Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  He broke off. His smile was rueful and he looked more than a little perplexed. “If you don’t listen, there’s very little use in my speaking.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t…I’m sorry.”

  “Does the title bother you?” he asked abruptly. His one weakness, that lack of a peerage.

  “No…ah…” Then, desperate and confused as she was, Selena thought she had a solution, a way out. “Yes,” she said, as if changing her mind. “Yes, I’m…I’m afraid it does.”

  “But your father assured me…”He stopped.

  She said nothing.

  “I see,” he said. “All right. If such is your wish, I will so inform your father. I am the suitor, and there are rituals to cover this situation. I will ask you to consider my proposal for a fortnight. If you, you alone, do not wish to wed, I shall accept that decision. Do you agree to this?”

  A fortnight was far in the future. A thousand things could happen in that time. She agreed.

  Tea was called for and served, as they talked around a hundred different topics. Lord Seamus came back in. His glance was shrewd and measuring. He was not a politician by accident. And he did not seem at all pleased with his perceptions. At length, Sean left, with a promise to join them for the banquet, at which Lord North was to speak.

  “So. I gather that it might be inadvisable to announce the banns just yet?”

  “Oh, Father,” she cried, and came into his embrace, “I know how much it meant to you.”

  He looked away from her gaze, but not quickly enough to conceal a shaft of worry that flashed behind his eyes. She told him what had happened, about the fortnight’s wait.

  “That may well be too late,” he murmured, barely conscious of her presence. Then, abruptly: “This may change everything. You rest this afternoon, child. And think. I have…Brian and I must see a number of gentlemen.”

  He went out, leaving her alone again. And she felt, not relieved at concluding a difficult scene, but instead restless and disconsolate, wondering how many kinds of love there were in life, and which of them might be best for her. Already, with everything most women would regard as happiness right within her grasp, handed to her, she had succeeded in disappointing Sean, hurting Father, and God only knew what else. And she had done it all because of a man she barely knew, but whose being possessed for her a strange excitement, almost like the expectation of destiny. It was dangerous and unreadable, as if she, her very life, were mounted upon a great engine over which she had no control. And, what was worse, over which she wanted none.

  For a long time she either sat there, staring moodily at the fireplace, listening to the crackling of the burning logs, or paced back and forth across the chamber, looking down into the courtyard below, where hundreds of people, servants and guests both, scurried about in a holiday mood. She watched them, too dispirited even to envy their good cheer. She did not even inspect her gowns, which hung in a long row in the adjacent dressing chamber. Finally, after hours crawled by, there was a change in the nature of the sound outside, an alteration in the easy rhythm of the crowd. Selena did not notice it at first, at least not consciously, but after a time she felt something in her senses quicken, and once more she walked to the window and looked out.

  The crowd below seemed greatly excited, and they were gathered around the main gate. She wrestled a moment with the heavy casement window, then threw the window open. It was late in the afternoon, to her surprise, and the sun, pale now and moving fast, dropped to the western horizon. The air was frigid. The commotion rose on the air, the barking of dogs, the shouts of servants and horsemen, the clatter of horses’ hooves on the ancient cobblestones. It was the usual courtyard scene, at a great fete, which precedes the arrival of a dignitary or a high official. It must be Lord North, she thought, remembering that her father had spoken of the prime minister’s expected attendance. And no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the trumpeters at the main gate blasted out in welcoming fanfare, and a small, elegant black hansom rolled on polished wheels into the courtyard, drawn by two of the whitest stallions Selena had ever seen. A cheer went up, and from the castle, grooms and footmen scurried out to serve the newcomers.

  Selena leaned forward a little more, hoping to see. Even if Lord North was British, his arrival was an occasion, and in the excitement she forgot her own problems for a moment. The small buggy, driven by a liveried coachman, pulled directly through the crowd and stopped before the main steps. People were trying to peer inside the hansom, others were applauding, although, since most of them were Scottish, she could not quite understand their enthusiasm. And then, as she watched, her face assumed an expression that would have been one of utter pain and loss had her mind not been numbed by what she saw. From the carriage, as the shouting and applause increased, emerged the long, graceful body of Sir Royce Campbell, attired in the plaids of his clan. But more! He turned and reached into the cab and when he brought his arm out again it was to help out the most beautiful woman Selena MacPherson—and maybe God—had ever seen.

