“I know.”
They kissed again, caught in wonder, having come together against all expectations. But the iridescent moment was already gone, flown like a glorious bird. And they both knew it. The future waited hard by the alley door.
“I had to see Hamilton that night,” Royce was telling her. “There was no other way to reach him. I needed funds for provisions, and he was at the Penrods’ to receive moneys. But for the risk I took, we might never have learned…”
“I knew!” she cried. “I saw the ship once. I knew you were alive.”
Royce said nothing for a moment, and when he spoke his voice contained both knowledge and sadness.
“And you did not attempt to reach me? You are not free to love me, are you?”
Selena wanted to avoid the pain of the situation. “I do love you,” she told him. “Of course I am free to love you.”
He was unconvinced. “Shall I return for you then? Will you come with me now? Tonight?”
“I…I cannot…” She faltered. And then she gathered her strength, against what loss and sorrow she could only guess, and told him of her marriage to Sean Bloodwell.
“Are you happy?” he asked, after a time.
Are you happy? The words reverberated in her mind. It was a simple question, but the emotions it evoked were as complicated as life itself. Yes, of course, she had been happy with Sean, protected and secure, but…But how can one answer a question about the mortal realm after one has just been blessed with a vision of heaven?
“Are you?” she asked him, unable to reply to his question.
“It doesn’t matter. I have things to do now. What I do at sea, for the country and for what until now was my memory of you, has been enough to fill my life. You gave me that kind of courage, that kind of knowledge. After I thought you lost forever, I decided, in remembrance of you, to believe in something as you always believed, with spirit and passion and total fire, whether a cause be won or lost.”
Selena was more touched than she could have expressed, just then. But he had said something that bothered her.
“That was my gift to you? That you should believe in lost causes?”
He laughed. “No. Rather that I should believe enough in a cause, a person, believe enough in something to fight for it, no holds barred, no quarter given, win or lose. That is the gift you left me, and there is no way to measure the worth of it. It is invaluable. When I realized what your secret was, what drove you…” He stopped, sensing something amiss. Her nervous silence had told him that something was not quite right.
“You and Sean are supporters of the cause of freedom, aren’t you? Surely you can’t be Tories, after all you’ve had to endure?”
“Sean is a loyalist,” she replied. “I…I do what I can. You must understand how difficult it is. I’ve…I’ve made promises.”
It felt as if he’d drawn away from her, although he hadn’t moved. A moment dropped into abyss. For the first time in her life, Selena felt false. It was as if she had misrepresented herself to someone whose admiration she sought above all else, and then, given a chance to redeem herself, she had to stand there silently. It was as if she were betraying him or betraying his idea of what she was. But that was not true. It was not that simple.
“How…how were you saved?” she asked quietly, still in his embrace.
He sighed. Miraculous salvation for both of them had brought them back together, but only to more difficulty and sadness. “After I put you ashore near the Canary Islands,” he said, “I set a fuse to the powder magazines aboard the Highlander. Then I passed out. When I regained consciousness, more dead than alive, I found that the wind had extinguished my fuse. So I lit it again and crawled out on deck to see the ocean and the sky one last time. Birds were circling when the magazine exploded. That’s all I remember. When I came to my senses again, I was in the water, holding on to a piece of the hull. I crawled upon it, and lay there waiting to die, half awash in the sea. Whether it was God or the sun, salt water or even my wolf, the plague boil burst. Or my body was so depleted that not even sickness could possibly feed on it. In time, I was picked up. I came to America. I survived.”
“I’m glad.” She clung to him. “I’m so glad.”
There might have been a sound somewhere outside. They stopped talking and listened. He’s different, Selena was thinking. His strength was greater than ever, but the recklessness was gone. He was still wild and driven, but the forces which drove him were subtly different. She hoped it was a part of what she had given him, what he called her gift to him.
“And you?” he asked.
Briefly, she told him what had happened since their parting at sea.
