Leslie Lafoy (3 page)

Which put her in the running for being one of man’s favorite fantasies. Hopefully she didn’t have a voice that sounded like fingernails on a slate board. “Give me an example of her terrible behavior.”

“She rides astride. Need I say more?”

“No,” Tristan admitted, grinning as he headed across the ballroom toward his sister and the delectable morsel at her side.

*   *   *

“Ten minutes to dinner, Emmy,” Simone announced as her friend took another sip of the syrupy punch. “Once the hostess dings the little bell, we’re off the dance hook for a couple of—” Simone frowned and tilted her head, trying to catch again the discordant sound.

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I thought I heard a strange sort of cracking.”

“Perhaps—”

Whatever Emmy had been about to suggest was lost in the deafening roar as a huge fireball shot up the stairwell and exploded into the crowded ballroom. In a single heartbeat the flames expanded in every direction, turning gay laughter to the screams of panic. Simone stared, her feet glued to the floor, her mind calmly noting that the air was suddenly very hot and very thin. Strange, really, since aside from the draperies blazing like torches, there wasn’t much actually on fire yet. If people would just calm down, they’d be much better off.

Although … Yes, there went the wallpaper behind the orchestra. It was going to be only a matter of minutes now before the whole room was engulfed. Obviously the fire had started on one of the lower floors. Which one? And how?

Emmy grabbed her hand and crying, “Help me find my brother!” pulled her into the mass of humanity storming toward the balcony doors.

Simone went along, her mind calmly collecting bits of information. Too many people, too small, too few doors … If they went with the rushing, pushing tide … Something deep inside her snapped and her brain began to function properly again. Digging in her heels, Simone used every ounce of her strength to yank Emmaline back. “No!” she shouted above the din. “We’ll be crushed! We have to go another way!”

“I have to find Tristan!”

As she had to find Haywood. Who, she assured herself as she looked around the ballroom, was probably in the gardens with Lord Denton’s wife. “We’ll find your brother once we get out,” she promised, dragging Emmy toward the men’s gaming rooms and desperately hoping not only that they were all connected but also that the last one of them in the line had a window overlooking the yard. If they had to jump, they had to jump. The chances of surviving a fall were better than those in joining the stampede or in hoping they could find a corner the fire wouldn’t touch.

With a stumbling Emmaline in tow, the smoke thickening with her every footstep and burning her lungs with each gasping breath, Simone led the way through the rooms and past hastily abandoned card tables. The gamers had taken the money before they’d fled, she noted, her brain once again slipping into its oddly detached observations. And thought to close the doors into the ballroom behind them. Or perhaps they’d had the same thought she had and gone the way she and Emmy were heading. Perhaps the gamers had already made a way out and all the two of them would have to do was follow them. That would be nice.

So much for nice possibilities,
she silently allowed as they raced into a room with, not a door, but a tall, intact window on the far wall and not another soul in sight. Behind her, Emmy whimpered. Simone paused just long enough to gulp a breath of heavy, acrid air and let go of her friend’s hand and then went to the window. As she frantically yanked at the sash, the reality of the world beyond it registered in her awareness. She’d turned the wrong direction. It wasn’t the rear yard spreading out far below; it was the front drive.

There wasn’t anyone down there to help her and Emmy. Just coachmen frantically trying to move their carriages and horses away from the burning mansion and out of harm’s way. No one would think to look up. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be inclined to abandon their vehicles and snarl things up even worse to effect a rescue of two stupid young women.

Simone pulled on the sash again, desperately aware that the smoke was growing thicker around them. The window refused to budge and she gave up trying to open it that way. Whirling around, she scanned the room, looking for something hefty she could pitch through the window. The desk in the room had only smallish things on it, nothing that would make an opening in an efficient way. The chairs were entirely too big to even think about moving, much less lifting and throwing. The mantel … She snatched up her skirts and dashed past a seemingly frozen Emmaline.

Simone was halfway back to the window with an iron fireplace poker firmly in hand and vaguely wondering what they were going to do once they had the glass broken when Emmy cried, “Tristan!”

