Elusive Flame

by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  Having forayed through the kitchen while the men were searching upstairs, Cerynise had come away with a spool of stout twine, a heavy iron kettle and a large bag of flour with which to weight it. It had met her mood to drape a sheet over the kettle to make it appear ghostly. The twine she had cut to a length longer than she was tall. One end she fastened to the handle of the pot and the other end to one of the spindles of the balustrade. After wrapping another length of twine around the kettle, or rather the belly of her spook, she had clasped the opposite end and then retreated as far as she could go back into the shadows beneath the stairs. There she had waited, much like a spider for a fly, until her victims ventured into her trap.

  This time it was Rudd who caught the brunt of Cerynise’s attack. Her contraption nearly lifted him off his feet when it slammed into him. It certainly served to spill him backward to the floor where the glass had been liberally distributed. There he lay as if frozen, staring upward in a stunned daze while the ghostly pendulum swung tauntingly to and fro above him.

  “Are you alive?” Alistair queried, seriously doubting the fact, for the lawyer was staring up the ceiling fixedly and really didn’t appear to be breathing. Perhaps all these years his companion had been suffering from some unknown malady that, at the moment of impact or at sight of the ghostly apparition, had stripped away his life. He thumped a fist rather harshly into the rounded chest, trying to provoke some response, and with a loud wheezing intake, Rudd sucked air into his lungs once again.

  “What hit me?” Rudd gasped, thankful he could breathe again.

  “A ghost,” Alistair retorted satirically. “Of Cerynise’s making.”

  Rudd swallowed and tried to move, then, gingerly feeling the back of his head, realized there was now a huge knot where his noggin had bounced on the marble floor. That was not all. He could feel something sharp piercing both his shoulder and backside. Rolling over, he allowed Alistair the honors of prying the pieces of shattered porcelain out of his flesh.

  “It was unwise of you to ever throw Cerynise out of your aunt’s house,” the solicitor reminisced morosely, as if he had just had an afterlife experience in the nether depths. “I don’t think she has ever forgiven us.”

  “I’ve got a lot more to forgive her for,” Alistair growled, peering into the shadows beneath the stairs. Holding his glass lamp aloft, well above his right shoulder, he crept forward cautiously, certain that he had seen some movement in the darkness beyond its glow. “Are you hiding back there, Cerynise?”

  The bronze bookend was like a bat flying out of hell. It crashed into the lamp, breaking the glass and spilling oil down the whole side of him. It quickly erupted in flames. Alistair shrieked in sudden anguish and terror as the fire rapidly fed into his clothing and began to sear his flesh. In a panic he whirled and raced past the stairs, frantically snatching at the burning bandages on his head. Rudd was just struggling to rise, but gasped in horror and ducked out of the way as the human firebrand leapt over him. In another moment the front door was jerked open, and Alistair went screaming into the torrential downpour beyond the porch. Rudd staggered to his feet and, holding one hand to the back of his head and the other against his bleeding rump, limped to the front door where, far beyond the porch, his partner-in-crime was presently getting thoroughly drenched.

  “I think we should leave before she kills us,” Rudd called out to the suffering man above the roar of the storm. “I’m not sure we should rile her any more than she is.”

  “I’ll rile her!” Alistair blared from the front lawn. “I’ll impale her on a pike and let her carcass rot in the sun!”

  “What sun?”

  Alistair sought to gnash his teeth at his cohort, but the pain evoked when he tried to draw his lips back made him immediately regret his effort. “Never mind, you dunderhead! Just help me get back into the house. I’m drowning out here.”

