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Chapter Eight
Rafe signed the final letter and placed it on the stack at his elbow then slumped back in his chair to stare at them all in disgust. Blasted woman and her blasted barricade! Thanks to her, instead of showing potential, eager buyers around his estate and having his pick of them, he now had to resort to begging them to return.
He had no clue how many would after today’s debacle and in all fairness he couldn’t blame them. Who on earth would want to buy a place where the inhabitants were so barking mad and belligerent that they would lay siege to the road and hold the entire estate hostage in order to get their way? He certainly wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole if he had a choice in the matter. A rebellious, revolutionary and ramshackle village was the last thing any sane person would wish to spend their money on, especially when he had advertised the place as an idyllic oasis of peaceful tranquillity.
Wearisome Whittleston-on-the-Water was as far from idyllic as it was possible to be, and despite his best intentions to live that quiet life he more than deserved, he hadn’t had a moment’s peace since his long-lost relation had saddled him with it.
He dreaded to think what they had said to all the carriages to make them turn around. What threats or malicious slanders they had employed to scare them away before he could have the protestors forcibly removed. All he knew with any certainty was that every carriage had turned around and hightailed it back to the city without argument so whatever they had been told must have hit home and might well have put them off this godforsaken place for ever. It certainly would have done him.
Blasted woman and her blasted barricade!
And damn and blast his own cowardly short-sightedness too. If only he had had the foresight to be honest about his plans to sell from the outset, and the common sense to work with the witch rather than turn her against him. When he knew from his father’s example that burying his head in the sand was never the correct solution to any problem. But Rafe had been so determined to be shot of the place he hadn’t listened to all his years of military training to take a moment to pause and take proper stock of the situation before marching forth. Especially when he also knew that the quickest way to cause dissention in the ranks was to pay scant regard for the thoughts and feelings of them, so was it any wonder that he now had a full-scale mutiny on his hands? One that could have been avoided if he hadn’t been so blinkered and determined to remain detached at all costs.
He was certainly paying for that now—in inconvenience and guilt.
Blasted woman and her barricade and her blasted, soulful big brown eyes! He was concerning himself with her plight in particular, and disproportionately, because something about her got to him. It had from the first moment he had set eyes on the witch, damn her.
What was it about her that mined through his well-fortified defences? What was it that made him wonder about her so when he had trained himself to never ponder women beyond the carnal? And certainly never to ponder the sort who wouldn’t be interested in the fleetingly carnal. Because that sort would certainly never ponder him and his responsibilities for very long. Of that he knew first-hand. Any serious interest any woman had ever had in him had waned the second they realised that he came with Archie. That his commitment to his brother was non-negotiable. That he would not have him sent away or banished to obscurity. And that perhaps whatever had caused his brother to be the way he was, was somehow contagious. Never mind that Archie had always been more a blessing than a curse as far as he was concerned. A lovable, joyous ray of exuberant sunshine if you bothered to take the time to get to know him and did not treat him like a leper.
Which, of course, the blasted witch hadn’t. She would be much easier to loathe if she had behaved like all the women had before. Much easier to dismiss from his niggling conscience.
Just as he had at least twice in the last hour, he wandered to the window. He stared into the gaping silver hole of the full moon while he pondered exactly what he was going to say to the harridan when he requested a truce tomorrow. Something he should have done earlier rather than losing his temper when all the chants of ‘Shame on you!’ had got to him disproportionately too. Something he should have rectified later when actual shame had set in and he had realised he had made a total hash of things so far. That was something she would doubtless make him eat a mountain of humble pie to rectify. If she would allow him to rectify it at all now that he was her sworn enemy.
What a damned, totally avoidable mess.
He huffed out a breath which steamed the glass, then rubbed it away with his palm to stare at the first hint of the sunrise on the horizon. The bright, orange glow filtered through the bare trees, sending shadows over the tangled branches that made them seem to dance in silhouette against the night. He shook his head, annoyed at himself for losing track of time and a night of sleep while he wrote all those blasted begging letters, and annoyed with the new brown-eyed bane of his life for making him have to write them in the first place, then frowned to stare back at the clock.
He had witnessed enough dawns all over the war-torn continent to know that the sun never rose at half past two in the morning, so rubbed away more condensation to study the strange anomaly better.
That was when he noticed the thick, black fronds of smoke snaking across the surprised face of the moon and panicked. Because in his extensive experience of all that war, he knew without a doubt that there was never any smoke without fire.
‘Use the stream behind the house! Form a line!’ Rafe shouted and pointed instructions to his servants as they raced towards the cottage, praying they had brought enough buckets to make a difference but fearing there weren’t enough in the world to tackle this blaze.
Where once had been Miss Gilbert’s roof was now only half thatch, half a raging inferno. Flames had blown out of a downstairs window and spewed into the night. The naked, twisted boughs of wisteria were also alight, the fire engulfing the entire left side of the building and suffocating the front door.
As he secured his horse at a safe distance, he scanned the shadows outside for any signs of life, praying she and her aunt had escaped to safety long before now. That prayer proved to be swiftly unanswered when her head poked out of a bedchamber window, and a wild Miss Gilbert appeared through the smoke screaming and clutching a cat. She held it out, leaning precariously over the sill until the animal squirmed above his outstretched arms. By more luck than judgement, when she dropped it, he caught it, the animal’s splayed claws scratching his cheek in its panic to be free before it wriggled out of his arms and ran away.
‘Your turn!’ Rafe held out his arms again in case she jumped but she shook her head.
‘My aunt is trapped!’ Her pretty face was obscured by soot as she pointed behind her frantically from above. ‘The door is jammed! I cannot get her out!’ Then, to Rafe’s horror, instead of climbing out of the window like any sane person would, she inhaled a lung full of fresh air then disappeared back into the choking smoke.
‘Miss Gilbert!’ He shouted upwards through cupped hands. ‘Sophie!’ Even his loudest bellow was smothered by the roar of the fire, so he ran towards the front door where the wisteria around it dripped flames, spitting lethal sparks like bullets until the searing heat of the burning wood pushed him back.
‘Bring that here!’ Rafe yelled to the first man he saw clutching a full bucket of water as he stripped off his coat, then dunked the garment in it. After wrapping it around his face and head, he lunged at the door again and managed to kick it open, only to recoil in the nick of time as the rush of air fuelled the fire beyond and sent it raging. His wet coat heated instantly, scalding his skin even as he staggered backwards away from the flames, until he ripped it off then stood impotently at the hopeless sight ahead.
The hallway was impassable. The narrow stairs had morphed into a burning pyre of crimson, hissing wood. Once that gave—and Rafe was in no doubt that it would and soon—it would likely take the upper floor, the unstable thatch and the ladies with it.
Unless the smoke got them first.
Or they burned alive before he could get to them.
Miss Gilbert emerged again at the window. Impervious to his screams to get the hell out before it was too late, she paused only long enough to suck in more fresh air and then she was gone again, leaving him simultaneously raging at her noble stupidity and terrified she would perish at any moment.
He dashed around the back of the house and kicked open the back door, only to discover that too was beyond hope because the fire had penetrated both the narrow beams which held up the ceiling and the wood behind the cracked plaster. He could not see past the blazing curtain of the door into the hallway and didn’t fancy his chances under the timbers.
As he ran back around the front, a mob of villagers rushed towards the cottage from the opposite end of the lane, clutching more buckets and dragging barrels in carts. Someone must have seen the fire and raised the alarm as the pealing bells of the old Norman church added to the cacophony.
‘The ladies are trapped inside!’
