The Firebrand

by Susan Wiggs

  A case of wishful thinking, he concluded sourly, giving the knob one last twist.

  This time, the latch yielded to his pressure and the door opened. Lucy stood there, mere inches away, snatching her hand from the doorknob as if it had burned her. She looked as startled and defenseless as a doomed rabbit caught in a steel trap.

  “Forgive me,” he said, rattled but intrigued. She must have been trying the door, too. “I didn’t expect to find you standing so close.”

  “You might have knocked.”

  “But I didn’t.” He glanced pointedly at her.

  “Oh.” She was more flustered than he’d ever seen her, and he found this curiously appealing.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean—”

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  She regarded him as though he’d spoken in a foreign tongue.

  “Brandy or port?” he said. “I have some in my room.”

  She nodded once and slipped silently past him. He caught the whisper of a light soapy fragrance as she walked by. She wore the same nightgown she’d had on her first night in the house, only now it was covered with a modest robe.

  A pity. In the sheer, revealing nightgown, she’d looked like a goddess. Now, with the robe buttoned to her chin, she merely looked uncomfortable.

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure where to begin,” she said, the words bursting from her in a nervous rush. “I have a few things to ask—”

  “To drink,” he interrupted, growing amused. “What would you like to drink, port or brandy?”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders sagged. “Brandy, please.”

  He poured a little from a crystal decanter into a snifter. The only light in the room came from a sconce by the bed; it was too warm for a fire. The diffuse glow fell like a veil over her, flickering in the folds of her gown as she paced over to the window and cupped her hands around her eyes to see out. “They’re still letting off fireworks.”

  “As you pointed out this morning,” he said, handing her a glass of brandy, “we only have one Centennial.” He touched his glass to hers. “Cheers. Sit down,” he said.

  With surprising obedience, she not only sampled the brandy, but closed her eyes as she swallowed, and then took a seat. She looked so prim and proper, her robe buttoned from throat to hem, her hair in a loose braid down her back, yet the very modesty of her appearance made him want to peel away those layers, one by one.

  When she opened her eyes, she was looking at the mantel shelf where he’d left his mother’s book. “You read it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” He pulled a reluctant admission from deep inside him. “I won’t say it was the most uplifting material I’ve ever read. It was damned painful. But you were right to show it to me. There are things I never knew, never understood. My father painted a picture of an unfaithful wife and uncaring mother. Now that I’ve read her story, I understand. My father drove her away, threatening to put her in an insane asylum if she dared to contact her son. I didn’t realize the burden I’d been carrying, and I never knew how forgiveness could lighten that burden.” He helped himself to a glass of brandy. “Now. Is that what you came to ask me?”

  “I wanted to ask you several things.” Amazed by his candor, she took a quick gulp of brandy. “And for some reason, I’ve forgotten all of them but one.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “It’s something I’ve asked you before.”

  Rand wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. In the past, she had asked him to lend her money for an enterprise in danger of failing, to support a cause he opposed, and in general, to change his life and his beliefs to suit hers. “What is it?” he said with weary resignation.

  “Can you—will you—make love to me?”

  It was the last thing he’d expected to hear from her, and he stood in complete, motionless silence for several moments.

  She mistook his hesitation. “If you’d rather not or if you, er, can’t, then I’ll certainly understand—”

  The old shame stung him. Damn Diana, he thought viciously. She’d made no secret of her rationale for divorce. Somehow, Lucy must have learned of the scandal. “What do you mean, can’t?”

  She took a bigger sip of brandy. “Why are you so angry?”

  Because I’m afraid, his heart whispered. She thought she knew what the fire had done to him. But she couldn’t, not really. Step by step, he’d reclaimed his life, building a career and a home, a place in society. Now he had his daughter again. He had his life back. He’d regained everything he’d lost, save one. He still lacked a true wife. Lucy was his in name only. So far.

