Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

If they touched her again, he would die.

All his muscles cramped, all his organs burned, as he stared into the round, black point of the pistol. Shoot. The plea plunged through him, because with Simon dead, they would have no gain in beating her.

"He does not have it." The gun wobbled in Mr. Wilkins' hand, the only evidence of his discomfiture. "I told you one day this would happen. That we would be unable to go back."

Rupert cursed. "He'll talk."

"It is too late."

"Enough of your devil and brimstone—"

"This is no sermon, Roo." Mr. Wilkins stepped closer to the chair, his voice as fond and scolding as if he was ordering children to cease running in the hall. "I know him."

That gutted Simon.

The acknowledgment that they had lived side by side, in the same house, smiling at one another and sorting through Mother's things and cherishing the same memories—

"If he had known the whereabouts of the letter, he would have caved. For his children and again for Miss Whitmore." A knot bobbed in his thin neck. "He would not have disposed of such a thing. Not with the revelations it contained. Which means he did exactly what I feared all along."

"I'll ruin her face until he cracks."

"A wasted effort if he has already mailed the letter to someone else." Mr. Wilkins dragged a sleeve across his rain-dampened face. "You could not admit such a thing, I know, Master Fancourt. Because if you did, it would leave us no choice."

"Give me that." Rupert groped for the gun, but Mr. Wilkins sidestepped him.

"Go and gather the remainder of our things. Anything of value we can load into the carriage."

"What the devil are you—"

"It is finished. All of it."

"I won't walk away."

"We have no choice."

"The warehouse—"

"Will burn. Along with anything else we ever had in London." Veins appeared on his forehead and his eyes turned glassy. "Heaven knows how many days we have left before we're discovered. The letter has likely arrived. It is only a matter of time."

"I want to do it." Rupert nodded to the gun. "For what he did to Lucan."

"No." Mr. Wilkins motioned to the stairs. "You do as I say. If we leave the warehouse in flames, perhaps it will be longer before the bodies are exposed or…recognized."

Rupert groaned blasphemies. He jerked his tailcoat from the floor and ran up the stairs, the creaking wood echoing in his absence.

Simon's chest pulsed so hard it ached. "Let her go, Wilkins."

"I wish I could."

"She has nothing in this."

"Everything now, I fear, sir."

Sir. The mocking respect slapped Simon across the face. He glanced at Georgina.

Slumped against the beam, she wiped vomit from her mouth, hair in her eyes, breathing so fast he heard the uneven, choppy noises.

Part of his sanity unraveled. He saw Ruth. The shredded blue dress. The bloodless skin. "No." Simon shook so hard his teeth rattled. "Wilkins, please. Let her go. Tell her where to find my children and let her go."

"I did not wish for anyone to die. Least of all you."

"You cannot—"

"A man is capable of anything, Master Fancourt." Now more than the gun quaked. His lashes blinked too fast. His tongue slid back and forth over his lips, and his lanky stance wavered. "This is never what I wanted to happen. I did not wish to hurt your children, but I have nieces and nephews of my own. I had to think of them. You never knew what it meant to be without familial connections, without wealth you could run home to, but Roo and I have only ever had ourselves." He sniffled. "Two years ago, my brother nearly lost the warehouse. The children would have been out in the streets."

"You could have gone to my father. He would not have allowed that to happen."

"Yes." Mr. Wilkins stepped back and grinned, though the corners of his lips trembled and his eyes leaked tears. "I could have watched my brother trade his livelihood for a footman's livery and watched the five little ones crowd into a Sowerby servant's chamber."

"So you slaughtered innocents instead."

"Lucan—Phoebe's brother—thought of it first. It seemed the right thing to do. Between the three of us men, with Lucan's work in Newgate and Roo's acquaintance with men at the docks and my connections through your Father, it was an easy way to set injustices right."

"Injustices." The word spewed like poison. "You deem setting murderers free justice?"

"The courts do not know everything."

"But you do."

"That man you killed. Brownlow. He was innocent. Patrick Brownlow murdered his own wife so he could be with another woman, then framed his brother. You did not know that, did you? We intervened. We saved his life."

"For a price."

"Yes, but—"

"And the others?"

"I think the fate of man is better left in the hands of God than the court of England."

"And what about the fate of my wife?" Simon hated the tears, hated that he tasted salt in the cuts on his lips. "And my children. And—" He looked at Georgina again. He shouldn't have, because the hurt clamped down on his throat and the only thing he could whisper was "Her."

Mr. Wilkins shook his head, snot dripping from his bony nose. "I am sorry, Master Fancourt. I wanted it to end before it came to this. That is why we did everything we could to stop Patrick Brownlow from his blackmailing scheme…and that drunken woman…when they attempted to expose us. All I ever wanted was to end such an operation before anyone else was hurt."

The door banged and Rupert charged down the steps again. This time with a lantern in each grasp. "The carriage is ready. Come on."

"I am coming." For the hundredth time, Mr. Wilkins cleared his throat. A nervous habit, something he used to do when he served a silver tray of tea to Father's important guests, or when the unmarried housekeeper flashed him a wink in the corridor at Sowerby.

One of the lanterns crashed against a crate. Flames burst.

"Let's go." Rupert ripped down the one from the beam. He slung it to another corner of the room, grabbed Mr. Wilkins' arm, and yanked him toward the stairs.

But the butler turned back.

A tremor racked his body as he fumbled in his pockets and finally found the handkerchief he had been searching for. He swept it below Simon's nose, soaking up blood, patting him dry. "I am sorry, sir. Very sorry." He hesitated. "I hope someday I can forgive myself for what I have done."