  “Well, at least you’re no longer burning,” Rudd reasoned mutedly. He hobbled down the front steps and solicitously served as a human crutch to the half-seared man. By the time the two got back inside, their clothes were soaked and pools of water collected around their sodden shoes and spread in ever-widening circles. Walking on the marble floor proved hazardous. They went slipping and sliding with arms flailing wildly in a concerted effort to balance themselves. Though Alistair’s wobbly legs threatened to collapse beneath him before he ever got there, Alistair reached the nearest bench and lowered his skinny rear onto the seat. Rudd clumsily skated over to the table where he had left his lamp and brought the light back to inspect the other’s burns. It was worse than he had first imagined, for the whole right side of Alistair’s face had been cooked. Raw flesh oozed beneath thickly curling, blackened crisps that, a few moments ago, might have been an outer layer of skin. Rudd seriously doubted that his partner would have to shave that particular side of his face ever again.

  Grimacing at the sight, Rudd drew a handkerchief from his coat pocket, squeezed the water out of it, and solicitously tried to wipe away the charred peelings, succeeding only in extracting a fierce yowl of pain.

  “My face is burnt, dammit!” Alistair railed in torment. “That’s what the little twit did to me, besides burning half my body!”

  “At least your ear is no longer bleeding,” the lawyer counseled, curling his lip in repugnance as he inspected the charred glob. When he looked at his companion in profile from the right angle, it was extremely difficult to determine if he was human.

  Alistair choked in outrage. “I can’t even feel it anymore with all the torment I’m in!”

  Rudd stepped back to survey the whole man and saw that, along Alistair’s right side, all that remained of his coat and shirt were blackened shreds adhering to his bony chest and arm, which were crisply burned. Most of the hair on his head and chest had been singed to the roots, and his eyebrows were completely gone. Just looking at him made the lawyer cringe.

  “Are you sure you want to continue our efforts to catch the girl?”

  “Go find something to dress my wounds!” Alistair muttered.

  “The captain may come back any moment now,” Rudd reasoned.

  Alistair snorted. “He’ll likely wait until the rain slackens.”

  “It doesn’t appear likely that that will happen any time soon. I think we should leave while we still can.”

  “No!” Alistair roared. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to kill that bitch, even if it’s with my dying breath.”

  “It may well be,” the lawyer responded ruefully. “We’ve clearly been outwitted by her.”

  “Never!”

  “I’ll go see what I can find to tend your burns,” Rudd offered submissively. Wary of his feet flying out from under him, he made his way with painstaking care down the corridor, leaving a watery trail behind him. Once he entered the kitchen, he lifted the lamp high to light the path around the table and squished his way carefully toward the pantry. It was a common practice for salves and such to be kept in a kitchen, where most burns occurred, and he expected that his search of the closet would prove successful. But first, he’d have to make sure the two men were still unconscious and wouldn’t attack him once he opened the door. He didn’t know if they could do any more damage to him than the girl had, but he wasn’t willing to give them a chance.

  He was just passing the dining room door when the rays cast from his lantern touched on something that made his nerves stand on end. With a startled gasp he glanced around, just in time to see Cerynise with an iron poker poised above her head. In the next instant the rod came swishing downward through the air. Rudd threw up an arm to protect himself, but too late. His cry of alarm dwindled to a mute groan as the poker struck his head. A fiery pain exploded in his brain, and he stumbled forward to his knees, still clasping the hurricane lamp in a desperate grip lest he, too, find himself set on fire by spilling oil. In a dazed stupor he grasped hold of the girl’s skirt. The rod was lifted once again and brought down, darkening his awareness to a pinpoint of light as
he toppled aside. Then that, too, was snuffed as a third blow was delivered.

  “Rudd!” Alistair called in a tone of panic from the front of the house.

  Almost calmly, Cerynise placed the poker beside the solicitor’s still form and picked up the hurricane lamp that had settled rattlingly to the floor. Moving through the dining room at a leisured pace, she watched the radiance reach out beyond her, flowing through the doorway into the central hall.

  Alistair heaved an audible sigh as he noticed the approaching light. “I thought something had happened to you. I heard you scream.” Silence continued unswervingly, and the scorched man struggled upward from the bench in intensifying alarm. “Rudd? Is that you, Rudd? Why don’t you answer me?”

  “I’m afraid he can’t, Alistair,” Cerynise replied, moving like a wraith into the hall.

  Alistair gasped and backed away. “What did you do to him?”

