Divine Fire

by Melanie Jackson

  And a proud one. He would be insulted if he knew she had looked through his desk.

  Brice understood. She would be insulted too. Her actions made her squirm. Would he despise her if he knew what she’d done in a moment of weakness and surprise? The thought of his anger or contempt left her stricken.

  But that was ridiculous. She cared too much what he thought of her. She barely knew this man—how could his opinion already count for so much?

  A word she didn’t want to hear popped into her head.

  No! There was no such thing as love at first sight. Lust at first sight, definitely. Lust with strong potential for a future relationship—probably. But love? No, nothing that constructive and supportive came out of instant attraction.

  And sexual arousal was the enemy of productivity, Brice reminded herself when she felt herself losing the argument. She knew her shortcomings. A new lover, on the rare occasion she took one, left her distracted, almost amnesiac. And in the end, what had she to show for these affairs? Usually nothing except a rushed deadline brought about because she hadn’t been able to concentrate.

  No, at the end of the day, no matter how wonderful the sex, Brice had no interest in men who refused to learn, to grow beyond their past failures. And none of them ever had. They were all trapped in their pasts, uncommitting to the future because of fear of failure. They enjoyed a fairytale passion, she learned their few charming quirks and mysteries, and then they got boring.

  It was depressing to think that this was all there was. People got stuck at times—all people—nailed in place by painful events. The smart ones, the brave ones, eventually moved on. But those were sadly rare.

  Byron had managed, in spite of his losses. That was part of what made the poet so appealing to Brice. And part of what made so many other men not.

  She wasn’t a wildwoman, an emotional kamikaze who took frequent risks with her heart, but she had once tried to not let fear hold her back. If a right man came along, she wanted to be ready to love him.

  So, what about Damien?

  Yes, what about Damien? Wasn’t it time to start asking herself some critical questions? He had no wife, no family. Was he one of those arrested souls, one who could never commit?

  No.

  There was definitely something beneath that civilized exterior. He was an unstill water that unquestionably ran deep. Whatever had kept him from marriage, Brice didn’t think it was fear.

  Damien looked up then and smiled. His grin pulled her out of her brooding thoughts.

  “Now for the crabs,” he said, opening the oven and letting the delicious smell of baked apples into the kitchen. “Just listen to them whistle when they hit the ale. That’s why they call it wassail. The apples are singing.”

  Brice giggled as the first apple hit the punch. “It sounds like a cat with adenoid problems.”

  “Clearly you have no poetry in your soul.” Damien sniffed and said loftily, “That is the sound of distant churchgoers trudging through snow and singing to keep their spirits high.”

  Brice shook her head. “Adenoids.”

  Damien ladled out some punch, pouring it into a Toby mug and handing it to her. The helping was more than generous.

  “Drink. I promise you’ll hear heavenly hosts after you get that lot under your belt.”

  He ladled out two more mugs and a small amount into a shallow dish.

  “Come on. Mace and Karen will want some too.”

  Feeling quite warm after only a few sips of the potent brew, Brice followed obediently.

  “Damien…” she began, wanting desperately to ask about the old book and the piece of paper in the desk, but knowing she shouldn’t.

  “Yes?” He looked back. The hall was shadowed, but steam from the mugs seemed to wreathe his head in a golden halo. And it was truly earned. Damien had been an angel to her, sharing his treasures and his home.

  She felt more guilty than ever.

  And more attracted.

  “Nothing.” She took another sip of punch. It was heady stuff. Better than demon rum. “I was just going to say that I’m having a lot of fun. Thank you for inviting me to spend the holidays here.”

  He grinned at her. The smile did funny things to her blood pressure.

  “Oddly enough, I’m having fun too. So don’t thank me. I am being amply compensated.”

  Chapter Eight

  Men are more often defeated in love by their own clumsiness than by a woman’s virtue.

  —Lesson in Love from Carte du Tendre by Ninon de Lenclos

  Talk to your lover about herself, and seldom of your own self. Take for granted that she is a hundred times more interested in the charms of her own person than in the whole gamut of your emotions.

  —Lesson in Love from Carte du Tendre by Ninon de Lenclos

  Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.

  —Lord Byron

  She knew—

  For quickly comes the knowledge—that his heart

  Was darkened with her shadow.

  —Lord Byron

  Brice didn’t usually like handsome men, not if they were aware of their beauty and cultivated it at the expense of their minds. Men who routinely traded on their looks seemed weak, even effeminate to her. It was such a female trick. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy seeing handsome men—far from it. But she preferred that the men in her life be men: rough, competitive, proud of their physical skills and their logical, even cold-hearted, judgment. If they were extremely intelligent, so much the better. She didn’t like having to slow down and explain things to those who couldn’t keep up.

  She’d been told that she was retrograde in her tastes. Maybe that was true. She hadn’t any use for brutal men, but she wasn’t fond of whiny, pacifistic males either.

  Damien seemed quite perfect—alpha, graceful, intelligent.

  And she had probably drunk entirely too much of that wassail punch. Perfect? A man? That was a heretical thought.