Simone wheeled back just in time to see Emmy launch herself into the arms of a tall, dark-haired, incredibly broad-shouldered man. A shorter, blond, rather pear-shaped man was behind him, closing the door. Emmy got a quick hug before she was all but slammed back on her feet. “Stuff a rug against the lower edge of the door,” her brother said curtly, his dark gaze locked with Simone’s as he advanced on her, his hand outstretched. “Permit me, please.”

“Glad to see that you’ve made it this far,” she said, handing over the poker. “She was worried about you. I’m Simone.”

“Pleasure,” he replied. He jerked his head in the direction of his companion and added, “That’s Noland,” as he strode on to the window.

“Charmed and all that,” she offered over the sound of shattering glass.

Noland nodded crisply and stepped past her to look out the opening Emmy’s brother had created. “Dear God, Tris,” he said, straightening. “It’s three stories down. To stone pavers. We’ll shatter every bone in our bodies.”

As the two of them looked around the room, Simone darted to the curtains. Even as she grabbed a handful of fabric, the hope they offered withered. Still, she gave them a hard yank, pulling them, rods and all, from the window frames. A cloud of dust swirled into the smoke and sent her, choking and stumbling, back, tattered shreds of rotten damask still fisted in her hands. A steel band clamped around her waist and hauled her hard against a massive wall of worsted wool and muscle.

“Stand still,” he commanded, planting her on her feet just as abruptly as he had his sister. Releasing Simone every bit as unceremoniously, he added, “I’m going to cut your skirt off at the bodice.”

And make a rope of out it. Brilliant.
“Rather forward, don’t you think?” she offered, lifting her arms out of the way and watching him slice the brocade with a nastily pointed shard of glass. “We’ve only just met.”

He turned his head to look up her, his grin wicked. “It’ll give them something to talk about if they find us dead.”

Simone laughed as Emmaline wailed from the door, “I don’t want to die!”

“We don’t, either, Em,” he assured his sister, severing the last threads on Simone’s dress. “And we’re not going to. Noland, get a piece of glass and cut off Em’s skirt.”

As Noland rushed to obey, Simone stepped out of the teal fabric pooled at her feet and then snatched it up, turning it so that Tristan could slice the seam that gathered and held the length into the fashionably full bustling train. Part of her brain noting the ever-thickening smoke around them, they worked together silently and efficiently to open the seams and then divide the fabric into substantial strips.

The last of them created, he took two from the pile at their feet, found the ends, and whipped them around and about. Simone arched a brow and watched him add a third length to the makeshift rope. Yes, he was using the bowline knot. Quickly, easily, instinctively. “You’re a sailor,” she observed.

His hands still working, he glanced up and cocked a brow as he gave her a lopsided smile. “You know many?”

“It’s been a while.”

His smile widened. “That’s not what I asked.”

“Yes, but it’s what I’m answering.”

He laughed, the sound low and rumbling and somehow both exciting and soothing at the same time. She was spared from having to contemplate the significance of that by Noland dumping pink strips on the pile of teal ones.

“Shall we use the desk as an anchor?” the portly man asked. “And move it to the window?”

Tristan nodded while tying and testing knots. Simone left him to the important task, trusting his ability, and went to help his friend shove the huge piece of furniture into place. Emmaline joined them and together the three of them managed to get the huge mahogany beast lurching across the room. As they pushed it into place, Tristan dropped the coil of knotted fabric atop it, took a free end, and bent down to secure it around the nearest leg.

He quickly tested it, using all of his weight, and then flung the length out the open window, saying, “Noland, you go first.”

“Why?” his friend asked even as he sat on the windowsill and took up the rope.

“One of us needs to be at the bottom to catch Em or Simone should the fabric or the knots give.”

“Oh yes,” he replied, looking down. “Of course.”

“That,” Tristan added, grinning wickedly, “and if it’ll hold your weight, it’ll hold the rest of us.”

Noland’s gaze snapped up from the ground below. “I’ve never quite trusted you completely, you know.”

“And I can understand why,” Tristan countered with a chuckle. “Down you go.”

