Tempted By Fire

by Thea Devine

  "Oh, my lady ... so dear she was; I came to this place myself when I was but a girl, you know. She was so good, so caring. So strong in her way. Like silk, you know. So fragile but it holds up under any circumstance. Always smiling the kind smile, always interested in things, in people. Mr. Dunstan loved her, I think."

  "What?"

  "Oh yes, my lady. Part of the reason Mr. Dunstan stayed so much away. He loved Mr. Henry but my lady —oh, I think she was his queen. And maybe he thought the fault of her barrenness lay with his brother and that he could have carried on the line. It is just a feeling I had, my lady . . . nothing personal. I thought you would like to know the whole, and who to tell you but me?"

  "Yes," Jainee murmured, "the family retainers always know the secrets, do they not, Mrs. Blue?"

  "I want to see Mr. Nicholas happy before I die, my lady. And children surrounding him and making this house whole again."

  "Yes," Jainee whispered, seeing a vista of the lineage of Nicholas Carradine carried on by her, perpetuated by him.

  "The Lady Eliza—she would have lived for this day did she but know it was coming."

  Jainee looked up at her portrait, at the sad wise eyes and the faint knowing smile that played over her firm lips. Like silk , . . warp and weft and tightly woven. Loved by two brothers; had he been a traitor then? Had he already gone to France and successfully courted Therese Beaumont and made the child who was herself? Had her rejection turned him into a traitor of everything he had ever known?

  She breathed deeply, dismayed by the wealth of secrets, the motivations and family intentions that no one ever knew. Questions cracked in her mind like little electrical bolts. Had Lady Eliza loved him and chosen Lord Henry?

  424

  Sad wise eyes—who did you love? Who did you want?

  How different, how flamboyant and gaudy Therese must have seemed next to the memory of her. Had he deliberately sought that difference? Had he ever even cared?

  She felt a chill, thinking about it.

  What if all of this impacted everything today?

  ******************

  She sliced her finger with a knife as she cut an orange. She moved while Marie was altering a dress, and Marie stabbed her with a pin.

  The candles by the window caught the drapes on fire and the whole.room could have burned down, except that she awakened and had the quickness of mind to beat them out with the covers from her bed.

  "I do not like the country," Marie said once, twice. "It is too quiet. Nothing happens. There is so little to do."

  But everything was happening; her clumsiness made her feel stupid. Her father's story was reeling in her mind.

  She went for a walk to escape—not a long walk, she wasn't sure by that time she could trust herself not to have some kind of incident; a short walk, one that took her around the house and out toward the back gravel drive which led to the stables and the outhouses. Mr. Finley would be there, should she need aid or succor. There could be no trouble, no reason not to go.

  She visited the stables and rubbed the nose of the old mare who had toppled her from the cart, all at Mr. Finley's insistence, and because she did not wish to offend him or remain so scared.

  Attack the problem —attack it. Action was the key point; never let the enemy see you down.

  The mare nickered and took a piece of carrot from her hand. She stopped trembling and perceived the sweetness in the old horse's eyes.

  " 'Twas an accident plain and simple," Mr. Finley said. "This old lady would never hurt a fly."

  She walked out of there toward a grove of trees that led to the little pond, her heart pounding furiously. The mare was as gentle

  425

  as a baby and yet for some reason, she had gotten spooked and toppled the cart.

  . . . Her father might have been in love with Lady Eliza . . . he had come to Southam Manor mysteriously some eight years before after having avoided visits for so long . . .

  There was nothing to connect those two things together, nothing.

  ... He had been returning from somewhere close to the Manor. He had just been in France— she knew it, she knew it . . . how could it not be? He never would have taken the boy back to London. That would have been sheer folly for a man who was a confirmed bachelor and held in esteem by his peers ... to appear with a baby in his arms? To claim it was his own by some serving wench somewhere — how could he explain that when in higher circles it was well known he was on diplomatic mission to France?

