Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,48
it beautiful . . . if it hadn’t meant death to all her hopes.
“My samples!” she cried, and ran for the door.
But she only got as far as the hallway before Thorn caught up to her. “No, it’s not safe. You know as well as I do that all the chemicals in there may not have burned yet. If the saltpeter erupts or—”
“It’s not the saltpeter you have to worry about. There are things like sodium hydroxide, which shouldn’t be allowed to burn at all, but is probably already burning. The fumes of that are toxic, too.”
“What’s sodium hydroxide?” he asked.
“You would know it as lye.”
“Damn. Even I know that lye on fire can’t be good.” They could hear noises from downstairs that said the servants had been alerted.
“Stay here,” Thorn told her. “I’ll tell the servants just to let the fire burn itself out. It’s far enough from the house and high enough on that hill that it shouldn’t ignite anything else.”
He hurried down the stairs and she rushed after him. Whether he admitted it or not, he didn’t know what he was doing, so he needed her.
As she approached the bottom, one of the servants cried, “Miss, that fire is already so hot we can’t get near to it. You must have left coals burning in the fireplace or something.”
“I didn’t start it, I swear,” she protested. “I’m always careful to douse the coals with water, and I never leave a candle burning—”
“That’s what we need—water!” another footman called out. “Buckets and buckets of water!”
“No!” she screamed, trying to be heard over the sudden clamor of servants making suggestions. “That could make it worse!”
But no one could hear her. When Grey and Beatrice appeared at the top of the stairs, the servants called out to their master to do something. Judging from Grey’s crookedly buttoned banyan and mussed hair, he had just awakened and still hadn’t figured out what was going on, so he wasn’t going to be any use to them.
Then Thorn moved higher on the stairs and let out an ear-piercing whistle that got everyone’s attention. When the noise quieted, he said, “The fire is made up of burning chemicals. So we should listen to Miss Norley, since she’s the chemist and it was her laboratory that exploded. She knows better than anyone how to handle things.”
Stepping aside in clear deference to her, he then hurried up the stairs to apprise Grey and Beatrice of the situation.
“I beg you,” Olivia said, “don’t try to douse anything with water. Some of those chemicals are harmless in fire but explode in water. Others explode in air. If you must go near the fire—and I wouldn’t advise it, frankly—use salt or sand to extinguish it.”
“Why must we not go near it, miss?” one footman asked her.
“Because depending on which chemicals are burning, poisonous gases will be rising from those flames, and you don’t want to breathe any of those.”
Another fellow cried, “Why are we listening to her, anyway? She’s the one what started the fire in the first place.”
Olivia bristled. “I swear I did not—”
“The miss didn’t start it!” another man called out. “It was that boy who did.”
That shocked everyone into silence.
“What boy?” Thorn asked the man. He and Grey hurried back down the stairs, leaving a clearly pregnant Beatrice standing at the top in her nightdress and wrapper.
“I was outside getting some air, Your Graces, when I saw a boy—couldn’t have been more than fifteen—running from the old dairy. I called out to him to stop, but then the whole place exploded, and I lost sight of him.”
When the servants began murmuring among themselves, Grey turned to Thorn and lowered his voice. “Do you think perhaps we’re getting too close to the truth? That someone would go so far as to blow up Miss Norley’s laboratory to prevent that?”
Thorn paled. “It’s possible, I suppose.”
Olivia shook her head. “They’d have to know which chemicals to ignite and—”
“They wouldn’t have to know a damned thing,” Thorn said in a low voice. “I started a fire in your laboratory just by knocking off a jar, remember?”
“Good point,” Grey said.
Her cheeks reddened as she glanced at Thorn. “Wait, you didn’t tell him about—”
“I told him I accidentally knocked off a jar, which is true.” Thorn ran his fingers through his hair in obvious frustration. “Olivia, could this fellow, whoever the hell he is, have started an explosion simply by smashing jars and throwing things about?”