  “Rand?” she asked, confused by his silence. “If you’d rather not—”

  “My grandmother told you about my mother. But I doubt she told you about Diana.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  It was time she heard the truth from him, for it was only a matter of time before some other source informed her. The local scandal rags had reported the story in salacious detail. “In her divorce suit, my wife cited my inability to perform my marital duties.”

  “Your—” Comprehension dawned on her face. “Oh. Why would she do such a thing?”

  “To facilitate the divorce.” He could see the unspoken question in her eyes. “Yes, her claim was true. I lay in a semiconscious state, and I could barely make a fist, much less make love to my own wife.”

  Lucy finished the brandy and set aside the glass. “You can make a fist now.”

  A powerful surge of desire heated to a peak he hadn’t felt since before the fire. He held out his own hand, demonstrating. “It’s the second-best thing I do.”

  “What’s the first-best?”

  He hesitated, feeling as though he balanced on a sharp precipice. Then he took her hand and drew her close. Slowly he untied the ribbon holding the robe closed at her throat. Bending down, he whispered his answer in her ear.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” she whispered back.

  He didn’t let himself hesitate. Didn’t think or analyze. He kissed her hard, sampling the brandy she’d just drunk, turned by some alchemy to pure nectar as it mingled with the taste of her. Each time he kissed her, he expected her to turn to stone, or to turn away. But instead, she became softer, more pliant. He pressed harder, parting her lips with his and the concealing robe with his hands. She tensed, and he feared she would draw back. He made a soothing motion with his hands until she relaxed against him. The fabric slipped off her shoulders and whispered down her arms, pooling with a delicate rustle on the floor.

  He wondered what expectations she’d built up in her mind about him. She’d seen the scars on his face and hands. Surely she could guess his wounds didn’t end there. He willed himself to stop thinking about his failings and concentrated on Lucy’s needs, Lucy’s desires. He had been thinking about her for a long time. By now, he knew exactly how he wanted to love her, knew how he wanted to kiss and touch her, knew what he wanted her to feel.

  He held and stroked her until she softened against him; then he changed the slant of his kiss, touching and pushing with his tongue, finding the pliant, brandy-sweet places of her. His hands skimmed downward, covering and then cupping her breasts. She gasped with surprise and, he thought, pleasure.

  “Come,” he whispered against her mouth. “Come to bed with me.”

  She seemed to tremble as she moved toward the bed, still holding his hand, stretching out her arm. In the dim light he could see that her lips were swollen and glistening, her neck and cheeks flushed. She hesitated as she stood by the bed, perhaps unable to decide what to do next.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” he told her. “Just…let me…” He found the drawstring that fastened her nightgown. Pulling it loose, he skimmed the gown off her shoulders and down her body.

  She wore nothing underneath. It was so startling, so unorthodox yet so typical of Lucy that he managed to smile despite the increasing inte
nsity of his need. She folded her arms in an attempt to cover herself.

  “Don’t,” he said, taking her hands and lacing his fingers with hers. “You look beautiful, just as you are.”

  “You needn’t say that.”

  “Why not? I thought you believed one should speak one’s mind.” He was astonished to see doubt in her eyes. “Lucy. How can you think you aren’t beautiful?”

  Somehow, despite her unclad state, she managed to look prim. “If you must know, it has been reported to me as fact.”

  “By some life-form lower than a snail, I’d wager.” Standing back, he outlined her silhouette with a long, delicate caress of his hands. “Believe this, Lucy. This.” Kissing her, he pressed her back on the bed. A sound came from her—distress? Excitement?—and then she grew bold with her hands, pushing them inside his robe. Her touch was so wild and compelling, his need for her so great, that he nearly forgot what the fire had done to him. But when she sighed against his neck and slipped her hands inside his robe, he remembered. Her fingers were mapping the terrible rugged landscape of his wounded body, and would soon discover the horrors written in his flesh.