  It had to have been —he had been there on a legitimate mission and chosen Therese, beautiful Therese, to be his light of love. She had gotten pregnant, maybe he had consented to marry her, maybe not —which would surely explain why she had never used his name —and sometime beyond that, she had caught the eye of the emperor because of her friendship with Caroline Murat.

  And when the baby was born a boy, he returned. Why had he returned then? Why take the baby if he were returning to England?

  Her mind teemed with stories, with possibilities; her heart ached for her poor mother. Her concentration was focused solely on understanding all the pieces and parts of the puzzle in her hands.

  She wasn't looking, and so it was the same explanation as it always was: she just wasn't paying attention, and when the shot rang out, she was caught squarely on the shoulder and she fell, heavily, like a sack of flour, into the grass, screaming.

  ******************

  "You was careless, my Lady, and that's all there is to it." This

  426

  from Mr. Coolidge, the gameskeeper, who had been hunting rabbits or quail or something—she couldn't keep it quite straight in the heat of the pain in her shoulder hours later, after the doctor had come and gone and everyone was trying to understand how it could have happened.

  "Always have to be looking in the grass on a spring afternoon, my lady. Always. I'm surprised Mr. Nicholas hasn't told you. And if I saw something move, it ain't my fault if it was you," he said firmly, "though I am sorry as can be, my lady."

  She dismissed him, and chased out Mrs. Blue and her gallons of broth and warm cloths with which she intended to bathe her forehead, her hands, her neck. Marie hovered, her hands fluttering helplessly.

  "I have to think," Jainee said with some spirit, but she felt so weak, so disheartened.

  Nicholas had just gone off and left her, after that keening swelling night of love, and all this had happened.

  She didn't have a story to tell him that wouldn't somehow destroy that little knot of tentative trust.

  She thought there were no shadows at Southam Manor. Now she felt them all around, and they were reaching for her, sweeping over the evidence with a tide of accidents which could solely be laid at her door.

  She knew how it looked, she could hear how it sounded, and a terrible fear took hold of her; she had nothing but her ultimate secret between her and Dunstan's threats.

  ******************

  London was empty without her.

  It took him a week —less—to understand that the moment he had brought her back home with him, he had added an unexpected symmetry to his life. And it was something that went beyond the games and the words.

  It was her presence, her drive, her guile.

  The house was empty without her.

  He went to quiet dinner parties, the theater, to White's. No

  427

  one dared outrightly question him. He dutifully lost money with good grace and had meaningless conversations he could not remember.

  Dunstan was nowhere in sight; Annesley avoided him. And Charlotte Emerlin had set her sights on a new target: Jeremy Waynflete.

  Edythe Winslowe was more in evidence than ever, in the wrong places, but now she had her hooks firmly into Lord Ottershaw, who had never been able to stand his wife's indecision, and liked a woman with more stuffing who understood the niceties of obligation as long as he supplied her with the niceties.

  Nothing had changed—and everything.

  The Chro
nicle's gossip column said what everyone was thinking:

  What hotly pursued lord has returned to town sans the baggage with which he left? Good news for the ladies, particularly one whom, we hear, is not quite the lady she seems—but perhaps she has found ways to interest another party? Lady Badlington, at least, can breathe a sigh of relief, and welcome his lordship's custom with open arms.

  So they were talking about Charlotte and Jeremy, he thought, throwing the paper onto the floor. And they never stopped talking about him.

  It didn't matter. It seemed a world away from his ineffable discovery at the inn that he was finally ready to go home and hold one certain woman in his arms.

  ******************

  At the most now, she took a chair and sat out on the parapet of the steps to the front door of the house.

  It was a good place to sit: it was sunny and warm and gave a good prospect over the drive and the bower of trees just beyond that led to it.

  Here, she was hiding in plain sight so that her mystery nemesis

  428

  could not get her. Here she was so obviously visible that should something occur, it must be seen too.

