Devil's Fire

Devil's Fire

MELISSA MACNEAL

Rover Books

New York

www.RoverBooks.com

This book is a work of fiction.
In real life, make sure you practice safe sex.

This book is made available in electronic form by permission of VirginBooks by RoverBooks.
www.RoverBooks.com

First published in 2000 by
Black Lace
Thames Wharf Studios
Rainville Road
London W6 9HA

Copyright © Melissa MacNeal 2000

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 0-7952-0217-2
DOI 10.1335/0795202172

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim any responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

T
he back door was bracketed by overgrown bushes that clittered in the wind, making me pause as I reached for the knocker.
MOUNT CALVARY
, said the weathered brass plaque.
HYDE A. FORTUNE, MORTICIAN.

Although the words were prettily engraved, they had the finality of a tombstone inscription. I used to laugh about the name Hyde A. Fortune, considering he sold burial plots and coffins. But on this cold January morning I couldn’t afford to mock him: should I entrust my future to this sandy-haired rogue with eyes the colour of cinnamon sticks? Would I regret discussing the employment he’d mentioned, now that I truly needed it?

Most people avoid undertakers, because their arcane trade is a necessary evil, associated with grief. My first dealings with Mr Fortune came seven years ago, when Mama died, and we met again last month when we buried my father. Our acquaintance was as pleasant as I could expect under such circumstances, yet oddly unsettling: as we stood among the mourners at Papa’s grave-side, praying, Hyde’s hand slithered down my back to fondle my bottom. It sent a streak of white heat through me, a delicious wickedness that settled between my legs and got rekindled every time I thought of him.

Rumour had it Hyde kept his mother locked away in a room of this rambling mansion, where he lived on the top two floors. But that couldn’t be true: I’d read Madeleine Fortune’s obituary years ago, and I walked past her headstone each time I visited my parents’ graves.

And my father, the Reverend Jeremiah Michaels, had announced his dislike of Mr Fortune early on, saying Hyde couldn’t be trusted with the deceased’s valuables — that he replaced their gemstones with paste. Worse, however, Papa believed our local undertaker took unspeakable liberties with the dead of either sex.

So, my father made me promise his burial would be handled by the mortician in Manitou Springs. However, a series of events set in motion by his own greed had prevented me from carrying out his final request.

It was Hyde Fortune who brought Papa’s body up from the chasm where he’d thrown himself. And he’d waived his fee when we learned my inheritance — a topic Papa discussed constantly as his mental condition declined — was a large donation he’d stashed beneath his mattress, instead of depositing it in the church’s bank account. I returned this money when his misdeed was discovered, which left me nothing to live on.

So Mr Fortune’s services were all I could afford. And as I stood at his private entrance, trembling with trepidation and the cold, I wondered if his reference to a possible position was merely a way to lure me into his clutches, now that I had nowhere else to go.

I despised being destitute. I despised being at any man’s mercy.

Yet the handsome mortician and his dubious reputation fascinated me. His magnetic eyes and mesmerising voice made promises I didn’t dare keep — but which I longed to explore, anyway. A woman past her twentieth birthday, without marital prospects or money, can’t allow such opportunities to pass her by.

With my first nervous clatter of the brass knocker, his office door swung open. I felt like the heroine of a Gothic novel, my inner voice screaming that I entered this office at my own peril. But inside, a cheerful fire crackled and the ambiance of polished woodwork and leather drew me in. After spending a dismal night at the Home for the Friendless, I craved the warmth and sense of solidity this place offered. As I stepped in out of the wind, brushing the snow from my cloak, I saw a snifter half-filled with brandy beside the open ledger on his desk. Mr Fortune would soon return from whatever errand had called him away.

Raucous female laughter came from the next room, followed by shrieks of ecstasy. I blinked. Fortune displayed his coffins in that parlour, yet the frantic calling of his name suggested anything but a grieving — or deceased — client.

My first impulse was to leave, before I stumbled into a very embarrassing situation. Yet my curiosity nipped at me like a pup. I tiptoed to the parlour door, my nerves crackling with an audacity I didn’t know I had.

Hyde Fortune was humping someone in a glossy walnut coffin. From this angle, I could only see her stockinged legs flailing on either side of his very active backside. His white shirt-tails fluttered wildly around his arse — and what a fine arse he had, sculpted with muscles that would make a Greek god envious! Up and down he pumped, as the woman beneath him howled like a coyote bitch in heat. I was so riveted by this spectacle that only her final triumphant cry sent me skittering away from the door. But not before I caught sight of Hyde’s stiff, dripping cock as he pulled away from her.

