‘The west wing is on fire!’ she gasped.
Atreus dealt her a look of frank incredulity. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Look, your house is on fire…don’t be pigheaded!’ Lindy yelled at him, sensing that being obstinate and independent of thought ran through his every fibre, like a name stamped indelibly into a stick of seaside rock.
Atreus strode down the steps. ‘On…fire?’
‘West wing. Top floor!’
His long, powerful legs cut the distance to the corner of the house at a rate she could not keep up with. Once there, he stilled at the sight of the glow lighting the darkness, while Lindy’s tummy gave a sickening lurch and cold fear chilled her to the marrow. A biting phrase of guttural Greek escaped him before he was galvanised into action.
Several powerfully built men had already jumped out of a big four-wheel-drive to race across the gravel towards him. Lindy recognised the musclebound males who seemed to travel everywhere with him as his bodyguards. He rapped out instructions to them and they walked straight into the house.
‘Is it safe to let them go inside?’ Lindy queried worriedly.
‘If it were not I would not send them. The seat of the fire is a considerable distance from the library,’ Atreus responded loftily, his irritation at that suggestion of censure unconcealed. ‘My laptop and sensitive papers must be retrieved.’
Lindy could not credit that he could still be concentrating solely on business when the superb paintings she could see decorating the hall walls were under threat. Didn’t he appreciate how terrifyingly fast a fire could move through a building? A terrifying shiver of remembrance that was a powerful hangover from her childhood experiences ran through her. Clenching her hands into fists of restraint, she turned away to approach Phoebe, who was surrounded by a cluster of locals. All of them were frozen into inactivity in the weird fascination of spectators watching a potential disaster develop.
‘There’s no time to waste. Let’s get the artworks out,’ Lindy urged.
A chain of willing helpers formed, and the first paintings were removed and passed out through the windows from hand to hand. Lindy, always a talented organiser, co-ordinated the effort, and once the Dionides bodyguards and estate workers joined them the salvage operation began to function with greater speed and efficiency. Two fire engines arrived and Atreus went into immediate consultation with the senior officer in charge. Ladders went up and hoses began to cover the ground. Chantry House sat on a hill, and water would have to be pumped up from the lake if the flames got a firm hold.
The task of clearing valuables from the vast mansion was eased by the fortunate fact that many of the rooms were awaiting redecoration and still empty. As the pressure on the salvage operation lessened Lindy watched in fierce trepidation as jets of water were directed into the burning building and billowing clouds of black smoke poured into the night sky. Even the smell of the smoke in the air made her feel queasy.
‘The fire’s travelling through the roof void,’ Atreus ground out.
‘Did the cat get out okay?’ Lindy asked, belatedly recalling Dolly, the animal the housekeeper had mentioned.
Atreus urged her back onto the lawn as the orange glare behind a sash window loudly cracked the glass. ‘What cat? I don’t have animals in the house.’
Lindy dealt him a look of consternation and raced over to Phoebe. A storage lorry was reversing in readiness to load the paintings stacked on the tarpaulins that had been spread on the grass.
‘Did Dolly get out?’ Lindy asked frantically.
‘Oh! I forgot about her!’ the older woman admitted guiltily. ‘I closed her in the kitchen for the night. I didn’t want to risk her getting out and wandering round the house.’
The fire team in the hallway told her she couldn’t enter the building. Tears of frustration in her eyes, Lindy pelted round to the back of the house. Would she really have the courage to go inside? she asked herself fiercely, doubting her strength of will in the face of such a challenge? The back door lay open. Her legs felt weak and woolly. She thought about the cat and, sucking in a deep jagged breath, conquered her paralysis and stumbled forward to race into the house. She sped down the flagged corridor and past innumerable closed doors. For a split second she froze in fear, for the smell of the smoke was rousing ever more frightening memories. But commonsense intervened and she snatched up a towel in the laundry room and held it to her face because the acrid smoke was catching horribly at her nose and her throat. Long before she reached the kitchen door, it had become a struggle to breathe.
She could hear a dull roaring sound behind the kitchen door and her courage almost failed to her, but she was powered by an image of Dolly’s terror and the sick memory of herself as a child, trapped in a burning house. Using the towel to turn the door handle, in case it was hot, she opened the door just as a man shouted at her from behind.
‘Don’t open the door…no!’ he roared, but she was on an adrenalin rush and she did not even turn her head.
She was shaken by the discovery that the ceiling was on fire. Although there was a scattering of small burning pieces of debris on the floor, the kitchen was still eerily intact within that unnatural orange glow of impending destruction. The heat, however, was intense. Dolly had taken shelter under the table. An elderly black and white cat, with big green eyes, she was clearly not her usual placid self. A smouldering piece of wood lay nearby and Dolly was snarling at it, with her hackles lifted and her fur standing on end.
Lindy surged forward and snatched up Dolly just as the most dreadful rending noise sounded from above her. Inadvertently she paused and obeyed a foolish compulsion to look up. Someone lifted her bodily off her feet and hauled her backwards. A burning beam fell on the table and rolled off again, showering sparks and choking dust only feet away from her. She had been right in its path, and the fear of what might have been hit her hard and left her limp.
Atreus carried Lindy and the struggling cat to safety and withstood a volley of reproof from the fireman who had followed his rescue bid. She was coughing and spluttering as Atreus lowered her to the cobbled yard outside, and she breathed in the clean air with feverish relief.
‘How could you be so stupid?’Atreus yelled at her, full volume. ‘Why didn’t you stop when I shouted at you?’
‘I didn’t hear you shout!’
‘You risked my life and your own for an animal!’ Atreus launched at her in condemnation.
That verbal attack shocked her, and at the same moment she feverishly fought disturbing recollections of the household fire that had many years earlier taken her father’s life. The combination made her eyes prickle and overflow and she flung him a speaking glance of reproach. ‘I couldn’t just leave Dolly to die in there!’
The cat was now curled up in Lindy’s arms, with her furry head tucked well out of view. She was paying not the smallest heed to the crackling flames leaping through the roof of the west wing, or to the noise and activity of the human beings rushing around. Dolly had had enough excitement for one day and recognised a safe haven when she was offered one.
‘You could have been killed or at the very least seriously injured,’ Atreus admonished fiercely.
‘You were a hero,’ Lindy pronounced through clenched teeth of ingratitude. ‘Thank you very much for saving my life.’
Fighting to contain his anger with her, Atreus gazed down at her defiant oval face. She wasn’t beautiful but there was something about her, a heady je ne sais quoi that made him blatantly aware of her femininity. Was it those clear bright eyes? The luxuriant mane of long dark hair? Or the voluptuous figure that had infiltrated his dreams and caused him more disturbed nights that he cared to remember? She was full of emotion, a far cry from the reserved and controlled women he was used to dealing with. Her tear-filled eyes were as bright as amethysts,