  And here, she could think and fit the story together in some way that made sense as she had been trying to do ever since Mrs. Blue had told her of Nicholas' childhood and Dunstan's inconstancy;

  But why the boy? It was the only point that didn't fit.

  The boy, she thought about the boy—the baby he was when her father so precipitously and charmingly took him from her arms and walked away to England with him. In aught one? Two? Easy to do. Peace at hand between France and her nemesis. Visits back and forth. She could not remember that year without feeling Therese's desperate grief at the loss of the baby and the truth of the father who never was. A devious one, Therese had called him, her eyes hard and far away. An aristocrat . . .

  Born into it, in fact, and a second son, and the consequences of being one were severe. Passed over on every account. Usurped by a ruffian who fell down a chimney just when he might have thought it was too late for his brother to conceive an heir.

  And loved his brother's wife. Pursued her, perhaps. Joined the ranks of the foreign office after she rejected him so that he did not have to stay in England, perhaps?

  Sent to France—and then, and then Therese: lovely, laughing, lighthearted Therese, who was always willing to strike a bargain with the man she loved.

  And then the boy.

  He had been gone a long time by then.

  She tried to remember. No, he had not been around by then for perhaps a year, maybe two. They had gone to live at court then, she did remember that, probably as a result of the emperor's uncommon interest in the lady who laughed so much, and flirted and thought a lot of herself, and could not, initially, by his importuning, be breached.

  She had stayed with Murat while her mother sashayed around court and played with the emperor's sensibilities and Josephine fumed. Oh yes, Murat had been gleeful at the thought of Josephine's anger at discovering this new petticoat which had at-

  429

  tracted the emperor's interest.

  It had lasted, what? A week? A month? Had Therese lived there or with Murat then? She couldn't remember. All she knew was at one point, the excitement of being a part of court abruptly ended.

  They were given the neat little house in which she grew up, and nine months later, Therese gave birth to a son.

  Yes, that all was fitting. He had gone, her mother had won the emperor's heart for perhaps five minutes or five months, and the end result was the child.

  And months later, Dunstan reappeared, charmed his child and took the boy.

  The emperor's blood. . .

  Who had said—deVerville had said over the body of her mother while the house lay in smoking ruins . . .

  Why the boy?

  "Horseman is coming, madame," Exeter said at her ear.

  Her heart leapt: Nicholas had returned!

  She posted herself at the stairwell ledge, her hand shading her eyes and looking out toward the tunnel of trees.

  A solitary horseman emerged from the shadows in a gallop and rounded the gravel drive like a man in urgent haste to return to a loved one.

  He drew up, the horse reared and she gripped the stone ledge. Dunstan!

  "Well, my dear—I had heard that Nicholas had imprisoned you at Southam Manor, and so I decided to come and keep you company. Are you not delighted to see me? Call the groom — I'm here to stay."

  ******************

  "This is a dull evening," Lady Waynflete said mournfully as she looked at her cards, assessed the likelihood of her taking any tricks—which was nil—and set them down disgustedly. "I haven't seen Dunstan in a fortnight; he is probably chasing after some fancy piece again, and my patience will be strained to the limit once more."

  430

  "You have no reason to believe . . ." Lady Jane Griswold said gently.

  Lady Waynflete sighed. "No, but I have ever hoped he would one day realize . . ." She stopped short as Gertrude Emerlin returned to their table.

  "So lovely: Charlotte and Jeremy together in the parlor. They look so well together."

  Lady Waynflete said, "I had rather hoped . . ." and broke off as Lady Jane signalled to her.

  But Gertrude Emerlin had no scruples about asking the questions that everyone wished to know the answers to. "So where has that disgusting Nicholas Carradine gone to these days?"

  "Why, he is in town," Lady Jane said, gathering up the cards. "And I believe Lady Southam is enjoying the spring at the Manor."

