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alert the neighbors.” The Duke interrupted her. “We need to stop the fire while it’s young, or the whole of London will soon be in flames.” He turned on his heel and started for the house next door.
    “Grady, go alert a constable,” Sara said as she yanked at her petticoats.
    “No, you alert a constable. I’ll not be havin’ you here fightin’ a fire.”
    Sara yanked again and heard a satisfying tear. “I will fight anything I bloody well please, Grady.” Her petticoats pooled at her feet. “Go alert somebody . . .” she gripped the two sides of a seam and spoke through her teeth. “Now.”
    Riiiiip .
    Grady looked from the flames to Sara, then back again.
    “Go, Grady.” She ripped her underthings once more, getting a nice, small strip and tying it loosely about her mouth.
    Grady rolled his eyes. With a sigh, he demanded, “Just be careful.” And he ran away into the night.
    Servants came spilling out of the next house over as the Duke continued knocking on doors. Sara ran to a maid with a bucket. Throwing part of her petticoats at the girl, Sara dunked her half in the bucket of water and ran toward the Duke’s townhouse. The door stood wide open, and she crouched down beneath the layer of thick smoke that hovered against the tall ceiling and made her way into the room just off the entry where the fire had obviously been started.
    With her soggy undergarments, Sara attacked flames as they danced up drapes and smoldered in furniture. She heard others behind her, but didn’t turn from her task, breathing as lightly as she could through her makeshift mask.
    She stopped only when a strong hand wrapped around her arm and whipped her against an equally strong chest. “Get out of here,” the Duke said into her ear, and shoved her toward the door.
    Sara tsked and started working closer to the door. The Duke did not seem to notice as he had immediately gone back to swinging mighty blows with a wet blanket at the worst of the flames. Sara beat at stray ashes and helped drench the room when water buckets were hefted through the door.
    Slowly there were fewer and fewer patches of smoldering flames and finally Sara nearly crawled from the soggy room, her lungs stinging and her breath shallow. She whipped the dingy bit of cloth from her mouth as she made it out into the fresh night air and collapsed on the walk.
    Trevor Phillips raked sooty hands through his hair and stared at the charred room around him. At least they had stopped the fire from spreading. Truly, if he had not worried about the rest of the houses on the street—the whole of London, in fact—Trevor would have enjoyed very much seeing this monstrosity of a house burn to the ground. One less thing to worry about, really.
    He dropped the stinking, black blanket on the floor and thanked the others, mostly servants, who had run in to help him.
    As he left the house, he finally saw the Duchess, lying prone on the ground, her arms outstretched. For a stilling moment, he wondered if she were dead. But then she coughed and groaned rather loudly.
    He came to a stop beside her, the toe of his boot nearly touching the indentation of her waist—a very deep indentation, he had noticed earlier in the evening, when he had decided immediately upon seeing her to invite her in rather than send her away for being dirty.
    Her eyes fluttered open, round brown eyes the color of chocolate. He did love chocolate.
    But too much of it could give one a rather bad stomachache. And this particular bit of chocolate seemed a bit tainted. “I have no intention of going to Rawlston, even if you burn down my townhouse,” he said, as if he had just told her that it might rain.
    Sara attempted to move, but winced instead. Her eyes closed again. “If you hadn’t noticed, I just spent the last hour saving your house from burning down,” she said without moving.
    “I’ve seen crazier things.”
    “I’m not crazy.”
    “Are you all right, yer grace?” came a youthful,