  Her heart plummeted, and all dreams fell away. Below, to the accompaniment of cheers and shouted greetings, Royce and the woman had entered the castle. What to do? Was that raven-haired beauty his wife? No, that couldn’t be, could it? Might not it be his sister? Yes, yes, it must be! That same dark hair! Certainly, then, she must be his sister!

  But Selena had to know. Donning her traveling cape against the chill of the cold stone corridors, and pulling the hood forward so that it would be difficult for anyone to recognize her, she left her chamber and made her way down into the main hall. Young women of her own age were there, gossiping with one another, flirting with the eager sons of lords—exactly as she had done every year until now. This year was different.

  Making her way through the crowd, she could not help but overhear the talk.

  “Aye, an’ did ye see the wench wi’ Sir Royce?” asked a red-coated butler, with the kind of leer that reminded Selena of the peasants at home in Berwick Province. “She’s the kind be born to make a good night fer any man.”

  “Aye,” agreed his fellow worshiper. “’Tis it his wife, d’ ye ken?”

  “Nay, I do na. They’re a’sayin’ he brung the frail wi’ ’im when ’e come back from the sea. All I ken is that they’re lodgin’ in the prince’s chambers o’erlookin’ Edinburgh ’arbor.”

  Selena had found out what she had to know. If Royce was in that suite, he would be at the opposite end of the castle, and on the top story. Wrapping her cloak tightly around her, she started the long trek through the dim corridors of the ancient fortress. Torches burned in holders on the stone walls, giving off small light and no heat. Now and then another heavily clothed person approached her out of the gloom, nodded or spoke softly in greeting. Then she climbed several flights of stairs and reached a section of the castle that was being used to house guests during these holidays. Blazes flared and exploded in great hearths, and servants flashed everywhere, bearing food, hot wine, and crystal decanters of smoky whiskey. She shook off her hood and let her lovingly-cared-for tresses spill out. She lifted her chin. It was easy to see she belonged with these people, even if the MacPherson quarters were a little way down the wing.

  “The Campbell suite, please?” she demanded of an attendant, scarcely slowing her pace.

  “It’s right there, milady, next the balcony doors…”

  Balcony, she thought, remembering.

  “…but ’e’s just arrived an’s left no word of callers.”

  Whatever else he said didn’t matter. Selena’s brain was working furiously. She would enter, she would say—very coolly—“Sir Royce, I saw you arrive and I…” And I what, Selena? “And I…” Ah! Yes! “And I bring my father’s greetings.” That was what he had spoken of last year at the ball! Her father! Perhaps it had been his own ruse to meet her without formal introduction. And now she would use it herself, to see him.“…I bring you my father’s greetings and his invitation to our chamber for wine before the banquet. I do hope y
ou will find it possible to attend.” Then there was the matter of the black-haired beauty. Would she be there in the room with him? Selena walked on toward the door of Campbell’s suite, thinking. Yes, she would be there. So Selena would then look at her, quite pleasantly, and add: “And of course the lady is invited, too.”

  And to her questioning look, Royce Campbell would explain. “Please, allow me to introduce my sister. Selena, what a delight to see you again!”

  …what a delight to see you again what a delight to see you again…

  Her hand was on the door handle and she heard the click of the mechanism as she depressed it, and she felt the door move as she pushed it, her eyes adjusting to the odd dimness in the room, Sir Royce, I saw you arrive and, but that was because the heavy draperies were drawn. Why? I saw you arrive and…

  “Yes? What is it?” snapped a harsh male voice.

  Selena, startled, spun around, her eyes adjusting to the gloom now. There, in the canopied bed next to the fireplace, was Royce Campbell. He was sitting upright, the bedclothes had slipped away, and above the powerful chest and shoulders was his dark, chiseled face, out of which his eyes blazed at her. Then the eyes softened, almost with amusement, as he recognized her. He laughed.

  Selena stood, incapable of movement, not looking at him now but at the woman in bed with him. She lay on her side next to Royce, black hair fanned out on the satin pillow cover, her soft white shoulder and upper arm exposed, but her arm beneath the bedclothes obviously caressing her partner.

  “Selena!” Royce said, not at all discomfited, even enjoying the situation. “What brings you here?”

