Catching sight of one of the shop managers, who was taking inventory of the evacuated foundrymen, Annabelle hurried to him. “Where is Mr. Hunt?” she asked sharply, having to repeat the question before she had caught his attention.
He barely spared her a glance as he replied with distracted impatience. “There was another collapse inside. Mr. Hunt was helping to free a foundryman who was pinned by debris. He hasn’t been seen since.”
Despite the blistering heat that radiated from the foundry, Annabelle felt cold from her skin to her bones. Her mouth trembled. “If he was able to come out,” she said, “he would have by now. He needs help. Can someone go in there to find him?”
The shop manager looked at her as if she was a mad-woman. “In there? It would be suicide.” Turning away from her, he went to a man who had collapsed to the ground, and bent to shove a wadded-up coat beneath his head. When he thought to spare a glance back at the space where Annabelle had been, it was empty.
Chapter 26
If anyone had noticed that a woman was plunging into the building, they did not try to stop her. Covering her mouth and nose with a handkerchief, Annabelle made her way through billows of acrid smoke that drew streams of water from her squinting eyes. The fire, which had begun at the other side of the foundry, was eating its way across the rafters in voluptuous ripples of blue and white and yellow. More frightening than the scalding heat was the noise; the growling flames, the screeches and groans of bending metal, the clangs of heavy machinery as it snapped like children’s toys being crushed underfoot. Liquid metal popped and sprayed in occasional bursts of grapeshot.
Picking up her skirts in awkward bunches, Annabelle stumbled over the smoldering knee-deep rubble, calling out for Simon, her voice muted in the cacophany. Just as she despaired of finding him, she caught sight of movement in the rubble.
Crying out, she hurried to the long, fallen form. It was Simon, alive and conscious, his leg trapped beneath the steel shaft of a fallen crane. As he saw her, his soot-smeared face contorted with horror, and he struggled to a half-sitting position. “Annabelle,” he said hoarsely, pausing as he was wracked with coughing. “Dammit, no—get out of here! What the hell are you doing?”
She shook her head, unwilling to waste breath in arguing. The crane was too heavy for either of them to move—she had to find something …some make shift lever to dislodge it. Wiping her burning eyes, she hunted through a pile of castings and broken stone and a heap of counterbalance weights. Everything was covered with layers of oil and soot that caused her feet to slip as she moved through the wreckage. A row of driving wheels rested against the shuddering wall, some of them taller than she. She made her way toward them and found a stack of axles and connecting rods as thick as her fist. Grasping one of the heavy, grease-coated rods, she tugged it from the stack and dragged it back to her husband.
One glance at Simon left no doubt that if he could have gotten his hands on her, he would have murdered her on the spot. “Annabelle,” he roared, between spasms of coughing, “get out of this building now!”
“Not without you.” She fumbled with a wooden block that had been placed at the end of a hydrostatic ram.
Twisting and tugging at his pinned leg, Simon showered her with threats and profanities while she lugged the wooden block over to him and shoved it against the crane.
“It’s too heavy!” he snarled, as she struggled with the connecting rod. “You can’t budge it! Get out of here. Damn you, Annabelle—”
Grunting with effort, she braced the rod on the wooden block and wedged the end of it beneath the crane. She pushed down, using all her weight. The crane remained solidly in place, indifferent to her efforts. With a gasp of frustration, she struggled with the lever, until the rod creaked in protest. It was no use—the crane would not move.
A loud crack went off, and iron shards flew through the air, causing her to duck and cover her head. She felt a blow against her arm, striking with enough force to send her to the ground. An aching burn penetrated her upper arm, and she glanced down to discover that a metal chip had lodged in her flesh, provoking a splash of brilliant red blood. Crawling to Simon, she felt him snatch her against his chest, shielding her until the shower of iron pellets had abated. “Simon,” she panted, drawing back to look into his fume-reddened eyes, “you always carry a knife. Where is it?”
