Page 38 of A Bride for the Devilish Duke (Marriage by Midnight #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

D amien walked a rickety wooden staircase that rose up the side of a tall building of moldering brick. It had rows of small windows, though only one, at the top, was lit. Far below him was the Thames, inky black and stinking.

The warehouse was one of five at Wapping docks. Over the past few weeks, Damien had personally arranged for all of them to receive shipments of wool, timber, and whale oil. Those shipments filled every inch of the warehouses, including the largest of the complex which he ascended now.

Those buffoons at tea today were keen to find out why I am holding onto my shipments instead of selling. Do I expect the market to rise? Am I waiting for something that they do not know about? They scramble to deduce some strategy for making money in my actions because that is all my father was notorious for.

The reality was that he wanted these warehouses to be a tinderbox. The workers had been dismissed, paid handsomely to leave their posts and seek employment elsewhere. The amount they had been paid would be sufficient to sustain them for months even if no work was to be found. When the warehouses were little more than a charred hulk, Damien would have them pulled down and the land sold. Let the new owners build their own legacy and let the Fitzgeralds be forgotten.

He reached the door at the top of the staircase. It led to a room beyond which was a walkway of wood, attached to the wall and circling the warehouse, allowing a supervisor to look down on the mountains of crates, barrels, and sacks that filled the vast hall below.

Damien paused, breathing deeply of the acrid tang of whale oil, mixed with the greasy odor of raw wool.

Once, the fire would have started here and quickly engulfed the other buildings. The Fitzgerald docks were separate from the rest of the docklands on the eastern reach of the Thames and the wind was from the west. The sparks would have been blown out over marsh and heath, not into the densely populated east end.

But now, there was nothing for him here. Nothing except…

“Emma, this is for you and for your family. Forgive me,” he muttered.

“What's that?” Silas Sutherland said as he stepped into the building from the same staircase that Damien had just ascended. Damien had been so lost in thought that he had not heard the other man following him.

“Talking to myself, Sutherland,” Damien called out into the dark.

He opened a door and stepped into a windowless storeroom in which the nightwatchmen kept a brazier for warmth and an assortment of liquor for warmth of a different kind. He used a battered tin containing flint and tinder to light an oil lamp and placed it on a stained wooden table. He reached into his coat for a leather-bound sheaf of papers, thumping them to the table too. Waving to them, he stepped away.

“Peruse the proposal to your heart's content. We will not be disturbed tonight. I have sent away the nightwatchmen. Best what we do here is unobserved.”

Sutherland followed him into the room, scraped a chair back from the table, and sat, unlacing the leather binder and taking out the first page within. There was a look of naked greed on his face as he licked his lips in anticipation of wealth.

Unobserved, Damien went to a tea chest in a corner of the room and opened it. The items that he had requested be left for him were present. Rope. A pistol. And powder.

Everything he had arranged weeks ago, when this had been about legacy, not vengeance.

Now, he closed the lid again.

He wouldn’t need the powder.

He turned, resting his hand atop the chest as he watched Sutherland read, the man’s face flushed with eager calculation.

Gregory Fitzgerald had been an egotistical brute, hellbent on befouling his sons. Isaac and Jacob had been sly snakes, but Sutherland… Sutherland was something fouler. A man who had left bruises on a girl and told himself she had deserved it. A man who took, and laughed, and walked away untouched.

Not today.

Damien’s voice, when it came, was calm. Almost conversational. “Do you know, I had this whole place set to burn.”

Sutherland did not look up. “Hmm?”

“These warehouses. All of them. Full of oil and wool and men who’d been paid to vanish.” He stepped forward, wrapping the rope tight around his knuckles. “I was going to turn this place to ash. Make a clean end of it. Let the world call it tragic and move on.”

Sutherland hummed absently. “ Preposterous . The wealth here could satiate generations, but I suppose you would have—”

“But then I learned what you did to her.”

