The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(33)

It had been years since he’d been on the fire brigade; he’d thought the memory of those weeks had hazed together into nondescript forgetfulness, but it was all coming back to him now. That tree, there—they’d have to lop the branches back, and then dig a line in the turf.

Her shoulders heaved one last time. But by now, the flames were waist-high in the room beyond, and even she must have known it was hopeless. She turned away, marching back to where the women were coming out of the press.

“Melissa, we need shovels, or anything like shovels you can find. Caroline, you must go fetch help. Phoebe and Mary, start with the buckets.”

Edward found a shovel himself and had started to mark off a perimeter when his brain finally caught up with his body. He looked up—at the women scattering in all directions, off to do battle against the blaze—and his mouth dried with a sudden realization.

This wasn’t the fire that his brother had been talking about. This was the distraction.

He had no time to think. He left the shovel in place and ran back to the press building. The doors were open wide, but the press floor was empty. But the overpowering smell of paraffin oil assailed him. The floor underfoot gleamed in iridescent colors.

He looked around, saw nobody about.

There had to be someone here. The arsonist must be inside; the place needed nothing more than a match to go up. He crept forward, checking under a table, behind a chest of drawers. He came to the other side of the room—the wall where the glass window spilled light into Miss Marshall’s office. Her door was ajar. And there, in the darkening shadows under her desk…

There was a boot tip poking out from the other side.

Emotion, he told himself, would be nothing but a burden now. He needed to act, and act quickly. And yet he could not dispel it. His stomach seemed full of rage.

He stalked into her office, grabbed hold of the man by the foot, and hauled with all his might. He was so angry he scarcely even felt the mass of the other man, even though the fellow must have weighed at least fifteen stone.

The man kicked out, knocking Edward’s grip loose. Another kick targeted Edward’s knees, and he crumpled to the floor. The arsonist scrambled to his feet, dashing to the door of Free’s office.

Edward lunged for him, grabbing for his ankle. He had it—but the man stomped, and his boot found Edward’s hand. Somewhere, pain registered. But in the moment, with the smell of smoke and paraffin overwhelming his senses, Edward felt nothing.

He reached up and grabbed the man by the collar with his other hand, twisting, cutting off air.

“You idiot,” he said darkly.

The sound of wood striking against sandpaper—the brief smell of phosphorus—brought him back to himself. For a moment, he felt fear, and with it, every other sensation returned: the sharp pain in his hand, the burn of his lungs.

“Let me go,” the other man said. “Let me go or I’ll drop this now.”

Edward’s attention focused on the flare of the match, that perilous dancing flame. Hell, the fumes in this room were thick enough that they might ignite.

“Stop being an idiot and put that thing out,” Edward growled. “You’ll kill us both.”

The man’s hand trembled. Edward reached out—his hand didn’t seem to be working properly—and crushed the flame with his glove.

His heart was beating like the wings of a flock of birds. The man kicked out once, twice—uselessly, now, because Edward had hold of him and was not letting go.

He could tell the moment the man gave up—when his limbs came to rest and he looked into Edward’s eyes, his lips pulling into a resigned frown.

“Oh, yes,” Edward said in a low growl. “You should be afraid. You are in a heap of trouble.”

BY THE TIME NIGHT FELL, the last remnants of Free’s home—charred and blackened embers, scarcely holding together in the shape of a building—had almost stopped smoldering.

It was gone. Her home, her place of safety… But that had been an illusion, too. Her hands were streaked with soot; her dress smelled of paraffin. But her press was still standing. Victory, of a sort.

Some victory.

She trudged back to her knot of tired, bedraggled employees. They’d all worked hard. She wished she could send them home. There was no time to be weary, though. There was too much to be done.

The most important of those things needed to be done quickly. “Amanda,” Free said, “you’ll need to leave now, if you wish to catch the night train to London.”

“But—”

“We can’t take even an instant to sit still and lick our wounds,” Free said. “Every moment we spend combating this is a moment lost to a larger, more important fight. If something else happens, you need to be in London, where you can commission another press to print our paper.”

More importantly, if something else was planned for tonight, if something happened to Free, she needed to make sure Amanda survived to carry things on. But she didn’t say that; if she spoke it out loud, she might lose her nerve altogether.

She didn’t have to. Amanda’s chin quivered, but she nodded.

“Melissa, make sure Amanda gets safely to the station. While you’re in town, let them know we have someone here that the constables will need to take into custody.” That had to be done; if they had any chance of presenting this affair to the public, they’d have to be seen to play by civilized rules.