horse, holding her in midair. Her eyebrows and the wisps of hair on her forehead were singed, and black tears of pain and desperation streaked down her smoke-blackened cheeks.
"Of all the lunatic, reckless things to do," he raged. "I told you to stay back." He shook her as he held her off the ground, beside himself with terror-induced fury.
"I had to rescue Petrarch," she cried as impassioned as he. "Petrarch was still in there! I couldn't leave him."
"Petrarch?" For a moment he was bewildered, then he understood. The damn chestnut had finally been christened. "I was just going in for him," he declared, setting her on her feet with a jarring thump.
"But he couldn't wait!" she cried, rubbing her tears with the back of her hand, smudging her face with black. "I couldn't wait for you… And Rosinante… he's still there." She dived suddenly beneath his arm and raced to the stable, ignoring everything he'd just said.
"Chloe! Come back here!" He lunged and caught her arm, spinning her away from the burning building. "Didn't you hear a word I said?" He almost threw her backward into Samuel's arms. "Don't let go of her!" Then he dived once more into the smoke-filled stable, stumbling down the aisle, crouching low to the ground. By the time he reached the end stall, his lungs were about to burst and he was blinded with smoke. The heat was so fierce, he could feel his clothes beginning to smolder, scalding his flesh.
Somehow, he grabbed the mane of the enfeebled nag. The hair was burning to the touch and he could smell the animal's scorched hide. He hauled him backward out of the building, thankful that the years of deprivation had reduced the beast to a weight that he could physically control.
He staggered into the yard just as his lungs were
about to yield to the smoke. Rosinante buckled at the knees and fell to the cobbles, where he lay on his side, his flanks heaving, foam bubbling from his mouth, his eyes rolling.
Chloe dropped beside the nag, tears still pouring down her cheeks. She laid a hand on the animal's tortured flank and then looked up at Hugo. "Put him out of his misery. He can't breathe. He'll never recover from this."
"I'll fetch your pistol," Samuel said.
He was back in a few minutes and silently handed the pistol to Hugo. Chloe was still crouching beside Rosinante, murmuring to him as if she could somehow reach him through his agony.
"Go into the house, Chloe," Hugo commanded brusquely, bending to lift her to her feet. "Right away!"
"It's all right, I don't need-"
"Go! And put that kitchen overcoat on while you're about it." He knelt to place the pistol against the animal's head. The shot rang out and Rosinante jerked once and was at peace.
"I'll kill Jasper."
The soft-spoken ferocity of the statement brought Hugo to his feet in one movement. Chloe was standing to one side, out of his line of sight as he'd shot the horse. But she was still coatless and had clearly remained in the courtyard.
"I told you to go into the house!"
"I didn't need to," she said, her mouth taking on the stubborn line he was beginning to know.
"Go and put a coat on!" he ordered her in clipped accents. A battle royal with his willful ward would have to wait until the fire was under control.
Chloe went for the coat without further protest and then ran to join them at the pump, where they were frantically filling buckets.
"I'll work the pump," she said, seizing the handle from Billy.
Half an hour later, the blaze was under control. The stable was solidly built of lime-washed stone, and while the straw and the wooden partitions of the stalls burned merrily, the flames finally exhausted the fuel.
Chloe was drenched with sweat from pumping the handle, her hands blistered, her nightgown beneath the overcoat torn and black with smoke, her face and hands and feet as filthy as a coal miner's. But without flagging she turned to calming the horses and settling them in the barn, where the stench of charred wood and burned straw wouldn't reach them. While she was thus occupied, the three men heaved Rosinante onto the cart and buried him in the far field.
It was past four o'clock before Billy went to his bed in the loft above the old dairy, and Hugo, Samuel, and Chloe staggered into the kitchen.
"Cup 6' tea won't come amiss, I reckon," Samuel declared, setting the kettle on the range.
"I'm parched," Chloe agreed, shrugging out of the overcoat. She rubbed her stinging eyes with the heels of her palms.
"Come here, you." Hugo took her by the waist, lifted her, and sat her on the table. "You and I need to have a little talk, my ward. Leaving aside that inexcusable piece of arrant interference over… over whatever you call him"-he clutched at the air-"Petrarch… I gave you two direct instructions, which, on both occasions, you chose to ignore."
"But you'd forgotten about Rosinante," Chloe protested. "I had to go in after him." Her position on the table meant that she was obliged to look directly at her guardian as he stood in front of her. It was not a comfortable exercise. Hugo was as filthy and as weary as
she, but his eyes were dauntingly severe and his jaw was set in an uncompromising line.
"You did not have to," he said forcefully. "I had just forbidden you to go anywhere near the fire, and you weren't going to take a blind bit of notice. Do you think I say these things just to exercise my vocal chords?"
"I couldn't think about anything but the horses. And you had forgotten about Rosinante." Seeing him for a moment without a response, she rushed on in swift self-defense. "And I didn't need to go inside when you shot Rosinante. I'm not such a milksop. It was the least cruel thing that had ever happened to him, poor soul." She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her filthy sleeve. The lace edging was torn and unraveling, and she began to pull at it. It gave her the opportunity to look down and away from that unwavering scrutiny.
Hugo put a finger under her chin and tilted her face. "In ten years at sea," he said deliberately, "no one ever, ewer disobeyed an order of mine."
"Too interested in keepin' a whole skin," Samuel observed, measuring tea into a pot. "Powerful 'ard the navy is."
It occurred to Chloe that Samuel was on her side. "But this isn't the navy," she pointed out.
"No, it's not, for which you may thank your stars." Hugo lifted her off the table. "In view of the circumstances, I'm going to let it go this time, but you'd be making a great mistake to assume any precedents."
The storm seemed to have blown over. Chloe shifted the subject to good purpose, saying with the ferocity of before, "I'd like to stick a knife in Jasper."
"So you've said." Hugo sank into a chair with a weary groan. "What makes you think your brother's responsible?"
"It's obvious. It has his mark all over it," she said. "He
never forgets an insult or an injury, and he doesn't scruple what methods he uses to get even."
" 'Ere, get this down ye." Samuel put a mug of tea in front of her. "A tot o' rum in that wouldn't do 'er any 'arm," he said to Hugo.
"There's a crock in the pantry, isn't there?"
"Reckon so." Samuel fetched the stone jar of rum and poured a dollop into Chloe's tea. He doctored his own similarly and sat down in his usual chair by the range, closing his eyes.
"Once, when a man offended Jasper… he wouldn't sell him a horse or something… Jasper arranged to have the stream that watered his orchard diverted. And I know he poisoned old Red Biddy's drinking trough and poisoned her cow because she'd cursed him once."
"How do you know these things?" Hugo sat up, no longer weary. He'd put nothing past Jasper, but he hadn't realized that the man's evil was so well known.