Page 54 of When the Scoundrel Sins

“Shovels!” Quinn yelled at the last men to arrive from the fields and gestured toward the equipment shed. They did as he ordered and grabbed up shovels, hoes, pitchforks—anything they could use against the flames—then braved the heat to get close enough to toss dirt onto the flames and to smack at the fire to try to control it. But the barn was full to the roof with that summer’s cuttings of hay, all of it dry and ready to catch flame from even the smallest spark.

Knowing the barn was lost, Quinn yelled for the men to turn the buckets on the surrounding buildings to keep the fire from spreading and for the men with the shovels to beat out any sparks which drifted from the hay barn. Grain sacks were dunked into the troughs and used to beat at the flames to keep the fire contained.

Quinn raced to the barn doors and threw them open wide, and he, Angus Burns, and two other men rushed inside to save whatever equipment could be salvaged before the flames completely engulfed the building. A small wagon sat in the middle of the barn, while above it the loft blazed with the heat of an inferno.

He ran forward and grabbed up the tongue, then began to push the wagon forward and out of the barn. Each step was agony, his lungs breathing in smoke and heat, burning as if they, too, were on fire, and all his muscles strained painfully to slowly roll the wagon from the barn. But he wouldn’t give up. As he rolled the wagon forward, his forearm brushed against the metal ring on the tongue. It burned his skin like a branding iron. He growled out a curse at the sharp pain, but he didn’t slow in his steps.

Finally, the wagon rolled out of the barn and into the fresh, cool air, which slammed into him like a wall. He gasped, filling his burning lungs with air and panting to catch his breath. Tossing the tongue down, he turned to head back to the barn, to rescue whatever else was still inside.

Someone grabbed his arm. He stopped—

Belle stood beside him, her fingers pressing hard onto his bicep and refusing to let him go. Tears left streaks down her soot-dirtied cheeks; the hem of her dress hung torn and singed. “You’re not going back in there!”

“There’s another wagon—”

“No!” She fiercely clung to him, putting herself directly between him and the barn. “I won’t lose you, Quinton. I won’t!”

He glanced at the barn and all the frantic movement around them as the others fought to keep the fire contained.

“It’s gone!” she choked out through her tears. “There’s nothing more you can do.”

“The hell there’s not!” he snarled. He hadn’t yet been able to find a way to save her from marrying, but he refused to simply stand there while this new destruction rained down upon her.

He yanked his arm away from her and ran across the barnyard to grab up a stack of wet grain sacks. Fighting back his exhaustion and the aching strain of his already sore muscles, he beat furiously at the pieces of flaming hay that drifted from the barn, then covered his face from the shower of sparks that flew high into the air when the roof caved in. He felt the heat of Belle’s eyes on him, as hot as the flames themselves, but he refused to look at her, refused to let her think him incapable of protecting her. She needed him, damn it, and he wouldn’t let her down.

After several minutes of fighting the fire with the other men, still giving orders even as he worked himself into exhaustion, he finally turned back—

His breath caught at the sight of Annabelle, dangerously standing in the middle of the chaos with the men, shoveling dirt onto whatever flames she could reach. Her face was filthy with soot, her hair hanging half-loose down her back, and every few minutes she had to stop to beat at the hem of her skirt to keep it from catching on fire from the smoldering ashes and charred wood at her feet. Every shovelful of dirt was a futile gesture, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her. He might as well have asked her to stop breathing as to give up this fight.

Together, all the men and household staff fought the fire until it was contained, although the hay and wooden barn beams would burn on for hours, most likely through the evening and night, no matter how much water and dirt they poured onto it. They were all exhausted and filthy, each man going through the motions in stunned shock and silence.

When his arms finally burned with a strain that grew too painful to slap the sack against the flames even one more time, Quinn tossed the wet burlap to the ground and bent over, hands on knees, to cough away the last of the smoke in his lungs and regain his breath. He was covered with sweat, hay, and black ash, and still scandalously bare-chested from when he’d pulled off his shirt in the field, which now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Angus Burns limped across the barnyard to him, the weathered Scot just as exhausted and filthy as Quinn. The collar of his coat was singed.

Quinn jabbed a soot-blackened finger at the charred remains of the barn and the flames still biting into the last of the wooden beams. “I want to know how this happened.” Blinding fear for Belle squeezed his chest like a vise. This wasn’t petty vandalism by a couple of boys from the village. This was deliberate, with all intents to harm Belle and the estate.

Across the barnyard, he saw Belle giving orders to the men, assigning shifts to watch the fire until it completely burned out, and asking others to keep on with the buckets of water and shoveling of dirt to quench the coals.

She paused to draw a deep breath. In that moment, she looked up and met his gaze across the barnyard. He saw the fear in her, the surrender…the utter hopelessness. No one could have stopped that fire after it started; the dry hay and wooden barn served as kindling to the biting flames and spread the fire so fast that extinguishing it had been impossible. Yet Quinn ached with self-recrimination that he’d failed to protect her when she’d needed him. Just as he’d yet been unable to find a way to save her from marriage.

He wiped his forearm over his lips and spat onto the ground, in an attempt to wipe the taste of the fire from his mouth. He promised Angus Burns in a low growl, “I will find the son of a bitch who did this.”

And when he did, the man would pay dearly.

***

“You had no business running into that burning barn,” Belle scolded Quinn, trying to keep the trembling worry from her voice as she gently applied Cook’s salve to the burn on his forearm. The basement was empty. All the servants had gone to help with the barn, which meant she was free to give him a piece of her mind without anyone eavesdropping. “You could have been seriously hurt.”Or worse.

Sitting next to her at the long worktable in the kitchen, letting her both tend his arm and duly chastise him for his foolish heroism, Quinn said nothing. And oh, if he knew what was good for him, he’d keep his silence!

Even as she slowly rubbed the salve over the blistering wound with her fingertips, careful not to hurt him, Belle was just furious enough to throttle him for risking his life. His charming grin was missing, for once replaced by a grim expression born of exhaustion and the same emotional drain she felt herself at losing the barn.

“Worried about me, Bluebell?” he asked gently.

“Of course I was,” she snapped angrily, refusing to let him see that she was more upset than she wanted to admit. She reached for the bandage on the table beside them, and her fingers shook as she silently rolled the long, white cloth snugly around his forearm. “You could have been killed. How would I have explainedthatto your mother?” She pulled on the two ends of the bandage, drawing it down tight around his arm. “And now, I’ve got to spend my time mending you because of your foolishness.”

He glanced down at the bandage, which was drawn so tight that it pressed a deep indention into the muscle of his forearm, and mumbled dryly, “Or saving my death for your own hands?”