Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  Selena stared at the little cross in her hand, which she had carried through time, across a vast distance.

  “Pierre Sorbante was beheaded today in Paris,” Oakley smiled.

  “When I have no more need of this cross,” Sorbante had told Selena, “I shall find a way to return it to you.”

  “Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette were guillotined as well,” said the colonel. “Maximilien Robespierre is in total control of the revolution…or will be until the beast he has created turns upon him. Which it will. Such is the tide of all revolutions, don’t you agree?”

  He took a few more paces toward her, and lifted the dagger. She felt the heat of his body; thick waves of his cologne spread out in the air.

  He lunged.

  His own great strength was his undoing. Had the movement of his arm been quick and deft, the dagger stroke would have been true. But he put too much power behind the stroke, losing his aim just enough for Selena to dart sideways and head for the door.

  Safe! she thought ecstatically, rushing from the room and flying down the stairs, two at a time. She would race through the lobby and run out into the street. It was still relatively early, perhaps nine o’clock; there would be people…

  A thuggish creature, obviously a man still loyal to the deposed colonel, stood sentry at the bottom of the stairs. His hand moved toward the pistol at his belt. Selena heard Oakley panting and lumbering along behind her. The way to the street was blocked.

  She vaulted over the railing and landed on her feet in a dim passageway that led to the rear of the hotel. Gathering her strength and nerve, she raced into the darkness.

  “Don’t fire!” she heard the colonel gasp. “I want her for myself.”

  Two choices. Either the exit door, which opened into a narrow, twisting back street, or a door that led to some sort of cellar. I’ll be trapped down there, she thought, reasoning with the perfervid instinct of a hunted animal.

  She stepped out into a chilly, fog-shrouded alley.

  Which way? Left or right? Where was the main street? It was impossible to tell.

  She turned left and made her way along the building. She heard the door open and close.

  “Selena, darling,” Oakley gasped, “do not try to get away. It will not work. You and I were meant for one another. We must complete the circle of which we have been a part since first we met.”

  Even as slowly and carefully as she was moving, Selena’s foot struck something, which overturned with a metallic clang and went rolling over the stones.

  “Ah!” exclaimed the colonel in satisfaction. “Fate gives you away…”

  They both moved forward then, almost as in an exquisite, extemporaneous dance. She would feel her way a few more paces into the darkness; he would follow. The process went on for a long time, it seemed, and finally, with her heart pounding, Selena thought she saw the glow of dull light in the fog up ahead. Her hands found the corner of a building, and she turned into a wider street. Light came from a window far ahead. Pray let it be a pub or some gathering place, she hoped, remembering how, in America, she’d found refuge from him in the Nest of Feathers tavern.

  She began to run.

  She fell.

  Before she had a chance to get to her feet, he was standing over her, gasping and wheezing, breathing into his handkerchief. The thick, coal-laden fog was afflicting his diseased lungs.

  He lunged. She rolled to one side. He fell down on the cobblestones beside her, but caught hold of her ankle. She tried to rise, but he pulled her back down. The dagger hissed, missed, and struck stone. She heard the snap of the blade. He was choking for breath. Then his great weight was upon her. She felt his monstrous hands, so capable of creating beauty, close around her throat. Cologne filled her nostrils. Her ears buzzed. She could see nothing but his dark shape above her. The light in her brain faded, red, dull red, flickering red and black. His breath came in great, intermittent snorts, like that of a dying bull…

  And then his fingers loosened. His body shuddered, shuddered again, and then he lay still and silent on top of her.

  Clay Oakley’s lungs had drawn their last agonized gulp of air. The fog, the lovely, gorgeous fog, had killed him.

  Great London itself had saved Selena.

  She found the main street and entered through the front door of the hotel. The thug was still on guard at the bottom of the stairs. He seemed alarmed to see her.

  “Your master is dead,” she told him calmly. “I know he escaped from the Tower. Lord Bloodwell is my friend. I don’t think I need tell you more.”

  The man swallowed once, twice, slipped through the rear exit and disappeared into the night.

  Royce returned to find her naked in bed, sipping a tumbler of brandy.

  “Strangest thing,” he said, undressing. “Lord Bloodwell never sent for me.”