  He pulled back, drew her hand away. “Lucy…”

  She was too impatient, pulling at his robe. He kissed her until her hands stilled and she lay quietly compliant, for once not trying to take the lead. He reached up with one hand, twisting the knob to kill the flame of the gas lamp.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Some things are best done in the dark.”

  She took his hand away and raised the flame again. “Not this.”

  “You don’t want to see, Lucy.”

  “I demand my equal rights. You just lectured me about the relative nature of beauty,” she said. “Will you not believe your own counsel?” She parted his robe and simply stared, saying no more. He waited for a revulsion that never came. “If you had the looks of a god I would still quarrel with you over the issues that matter to me. If you had the face of a wildebeest I would still want you,” she explained. Sympathy flashed in her eyes, but it quickly turned to…he wasn’t sure what, for she bent down, trailing her hair over his chest as she kissed him there, scars and all, with a compelling combination of reverence and heat.

  Shaken, he accepted her tribute with a gratitude and tenderness too powerful for speaking. Laying her back on the bed, he pressed himself against her, and his flesh took fire. His kisses traveled over her, savoring the fragile contours of her body, the satiny breasts brushing against him. He closed his lips around the soft peak of her breast, eliciting a new sound from her, a sound he’d never heard before. One that spoke of yearning and abandon, one that drove away all attempts to control, to slow the pace. He parted her legs as he kissed her mouth. His tongue moved in and out, and his hand below echoed the rhythm. The motion of her hips beckoned and tantalized until he came to her swiftly, feeling a tight resistance and then a smooth fluidity as their bodies slid together. She felt like a virgin, he thought, but that was impossible. Or maybe not.

  Bracing his arms on either side of her, he moved in a rhythm that ignited her as if he’d touched a flame to her center. She cried out with an explosive, deeply sensual sound that shook him. He felt her contract and then shatter into soft pulsations that drew from him an overwhelming response. He spent himself fully and deeply, joining with her in a bond forged of years-old, unbidden passion. The moment drew out in a long shock of sensation that left him panting, bathed in sweat and stricken to the heart.

  He settled atop the covers next to her. Moonlight flooding through the window outlined her slender silhouette. He skimmed his hand over her and finally spoke.

  “You’re a virgin.”

  “Um, not anymore.” A smile softened her voice.

  “I thought you were…experienced.”

  She shifted, propping herself on his chest. “Most people who don’t know any better believe New Women are promiscuous.” There was a wry, gentle censure in her tone.

  “You all but said you have a raft of lovers at your beck and call. You spoke of free love.”

  “That doesn’t mean anyone was ever free to love me.”

  Unexpected tenderness took hold of him. Everything about Lucy startled and moved him. She was the last woman he could imagine winding up with, yet here she was in his arms, where he had never expected to find her. He laid the palm of his hand against hers, feeling the steady, strong cadence of their pulses mingling.

  “I am,” he said simply, not at all surprised to discover that he wanted her again.

  “You’re what?”

  He pressed her down, kissed her, and she opened to him again, sweetly eager. He went slowly this time, using his hands and mouth at a leisurely pace, exulting in her ecstasy, feeling the wonder of something unexpected and new. “Free…” he said in answer to her question, “to love you.”

  Lucy kept the delicious secret of her new liaison with her husband hidden in her heart. There was nothing illicit about a married woman sleeping with her own husband, she told herself, yet this was something wholly her own, fragile as a soap bubble that could burst to nothingness at the slightest pressure.

  She tingled with the sense that the world was brand-new, candy-colored, a place of whimsy and possibility. In the bookshop, she sang as she catalogued books and tallied accounts. On one unforgettable afternoon, Rand found her alone, halfway up the brass ladder, shelving books. Without saying a word, he turned over the Closed sign on the door and seduced her right then and there, with the ladder rolling back and forth and books dropping to the floor. Dime novels of love and adventure that used to seem so silly now had the power to move her to tears. She couldn’t wait to get home each day, couldn’t wait for night to come, for that was when she moved into the private, velvety-soft world encompassed by the bed she shared with Rand.

