Fires of Delight (50 page)
Authors: Vanessa Royall
She began to run.
She fell.
Before she had a chance to get to her feet, he was standing over her, gasping and wheezing, breathing into his handkerchief. The thick, coal-laden fog was afflicting his diseased lungs.
He lunged. She rolled to one side. He fell down on the cobblestones beside her, but caught hold of her ankle. She tried to rise, but he pulled her back down. The dagger hissed, missed, and
struck stone. She heard the snap of the blade. He was choking for breath. Then his great weight was upon her. She felt his monstrous hands, so capable of creating beauty, close around her throat. Cologne filled her nostrils. Her ears buzzed. She could see nothing but his dark shape above her. The light in her brain faded, red, dull red, flickering red and black. His breath came in great, intermittent snorts, like that of a dying bull…
And then his fingers loosened. His body shuddered, shuddered again, and then he lay still and silent on top of her.
Clay Oakley’s lungs had drawn their last agonized gulp of air. The fog, the lovely, gorgeous fog, had killed him.
Great London itself had saved Selena.
She found the main street and entered through the front door of the hotel. The thug was still on guard at the bottom of the stairs. He seemed alarmed to see her.
“Your master is dead,” she told him calmly. “I know he escaped from the Tower. Lord Bloodwell is my friend. I don’t think I need tell you more.”
The man swallowed once, twice, slipped through the rear exit and disappeared into the night.
Royce returned to find her naked in bed, sipping a tumbler of brandy.
“Strangest thing,” he said, undressing. “Lord Bloodwell never sent for me.”
“Oh?” she said. She saw that he was smiling.
“No,” he said, slipping into bed beside her, removing the glass from her hand and taking a long swallow of the strong liquor. “No, he didn’t, but he said he’d intended to do so in the morning. He was able to complete the canvass.”
Selena scarcely dared to breathe. “And?” she managed. “And?”
“Selena, you will always have me,” said Royce, taking her into his arms. He kissed her at the place where her shoulder met her neck, brushing away her long, golden hair. His fingers found the living pearl of all sensation.
“Oh, Royce!” she cried. If this were all there was, still it would be enough.
“You will always have me,” he whispered huskily, “and now you have Coldstream too.”
Home
They set out on horseback the next morning, just the two of them traveling alone. It was a journey of three hundred miles, but Selena had never made a happier nor an easier trek. Sometimes they managed twenty miles a day, sometimes less than ten, but it didn’t matter because time no longer mattered. Each mile brought Selena nearer to the home she’d left so long ago, which she’d held close to her heart ever since, in good times and bad.
North through Hertford they rode, and Bedford and Hunt, lodging at night to make love in inns along the way. Pressing on through Lincoln and East Riding, North Riding and Durham, Selena could not but remember the thrilling returning journeys of her youth, when the people of Coldstream would welcome her father with great bonfires burning on the hills. Ah, that had been wonderful, but this was better still, to return with Royce.
And at last they were almost there, riding easily across the fields of Northumberland, hard by the sea. Darkness fell when they were perhaps ten miles from their goal.
“Shall we stop for the night?” Royce asked.
“No.”
“That is what I thought you’d say.”
There was a half-moon in the sky. Their way was well-lighted. Soon Selena recognized landmarks along the roadway, certain trees, the village of Wooler, and knew that the border was near.
She began to cry when they crossed into Scotland, and in her tears was a trace of every emotion she’d ever experienced, for her great journey was almost over, yet those souls who had been part of her life throughout her years of exile were not there to share the joy of homecoming.
Royce understood and said nothing. Selena was still weeping softly as they climbed the last rocky rise and saw it there in the
distant hills: Coldstream, ancient, impregnable, eternal, and Scotland lying beyond, patient and mysterious and wise.
“I have come back!” she cried aloud.
And she was certain that, with her heart, she could hear her homeland whisper “Welcome” in reply.
And then in the distance, near and far, there rose a strangely familiar sound. The horses nickered and danced, pressing their ears back against their sleek heads.
Royce and Selena looked at each other.
“What is it?” he asked, alert for danger or surprise.
“I know,” said Selena, as her heart remembered.
Torches flared upon the hills then, and faint fires blossomed like flowers in the night sky. Then the dry wood caught, and flames—six, seven, eight, nine of them—leapt crackling and roaring toward the heavens.
“Somehow they knew,” Royce said softly. “Somehow they know.”
“The hearth knows its own,” replied Selena, through glorious tears. “Let us go.”
