Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane #1)(100)

Night had fallen fully. Signs swung overhead, creaking eerily in the wind. Now and again, they could see the moon, floating bloated and weak behind drifting clouds. The Ghost of St. Giles ran ahead, his footfalls nearly silent. As they neared the home, Temperance could see an odd orangey-red light flickering over the rooftops, teasing and coy, but becoming bolder as they ran.

And then she smelled the smoke.

“Dear God!” She couldn’t even put into words her fear.

They rounded the corner and saw. The home was on fire. For a dreadful moment, the sound seemed to stop in Temperance’s ears and all she heard was a kind of rushing noise. Oddly she focused on Lady Caire, standing by herself in the middle of Maiden Lane. Lazarus’s mother had one hand to her mouth, and she was gazing up—at the top of the foundling home. That sight was what brought Temperance back suddenly and all at once. People were shouting. Nell was there, shaking her arm, and she could smell the smoke now, a dreadful hint of the chaos within.

“Are they out?” she shouted at Nell. There were children milling about her. “Are all the children out?”

“I don’t know!” Nell replied.

“We need to take count!” Temperance shouted.

Maiden Lane was in chaos. People screamed and ran back and forth, the aristocrats who had come to view the home mingled with the everyday folk of St. Giles. A bucket line had formed. The ragged cobbler who lived in the cellar next door handed a bucket of water to a footman in full livery who handed it to the fishmonger’s wife who handed it to a lord in a snowy white wig and so on. It was a bizarre sight. Temperance turned and looked behind her at the home.

And caught her breath.

Flames were shooting out the upper windows, smoke billowing in a gray-black cloud. At that moment, Winter and St. John staggered from the house.

“Winter!” Temperance called.

He carried a small boy in his arms. “No one else is in the nurseries. I think we got them all. Did you count the children?”

Temperance turned to Nell.

“Six and twenty—all but Mary Whitsun.”

Temperance clutched at Lazarus’s arm. “Where is she? Where could Mother Heart’s-Ease have taken her?”

But when she looked at him, he was staring up at the building. “Christ’s blood.”

She followed his gaze. Atop the roof, a tall, gaunt woman in a tattered man’s scarlet military coat was picking her way across the shingles.

The harlequin flashed by them silently and disappeared into the house next to the foundling home.

“Where is Mary Whitsun?” Temperance fisted one hand at her breast. No, it couldn’t be. No one would be so terrible as to leave a child in that inferno.

But Mother Heart’s-Ease was clearly alone.

Temperance burst into tears. Dear God, Mary Whitsun was in a burning building, dying.

“God’s bloody stones,” Caire muttered, and before she could speak, he was gone.

Gone inside the burning home.

THE LOWER FLOORS were relatively clear, but as Lazarus ran up the wooden stairs, the smoke rapidly built. He threw his cloak over his head, holding part of it against his mouth, but it provided little barrier against the smoke. He choked, fighting his body’s urge to return to clean air. Dear God, he could hardly see, let alone breathe. Everything was gray with smoke. He looked about the floor where the children slept.

“Mary!”

His bellow turned to a hacking cough and was lost in the roar of the fire. She might not even be here. He might be on a fatal fool’s mission. But the sight of Temperance’s despair had been too much for him to bear. If the child was here, he would find her.

The inferno moaned like a live thing, lurking in the floor above—the floor where Temperance and her brother had rooms. He narrowed his stinging eyes against the smoke as he climbed the rickety staircase. If he survived this hell, he’d be damned sure the home was better built next time. Tears streaked his face but evaporated almost at once in the heat.

The upper hall boiled with smoke.

Where would a madwoman hide a child? Lazarus fell to his knees, crawling, the tears blurring his eyes. If the girl was at the far end of the hall, she was gone now, but Temperance’s room was not yet engulfed. He had to at least check.

He reached up to turn the doorknob, shoving the door open with his shoulder. “Mary!”

An answering cry.

He was blind now, so he felt with his hand, finding and clutching at a small foot. She was bound, lying on the floor next to the bed. She crowded against him as if she might burrow her small body into his, and he felt the wiggling fur of the cat she held. He broke apart his stick and used the sword to cut the rope about her legs and hands. Then he tucked her under one arm and dragged her toward the stairs. The flames were blasting in his face, licking down his throat, trying to set him afire from within. His lungs ached. There was a terrible roaring in his ears, and he realized, suddenly and fatefully, that the house was giving way. The cat leapt from the girl’s arms.

Temperance loved this child, even if she’d never admitted it.

He shoved Mary’s little body ahead of him. Dear God, let her at least live. “Run! Run now!”

He might’ve said more, but at that moment, hell opened up and swallowed him whole.

* * *

THE HOME WAS dying, and Caire and Mary Whitsun were still inside.

Temperance watched as a section of the roof suddenly slid and came tumbling down to the cobblestones. For a moment, two figures were silhouetted against the flames: Mother Heart’s-Ease’s cadaverous form and the quick shadow of the Ghost of St. Giles. Then they were both gone. Temperance couldn’t muster the energy to wonder what had happened to them. All her will, all her hopes and prayers, were centered on Lazarus and Mary.