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

Harriet? Or am I being haunted by slim girls dressed in black silk?
    A sudden desperate urge to do something, anything, to help that gallant little figure made him begin to shoulder his way through the crowd with Bertram Hudson following behind, still querulously demanding to be told what it was all about.
    Harriet felt herself becoming giddy and faint. The gutter was just above her head, but all at once the madness of fear that had given her strength left her.
    A sigh like the wind passed through the watching crowd. It seemed certain she would fall.
    The marquess groaned. The downstairs floors were a raging inferno. There seemed no way he could get to her.
    “Go on!” he shouted suddenly. “Go on, Harriet. You can make it.” He was still not quite sure whether the slight figure now far above his head as he stood in front of the burning building
was
Harriet. But he called again, desperately, “Go
on
. Climb!”
    “Climb!” roared the crowd, taking up her name. “Climb, Harriet.”
    Harriet clenched her teeth, taking courage from the noise below. She stretched up one hand to the gutter.
    The duchess moaned and stirred.
    “Don’t,” pleaded Harriet. “Don’t move.” She needed both hands to climb up onto the roof, and so long as the duchess remained a limp, inert figure, it was possible. She could not manage it if she had to stop to hold on to a frightened woman.
    The duchess mercifully swooned again.
    Harriet’s toe found a good-sized crack in the side of the building. Above the gutter was a low balustrade, and behind that a small space between the balustrade and the steep slope of the tiled roof.
    With a superhuman effort, her muscles cracking, she heaved herself up and over, she and the duchess tumbling over the balustrade to lie facedown on the other side.
    The wild cheering of the crowd was suddenly stilled as a great tongue of flame broke through the roof several yards to the left of where Harriet was lying.
    Harriet struggled to her feet, picked up the duchess in her arms, and set off in a shambling run along the edge of the roof toward the adjoining building.
    At the edge of the roof she stopped in dismay. There was a gap of twelve feet to the next building. She could not possibly jump it with the old woman in her arms.
    Behind her came a terrible rumble and crash as part of the roof fell in.
    The heat of the roof under her feet was becoming intense. Down below a sea of white faces stared up.
    “Help!” cried Harriet piteously. “Help!” But her voice was drowned by the roaring and crackling of the fire.
    And then she heard her name.
    “Harriet,” said an imperative voice. “Over here. Move quickly.”
    The Marquess of Arden was standing on the other roof, untying a stout length of rope from about his waist.
    “I will throw you one end,” he called. “Tie it firmly to the parapet.”
    The rope snaked over. Harriet laid the duchess gently against the slope of the roof and seized the rope. At first her hands were trembling too much to tie it securely, but at last she managed to knot it firmly.
    The marquess, who had secured his end, stripped off his coat, kicked off his boots, and made his way, hand over hand, across the intervening gap.
    “Come along, Miss Harriet,” he said. “Your troubles are over.”
    “Take her first,” said Harriet, gasping, pointing to the duchess.
    “Very well. I will be as quick as I can. Pray God you do not lose your life in this rescue of one of London’s most parsimonious, selfish old hags.” He unwound a thinner length of rope from his waist. “Tie her on my back. Hurry!”
    The duchess was lashed to his back. He crossed quickly to the other roof, slashed at the rope that bound the duchess to him with a knife, and tumbled her unceremoniously onto the tiles.
    He swung himself back over again and seized Harriet. “Put your arms about my neck,” he said urgently.
    “I can’t,” said Harriet, trembling. Her legs seemed to have turned to water and her arms to