She was home, but it was not until she rode beneath the great gate, with
Anno Domini 1152
engraved upon the stone, that she really was at home. The courtyard was filled with people, their voices lifted in an incessant, soul-stirring roar of greeting and joy. Royce dismounted and helped Selena down from her horse. They stood there in the courtyard, holding each other. The people cheered and cheered. They could not stop cheering.
“Everything is restored now, darling,” said Royce, kissing her. “The past is laid to rest, is it not?”
She looked up into his eyes. “Except for one thing,” she said.
“And what is that?”
She hesitated. The matter seemed silly, especially at a time like this, but something in her woman’s heart wanted to set it to rest.
“Were you truly…were you truly Marie Antoinette’s favorite?”
The question caught him off guard, but he recovered, smiling. “Darling, as I told you once before, a lady wouldn’t ask such a question, and a gentleman wouldn’t answer it.”
“I see.”
“But,” he added, with a conspiratorial wink, “you’re not and I’m not, so the answer is no.”
Selena laughed and lifted her arms toward the towering, torchlit walls of Coldstream.
“Home,” she said, remembering the words of Jean Beaumain.
It was the best word in the world.
Next to love.
A love that burns more fierce than any holy flame threatens to engulf Spain in this scintillating historical romance.
Proud as her aristocratic upbringing, bold as the ancient gypsy blood that ran in her veins, the beautiful, golden-haired Maria saw her family burned at the Inquisitor's stake, watched her young lover, the adventurous Rafael de Alagon, forced into the priesthood.
Desperate, and bound by a forbidden love, she defied the Grand Inquisitor himself, fled across Spain with the gypsy king, was enslaved by the Blue Sultan, and escaped to entreat Queen Isabella's favor at the dazzling Spanish court.
But through all of her travels, Maria is bound to Rafael by a love more unshakeable than faith, that burns hotter than the fires of the Inquisition.
From a master of historical romance comes a sweeping tale of the American frontier, and a love that could not be, but also could not be stopped…
After losing her parents to ruthless soldiers, Gyva is cruelly banished from her tribe, forced to live as an exile in the foreign world of white men. But she will return to lead her people, for pride and for love.
Firebrand, the legendary Chickasaw chief, has waged war against the white settlers who flood his people’s land and force them westward on what has become called The Trail of Tears. He has sworn to defend his people and their land to the death, sworn with the power of his love for Gyva that he will push back the invaders, and forge a brave new dream with his one true love.
In ancient Scotland, a searing love triangle changes the course of three turbulent lives.
Selena MacPherson is the proud princess of Coldstream Castle. She's never met a man who doesn't desire her, but she has yet to meet the man whose desire she welcomes...
Royce Cambell is the fabled son of a ruthless Highland clan. He has fleets and warriors ready to do his bidding. His frightening legends glitter about him like a cloak. He is promised to another, yet when he meets Selena at an Edinburgh ball, there is no denying the burning promise of ecstasy between them. It is across raging seas that the destiny of that promise has its chance to be fulfilled…
Beyond the majestic Rockies lay the promise of land, the promise of love.
Beautiful Emmalee Alder was escaping a Cincinnati orphanage when a black-eyed rogue spirited her aboard a Missouri-bound riverboat. Blind to Garn Lander's true passion, she does what she must to escape his bold advances; she sells herself into servitude to a wagon train heading West.
Obsessed by a proud dream of independence, swept-up in the fever of land rush, she has yet to learn that claiming land was only half the battle. There is farming, ranching, and bone-deep toil. And there is Garn, the man who may just help her grasp her golden future.
As America rises to become a great nation, one woman unravels the mystery that is her past, and rediscovers a love that could change her life forever.
Elizabeth Rolfson had been kidnapped and carried across the seas, yet for as long as she could remember, she knew that her destiny lay in America. She arrived in Chicago in 1885, the stunning heiress to a vast empire.
As men of daring pressed westward towards America, Elizabeth was swept into the savage struggle. Driven to learn the secret of her past, to find the one man who could still the restless yearnings of her heart, she would stand alone against the mighty to claim her proud birthright and grasp a dream of undying love.
On the windswept frontiers of a new America, one woman looks westward for her future, and inward for her true love.
Kristin Arnesdatter had hair was like the summer sun. Her eyes reflected the clear blue Norwegian skies. Her beauty was a blessing and a curse. She would be Gustav Rolfson's reluctant bride, despite her heart being forever bound to Eric Starbane.
Eric had fled his homeland with a price on his head and vengeance in his heart. He would make his way in an alien land torn by civil war, would win honor and prepare for greater battles, if it only meant reclaiming his beloved's heart.
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