Would-Be Mistletoe Wife by Christine Johnson

Author:Christine Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The distant sound of banging pulled Louise from her thoughts and the chapter on wind in Captain Elder’s book.

What was that sound, and how long had it been going on? Groggily, she realized the hour was late. Contrary to her earlier plan, she had spent far too long studying the chapter. She ought to be in bed.

Again the pounding began. Not mere knocking. Whoever it was, he had resorted to banging with his fists. It must be a man. No woman would make such a racket.

Rising, she stretched her stiff back and then took up the lamp she’d been using. The treatise on wind would have to wait.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she said as the pounding continued.

The individual clearly didn’t hear her, since the banging didn’t stop.

It took long moments to traverse the hallway and reach the front door. The girls must have heard the pounding, for Dinah, Linore and Adeline waited on the steps.

“What is it?” Linore asked.

“I don’t know. Go back to your rooms.” Louise had little hope they would do as she asked. Their curiosity must be as great as hers.

At last she reached the front door, which she unlatched and then opened. The swirling gale blew in more withered bits of leaves along with the smell of smoke. On the porch, fist raised, stood Jesse. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked wild.

“Fire!” he gasped.

Louise looked left and then right. She saw nothing. “Where?”

He pointed along the length of the porch, toward the hotel.

Louise hurried outside, her heart nearly stopped. Surely not the hotel. She pushed past Jesse to get a better view and saw nothing but the warm glow of a lamp in the window of the Evanses’ quarters.

“The hotel isn’t on fire.”

“Not the hotel,” Jesse croaked, his voice strangely pinched. “The town. Holland.”

“Holland?”

The town was roughly ten miles to the north and the largest within ready distance. Those who hadn’t come from a place like New York or Chicago considered it a city.

Jesse was nodding. “And Chicago, if we’re not mistaken.”

“Chicago?” It was beyond belief. “Surely a large city like that with a fire department would not be ablaze.”

Jesse was shaking his head. “The streets are wood, the sidewalks are wood, the buildings are wood—just like here.”

“But they would never—”

He grabbed her shoulders, stopping her thoughts midstream. “It doesn’t matter what’s happening elsewhere. What matters is what might happen here. Holland is close, and I spotted a glow closer, inland. With this wind, it could reach here. You need to get the students out of the building. Get everyone out. The town has to be notified. People can’t die in their beds.”

He was panicked, and she had to calm him down.

“It’s not here yet,” she said slowly, “and the winds are from the southwest. They would blow the flames in the opposite direction.”

He shook his head. “You saw the tinder-dry slash on the ground and how dry the pines are. A shift in the wind direction would burn them in an instant.

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