Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers #1)(101)

She never remembered the moment they emerged from the foundry with smoking clothes and singed hair and heat-parched faces…all she could recall later was that there were countless pairs of hands reaching for her, and her aching legs were suddenly relieved of the burden of her own weight. Collapsing slowly into someone’s arms, she felt herself being lifted while her lungs worked greedily to collect clean air. A dripping, brackish cloth passed over her face, and unfamiliar hands reached inside her dress to unfasten her corset. She couldn’t even bring herself to care. Blanketed in an exhausted stupor, she surrendered to the rough ministrations and gulped the contents of a metal dipper that was pressed to her mouth.

When Annabelle finally came to herself, she blinked repeatedly to let the assuaging fluids spread across the stinging surface of her eyeballs. “Simon…?” she mumbled, struggling upward. She was gently subdued.

“Rest for another minute,” came a gravelly voice. “Your husband is fine. A bit battered and scorched, but definitely salvageable. I don’t even think his damned leg is broken.”

As full awareness seeped over her, she realized in sluggish amazement that she was half-sitting in Lord Westcliff’s lap, on the ground, with her gown partly undone. Glancing up into the earl’s harsh-planed face, she saw that his tanned complexion was streaked with black, and his hair was rumpled and filthy. The usually impeccable earl looked so sympathetic and disheveled and approachably human that she barely recognized him.

“Simon…” she whispered.

“He is being loaded into my carriage as we speak. Needless to say, he is rather impatient for you to join him. I am taking the both of you to Marsden Terrace— I’ve already sent for a doctor to meet us there.” Westcliff shifted her a little higher in his arms. “Why did you go in after him? You could have been a very wealthy widow.” The question was asked not with mockery, but with a gentle interest that confused her.

Rather than answer, Annabelle turned her attention to a bloody blotch on his shoulder. “Hold still,” she murmured, using her broken fingernails to grasp the end of a needle-thin metallic shard that protruded from his shirt. She tugged it out quickly, and Westcliff’s face twitched with pain.

Regarding the shard as she held it up for him to see, the earl shook his head ruefully. “God. I hadn’t noticed that.”

Enclosing the object in her fingers, Annabelle asked warily, “Why did you go in, my lord?”

“Having been informed that you had dashed into a burning building to fetch your husband, I thought to offer my services…perhaps open a door, clear an object from your path…that sort of thing.”

“You were rather helpful,” she said, deliberately matching his bland tone, and he grinned, his teeth white in his smoke-blackened face.

Carefully, Westcliff helped her to sit up. Keeping his arm behind her back, he closed the fastenings of her dress with a deft, impersonal touch, while he contemplated the full-bore devastation of the foundy. “Only two men perished, and one still unaccounted for,” he murmured. “Miraculous, considering the scope of the disaster.”

“Does this mean the end of the locomotive works?”

“No, I expect that we’ll rebuild as soon as possible.” The earl stared kindly into her exhausted face. “Later you might describe to me what happened. For now, allow me to take you to the carriage.”

Annabelle gasped a little as he stood and lifted her in his arms. “Oh—there’s no need—”

“It’s the least I can do.” Westcliff flashed another rare smile as he carried her with facile strength. “I have some amends to make, where you’re concerned.”

“You mean because you now believe that I actually care about Simon, instead of having just married him for his money?”

“Something like that. It seems I was mistaken about you, Mrs. Hunt. Please accept my humble apology.”

Suspecting that the earl was rarely given to making apologies of any kind, much less humble ones, Annabelle linked her arms around his neck. “I suppose I’ll have to,” she said grudgingly, “since you saved our lives.”

He shifted her more comfortably in his arms. “Shall we cry pax, then?”

“Pax,” she agreed, and coughed against his shoulder.

While the doctor visited Simon in the master bedroom of Marsden Terrace, Westcliff took Annabelle aside and personally tended to the wound in her upper arm. After tweezing out the metal chip that was half-buried in her skin, he doused the area with alcohol while Annabelle screeched in pain. He dabbed the cut with salve, bandaged it expertly, and gave her a glass of brandy to dull her discomfort. Whether he had added something to the brandy, or pure exhaustion had amplified its effects, Annabelle would never know. After downing two fingers of the dark amber liquid, she felt woozy and light-headed. Her voice was distinctly slurred as she told Westcliff that the world was fortunate that he hadn’t gone into the medical profession, which he gravely acknowledged was probably true. She staggered off drunkenly to find Simon, and was firmly dissuaded by the housekeeper and a pair of housemaids, who seemed intent on washing her. Before Annabelle quite knew what had happened, she had been bathed and changed into a nightgown purloined from Westcliff’s elderly mother’s closet and was lying in a soft, clean bed. As soon as she closed her eyes, she sank into a helpless slumber.