Then he followed his brother up the shifting wooden stairs. The third lantern exploded at the bottom. The door slammed. The lock rattled. The fire whooshed higher from too many places in the room.

Desperation gut punched Simon. He had to get them loose. Grinding his teeth, he heaved his chair toward the blazing crate. It toppled sideways, but he used his elbow to scoot closer. Closer. Closer.

"Simon."

Please, Lord.

The flames licked close to his skin, but not close enough. With one final lunge, the fire singed him. Eating into his ropes, flickering across his hands, swathing him in sensations that were oddly cold and tingling.

"Simon!"

He ripped his arms free and dragged himself away from the crate. He untangled from the ropes, rolled from the chair, suffocated the fire on his shirt. The shadows tried to close in on him. He breathed. In, out, in, out, coughing.

The smoke already stung his eyes as he crawled for the beam.

He caught her face.

Her hair tickled his raw skin and heightened the pain, but he dipped forward anyway. Absurdity. He didn't know what he was doing. His mouth pressed into hers—at first hard, desperate, every ounce of his frenzy and confusion tangled in her lips.

He pulled away.

Then kissed her again. This time slower, her softness enveloping, her sweetness warding off the blackness. Too many senses awoke. Warmth knifed through the horror. She was all the things he had never allowed his mind to imagine. Everything beautiful. Wonderful. He loved her…loved her because she was the lifeline that kept pulling him from the waves.

Only now she was going down too.

His fault.

"Forgive me." The words ripped out of him. He pushed the hair out of her face, rubbed both quivering cheeks, then devoured her lips one more time.

How easily she melted into him.

And belonged to him.

Maybe she had always been his—from the beginning, in the spring of their promise, when they had been bashful children. Then more at the dull musicales and quiet parlor visits. Then more on the summer carriage rides, when he had told her all the things he'd never told anyone else.

Lord, help me. He grabbed the iron chain and pulled. His panic escalated. He yelled and yanked again.

"It will not work." She pushed at his chest. "You cannot break it."

He stumbled back to his feet. His legs gave out. The room spun, but he stood again and rammed into the beam with his shoulder. Thwack. Thwack. He heard his shoulder crack. Maybe another broken bone. He barreled into it anyway.

"Simon, please." She wept and pulled him back down to her. "You can get out. You can break the window. Or the stairs—"

"I will not leave you."

"You have to."

"I won't."

"The children—"

"No." He coughed against the smoke swelling his throat. Fire blurred in the corners of his vision—red, orange, gray, and engulfing smoke. Sparks sputtered and burned his skin. He pressed her into the floor, against the beam, and hovered his body over hers.

She would not die alone.

Leave. Her body throbbed beneath his weight. His hands were in her hair and she choked in the wretched odor of charred flesh. Make him leave, God, I beg of You.

Because Simon could not sacrifice himself for her.

She would not let him.

But even when she strained, he would not move. When she screamed, when she wept, he would not listen. He remained, tucking her closer, his chest burrowing her face. She felt the warmth of him. She heard his heartbeat.

No, no.

She could not bear this.

All her life, the ones she cared about had abandoned her. The nannies. Her fondest governesses. Then Simon, then Papa, then Agnes, and in too many ways, even Mamma. Georgina had wanted to hold on to them so badly. She would have done anything to keep them. To know they would not leave.

But this was madness. She was weak and aching, and she could not breathe. Her lungs heaved. The blazing roared in her ears—boards cracking overhead, crates tumbling, the muffled sound of Simon's racking coughs.

Nothing made sense.

No one could love her this much.

No one ever had.

"Simon." The word rasped. She struggled against him for the hundredth time, but his body paralyzed her. "You can run for help." She knew there would not be enough time. The room was too small, the flames too engulfing.

She would be dead by the time he returned.

"Please. Please do not do this."

"Lie still."

"I cannot allow both of us to die when—"

"Hush." Deep, soft, calm somehow. "One of the paintings is you."

"What?"

"In the turret room. When we were young. I painted you."

A sensation—one of white-hot torture and other part pleasure—quaked through her. "I loved your paintings." Loved because it was over now. She would never get to see them again. She hoped someone dusted them and fixed the moldy frames and hung them back downstairs. She hoped someone looked at them and understood.

"I am sorry." He flung away a burning slat of wood that had fallen next to them. His voice quieted, dipping closer to her ear. "I am sorry for leaving and forgetting—" Something crashed. He cried out, his back arched, and she knew he fought the urge to roll away from her and douse whatever had landed on him.

But he only held her closer. He shook as he burned.

She crammed her eyes shut and prayed the flames would take her too, that she would not have to bear his stillness. No, no, no. She smelled ash and perfumes and the unique scent that always clung to Simon's shirts. Heat blasted her from every side, then crackled and popped and burst to life in her hair.

Sorry. His voice clung to her mind. Over and over, something sweet she could latch on to as the nightmare closed in. For leaving.

She wished he would leave now.

She wished she were burning alone.

Something cold and shocking splashed over her, drenching the heat in her tresses. Simon's weight was ripped off. Flames must have already found her clothes, because hard whacks of fabric swatted them away, the motion so loud and blurring that her eyes rolled back into her head.

Noises roared.

Pounding.

The clinking and busting of chains, then a new pair of arms swept her up. "The stairs are gone! Get someone outside the window!"

Glass shattered, cutting into her awareness. She tried not to moan when her body was jostled, hoisted, more hands, then soft and cooling grass. She gasped the air into her lungs. Simon. She fought through the dimness. She lifted a hand toward the broken warehouse window and croaked out his name.

But all she heard was more crashing inside the room, as if the ceiling had caved.

Then a low voice, like a stab to her chest, "The Fancourt man is dead."