Though she tried to weave through the crush of bodies toward them, she found herself unable to. Magdalene coughed against the now biting, hazy air as the resistance of the crowd bobbed her more backward than forward. Smoke snaked its way from the ornate main corridor across sections of the high Grecian ceiling, making her lips part in horror. More than a settee was burning.
Gritting her teeth, she tried to wedge past the surrounding wall of bodies, only to stumble. She was going to die. On her own dance floor!
“Magdalene.” Thornton jumped toward her, his sharp green eyes capturing hers amidst the clamor. His rugged features tightened as he grabbed her waist, startling her with not only his presence but the strength of his hold. Turning her toward the direction of the terrace, he commenced guiding her forcefully through the throng of people.
She glanced up at him, her heart pounding but blissfully happy knowing he thought her worthy of rescuing. “Thornton.”
Someone violently shoved her in a desperate effort to move past, breaking their hold. She gasped and tumbled to the floor, her body instantly swallowed by a mass of swarming, pushing limbs. Booted feet now kicked and stepped and climbed over her without pause, and though she tried to scramble up amidst panicked breaths, too many people kept rushing past and none of them seemed to care if she lived or died.
“Magdalene!” Thornton thrust people aside and jumped toward her through the torrent of bodies. He grabbed her by the arms and yanked her up and off the floor with unprecedented strength. “These people are mad. If the fire doesn’t kill us, they will.”
He savagely tucked her against his towering frame, the scent of sandalwood faintly wafting through the acrid, smoky air. Those muscled arms tightened around her, mashing her cheek against his chest as he veered them through the crowd with his body.
Magdalene clung to his embroidered waistcoat as he hurried them forward and onto the crowded terrace. People rushed out into the darkened gardens beyond, their shouts echoing all around and lifting up to the cloudless, starry night sky above.
Despite the fray, a sense of strange serenity descended upon her knowing that Thornton was not only back in her life but in her arms. She could now openly admit to herself that, yes, the month without him had been torturous and beyond lonely. She had stared at their unfinished chess game for hours thinking about him and that kiss and how confused she was knowing that she had wanted him naked all along. Such had been the case for quite some time, much to her consternation, but she had taken sweet refuge knowing that he would never overstep the bounds of their cherished friendship by making her face it.
She’d been wrong.
Her throat tightened as she glanced up at him. His shadowed profile remained intently focused on the path before them as he strategically moved them left and right and left again, rounding others. She shouldn’t have smacked him. He wasn’t a man to be feared, as her late husband had been. Thornton had always been a good friend. One of the few she’d had in life.
A cool gust of night air slapped her heated face, sweeping her back into the reality that her house was on fire. Scrambling against Thornton’s strong hold, she wrenched herself loose to look back at the house, stumbling on the edge of the stone steps that led out into the garden. The open doors of the ballroom held an eerie stillness as a thick haze dimmed the brightness of the chandeliers and muted the appearance of the bright honey walls to a yellow-gray.
“Stay here,” Thornton said as he dodged past her and jogged back up the stairs, making his way back into the smoke-filled house.
She pivoted toward the direction he’d gone. “Thornton!” Her heart pounded as she watched his large frame disappear back into the wavering haze of the ballroom. She frantically headed after him. “Thornton!”
A hand hooked her arm and yanked her back toward the terrace. “Mother.” Charles jerked her around, grabbed her hands and squeezed them hard.
She hissed out a breath. “Charles. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thornton pushed me straight out before I even knew what was happening. I haven’t seen him since.”
Her stomach roiled as she whipped toward the house, realizing that Thornton still hadn’t come back out. Oh, God. Gathering her skirts, she hurried back inside.
“Mother, what— Where the hell are you going?” he shouted from outside. “The house is on fire!”
“I know! Believe me, I know! Stay there!” she shouted back and dashed on.
CHAPTER TWO
THICK SMOKE STUNG MAGDALENE’S watering eyes as she bounded toward the direction of the fire. Coughing spastically against the sooty air that crawled into her throat, she pushed onward, chanting to herself to grab Thornton and get out.
Male shouts drifted from beyond. She hurried toward them and skidded to an abrupt halt upon reaching the foyer that led toward the parlor. A cool, welcoming breeze gushed past through the entrance doors which had been pushed wide open, revealing the moonlit, starry night beyond.
“Faster! Move those buckets faster!” Thornton’s harsh command echoed all around her.
To her astonishment, Thornton and all of her servants, footmen, coachmen, stable hands, the steward and the butler alike, stood in a single, regulated line that impressively extended from the kitchen all the way to the hazy parlor.
Bucket after bucket of water was passed from hand to hand down the length of the corridor toward Thornton whose muscled frame stood waiting within the entrance of the parlor. Having tossed his evening coat to the marble floor, he now wore only an embroidered vest and white linen shirt that grew increasingly transparent as water splashed out of the bucket and repeatedly soaked his sleeves. That shirt indecently clung to muscled arms as he savagely tossed more water out onto a smoking carpet before handing back the empty bucket and grabbing a new one.
She edged back against the wall, watching Thornton in a half daze. There were so many times she had secretly wished her son would become just like him. Strong, valiant and reliable.
She worried for the thousandth time that she hadn’t done enough for Charles during his upbringing, and that she was the reason why he hadn’t become the man she now wished he could be. Of course…at one and twenty, he was still young. There was still time for him to grow, though, in truth, she feared he would never be more than he already was: flippant toward society and his duties as earl. He was a wonderful son to her, caring and kind, but it was as if he didn’t care if his name or the estate crumbled. If it didn’t involve his sketching or her, he simply didn’t care.
Handing off the last wooden bucket, Thornton hissed out a breath, swiping cascading strands of black hair out of his eyes. “Enough.” He stepped back, scanning the parlor.
She scrambled forward. “’Tis contained?”