Simon went still as the import of the question struck him. For a split-second she saw him weigh the possibility, then he shook his head. “No,” he rasped. “Even if you could manage to sever the leg, you couldn’t drag me out of here.” He shoved her away from him. “There’s no time left—you have to get out of the damned foundry.” As he saw the refusal on her face, his features twisted with hideous fear, not for himself but for her. “My God, Annabelle,” he grated, finally reduced to begging, “don’t do this. Please. If you care for me at all—” A shuddering cough tore through his body. “Go. Go.”
For an instant Annabelle wanted to obey him, as the desire to escape the hellish nightmare of the burning foundry nearly overwhelmed her. But as she staggered to her feet, and looked down at him, so large and yet so defenseless, she could not make herself walk away. Instead she picked up the connecting rod once more, and hoisted it back onto the wooden block, while pain shot through her injured shoulder. Blood thundered in her ears, making it impossible to distinguish Simon’s outburst from the din of the shuddering building around them. And that was likely a good thing, as he looked insane with fury. She pulled and hung on the lever, while her tortured lungs pulled in choking air and spasmed in response. The scene blurred around her, but she continued to exert her remaining strength on the iron bar, her slight weight straining to move it.
All of a sudden she felt something grasp the back of her dress. Had she any breath left to scream, she would have. Startled out of her wits, Annabelle went stiff as she was hauled backward, and her hands were pried from the bar. Choking and sobbing, she stared through smoke-blinded eyes at the lean, dark shape behind her. A cool voice reverberated in her ear. “I’ll lift the crane. Go pull his leg free at my command.”
She recognized his autocratic tone even before his face registered. Westcliff, she thought in amazement. It was indeed the earl, his white shirt torn and filthy, his features streaked with soot. Yet for all his dishevelment, he looked calm and capable as he motioned for her to go to Simon. Hefting the iron bar with ease, he deftly adjusted the lever beneath the crane shaft. Although he was only of medium height, his lean body was solid and superbly fit, conditioned by years of punishing physical exertion. As Westcliff pushed downward with a mighty shove, Annabelle heard the squeaks and groans of bending metal, and the massive crane eased upward a few crucial inches. The earl barked at Annabelle, who frantically tugged at Simon’s leg, ignoring his groan of agony as he rolled from beneath the crushing object.
Lowering the crane with a massive thud, Westcliff came to help Simon struggle to his feet, wedging a solid shoulder beneath his arm to support his injured side. Annabelle took the other side and winced as Simon seized her in a punishing grip. Smoke and heat overwhelmed her, making it impossible to see or breathe or think. Continuous coughing rattled her slender frame. Had she been left to her own devices, she would never have been able to find her way out of the foundry. She was hauled and pushed forward by Simon’s brutal grasp, occasionally lifted from her feet as they crossed the wreckage on the ground, her shins and ankles and knees battered painfully. The torturous journey seemed to last forever, their progress incremental, while the foundry shook and roared like a beast hovering over its injured prey. Annabelle’s mind swam. She fought to stay conscious, while her vision was filled with glittering sparks and an inviting darkness that loomed just beyond them.
She never remembered the moment they emerged from the foundry with smoking clothes and singed hair and heat-parched faces… all she could recall later was that there were countless pairs of hands reaching for her, and her aching legs were suddenly relieved of the burden of her ow
n weight. Collapsing slowly into someone’s arms, she felt herself being lifted while her lungs worked greedily to collect clean air. A dripping, brackish cloth passed over her face, and unfamiliar hands reached inside her dress to unfasten her corset. She couldn’t even bring herself to care. Blanketed in an exhausted stupor, she surrendered to the rough ministrations and gulped the contents of a metal dipper that was pressed to her mouth.
When Annabelle finally came to herself, she blinked repeatedly to let the assuaging fluids spread across the stinging surface of her eyeballs. “Simon …?” she mumbled, struggling upward. She was gently subdued.
