She felt the smoke even before she saw the door to the kitchen. It was thick and acrid, and it stung her lungs within seconds. With a grim heart she turned that last corner. Servants were handing off buckets of water, and Charles was in the thick of it, shouting out orders and running in and out of the kitchen as he hurled water onto the flames.

Ellie's heart caught in her throat as she watched him dash into the blaze. “No!” she heard herself shout, and without thinking she ran through the throng of servants and into the kitchen. “Charles!” she screamed, tugging at his shirt.

He whirled around, his eyes filling with horror and rage when he saw her next to him. “Get out!” he yelled.

“Not unless you come with me.” Ellie grabbed a bucket of water from a servant and threw it on a small blaze that had jumped from the floor to a table. She could put out that small section of the fire, at least.

Charles grabbed her arm and began to drag her to the door. “If you value your life, get out!”

Ellie ignored him and picked up another bucket. “We almost have it contained!” she yelled, charging forward with her water.

He grabbed the back of her dress, stopping her short and causing the contents of her bucket to fly forward, landing rather neatly on the fire. “I meant that I will kill you,” he hissed, hauling her toward the door. Before Ellie realized what was happening, she was on her behind in the hall, and Charles was still in the kitchen, fighting the blaze.

She tried to reenter the kitchen, but Charles must have said something to the servants, because they very efficiently blocked her way. After about a minute of trying to worm her way back in, Ellie finally gave up and joined the bucket line, refusing to consign herself to the impotent position Charles seemed determined to assign her.

After a few minutes more, she heard the telltale sizzle of a blaze put out, and the people in the bucket line began to exhale so loudly that Ellie wondered if any of them had remembered to breathe. They all looked exhausted and relieved, and she decided then and there that her first official act as Countess of Billington would be to make sure that all of these people received some kind of token of appreciation for their efforts. Extra pay, perhaps, or maybe an additional half day off.

The crowd thinned out at the entrance to the kitchen, and Ellie wormed her way forward. She had to get a look at the oven and see if she could somehow determine what had caused the blaze. She knew that everyone would believe that the fire was her fault—she only hoped that they would think she had done a shoddy job fixing the oven and not that she had purposefully set the fire. Better to be thought foolish than evil.