Hope - Lesley Pearse [173]
A piercing scream from upstairs made him run faster. Once at the glass doors he could see inside the room plain as day for it was lit up by the glow of flames at the front of the house. Picking up some kind of heavy flowerpot on the terrace, he smashed the glass doors in, ran across the room and cautiously opened the door into the hall.
It was like opening an oven door. He was blasted by heat and the smoke made his eyes sting. The fire had clearly started in the room next to the front door, and that was an inferno; flames were already licking across the rug on the hall floor towards the stairs.
Cracking, popping and hissing sounds accompanied the roaring of the fire as it devoured everything in its path. Shutting the drawing-room door behind him, Matt took a deep breath and dodging the flames on the floor, ran for the stairs.
Lady Harvey was still screaming as he turned on to the landing. She was wearing a long white nightgown and wringing her hands, clearly too terrified by the flames below to attempt going down.
‘It’s me, Matt Renton, m’lady,’ he said firmly, aware that she was so deeply shocked she wouldn’t know him. ‘I’ll get you out. But first showme where Sir William and Mr Baines are.’
‘I can’t wake William,’ she sobbed. ‘I tried just now. He takes drops at night to sleep and he’s too heavy to move.’
‘Is there any water up here?’ Matt asked, wishing he knew his way around.
‘Only jugs on the washstands,’ she cried. ‘We’re all going to die, aren’t we?’
‘Not if I can help it. Now, calm down and show me where Sir William is.’
The room she led him to was right above the seat of the fire below, and full of smoke. Coughing and spluttering, Matt groped his way to the bed, grabbed Sir William like a sack of potatoes, threwthe cold water from the jug over his face and then hauled him out on to the landing floor.
‘Wake up, sir!’ he yelled, slapping at his face. ‘There’s a fire, you must wake up and get out!’
There was no immediate response, but the roaring sound of the fire below was growing louder by the second. ‘Wake him up,’ he ordered Lady Harvey, who was bent over her husband, coughing hard. ‘I’ll get Baines. Where is he?’
‘Upstairs,’ she said.
Matt ran back to the staircase, only to find it didn’t go up a further floor. The flames were at the bottom of it now; they couldn’t get down that way.
By the time he’d got back to Lady Harvey and learned from her that there was another staircase and where it was, she was so distraught at not being able to wake her husband that Matt had to lift her bodily out through the door to the back staircase, and leave her there while he ran up to find Baines.
The old man was already trying to put his breeches on, coughing and spluttering in the smoke. Matt heaved him over his shoulder and staggered down the stairs to where he’d left Lady Harvey. But she had disappeared, and assuming she’d gone down the stairs he continued too. He found himself beyond the kitchen in what looked like the servants’ hall Nell used to speak of, but there was no sign of Lady Harvey. He kicked open the door on to the stable yard and dumped Baines outside, telling him to get right away from the house.
As he came back through the backstairs door to the bedrooms, the other end of the landing was ablaze, and Lady Harvey was there, collapsed on top of her husband’s prone body. Matt didn’t know if she’d been overcome by the smoke, or was so frightened that she had fainted.
Matt scooped her up in his arms and carried her down to safety, depositing her on the far side of the stable yard where Baines was slumped, coughing his lungs up.
Smoke was billowing out all over the house now, even under the door Matt had just come through. He could hear crashing sounds inside and the roaring of the flames. Taking the kerchief from his neck, he dipped it in a butt of water by the stables, and tying it over his nose and mouth, went back in to get Sir William.
He could feel the heat from the flames even through the door