Burning Up

feed.”
    “He’ll be lucky to get half that.”
    It cost more to feed a horse than to keep a servant. The stables at Alden housed four farm animals, Sloat’s cob, and a couple of carriage ponies. “The charge seems reasonable to me,” Jack said.
    “He is a tenant. He owes rent.”
    “He cannot meet his obligations if we don’t meet ours.” Jack put the bill on the stack to be paid.
    Outside, a bell rang, tolling against the storm, penetrating the rush of wind and rain.
    Jack raised his head, glad of the distraction. “Who died?”
    “No one. Yet,” Sloat said. “They ring the church bell to guide the boats in to the harbor.”
    Jack glanced at the windows, where a hard rain streaked the glass. “The fishermen went out in this weather?”
    Sloat shrugged. “It wasn’t raining when they went out.”
    They continued to work with the rain beating at the glass and the fire hissing in the hearth. The bell tolled incessantly, jangling on Jack’s nerves.
    He drummed his fingers, glanced outside at the thrashing trees and turbulent sky. He thought of the men on the boats, braving the storm, and the families waiting for them onshore. “I’m going to the village,” he announced abruptly. “We need to help.”
    Sloat huddled closer to the fire. “Why?”
    He eyed his steward with dislike. “Because we can. Load a wagon with blankets, brandy, firewood. Have Mrs. Pratt make up some baskets and bring them down with you.”
    “Bring them where?”
    Where did people gather in times of trouble? The church?
    “The tavern,” Jack said. “Hurry.”
    A wet and worried-looking groom led Neptune from the stables. Outside the yard, the wind pounced, shrieking, biting, pelting them with rain. The horse shuddered and shook his head in protest. Jack steadied him with hands and voice. Neptune responded to his reassurance, putting his head down, forging forward through the sucking mud. The rain slashed down like knives. Trees tossed and bent. Branches creaked and flew.
    Jack raised his face to the slashing wind and rain. Despite the freezing discomfort, it felt good to be out, to be doing, to pit his strength against something as substantial as the storm. Neptune emerged from the illusory shelter of the wood onto the track that spilled to the harbor.
    The ruthless wind, the brutal view, snatched his breath away. The ocean raged as loud as an army on the move, gray and violent as a battlefield. Huge breakers rolled between the swelling sea and the lowering sky, flinging themselves onto the rocks in a fury of spray and foam.
    The shuttered houses clung to the rocks like a colony of oysters, dark and closed. Slits of yellow lamp light edged the tavern windows. The church bell tolled, Come . . . back. Come . . . back.
    A boat spun and tumbled in the turbulent waves like a leaf in the gutter, beyond reach, beyond help, beyond hope. Half a dozen men clustered onshore, brandishing a rope in the wind. Their shouts rose thin and piping as gulls’ cries. Jack watched as the weighted rope coiled over the water, fell short, and was reeled in again.
    The small craft pitched and tossed without sail or oars, up and down, up and . . . A wave crashed down and drained away, leaving a single man inside clinging to the side of the boat.
    Jack’s heart thundered. He spurred Neptune forward, hooves clattering on the wet stone.
    They reached the strand. The man in the boat had caught a wild toss and somehow tied the rope to the prow. The men onshore hauled and cursed, the wet rope yanking through their hands.
    Jack slid from the saddle and stumbled down the beach into the teeth of the wind and the cold, cold tide. The air was thick with salt and fear. Water slapped his face, filled his boots, dragged at his thighs. He slogged through the churning surf and grabbed hold of the rope between two other men.
    “Pull!”
    The boat leaped liked a shark fighting at the end of a line. Jack’s shoulders wrenched. His boots scraped shale.
    “Pull.”
    A waved crashed over them, almost knocking Jack from his feet. The man in front of him went down. He hauled him up by his collar, wrapped white knuckles around the twisted rope.
    “Pull . ”
    They staggered back, fighting the savage sea and angry tide for possession of the boat. It wallowed and rolled, ungainly in the shallows, banging ribs and shins, smashing fingers. They towed it through the long white breakers and onto the shore.
    The man inside sprawled against the bench, dark and limp as