  But Selena did not look at him, only heard him. She saw in the other woman’s eyes a sudden, haughty, totally feminine knowledge. And contempt. So you came for this man, you silly little girl, said the woman wordlessly. But, as you see, he’s mine.

  You fool, the woman added, with just the suggestion of a smile, moving her head a trifle closer to Sir Royce.

  You fool, Selena echoed. Who could deny it?

  “Really, Selena, I’m quite glad to see you, but don’t you think we might meet a bit later?” Royce suggested, quite pleasantly.

  Then she had turned and she was running for the door, and then she was out in the cold corridor once again, with the sound of the door slamming behind her, and the laughter behind her, too: Royce Campbell’s, deep and good-humored, and the woman’s, mocking and victorious.

  Selena barely remembered walking back to her own room, and when she got there much more trouble awaited.

  “I think we’re being set up for some kind of mass arrest,” Brian was saying in his blunt way as she entered. “Oh, Selena…”

  Lord Seamus was seated at a table, uncharacteristically slouched, head in hands. He looked up.

  “Selena! Where’ve you been? We were worried.”

  “I…I took some air.” Quickly, she changed the subject. “What’s this about arrest?”

  The conversation in the coach returned to her. The face of Darius McGrover. These threatening thoughts muted for a moment the savage pain of Royce Campbell’s rejection and the greater pain of her own stupidity and humiliation. Never again. It would have never happened if she’d remained true to her duty.

  “Alan McTavish died on the wheel in Dundee Castle,” Father said quietly, his eyes slitted with worry. ‘I learned it from Will Teviot, the Rob Roys’ captain in Ross and Cromarty Province. Now we must reckon with the worst. If he died too late, poor devil, and if he was made to talk, we may have been invited here for the last time. ’Tis no coincidence that Lord North himself is here. Perhaps he’s come to see the capture.”

  Brian cursed, and spat into the fireplace. Selena stifled a gasp. Of all the horrors to survive the Middle Ages, the wheel was one of the worst, the most odious. It was an instrument that would permit an interrogator like Darius McGrover to break, slowly and deliberately, every bone in a person’s body, one by one. Positioned in tight wooden grooves, the bones would be crushed by heavy metal wheels crashing from above.

  “All right,” Brian said. “Now it’s time, is it not? If they try anything while we’re in Edinburgh, I say let’s strike! Strike fast and strike hard! That’s the only way.”

  “Yes,” Lord Seamus said without enthusiasm, “and kill ourselves straightaway in the bargain. I choose not to. In the first place, we must wait. The British hold all the cards. We do not know if McTavish talked. If we act without such knowledge, we may rashly and needlessly reveal ourselves.”

  “But if we do not act—” Brian interrupted.

  “Let’s just go home!” Selena declared. “Enough of this. We’ll go home where it’s safe, and…”

  And I won’t have to face Royce Campbell and that woman at the ball!

  “We can’t do that either,” her father said sadly. “We must attend the banquet tonight and give no sign that anything’s amiss.”

  “But what if they do indeed try to take us?”

  He shrugged. Selena had never seen her father so dispirited or tired. She went over to him and put her arms around him, as he had done to her, so many times, in moments of trial or disappointment. She recognized that she herself was in danger, but somehow that did not seem as immediate or as important as his grimness.

  Lord Seamus was silent for a long time, then he spoke: “There are certain plans we might try,” he said. “They will be difficult and there is no guarantee that they will succeed. And I will have to deal with the devil if we are to attempt them at all.”

  There was a long silence in the room. Finally, he put his hand on Selena’s arm and gently freed himself from her embrace. “I must go now, child, and see to some things.”

  “No, stay. There’s no need. Let’s be off from here.”

  He shook his head gravely and tried to smile.

  “No, we all have things to do, now. Brian, go and take care of yours.”

  Brian threw on his cape and left. Lord Seamus made ready to follow.

  “What about me?” cried Selena. “I want to help, too. Tell me what to do.”

  He turned at the door and looked at her. “I thought you already knew. Sean Bloodwell will be by shortly. And,” he added, with an implication that Selena did not then understand, “if we can save you for him, the MacPhersons might not all be lost.”

