“The kitchen boy,” Brightmore said with cold satisfaction. “The police talked with Wispel, but they never spoke with him. And I began to wonder, what did you do after the master caught you that night? Where did you go? The kitchen boy had seen it all, running firewood inside the house. He saw you go into the sables. And he heard you threatening the lady all those nights. As soon as I spoke with him, I made plans to come to London. Mr. Markham needed to know.”
Gareth was only a couple of steps away from her by now. “Why do you even care?” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Everything to do with my master concerns me.” And in her eyes was the burning fervor of a religious convert. She raised the gun. “And while I don’t care partic
ularly what you do with the whore—”
It took a second to realize she meant me, but her words drowned out my noises of protest.
“—I do care that you tried to have the master arrested. And that you might try to kill him.”
“It is a pity then,” Gareth said, “that you won’t be there to stop it.” And he grabbed for the gun.
The moment I realized what he was about to do, I tried to stop it, flinging myself toward him. Another bullet fired, sending a wave of fear through me, and both the housekeeper and the valet fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs and skirts. There was shouting and grunting and the roll of heavy bodies on the floor.
I was on the floor now too, on my side, my breath forced from my body, all my weight on my arm, facing away from the struggle behind me. All I could see was smoke. The gray veil of smoke as the fire leapt from fireplace to hearth to rug. The house was catching fire.
The noises behind me died down, as if the struggle had stopped. I felt my chair move as Gareth stepped around me, gun in hand and blood running from his nose. He wiped at it with his shirtsleeve as he aimed the gun at me. “I was going to let the fire do its work,” he said. “But now I think I shouldn’t leave it to chance, don’t you? We’ve had enough unexpected variables this afternoon—”
I kicked out viciously with my leg, making contact with his knee. He cried out and dropped and I kicked again, determined not to die passively. If I couldn’t run, I would fight.
I kicked again and again, landing two or three good ones before he managed to force himself to move through the pain, and then I heard an unearthly scream from behind me, like a banshee or a ghost caught by the sunlight away from its grave. A scream and then a roar as Brightmore came off the ground and charged at Gareth like a woman deranged.
He’d still been reacting to my kicks and so he didn’t have time to duck or to dodge, and they both went flying backwards as their bodies collided, right into the trail of the fire.
Instantly, they both lit up, human pyres in a dark room, like ancient sacrifices in a wicker cage. The light was almost too bright to look at, searing and intense, and I could smell the distinct smell of burning hair and clothes and something sweet and meat-like that had to be flesh.
Gareth was screaming and Brightmore was still fighting him, even aflame, hell bent on destroying the man who would destroy the only person she cared about. They were one indistinct pillar of fire now, and with a final scream that would haunt me until my dying day, the two of them careened toward the wide front window, crashing through the glass and to the sidewalk below.
Heart pounding, the sudden silence almost worse than witnessing the immolation itself, I squeezed my eyes closed and gave myself five seconds. Five seconds to be horrified, to want to run, to want to claw the very images out of my mind. Five seconds to be both grateful and confused and grateful again that this woman who hated me had sacrificed herself to save me—all for a love that would never have been returned.
Five seconds.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
I opened my eyes. The fire still burned, though now the smoke poured through the open window. But that wouldn’t stop it from creeping toward me, no, I still had to get out. With a deep breath and a grunt, I started rocking the chair, straining to roll onto my front, so that I’d be on my knees. After several attempts, I managed it, my head knocking against the floor as I did and I finally managed the awkward half-standing position and moved out of the room.
Brightmore had left the door open and I emerged into the outdoors, where the sun had broken behind the clouds. The world was a brilliant blue, mild and breezy, October at its finest. All around me were leaves rustling, fine houses in the distance, and the still-smoldering corpses of the man who’d killed my cousin and the woman who’d stopped him from killing me.
What I felt when I finally made it to my Hampton house and saw the smoke and the swarms of police carriages, I don’t recall. I remember panic, and more panic, and then rage at my delay in figuring out where Gareth had taken her. (Where else, once I’d thought about it. Where else would he have a key, where else to send a message to me?)
And what I felt when I leapt out of the Baron’s carriage and saw my wildcat—her face covered in soot and tears, and two bodies covered with sheets beside her—but alive, yes, so, so alive.
Well, I still felt it. Every minute, every hour, a tidal wave of relief and thankfulness to whatever god still deigned to watch over me.
We’d waited two weeks to marry. Ivy was shaken after her kidnapping, and even though we didn’t speak the thought out loud, it seemed strange to marry in the shadow of Brightmore’s death.
Brightmore.
Even now, as I sat on the plush hotel bed in Paris, listening to the music of the city, I felt the weight of Brightmore’s gift to us. Her death, her painful and absolutely unnecessary death. If only I had bothered to listen to her, to find her again! It was a self-flagellation that I couldn’t stop. If only I’d been less careless, less selfish, Ivy would have never have been in danger and Brightmore would be alive.