“You survived too.”
The darkness of the cellar swirled around them. Outside, over cobblestones, there was a sound. Horses or men? Or both? They could not tell.
“Our time is running out.”
She nodded, pressing her head to his chest, trying not to let the tears begin.
“Do you still think of Coldstream?”
“That’s why Sean is…that’s why we’re trying to stay out of political trouble. He wants a title. My very blood wants to feel those stones again. They belong to me. I feel the centuries they hold. But I’m afraid I’ve already jeopardized everything.”
The years had neither diminished his perceptiveness nor reduced his quick intelligence. “Selena, I understand. If I could help you with your burden, I would. You want Coldstream terribly, but you want a rebel victory, too. And, in your position, you can’t have both.”
He fell silent a moment, not as if he had stopped speaking, but rather to fashion his next words. They came. “Selena, I know how it feels. Because I also want what I cannot have.”
She dared not believe.
“You, Selena,” he said. “Nothing else will do. I must have you, and somehow, someday, I will.”
Oh, you can! You can! her heart cried out. Please. But she did not speak. There were men outside now, coming to take him to Long Island, then to the sea. They kissed again. She thought of Sean and her vows. She felt as if she were being untrue to both men.
“I don’t want you to leave,” she managed.
“Nor do I want to. But I have made my choices, and you have made yours. Some of them, at least. I regret but two things: that I did not appreciate you sooner for what you were, and…”
He stopped. Outside, on the street, voices of men could be heard.
“Yes?” Selena asked.
“…and I regret that I cannot help you now as once you helped me. I regret that, together, we cannot find some resolution for your dilemma. Come away with me,” he urged once more. “Or wait for me.”
Selena felt like sinking to the floor in sheer exhaustion. It was all so complicated. Now it was Royce whose vision and purpose were pure. She was the one with the reservations, the one who had to make the self-serving qualifications that previously she would have scorned. But he was right. She had made her decisions, and she would have to live with them until she decided that they were no longer valid.
On the street there were voices. Several men speaking low.
Royce prepared to depart. He kissed her softly on the forehead, eyes, mouth. He kissed her on the neck, as he had done long ago when they had possessed each other, bathed in holy fire. Then, before she could do anything about it, before she could even wrap her arms around him one more time, he had stepped away from her, into the darkness.
“Royce!” she cried, much too loudly.
“Quiet. Don’t let me jeopardize your life any more than I already have.”
He was leaving. No. Not this way. “Can’t we…can’t we be together sometime? At least once? There are things we must talk about, things we must say…”
Instantly, he was back with her again, holding her more tightly than she had ever been held, as if to press his very soul into hers, and to meld their souls forever. She felt her mind going, and the thin thread that was connected to reality began to come unravel
ed…
“Oh, dear God, Selena! If we would never have to part again…”
Far away, someone was knocking on a door.
She kissed him as she had kissed no one before, so desperately and so hard that she was not sure where her being ended and his began.
“But tell me…send word through Dick…if you need me. If you wish me to come for you…”
Oh, if I did that, she was thinking, if I did that, it would be forever.
“The day will come. I know the day will come.”
There was a knock on the door. Selena heard it, but at first it did not seem to matter. They were lost in an embrace. Her flesh was hungry for him. But her mind refused to die completely. There was Sean to think of, and Davina, and here she was, a married woman, holding the love of her life in her arms, but it could not be…
He was gone from her. “That’s at the front door?” There was alarm in his voice. “They shouldn’t…”
Something had gone wrong. A trap. The banging continued, and grew louder, at the front of the house. And now, above them, the cellar door slowly eased open. Friend or foe? Foe. The highly polished buttons on the uniform of a British soldier gave him away. He had a musket, held at port arms, across his chest. He was being very cautious; the door inched open.
“McGrover,” Royce murmured. “He’s come. Selena, kill him, next time you have the chance.”
