Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  Yet nothing like that happened.

  The dinner proceeded from lobster bisque to roast peacock to turtle steak and tubers, from champagne to white wine to red, and a vastly pleasant, eminently civilized air filled the candlelit dining chamber. Rafael was somewhat taciturn by nature, but Louis possessed a quick, if somewhat bluff, sense of humor, and regaled them with tales of his boyhood in Brittany. He’d been the youngest of thirteen living children—eight others had died at birth or shortly thereafter—and it had been the dream of his parents to have at least one of their offspring enter the religious life.

  “I protested,” he related, “but in the end they shipped me off to the local monastery. I was ten years old, but big for my age, and I had heard a great many stories from my older brothers. I decided the only way to escape my fate was to seem unworthy of it, so I sought out my confessor. ‘I have committed sins of the flesh,’ I said. He was somewhat alarmed, given my years, and inquired about what these sins had been. Very penitently, I related everything my brothers had ever told me! I was expelled that very afternoon.”

  “Ah, home!” sighed Martha Marguerite, after the laughter had subsided. “What I would not give to return!”

  It was a feeling that Selena could understand.

  “Why don’t you go back?” she asked, thinking there might be some dangerous or complicated reason that prevented such a trip.

  “I shall, when Jean is ready to take me there. You did promise, didn’t you, Jean?”

  Beaumain ducked his head and admitted that he had.

  “But,” he said to Selena, “I don’t want to return myself until I settle with Chamorro and bring my trophies to throw upon the gates of the King’s palace. I want his majesty to regard well how an honest peasant deals with the savage cruelties of the rich and titled.”

  “From what I have heard,” offered Rafael, “his majesty may soon learn precisely that from many quarters. France is becoming, more and more, a revolutionary tinderbox that will make the American war seem but an afternoon’s promenade.”

  “Come, come,” said Martha soothingly, tolerantly, twirling a goblet of red wine in her long fingers. “The great majority of the people love their king. I realize that they do not much revere his queen, the Austrian, Marie Antoinette, but it is the stability of the upper order that has kept our beloved France ascendant for hundreds of years—”

  “It is the nobility which is tearing France apart,” said Rafael. “The nobility and the clergy. Privilege, pfffftt!” he declared. “I tell you, the people will not bear it much longer.”

  “Ah, but if you had had the life I enjoyed,” Martha went on as if she hadn’t even heard him, as if his opinions—the sincerity of which Selena could not doubt—did not matter, “you would think differently. Gracious, I see it as if it were before my very eyes, that great house of my father’s on the right bank of the Seine. It was five stories high with dormers beneath the steep, slanting slate roof. How I loved to go up there as a child and look out over Paris, and see the boats on the river, and Notre Dame! There is no sight like it in all the world. Summers we spent at our château in Côte d’Or.”

  “Does your family still own these homes?” Selena inquired.

  “Of course, my dear. And that is why I want Jean to take me back. If my dear husband Hugo had not died while building Hidden Harbor, I expect I would be in France right now.”

  “You had better return soon then and see to your property,” commented Rafael. “When the tornado of revolution touches down on French soil, I suspect many nobles will be quickly relieved of such properties.”

  “Never,” maintained Martha Marguerite, with a bit less assurance than she’d shown thus far. “But all the more reason for Jean to take me back soon. Jean?”

  Beaumain smiled noncommittally.

  Selena glanced at him, then looked past him toward Yolanda, who had said nothing whatever during the course of the meal. She held her tongue now as well, but Selena had noted that whenever Martha spoke of going back to France with Jean, the Haitian beauty showed a combination of anger and distress. Her large eyes widened in moody alarm; her dusky breast swelled with great, anxious inhalations.

  Something else too: At every reference, no matter how casual, to Jean’s putative departure, the candles on the table seemed to blaze more brightly.

  Testing a theory that was taking shape in her mind, Selena said: “Jean, I think it would be sweet of you to take Martha back to her home.”

