Colin awkwardly patted the boy’s head, leaning to look into the street. “A fat lot of good it will have done if we all burn anyway,” he muttered. “It’s headed this way. Wait here; I’ll be back.”
He darted before a creeping wagon, its bed laden with a hodgepodge of household goods. With Colin’s palms outstretched to press against the two horses’s muzzles, the wagon ground to a quick halt.
“Hey!” the driver shouted. “What the dickens do you think you’re about?”
“I need this vehicle.” Colin came around and leapt up beside the man, who shook his slick, bald head indignantly.
“Folks paid good silver for me to save their belongings. I’m bound for Moorfields, for the refugee camp.” The man’s accent branded him from the countryside, no doubt come into London to assist the victims’ flight—and turn a handy profit in the process. A simple cart had suddenly become a high-priced asset, and this was a sturdy wagon.
“Silver, you say? I’ll pay gold.” Colin fished a pouch from his ripped surcoat and pulled out a guinea. He jumped to the street and began unloading the wagon, suffering a pang of guilt at his cavalier disregard for others’ prized possessions. But a line from one of Dryden’s poems came to him unbidden: “And thus the child imposes on the man.”
Surely children’s lives took precedence over men’s possessions.
The driver bit on the coin and then pocketed it, climbing down to watch with disbelieving eyes.
Colin tossed him another guinea. “There’s for your flea-bitten horses. And there’s another in it for you if you’ll help me unload. The fire’s gaining.”
A quick glance toward the flames had the man throwing goods off the back end, heedless of the clutter it added to the street. He grabbed the third coin, then took off at a run toward Cheapside, disappearing into the wretched mass of newly homeless.
The children clambered up into the wagon bed, their faces masks of relief beneath the tear-streaked soot. Waves of heat lashed at Colin’s back, spurring him to move on.
He shrugged off his hot coat and stood up on the bench seat, plucking his damp, grayish shirt away from his body as he peered through the smoke toward the west. Priscilla lived in that direction, and his family’s town house was there too, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Thankfully, the area appeared untouched. The fire was heading north now; west was the best way out of London.
And out was where Colin intended to head—out and to his brother Jason’s home, Cainewood. There was no sense searching for the children’s families until the fire died down, which could be days. And there was no suitable space for them at Greystone.
He sat and picked up the reins. Traffic was unbearable, and they moved at a crawl. A quarter-hour later, they’d crossed one block of Friday Street and made the turn onto Cheapside. Just three or four blocks, a little further from the leading edge of the fire, and then—
“No, Papa!” The voice cut through the roar of the crowd; a rather familiar voice, though Colin was sure he’d never heard it raised before. His fingers went oddly, instinctively to his ring. “Papa, you cannot!”
His head whipped around. There it was, Goldsmith & Sons. And the girl, Amethyst.
He jerked on the reins as her father shoved her stumbling into the street, flames thundering in the shop behind. A small trunk came out after her, then the man gestured wildly and ducked back inside. Colin saw him start up the stairs—stairs already engulfed in fire—before a blast of heat slammed the door shut.
“Papa!” The girl’s wail was a knife to Colin’s heart.
“Davis, take it,” he barked, throwing the boy the reins. He jumped to the street, dodging cross-traffic as he made his way toward the girl. She hastened up the street in the direction her father had indicated, not making much progress, weighed down by the trunk she dragged in the mud.
They both whirled at the sound of an ominous crash. She let out an anguished scream as the roof of her home caved in, sending a column of sparks into the sky that looked extraordinary, even in stark daylight.
“Papa!” She dropped the trunk and rushed back toward the door. The gilt shop sign crashed to the street, but she lifted her skirts and leapt over it without missing a step. Colin reached her just as she grasped the door latch, but she jerked back, staring at her palm, where angry red welts were already rising. Cradling the hand, she doubled over, oblivious to the soot and ash that rained down on her head.
“Papa!” The cry was a whimper now.
Black smoke puffed out from beneath the door, swirling around her grayed skirts. She didn’t move. Flames licked at the shop’s windows. Good heavens, the blaze would consume her in a moment, and she wasn’t moving.
Colin grabbed her good hand and pulled her toward the wagon.
“No!” She wrenched from his grasp and rushed back to the door, bunching her skirts in one hand for insulation as she reached again for the searing metal handle.
Colin couldn’t believe his smoke-blinded eyes. He clutched her by the waist and yanked her back against his body.
“No!” She slammed into him and immediately lunged forward. “Papa’s in there—I must save him!”
The door’s paint was now blistering, writhing, bubbling. At any moment the planks would flare up. Yet she tugged against Colin’s restraint, aiming a shoulder at the door, clearly intending to batter it down.
With both hands on her shoulders, he dragged her back a yard…two…three.
“No! Let me go!” She twisted and turned in his grip. Heat battered them in scorching waves. “No!”
“Yes!” He spun her around and, desperate, gave her a shake meant to rattle some sense into her fevered brain. “You must leave!”
“I have to save him!” Head down, she
