A Lady of Notoriety. Diane GastonЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Chapter One

      Ramsgate, Kent—April 1821

      ‘My lady! My lady! Wake up! Fire!’

      Daphne, Lady Faville, jolted awake at her maid’s cries. Smoke filled her nostrils and stung her eyes. Shouts and pounding on doors sounded in the hallway of the Ramsgate inn.

      ‘Fire! Get out,’ a man’s voice boomed.

      Fire. Her biggest fear.

      Daphne leaped out of bed and shoved her feet into slippers. Her maid began gathering their belongings, stuffing them into a portmanteau.

      ‘Leave them, Monette.’ Daphne seized her coin purse and threw her cloak around her shoulders. Her heart raced. ‘We must go now!’

      She reached for the door latch, but her maid pulled her arm away.

      ‘Wait! The hall may be on fire.’ The maid pressed her hand against the door. ‘It is not hot. It is safe.’ She opened the door.

      It was not safe.

      The hallway was filled with smoke, and tongues of flame licked the walls here and there, as if sneaking up from below. In a moment the wallpaper would curl and burn. The fire would grow. It could engulf them.

      Daphne saw a vision of another time, another fire. Her heart pounded. Was she to die in flames after all?

      ‘Keep your skirts away from the fire,’ she cried to Monette.

      They moved blindly ahead, down the long hallway, through its fiery gauntlet.

      ‘Hurry, Monette.’ She took the maid’s hand and lamented asking the innkeeper for rooms that were as private as possible.

      Their rooms were far from the stairway.

      ‘Someone is in the hallway. At the end,’ a man’s voice cried.

      Through the grey smoke he emerged, an apparition rushing towards them. He grabbed them both and half-carried them through the hallway past other men who were knocking on doors, and other residents emerging in nightclothes.

      They reached the stairway and he pushed Monette forwards. The girl ran down the stairs. Daphne shrank back. The flames below were larger, more dangerous.

      ‘I’ll get you through.’ The man gathered her up in his arms and carried her down the three flights of stairs. She buried her face in his chest, too afraid to see the fire so close.

      Suddenly the air cooled and she could breathe again. They were outside. He set her down and her maid ran to her, hugging her in relief. They were alive! Daphne swung back to thank the man who rescued them.

      He was already running back into the fire.

      Her footman appeared. ‘You are safe, m’lady. Come away from the building.’

      He brought them to where a group of people in various stages of undress huddled together.

      ‘I must go back to the buckets.’ He looked apologetic.

      ‘Yes, Carter. Yes,’ Daphne agreed. ‘Help all you can.’

      He ran to the brigade passing buckets of water to the fire. Other men led horses out of the stables and rolled coaches away from the burning building.

      Daphne’s eyes riveted on the doorway, willing their rescuer to reappear. Other men carried people out, but she did not see him. She’d not seen his face, but she knew she would recognise him. Tall, dark haired and strong. He wore the dark coat and fawn pantaloons of a gentleman.

      Finally he appeared, two children tucked under his arms and a frantic mother following behind.

      Daphne took a step forwards, eager to speak to him, to thank him. To her shock, he ran towards the door again. One of the other men seized his arm, apparently trying to stop him, but the man shrugged him off and rushed back inside.

      Daphne’s hand flew over her mouth. Please, God, let him come out again.

      An older gentleman approached her. ‘Lady Faville?’

      She wanted to watch for her rescuer, not engage in conversation.

      ‘Do you remember me?’ he asked.

      She presumed he was someone she’d met in London. ‘I am sorry. I do not—’

      He looked disappointed. ‘I am Lord Sanvers. We met several times at the Masquerade Club.’

      The Masquerade Club?

      It was a place she wanted to forget, the London gambling house where players could gamble in masks to protect their identity. It was also the place she almost destroyed.

      By fire.

      ‘It is two years since I attended there,’ she answered him. ‘There were so many gentlemen I met.’

      It was inadequate as an apology. Surely he—and everyone—knew that she’d been obsessed by only one man, a man who would never love her. She’d fled to the Continent and eventually to Switzerland and Fahr Abbey. The abbey had become her retreat and her salvation, chosen by whim because its name was similar to her husband’s title name and the name of the village where she’d once felt secure. At Fahr Abbey, though, she’d come face-to-face with her failings.

      But could she change?

      Could she be as selfless as her brave rescuer?

      Minutes seemed like hours, but he finally emerged again, leading two more people to safety. The fire intensified, roaring now like a wild beast. Were there more people inside? Would he risk his life again?

      He ran back to the fire and was silhouetted inside the doorway when a huge rush of glowing embers fell from the ceiling. The building groaned, as if in the throes of death. Timbers fell from the roof and the man’s arms rose in front of his face. Daphne watched in horror as one large flaming timber knocked him to the floor.

      ‘No!’ Without thinking, she ran towards him.

      Other men reached him first, pulling him by his clothing until he was in the yard. The building collapsed entirely.

      Daphne knelt down next to him as they brushed away glowing cinders from his coat and patted out smoking cloth.

      ‘Is he alive?’ she cried.

      They rolled him on his back, and one man put a finger to the pulse in his neck. ‘He’s alive for now.’

      Daphne gasped. ‘I know him!’

      Though his face was dark with soot and pink with burns, she recognised him. He was Hugh Westleigh, younger brother of the new Earl of Westleigh. He was also the brother of the lady she’d so terribly wronged at the Masquerade Club.

      Had he arrived on the packet from Calais, as she had? Or was he bound there? Either way, she suspected he would not have liked seeing her after all the trouble she’d caused.

      He was not conscious, and that alarmed her.

      ‘We’d better carry him to the surgeon,’ one of the men said.

      They