“Stay here, all of you!” I demanded. I looked at Mr Davis. “Use that pistol to try and shoot the door bolt once I am taken. Perhaps it will open. Or perhaps someone will hear the report.” The pistol looked old and I had no idea if it was even loaded. Mr Davis cursed and someone else whimpered, but Mrs Dale dropped to her knees and began to pray. Miss Bickford bravely started forward regardless, but I gave Mrs Reynolds a look, part pleading, part insistent, and she put her hand upon her arm to stop her.
“Don’t interfere! She has her plan, can’t you see?” the housekeeper implored, and she stilled.
Plan? I had no such thing. Only the design to walk as slowly as I dared, and hope that the distance was great enough, that it took time enough, for some brilliant, miraculous intervention to present itself. She would not wish to give up her one means of control until I was close enough for her to keep it; as long as I inched forward, she would not light the drapes, though she goaded and shouted insults. “Do not imagine you can escape me! You only delay the inevitable! I will carry my point!”
I was very much afraid she would. And then I was only eight feet from her. Seven. Six. Five…
With a deafening crash the door nearest the villagers opened, and I whirled to see Mr Darcy—followed closely by Mr Williams—thunder in with a half-dozen others, knocking over poor old Mr Davis in the process. Mrs de Bourgh did not hesitate. She held the candle directly to the portraits. Whatever she had poured upon them caught instantly, and the velvet did the rest, the flames crawling up the drapes and leaping towards the ceiling faster than anything I ever imagined. I turned to run but she grabbed me with nearly inhuman strength, throwing me into the nearest portrait, trying to hold me close enough for any fabric upon me to catch—as if into Anne’s fiery embrace.
But the scent of the oil she’d splashed was strong upon her, and in her attempts to shove my kicking, flailing, struggling person into the flames, she ignited. Still, she did not give up—even when her hair lit—only trying to use herself as a brimstone match to set me aflame. And then Mr Darcy was there, snatching me away from her, though my skirt and the cravat bindings had begun to burn, rolling away with me, over and over, to extinguish any flames. The ballroom was rapidly filling with smoke; he scooped me up and ran with me towards the open door.
Through watering eyes, I caught my final glimpse of Mrs de Bourgh. She made no move, not to escape the blaze, not to quench the flames encircling and encompassing her, not to cry out or reach for the door behind her.
She had lost, and she let herself burn.
* * *
“Oh, my darling. My darling Elizabeth. I am so sorry, so sorry,” my husband said, over and over again.
He had run with me to a raised hill, far beyond the flames and smoke; I was dazed and coughing, but gradually, as the fresh air infused my lungs, began to make sense of my escape.
“You came,” I rasped, for my throat felt sore as if I’d been screaming—although I was fairly certain I had held them in. “Please do not apologise. You came for me. I am safe.”
“’Tis all my fault,” he said, soothing my hair away from my face. “I cannot express—”
“It was not,” I said, a little more strongly. “No one could have guessed she would be so diabolical.”
But he held me tightly to him, murmuring words of affection and guilt. “You have not understood, you could not know. I brought this upon you, I did. Oh, my dearest, loveliest Elizabeth.” A single tear tracked down his soot-stained cheeks.
Once I could not have fathomed this proud man in tears, but that was before I knew how soft and kind his heart. “No, no,” I whispered, trying to put my hands up to press against his cheeks. But they were still bound.
With a muttered curse, he began tearing away at the filthy, singed cravat tying my arms together. It had protected them, for the most part, but I began to feel the effects of my close encounter with fire. My skirt, of a high-quality wool, had resisted burning through; however, a few small burns upon my upper arms stung a bit—nothing too serious, I was certain, but I could not prevent my hiss of pain.
“Oh, my love,” he said, anguished, as he saw the angry red marks. “My dearest love.”
At that moment, we were joined by a troupe of men from the estate, led by Mr Williams, as well as Mrs Reynolds—who thankfully appeared utterly untouched by smoke or soot or flame. Mr Darcy did not appear to notice them. I stroked his cheek and looked into his eyes.
“I am well, I promise. Please, go and rescue the rest of the house for me. Ensure all are safe and the fire does not spread. I have plans…remember?”
“I will take good care of her, sir,” Mrs Reynolds promised.
“Take her to my home,” Mr Williams offered. “It is close, but well away from the house and quite safe.”
“That will do very nicely,” I agreed. “And look, here is Miss Bickford and her party coming to meet us. Let us all go to Mr Williams’s home, where we will be out of the way, while you and the others do the more dangerous labour of stopping the spread of the flames.”
After a last agonised look at me, Mr Darcy took the men away with him to lead the fight against the fire. For a moment, we all stood together on that grassy hillock, watching the bustle of activity swarming the cliffside.
“They will try and choke it out,” Mrs Reynolds said knowledgably, calmly. “Fire needs air to breathe. But Pemberley also has the latest in fire engines, to better apply water.”
“Bertie…is he safe?”
“Oh, yes, mistress. They brought him ’round quickly and nothing would do for him but that he immediately join the men fighting the fire.”
I closed my eyes in relief, but other worries beset me. “What if she applied her oil earlier, to other draperies? We do not know how long she was there, lurking, or what they have done with the doctor or the coachman. Obviously, she was not ill, and has not been for some time.”
“Ah, but we have had footmen stationed beyond her room’s door these last weeks, and Nurse Rook was not the type to fall asleep while attending her patient. I do not think the old lady decided to harm Pemberley until she learned of the renovation, and by then, she was too closely watched. I do not believe she has been here for hours, even. There were too many about, and few places to hide. Now, mistress, let us go to Mr Williams’s cottage. His housekeeper, Mrs Pruitt, will have something for those burns. Or shall we ask for a litter to carry you?”
At last, I heard it—the trembling in her voice. Cool, steady Mrs Reynolds was unmistakeably overwrought.