James felt a tug on both of his feet and he was pulled out of the hallway, all the way into the drawing room. And then he was turned over and a body, a little one, covered him and beat on him with small hands.
“Your hair, your hair,” the little body said, beating on his head.
It was Catherine. He put his arms up to hold her to him. “Upsidaisy,” he murmured.
She whispered, “Let go of me, Jamie. I put out the fire on you, but you have to let go of me.”
He still held her fast.
“Be not afraid of greatness, Jamie.” That seemed reasonable to him and he allowed his arms to relax and she was gone.
When he let her go, she was off him in a flash and feeling around on the floor for the foil she had dropped when she had heard the shot and seen him fall into the flames.
She walked toward the entrance to the hall between the drawing room and the bedchamber. There were still a few flames licking on the floor but the oil from the lamp had mostly burnt away. And it was a stone floor. The fire would not spread. Beyond the hall, in the bedchamber, she could see Roger Siddons kneeling on the floor, the painting in front of him. She couldn’t tell if the painting had been damaged. She couldn’t see the pistol.
And then he saw her and she saw the pistol because he had raised it and leveled it at her.
“Roger,” she said and walked toward him, holding the foil behind her back.
“Cath,” he said and smiled and stood up and backed away.
She walked through the hallway and into the bedchamber.
“You always were very daring, Cath,” he said. “Very much of a risk taker.”
“Not really.”
“And you’ve grown out of your fear of me, I see.”
“I was never afraid of you, Roger.”
“Really? This painting you hate so much says otherwise.”
“That’s a single-shot dueling pistol. I don’t think you’ve had time to reload.” She whipped the foil out from behind her back and lunged and with a flick of her wrist had knocked the pistol out of his hand. “Surrender to me, and I won’t kill you.”
“Um, Cath,” he said. He was looking at her feet. She continued to look at him.
“You’re on fire, Cath.”
And it was true that she felt some warmth around her ankles. She looked down for a moment. The hem of her dress, and perhaps her petticoat too, was burning. She had caught fire from the few flames that were left, walking through the hallway. Stupid. She should not have confronted Roger. She should have dragged Jamie out of the drawing room and into the hallway outside the rooms . . . and then what? Would she have been able to get them both to safety in time?
Some movement. She looked up. Siddons had grabbed a long object from the floor. It looked like a poker. He swung it at her and she ducked.
“You better get those clothes off, Cath, or you’ll go up like a torch.”
She lunged forward with the foil but he parried her with the poker.
“I want you to know this, Roger. I was never—”
A series of blows, she tore his trousers, she saw blood.
“—afraid of you—”
He was so much taller than her, so much stronger with the poker.
“—I was afraid of—”
And she lunged and pointed the foil upward toward his neck, as high as she could.
“—myself.”
She pulled the foil back and he looked startled and put a hand to his neck. The hand disappeared in a fountain of bright blood and he fell to the ground.
She dropped the foil and fell to the floor herself and rolled around, beating at her dress and her petticoat as she did so. The flames had destroyed the fabric up to her knees but she finally put them out. She grabbed the candle from the mantelpiece and ran through the small scorched hallway. There were no flames now. The lamp oil had been consumed and, as she had expected, the fire had burnt out on the stone floor.
“Jamie! Jamie!”
He was sitting up on the floor of the drawing room, holding his head, but when she rushed to him, he stood up easily and said, “Where’s Siddons?”
“He’s dead, Jamie. Where were you shot?” She saw blood on his legs, his abdomen and chest, his shoulders, his face. She went to examine him, to run her hands over his body to check him for wounds, but he clutched at her and lifted her up and said “Kate, oh Kate, are you all right?” and covered her mouth with his so that she could not answer.
He kissed her. She kissed him back. He kissed her more. She put her hand in protest over his mouth.
“Jamie, put me down and let me look at you.”
He complied and she ran her hands quickly over his abdomen and back, his buttocks, his legs. He had to stifle a laugh when she touched his knees. Catherine felt a measure of relief. A man who could stand, who could kiss, who could be ticklish was a man unlikely to have a serious injury. “Kneel down.” He obediently knelt and put his hands around her waist as she checked his chest and upper back and shoulders.