  "Horrible how he jilted my poor girl and flaunted that creature in her face when Charlotte wanted to make amends. It would serve him right if Jeremy just swept her out from under his nose," Gertrude said righteously, taking the deal and flipping the cards to each of the women with the expertise of a born gamester.

  "And why Nicholas has come back to town I will never know," Lady Waynflete said. "Just the other day, Dunstan was asking about—" She stopped again. And there it was, that niggling little feeling of unease she always had when Dunstan had been attentive and then suddenly disappeared.

  He had asked about Nicholas. He had asked if Nicholas were to come back to town. She had said . . . she had said —oh, a month at least he was due to stay. One enormous month when that creature would be alone in the country with no company in sight but the servants; wouldn't she welcome a familiar face, a face that was kin, a face that had fawned all over her while she had been under Lady Waynflete's roof.

  Her cards fell from her hand and she pushed her chair away from the table. "I must leave you, my dear," she said to Lady Jane. And to Gertrude: "You will excuse me."

  She rushed out into the parlor where the guests at this select

  431

  dinner were playing games and dancing to the music someone was playing on the harpsichord.

  Jeremy was nowhere in sight; Lady Waynflete gave a cursory search among the guests, and with her mother's eye, noticed that Charlotte was missing too.

  It didn't matter. She would send word to Jeremy. If he knew her plan, he would try to stop her anyway. He would never allow her to belittle herself by chasing Dunstan Carradine all the way to Berwickshire and Southam Manor.

  ******************

  "Don't even tote up the losses," Dunstan had advised him those many years ago when he had recruited him for the task of rooting out a traitor. "It is nothing compared to how much he has drained from the treasury of England by goading Prinny to excess. One of four, one of five, we don't know, we can't tell. We need someone who can play deep and impress them with his cold-bloodedness.

  "And we can't do it fast. We have to insinuate you into the set where money is king and the prince is a loser. I thought it all out, and although your spotless reputation is a hindrance, it still may work to our advantage. Tell me what you think."

  But he had recorded the losses every time, and he knew to a farthing how deep he had cut into his fortune.
<
br />   The stiffer price was having to use Charlotte Emerlin as a pawn in the game, despite the fact she was thoroughly dislikeable and just as virginal and precious as she could be. That had changed, of course, although had she done during the months of their betrothal, it would not have made a difference.

  The plan was the plan, to be adhered to with no deviation whatsoever.

  He was to offer for Charlotte and then jilt her after regaling her with stories of his supposed exploits that were not fit for unsullied ears.

  It had worked. He was the aggrieved lover who had been spurned; she cried buckets of tears and her mother hauled her off to their country estate for lessons, obviously, on how to

  432

  please a man and the ultimate irony of her cavorting with Dun-stan tn the most licentious way possible and then taking up after Jeremy in a match which was beginning to look more and more likely every day.

  And he had played his part well: he had set a little bet here and there everyday, just to add interest to things, just to forget. And the bets got bigger, the subject matter wagered upon more outrageous.

  Everyone wagged their heads and their tongues: he was totally gone over Charlotte Emerlin. Had never been the same since she cried off. A man had to drown his disappointments somehow. Lady luck was a better wife than a woman. Lady luck consoled you, smiled on you, rewarded you and every once in a while reminded you that you were alive when she kicked you when you were down.

  And the more money he played, the higher the interest of the feckless four who surrounded the Prince. The wager at White's was the culmination, and his first step into the secret room of the inner circle.

  But all that had changed.

  Jainee ... he breathed her name, her real name, her euphonious name, the essence, the name who had surrendered to him unconditionally without contesting her supremacy in a cluttered little inn halfway to home and had made him whole again.

  Jainee . . .

  He wondered why, when his mind and heart were so full of her, he was maundering around London, keeping engagements that didn't matter, fighting a battle for Dunstan that had no foreseeable termination, when he could be down in Southam Manor learning about Jainee.