  Yolanda widened her eyes, scowling.

  Again, the candlelight leapt.

  It was as if Yolanda’s emotions were sent forth from her body into the very air with the power to touch and alter the state of surrounding objects.

  “My own problem,” she said hastily, changing the subject, “is to find my friend, Royce Campbell. I hope I shall be able to do that soon.”

  Jean had apparently resigned himself to the fact that Selena’s love was too great to breach, let alone break. A discussion followed, introduced by Jean, which led to the decision that Rafael would depart in a few days for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, there to make inquiries regarding Campbell and also to determine when the next ship would set sail for America.

  “You’ll be safe there now, Selena,” Jean said. “Oakley and his men will be gone, having lost the war.”

  “Oakley!” said Selena in disgust.

  “Who’s that?” Yolanda wanted to know.

  Selena told her, describing the lieutenant’s great bald head, hairless face, flabby fold of nose. She also added the information that, incongruously, the man was a gifted artist, able to paint with subtle, spectacular effect.

  Yolanda listened, saying nothing, taking it all in.

  “You speak of him as if the force of his hatred is with you still,” commented Martha, her odd ring glittering.

  “I’m afraid it is. He is the kind who does not forget. I picture him pursuing me like a hound of hell. ‘We have a bond, Selena,’ he said. And he believed it.”

  She shuddered. Yolanda’s eyes widened, and the candles flared. As the beauty lifted her hand to brush back a tendril of raven-black hair, Selena saw, in the palm of her left hand, a tiny five-pointed star, like a tattoo.

  Another symbol, she thought. But signifying what?

  Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the star was only a kind of beauty mark, a graphic residue of Yolanda’s superstitious, dream-haunted homeland.

  After dessert, a rum-flavored banana puree spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, the dinner ended. Jean, rising from the table, said that musicians were waiting to play for them on the veranda. But Selena demurred. She felt very tired suddenly, a languor born of many things, not the least of which was the uninterpretable tension between Yolanda and Martha Marguerite.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “I think I’ll retire for the night.”

  The two women, along with Rafael and Louis, rose as Jean helped her up from her chair. The men seemed disappointed that she would not be joining them, and the women pretended to be.

  “Come on, Selena,” urged Jean, as he walked her toward the rose room, “change your mind. I find pleasure in your company.”

  “I’d like to listen to the music, truly. But I’m so tired…”

  They paused outside her door. “Let me come inside for just a little,” he said huskily, slipping an arm around her waist and cupping her bare breast in his hand.

  “Jean—”

  “Please. Just for a little while. You don’t know how much I desire you.”

  Yes, she did. She could feel, through his breeches and her gown, exactly how much, and it was quite a lot. Moreover, his expert attention to her breast was having an effect. His lips were just above her own, and she very much wanted to kiss him.

  “That time on board your ship—” she began.

  “I’m thinking of the time on board my ship, and how you felt.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened. I thought we’d agreed—”

  “I don’t recall
agreeing to anything.” He smiled.

  “But what about Yolanda? Think how badly she’ll feel if she finds out.”

  “Selena, she is merely my mistress. I’m in love with you.”

  “But you said you’d send Rafael to Port-au-Prince to help me go back to America.”

  “Yes. And in the meantime, you’re here. Just give me that time to love you, Selena. I want to make you feel what I felt with you. If I can. You may be surprised to find that you will love me too.”

  He was rubbing his thumb lightly over her taut nipple, back and forth. Maddeningly, sensations flashed down through her body to where she felt his hard strength pressed against her.

  “Oh, Jean, I just can’t,” she said, in genuine distress.

  At that moment, she was all too ready to make love, and if it had not been for the image of Royce, she’d have pulled Jean inside her room, stripped in a flash, lain him down, opened herself to take him, to ride until there was no more.

