers beneath would not give way, and that he wouldn’t alert those below to their plan.

His breath caught as his tile broke beneath his knee with a dull crack, the sound hardly audible over the noisy thudding of his own heart, but there were no sounds of alarm from below, so he carried on until he was level with the doorway.

Below him, he could see Milly waiting in the building's shadow, shovel in hand. Everything was in place. Now all they needed was the smoke.

Angel muttered a curse under her breath as rain trickled down her neck and beneath her collar like icy fingers seeking warm skin. She was shivering hard, though whether that was from the cold or from fear she wasn’t certain. The hay ought to have gone up like a torch—Leo had soaked it well, the oil still visible, a dark greasy stain sticking to the ragged bundles of dry grass—but the rain was coming down harder, flattening it until it resembled the untidy nest of some massive water bird.

Still, she persevered, hunched over it, curving her body to shelter any tiny flame she might coax to life. Her fingers were stiff with cold, refusing to cooperate as she used the steel to strike the flint again and again.

Strike.

The flint rasped, skittered, and sent up a tiny, resentful spark that died before it could reach the oil. The char cloth was sodden, sticking to her fingers. Summoning up the very worst curses she had ever heard Black Jack utter, she tore it free, tried again.

Strike. A spark.

The rain devoured it before it could catch.

Angel gritted her teeth. She could make out the indistinct murmur of voices from inside the barn, though not what the villains were saying, their words muffled by walls and the weather. Her belly tightened, tension tying her insides into a knot. The stench of the oil was sharp in her nostrils, promising to burn if she could only find a strong enough spark. But the rain kept falling, drowning her hopes.

For a moment she stared up at the night sky, feeling the vast expanse of darkness might swallow her whole. Her breath was short and uneven, delicate phantoms that appeared and vanished in the frigid air.

Panic fluttered at the edges of her mind—what would they do if she failed? —but she forced it away.

Come on, she murmured to the little box, as if it needed coaxing to do as she wished. Come on, you little devil, help me out here.

Strike—a spark!

Angel held her breath as the glowing ember caught and spread, moving along the ragged edge of the char. She cupped her hands around it, willing it to burn, breathing low to feed it a tiny thread of air. Angel watched with her heart in her mouth as a skinny curl of smoke drifted up. Come on, come on, she willed it as the glow touched the nearest oil-soaked stem. At first the hay only smouldered sullenly, but then the flame picked up, spreading along the stem to another, and another, until it finally got the idea and ran.

Heart thudding so hard she felt sick with it, Angel fed the fire, adding straw to the blaze until she was certain it was strong enough to hold. Murmuring a small prayer to her grandfather and asking him to stand beside her this night, she grabbed an armful of hay and gently covered the fire.

For a moment she feared she had smothered it too completely, but then a fat, acrid billow of smoke erupted, sending her hurrying away as it caught at her throat, making her want to cough. She watched for a second longer, wondering whether Black Jack really was standing at her side, as the wind picked up, blowing the smoke towards the doors.

Thank you, she whispered in her mind, before turning and running back to the side door.

Milly gazed at her with wide eyes, her knuckles white in the darkness as she clutched the handle of the shovel. Angel grasped her arm and squeezed in a silent show of encouragement before glancing up at Leo, who was waiting on the roof, poised to jump. He nodded.

From inside, raised voices erupted in alarm as smoke began billowing up through gaps in the roof tiles. The barn must be filling with smoke at quite a rate.

Angel grabbed for the rope she’d left tied to the pickaxe and crouched down to the right of the door, about three feet from the wall. She pulled the rope tight, angling it so it would not stop the door from opening.

Milly stood a little to her right, farther from the wall, the shovel held aloft as the shrieks from inside became increasingly loud and furious.

Suddenly, the door flew open.

“Bill, take the brat and get away—”

Mercy’s voice, choking and coughing, was still audible enough as Bill lumbered out, spluttering and looking about in the darkness as he hauled Toby along with his good arm.