Page 57 of Drowned in the Pleasure of a Devilish Baron
“So now you are calling me a liar? In my own drawing room?” John surged forward and pounded one fist atop the back of an armchair.
“Perhaps I am! It would take a liar and a coward to send the letters I have been receiving!”
“Now you call me a coward? That, Sir, is too far, indeed!”
A white face appeared at the door. “Felix, John, what is happening?” Sarah looked shocked, dressed in the simple white gown he had seen her wear most recently at Juliet’s, with her face turned the same color.
“Sarah,” Felix turned to her at once and lowered his voice, but John was already crossing the room.
“Get out of here! No one asked you to be a part of this! In fact, it isyouwho are to blame for all of it to begin with!” He took her arm and turned her toward the stairs, causing her to trip on her skirt as she hastened to move away from his grip.
“Don’t you touch her!” Felix roared, and now he was moving, putting himself between Sarah and her brother. The barely restrained fury was throbbing nearer the surface now, and he was no longer certain he would be able to control it.
“You dare tell me what I can do to my own sister under my roof? That is enough! Let us go outside and settle this like gentleman.” John’s face was a mask of fury. Behind him, Felix could see a row of servant’s faces peeping at the sounds, but none so far were brave enough to attempt to intervene.
“Upstairs!” John shouted to Sarah, who crossed her arms defiantly.
“I won’t,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on!”
John’s voice dropped to a hiss. “Go upstairs or I’ll drag you myself and lock you in your room.”
With an anguished look to Felix, who nodded—better to have her safely away—she fled upstairs.
“Gladly.” Felix pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and exited the house, John’s angry steps right on his heels.
In the courtyard in front of the modest Marlow home, the two men circled one another like predators, fury sparking their eyes. John pulled his jacket off and tossed it to the side, where it was caught by the same small boy who had taken Acorn’s reins from him before. Felix took off his own, feeling nothing but his anger and the driving need to protect Sarah, and in the distance, a plume of black smoke rose.
“Let us do this, then,” John said, his voice heavy with a threatening promise, and the two started forward.
At that moment, the sound of frantic, speeding hoof beats startled them both.
“Sir Felix!” It was a farmer he recognized, one whose fields bordered his own. “Sir Felix! It’s your land, sir! It’s on fire!”
Felix stared at him, his mind still on the letters, on John. He could not make sense of this sudden development.
“Fire, Sir Felix!” the farmer shouted desperately, and it was the first word which snapped all of those present into action.
“Fire…” Felix breathed, thinking of the newly tilled land, the lovingly planted grape vines that had been shipped at such expense from France, and fear froze his heart.
John called for his own horse, and the young boy ran Acorn up to Felix. He mounted at once, but a tug on his ankle stopped him for a moment.
“Sir, sir, can you get a letter to Lady Cunningham? Your sister?” It was the boy, speaking quietly and looking up at him, a letter in hand.
Felix looked down at him. “What? I— yes.” There was no time to question this. He took the letter and tucked it into his breast pocket, where he forgot about it at once.
He wheeled Acorn around and took off for home, John thundering behind him, the plume of smoke growing larger, closer, as he rode.
Chapter Thirty
Felix approached his land to find it in a state of near-total devastation. The icy fear that had frozen his heart before had turned into the cold numbness of realization.
Feeling as if he were clouded in a dream, he stumbled from Acorn and looked at the fields before him.
All of the nearby farmers had bravely formed a line to the closest river, where they passed pails of water to one another and dumped it on the fire, of which there was now no longer a sign of. In doing so, a portion of the newly planted vines had been saved.
However, more than half of the fields were burnt to dust. He walked slowly throughout them, looking down at the black ashes of his dreams for a future, a future with Sarah, and felt nothing but that stolid, unmoving block of ice in his chest. Kneeling, he touched a vine stem that was still lovingly nestled in a perfectly shaped pile of dirt. At the barest brush of his fingertips, it disintegrated into dust. The thick stench of alcohol that still hung in the air spoke clearly to how they started such a destructive fire and spread it so quickly.
He stood, swallowing the bile that had risen in his throat, and thought about the massive loan he had taken from the Earl of Camden, a loan that had been specifically tied to a piece of a business that would now be defunct. He thought about the money Leonard had put in. All of that money that he had not a chance of ever being able to repay.
