WindBeliever (13 page)

But after nearly an hour had passed, the Serenian had not returned. Men coming down for a few moments of respite from the heat, to gulp down food and drink, spoke of the fair-haired Outlander who was fighting the fire, and Catherine could not help but overhear as word passed from man to man around the command sight.

“You ought to see him, Alexi,” one wizened villager chuckled. “That boy can wield a mean hoe, he can! I’d have sworn when he took up that thing he didn’t know one end of it from the other, but he set in to digging right alongside us and he’s still digging!”

Catherine saw Alexi Romanovitch frown. “I hope to God he don’t chop off his own foot.”

“If’n I didn’t know no better,” another firefighter said in a tired voice, “I’d say he’s dug many a hole in his time.” He glanced up at Alexi. “He don’t waste no time in doing it, neither.”

“He’s a strong’un,” still another man commented. “He helped Andrei lift that felled tree out of the way as though it were a piece of kindling.” A wry grin touched the man’s toothless mouth.

“But he done went and ruined that silky shirt of his’n.”

Alexi looked toward the stand of trees where word had reached him that despite the men and their efforts, the fire was rapidly spreading.

“We’re going to have to move down the hill some.” He found Catherine watching him and smiled. “You’d best tell His Highness, milady.”

Catherine nodded and turned toward her father’s tent. When she ducked inside, she sighed.

Her father, the Tzar, was playing dominoes with one of his personal aides. When he looked up at her and frowned at her sweaty, dusty appearance, she forced a rigid smile to her lips.

“Where’s Peter and Mikel, Father?” she asked, not seeing her brothers.

The Tzar shrugged. “They’ve gone to help evacuate the villagers.” A pout formed on her father’s face. “I refused to allow them to fight the fire, but they insisted on making themselves useful so I sent them on to supervise the evacuation.”

It was something her father was good at doing--she thought with a grimace of disdain--

supervising. He would have his sons follow in his footsteps, but neither of her brothers were so inclined. Both felt a keen need to actively help their people as well as lead them.

“Alexi says we are to move the command post, Father,” Catherine announced. She almost screamed her disapproval when her father let out an annoyed sigh.

“I was winning, too,” he said, looking up at her with a frown.

“You always do,” Catherine snapped, looking at the man her father was playing. At least the bastard had the grace to blush at her reprimand. “Did you know Prince Conar is here?”

A startled look of fear crossed the Tzar’s face. “Doing what?”

“Fighting the fire, I would imagine. He is up in the north fire line.” She felt a twinge of revenge when her father’s face paled.

“He can’t be! I left instructions that no one was to let him know of this!”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 58

Catherine shrugged. “Well, he found out somehow and is up there making a fool of himself.”

“Or acquitting himself well,” her father’s domino partner said quietly.

“That is your opinion, Misha,” Catherine snapped.

“Made from personal, first hand knowledge of the man, Your Grace,” Misha answered her.

“Well, we can’t have him doing it!” the Tzar protested. “If he’s hurt he can’t ....”

“I’ll see to it, Highness,” Misha said, casting a warning glance at his monarch.

“Yes, yes,” the Tzar mumbled, avoiding his daughter’s stare. “Please see that you do, Misha.”

Catherine wondered at the hasty departure of her father’s closest aide. She cast the Tzar one final look as he bid her send in men to help dismantle his tent.

“Perhaps you should go back to the Palace, Father,” she advised.

Her father nodded absently, his mind elsewhere. “You do that, Catherine. I’ll be all right here.”

Letting out a long sigh, Catherine turned and ducked under the tent flap. She loved her father dearly, but the man was inclined toward an absent-mindedness that drove her to the brink of insanity. Plodding wearily to the camp cook fire, she sat down on a rock beside the hastily-erected work table and pilfered a sandwich of ham and lettuce.

“It’s him!” her younger sister, Tatiana, sighed and Catherine glanced up to see an angry Conar McGregor stomping toward the water kegs. “Isn’t he rugged-looking?”

