A Porcelain Viscountess by Hazel Linwood

Chapter 25

Phoebe followed Francis out of the room as he jumped to his feet, sniffing the air as she had done. When they reached the hallway, the stench grew stronger.

“Something is burning,” Francis said with horror in his tone. “Mrs Goodman!” he hollered for her, his voice bouncing around the walls.

Seconds later, she came running.

“Your Grace?” She appeared through a doorway.

“Has there been an accident in the kitchen?”

“No, Your Grace,” she said hurriedly, then she sniffed the air too. “Is there a fire?”

“There must be. Everyone, out. Now.” Francis turned Phoebe toward the door, but she planted her feet into the ground.

“What? No,” she said, pulling at him. “Where is Louisa?”

“I’ll find her, but please Phoebe, we have to get out. Now.”

“I’ll get the staff out.” Mrs Goodman ran off through the servant’s door to the other chambers.

Phoebe followed Francis out of the house, not caring if any of the staff in their haste to flee saw her hand in Francis’. It felt foolish to deny there was something between them anymore.

They hurried down the steps and out the front, where Phoebe tripped a couple of times on the pebbled driveway in her effort to keep up with him.

“Josiah!” Francis roared. Lord and Lady Dodge appeared a few minutes later, from the direction of the river.

“Has something happened?” Lord Dodge called then the two of them came to a firm stop and stared up at the window of the house.

“In the name of our Lord,” Lady Dodge said and flung her hands to her mouth.

Phoebe whipped round, just as Francis did, and they both gazed up at the windows on the top floor of the manor house to see smoke curling out of two of the windows.

“It’s…my chamber,” Phoebe said with panic. “Oh my god. Louisa!” she cried the maid’s name and made an attempt to run back into the house, but Francis stopped her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her backward.

Any other time, she would have been thrilled at such an intimate connection, but now, she was furious.

“Let me go! Louisa is in there!”

“Then I will get her.” Francis put her back down on her feet and pushed her toward Lord and Lady Dodge. “I give you my word, Phoebe, I will get her out, just please stay here.”

Phoebe couldn’t say any words. She was torn, between wanting her friend safe and fearing putting Hayward in danger.

“You…you cannot go near the fire,” she said after a minute. “It is too dangerous.”

“Nothing will stop me,” he said, backing up from her. “Josiah, do not let her back into the house. Understood?”

“I give you my word,” Lord Dodge called back to him.

Francis ran inside, disappearing a second later. When Phoebe stepped forward, intent on following him, Lord and Lady Dodge stopped her.

“Trust him, my friend,” Lady Dodge said, taking her hand. “He will find Louisa.”

* * *

Francis ran into the house when he passed people on the stairs, all the staff that were running to get out, along with the maids and the butler.

“Has anyone seen Louisa?” he cried, but all the maids shook the heads, and most didn’t even bother replying, all too afraid by the mention of a fire.

“You,” Francis found one of the footmen at the top of the stairs. “Find volunteers to fight the fire. We must stop it from spreading.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the man said hurriedly with a bow and ran off.

Francis ran across the corridor, heading straight for Phoebe’s chamber. The nearer he got, the worse the smell grew, until the burning was thick and cloying at the back of his throat. He went to take hold of the door handle, but he found the knob hot to the touch. Swearing under his breath, he adjusted and put the sleeve of his jacket over the doorknob, before pushing the door open.

The sight that greeted him made him waver in the doorway, as though his legs had become wobbly and built out of nothing but air beneath him. Half the room was in flames, the bed was engulfed and furniture around the bed were quickly taking hold. The smoke was seeping out of the windows, but it did not stop a cloud of this thick black smoke building at the top of the room and hovering on the ceiling, like a monster clinging to the ceiling molds.

“Louisa!” he called her name and then coughed from inhaling the smoke.

Behind him, there were footsteps of people running. He turned his head back to see footmen were approaching, carrying buckets of water and great troughs too, no vessel was too big, even though some vats had to be carried by two or three men at a time.

Looking away from them, Francis covered his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and stepped into the room. The heat was instant and grating against his body. He squinted his eyes against the brightness of the light and gritted his teeth, looking around the room as the first footmen followed him in, ready to fight the blaze. He darted his head back and forth before finding something curled up at the side of the room.

“Louisa!” he called her name again, lowering the sleeve from his mouth just enough to be audible. She lifted her head off the floor a bit, before coughing and falling back down.

He ran toward her, thankful the fire had not yet caught the corner of this room and hauled her to her feet. She was dazed, in a half unconscious state.