  One morning, after he had gone to the bank, she and her mother had gone to the conservatory to tend the orchids, a project Viola had recently adopted. Surrounded by the lush growth of palms and cycads and helliconia, Lucy stood gazing out at the lake mist creeping across the lawn. Gradually she became aware of her mother’s silent attention.

  “What?” she asked, nervously fingering the leaves of a bamboo ginger plant. “Is something the matter?”

  “I don’t think so.” Viola took out a pair of trimming sheers and snipped at an orchid’s stray root hairs. “But you seem different.”

  “Do I?” Lucy ripped the leaf clean off the plant. The secret rose up inside her, wanting to be let out. “I suppose I am.”

  Viola froze, shears poised around a hank of Spanish moss. “Heavens, you’ve fallen in love with the man.”

  Lucy studied the hunting scene on the side of the china teapot. She couldn’t deny it, not to her mother. “Believe me, I was the last one to expect that to happen. It’s a bit frightening,” she admitted.

  “What, being in love with your husband?”

  The very thought of him ignited warm shivers inside her. “It gives him far too much power over me. He can make the sun come out with one smile. How absurd is that?”

  “Completely. And it is one of life’s sweetest joys.” Beaming, Viola admired one of her favorite blooms, the dancing-lady orchid. “I think it might be catching. Eugene has asked Willa Jean to marry him.”

  Lucy grinned. “Bull and Willa Jean? It’s about time. Did she say yes?”

  “Of course she did.” Viola winked. “You might find yourself in need of a new bookkeeper soon.”

  “Why would she stop working at the shop?”

  “Some women choose to direct all their energy to marriage.”

  “Are you implying I should be doing that?”

  “Not at all. But I’m telling you to respect women who choose the traditional role.”

  “I do. I—” Lucy stopped. Could her mother be right? Was she intolerant of those whose views differed from hers? Overly critical of women who preferred tradition over innovation?

  “Love is a gift,” Viola sai
d. “We each cherish it in our own way.” She cradled a delicate arch of pale, yellow-lipped blossoms in her hand, taking care not to extract the body of the plant from its nest of bark. “I do love the moth orchid, don’t you? This one can’t exist without the tree to support it. On its own it would die.”

  Lucy turned away, the loamy humidity of the air in the glass room filling her lungs. An odd and unsettling perception nagged at her, tightening like a noose. She was starting to disappear. When she lay with Rand at night, she melded and fused with him, and even during the day, when they were apart, she felt a powerful connection to him. Because of the new bond growing between them, she ceased to exist as a separate entity; she’d become an adjunct that could not live apart from him.

  That was it, she thought, working herself into a panic. That was how a man dominated and controlled a woman. He made her disappear. He transformed her from an independent individual into a clinging attachment dependent on him for everything, even the very air she breathed.

  It was a frightening thing, Lucy realized, to be in love with her husband. She did not trust the idea at all.

  “Don’t go.” Rand wrapped his bare arm around Lucy’s waist and pulled her naked body snug against his in the bed.

  His sleep-warm kisses tickled the back of her neck. “Ah, that’s tempting,” she admitted, stretching luxuriously, then drinking from a tumbler of water on the bedside table. He made her feel languorous and pampered; she wanted to lie abed and let him pet her all day as if she were a sleek cat. “I’m becoming lazy,” she protested as he slipped his hand down in a clever, irresistible caress. His knowledge of her body was much too intimate. As the heated flutters of sensation started, she used the last of her willpower to pull away. “I have a lot of work to do at the shop today.”

  With much reluctant grumbling, he rose from the bed, walking across the room to the basin. As always, she was quietly mesmerized by his physique. The long, carved sinews of his limbs moved with innate grace, and the terrible scars that marred his right shoulder, back and chest didn’t detract from his appeal but added to it. What he’d lost in perfection he’d gained in character.