CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A MAN HELPED Nell to her feet, a stranger dressed in a baker’s apron. He took her back to the inn. She walked leaning on his arm, feeling stupidly weak. It wasn’t until they were nearly there that she realized the baker was limping, and that beneath his apron he had a wooden leg.

Black’s traveling chaise was in the inn’s yard, a grim-faced Phelps on the box. Bessie rushed towards her, crying, “Ma’am! Ma’am! Where have you been?” and Walter was behind her, looking no less distraught.

“The fire’s out,” Nell said, still leaning on the baker’s arm, but her voice was weak and Bessie and Walter didn’t hear her. They detached her from the baker and tried to herd her into the carriage.

“The fire’s out,” Nell said again. She stretched a desperate hand towards the baker. “Tell them, sir.”

“Fire’s out,” the baker confirmed. His voice was a deep, authoritative bass.

Bessie and Walter stopped trying to bundle Nell into the carriage.

“Fire’s out,” the baker said again. “Snuffed out in an instant. Miracle, it were. God’s work.” He gave a decisive nod and turned and left the yard.

Nell stood with Bessie on one side and Walter on the other, feeling weak to the point of fainting. It took all her effort to stay standing. “Has Mr. Black returned?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Walter, can you please go and look for him?”

Walter hesitated, and then said, “Yes, ma’am,” and followed the baker out into the street.

“Phelps, you may put the carriage away.”

Phelps hesitated, too, and then said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Nell sagged against Bessie.

“Ma’am, are you all right?”

“I need to lie down,” Nell said.

Bessie helped her up the stairs. Nell’s head swum and bright stars danced across her vision. When she reached her bedchamber, she half-collapsed on the bed. Bessie bundled her briskly out of her clothes. “Ma’am, all your seams are charred,” she said, a note of horror in her voice, and “Ma’am, the soles of your shoes are burned through!”

“Please wake me if the news about Mr. Black is bad,” Nell said, crawling under the bedcovers. “If he’s injured, or . . . or . . .” Or dead.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Nell pressed her face into the pillow and discovered that she was wearing the spectacles. She fumbled them off. A wig was still pinned to her head, but she didn’t care. She closed her eyes and was asleep in an instant.

IT WAS EARLY evening when Nell woke. She lay and listened to Exeter’s church bells tolling six o’clock. The echoes died away. Silence returned. Not complete silence—a murmur of far-off voices drifted in the open window, a clatter of wagon wheels, a dog’s faint bark—but those were safe, ordinary, everyday sounds. She heard no panicked shouts, no cries of alarm and warning.

Nell sat up. She felt only a little tired. When she pushed back the bedclothes and climbed out of bed her legs didn’t buckle and her head didn’t swim.

She crossed to the window and looked out and saw a hazy, smoke-tinged sky. The distant rooftop where the flames had leapt was a charred and blackened shell.

She had slain Exeter’s fire, but in return the fire had almost slain her.

Nell turned away from the window. She fumbled at her hairline, pulling out the hairpins, and removed her wig. It smelled strongly of singed horsehair.

The door opened behind her. She turned, and saw Bessie peeping in.

“Ma’am! You’re awake.”

“Has Mr. Black returned?”

“Just now, ma’am. He and Walter were helping with the fire. Walter says it’s a dreadful mess, buildings falling down, some of ’em with bodies still inside.” Bessie gave a shiver.

“He’s all right? Mr. Black?”

“Dirty as a chimney sweep, but quite safe.”

“Thank God,” Nell said.

“How do you feel, ma’am? Would you like a bath?”

Nell most definitely did want a bath. She washed the soot from her skin and the stink of the singed wig from her hair. Dressing was problematic, though, because everything she’d been wearing was ruined. Not just her gown, but her petticoat and chemise and stays. The gown disintegrated when Bessie held it up, the bodice parting company from the skirt, the little cup sleeves falling off.

“But why only the seams?” Bessie said, perplexed. “Why didn’t the whole gown catch fire?”

Nell could have answered that question: Because it hadn’t been the inferno that had burned the seams; it had been magic. Her magic.

The blue kidskin shoes had fared no better than the gown. Each sole had great charred holes in it.

“Are you certain your feet aren’t burned, ma’am?”

“I’m certain.” Nell examined the white cotton stockings she’d worn. They were speckled with tiny holes. “My garters?”

The garters were ruined, the pretty embroidery charred and flaking.

“Look at your bonnet.” Bessie held it out, a bedraggled object with a scorched brim. The smell of burned straw clung to it. “It’s a miracle your wig didn’t catch on fire.”

The wig looked like the pelt of a long-dead animal. When Bessie picked it up, a great hank of horsehair fell off.