That got Sutherland’s attention. His head jerked up, expression tightening just a fraction.

Damien smiled.

Not pleasantly.

Not at all.

“There it is,” he said, softly. “You thought no one would ever know, didn’t you?”

Sutherland stood abruptly, the papers spilling to the floor, half-formed excuses tumbling from his mouth. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whatever she said, I—”

“Whatever she said?” Damien’s tone didn’t rise, but the temperature in the room dropped. “Say her name, Sutherland.”

Silence.

Damien moved forward again, slow, deliberate steps across creaking floorboards.

“I have imagined this moment,” he said, conversational again. “For weeks. I wondered what I’d say. How I’d say it. Who I’d say it to. Whether I’d shoot you. Break your fingers. Leave you tied to a piling at low tide.”

Sutherland backed away a pace.

“You disgust me,” Damien muttered, and now his voice was sharp, honed to a knife’s edge. “A weak little man who thinks power is the same as cruelty. That because someone is smaller, younger, they belong to you.”

He passed the table, ignoring the papers and the chair, and uncoiled the rope from his hand.

“Your Grace,” Sutherland began, voice cracking. “You—you don’t want to do this.”

“Oh, you are wrong about that, old boy,” Damien said coldly. “I have never wanted anything more.”

“Over here, Your Grace. A small gate in that larger one,” Elsie whispered, “I can't think where the nightwatchman has got to, these places are never deserted like this.”

“Damien would not risk innocent lives in whatever he is planning. He would have sent away anyone that might be harmed,” Emma whispered back.

They stole through a deserted, cobbled yard, approaching a tall brick building. The sound of the slow slosh of the river reached them from the other side of the building as well as its noisome stench. They found a door which had not been locked and carefully opened it. Inside was dark.

Emma stole inside, finding herself walking along a canyon of tall, wooden crates. A sickly sweet smell filled the air.

“Smells like oil,” she commented. “ Damien !” she called out into the gloom, “are you in here?”

Her voice echoed from the walls of crates around them. Only darkness answered.

“ Damien ! I am here to implore you. Do not do it! We can be happy together, you do not need to submit to this madness. Please!”

From somewhere above came a sound, as if of a muffled grunt. Then there was a light, high above. It was yellow and flickering, growing rapidly in intensity.

“That is a fire!” Elsie cried out, grabbing for Emma's arm. “We must leave before this whole place goes up!”

“Damien!” Emma cried, seeing the silhouettes of two figures outlined in shadow by the firelight above.

There came the sound of running footsteps and a shadowy figure appeared high above, dashing for a doorway in the wall. Emma recognized the figure.

“ Damien !” she cried as loudly as she could.

Damien froze, then looked down at her. The fire lit his face. He looked stricken, disbelieving.

“Emma? I heard your voice but thought you to be outside! What are you doing here? Get out, it is dangerous!”

Elsie was tugging frantically at Emma's arm as another figure appeared above. It was… Silas Sutherland?

His face was bruised, his clothes blood-soaked, and he was staggering and clutching his head. Something rolled at his feet and he cried out, kicking at it. It was a lamp, and at his kick, the glass broke. It fell from the walkway on which Sutherland stood, falling like a shooting star. Emma stood, frozen in place as it tumbled lazily to disappear among the crates.

Then there was a roar, followed by a wall of flame.

Sutherland screamed, falling back into the room from which he had emerged, slamming the door. Damien raised a hand against the sudden heat. He pointed towards the door that Elsie and Emma had just come through.

“That's the only unlocked door. Get out before the fire cuts you off!” he yelled, choking and coughing even as he spoke.

“Not without you!” Emma cried.

“I have my way out, but I must get Sutherland out with me. Go now!” Damien roared before dashing towards the door.

Emma knew she should run but she could not move her feet. She did not know why Silas Sutherland was there or if the fire had been started deliberately.

Is this part of his revenge? Does Damien include Josie and my family in his vengeance now? He would not murder a man. He could not. Could he?