  It was getting late, too. Karen and Mace had left hours ago. She should make some pretense of retiring to bed; she just didn’t want to. There was too much pleasure to be had in Damien’s company, and time was running out. She couldn’t stay at his home indefinitely.

  “A penny for them,” her host said, finally putting aside his manuscript. The soft light from his desk lamp again surrounded him in a golden halo. He didn’t look angelic now, though, unless one was thinking of the fallen one. Hadn’t Lucifer been the fairest of them all?

  “I’m surprised that I’m able to work here,” Brice said. And that was true, as far as it went. Usually when she was working, she needed a routine. She was like a high priestess performing a sacred rite. Any disruption and she was left distracted and wrathful. Searching through the paper remains of the dead was a hard, lonely business. She was surrounded by people when she went to the great archives, the living and the dead, but she was not part of them, was simply a witness to their actions. The people she studied were like actors in home movies, ghosts going on with their lines, unaware that someone was eavesdropping on them from the future, watching, taking notes on everything they said and did and thought. Being such a witness required silence and meditation.

  But here she was frequently interrupted by Damien—or Mace—and it didn’t bother her in the least. In fact, she looked forward to hearing his voice, to feeling his touch at those moments when they traded papers, or when he helped her from a chair.

  And petting Mace was okay too. She found she liked having a warm body lie on her toes. It was companionship without distracting conversation. She would have to think about getting a dog.

  “I’m not all that surprised that we should rub along tolerably well,” Damien answered. “As you said, it’s as though destiny took a hand in our affairs.”

  “Yes—but destiny isn’t always so tidy. In fact, I can’t recall anything ever going so smoothly. It makes me nervous, if you want to know the truth.” As soon as she said this, Brice realized it was true. She di
d feel nervous.

  “Perhaps Santa has brought you an early present.” Damien frowned suddenly. “Too bad he didn’t bring you a new laptop as well. The drive in that thing sounds asthmatic.”

  “I know. Maybe next year, when I get my next advance. For now, this will have to do. I need the thing too badly to abandon it. Human memory is a terrible record keeper, you know. And my handwriting qualifies as villainous. I take copious longhand notes when I can’t bring the portable—and have to transfer them to disk while I can still read my own writing,” she said, typing the last entry into her laptop and then saving the file to both drives. That part of her routine had not changed. After a bad experience with a hard-drive crash where she’d lost almost a hundred pages of work, she had become religious about saving her written labor at regular intervals. Her new first commandment was: Thou shalt back up files.

  Brice chuckled suddenly, and before she could reconsider the wisdom of introducing the topic she said: “The brain does manage to keep track of some peculiar things, though. Take this fact about the Etruscans I read fifteen years ago. They were supposed to race into battle sporting full erections. It was thought to terrify the enemy, and was part of what made them such great soldiers. I suppose that might have worked. However, I have a bad feeling that it might have made me giggle instead of quail. I mean, picture it. They wore those silly little tunics, and there they’d be, bobbing along like the gentlemen of the chorus. Would you find that terrifying? Or, if you were a fellow Etruscan, inspirational?” She shook her head. “I’ll never be able to write about them, you know, because I just don’t get it. The whole society is an enigma.”

  Damien’s teeth flashed. “Hm. Interesting strategy, I must say. But the Etruscans have rather died out. I wonder if there’s a connection. Battle can’t be the safest place for an erection, not with all those nasty swords and maces being swung around.”

  “That’s exactly what I said to my history professor when he brought it up.”

  “Did he agree?”

  “I don’t know. He just sniffed.” Brice shook her head and confided, “A lot of us had doubts that Dr. Knowlton actually knew what an erection was. Frankly, we weren’t sure he knew what an Etruscan was either.”

  “Was he male?”

  “We were never entirely certain. Usually I can tell, though.” She peeped at him over her screen. “For instance, your gender is quite evident.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it.”

  Brice smiled. Picking up the next letter of Ninon’s she unfolded it carefully. Damien took up the manuscript he was reading.

  She was becoming accustomed to the idea that he was a critic and doing his wicked work in her presence. Damien was a reviewer, but a scrupulous specimen. She had learned that there was nothing personal motivating him, nothing beyond his taste and somewhat exacting standards—and heaven knew that she had those idiosyncrasies too.

  Damien Ruthven and his arrogance went together like truffles and foie gras—which was not a common combination but probably should be, now that she thought of it.

  On that consideration, Brice bent her head back to her work.

  “You’re grinding your teeth,” Damien said a short time later. The storm was again raging outside.

  “Am I?” Brice exhaled heavily. “Sorry. I sometimes do that when I’m angry.”

  “What’s annoying you?”

  “Oh—the usual. Life lessons presented when I don’t want to think about them.” Brice sighed again.

  “Such as?”

  She waved the letter in her hand. “Ninon seemed to manage to be it all—sex goddess, mother, writer…What’s my problem? I wonder sometimes if not marrying again and not having children have led me to a life of intellectual self-indulgence and cowardly isolation. In a word, I have become a writer more than a woman. I should go to the DMV and have the gender on my license changed.”

  “That seems drastic. I am quite certain that, writer or not, technically you are still female.” His words were playful, but his mood was not. He could feel a frown plucking at his brow.