“Dirty-looking,” Catherine corrected as she watched Conar McGregor untie the bandana around his neck and wipe his grimy face. Scooping up a tin of water, he poured it over his uplifted face. She frowned as dirty lines appeared on his cheeks and down his neck. His shirt was a sodden, blackened rag over his wide shoulders and there were rips under the arms and along one shoulder seam.

“I think he’s the handsomest man I’ve ever seen,” Tatiana sighed again.

Catherine

snorted,

drawing

Conar’s attention. His dark gaze swept over her, obviously

surprised to see her there. His grimace of dislike was so plain it made her hackles rise.

“Come to watch the fun, milady?” he called over to her as he began to tie his bandana across his face.

“Go to hell!” she answered sweetly, batting her lashes at him. She frowned as his dark eyes crinkled behind the obstruction of the makeshift mask.

“Been there!” he shot back, winking audaciously at her little sister before he turned to go back to his work.

She followed his progress until he was out of sight.

Obviously whatever he was doing with the firefighters he wasn’t making too much of a nuisance out of himself else someone would have come to Alexi to complain.

“Isn’t he the bravest man you’ve ever known, Cat?” Tatiana breathed.

“He’s certainly the most arrogant,” Catherine sneered.

Tatiana turned a curious look up to her sister. “Why do you dislike him so, Marie Catherine?

I’d give anything to have him look at me the way he looks at you.”

Catherine stared down at her sister. “And just
how
have you interpreted his looks at me, Tatiana?”

A sly, knowing grin stretched the young girl’s mouth. “He looks at you like Mikel looks at unbaked cookie dough!” Tatiana answered. “As though he could gobble you up.”

A snort of derision exploded from Catherine and she shook her head at her sister’s romantic notion. “If he looks at me at all, Tatti, it’s to smirk at me!”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 59

“Move back!” a voice yelled from the northern edge of the camp. “Move back! The wind’s kicking up!”

Glancing up at the tall trees behind them, Catherine could see the tops swaying before she felt the hot blast of smoky wind searing down from the fire break.

“Get your things, Tatti,” the older girl ordered. “We’ve got to hurry.” She looked for her other sisters. “Svetlana! Nadia! Get in the buggy!”

The Tzar came out of his tent, looking slightly dazed and confused. He looked toward the higher elevation, saw the dense smoke and shrugged. Clutching his box of dominoes, he strode forward, smiling absently at his elder daughter as he walked toward the serviceable buggy which had brought him to the command site.

“Come along, Marie Catherine,” he commanded as he put his hand into his footman’s as the servant helped his Tzar into the buggy. “You mustn’t dawdle, child.”

Gritting her teeth, Catherine glanced once more toward the pathway leading up to the northern fire line. She drew her lower lip between her teeth and her forehead creased in worry.

“He’ll be all right.”

Catherine looked around, saw Misha standing behind her with an encouraging smile. “Who?”

she stammered, although she knew she hadn’t fooled the man.

“If there is a man here capable of taking care of himself, and those around him, milady, that man is the true king of Serenia.” He held out his hand. “May I help you with that medical kit?”

“You have a lot of faith in him, Misha,” she commented. “Just how much do you know of Prince Conar?”

Misha smiled. “I had the opportunity to observe him for quite some time when my Tzar sent me to the Outland.”

Catherine’s brows drew together. “I never did know why Father sent you to that heathen place,” she said, referring to Serenia. “Since you seem to know so much about Prince Conar, I assume you were sent there to make his acquaintance.”

The twinkle in Misha’s expression flared and then disappeared. “In a matter of speaking, that was my mission.”

“Then perhaps you can answer a question I put to Yuri Andreanova concerning the Prince, one Yuri said he could not answer.”

A wary look entered Misha’s eyes. “And what question was that, Your Grace?”

“It concerns those horrible scars on his face,” Catherine stated. “I asked Yuri how Prince Conar came by them and he said to ask my father.”

Misha knew well enough that Yuri Andreanova knew all about the scars on Conar McGregor’s face and how he came to have them and who had dared put them there.. But if Yuri hadn’t answered the Tzarevna’s question, then Misha understood he better not, either.

“Your father knows more of the matter than anyone, Your Grace,” he answered, eyes hooded.

