Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (35 page)

‘This is all my fault,’ Helen said, wringing her hands together. ‘I was too hard on her.’ They were standing in the family sitting room, the grandfather clock in the corner just chiming quarter past two in the morning. Megan, still dressed in her pyjamas, was sitting on one of the floral sofas clutching a throw pillow while her father paced the floor agitatedly in front of her and Stefan stood next to the mullioned windows, talking to the police on his mobile.

‘What time did you last see her?’ Stefan asked Helen.

‘I went up to her room at around ten,’ she replied. ‘And I—’ She looked at her husband. ‘—I shouted at her, told her to go to sleep.’ She began to sob.

‘Did you get that?’ Stefan said into his phone, his eyes briefly meeting Luna’s before returning to the floodlit lawn below. ‘No, her parents think she might be trying to get here, to Arborage…’

As he continued talking, Luna reached out and clasped Helen’s arm. ‘We’re going to find Tilly,’ she said reassuringly. ‘We’re going to find her and everything is going to be fine.’

There was a loud knock on the sitting room door and suddenly Arborage’s entire security team came pouring into the room. Over the course of the ensuing ten minutes plans were quickly made for Helen to return to the family’s farm to await the police. Stefan and Mark, meanwhile, would search the bike path between the estate and Deersley, and the security team would fan out across the grounds. To her exasperation, Stefan tasked Luna with staying put in the house with Megan.

‘But we could help…’ Luna protested.

‘No,’ Stefan replied adamantly, shaking his head. ‘If Tilly is on her way to Arborage, someone needs to be here waiting for her.’

Luna’s lips tightened as she prepared to answer back, but then she felt a tug on her jumper. She looked down to find Megan staring up at her inscrutably but intently. And swallowed her arguments.

Shortly thereafter, the two of them strode along a darkened gravel path, Megan wearing one of Luna’s coats and Luna shining a torch to light the way. The wind was getting up, and the temperature had dropped to around freezing.

‘Tell me again why you think she may have gone to the Dower House,’ Luna said, gripping Megan’s hand with her own.

‘It’s just…it’s all she’s talked about, since we came here the other week. About the old Marquess and his Marchioness, how romantic it was, her lighting a candle for him every night. Tilly kept asking if I thought you meant it when you said she could spend the night there sometime…’ Megan hesitated. ‘I’m probably wrong. She’d be too scared to go there on her own at night.’

‘Well,’ Luna said, ‘it can’t hurt for us to take a look.’ She gave Megan’s hand a squeeze. ‘
I’d
be too scared to go there alone in the dark, so it’s a lucky thing you’re here.’

Luna wasn’t saying that just for Megan’s benefit. Although the path was intermittently punctuated with wrought iron lampposts, the illumination they gave off was feeble, swallowed up within a few feet by the overwhelming darkness of the surrounding woodland. She remembered other nights, back in her and Stefan’s ‘courting’ days, when this route had spooked her so much she’d fairly run all the way to the Dower House. Torch or no, the prospect of searching it at night held little appeal, despite her stubborn unwillingness to comply with Stefan’s orders to remain in the main house.

She caught a faint whiff of smoke in the air. ‘Someone’s having a fire,’ she smiled to Megan. ‘Maybe we should do the same after we find your sister, eh?’ The smell grew stronger as they continued. Luna’s eyes actually started to sting from it; something about the direction of the wind seemed to be funnelling it in their direction.

They rounded a final bend and the Dower House appeared in the distance. At first Luna was sure her eyes were playing tricks on her—there looked to be lights on in the downstairs windows where no lights should be, with the electrical work still going on. But no, lights
were
shining in the windows.

‘How is that possible—?’ she began. And then she saw it: a waning followed by a surge in the brightness within the house. It…it wasn’t lights. It was
fire
. The Dower House was on fire.

Luna dropped Megan’s hand, her body suddenly coursing with adrenaline. Pulling her mobile out of the pocket of her hoody, she flung it at Megan and began to run.

‘Call 999, then call Stefan!’ she cried over her shoulder. ‘And
don’t move
. Stay here.’