Damien appeared again, dragging a screaming Silas Sutherland with him. The man was thrashing and kicking, plainly more terrified of Damien than of the raging inferno below them. Damien pushed him towards the door in the wall, bellowing at him to get out.

Emma finally moved, seeing that Damien must be leaving the building with Sutherland. She ran with Elsie but their escape was short-lived. A mountain of burning crates suddenly crashed to the ground in front of the door. The two women shied away from the intense heat and licking flames, running in the opposite direction.

“We must find another door!” Elsie cried.

But where. Any other way out of the building was hidden by the mountains of crates, barrels, and bales of wool. They rose at least twelve times Emma's height all around. Those that weren't alight were smoldering and smoking. The air was becoming harder to breathe.

There was no escape.

“Get out, you fool!” Damien bellowed at Sutherland.

Damien had intended a far worse fate for the man. Tie him up, beat him to a pulp, let him think he would be burned alive if he ever dared utter a word about Emma again. That was if he managed to still breathe after tonight.

But then Damien had heard Emma’s distant cries.

Damn the man for being a coward. If he had not panicked, then the lamp would not have ever been knocked over to start the fire.

It was bitterly ironic that it would be Sutherland whose cowardice had led to the fire taking hold among the tightly packed materials below. Sutherland would be the one who completed Damien's revenge.

He shoved the other man towards the door, and then heard the deafening crash from behind. He looked, wanting to make sure that Emma and Elsie were no longer below.

What on earth were they doing there? Why would she follow me and how did she know? Elsie must have listened at the door. Blast!

Damien stared in horrified disbelief as he saw Emma and Elsie running deeper into the warehouse, their exit blocked by a seething mass of burning wood. He pointed to another door, hidden from their sight by crates. But they showed no sign of hearing him over the noise of the inferno.

Then he realized that the door would be locked anyway.

He had unlocked only one as an escape route should he need it. The keys to the rest of the doors weighed heavily on an iron ring in his pocket.

He could throw it down to them, but if he missed, they were lost. He could go down the stairs and open the door from the outside… but it would take too long. He needed to get down to them immediately, but how? There were no stairs inside the godforsaken building.

Looking along the walkway on which he stood, Damien saw the mass of wool bales a few yards ahead. It would be a hard landing but not as hard as solid wood. And if he survived it, he could get to Emma and Elsie and guide them to the door.

“Are you coming, man?” Sutherland cried from the doorway.

He had mastered his fear enough to look in to see where Damien was. Damien looked back and grinned. Then he ran along the walkway, vaulted the wooden handrail, and leaped into empty space.

The landing was hard enough to knock the air from him. Something snapped and pain lanced through him. His right arm was in agony and would not bear his weight as he tried to push himself upright atop the pile of wool bales. A deep breath brought a stab of pain in his chest which he thought was a broken rib. Or even more than one.

He scrambled across the wool bales, tumbling down from one to another until he was on solid ground.

Emma appeared out of the gloom, staggering, and choking on the smoke which was already rendering the air almost solid. Damien hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her towards the door, fumbling with a broken arm for the keys. With a soft rushing sound, a fresh heat surged up behind them. The wool bales had caught light. The heat was unbearable and Damien's numb fingers dropped the keys.

Crying out in frustration, he summoned the last of his strength to kick at the door.

It gave way on the third kick and Damien pulled Emma through. Elsie clung to Emma, following. They staggered out into the blessedly cool night air. Damien wanted to collapse to the ground but knew they needed to be a safe distance away. Explosions were sounding from within as barrels of oil ignited. He kept trudging forward, drawing the two women after him.

In the darkness beyond the warehouse, a gibbering Silas Sutherland watched in disbelief as Damien emerged from the raging inferno.

“It cannot be!” he stammered, “he fell! I saw him fall into the fire! What manner of demon is he?”

Sir Silas Sutherland cried out, a wail of pure existential terror, and fled into the London night.