  “If I try very hard, I can pretend to myself that I was not totally responsible for the time on your ship. But if I give myself again, I’ll have to live with the knowledge that I’ve been deliberately unfaithful to Royce. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “Sure I can.” He grinned, kissing her neck and running his hand along the sweet curves of her body. “Sure I can, but it makes no difference to me.”

  He was jesting now and Selena realized—with just a faint, fading disappointment—that he had decided not to force the issue. Not then anyway.

  “Good night, my love,” he said lightly, kissing her—too briefly, it seemed—on the mouth, and leaving the touch of a final caress on her bare breast. “I hope you dream of me.”

  “I probably will,” she murmured to herself, entering the rose room and closing the door. There were few physical sensations in the world worse than to be completely ready for love, but not to be able to do anything about it! The trouble was that, even though one’s mind and body recalled the precise shape of a man, memory could never hope to approximate, let alone experience, the actual feel of him deep down.

  Deciding against another bath, Selena undressed, hung up the shameless wisp of cloth she’d been maneuvered into wearing by Martha, and slipped naked between the satin sheets of the voluptuous bed. Warm climates had their advantages. In cold Scotland, a person would invite the grippe or worse without flannels and stockings and a nightcap. Unless, of course, one could find an agreeable partner.

  Gradually, attenuated desire sank away until the next time it should be evoked, and Selena drifted toward sleep. The moon had risen, soft and majestic in a star-riven sky, filling the bedroom with a lambent, rose-tinted haze. Selena watched the way in which the color changed as the moon eased across the sky, saw through veiled eyes the shadows of the rubber plant on the floor.

  And saw Lieutenant Clay Oakley standing beside the rubber plant!

  She sat bolt upright, incapable of crying out, and clutched a sheet to her bosom.

  It was Oakley all right, in all his leering, muscular malevolence, and he advanced toward her with heavy, implacable tread. There was something unusual in his gait, jerky and uncoordinated, as if he were a dead man called from the grave by strange powers to attack Selena in the night.

  “What do you want?” she managed, her voice barely a whisper.

  He said nothing, just stared at her out of his enormous, icy eyes. She saw in his right hand something slim and long like a stiletto, but as he approached her bed and loomed over her to strike, she saw that he held not a weapon at all but…

  An artist’s paint brush!

  Then he melted away, disappeared instantly, utterly, into the rose-colored air.

  And Selena was alone.

  My God! she thought, getting out of bed, feeling the cool floor beneath her feet. “What on earth—?”

  Her mind was whirling, her heart pumped crazily, but she forced herself to be calm and tried to think.

  Oakley had been there, true to life in every detail. But why the paint brush?

  After several minutes of tumultuous consideration, Selena thought she had the answer. At the dinner table, she had vividly described Oakley for the benefit of the others. And she had added the information that the peculiar lieutenant was a painter. Thus, someone present at the table, in order to terrify Selena, had projected the image of Oakley into this very room! The paint brush was an incongruous error, either of perception or projection, but there was no denying the vast, eerie power of…

  Who?

  Yolanda, with her brooding aura and barely hidden animosities?

  Or the apparently serene Martha Marguerite, with her singular ring?

  Or someone else—one of the silent, scurrying servants perhaps—who had an unknown reason to harass the new guest?

  Selena did not know.

  Agitated, unsettled, she pulled on a robe and began to pace about the room. Should she go and tell Jean Beaumain what had happened? He would be on the veranda with the others. She could hear the sounds of violins in the distance, a song half-forgotten, melancholy, inexpressibly heartbreaking, conveying the sadness of someone who had already been dead for centuries.

  No, she decided. I don’t know what is happening, or why. I won’t make a fool of myself. I’ll bide my time.

  Continuing to pace, she wandered over toward the rubber plant and felt, beneath her bare feet, the grit of dirt spilled on the floor. What? she thought. I cleaned very thoroughly when I hid the pouch…

  Unless—!

  Her premonition proved to be correct.

  The soil in the pot, around the roots of the rubber plant, had been disturbed.

  The pouch of jewels was gone.

