The Wildest Rake

Drawing back the curtain, she looked round the room. It lay dark and quiet. The candle had burnt down to a stump and flickered out. The shadows of the corners lay dark and impenetrable.

Nothing stirred.

She slid out of bed and walked to the door. In the passage she sniffed again. The smell of smoke was stronger now. She ran, heart pounding, to Rendel’s chamber and flung open the door.

His room was large. Curtains hung at the windows, but they were not drawn across, and pale moonlight filtered across the floor.

What she took to be moonlight wreathing around the great four-posted bed was pale coils of smoke, curving up towards the ceiling, and as she flung open the door the draught of air, rushing in, added impetus to the fire, sending up a thin tongue of flame from the bed curtains.

Rendel lay across the bed, fully dressed, a glass in his hand. She ran to him, screaming his name. The bed curtains were now burning so fiercely that the heat struck her face as she bent over him, pulling at his waist, calling him to wake up.

He stirred as she dragged him off the bed. For a brief moment, there was total bewilderment in the grey eyes, a fuddled confusion which cleared into a dark anger.

‘The curtains are on fire,’ she cried, trying to help him to stand, her arm around his waist. He was very heavy, his limbs relaxed, and she could not support his full weight.

He blinked then and looked round. ‘Damn,’ he murmured thickly, his glance taking in the burning bed. ‘I must have forgotten to snuff the candle.’

‘Oh, be swift, be swift,’ she moaned, pulling at him. The flames had reached the bedclothes, which began to burn and smoulder. Smoke was now pouring up into the air, making her cough. .

They somehow staggered to the door. A maid, in a torn shift, appeared, pop-eyed, and wrung her hands as she saw the grey smoke curling out of the door after them.

Rendel laughed drunkenly.

Cornelia shouted to the girl to bring water, then, abandoning her husband, she ran back into the chamber and flung the contents of the ewer upon the bed, where it sizzled but made no appreciable difference to the flames.

She reached up and wrenched at the canopy, hoping to tear down the curtains before the whole room was set alight, but a wisp of burning brocade floated down and set light to her own shift, so that she had to pause to beat out the flame, wincing and crying at the pain in her hands.

Servants ran into the room with buckets of water. Nan, grumbling furiously, sprang to her side and led her out of the room, scolding her for having tried to fight the fire herself.

Rendel was leaning against the wall outside, very white and shadowy around the eyes.

Nan glared at him.

‘In her condition she should not have to bear such shocks,’ she accused him.

Rendel frowned. ‘In what condition?’

Nan looked at her mistress, her mouth compressed in irritable shrewdness. ‘Haven’t you told him? You fool. Why, sir, she is carrying your child.’

Rendel straightened then, and stared at Cornelia with a tight-lipped intensity. ‘Is it true?’

She was conscious of a peculiar mixture of emotion; weariness, regret, depression, which, combined with the pain from her burnt hands, made her want to weep.

‘Yes,’ she said flatly. But it had all been too much, and her head was swimming.

She felt a strange, panic-stricken confusion, as though she was drowning, and she clutched at Nan hard before slowly crumpling to the floor.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When she came out of the web of pain which had suddenly enmeshed her, it was to hear that she had lost the baby.

A stranger sat beside her bed, gazing at her with mild, myopic blue eyes. He was, it seemed, Rendel’s doctor, and had been called to the house after she fainted, only to discover that she was in the process of miscarrying of the child. He shook his head over her. ‘You are slightly made, my Lady,’ he murmured, almost in accusation. ‘It will never be easy for you to bear a child full term—you must take more care.’ The sunlight glinted on his bald head as he nodded vehemently.

She began to weep, weakly, turning her head away from him, yet too weary to speak.

The doctor clicked his tongue. ‘This will not do,’ he said.

Nan pushed him aside, skirts flurried. ‘There, there,’ she said fiercely, wiping Cornelia’s wet cheeks. ‘The idea . . . bullying her while she is still weak . . . Men.’