“Rest for another minute,” came a gravelly voice. “Your husband is fine. A bit battered and scorched, but definitely salvageable. I don’t even think his damned leg is broken.”
As full awareness seeped over her, she realized in sluggish amazement that she was half-sitting in Lord Westcliff’s lap, on the ground, with her gown partly undone. Glancing up into the earl’s harsh-planed face, she saw that his tanned complexion was streaked with black, and his hair was rumpled and filthy. The usually impeccable earl looked so sympathetic and disheveled and approachably human that she barely recognized him.
“Simon…” she whispered.
“He is being loaded into my carriage as we speak. Needless to say, he is rather impatient for you to join him. I am taking the both of you to Marsden Terrace— I’ve already sent for a doctor to meet us there.” Westcliff shifted her a little higher in his arms. “Why did you go in after him? You could have been a very wealthy widow.” The question was asked not with mockery, but with a gentle interest that confused her.
Rather than answer, Annabelle turned her attention to a bloody blotch on his shoulder. “Hold still,” she murmured, using her broken fingernails to grasp the end of a needle-thin metallic shard that protruded from his shirt. She tugged it out quickly, and Westcliff’s face twitched with pain.
Regarding the shard as she held it up for him to see, the earl shook his head ruefully. “God. I hadn’t noticed that.”
Enclosing the object in her fingers, Annabelle asked warily, “Why did you go in, my lord?”
“Having been informed that you had dashed into a burning building to fetch your husband, I thought to offer my services …perhaps open a door, clear an object from your path…that sort of thing.”
“You were rather helpful,” she said, deliberately matching his bland tone, and he grinned, his teeth white in his smoke-blackened face.
Carefully, Westcliff helped her to sit up. Keeping his arm behind her back, he closed the fastenings of her dress with a deft, impersonal touch, while he contemplated the full-bore devastation of the foundy. “Only two men perished, and one still unaccounted for,” he murmured. “Miraculous, considering the scope of the disaster.”
“Does this mean the end of the locomotive works?”
“No, I expect that we’ll rebuild as soon as possible.” The earl stared kindly into her exhausted face. “Later you might describe to me what happened. For now, allow me to take you to the carriage.”
Annabelle gasped a little as he stood and lifted her in his arms. “Oh—there’s no need—”
“It’s the least I can do.” Westcliff flashed another rare smile as he carried her with facile strength. “I have some amends to make, where you’re concerned.”
“You mean because you now believe that I actually care about Simon, instead of having just married him for his money?”
“Something like that. It seems I was mistaken about you, Mrs. Hunt. Please accept my humble apology.”
Suspecting that the earl was rarely given to making apologies of any kind, much less humble ones, Annabelle linked her arms around his neck. “I suppose I’ll have to,” she said grudgingly, “since you saved our lives.”
He shifted her more comfortably in his arms. “Shall we cry pax, then?”
“Pax,” she agreed, and coughed against his shoulder.
While the doctor visited Simon in the master bedroom of Marsden Terrace, Westcliff took Annabelle aside and personally tended to the wound in her upper arm. After tweezing out the metal chip that was half-buried in her skin, he doused the area with alcohol while Annabelle screeched in pain. He dabbed the cut with salve, bandaged it expertly, and gave her a glass of brandy to dull her discomfort. Whether he had added something to the brandy, or pure exhaustion had amplified its effects, Annabelle would never know. After downing two fingers of the dark amber liquid, she felt woozy and light-headed. Her voice was distinctly slurred as she told Westcliff that the world was fortunate that he hadn’t gone into the medical profession, which he gravely acknowledged was probably true. She staggered off drunkenly to find Simon, and was firmly dissuaded by the housekeeper and a pair of housemaids, who seemed intent on washing her. Before Annabelle quite knew what had happened, she had been bathed and changed into a nightgown purloined from Westcliff’s elderly mother’s closet and was lying in a soft, clean bed. As soon as she closed her eyes, she sank into a helpless slumber.