  “Yes. But only technically. I’ve been transformed into something sexless. I mean, is what I do so important? Am I wrong to close out the world in favor of work?” Brice chuckled suddenly, her face losing its scowl. “Is the fact that I’m asking this question of a virtual stranger a sure sign that my lifestyle has made me self-centered and narcissistic?”

  Her earlier words hit him. “You were married?” he asked, surprised. The idea had not occurred to him. Probably because he didn’t like the idea that she could have ever loved anyone else or been some other man’s wife.

  “Yes, briefly. He died in a car accident. At Christmas.” Her voice was calm, not unhappy, but not as lively as it had been. Her explanation was succinct and said more about her lingering grief than her facial expression.

  “Do you still miss him?” Do you still love him? he meant.

  “Sometimes. Not so much anymore. It happened many years ago.” Her head was bowed and she shuffled absently through the papers.

  “You’ve healed well,” Damien commented, wanting to say something else entirely but wisely refraining. He added, “One would never guess at such a huge tragedy in your life.”

  She shrugged. “I drag around as much emotional baggage as anyone else. Maybe more,” she admitted. “The trick to getting on with things is to make sure that those bags are on wheels. The right work helps too. Everyone should have at least one magnificent obsession. It’s a life jacket when the ship goes down.” She gave a wry smile.

  He nodded once, liking the analogy. She had emotional baggage—no surprise. All interesting people did. And he knew all too well that some emotions, some memories, couldn’t be left behind, no matter how one longed to abandon them. The only thing to do was to learn to travel with them. What Damien liked most about Brice was that she didn’t seem to expect anyone to handle her heavy baggage for her.

  “Pain is usually an excellent teacher. It is fortunate for the human race that most romantic lessons don’t stick. Without this amnesia no one would ever love more than once,” Damien said. “Certainly, one would never marry a second time.”

  Brice nodded back, her eyes thoughtful. “You can pull up the drawbridge and turn crocodiles loose in the moat, but eventually loneliness compels most people to open up and try again, I suppose. But not me. Not marriage. At least, not any time soon. It’s like I said, I take copious notes and they remind me of what I need to know. And I think I’m with Ninon on this one.” She leaned toward her screen and read the translation aloud. “ ‘Women have always refused to recognize what most marriages are. Wives are slaves to their husbands. Even the convent seemed better to me. I am not saying that we should not love—to fight against nature’s passions is to invite a lifelong torture. Yet a woman must consider carefully before she sets a legal seal on her deeper emotions. Passion is fleeting; marriage is not.’ ”

  Brice looked up. “Perhaps I am fortunate not to have faced such disillusionment. Mark died while I still loved him.”

  “So, you are not looking for marriage?” Damien wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Once upon a time, it would have been the answer to his prayers. Now, he wasn’t certain that he liked this unwillingness to commit.

  “No. Not at the moment,” she said firmly. “And maybe not ever.”

  “And what about passion?” he asked, knowing his voice had gone deep and smoky. “Are you looking for that? Have you been searching?”

  Her deep blue eyes studied him. She looked more serious than he’d ever seen her.

  “Do you know, generally speaking, I don’t mind desire suggesting a course of action,” Brice said slowly. “But I have refused in these last few years to be ordered around by it. The heart and soul have greater needs, and most men did not seem worthwhile.”

  “But this time?” he asked directly. “Do your instincts say that I would be worth an investment of time?”

  “This time…I’ve decided to take the suggest
ion under advisement. It’s why I’m still here.”

  Damien looked at her. He could see himself reflected in her spring-colored eyes. His own were shining, but he knew they were as black as the endless midnight that was now part of him. “Is that wise?” he asked, knowing it was only fair to give her a chance to back away.

  “Hell, no.” She shrugged. “But you know what’s rarer than a first edition of La Coquette Vengée?”

  “A second edition,” he suggested. He smiled slightly. Even while being enticed, Brice continued to be more intellectual than passionate. She was interested, but was still hiding behind her barricades. Others might not notice, but Damien saw them for what they were because he had his own barriers that kept people from pressing too close. Brice carefully armored herself with books and research and other intellectual distractions—and thus far they had served her well.

  Brice had also blithely admitted to not replacing a broken answering machine, and she refused to carry a cell phone, so that she could get lost when it suited her. She even had a house that was remote enough to discourage casual visitors.

  Damien’s own defenses were more obvious: a huge library where he did unending research instead of spending time with friends, security guards to keep the unwashed masses away, a secretary to keep known but unwanted associates from interrupting. And he had a home at the top of a citadel that had only one entrance, which he controlled with electronic keys.

  But he had let her inside his fortress, had allowed her to pry enough to catch a glimpse of who he really was. And he had enjoyed it. It was time for her—willing or not—to return the favor. Stripping her layer of protective reason away so she could deal in pure emotion would be half the fun of seducing her.

  Damien felt his smile widen. Brice smiled back warily and shook her head.

  “No, it’s true desire that’s rarer.” She answered the question she’d posed. Her voice was low. “Not the simple kind where you can satisfy the physical longing with any nonrepulsive person. I’m talking about passion—a specific, complicated, dangerous and insane desire.”