Fires of Delight (21 page)

“Selena…” Jean gasped, lying beside her and putting his lips to her flushed breasts. “Selena, that was so good.”

She could not answer for a moment. Jean was right. She felt shaken and limp and…

Guilty. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she murmured.

He was silent for a moment, then laughed softly.

“I didn’t think that I was the only one involved,” he said.

She had to smile. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted, patting down his hair, curled and damp from passion. “It’s just—”

“Still thinking of Royce Campbell, are you?” he guessed, without anger. “Forget him. If he’d desired to find you, he’d have done so by now—”

Selena could not tell him of Rafael’s conversation with Royce.

“—but he hasn’t, so you’re mine. I am so rich now that the world can be ours. Let’s belong to each other. Let’s start right now.”

He reached down to pleasure her. She was trying, unsuccessfully, to writhe away when a soft rap sounded at the door.

Jean may not have heard it. At any rate, he did not bother to move. Selena hurriedly drew a sheet over them. Hidden Harbor was a place filled with servants and it was not at all unusual—indeed, it was accepted—for the staff to move about freely in household duties. Before Selena could call out, asking who had knocked, the door opened and the little houseboy, Campanale, stood there with a silver tray balanced on the flat of one hand. On the tray were a pitcher and two tall glasses.

“I’m so sorry…” he said, nonplussed, as he saw the two of them in bed.

“It’s all right,” Jean reassured him, smiling the lazy smile of a man who has just been well-satisfied and looks forward to being satisfied again. “What have you there? Bring it in and set it on the table.”

“Rum punch,” replied the boy, averting his eyes as he skirted the bed and put the tray on the table.

“What have you brought?” asked Selena.

“Why, it’s the refreshment you ordered, ma’am.”

Martha Marguerite had instructed him that women of the British Isles were addressed in that manner.

“I didn’t send for anything,” she said.

“Well, I’ll have some,” Jean decided. “Pour me a glass. Pour yourself one too, in honor of my safe return. We’ll drink together.”

Selena was a bit chagrined. She understood that Jean wanted the houseboy to bruit it about that she was Beaumain’s woman now. He was forthright and direct, but he had his wiles too.

Campanale filled the two glasses, handed one to Jean, and lifted the other to his lips.

“Here’s to your return, sir,” he said, and drank.

Selena shifted slightly in the bed just then, arranging the sheet more adequately about herself, and her sudden movement caused Beaumain to hesitate. He did not sip the drink.

Thank God for him.

Little Campanale smiled, had several swallows of the punch, and grinned at them.

Then he was jerked to his toes as if by a rope, and his entire body began to tremble. “Ahhhhh…” he said, but that was all,
because right there before the eyes of Selena and Jean, his skin seemed to shrink upon his body, his face became a death’s-head, and his slick, glossy Haitian hair turned as white as the sand on St. Crique Isle.

He turned from an adolescent into a withered little old man before their eyes.

And as a little old man he died, gasping and quivering, on the floor beside the bed.

“It was the drink,” cried Jean, hurling his glass away and leaping up, naked, to sniff the pitcher of rum punch. “You didn’t send for it?”

Selena bent helplessly over the houseboy. “My God, no. It is poison. It is more than poison. It is—”

“—a potion of some kind,” finished Jean Beaumain. “Who would have—?”

He slipped into his breeches, heading toward the door. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now…”

Selena continued to kneel over Campanale. The rum punch, she knew, had been meant for her and Jean. Someone had intended to kill them and, for good measure, turn their youthful bodies into withered husks.

Shrunken bodies. Shrunken heads.

Yolanda?

Or Martha Marguerite, skillfully concealing her acts behind methods that would cause suspicion to fall upon the Haitian girl?

“Wait, Jean!” she cried, as he reached the door. She was afraid that he had misread a situation that, apparently simple in its sheer deadliness, might nonetheless have proceeded from a devilishly complex and scheming mind.

The feel of Jean outlined her insides, she was awash with his essence, he was a part of her, so she cried out and stopped him at the door.

“Don’t go just yet…” she began.

Her concern saved both their lives.

A shriek of alarm sounded in the hall outside the rose room, followed by a deep-throated command,
“Halt!”
and the explosion of a blunderbuss. A jagged, splintered hole appeared in the door, inches from Jean’s head, and a ball of lead shot whined through the bedroom, shattering a pane of glass in the French doors as it exited. Footsteps came down the hall at a run, servants were yelling, and there was a second explosion and a cry of agony.

“What? We’ve been invaded?” wondered Jean.

In the hallway, Selena heard the low, icy voice of Lieutenant Clay Oakley. “Search everywhere,” he ordered with limpid malice. “I know she’s here and I want her alive.”

Yolanda or whoever may have, had the power to evoke a visual projection of Oakley? But the voice outside was real, and so was he.

“It’s the British,” said Selena. “They’ve come for me, not you. Let me give myself up before they destroy your home.”

“Nobody’s giving anything up,” vowed Jean, thinking fast. “They couldn’t have sailed into Hidden Harbor, so they must have come as a landing party from the beach. Here, put on your dress,” he said, tossing it to her. She did, and they left via the French doors. Out in the darkened garden, he outlined his plan.

“I’m going to slip into the weapons room and arm myself. You run down to the dock and summon my men from the
Liberté
. Shout as loud as you have to. Some will be asleep. Get them up to the house as soon as you can. Now go.”