  All be lost? she asked, after he’d disappeared. The MacPhersons? Never! The long history of the clan swept out of the past then, and bathed her in its solace. Other women had felt as she did now, felt torn between duty and love, felt loss and pain, yet beyond all these griefs, they had remained members of a family, instruments of a cause, in spite of their personal desires, or the apparent tyranny of fate. You could choose neither your ancestors nor your past, and your future was less than flexible because of both. Yet, Selena knew, other women had borne their burdens, and they reached out to her now from legend and story, spoke to her now even from the marble vaults below the wall at Coldstream Castle. They had endured. They had kept the faith, for better or worse. The past belonged to them, but served as a guide to her. The present was hers, and the future, too, if she were but wise.

  But treason? Escape? Arrest?

  And escape to where? Leave Scotland? Scotland was all Selena knew, and she loved it as she loved Coldstream. She loved not a little her position as a MacPherson, and she loved, too, the rolling moors, sere and dour in fall, bursting with flowers and heather in spring. Farther north, she loved the deep, mysterious lochs, Lomond and Rannoch and Ness, which they saw in summer on the way to the hunting lodge at Mount Foinaven. Dear to her heart as well, brooding there, were the strange, magnificent mounds of the Highlands, the rustle of kilt and caftan, the high and mournful music of the pipes. But dearest of all was Coldstream, with its old stone walls, its mazed and ivied gardens, its twenty-two fireplaces ablaze on a winter’s eve.

  Leave all that? Leave Scotland? Never! She would do what had to be done. She would marry Sean Bloodwell right away. I’ll tell Father at dinner. She dressed numbl
y, thinking of nothing, and then Sean arrived to escort her to the banquet.

  According to protocol, the order of entrance to the banquet hall and the seating positions at the long rows of candlelit tables were determined by rank. Thus, most of the tables were already filled, the lower-ranking guests positioned, when the trumpeteers sounded the arrival of the MacPhersons and Sean Bloodwell (whose imminent betrothal to one of the nobility accorded him this honor) entered the hall. Selena was on her father’s arm, Brian and Sean trailing, as they were shown to their table. Around them the vast hall was a blazing blur of red-coated waiters, fine-gowned women, and vigorous men, and from the high stone walls fell the draped white, red, and blue of the Union Jack, symbol at once of Empire and Act of Union. Here and there around the hall, as Lord Seamus MacPherson entered, there was applause, but he remained sober and weary-looking. They were seated, and the clapping faded.

  “So I expect there’s to be no trouble then?” whispered Brian, his red hair flashing and blue eyes gay, as if a burden had been lifted.

  “Ne’er fool yourself with the cheers of the crowd. Did you not see McGrover gloating over near the door?”

  They looked, but the spot was vacant now. Then the next guests approached the trumpeters, and Selena steeled herself for the worst.

  “Lord Royce Campbell,” came the cry. “And Lady Veronica Blakemore.”

  Not married! Well, it made no difference now. She stayed composed, and surreptitious glances at Sean, Brian, and her father, showed that none of them knew of her idiotic afternoon foray. Idiotic, she told herself. Yet, mockingly, a part of herself rejoiced that this Blakemore was only a lover…

  “The Blakemores are from Jamaica, in the West Indies,” Sean was explaining. “I’ve bought cotton from their plantations, much less difficult to produce than wool.”

  Selena watched Royce and Veronica. The rugged man, back from the far reaches of earth, a rider of the high seas. Rider of fine women, too. Her face was white and as icy cold as her eyes. Black hair, like raven’s wings, fell upon her soft shoulders, and her rouged, swelling breasts were bare to the tiniest rose crescent of nipple at the bodice of her gown. Now she glanced over toward Selena, and she smiled, a horizontal tightening of lips that mocked. Then, as if to accentuate her conquest, she reached out and touched Royce Campbell’s arm. He immediately leaned toward her, and she said something in his ear. She laughed. He smiled. She looked once again at Selena, who could not help but feel the rush of blood into her face, remembering this afternoon, remembering the balcony last Christmas, imagining how many times and in what delicious embraces Royce had taken his pleasure with this haughty Blakemore. She summoned a last effort of will and stared directly at Royce, her head high, and his cold ironic eyes came over to her. But, no! Not to her. He looked at her father, and then nodded, and his glance drifted elsewhere.