Noland took a deep breath and eased his weight from the sill to the rope. The fabric went taut and the desk skidded slightly toward the window, but the knots didn’t shift so much as a millimeter. Simone joined Tristan and his sister at the window, holding her breath with them as they watched Noland lurch and jerk his way down to the safety of the drive.

As his feet touched the ground, Tristan turned away, took his sister by the shoulders, and sat her down on the sill, saying, “You’re next.”

Emmaline’s eyes went wide. She looked back and forth between them. “That would leave you and Simone alone, unchaperoned.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Emmy!” Simone challenged, picking up the slackened rope and forcing it into her friend’s hands. “Given the somewhat dire circumstances, I hardly think your brother is of a mind to ravage me.
Or
that maintaining appearances is at the top of anyone’s list of concerns at the moment.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she managed to squeak out as Tristan lifted her feet and swung them outside, effectively turning her entire body and preparing her for the descent.

“Yes, I am. Now go. It’s getting thick in here.”

“Not to mention more than comfortably warm,” Tristan chimed in from beside her.

To her credit, Emmaline resolutely inched her behind off the sill and trusted her weight to the rope. She went no farther, though. Tristan leaned down, his hands on the sill, and patiently said, “Just hanging there doesn’t do you any good, Em. You have to loosen your hold enough to slide down the rope.”

She glanced down and then up at him again, her eyes even wider than before. “What if I can’t hang on and fall?”

“Noland will dash under you in a great act of chivalrous sacrifice. Landing on him will be like falling into a feather mattress.”

Emmy glanced down at Noland, then nodded, swallowed, and started the descent, one tightly grasping handhold at a time.

“Our rope has taken two down,” Tristan said softly, stepping back from the window as his sister neared Noland’s outstretched arms. “It could come apart at any time.”

Seeing Emmy safely on the ground, Simone sighed in relief and picked up the slackened line. “My,” she said, chuckling as she sat on the sill, “aren’t you the cheerful sort.”

He grinned and shrugged. “I’m just mentioning possibilities in case you have anything you’d regret not doing before an untimely end.”

“Other than getting out of a burning building in time,” she offered, swinging her legs out, “nothing comes to mind right this second.”

As she considered Noland standing below with his arms up, Tristan said from behind her, “Well, there’s something I’d regret if I didn’t get to do it.”

Oh, God, of all the times for anyone to pour out the yearnings of his soul … “What would that be?” she asked dutifully, looking at him over her shoulder.

His eyes twinkled and his grin … Her heart lurched and her chest tightened. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as he took her face between the palms of his hands and bent his head.
He isn’t
—
Oh, he is.

And oh, he did. Thoroughly, bone-meltingly wonderfully. Her breath escaped on a sigh as her lips parted beneath his.
So
good. Never in her life …

She swayed and blinked as he released her. The devilish, knowing angle of his smile snapped her awareness back to the moment. And brought her sense of self-preservation to the fore. She arched a brow and announced regally, “That was most improper, you know.”

“Absolutely,” he admitted, his grin going wider. “Was it enjoyable as well?”

“Marginally so,” she allowed, easing off the sill. “Just barely.”

He leaned out after her. “Oh, please! Just barely marginal?”

“Yes,” she answered, choking back her laughter. “But you are very good at tying knots. I definitely appreciate that bit of competence on your part.”

Tristan watched her descend with a speed and agility that suggested considerable experience at escaping upper stories in the middle of the night. Lord Almighty, she was an interesting woman. She had grit and gumption under fire. Literally. Add in beautiful and naturally wanton … “I haven’t even begun to show you knots, dearest Simone.”

Chapter 2

A rope made of knotted damask didn’t lend itself well to a display of his true rig-climbing abilities, but Tristan did the best he could with the opportunity and descended hand over hand with far more finesse than any of the others had displayed. Letting go a couple of meters up, he dropped the last of the distance to land squarely on his feet. Both Emmaline and Noland looked at him in wide-eyed and appropriate wonder—the very the kind of wonder and appreciation he’d designed his descent to illicit from Lady Simone Turnbridge. Unfortunately …