  She smiled stiffly as she passed the stairs and set the lantern aside on a table. “Put him out of his misery, I would presume.”

  “You mean…you…you killed him?”

  Though Cerynise couldn’t tell much from his blistered face, his tone had certainly sounded incredulous. “Perhaps.”

  “How could you…?” Alistair began, and then abruptly remembered what she had already done to them. Suddenly he was afraid, enough that the hairs on the back of his neck, at least the few that were left, stood on end. “Keep your distance, bitch! Stay where you are!”

  Ignoring his ultimatum, she glided ever-nearer. “Why, Alistair, what could I possibly do to you that you haven’t already threatened to do to me?”

  His eyes widened until she could see the whites, a sharp contrast indeed against his scorched skin. A warbling wail of fright burst forth from his singed lips. He wouldn’t put it past the wench to employ some of his own threats to do him in. “You’re a fiend!”

  Her poise amazed Cerynise. She had never dreamt that she could remain unruffled in the face of danger. She had always been afraid that she’d panic in a dangerous situation and be utterly useless to herself and everyone around her. Silently she thanked heaven for her aplomb.

  “Now really, Alistair, what right has a kettle to besmirch the pot and call it black?” The incongruous humor of her statement drew a chuckle from her as she peered into his blackened face. She slipped a hand into her pocket, taking hold of the butt of the pistol, and shrugged casually. “I shouldn’t make jests when you’re obviously in pain, should I, Alistair?” She shook her head sadly, and then, without pause, changed the subject. “So! Would you like to take Rudd’s advice now and give up the fight?”

  “You slut!” the thin man bellowed. “What more could you do to me that you haven’t done already?”

  “Put you out of your misery,” she offered.

  Jerking forth a pistol from the left side of his coat, he smirked lopsidedly with a measure of triumph. “My turn, bitch!”

  The hazel eyes reflected the light of the lantern as Cerynise flicked a glance toward his weapon. “Before you kill me, Alistair, would you mind telling me one thing? Why have you done this? Why did you journey all the way from England to create havoc in my life? Do you hate me so much?”

  “Why?” The man scoffed at her lack of insight. “For money, of course. What else?”

  “Money?” Cerynise’s brows gathered in confusion. “But Lydia left you everything. Wasn’t it enough?”

  His laughter was short-lived and chilling. But then, he had always seemed more demon than man to her.

  “You stupid, senseless twit!” he choked and then shuddered at the pain enveloping him. “Lydia left me nothing! She couldn’t see anyone but you after you came to live with her. You turned her affections against me. She wrote a new will, leaving you everything. She couldn’t even spare me a farthing.”

  His answer was almost more than Cerynise could comprehend. “But I saw the will,” she reasoned. “You showed it to me. It declared you as her sole heir.”

  “That was the old will, one which Rudd had drafted long before you became Lydia’s ward. She went behind our backs, she did, and made a new one on the sly. But I wasn’t cognizant of that fact, and I became desperate, you see. My creditors were harping at me day and night, threatening to imprison me. I held them off as long as possible, hoping Lydia would do me a favor and die, but the strain was too much, and I wanted to live.” He shrugged one shoulder lamely. “Her last night on earth…I visited her and put hemlock in that foul-tasting tonic she always sipped in the evening.”

  Cerynise gasped. “You mean you…she didn’t…?”

  “No, she didn’t die of natural causes,” Alistair finished for her with a one-sided sneer. “I was tired of having to argue and beg for every farthing she threw me, so I took matters into my own hands and”—he chortled crazily—“put the old hag out of her misery. I doubt that she even knew what I had done. Certainly that stupid doctor of hers didn’t.”

  “Oh, Alistair, how could you?” Cerynise moaned.

  “Actually, it was all very easy,” he replied smugly. “All I had to do was think how rich I would be once Lydia passed on. I thought everything would be wonderful then, until I found out what the old hag had done.”