My pulse raced as I clutched my crotch. I’d never seen such an act of abandon, nor felt such brazen desire. Just the fact that I’d thought of Fortune’s exposed parts in such vulgar terms shocked me, for I’d been taught to keep my thoughts tightly reined. Had this house and its occupant cast a spell? Or had walking in on such a provocative act sent me out of control?

I grabbed the snifter from Hyde’s desk, calming myself with brandy so I could act as though I’d seen nothing. But I wasn’t accustomed to alcohol. The first sip sent a sweet fire singing through my insides, and the sensations went straight to that already-aroused area between my legs. The second sip put a flush on my face, betraying my secret observations.

I was sipping again when Fortune walked in. His eyes nailed me — such a curious colour of topaz mixed with russet — and he stopped in the doorway. Then a sly grin overtook his face, the look of a fox entering his lair to find he’d cornered an unsuspecting morsel.

‘You’ve come to discuss that position I mentioned?’ he asked in a silky voice.

Fumbling with his goblet, I blurted, ‘If it’s the same position you had that other woman in, I’m not interested!’ This was a lie, but my upbringing forced me to be modest.

Realisation dawned on his face just as embarrassment reddened mine. Raking his hand through hair the colour of wild honey, Hyde glanced peevishly towards the parlour door.

‘Insidious bitch!’ he whispered. ‘Bought herself the most expensive coffin I carry. Then said if I didn’t supply other services each time she came to pay an instalment, she would publicly announce that I’d stiffed her by burying her husband in a false-bottomed box.’

‘There is such a thing?’

Hyde chuckled, again making sure the woman in question didn’t lurk behind the door. ‘There’s a recession on, and some of our finest families wish to keep up appearances as they bury loved ones, but they can’t afford it. So I devised an ornate model with a drop bottom, which the sexton and I take from the grave once the mourners have left.’

My eyes widened at this revelation.

‘And Delores Poppington requested this model, so she could put her money towards her own luxurious coffin and let poor Terrence rot in the ground. Disgusting woman! And I wanted to strangle her for throwing you out of the parsonage! Most un-Christian for a pillar of the church, and the wife of a departed deacon.’

Delores Poppington. Her name brought bile up my throat, because Terrence had discovered Papa’s mis-placement of that donated money. He resembled a plucked chicken with a nervous tic, and confronting my unbalanced father — then learning of his suicide a few days later — had put Mr Poppington in his grave, as well. Had Delores handled this matter privately, rather than announcing it during a Sunday service, we’d all have been better off.

‘Seems the Widow Poppington is recovering nicely from her loss,’ I muttered. ‘And we can guess where she got the money for that fine casket, can’t we?’

As though on cue, footsteps approached the office. Delores then poked her head in to say goodbye to her lover, who was young enough to be her son. She had straightened her clothing, but her broad-brimmed hat sat cockeyed, with a few curls of grey hair hanging askew above her ears. When I flashed her a defiant smile, her expression curdled. She left in a huff, the rapid tattoo of her heels echoing through the parlour.

At the slam of the front door, Hyde laughed uncontrollably. ‘Fine show, Miss Michaels!’ he crowed. ‘I always knew you were a trouper! I hope you’re proud of yourself!’

To celebrate, he reached towards his desk — and then discovered I’d sipped from his snifter, rather than pouring brandy into a fresh one. His mood changed like quicksilver. As he slowly approached me, his eyes fastened on mine, excitement surged through my entire body.

‘So you’ve shared my cup, Mary Grace?’ he murmured, slipping his fingers over mine. ‘I consider that a highly personal act. Far more intimate than the coupling you watched.’

The memory of his bared backside, his muscles bunching as he pumped, and then his impressive erection, had me nipping my lip. Hyde smiled, lifting the snifter to his mouth, holding my hand hostage. I wanted to lick the film of liquor from his lips and feel the roughness of his shaved skin as I kissed my way down to that knot where he swallowed. His breath fell warmly on my face, scented with brandy and desire.

‘I’ve dreamed of making love to you since we first met,’ he whispered. He closed his eyes, easing his face towards mine.

