Page 55 of Vanquished By A Viscount
The smash of glass shattering had Charlie’s teeth on edge as Gray jammed his log through the window. In one regard, the gesture was effective as it broke the window. But the window was relatively small and made of even smaller panes. The glass might have broken, but the iron between the panes remained intact. Worse still, the whoosh of air into the cottage seemed to make the smoke and flames worse.
“Barbara!” Robert shouted, hurrying to the window and pushing Gray aside in his desperation to save his wife.
“Robert!” Barbara sobbed in return, her face streaked with smoke and sweat and tears.
“I’m coming for you, darling!” Robert shouted.
Gray had broken the pane closest to the window’s inner latch, so Robert thrust his arm through, heedless of the shards of glass still clinging to the windowpane. Red blossomed on his forearm that he seemed unaware of as he reached inside to push the latch open. Charlie couldn’t blame Barbara for not seeing that she could have undone the latch and opened the window herself in her panic. He was merely grateful that Robert had the presence of mind to pull open the window, regardless of the damage it did him, and to reach through, beckoning Barbara to come to him.
“Hurry!” Charlie shouted, gesturing to the footmen and guests who ran at the cottage with buckets of water that would probably prove useless in putting out the blaze. Olivier was at the head of the line, looking as though his own daughter was trapped in the flames.
When Charlie saw that Robert was struggling to pull a sobbing and coughing Barbara through the window, he jumped in to grab hold of his sister and helped Robert to yank her to safety.
Barbara’s nightgown tore on the way out, exposing a large bit of her leg, but no one seemed to care. Charlie and Robert hurried Barbara away from the cottage as fast as they could as everyone else set to work attempting to douse the flames.
“Are you well?” Charlie asked, coughing from the smoke that had billowed out of the cottage as he and Robert had dragged Barbara to safety.
Barbara answered with a wail, throwing her arms around Robert’s neck and clinging to him as if her life depended on it. She barely glanced Charlie’s way at all.
It stung. It shouldn’t have. Charlie knew good and well that a woman’s first loyalty should be toward her husband. But having the one person for whom he’d felt responsible his entire life turn to someone else when she was terrified felt like a break he would not easily recover from.
To soothe his aching heart, he kissed Barbara’s head, wondering if she even noticed, then jumped up and joined the others who were trying to put the fire out.
“This side is worse than the other!”
Charlie twisted to find that the shout had come from Bradford. The man had joined the efforts to save what could be saved of the cottage. What was unusual was that he wore only his shirt and trousers, and the rain had soaked his shirt through. It clung to his surprisingly fine physique, emphasizing what Charlie had suspected about the man all along, that he was very possibly the most desirable specimen of masculinity imaginable.
“I’ve got it!” Gray shouted in return, running to throw the bucket of water he carried against the flames that licked up the side of the cottage. Where he’d found the bucket was a mystery, but the way he jumped to do what Bradford ordered him was another sharp blow to Charlie’s feelings. He would not have cared one way or another if he had not already been reeling from Barbara’s shift in loyalties.
He did what he could to push his inconvenient feelings aside and joined Olivier in the line of people handing off buckets, even though he was certain their efforts were too late. The cottage was fully ablaze. They’d pulled Barbara to safety in the nick of time. The best Charlie thought they could do was to keep the fire from spreading to the surrounding foliage, though the rain had done its part in dampening everything in the garden.
“It’s useless,” Robert called out at last. He stood with Barbara in his arms, blinking against the continued rain as he staggered closer to those who were doing their best for the cottage. “Thecottage is a loss. Nothing else will burn, though. We should return to the house.”
“Are you certain?” Gray asked, slipping in the wet grass as he brought a bucket back from the edge of the cottage.
Robert nodded. “We’ve done our best.”
The call went down the line that they were giving up, and the buckets stopped coming. Charlie let his arms drop as he took a last, heavy bucket from Pettigrew. He noted suddenly that Pettigrew was in only his shirt and trousers as well, and that he glanced to Bradford as if waiting for the man to tell him what to do. It seemed as though Bradford had not been disappointed in his search for a bedmate for the night after all.
Lucky Pettigrew.
Charlie growled at himself and shook the thought away. He tossed the final bucket of water uselessly at the cottage. The flames were already dying, leaving a blackened ruin in their place.
“Thank you,” Gray said, grasping Charlie’s arm as they trudged back toward the house with the other exhausted men who had done their best.
The house was awake and alive when they made it back to the conservatory. All of the maids and most of the ladies of the house party waited there for the gentlemen with everything from towels to blankets to hot tea. Whatever Charlie had been tempted to think of the silly, husband-seeking young ladies of the party, he was grateful for the care they all showed the gentlemen now.
“I am certain you were quite heroic,” Lady Eudora sighed over Pettigrew, dabbing at his forehead with a towel as if she wished to wrap him up in it, and in her.
Charlie caught Bradford grinning at Pettigrew with a knowing look as he stood off to one side, dripping onto a pileof thick towels as he sipped tea. Damn the man for looking desirable even in the guise of a drown and soot-smudged rat.
“I, er, did my best,” Pettigrew mumbled, attempting to politely shy away from Lady Eudora while appealing to Bradford with a look.
Charlie would have found the scene amusing if he did not have Barbara to worry about. He and Gray both ignored the offer of towels and tea to cross the room directly to where Robert had just taken a seat on one of the settees with Barbara in his arms.
“My dear, are you well?” Charlie asked, trying again to gain his sister’s attention. He even took the towel that one of the maids was offering and wrapped it around Barbara’s shoulders himself.
Barbara was shaking, from fear as much as from cold. She turned slightly to acknowledge Charlie, but her attention was still primarily on Robert. “I am so sorry,” she wept, clinging to him. “I should have been warm and safe in your arms rather than playing shepherdess in the cottage.”
