Fire Lily (A Dangerous Hearts Romance)

by Deborah Camp

  “No, no!” She’d looked to her father for help. “Mommy can’t go there, Father. Tell her! Tell her she can’t go there.”

  Her father had laughed and motioned for them to join him near the river. The bad cloud had disappeared.

  “Come on, sweetie.” Her mother tugged on her hand.

  Lily stiffened, planting her bare feet firmly and curling her toes in the baby-soft grass. Shaking her head, she pulled back. “Uh-uh, Mommy. Not there. Don’t go there.” She managed to free her hand and looked toward her father for help. “Father … Father!”

  “Want to stay with him? Okay, go along. Maybe you’ll bring him good luck and he’ll catch a huge trout or catfish.”

  Lily skipped toward her father, glad the danger had passed them by again. She thought her mother was right behind her. Reaching her father, she turned to find that she’d been wrong. Her mother approached the bed of flowers beneath the towering oak.

  Terror sank its claws into her heart, and Lily let out a shriek.

  “What is it, baby?” her father asked, even as her mother whirled in her direction and lifted one hand to shade her eyes and see what had frightened Lily.

  “Mommy, no!” Lily pointed a shaking finger. “Father, get Mommy. Go get her.” Sobs of panic shook her voice and then closed on her throat.

  Her mother retreated a few steps. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Lily’s just being a mommy’s girl. She can’t stand it if you’re out of her sight,” her father called.

  Then her mother jumped as if startled and let out a cry of alarm. She looked down at her feet. Lily felt her mother’s horror and screamed.

  “Oh, no!” Her mother stamped her feet and flailed, trying to keep her balance. “Eddie! Eddie, help! Sn-snakes!”

  Her father dropped the fishing pole and dashed across the uneven ground. He kicked viciously and plucked his wife from the field of flowers. Lily saw a triangular head lift from the blossoms and strike at her father’s boot. Her mother lay limply in his arms. He carried her to the buggy.

  “Come, Lily. We must get the doctor. Hurry, baby. Hurry!”

  Her mother was pale, and there were flecks of blood on her ankles. She moaned and her eyes rolled back in her head, showing white. Lily cried all the way to town. Somehow, she’d known that her mother wouldn’t get well. She had known that the bad thing had wanted her mother and had taken her.

  “Lily? It’s Griffon. Can you come back to me?”

  The voice invaded, separating the past from the present like the parting of draperies to let in the sun. Why couldn’t she see him? she wondered, feeling drugged. Then she realized her eyes were tightly shut. It took a huge effort to lift her lashes off her cheeks.

  She was lying on the barge again. It rocked beneath her. She heard the lapping water along the sides. Her face felt damp, and she realized she’d been crying. Griffon laid the back of his hand against her cheek in a gentle caress.

  “Hello, love. Where did you go? Back to the day your mother died?”

  She turned her face away from his touch, away from his probing eyes. “What’s happening to me, Griffon? Maybe it’s you. Being around you seems to bring on these … spells.”

  “If you were tested at the Society, I daresay they’d find that you possess a strong tactile memory. Has nothing to do with me, and it’s not a witch’s spell.”

  Lily struggled to sit up, feeling weak as a kitten, and Griffon helped her. She braced her back against the side of the barge and picked bits of grass from her long braid.

  “I haven’t thought of that awful day in years,” she said, after a long silence. “That day changed my whole life. Before it, I was a happy child with two loving parents. After it, I had lost my mother. And my father … well, I lost him, too.”

  “Does he refuse to discuss that day with you?”

  “We never talk about it. I’m sure he doesn’t know what to think about me.” She fetched up a sigh. “How much do you know about her death? I assume you robbed my memory of it.”

  He winced. “I wish you wouldn’t put it that way. I gather your mother was bitten by a snake.”