I backed away. ‘I was hardly more than a child! Had just turned —’

‘Thirteen, as I recall,’ he murmured. ‘And I was the undertaker’s apprentice — terribly embarrassed by it, but who else would hire me? I was the local whore’s illegitimate son, lusting after the preacher’s lovely red-haired daughter. Even then I wanted to be your friend, hoping your unsullied reputation — your angelic ways — would raise me to a level of acceptability. But mostly I wanted to yank down your drawers.’

When my mouth dropped open, he caught my head in his hand and kissed me deeply. This surprise, plus the effect of the brandy, made my head spin. What could I do but kiss him back? Never before had any man delivered such a compliment, nor had my sheltered ears been so eager to hear it, and my heart to believe. Hyde’s tongue led mine in a dance I’d never had the chance to learn, and I got so dizzy I had to grab him to remain standing.

A chuckle rumbled low in his throat while he continued his assault, teasing at me with his teeth, nipping the silk of my inner lips. Setting the snifter aside, he held me so tightly my breasts pressed against his midsection while I felt a hard ridge riding my lower belly. My legs were shaking, and the warmth that had pooled between them broke free to trickle down one thigh.

I gasped for air. ‘This is a sin! We mustn’t —’

‘No,’ he insisted, making me wriggle with the delight of his wet tongue inside my ear. ‘The sin was the way your father kept you home, forcing you to sacrifice your youth and your chances for a husband.’

‘But I was caring for Mama! We came to the Springs for her consumptive lungs!’

‘And everyone admired your devotion, Mary Grace. You were a loving daughter to the end,’ he murmured, pulling the pins from my upswept hair. ‘But it was pure selfishness on your father’s part to keep you home, locked away.’

‘I was only fourteen!’

‘And you grew up before your time by becoming your mother’s nurse,’ Hyde said savagely. His hands found my aching breasts, kneading them until I thought my nipples would poke through my threadbare dress. ‘Your father —’

‘Needed me after Mama died.’

‘— could have married any of the available ladies panting after him, Mary Grace. Lord knows he didn’t observe the same celibacy he required of you!’

I gasped, shoving him away. ‘How dare you insinuate that a man of God —’

‘Jeremiah Michaels was just that — a man,’ Fortune replied in an impassioned voice. ‘And, as a creature of God, he had needs just like the rest of us. How shallow of him, to sneak around at every opportunity while denying his daughter the right to bloom — keeping her home, enslaved by duty, under the guise of righteousness. Even if he hadn’t voiced his slanderous opinions of me, I would’ve considered him a hypocrite for the way he treated you, Mary Grace.’

While this outburst shocked me, Hyde Fortune had honed in on a resentment I’d kept hidden in the darkest recesses of my heart. I was only a girl when my mother took sick, and I tended her frail body out of the boundless love she had always shown me. I had learned religion from Papa’s pulpit, but I found my faith in Mama. Her death had devastated me. I recovered by keeping busy around the house, seeing to the needs of my grieving father.

But yes, he’d called upon plenty of women as part of his pastoral duty; women who smiled eagerly as they presented him with cakes they made or socks they knitted. Most of them were married, so everyone assumed their sympathy and gifts were given with honourable intent. I was too naïve to see their ulterior motives, or to suspect my father’s response. But Hyde had just told me what I’d been too sheltered to guess.

And his words rang sweetly in my lonely heart, telling me I was lovely and that he’d wanted me for years. And yes, I’d sacrificed the prime of my life out of a sense of duty rather than love. Jeremiah Michaels was a demanding man who set me upon an impossible pedestal, as an example of virtue and modesty. So by the time he took to liquor as an attempt at staying sane, I had no choice but to cover for him. I’d accepted this form of servitude as my fate, my life’s purpose as his daughter.

I sagged against the desk, absently rubbing my wrists as though bound by invisible chains.

Hyde sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve heaped even more sorrow and guilt on you. How can I make it up to you, dear lady?’

Dear lady, he called me. Although Mr Fortune was only five or six years older than I, his profession had rendered him worldly and sophisticated. He might’ve been born to a whore out of wedlock, but he’d carved himself a niche: death was the great equaliser, and as its gatekeeper, Hyde had attained a lucrative — if unenviable — position. No one really liked him, but everybody needed him in the end.

So when he called me a dear lady, he was, in effect, raising me to a higher level by association. And at that moment, I felt too wonderful for words, because I sensed he could help me find the life I’d been denied. I no longer had to be poor and beholden. I could be Mary Grace Michaels, a woman in my own right…maybe with my own means.