They Gave the Doomed Duke the Wrong Bride novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: The Lodge

We rode the last mile at a gallop.

The gate was open. Half of Frostmere was running through it with buckets.

The mill stood over the stream below the north wall, and its whole roof was alight.

Flames came out of the shutters. The big wheel was burning on one side, turning slowly in the water and hissing as it went.

In the middle of it all stood Isobel.

She had her skirts tied up above her boots and her gray hair coming down.

"Line!" she was shouting. "One line from the stream to the door! Children on the small buckets! You, the tall one, on the roof with a wet blanket! Move!"

They moved.

Widows and old men and boys, in a long chain down to the black water, passing buckets hand to hand faster than I'd have believed.

Everard was off his horse before it stopped.

So were the freed men from the mine, who could barely stand.

They got into the line anyway.

The wagon master went straight up the ladder onto the mill roof with a blanket in each fist.

I ran for the granary.

Ned was standing in its doorway.

He was still ringing the bell. His arm was shaking.

"Ned. Ned, you can stop."

"I can't," he said. "He'll come back."

"Who?"

"The peddler." His face was black with smoke. "He came yesterday selling needles. Tonight he came to the granary with a jar of oil. I was on the door, because it's my job, and I rang the bell, and he ran and threw it on the mill instead."

I took the bell out of his hand.

I held him very hard.

"You saved the granary," I said. "Do you understand? Every sack in there. You."

He started to cry into my cloak, finally, the way he'd been trying not to for an hour.

By midnight, the fire was out.

The mill roof was gone. The wheel was charred on one side. The stones were whole.

Isobel sat on an upturned bucket in the snow with soot on her face, giving orders to the last of the line.

Everard went and knelt in front of her.

"Mother," he said. "You were magnificent."

"I know," said Isobel. "Somebody had to be. You were off playing in a salt mine."

The cook and two widows had caught the peddler at the bottom of the crag road, trying to steal a horse.

They brought him into the yard with his hands tied.

He was a thin man with bad teeth. He took one look at the commander, and at the wagon master standing behind him with his salt-raw hands, and he talked.

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