Nell gazed at the pile of clothes. Everything she’d worn needed to be replaced. What on earth am I going to wear tonight? She had two more gowns and one more pair of stockings, but no spare petticoat or chemise, no stays, no garters and shoes.

She thought of her reticule with its shrinking hoard of funds. Thank God she’d been in such a hurry she’d forgotten to wear her spencer and her gloves. “Bessie, tomorrow morning you must go shopping for me. I’ll stay in my room until then.”

“I have these for you, ma’am,” Bessie said, and folded on the chair were a petticoat and chemise. “You can borrow them for now.”

“Whose are they?” Nell asked, astonished.

“They belong to one of the servants here.” Bessie hesitated, and then said anxiously, “You don’t mind, do you, ma’am?”

“Mind? Of course not!”

Bessie looked relieved. “I couldn’t find any stays for you to borrow, ma’am.”

“I shall be quite happy without stays,” Nell said.

She donned the borrowed chemise and petticoat, and then her own gown and stockings. Bessie gave her two mismatched ribbons for garters, and then produced a pair of yellow silk slippers.

“Whose are these?” Nell asked.

“The landlady’s. They might be a little too long, but they’re the best I could find, ma’am.”

“Does she not mind me wearing them?”

Bessie shook her head.

The slippers were almost a perfect fit. Nell looked at herself in the mirror, and then turned to Bessie and impulsively hugged the girl. Her father would have scolded her for such a gesture, but Nell didn’t care. “Thank you, Bessie. You’re a marvel.”

Bessie blushed pink with pleasure. “It’s nothing, ma’am.” And then she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Mr. Black ordered dinner for eight o’clock. Shall I do your hair?”

Nell glanced at the clock, too. Twenty to eight. “Yes.” She crossed to the dressing table and sat.

Bessie combed out Nell’s damp hair and pinned it up, then she fitted the second wig in place. She chattered while she worked, telling Nell everything she knew about the fire. “A whole street of houses burned to the ground, ma’am, and three more streets started to burn and then stopped. Walter says there are houses that are half burned and they look like the fire ate a great bite out of ’em and then just snuffed right out, and the walls and the furniture and everything is half ash and half not. He says there’s no understanding it, ma’am, except that it’s a miracle.”

“Did many people die?” Nell asked. “Do you know?”

“Walter says there are a score or more dead,” Bessie said, deftly placing a hairpin. “That’s what he and Mr. Black was doin’ all afternoon: helping get the bodies out. But Walter reckons there are some folk as are ash and will never be found.”

Nell grimaced and looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. How many people had died while she’d run? I chose my wish badly.

“Walter says there was lots of folk helping, but there was also some as were looting. He says Mr. Black gave one young devil a right hiding.” Bessie’s busy fingers stilled. Her expression in the mirror was suddenly flustered. “Begging your pardon for the language, ma’am.”

“Young devil sounds a perfectly accurate description for such a person,” Nell said. “I’m sure he deserved his hiding.”

Bessie gave a relieved smile and resumed her placing of the hairpins.

“Do you know what happened to the boy Mr. Black went to help? The one whose mother couldn’t get down the stairs?”

Bessie shook her head. “No.” She slid a final hairpin into place and stepped back. “Finished, ma’am.”

Nell looked at herself in the mirror. There was nothing to show that she’d been face to face with an inferno only a few hours ago. Her skin wasn’t reddened in the slightest. If anything, she looked a little pale . . . but perhaps that was because she’d almost managed to kill herself that afternoon. “Thank you, Bessie.”

A glance at the clock showed it was ten minutes to the hour. Nell went down to the private parlor. The luncheon they’d not eaten had been cleared away. The table was now set for dinner.

The letter to Georgie lay where she’d left it, on the little writing desk, folded and addressed, but not yet sealed. She’d have to rewrite it, have to tell Georgie that she had no way of knowing where Sophia was—or Hubert—but she couldn’t face that task tonight.

She wouldn’t mention Mordecai Black in the new letter, wouldn’t tell Georgie that she planned to marry him . . . because she no longer did.

Nell sat on the sofa and clasped her hands in her lap. The last time she’d been in this room she’d been so certain she knew what the day would bring: meeting Baletongue, finding Sophia. And she’d been certain in her feelings for Mordecai Black. Certain that she wanted to marry him.

And then the day had tipped upside down and everything had changed. She had a wish she hadn’t intended to ask for. She didn’t know where Sophia was. And she no longer wanted to marry Black.

This is one decision you’re not going to make, Black had told her. And he’d meant it. There had been no discussion, no question of compromise. He’d overridden her bluntly and emphatically, ignored her objections, treated her as a child to be told what to do.

Nell clasped her hands tightly and stared down at the toes of the borrowed yellow slippers. She still loved Mordecai Black—but she didn’t want to marry him.

One couldn’t walk away from a marriage, but one could walk away from a liaison.