  “Snakes. She wandered into a nest of water moccasins. I kn-knew they were there.” She shook her head. “That is, I knew something was there. Something terrible. I tried to make her stay away from that place, but she walked right into them.” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, waiting for the old ache to subside. “After the funeral, Father seemed distant around me. He looked at me … well, in a peculiar way. Almost as if he didn’t know me anymore or didn’t trust me. He was uncomfortable around me. Still is to this very day. He never touches me unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. And he’s forever telling me to be normal—to act normal—to pretend to be normal.” She crossed her arms against a sudden chill that emerged from her bones. “He makes me feel like a freak.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth to keep it from trembling. “Maybe I am,” she murmured, mostly to herself, for hadn’t she just emerged from an eerie trance?

  “Damn it all, you are not a freak!” Anger pumped through Griffon’s voice.

  Lily knew a moment’s thrill at his championing her. “What is tactile memory?”

  He sat cross-legged on the barge. “It’s when a person can get a sense of what has happened or will happen by touching something connected to the event or persons involved. When you touched the snakeskin, it transported you back to your mother’s death. When you touched that beam in the barn back in Fort Smith, you recalled moments between Anson and Cecille there.”

  “It seems farfetched.” She looked over her shoulder at the glistening water. “I would imagine witches were hung for less in Salem.”

  “Some of those so-called witches were our ancestors—our gifted ancestors. At the Society our research indicates that sensory perception might be hereditary.”

  She hardly registered this because the memory of her father’s reaction to her after her mother’s death still poisoned her mind. Her need to talk about it grew too strong to fight. “After my mother died I lived with Father for six months before he made arrangements for me to move in with Uncle Howard and Aunt Nan. Uncle Howard came to visit once, and I heard him and Father arguing about me. Uncle Howard was terribly angry because my father had said he thought I might have known of those snakes and suggested that my mother walk in that direction.”

  “Good God!” Griffon stared at her, his brows pinched together, his eyes a stormy blue. “The man couldn’t have thought that an innocent child would do such a thing. His own daughter!”

  Lily covered the lower half of her face with one hand, hiding the telltale tremble of her lips and chin. “H-he didn’t understand. He meant only to find an answer to the puzzle I’d presented.”

  “But to think that his little daughter would send her mother into death’s jaws?” Griffon shook his head, his eyes tightly shut. “No, that’s crazy thinking. No wonder you felt ill at ease around him.”

  “I didn’t. He felt that way around me. I think I scared him.” She blinked the sting from her eyes. “Can’t blame him. I scared myself. That’s when I decided to curb these odd tendencies, and that’s why I’ve been rude to you at times. It’s nothing to do with you, Griffon. But I feel I must protect myself. You embrace what I have spent my whole life dodging.”

  “Well, at least you now admit that much.” He sighed as if relieved of a burden. “You’ve shunned me for another reason, as well.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Because I am the embodiment of your girlhood fantasies.” He essayed a rapscallion’s grin. “Isn’t that right, my fire lily?”

  She tipped up her chin, partly amused and partly appalled that he’d exposed another of her deep secrets. “You fancy yourself a fantasy figure, do you?”

  “You and Cecille cut your teeth on stories of Gypsy caravans. You told me yourself that you thought Gypsies were romantic. I suppose, after today, you no doubt think we’re legendary lovers as well.”

&nbs
p; “How you go on,” she scoffed, mildly amused at his bragging.

  “I’m glad we’re closer.” He took her thick braid in hand, rubbing his thumb over it, involved in his own thoughts for a minute. “Now we can begin channeling your energy. A few simple techniques will help you tame your psychic powers and utilize them to their fullest.”

  She chose her next words carefully. “I, too, am glad we … well, we’re closer, as you said. But just because I reached out to you doesn’t mean I’m reaching out to the psychic world, too. I have no desire to live my life as you do.”

  His expression changed minutely from friendly to wary. “And how do I live my life—as you see it?”

  “By flaunting your … abnormalities. By exposing them to the world and thus courting the contempt of others.” She could tell he didn’t approve of her assessment.

  “Better than how you live your life.”

  “And how is that?” she demanded, already insulted.