With that, he leaped up the ladder, slammed his head full force into the vulnerable parts of the soldier with the weapon. She could see Royce dark against the lighter darkness of the rain-silver night. There was running, and a shout. More shouts, from down the alley. Weddington’s men, she hoped. Moaning, the soldier sat up, and called for help. Sean’s voice carried down to her as he opened the front door. He was angry. “What’s the meaning of this pounding?” he demanded. “Stop it! Don’t you know it’s the middle of the night…”
His voice ceased. Selena knew he had recognized McGrover. She started up the stairs. Her body shuddered. Her heart pounded, wild for a thousand reasons. McGrover was telling Sean something. Selena could not hear the words, only the oily insinuations thick on his broken tongue. She reached the top of the steps and walked through the kitchen, moving to confront what awaited her at the door. It seemed the natural thing to do. She did not have the time, then, to recapitulate her communion with Royce. But already she had begun to change. She was changed. The realization came to her with a shock of surprise. She felt different, faintly exhilarated, even as she saw Sean, in his robe, facing her old nemesis, the bloody, implacable monster in his tricornered hat, with his cape and that absurd ear.
Selena strode to the door, lifted her chin high. Her body was erect, proud. There was fire in her eyes. After the doubts, the hesitations, the vague semi-deceptions of so long, things were beginning to change. The fiber of her soul thrilled to a secret knowledge. She locked her eyes on McGrover’s. He saw what was in them. So did the gaggle of security men, standing around him on the front steps.
Sean glanced at her, then looked again. What he saw took him back to a time in Scotland, a time before these times of danger and exile. They all saw courage, raw defiance.
Selena MacPherson Bloodwell was no longer afraid.
The Bold Must Decide
Selena could read the demon’s face. He had come to the house, secure in the knowledge that, this time, at last, he had Selena where he wanted her. And Bloodwell, too, for good measure. What better way to convince Lord Ludford to give him carte blanche where the traitorous rebels were concerned?
But now, seeing her, he was not quite so secure. Still, he pressed on. Pretending to ignore her, he spoke to Sean.
“Sir, we have reason to believe that a rebel sea captain is being harbored here at your residence. As you are well aware, we require no warrant. Stand aside, please.”
Sean did not move, more because of surprise than resistance.
“A rebel sea captain?”
“His name is Royce Campbell,” McGrover added helpfully, with a smirk in Selena’s direction.
Now Sean looked at Selena, recalled that she had not been in bed when he’d awakened to the pounding on the door. He was just about to speak when the soldier who’d been assigned to guard the cellar door came limping around the corner, holding his genitals with one hand and his musket with the other.
“Howard!” McGrover demanded. “What happened?”
“He…he got away. Came ramming up at me out of the cellar, and…” he winced in pain “…got away.”
McGrover swore. “Take that soldier into custody,” he ordered his men. Immediately three of them sprang at Howard, the hapless incompetent who’d let the quarry get away. “Take him back to the fort. Give him a thousand lashes—don’t spare your arms—and if he lives through that, hang him here on Bowling Green as an example to these rich fence-straddlers. They’ll learn where their loyalty belongs.”
He glared at Sean, who returned him a look of revulsion.
“I don’t believe there’s anyone such as you describe in my house.”
More than anything else, McGrover’s obvious cruelty and high-handedness had made an impression on him. Nonetheless, he glanced uneasily at Selena.
“There may have been someone,” she told McGrover coolly. “Something awakened me, and I went downstairs. I was just about to hold a candle into the cellar when your soldier opened the door. I saw a man leaving our house. He knocked the soldier down. It was not Private Howard’s fault.”
Sean was looking at her closely. She held her ground. McGrover waved away her explanation. “Howard can writhe and whine and scream just like all the rest, and I need an example. You two might serve very well, also.” He made a forward movement, as if to step into the house. Sean stood firm. Selena kept her eyes on McGrover and smiled.