And then she saw it. In the burnt hair on his head. A four-inch-long graze into the scalp that was bleeding copiously.
“Help me take my dress off.” He obligingly lifted what remained of her dress, stained with his blood, and helped her pull it off and she balled it up and held it to his scalp.
“It looks like a graze, Jamie. Do you hurt anywhere else?” She saw some areas of redness on his chest and on his thighs. His leg hair was singed.
He was feeling her legs. “Your petticoat is incinerated.”
“Yes, but I didn’t get burnt. But you did. Oh, Jamie, your beautiful hair.”
“It will grow back.”
“Yes.”
“How . . . how is Siddons dead?”
She looked away. “I killed him, Jamie.”
Roger was gone. Forever. It didn’t make it easier that it had always felt inevitable to her that it would end this way. That she would be driven to this. She had never once pictured it the other way around, that she would die at the end of Roger’s sword or pistol or chokehold. It had always been her killing him. Her exacting the price of her torture. Her rebelling against the long hold he had had on her.
Yes, of course, she would have done the same to anyone who had tried to kill the beautiful man who was on his knees in front of her, holding her and bringing her head down to cover her face in kisses. But that it had been Roger—it was like she had been an understudy, rehearsing in her head for so long, and she had finally gotten to step into the role.
The role of a murderer.
The painting was blackened but James noted that Catherine’s face and upper body were still clearly visible and identifiable on the canvas.
They burnt the painting in the fireplace in the drawing room. First, Catherine used James’ razor to slice the canvas to ribbons, and James used the poker to bash the frame to bits. Catherine made a compression dressing for James’ head out of the remains of her petticoat. James dressed and gave Catherine a pair of his breeches and a shirt and she put them on and was so dwarfed by them that they laughed together a trifle hysterically.
They both tried not to look at the body lying on the floor of the bedchamber when they went to get clothes from the dressing room.
The long case clock in the drawing room chimed. Once. They waited. That was all. It was only one in the morning. No one had come to the rooms in response to the pistol shot.
They left the rooms and walked to Catherine’s house. They encountered no one. He held her hand as they walked, something he had never done before. How small her hand was. How good it felt to be linked to her even in the midst of this horror.
“You won’t have been there,” he said. “I killed Siddons with my foil when he broke in to steal the painting which I had already destroyed. It’s all very close to the truth.”
“Yes, Jamie.”
“And we will need to stay apart for a while. I want no association between you and Siddons’ death. I don’t want it to come out that you might have been involved in any way.”
She hitched up the breeches she was wearing with her free hand and said nothing.
“What was that you said to me, when I was dazed and holding you and you wanted me to let go?”
“I don’t know why I said it.”
“But what was it that you said? I can’t remember.”
“It’s from Twelfth Night. The line is Be not afraid of greatness. And you know how it goes on. Some are born great—”
“—some achieve greatness—”
They finished together, “And some have greatness thrust upon them.” He looked at her. She smiled at him. His Viola in oversized breeches and her little scorched boots.
One street over a carriage rolled by. Someone leaving a ball early or going to one late. It might even be Lady Huxley’s ball tonight. One year since they had met.
“Thank you for saving me, Catherine.”
“You and I both know that you would have been in no danger if it weren’t for me. My stupid wish to be rid of that painting.”
He stopped walking and faced her.
“I hope you know that I would do anything for you.”
She nodded and kept walking and did not drop his hand.
“Why haven’t you answered my letters, Catherine?”
They had arrived at her house, she mounted the steps and knocked on the door. She looked down the steps at him.
“I’ve answered all your letters, Jamie.”
Chelsom answered the door. “Mrs. Lovelock, I’m glad you’re back, I was about to go to Tothill Fields but I could not find any ready cash for the bond—”
He broke off when he saw James standing behind her.
“No need, Chelsom,” Catherine said. “And His Grace was not here tonight, and I never left the house.”
“Yes, Mrs. Lovelock.”
She turned to James. “After the magistrate, you’ll get your head seen to.”
“Enfield will make sure of it. Don’t worry.”
She laid her hand along his cheek and he clasped it there and then she took her hand away and went into the house.