  “I am who I am. You live your life pretending to be someone you aren’t and can never be.” He thrust his face close to hers and gripped her upper arms. “You aren’t average, Lily. You are special.” He spoke the last sentence slowly, stressing each word.

  Lily supposed he meant to compliment her, but she had lived too long avoiding her differences, and she wasn’t ready to give them a pretty name. She wriggled from his grasp and sprang to her feet. The barge rocked as she leaped off it to the soft ground.

  “I want to go back to town,” she said, already folding one of the blankets. “It’s been lovely …” She paused, hearing how inadequate that sounded. Her gaze skittered to Griffon and her smile, she hoped, added to her words. “More than that. Today you have changed me forever.”

  “And I trust you aren’t disappointed or regretful?”

  “No, not at all.” She held out one hand to him, and he took it to kiss her palm and each fingertip. “Griffon, please don’t be angry because I won’t bend to your every wish, your every suggestion. I know that women should be flexible, swaying like willows in whatever direction a man pushes them, but I feel this isn’t necessary with you.”

  “Lily, I will never ask you to be less than you are. On the contrary, I want only that you be yourself—your whole, glorious self.” He pulled her forward. Their bodies collided a second before their open, seeking mouths.

  She was immediately lost in his lovemaking. Clinging to his broad shoulders, she experienced a kiss that set off small fires at her pulse points. Lily raked her fingers through his thick hair, giving herself up to the mastery of his flicking tongue. His lips nibbled hers. His hands cupped her hips. In those moments she belonged to him and was glad of it. Griffon Goforth was more than her lover. He was her Gypsy. Yes, her fantasy come to life. Cecille had thought she’d found the same in Anson, but her dream lover had become a nightmare. That realization disturbed Lily, and she gently disengaged herself from Griffon’s embrace.

  “If we don’t leave soon, it’ll be dark before we return to Van Buren and Orrie will be frantic,” she explained, swaying sideways to elude his persistent mouth. She patted his chest. “You promised Orrie you’d behave, remember?”

  “I remember, and this is the way I behave around a ravishing woman.”

  She laughed huskily. “You sly fox. Seriously, though, I don’t want to worry dear Orrie.”

  “Very well.” He backed away from her, each step labored, reluctant. “I don’t want to get on Orrie’s bad side.”

  “Yes, it’s better if she continues to dote on you.”

  He chuckled, bending to retrieve the blanket she’d dropped. “Dote on me, does she?”

  “She does, and you know it.” Lily turned in a half circle, searching for her bonnet. The breeze had sent it skipping across the grass to the edge of the woods. “Ah, there it is.”

  She went to fetch it before the pesky wind could blow the straw creation into the tree limbs and thorny bushes. Within a few steps, she realized it was not the bonnet that drew her, but some other powerful force. The knowing engulfed her, driving her to her knees on the soft grass. She balled her hands into fists over her heart, feeling its frantic pounding, aware of what was happening to her. Instead of fighting it off, she rose to her feet again and let the force guide her as if she were a paper boat gliding upon the mighty river.

  “Lily, what is it?”

  She flapped one hand, silencing Griffon and letting him know that she was aware this time of her actions. She sensed him behind her, moving cautiously. Slipping between two slender dogwoods, she picked her way a few feet into the dappled sunlight. The burning expanded in her chest and gripped her mind more fiercely. Using herself as a divining rod, she turned this way and that, finding the right direction by the strength of her intuition. Her gaze focused on a distant point, and she knew it for her destination. She hurried toward the plot of overturned earth. The moment the toes of her boots touched the loose dirt, an absolute dropped into her mind.

  “A woman is buried here,” she said, her voice as firm as her conviction. “Recently. She … she was murdered.”

  “Yes, I feel it, too.” Griffon’s eyes seemed flat, glazed. A tangle of vines and brush marked one end of the rectangular plot. Amid them stood a crudely constructed cross. Griffon walked to it, then turned his head to look at Lily. “Let’s try to channel your energies this time. Take a deep breath, Lily. That’s it. Now let it out slowly and imagine that smoke is curling out of your mind with that breath, leaving your thoughts clear and unobstructed.” He squatted beside the grave and took from it a handful of dirt, which he pressed into one of her hands. “What can you tell me now, Lily?”