  “Oh?” she said. She saw that he was smiling.

  “No,” he said, slipping into bed beside her, removing the glass from her hand and taking a long swallow of the strong liquor. “No, he didn’t, but he said he’d intended to do so in the morning. He was able to complete the canvass.”

  Selena scarcely dared to breathe. “And?” she managed. “And?”

  “Selena, you will always have me,” said Royce, taking her into his arms. He kissed her at the place where her shoulder met her neck, brushing away her long, golden hair. His fingers found the living pearl of all sensation.

  “Oh, Royce!” she cried. If this were all there was, still it would be enough.

  “You will always have me,” he whispered huskily, “and now you have Coldstream too.”

  29

  Home

  They set out on horseback the next morning, just the two of them traveling alone. It was a journey of three hundred miles, but Selena had never made a happier nor an easier trek. Sometimes they managed twenty miles a day, sometimes less than ten, but it didn’t matter because time no longer mattered. Each mile brought Selena nearer to the home she’d left so long ago, which she’d held close to her heart ever since, in good times and bad.

  North through Hertford they rode, and Bedford and Hunt, lodging at night to make love in inns along the way. Pressing on through Lincoln and East Riding, North Riding and Durham, Selena could not but remember the thrilling returning journeys of her youth, when the people of Coldstream would welcome her father with great bonfires burning on the hills. Ah, that had been wonderful, but this was better still, to return with Royce.

  And at last they were almost there, riding easily across the fields of Northumberland, hard by the sea. Darkness fell when they were perhaps ten miles from their goal.

  “Shall we stop for the night?” Royce asked.

  “No.”

  “That is what I thought you’d say.”

  There was a half-moon in the sky. Their way was well-lighted. Soon Selena recognized landmarks along the roadway, certain trees, the village of Wooler, and knew that the border was near.

  She began to cry when they crossed into Scotland, and in her tears was a trace of every emotion she’d ever experienced, for her great journey was almost over, yet those souls who had been part of her life throughout her years of exile were not there to share the joy of homecoming.

  Royce understood and said nothing. Selena was still weeping softly as they climbed the last rocky rise and saw it there in the distant hills: Coldstream, ancient, impregnable, eternal, and Scotland lying beyond, patient and mysterious and wise.

  “I have come back!” she cried aloud.

  And she was certain that, with her heart, she could hear her homeland whisper “Welcome” in reply.

  And then in the distance, near and far, there rose a strangely familiar sound. The horses nickered and danced, pressing their ears back against their sleek heads.

  Royce and Selena looked at each other.

  “What is it?” he asked, alert for danger or surprise.

  “I know,” said Selena, as her heart remembered.

  Torches flar
ed upon the hills then, and faint fires blossomed like flowers in the night sky. Then the dry wood caught, and flames—six, seven, eight, nine of them—leapt crackling and roaring toward the heavens.

  “Somehow they knew,” Royce said softly. “Somehow they know.”

  “The hearth knows its own,” replied Selena, through glorious tears. “Let us go.”

  She was home, but it was not until she rode beneath the great gate, with Anno Domini 1152 engraved upon the stone, that she really was at home. The courtyard was filled with people, their voices lifted in an incessant, soul-stirring roar of greeting and joy. Royce dismounted and helped Selena down from her horse. They stood there in the courtyard, holding each other. The people cheered and cheered. They could not stop cheering.

  “Everything is restored now, darling,” said Royce, kissing her. “The past is laid to rest, is it not?”

  She looked up into his eyes. “Except for one thing,” she said.

  “And what is that?”

  She hesitated. The matter seemed silly, especially at a time like this, but something in her woman’s heart wanted to set it to rest.

  “Were you truly…were you truly Marie Antoinette’s favorite?”

  The question caught him off guard, but he recovered, smiling. “Darling, as I told you once before, a lady wouldn’t ask such a question, and a gentleman wouldn’t answer it.”

  “I see.”

  “But,” he added, with a conspiratorial wink, “you’re not and I’m not, so the answer is no.”

  Selena laughed and lifted her arms toward the towering, torchlit walls of Coldstream.

  “Home,” she said, remembering the words of Jean Beaumain.

  It was the best word in the world.

  Next to love.

  More from Vanessa Royall

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