Page 100 of The Phantom Duke
Damien saw death reaching for him with skeletal hands. Saw the masked man standing above Ezekiel on the stairs, laughing at Damien’s futile struggles. Saw Maria in his mind’s eye, outside and safe, but praying for him. He saw Ezekiel’s flinch moments before he pulled the trigger.
This was a man who had never shot a man before—and who had just realized that pulling a trigger with the certain knowledge of causing another’s death is not easy.
As Ezekiel pulled the trigger, Damien dropped to the stairs. The shot grazed the stock of the rifle, an inch from Damien’s face. Splinters of wood stabbed at him. The shot continued down the stairs where the prisoner was rushing upward, knife ready and teeth bared. Damien saw the man snatched from his feettumbling downwards, where flames were beginning to fill the doorway.
He looked up, blood dripping into his eyes. Ezekiel was looking down at him in horror, knowing that he had no time to reload the pistol. Damien brought the rifle to bear on his brother, cocked it and settled his finger on the trigger.
He is my brother. The memories he has of our mother cannot be faked. We might not have the same father, and he could be right. Maybe he is the legitimate heir. That is irrelevant. He is still my brother.
The fires of hell were reaching for him as he sighted along the rifle barrel, holding Ezekiel’s life in his hands. Then he lowered the rifle. Ezekiel gaped at him as Damien slung the rifle over his shoulder and ascended the steps, two at a time. He cowered away from his brother, but Damien ignored him, passing him and continuing to stride away.
“I will not kill you, Ezekiel. I do not have it in me. Stay there if you want, and the fire will do what I cannot. Or come with me and live.”
He reached the door and looked back. Ezekiel still cowered, his face contorted in hate and fear.
“Just give me the house! Give me the dukedom! You don’t need it. You don’t want it. You live as a hermit. I know. I’ve been spying on you for months. It is wasted on you. It should have been mine!”
“Maybe it should. But it isn’t,” Damien said. “And a new heir will be in the world soon. The line will continue through me.”
“No! You haven’t suffered! If you had, you would understand. I can’t just give up and go back to being a pauper when I should be a duke!”
He was coughing as he spoke. The wooden stairs were beginning to smolder and smoke. Ezekiel looked down to where the body of his spy lay, wreathed in fire. The knife, long-bladed and deadly, lay a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. Damien saw where Ezekiel was looking and shook his head.
“Do not try it,” he said.
Ezekiel screamed his rage and darted down the staircase, hand outstretched for the knife. Damien didn’t move. Saw him reach it. Saw him take it and turn, running back up the stairs with his weapon, his eyes on Damien. Filled with hate.
The stairs chose that moment to surrender to the fire. Ezekiel’s fury fled from him as the stairs collapsed beneath him. Damien saw the look of surprise on his brother’s face. Then there was nothing but flames. He turned away, closing the door but already feeling the heat through the floor. The door would not stop the fire for long.
As he ran through the halls of Winterleigh he saw how widespread the fire in the cellar was. Smoke billowed through cracks in the floor and had broken through in several places, tearing hungrily at floorboards, reaching ever higher.
CHAPTER 26
Maria handed an overflowing bucket of water to the next person in line. It was handed to the next, then the next before being tossed into the flames. The line was made up of servants and people from the surrounding farms and villages who had come to help once they’d seen the signs of fire.
It had sprung up, seemingly from nowhere and rapidly raced out of control. Simon Hale staggered away from the house, clothes smoking, face sooty.
“It is too hot! I cannot get close to any entrance. Have they come out?”
“No!” Maria called, giving up her place in the line. “Damien, Philby, Matthew the footman, and Ezekiel are all still inside. Simon, what are we going to do?”
“Pray, Your Grace,” Simon coughed. “This is not a natural fire. It was set to burn rapidly. For it to take this much of the house so quickly… this was arson.”
Maria’s eyes filled with horror as she looked back at Winterleigh. Her Winterleigh. It was vanishing before her eyes, swallowed by fire and black smoke. The flames danced hungrily over the rooftops, cracking the stone with explosive heat, curling up the timbers that had stood for generations. Sparks jumped wildly to the hedges nearby, and the smoke billowed toward the stars like a mourning shroud.
The grand windows she had once admired were shattering from the inside with sharp reports like pistol shots. The eastern wing was already collapsing. This house, where their romance had kindled, where the first threads of trust had begun to grow, was crumbling before her eyes.
And Damien… still inside.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
“No one can survive that,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No one…”
“Don’t say that,” Simon snapped. “Not him. If anyone can walk out of hell, it’s him.”
Maria thought of those noises she had been hearing. She had thought it to have been the prisoner, once she had discovered hisexistence. Had he been freed? Or had the fire claimed him? Now, she thought of where a bonfire might be built.
In the cellars, which covered the entire house. Was this the doing of the prisoner? He surely could not have done it all himself. But who would help him? Damien? No. Ezekiel?