  She shut her eyes as her fingers closed around the soft clod, and sensations, impressions, random thoughts flickered in her mind like fireflies against a dark night. Then the lights brightened. She didn’t flinch from the light, but let herself examine it, unafraid.

  “This is the woman Cecille saw strangled by a swarthy man,” she said, as certain of this as she had been when she was a child and had known the primroses hid an awful fate meant for her mother. “She was an attractive woman, older than me, very unhappy. No! She’s angry. This man is scaring her, making her realize he means to kill her. She fights him, but he’s strong, ruthless.” The soil grew cold and lifeless in her hand. She dropped it and brushed the rest from her palm as the impressions faded.

  Griffon tore the vegetation from the cross. “There’s a name scratched here,” he said, peering at the uneven lettering. “Dora … Doralee Jeffers.”

  “Anson’s wife!” The import of that stunned Lily for a moment as her gaze met Griffon’s. “Oh, my God! He killed his own wife.”

  Griffon nodded. “And Cecille saw it all. That means, if she’s still alive—”

  “She is,” Lily affirmed.

  “Yes, I believe so as well. Therefore, she’s in great danger. I don’t think she had anything to do with this, do you?”

  “You mean, that she approved or wanted this to happen?” Lily shook her head, rejecting the idea. “No, not Cecille. At first, I was confused. I couldn’t imagine why she’d allow such a heinous act to occur before her eyes and do nothing, but I understand more now. I’ve seen some of the Jefferses. Ham Jeffers is not a man I’d want to tangle with. If Anson is anything like him, then he’s evil to the core. I didn’t mention this to you before, but Ham gave me the jitters. The way he looked at me … well, it was horrible. He looked at me as if I weren’t a human being, but property—less than an animal. A thing.”

  “Take it easy,” Griffon said, pulling her into his arms. “Don’t work yourself into a lather over this.”

  “Anson has more finesse,” she said, grabbing at another spark of intuition. “He’s a smooth operator, but down deep he’s like his brother. It’s hard to explain … but one doesn’t see the danger in him at first.”

  Griffon ran light fingertips around the outside oval of her face. “One might admire the grace of an eagle in flight, but the field mouse knows the terror
of its talons.”

  “Exactly,” she agreed. “Cecille has seen those talons. And that poor woman …” Her gaze drifted to the grave. “Doralee was their victim.”

  Griffon put his arms around her, and Lily rested her cheek on his chest and closed her eyes. His heartbeat beneath her ear calmed her. When he led her away from the tainted place, she went gratefully.

  Chapter 14

  “Maybe that grave doesn’t hold that Jeffers woman,” Orrie Dickens said. She sat by the window, where a reading lamp cast sufficient light on the book she held in her lap. “I don’t want to put bad thoughts in your head, but it might have been a grave to make nosy people think that woman is dead and buried.”

  Sitting in the middle of the bed, Lily glanced up from the game of solitaire she’d fanned across the spread. At first, she didn’t understand where Orrie was leading, then she caught on to her meaning. “Cecille isn’t dead, Orrie. She wasn’t in that grave.”

  She and Griffon had arrived in Van Buren less than an hour before dusk, winning Orrie’s scolding. After a quick dinner, they’d all retired to their respective rooms. It was still too early to go to bed, so Orrie had picked up a book, and Lily had tried to engage herself in a card game. But her thoughts kept straying to the afternoon on the barge where Griffon had made her his lover. Lover. It didn’t have the secure ring of wife or betrothed, but it had a charm all its own, she decided. It hinted at passion, bright and hot and undeniable.

  “Did you hear me, Lily Jane?” Orrie’s voice rapped on her private thoughts.

  “What? No, I … was concentrating on this card game. What did you say?”

  “I asked you how you can be so certain that grave contained the Jeffers woman. Did Mr. Griffon sense it?”