Heartless (The House of Rohan 5)

“Fire! Get out of the house. Get out, get out!” she shouted, reaching down to free her legs and ankles. At last she could hear movement down below—voices and cries, as the women awoke.

Fenrush was still watching her. “It won’t do them any good,” he said in a sweet, practical voice. “There are fires at each of the doors. There’s no way out for them—I made sure of it. The whores must be destroyed by flame, so sayeth the Lord.”

She tried to push herself up from the floor, using the overturned chair, but she fell back as blood came screaming into her muscles. “No, he doesn’t,” she snapped. “I had most of the Bible memorized by the time I was twelve, and nowhere does it say whores must be destroyed. Almost every time they’re mentioned someone is saving them, and it’s only the Great Whore of Babylon who gets eaten and burned, and she’s not even a woman, she’s a city.”

Why in heaven’s name was she arguing about church doctrine when she could hear the increasing noise of the flames, the cries of the women? There was now an orange glow in the window above Fenrush’s body. She had to move, and now.

“Fornicator,” Fenrush said, his voice rising. “You are the Whore of Babylon, filth and degradation and everything that is evil. . .”

“Like murdering men for profit?” She needed to shut her mouth, concentrate of getting out of there, helping the occasionally feather-headed women to get to safety, not enflame a madman.

It was too late. Fenrush stood up, a fluid movement for someone of such wasted corpulence, and moved toward her, madness in his eyes. She tried to rise one more time, only to collapse again as he fell on top of her. He was clawing at her, screaming at her, tearing at her skin, and she managed to pull her knees up, just enough, to lever him off her, as she shoved up with the saw and sliced open his throat.

It was quick and simple—she’d cut into flesh a hundred times with a blade such as this, and there was no squeamishness in her nature. He struggled, falling back to clutch at his slashed neck, but it was too late. He was still kicking the floor when she finally managed to stumble to her feet and find the door.

She heard the hysterical cries from down below. The fire had reached the Gaggle, and nothing mattered, not pain or weakness, as she threw herself down the narrow stairs, into the blazing heat, to get to them.

.

The Dower House was on fire, flames soaring up into the night sky, and Brandon’s last bit of calm deserted him. Flinging himself from the horse, he started running toward the conflagration. Flames had engulfed the front entrance, and he could see women at the windows, trapped, desperate, and he knew Emma had to be among them, fighting for her life. He had to get to her, he had to get all of them out, he had to. . .

The cudgel smashed down out of nowhere, but he managed to jerk out of the way at the last minute, the blow that would have crushed his skull numbing his shoulder instead. It was the huge man he’d faced in the muddy field a few short days ago—he’d know those button-black eyes anywhere.

“Now, we can’t have you interfering with our nice bonfire,” the oaf said in a cajoling voice. “After all the trouble we’ve gone to. You messed with my work once—I can’t have that again, can I, Beedle?”

The man with him, smaller, compact and hard looking, grinned. “That’s right. He won’t be no problem, though—the gentry don’t know how to fight. I’ll take him—you go ahead.”

Brandon didn’t move, a dangerous stillness that wiser men would have recognized. “Where is Mrs. Cadbury?” he said softly.

“Oh, she be dead by now,” Beedle said. “We put her up in the attics with Mr. Fenrush, and if he hasn’t killed her the smoke has. Unless he decided to take ‘is pleasure with her, which is unfair, if you ask me, as he wouldn’t let us touch the whore, and. . .”

He killed them both, without thinking, so fast neither could react, breaking Beedle’s neck with one swift move, yanking the cocked pistol from the already dead man’s hand and shooting the giant in the eye. He didn’t even wait to see him fall. He knew how to kill like a savage – the horror of the Afghan war had taught him that much, and no one was a match for him in his desperation.

The flames had already begun to eat through the front of the house, blocking the entrance when he reached it, but the fires were smaller by the garden. He didn’t hesitate, yanking the flaming brush away from the side, ignoring the fire that was scorching his hands, ignoring the heat that blistered his face. He had to get to Emma. If she was up in the attics then that was where he would go, and if they were trapped, so be it. He wouldn’t live without her—it was that simple.

The door was on fire, with the women on the other side, screaming for help, and he had no choice. Reaching out, he caught the glowing door handle and yanked it open, and the women tumbled out, the gaggle of them, beating at flames as their skirts caught fire, helping each other, crying and howling and making such a racket that there was no way Emma could have heard his shouts.

He didn’t hear that help had arrived, carriages racing down the drive, wagons and horses as well as the entire Starlings household. He caught one of the women, the big one from the kitchen, and stopped her. “Have you seen Emma?” he shouted over the noise.

The woman was dazed, uncomprehending for a moment, and then her eyes narrowed in her soot-covered face. “She’s with Polly.”

A shaft of relief speared through him—she wasn’t dead. But he had to make sure she was safe, touch her, hold her.

“Where?”

To his horror, the woman jerked her head over her shoulder toward the burning doorway. “In there.”

He didn’t draw breath, but flung himself into the conflagration, smoke blinding him, fire licking at his heels. He screamed Emma’s name, but his desperate voice was swallowed up in the roar of the fire.

He could still hear better than anyone, and the sound of the cough reached his ears as he was about to head up the stairs. He whirled around, peering through the smoke, searching through the rooms until he saw a huddled pile of skirts near a window. Emma.

And then he was on his knees beside her, trying to pull her into his arms, but she was holding the still body of a woman, so tightly, and he knew the girl was dead.

“Let her go, love,” he said softly. “You can’t help her anymore.”

Emma looked up at him, and she was beautiful. Her face was scratched, bruised, and she was covered with blood, as if she’d taken a bath in the stuff, and he wanted so badly to snatch her to him, carry her out of there.

“I can’t leave her.” Her voice was so raw he knew she must have breathed in dangerous amounts of smoke. “She was afraid of fires.”