Tearing up the path to the house, Luna tried the heavy oak door, but it was locked. She peered through the leaded windows, horrified to see fire licking up the walls of the front room. No sign of Tilly, however.
Please don’t be in there, please don’t be in there,
she prayed as she sprinted around to the back of the house, dodging past a mini-digger and a skip to the temporary door next to the kitchen, which was—ah God—it was ajar. Luna pushed it open and was immediately assaulted by a blast of scorching hot air.

Please don’t be in here, please don’t be in here.

‘Tilly!’ she shouted, but all she heard in response was the sound of the wood framed house creaking and popping, heat literally expanding its walls, pushing them outward.

Luna ran into the kitchen, where the light of her torch was met with thick darkness. Moving quickly toward the door into the front room, she grasped its wrought iron latch. Instantly a searing pain ran through her hand and she snatched it away with a yelp. The latch was scalding hot. She couldn’t go that way.

Turning back into the kitchen, Luna’s mind went momentarily blank.
What to do, what to do?
Stumbling past the island, she moved toward the small wooden servants’ staircase, screaming up into the pitch blackness, ‘Tilly, are you up there?’ Nothing. She isn’t here, she thought to herself. I’m on a fool’s errand.

And then she heard it. It could have been wind, or the house squealing in protest as flames consumed it. Or it could have been a girl’s voice. Luna shouted Tilly’s name again, and yet again she thought she heard a faint answering cry. Without thinking, she dashed up the stairs.

The air on the upper landing was thick with acrid smoke and she immediately dropped to her knees, shining her torch along the two foot tunnel of cleaner air beneath the smoke. The floorboards, when she placed her hand on them, were warm, hot almost, to the touch.

‘I’m here!’ came Tilly’s reedy voice from the master bedroom. Thank God. Luna crawled as fast as she could toward the door, pushing it open. The air was less smoky in here, so she quickly shut the door behind her and stood, shining her torch in an arc across the room. And there was Tilly, sitting in the corner on top of her sleeping bag, arms tight around her knees, face pale with fear. Luna immediately ran across the room. ‘Let’s go, sweetheart,’ she said, urging Tilly to her feet. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

In response, the little girl threw her arms around Luna’s waist. ‘We can’t go down there!’ she cried. ‘They’ll get us if we go down.’

Luna took Tilly by the shoulders and held her away from her. She didn’t know who ‘they’ were and she didn’t have time to argue. ‘This house is burning down, Tilly. We have to go, you understand?’ With that she began marching toward the door, dragging the child with her. In her haste she banged the torch against the door frame and it immediately went out. Shaking it, then switching it off and on had no effect, so she dropped it.

Back out in the darkened hallway, smoke filling her lungs, Luna was confronted with an awful choice: turn right and head back to the servants’ staircase, now billowing with black smoke, or turn left toward the main stairs, semi-lit by the flames below.

No time, no time, no time.

Suddenly there came the sound of feet pounding up the main stairs and a masked face appeared through the banister. The masked intruder reached the top landing and Luna instinctively pulled Tilly close as he ran toward her.

He reached up to pull down the cloth covering his nose and mouth and at sight of the familiar face underneath, Luna almost collapsed with relief. But there was no time to waste. ‘Out
now
!’ Stefan yelled, reaching for Tilly, lifting her up into his arms. ‘You go first,’ he shouted to Luna, gesturing toward the stairs, and she promptly raced down them.

Straight into a blast furnace. The fire had spread everywhere. Walls, doors, even the beamed ceiling in the front vestibule was burning. Bounding off the bottom step, Luna hurled herself at the front door, working at the locks, first the dead bolt…
almost there
…then the Yale lock...
almost there, almost there
…fingers fumbling on the latch…

‘Luna, no!’ Stefan bellowed from behind her. She turned to find him standing at the bottom of the stairs, Tilly clinging to him for dear life. ‘Backdraft!’ he shouted. ‘We can’t go that way!’

‘But—’ Luna’s body flooded with panic. They were so close to safety; surely there was no other way. Stefan stepped forward, passing Tilly to her.

‘Follow me,’ he commanded, striding swiftly down the burning hallway.

Luna tightened her arms around Tilly. And then followed in Stefan’s wake, back into the house. Into hell.