To Annabelle’s chagrin, she awoke quite late the next morning, struggling to gather where she was and what had happened. The moment her thoughts touched on Simon, she floundered out of bed, paying no heed to her handsome surroundings as she padded barefoot into the hall. She crossed the path of a house-maid, who looked mildly startled by the appearance of a woman with wild, unbound hair, a scratched and reddened face, and an ill-fitting nightgown …a woman, who, in spite of a thorough washing the night before, was still strongly scented of foundry smoke.
“Where is he?” Annabelle asked without prelude.
To the housemaid’s credit, she comprehended the abrupt query and directed Annabelle to the master bedroom at the end of the hall.
Coming to the open doorway, Annabelle saw Lord Westcliff standing by the side of the huge bed, where Simon was sitting up against a stack of pillows. Simon was bare-chested, his shoulders and torso swarthy against the snowy linens that had been pulled up to his midriff. Annabelle winced as she saw the profusion of plasters affixed to his arms and chest, having some idea of the discomfort that he must have endured in having so many metal pellets removed. The two men stopped talking as soon as they became aware of her presence.
Simon’s gaze locked on her face and held with unnerving intensity. An invisible swell of emotion filled the room, drowning them both in acute tension. As Annabelle stared into her husband’s granite-hard face, no words seemed appropriate. If she spoke to him just then, it was either going to be puerile hyperbole or inane understatement. Absurdly grateful for Westcliff’s presence as a temporary buffer, Annabelle addressed her first comment to him.
“My lord,” she said, inspecting the cuts and burns on his face, “you look like the loser in a tavern brawl.”
Coming forward, Westcliff took her hand and executed an impeccable bow over it. He surprised her by pressing a chivalrous kiss to the back of her wrist. “Had I ever participated in a tavern brawl, madam, I assure you that I would not have lost.”
That drew a grin from Annabelle, who could not help reflecting that twenty-four hours ago, she had despised his arrogant aplomb, whereas now it seemed almost endearing. Westcliff released her hand after giving it a reassuring squeeze. “With your permission, Mrs. Hunt, I will withdraw. No doubt you have a few things to discuss with your husband.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
As the earl left and closed the door, Annabelle approached the bedside. Simon looked away from her with a frown, the bold structure of his profile gilded with sunlight.
“Is your leg broken?” Annabelle asked huskily.
Simon shook his head, concentrating on the ornately flowered paper that covered the bedroom wall. He spoke in a smoke-ravaged voice. “It will be fine.”
Annabelle’s gaze touched on him, lingering on the heavy musculature of his arms and chest, the long fingers of his hand, the way a lock of dark hair fell over his brow. “Simon,” she asked softly. “Won’t you look at me?”
His eyes narrowed as he turned to pin her with a hostile stare. “I’d like to do more than look at you. I’d like to throttle you.”
It would have been ingenuous for Annabelle to ask why, since she already knew. Instead, she waited with forced patience, while Simon’s throat worked violently. “What you did yesterday was unforgivable,” he finally muttered.
She gave him a startled glance. “What?”
“Lying there in that hell-pit, I made what I thought would be the last request of my life. And you refused.”
“As things turned out, it wasn’t your last request,” Annabelle replied warily. “You survived, and so did I, and now everything is fine—”
“It is not fine,” Simon snapped, his face darkening with rising fury. “For the rest of my life I will remember how it felt to know that you were going to die along with me, while I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop you.” He averted his face as his breath turned harsh with unwanted emotion.
Annabelle reached for him, then checked herself, her hands suspended in the air between them. “How could you ask me to leave you there, hurt and alone? I couldn’t.”
“You should have done as I told you!”
Annabelle didn’t flinch, understanding the fear that seethed beneath his anger. “You wouldn’t have left had it been me on the foundry floor—”
“I knew you were going to say that,” he said in savage disgust. “Of course I wouldn’t have left you. I’m the man. A man is supposed to protect his wife.”
“And a wife is supposed to be a helpmate,” Annabelle countered.