And her last word before the blade moved was an admonishment to run.
An irritating siren pierced the air at a terrible pitch, ceaseless and grating. It drowned out the sounds of fear and death filtering to Pippa through the tremendous halls of Mont Claire.
Could no one stop these men? Would they simply swarm the manor like an army of ants, and dismantle every living thing inside?
Pippa had to escape it. It would deafen her, surely. Turning on her heel, she fled down the hall, but was intersected by another masked man before she could reach the furnace room.
“Grab the little bitch!” the American ordered.
Pippa leapt to the side, scrambling down a narrow service corridor that dumped her into a main marbled hallway.
The siren scream haunted her as she sped down halls, blindly crashed through doors, and leapt around and over the bodies of those she’d known her entire life. She was grateful for her tears. For the way they softened and blurred the sights of gore, blood, and the dead-eyed features of her beloved. She left a trail of her tears as she ran.
A man seized her braid and yanked with such force, she lost her balance.
It wasn’t the American, but a smaller foe with a blade no less fearsome. He lifted it over his head, his intention unmistakable as it arced toward her chest.
A battle cry cracked on a high note as Declan Chandler leapt from the study and drove a fire poker into the man’s head. He didn’t stop swinging, even after the man crashed to the ground like a felled tree. Declan’s movements remained tight and frenzied, his eyes black with a rage Pippa didn’t understand. After the fifth blow, Declan tossed the instrument at the man’s misshapen skull and seized Pippa.
The wail that had been aggravating her miraculously ceased when he clamped a hand over her mouth. Yanking her forward, Declan half dragged, half carried her through the study and into the Mont Claire library, a two-story phenomenon with more books than could be counted.
Before she could struggle or stop crying long enough to ask what he was doing, Declan took them to the fireplace, which was large enough to have housed a small tenant family.
Declan held a rough finger to his smooth lips. “If you’re not quiet, they’ll kill us both, do you understand?”
Upon her nod, he took his hand off her mouth. Turning to her, he seized both her wrists, then stared down in horror at the drops and smears of blood marring her flesh and white sleeves.
“Pip, are you hurt?”
She shook her head, unable to form words for the horror of it.
“What is this?” he demanded. “Whose blood?”
Francesca’s blood.
“Not mine,” was all she could say.
Loud boots and bloodthirsty calls filtered down the grand marble halls as a cadre of men threatened to discover them.
“Here,” he whispered, and shoved her up the chimney before following her.
Soot and grime coated them both as they shimmied up the wide, cylindrical flue, their bodies wedged so tightly, Pippa worried that they wouldn’t be able to get out again. Rough walls abraded her arms and back, and tore at the coarse wool of her dress and stockings.
Declan braced his legs beneath her so she’d have something of a perch and used his long arm to stabilize them, wrapping the other around her.
Pippa’s chest burned from exertion, and ached with a well of grief so intense, she worried it would crush her lungs. She could see nothing in the dark of the chimney. She could only feel.
And hear.
The timbre of masculine voices changed from excited to outraged when they came upon the dead body in the hall. Their angry, clipped conversations ebbed and waned as they searched the study and the library for the culprit.
As they neared the fireplace, terror weakened Pippa’s limbs.
Seeming to intuit this, Declan pulled her close, settling her ear against the bones of his ribs. He trembled, as well, whether with fear or the exertion of keeping them aloft, Pippa couldn’t tell.
His heart became a staccato metronome against her ear, driving all other thoughts and sounds away. She held her breath when Declan did.
And shut out every sound in the world but the thrumming beneath her ear.
If she’d lost everything, she had this. This boy. This heartbeat of time. She’d always known he was possessed of the strength and goodness of a mythical hero.
Now everyone else would know it, too.
Because he’d saved her.
Pippa didn’t know how long they stayed like that. Perhaps minutes, perhaps hours. But when all fell eerily silent and the men moved on, Declan lowered his mouth to her ear.
“Ferdinand…” he said, his voice breaking with sorrow. “Did you see them? Did you see what they did?”
Pippa nodded, wishing she didn’t still see the tiny body bouncing and contorting in the darkness of her mind’s eye.
“What about Francesca, did she … did she make it?”
Despair choked off her breath once more, and Pippa swallowed several ragged sobs before deciding she was unable to answer.
She didn’t have to. The tension in his trembling muscles and the hitches in his breath as he fought his own sobs told her Declan understood.
“Where … where is my papa?” Somehow, Pippa knew her hope was ridiculous. Because her father never would have left them behind. Even to save his own life.
Declan didn’t answer for a long moment, and when he finally did, his voice was husky with shadows and pain. “Your father … they … they stabbed him first. It was quick. I-I’m sorry. He sent me to find you.”
A sharp blade of grief slid through her ribs and into her heart, this one finding purchase next to where her mother’s wound belonged.
“Am I an orphan now?” she whispered as her tears trickled from her chin and onto the still-bare skin of his abdomen.
“Yes.”
“How do you bear it?”
His arm tightened around her, and his face pressed into her hair. “I can’t tell you that. It was different for me.”
“How?”
“Because—because I didn’t lose good parents, Pip … not like yours.”
She lifted her head, swiping at her tears with the back of her hand. “I never thought your parents were good.”
His features shifted as he peered down at her. “I’ve never said a word about them.”
“But you were already sad when you came here. A kind of sad that isn’t gone … and now it might never be.”
His eyes fluttered closed as a gathering of tears dispersed beneath the fan of his dark lashes. “Pip … this kind of sad will never go away. But—” He stopped. Stiffened. Tested the air with sharp inhales. “Do you smell that?”
She gave the air a delicate whiff. Something was burning.
They both looked down to the dry fireplace beneath them. Little tendrils of smoke curled into the shafts of light.
“Bloody hell,” he cursed. “They’ve set fire to the manor.”
“What?” she cried. “Why?”
“To cover their crimes, I suspect. To burn the bodies.” He nudged her back. “Can you climb down on your own, Pip? We have to get out of here.”
Seized by anxiety now that he was pulling away, she clung to him with desperate arms. “Don’t leave me,” she cried. Could they not stay here in the stillness forever? Could she not simply listen to his heartbeat until the rhythm drowned out her loss? “Why did this happen?” she whimpered.