The Gentleman Who Loved Me (Heart of Enquiry Book 6)(2)
“Sound the alarm, get everyone out!” Andrew was on the run, battling flames to reach the stairway at the other end of the hall. “I’ll fetch Primrose and meet you outside!”
He raced up the spiraling steps to the garret room. At the top, he twisted the doorknob, cursing when it was locked, even though he’d been the one who’d lectured Primrose to keep it that way.
He pounded his fist against wood. “Primrose, wake up! There’s a fire!”
No reply. He backed up, readying to break down the door when it squealed open. Primrose blinked drowsily up at him, her toes peeping beneath her nightgown. “Andrew?”
“Come with me. Now,” he said urgently.
Without a word, she lifted her arms, and he scooped her up, heading back the way he’d come. Smoke thickened the air, stung his eyes. He came to a halt as waves of heat blasted into him: flames engulfed the floors, walls, ceiling. He jumped back as a beam collapsed in a shower of embers. No way to make it to the last flight of stairs. Against his chest, Primrose’s small body wracked with gasping coughs, her arms tightening around his neck.
Cursing, he retraced his steps back up to the garret room. Slammed the door to shut out the choking smoke. Sprinting to the chamber’s only window, he threw it open and pushed Primrose’s head through.
“Breathe, little chick,” he said, his voice gritty from the smoke.
As she drew in great gulps of air, shouts and the clang of a fire bell came from the front of the building. Andrew took rapid stock of his options. Here, at the back of the house, there was only one way out: a twenty-five-foot drop to the empty alleyway. To climb down, he would need a rope…
He went over to the bed, yanking off the bedsheet. He tore it in half, twisting and knotting the pieces together. He tested the makeshift cord: strong but not long enough. Adding the curtain panels to extend the length, he secured the rope to the bedframe, tossing it out the window. The end dangled some fifteen feet above the cobblestones. Still not long enough—but a damned better option than being burned alive.
He crouched in front of Primrose. “I need you to do something for me.”
“All right.” Her trusting reply came readily, despite the fear in her wide jade eyes.
He placed a hand atop her sunny curls. “We’re going to climb down that rope together, but I’ll need both of my hands. That means you must hold onto me very tightly. You’re not to let go under any circumstances, understand?”
“Yes, Andrew.”
“Then up you go.” He turned around, and she clambered onto his back, her arms circling his neck and her legs clamping his waist. He grabbed the makeshift rope and exited through the open window onto the narrow ledge of the roof. When the cord held after another testing tug, he readied to make the descent—and heard her frightened whimper.
“Trust me, sunshine,” he said.
Her arms tightened around him; her curls brushed his neck as she nodded.
With a silent prayer, he stepped off the edge.
They swung in a dizzying arc before his boots hit the wall of the building. Bracing with his feet, he lowered them down the rope, fist over fist. He made the mistake of looking down: the cobblestones swam in his vision, miles away from where they hung, suspended, one false move away from certain death. Primrose’s heart hammered against his back, and her face, buried against his neck, was slick with tears.
“Don’t look, sweetheart,” he panted. “We’re almost there.”
Trembling, she burrowed closer. His muscles bulged, straining as he climbed down foot by foot. He didn’t have a plan for when they ran out of rope. He’d have to do a free fall for the last fifteen feet, to somehow cushion Primrose’s body with his own— “I’ll be there in a minute!”
His head whirled in the direction of Kitty’s voice, the clip-clop of hooves. Relief blasted through him at the sight of the wagon barreling down the alley, and he had a crazed desire to laugh. How could he have underestimated Kitty? If he could count on one thing, it was that she always landed on her feet—which meant, in this instance, that he and Primrose would too.
Strength renewed, he continued the hand-over-hand journey to the end of the rope, beneath which Kitty had now aligned the straw-filled cart, closing the gap to less than ten feet.
“Hold on,” he told Primrose.
When she clutched him tighter, he let go of the rope. He twisted in the air, shielding her small body with his. His back hit the cart, the breath knocking out of him.
Primrose scrambled off of him and peered into his face.
“Andrew?” she said fretfully.
“I’m fine,” he managed.
She burst into tears.
Gingerly, he sat up and patted her rumpled curls. “There, my brave chick. No use crying after the fact, is there?”
“I w-wasn’t brave. I was scared,” she sobbed. “You s-saved me.”
Survival had rid him of any capacity for self-delusion. He knew what he was, and it wasn’t a hero, not by a longshot. Yet her words wended through him like dawn’s first rays through the rookery’s dark streets.
“Shut up, you stupid girl! Or I’ll give you something to truly cry about.”
Kitty’s threat drew his eyes to the driver’s bench. His lover’s russet tresses were loose around her cloaked figure, her beautiful features hard with rage. Primrose instantly quieted, biting her lip, her breaths fitful as she tried to obey.