The effect was broken by Traudl. Her short blond hair was half in curlers, and she came blithering down to the front door, worried to distraction by all that was on her simple mind.
“Oh, Mister Sean—ma’am—I don’t know if I should tell ye. I’ve been puzzling it, but I just saw…”
She saw McGrover there in the lamplight, and her jaw dropped down to her rounded bosom.
“What did you see?” snapped McGrover.
Traudl looked from Sean to Selena to the floor.
“Nothin’,” she said. “It must’ve been a dream.”
Heartened, McGrover gave a nod, and, as a body, he and his men surged into the house. Sean slugged one of them, who dropped to his knees. Three men grabbed Sean. Two held Selena. She bit one of them in the hand. Traudl started to scream. A rough soldier’s paw cut her off.
“Do you have any idea whose house it is you invade?” Sean demanded. “In the morning, Lord Ludford will hear of this. I’m a loyal subject, and…”
“Aye, that ye be,” drawled McGrover, in a broad, mocking imitation of the Scottish brogue. “But this be no patriot’s ’ouse, ye know. Rather, t’d seem t’ me a viper’s nest.”
Brusquely, he ordered soldiers upstairs, to pen the rest of the servants in their rooms.
“The chubby wench knows something,” he snapped to his security men. “Get her in the cellar, and these two as well.” He pointed to Sean and Selena. “They might feel like telling us a few things, when they see how I make love.”
Sean struggled, but he was held too fast. Selena had no chance, gripped from behind by a strong soldier who had her arms in a painful grasp. When she moved, he put on the pressure. Pain. She did not move.
In a minute, they were in the cellar. Men brought down a couple of lamps. It was quite dark, but the lamps were of sufficient strength to show McGrover, smiling as he ripped away Traudl’s robe and nightdress, revealing her soft, pale body.
“Aha! I have a feeling you don’t care too much for pain, my dear.”
Poor Traudl, choking with fear, let her wild eyes plead with McGrover, implore Sean and Selena for help.
“Stop this at once!” Sean ordered, struggling one last time.
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McGrover stepped over and brought the butt of his pistol down on Sean’s head. He dropped to the floor, unconscious. Selena screamed.
“Now, what did you see?” McGrover demanded of Traudl.
She was trying to say what—or who—it had been, but she was too terrified to shape the words on her tongue. Grinning, McGrover stepped over her naked body. “Part her legs,” he ordered the men who held her. Then he crouched down and gripped the long-barreled pistol.
“I’m sure you like it hard,” he said softly, “but I don’t think you’ve ever had it this…”
He said no more. Out of cellar shadows sprang at least a half-dozen men, all of them in black masks. Quickly, brutally, silently, they fell upon McGrover and his men. A long knife slashed into the guts of one of the British and drove powerfully upward, gutting him from groin to breastbone. The sight of gushing blood and entrails, after everything else, proved too much for Traudl. She succumbed in a faint. Not one of the hooded men so much as spoke, as the remaining two guards fell to club and knife. Selena felt herself yanked free of her tormentor, and saw the heavy hickory that split his skull in half before her eyes. Then it was McGrover’s turn. The pistol had been knocked from his hand at the beginning of the battle, and then he had been grappled to the ground by the biggest of the hooded figures. Royce, she thought. But it couldn’t be. No time to think. The hooded figure atop McGrover rammed his forearm across the monster’s throat. His dagger cut free McGrover’s clothing, exposing his manhood. The other hooded men, jobs done, gathered around, except for the one who bent to tend to Sean.
“Should be all right,” he muttered. “Now, hurry.”
The man—could it be Royce?—kept his arm on McGrover, whose bulging eyes remained defiant, unyielding, even as his body gulped for air. With his dagger, he gestured to McGrover’s private parts, somewhat misshapen and now shrinking fast. A flick of the wrist, tossing the dagger in the air, catching it by the blade. He handed Selena the hilt of it.
Flames of Desire Page 55