  6

  Eye of the Beholder

  Rafael journeyed to Port-au-Prince and returned a week later, the bearer of much news, most of it disquieting. He sat with Jean and Selena on the veranda in late afternoon, the three of them sipping tea and sherry.

  “First of all,” he said, “Lieutenant Clay Oakley and a number of his men are in Haiti now. I saw him myself in the barroom of the Black Prince Hotel, a most disagreeable-looking man, if I do say so. And, Selena, he is looking for you.”

  “I knew it,” she murmured.

  “The British defeat in America seems to have stung him badly. There is much talk of recoupment and revenge. He is showing, to whomever will pay him heed, a handbill with your likeness on it.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Selena said.

  “Very curious. He carries with him at all times a scented handkerchief and breathes through it constantly.”

  “It seems to be his one weakness,” she explained. “It is as if there is not enough air in the world for him.”

  She did not understand how that weakness could do her much good, unless it were to lead to premature demise.

  “Also,” continued Rafael, “there is news that Royce Campbell was sighted aboard his ship near Trinidad—”

  “Yes?” she exclaimed excitedly, as Jean tried to veil a frown.

  “—and he is looking for you as well.”

  “Oakley is much closer,” Selena said. “Are any ships due out for America or Trinidad?”

  “There are always some. But suppose you went to Trinidad? Royce might already be gone.”

  “Eventually, he might come here,” she said hopefully.

  Jean Beaumain took a swallow of the sweet sherry and set down his glass. “Selena,” he said, having made a decision, “it would be too risky for you to appear in Haiti just now, for any purpose. I will tell you what I shall do: When next we learn of Royce Campbell’s whereabouts—and I will make sure we are kept informed—I myself will take you to him aboard the Liberté.”

  “Would you do that?” she cried, delighted.

  He was surprised, but not at all displeased, when Selena bestowed an affectionate kiss upon his lips.

  But that decision, so readily made and received with such joyous acquiescence, proved to be dependent upon the future convergence of disparat
e and unpredictable people and events. News of Royce would have to reach Haiti and St. Crique. It could not be old information; Royce would have to be within reasonable sailing distance. And Jean Beaumain would be the one to make the decision about when to weigh anchor.

  He held all the cards so to speak. Selena was in his power, as well as indebted to him.

  Fall turned to winter on St. Crique Isle, but it hardly seemed to matter. The days were warm, as were the nights. The skies were peerlessly blue, and out on the ocean the mighty Gulf Stream moved in its mysterious current. Time itself seemed to slow down as week melted into week, and an odd, uncharacteristic lethargy settled over Selena. Always so vibrant, she was puzzled by it, and finally thought that she recognized the cause of her state: she had begun to accept the apparent powerlessness of her situation here. Instead of instigating a search for her missing treasure, she had settled in to wait for some hint or clue about who had stolen it. Instead of actively pursuing relationships with Yolanda or Martha Marguerite—relationships which might at least have provided the clues she needed—she had kept her distance from the two woman, a distance with which they seemed quite comfortable, thank you. Martha continued to coddle and fuss over Jean as if he were her son, and to chatter about Paris. Yolanda disappeared with Jean for great parts of the day, and always for the night, to gift him with sensual delights that Selena could all too readily envision.

  Selena was in the library when she decided that she’d had enough of waiting, of leisure, of debilitating inactivity.

  “I am going to act!” she declared aloud, to the sudden, startled carping of a couple of caged mynah birds. “I am finished with laying about!”

  In truth, what roused her to this pronouncement was not completely her own impulse. A piece of news in a British paper, which Rafael had brought back from another of his gloomy forays to Port-au-Prince, caught her eye and quickened her blood.

  LORD BLOODWELL APPOINTED TO HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE

  Lord Sean Bloodwell, by order of His Majesty George III, has been appointed to the diplomatic corps. He will serve as Deputy Minister for Anglo-French affairs, a most crucial area at this time due to the turbulent winds of revolutionary havoc stirring the Continent.