Page 43 of The Villain’s Fatal Plot (Gravesyde Village Mystery #1)
FORTY-THREE: RAFE
Finding the source of the fishy oil and alcohol stench, Rafe took the stairs down, two at a time, shouting, “Upton, get out, stay low, behind the cart, but get the blazes out !”
Cursing until the air turned blue, he reached the kitchen, praying the curate had obeyed.
He had no way of knowing if the killer knew how to shoot, but he was almost certainly out there, waiting for his moment. Rafe had to spirit the curate away from the deadly inn and through the open yard without anyone seeing—a quandary.
Outside, a voice resembling Verity’s rose in insane shrieks of hallelujah .
He must be hallucinating from oil fumes. Paul was already out the kitchen door by the time Rafe reached it. They ducked low behind Henri’s cart, scanning the yard as more voices and shouts emerged from the night.
From this vantage point, he saw an open lantern and flames sputtering in the distance, just as he’d feared. The bastard had turned the inn into an incendiary bomb simply waiting to be lit, trusting a method that had worked before.
The wild screams escalated and... echoed? An entire chorus of hallelujahs carried up and down the hill .
“Run for the woods, if you can,” Rafe warned the curate, wanting him well out of the way before the bomb ignited.
Even as Rafe broke from their hiding place, hoping to distract the killer from the curate, the singing dark silhouette of a vengeful angel manifested behind the cloaked madman holding a torch.
Verity! By all that was holy, she wielded a sword as well as her cane.
Gripping a blazing torch in one hand, lantern in the other, the cloaked scoundrel swung to meet his singing attacker. Before he could complete his clumsy turn, Verity walloped his head with her stick so hard that he staggered. As the villain tried to regain his balance, she swung again with the sword.
Fighting to dodge the blows and hang onto his torch, the cloaked form stumbled over a stone.
Before Rafe could even think about crossing the yard to save the insane angel from herself, the arsonous villain tumbled—onto his torch. Saturated by spilled fuel from the swinging lantern, the cloak ignited.
Verity’s song escalated to screams, as did that of everyone converging on the inn.
Rafe watched in horror as the blaze rose into a bonfire. Turning, he rushed back to the kitchen, where he heaved the fifty-pound bag of flour over his shoulder. Trailing a path of white, he ran into the yard again to slice the burlap open over the burning cloak, smothering all but embers with flour.
Black fury roiled his soul as he grasped what the scoundrel intended, what he could still accomplish if the flames spread. Instead of running, the poor curate used his shabby coat to beat at the smoldering fire in the dead grass and debris.
Illuminated by flames, shadows raced down the hill to the pump.
Letting others dump water on the mix of flour and oil, Rafe caught Verity in his arms and carried her from the sight. Shivering and shaking, she wept against his chest while others doused the final sparks racing toward the inn .
Rocking her back and forth, he watched in unsympathetic rage as the fire died and people began to circle the villain. The gentlemen used their swords to remove the remaining fragments of smoldering cloak. What little that was left unscorched beneath revealed a stout man of middling height, with hanks of graying hair. The clergyman kneeled down and located an unscorched and unmoving wrist. Testing it, he shook his head.
“He’s gone, sweetheart,” Rafe whispered in her ear, offering her reassurances while waiting for his racing pulse to slow so he could think coherently. He was utterly amazed at what she had done. “You stopped him. He meant to torch the inn with us in it.”
She buried her head in his shoulder, refusing to look.
Wielding an assortment of weapons, women spilled across the now dark yard. Rafe shook his head in disbelief but didn’t disabuse them of their notion that they could have stopped a demented scoundrel with anything short of a shotgun. Or his own torch. Verity had risked her life to save the inn.
“You’ll have to identify him, Miss Porter,” Captain Huntley said, returning to his feet after taking a look at the half-baked corpse. “None of us recognize him.”
“Clubfoot,” she whispered. “Uncle Warren has a clubbed foot. I should have noticed his special boot and shouted sooner.”
That explained the clumsiness of the man’s actions. He’d fallen over his own feet. “He wore a cloak. Until he opened the lantern, you could not have seen his boot.” Rafe stroked her hair. She’d lost her pins and he felt guilty enjoying the silken strands beneath his rough fingers. His heartbeat had barely slowed, but that could be because of the female bounty pressed against him.
“Flour.” After examining a burned boot and confirming the misshapen foot, Henri dusted the detritus off his hands in disgust. “Who knew?”
“A cook who has to put out fires.” Lady Elsa strode up like a Valkyrie carrying a whip instead of a sword.
“Oil and flour batter,” Rafe said in disgust. “I’ll never fry another chicken. ”
The lady glanced down at the victim with a visible shudder. “What a waste of good grain. I’ll happily replace it for you, maybe with two sacks. I’m sure my trustees will agree that saving lives is a justifiable expense.”
In his arms, Verity choked and coughed at the macabre promise. Experienced in war, Rafe understood black humor. An extremely wealthy heiress and an eccentric, Lady Elsa must have had brutal experiences in her past. Her husband emerged from the trees to hug her shoulders, kiss her streaming blond hair, and lead her away. There was a story for another day.
The captain studied the inn’s thatch and the still smoldering torch. “You’d have lost the inn, but there might have been time to escape. It would have been useful to interrogate him.”
Rafe shook his head vehemently. “The bastard emptied oil over the floors in the upper story, then for good measure, broke bottles of that alcoholic elixir. Heat from just a fireplace might ignite the fumes. That’s how he blew up Verity’s home.”
“Barrels of whale oil,” she murmured against his chest. “Uncle Warren claimed he was saving money by buying barrels of oil from a company going bankrupt. He stored them all over the house, for convenience, he said.”
Rafe held her closer, wishing he could erase the horror of her memory by running his hands up and down her back, but he did not have the right to even hold her like this. For this brief moment out of time, he absorbed the pleasure of the rise and fall of her breasts and her racing heartbeat. She was alive, no thanks to her villainous uncle.
Captain Hunt practically growled as he studied the inn. “We’d better start scrubbing it down then. No lanterns or fires until we do.”
The librarian took the curate’s arm and the pair departed, whispering. Rafe assumed they’d take charge of the body. He needed to take charge of cleaning the inn, but he couldn’t bear to let Verity go.
Hunt’s wife decided for him, tapping Rafe’s hands so he’d release... the young lady, not a widow. “I’ll take Verity up to the manor. A bit of brandy and sleep will help. Some.”
He didn’t have the right to kiss her hair as he’d seen the lieutenant do with his lady wife. Reluctantly, Rafe released her. Verity cast him a glance he couldn’t interpret, then obediently followed Mrs. Huntley.
It would be a very long night.
“You may want to regain control of your arsenal.” Rafe addressed Hunt, nodding toward the shadows slipping back up the drive. “I’m fairly certain your librarian was carrying a pistol and your housekeeper had a blunderbuss.”
The captain snorted. “Clare had a rapier. I don’t know what the devil she thought she could do with it.”
“On the Continent, we used them for cooking vermin.” Without another glance at the roasted corpse in the dirt, Rafe strode back to the inn to begin pumping water and restoring order. That, he knew how to do.
What he meant to do about Verity... required planning, a technique he had not mastered but hoped to learn.
Instinct might save his life, but it wouldn’t win a woman’s heart. He’d lived an aimless existence until now. With a worthy goal in sight, he’d learn to strategize.