“In other words, both you and Yuri know but you’d prefer not to be the ones to tell me,”

Catherine accurately surmised. When Misha would have protested, she held up her hand. “It isn’t important, Misha. I was simply curious, nothing more.”

Curious hell, Misha thought. The woman was itching to know. He saw no reason why she shouldn’t be told. As a matter of fact, he thought it would help matters along if she knew just what tragedies had befallen the monarch of Serenia, but obviously the Tzar had his reasons for keeping such knowledge from his daughter.

A whinny from beside her father’s buggy drew Catherine’s attention and she noticed for the WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

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first time the palomino stallion nervously pawing at the ground, his eyes rolling as he drew the smell of smoke into his nostrils. She turned to Misha. “Can you ride that beast?”

Misha nodded. “I’ll see to him.”

She glanced once more toward the place where she reckoned Conar McGregor to be, drew in a long breath, and then allowed her father’s footman to help her into the buggy with the rest of her family. She glanced around her.

“Where’s

Mother?”

The Tzar fanned a hand before his face to ward off the heavy stench of smoke. “In the village with your brothers. Some woman has decided to take this particular moment to give birth.” He wrinkled his nose. “I say, the woman could have waited.”

Catherine groaned at her father’s idiotic statement and settled back against the buggy’s seat.

The leather felt warm and slick and she knew her gown would be dusted with ash and smoke. As the buggy lurched forward, she turned in her seat and looked back toward the fire. Already the breeze was fanning tendrils of her hair, whipping it into her face. With the wind picking up as it was, she knew the flames would be fanned, making the firefighters’ job even more dangerous.

“Be careful,” she whispered, not even sure to whom she sent the soft word of protection.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 61

“Get back! Get back! Andrei, get back!”

Conar spun around, his eyes watering from the heavy smoke. Vaguely he could see one of the men at the far end of the fire break frantically pointing toward a tall fir, its branches blazing, the stark column of its trunk slowly beginning to tilt downward. Beneath it, one of the firefighters, a man Conar had learned was Yuri Andreanova’s brother, Andrei, was in danger of being crushed beneath the weight of the falling tree.

“Shit!” the Serenian snarled as he threw down his shovel and raced forward. His legs pumped furiously as he dug his booted feet into the thick, fire-curled pine needles. He stumbled, almost went down, but managed to let his forward momentum push him toward the man who only at that moment realized he was in danger. From ten feet away, Conar could see the fear and stunned shock that had frozen Andrei Andreanova in his tracks.

Overhead, the air was split with a furious cracking noise and men were shouting, screaming their anxiety, their voices blending into one litany of warning. All around them the fire was roaring, hissing as it devoured the dry evergreens and lapped at the healthy green trunks that stood in its way of the vulnerable village less than a mile away.

“Ooof,” Andrei puffed as Conar’s hurling body knocked into his to send them both crashing to the ground beyond the flaming tree, out of its heavy descent. His face dug into the rugged forest floor, a stone painfully gouging into the tender flesh of his cheek as Conar’s heavy weight descended on him. Beneath them, the ground shook violently as the tree slammed to earth, sending up fiery sparks and leaping flames, igniting the area immediately around the tree and racing up the cotton pant leg of Andrei’s breeches. “God!” the man screeched as the flame licked at the hair on his leg.

Conar rolled off him, spun around on his knees and batted with his bare hands at the fire already charring the cotton. He managed to beat the flame out, then leapt to his feet and grabbed Andrei’s arm, dragging him away from the danger of being touched by the roaring tree once more.

“Here, prince Conar! Here!” someone yelled and hands locked onto Conar’s shoulders, tore Andrei’s arm out of his grip as other, more feverish hands dragged at Conar’s shirt, pulling him away from the advancing fire.

“I’m all right!” he yelled above the roar. “Get him out of here!”

The men moved in, helping the dazed Andreanova out of harm’s way. Conar glanced up at the fire leaping from branch to branch above him, back along the northern trail to the fiery wall of rushing flame and cursed. There was no way to get the fire under control before it reached the village. All they could do now was hurry to the village and save what little they could before the fire marched down to destroy everything in its path.

“We’d better get below!” he told the men. “We’ve done all we can here!”