  Cerynise’s mind reeled. No wonder he had been in such a hurry to get her out of Lydia’s house…at least until he realized there was a new will. “That’s why you came to fetch me from the Audacious.” She was just beginning to understand the reasoning behind his attempts to take her captive. “By that time, you had discovered the truth and had plans to kill me as soon as it became convenient.”

  Alistair tried to nod, but the agony that the movement caused made him tremble uncontrollably. Another moment passed before he could continue. “I wanted to kill you. It would have been nice and tidy before you married the captain. Without a legal heir to your name, all of Lydia’s wealth would have come to me.” He wheezed in pain. “When your husband waved those marriage papers in front of me, I thought all was lost. But I didn’t give up, not me. I came after you. We were intending to take you back to England, ensconce you in Lydia’s house and then, after assuming legal guardianship over you, render you feeble and incapable of communication with strong potions. Of course, we’d have forced you to sign a will which would have left me everything in the event of your death. Oh, we’d have allowed you to have visitors for a while, some of Lydia’s friends who knew you.…We’d have even appointed a nurse to care for you so no one would have suspected that we were feeding you slowacting poison. Then we’d have buried you.”

  “Don’t you think my husband would have come after me?”

  “Oh, we were willing to pay for his death, someone who’d have made it look like an accident before the bloody bastard set foot on English soil. People wouldn’t have grieved his passing overmuch.”

  “You planned it all,” Cerynise mused aloud. “Yet, except for Lydia’s death, none of it will ever come to pass now.”

  Alistair had already come to that conclusion himself, but he was not above smirking at the power he held over her now. “At least you’ll be dead.”

  “Did Rudd help you kill Lydia?” she queried, realizing there might have been a viable reason for her not trusting the solicitor.

  “He didn’t know anything about that. In fact, he only became an accessory after I killed another. As yet, he isn’t aware that I poisoned Lydia, but he had no choice but to help me when I offered him a third of the inheritance. You see, he needed the money as desperately as I did. He’s quite partial to his brandy and other things that cost money. Or perhaps he was once. Do you really think you killed him?”

  “He won’t be helping you, if that’s what you mean.” Cerynise tilted her head curiously. “I heard you say that you had stabbed Wilson because he was trying to kill me. Was that really the reason?”

  “A necessity, Rudd said,” Alistair admitted. “The tar was being paid to kill you to seek revenge on your husband.”

  “You say he was being paid, yet Wilson might hav
e thought that he had enough cause to retaliate on his own…without inducement.”

  Alistair grimaced again at the pain he was suffering and staggered slightly before he could manage to bring himself in line. “It’s not unheard of for a man to kill for revenge, but in this case, he not only had an accomplice, but there was someone else who had funds enough to guarantee their enthusiasm for such a chore.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “The man I heard advising Wilson to lay low for a time was Frank Lester. It seemed they both came out here one night to do you in. Frank was boasting about throwing you down the stairs at your husband.”

  “But why would they have been so careless to talk where you could overhear?”

  Alistair winced, wishing at the moment that he had a whole vat of brandy to drink. It would probably be the only thing that would ease his discomfort. “We had a room right next door to them at an inn, a shabby one at best, but the only one we could afford. We heard voices coming through a vent in the chimney in our room and paused to listen. Here I was, newly arrived in Charleston, and the first person I heard those two discussing was you. I thought for a moment my imagination was getting out of hand.”

  “I’ve heard it said that Wilson was wary of strangers since there were so many people looking for him. How did you manage to get close enough to knife him?”

  His blistered lips moved minutely, trying to form a sneer. “He had seen us getting off a ship from England, and when we asked him about an inn, he told us where he was staying. Of course, he was cautious of others seeing his face, so he kept to the shadows most of the time or hid out in his room. After we overheard him talking to Frank Lester, we approached him on the dock in the guise of needing more directions. By that time, he thought nothing of talking to us, since he knew we were Englishmen and had no dealings with the local inhabitants.”

  “Are you planning on murdering me by some other devious means or do you intend to kill me with that?” Cerynise asked, indicating the pistol he was holding.