Read Online The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers - Free Book Online

to return.
    And before he did, the place had caught fire. Crawford thought now that the Navy man might have set it intentionally when he'd learned—when he had got the impression—that she was pregnant.
    When smoke had begun gouting out of the upstairs windows, Crawford had dropped his beer and sprinted out of the pub and across the street, and he'd been slamming his shoulder against the front door when the sailor had opened it from inside, to come lurching and coughing out in a cloud of acrid smoke. Crawford had bulled past him, shouting "Caroline!"—but the sailor had caught him by the collar and whirled him back outside.
    "Hopeless." the man had wheezed at him. "Only be killin' yourself."
    But Crawford had heard a scream from inside. "That's my wife," he gasped, tearing away from the sailor.
    He had taken only one running step back toward the house when a hard punch to the kidney brought him to his knees; but when the Navy man grabbed him under the arms to haul him out onto the street, Crawford drove an elbow, with as much force as he could muster, back into the man's crotch.
    The sailor collapsed forward, and Crawford caught his arm and spun him out into the street, where he fell and rolled moaning in the dust. Crawford turned back toward the open door, but at that moment the upper floor gave way and crashed down into the ground floor, exploding out through the doorway such a burst of sparks and heat that Crawford was lifted off his feet and tossed right over the hunched sailor.
    His eyebrows and a lot of his hair were gone, and his clothing would have been aflame in moments if someone had not flung on him the contents of a pail of water that had been brought to douse the wall of one of the surrounding houses.
    The fire was officially declared an accident, but rumors—and even a couple of street ballads—hinted that Crawford had set it in revenge, and then prevented the Navy man from getting inside to rescue Caroline. Crawford thought the sailor himself might have started the rumors, for a couple of the onlookers at the fire had remarked acidly on his hasty solo escape.
    And this thing now was far, far worse. Of
course
people will take it for granted that I killed Julia, he thought. They won't listen to me. And already errors have begun to creep into the story—such as the doctor's statement that she died at around midnight. I
know
she was still alive at dawn. I remember drowsily making love to her while the curtains were just beginning to lighten; she was straddling me, sitting on top of me, and while I don't know if I ever did wake up fully, I know I didn't dream it.
    I can either stay, and be arrested, and almost certainly hang . . . or I can run, leave the country. Of course, if I run, everybody will conclude that I did kill her, but I don't think my voluntary submission to arrest and trial would make them think any differently.
    All I can do, he thought, is run.
    He felt better after deciding; at least now he had a clear goal, and something to think about besides Julia's intolerably sundered body.
    He stood up cautiously—and instantly there was a shout and the stunning
bam
of a gunshot, and a tree branch beside his head exploded in stinging splinters.
    And then Crawford was running, back through the lanes of the garden, toward the back wall. Another shot boomed behind him and his left hand was whiplashed upward, spraying blood across his eyes, but he leaped, caught the wall with his right hand, and contorted his body up and outward through empty air; a moment later he hit rocky dirt hard on his side, but as soon as he had stopped sliding he made himself roll back up onto his feet and hobble down a slope to a rutted, building-shaded alley.
    Only when he saw the man on the horse at the street end of the alley did he realize that he had picked up a fist-sized stone, and almost without volition his arm drew back to fling it with all his remaining strength.
    But, "Michael!" the man called softly in a familiar