To Dream of Love by M. C. Beaton Read Free Book Online Page A

Harriet, catching the foreman by the sleeve. “In the name of humanity, you cannot leave her to burn.”
    “She should’ve thought of that and paid up,” said the foreman, shrugging Harriet off.
    Harriet looked about desperately. A fireman had left a leather bucket of water at the side of the pavement.
    She sprang into action. Seizing the bucket, she doused herself from head to foot with the contents and, without pausing to think of the danger, ran headlong into the burning house.
    “What’s happening?” cried a Mr. Harry Postlethwaite, one of London’s latest ornaments and a Pink of the Ton, scrambling up on top of a carriage to join his friends. “Can’t see a demned thing.”
    “Some gel’s run right into the building,” said one of his friends. “Gone to rescue that old duchess creature, Macham.”
    “By jove,” said Mr. Postlethwaite. “More over there, chaps, and let me see. Gad’s ‘oonds! What a sight. It’s better than Astley’s. I say.” he added recklessly. “I’ll lay you a monkey that gel gets her out.”
    His friends eagerly began to lay bets and their gambling fever spread to the crowds around, although his faith in Harriet was not shared. It was ten to one that the dowager would burn.
    The fire had miraculously not yet reached the staircase. Harriet sprinted up the steps two at a time and hurtled along the upper corridor that led to the bedchambers, flinging open door after door, until she finally crashed into the Dowager Duchess of Macham’s bedroom, gasping as the acrid smoke went down into her lungs. Why the duchess, who had unlocked her door too late to be assisted by her servants, should not have tried to escape by the way in which Harriet had come, instead of screaming for help from the window, was a mystery. The shock of her predicament, combined with the fumes, had overpowered her, and the duchess lay by the window, a crumpled and unconscious figure.
    Harriet’s years of chopping wood, carrying pails of water from the pump, and scrubbing floors stood her in good stead. She slung the frail body of the duchess easily over one shoulder and ran for the door, only to retreat back into the room with a cry of dismay. The end of the corridor at the upper landing was now a blazing inferno.
    She set the duchess down and leaned out of the window. A hoarse cheer went up from the crowd below.
    Harriet twisted her neck and looked up. There was only one more floor before the roof and a thick drainpipe ran up beside the window.
    She tore off her crumpled bonnet and hitched her long, still damp skirts up by the tucking folds of the clinging black material into the tapes of her gown. Kicking off her boots, she picked up the duchess again and edged out onto the sill until she was standing there above the roaring crowd with the duchess over her shoulder.
    Thanking God that her grace weighed little more than a child, Harriet gripped the drainpipe firmly in both hands and began a lopsided climb, praying that the duchess would not recover consciousness and struggle, since she needed both hands free.
    The crackling and roaring of the fire eating at the building lent her the strength of a madwoman. Up she went, inching her way, the limp figure of the old woman hanging like a sack over her shoulder.
    A silence fell on the watching crowd below, a silence broken only by the petulant voice of Mr. Bertram Hudson demanding loudly from the edge of the square, “What is going on?”
    “Quiet,” said the Marquess of Arden. His great height allowed him to see above the heads of the crowd.
    Normally, the square would have been dark, lit only by the flickering, feeble lights of the parish tamps. But the raging blaze from the building threw everything into high relief: the gaping crowd, the jostling hawkers selling gingerbread and hot chestnuts as if at a fair, and the slim, black figure edging up to the roof, the body on her shoulder.
    Pray God, she makes it, thought the marquess. Can it possibly be Miss