“What happened to you?” he asked, but he didn’t need an answer. The roar of the fire and the catcalls of the footmen stopped him from hearing her even if she had given an answer, and the bruise that was developing on her temple told him what he needed to know. She had been struck and knocked out.

He dragged her out of the room, urging his men on with words as he passed them before they were beyond the door, then he hauled Louisa up into his arms and carried her through the corridor, down the stairs.

“He was here.”

“He? Who’s he? Was it the Viscount, Louisa?” Francis asked. She coughed a few times, with soot on her clothes and on her face.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice all creaky. “Someone was in the room. They struck me, then everything went black…I didn’t see them.”

“Whoever started the fire must have struck you,” he said knowingly as they reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried to the open door.

The second they were outside, Francis heard Phoebe calling for her friend. He carried Louisa all the way to Phoebe, where she was then placed on the ground. Diana and Josiah fussed around the maid, with Mrs Goodman shouting at the other staff for the stable boy to be sent for the physician at once, just as Phoebe reached out for Francis.

“You saved her,” she said, clinging to him. “Thank you.”

“You do not need to thank me,” he said, looking her over her repeatedly.

All that mattered to him was that she hadn’t been caught in the fire. With the flames being set alight in her room, then there was the chance that whoever had started the fire was hoping to hurt Phoebe, and Louisa’s entrance into the room had just been ill timed.

He glanced over his shoulder, aware that all the staff were nearby, but with their gazes upon the house and the smoke that was curling out of the window, he felt a little liberty to do as he wanted, without them noticing. He lifted Phoebe’s hand quickly to his lips and kissed the back.

“Thank god you were not in that fire,” he whispered to her, feeling a tightness in his throat at the idea. “It’s just too horrifying.”

“I am well, Francis,” she said reassuringly. She was about to turn back to Louisa and attend her maid when Francis pulled on her hand another time.

He had been about to tell her how he really felt and then they had discovered the fire. It reminded him how fleeting these moments with her were, how they could be gone in an instant again. He would take this moment now, even if it was a very fleeting one indeed.

He leaned into her, just enough so that he could whisper in her ear.

“I’m in love with you, Phoebe.”

As he leaned back, he watched as her lips parted in wonder, then she smiled, the kind of smile he had never seen on her face before. It spread a warmth inside him. Yet he backed up away from her and let her hand slip from his.

“No, Francis, where are you going?” she called to him.

“To fight the fire,” he said, turning and running back into the house. It didn’t matter to him that he had been lately injured, or that there was a risk involved. He would not let his staff take the risk of putting the flames out without being there beside them to help.

Francis ignored the shouted pleas that were calling him back out again. He was sure he could hear Diana’s voice amongst those shouts, and Josiah’s too, though Josiah seemed to give up calling for him quite quickly. Instead, he started calling for that stable boy to be sent to the physician again, insisting that he had to be on his way at once.

As Francis reached the chamber, he worked tirelessly with his men, all the staff and footmen that had come to his aid were carrying vats of water and trying their best to get the fire down. It took what felt like hours, with them even once having to throw the contents of a copper bath onto the flames. When the final flame was put out with thick heavy blankets, windows were thrust open.

Francis was among the men as they all coughed and tried their best to clear their lungs. After a few minutes of kicking away the burnt debris in the chamber and breathing beside the open window to clear his lungs, Francis looked back into the room at the mess that had ensued.

Whoever set the fire had used the curtains around the four-poster bed to start it. With such material to fuel the flames, no wonder it had taken hold so quickly. The question was…who had started it?

As Francis took a step away, about to leave and head back down to see his family and Phoebe, something caught his eye. There was something on the wall beyond the four-poster bed, something painted there.

Slowly, with wary steps, Francis walked round the bed, tilting his head to see what had been left there for him to find. There were words painted in black on the white wall. They had been covered before by the carcass of the black and burnt-out bed, but they were now clear as day to see.

As Francis read the words, he felt that old dizziness return from his head wound. He recovered one of the few unburnt chairs from the chamber and sat down into it, flinging his body down in order to stay centered.

The words were thickly painted in this black ink, suggesting it had been taken from a broken inkwell bottle from nearby and painted on with something. Francis looked around, finding a pillowcase he at first had thought was burnt black discarded on the floor in the corner, but turned out to be covered in paint. He returned his gaze to the words on the wall in anger.

“It was him, after all. He’s been here. He knows she’s here,” he muttered to himself, along with a myriad of curses and exclamations.

‘You have been warned. Send her back.’