Scarcely thinking, Selena did as she was told, racing down to the pier and hailing the ship, on which Jean’s men were quartered. Rafael and Louis came immediately up on deck, and she told them that Hidden Harbor was under attack. Within minutes, armed with swords, knives, and guns, they were running with her up toward the house, inside which another explosion of gunfire
sounded. Selena hovered outside the front door. The sailors, heedless of their safety, poured into the house, enraged and determined. For a while there were shouts, sounds of running and scuffling, then silence. Selena slipped into the foyer, armed herself with the bronze statuette of a sea nymph, and advanced into the drawing room.

There she saw why things had quieted down so abruptly. Five fearful redcoats were forced up against a wall, disarmed and vulnerable. Jean’s men, twenty in all, pressed them there with swords. Terrified servants watched from doorways as Jean and Lieutenant Oakley faced one another in the center of the room.

Oakley held Martha Marguerite between him and Jean. He had a thin stiletto at her throat. Martha’s eyes flashed every which way, but she seemed in control of her emotions by sheer effort of will.

“Ah, Selena!” said Oakley, catching sight of her. “I knew we would meet again. Come away with me, and let us complete our business.”

“Drop the knife or you’re a dead man,” Jean told him.

“Then so is this lady I hold,” Oakley replied.

“Why have you invaded my house?”

“To arrest Selena, of course. She is a spy against my monarch.”

“The war is over,” Jean said, stepping close to Oakley. He held a great-snouted pistol, and was trying to get into position for a shot at the lieutenant.

Oakley pressed the tip of the stiletto more closely against Martha’s throat. She winced.

“The war may be over,” Oakley admitted, “but Selena is still an enemy of the British Empire, which I serve. Moreover, she and I share a regard for beauty, for the perfect symmetry of existence, if you will. Our circle must be closed. Isn’t that right, Selena?”

“You’re mad, you know that?” said Selena.

Oakley just grimaced. One side of his mustache threatened to become unstuck.

Selena dropped the statuette she was holding and stepped forward. “Take me then, but release Martha. She has done you no harm.”

The lieutenant loosened his grasp on Martha Marguerite, a sly look of triumph on his bleak, misshapen face.

“No, Selena!” cried the older woman. “He will kill both of us if he can.”

At that moment, Selena knew that Martha Marguerite was not her enemy. She realized at the same time that Yolanda Fee was nowhere in sight.

“How did you come to know I was here?” she asked Oakley.

He shrugged. “I have my ways. I know many things. You may wish to die anyway when I tell you what I also know.”

Something eerily dry and slithery, like Yolanda’s magic snake, curled beneath Selena’s breastbone.

“Stop talking to him, Selena,” said Jean. “We can overpower him and his men. He’s just buying time by pretending to information he doesn’t—”

Oakley actually laughed. “I know that Royce Campbell is dead, Selena,” he said. In truth, he fairly crowed this news, as an insane cock might have addressed a triumphant dawn.

“You’re lying!” Selena managed.

The lieutenant shook his head in prideful satisfaction. “No, it’s very true. I myself was aboard the
Prince William
when that worthy frigate, along with the men-o’-war
Cliveden
and
Duke of York
, cornered Campbell west of Haiti. He all but wrecked the
Prince William
and left the warships dead in the water, but through a spyglass I saw him dead and bleeding on the
Selena’s
deck before she limped away toward La Tortue.”

This was a sizable island perhaps fifty miles from St. Crique.

“You’re lying,” Selena said again, in a faint, dry, wispy voice.

“No,” declared the lieutenant.

Jean, who had listened to this tale without comment, turned to Rafael. “Kill the redcoats,” he snapped.

Oakley’s eyes widened. “Don’t,” he cried. “They’re good men. They’re only following orders.”

In spite of her concern about Royce, Selena realized that Oakley possessed yet another facet which might be considered honorable. A good officer, he was mindful of his subordinates’ safety.

“We’ll let the men go if you release Martha,” she said.

“Selena, don’t—” said Jean exasperated.

“What about me?” Oakley inquired.

“You can go too.”

“Selena—!”

But to Selena, it seemed the only way to avoid bloodshed in this house, to which she was conscious of having brought sufficient trouble already.

Jean stood there, glaring at Oakley and calculating the costs of various courses of action. All of the costs were high.

“All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “Life for life. But I will kill you if you ever set foot upon my isle again. I will kill you if I
see
you again.”

Oakley released Martha Marguerite, who stepped away from him quickly, gasping for breath and massaging her throat.

“Fair enough,” Oakley said, keeping his stiletto at the ready. He glanced menacingly at Selena. “There is much time in this world,” he muttered enigmatically.

The sailors were disappointed at the outcome of this confrontation—after all, a servant had been wounded—but yielded to Jean’s authority.

“Au revoir
, Selena,” called Oakley, as he panted breathlessly after his men, who had set out for the St. Crique beach.

“Rafael,” said Jean, “ready the
Liberté
for sailing. Oakley must have a ship off the coast. We are going to pursue her until I’m satisfied that the threat to us is over, and that Oakley is bound for the high seas.”

“Let me come with you?” Selena asked plaintively.

Jean’s glance was quizzical.

“Perhaps we might…pass near the island of La Tortue?”

Where the
Selena
had last been heading.

Jean’s face darkened. Royce. But he nodded. He understood.

By mid-morning of the following day, it was clear that the HMS
Prince William
, with Lieutenant Clay Oakley aboard her, had set a northeasterly course, perhaps toward England itself.

“Good riddance,” said Jean Beaumain, standing on the bridge with Selena. Then he gave the order to come about and begin the search for Royce.

Hours before they drew within sight of La Tortue, which Jean Beaumain intended to circumnavigate, Selena was up in the swaying crow’s nest, scanning the endlessly rolling blue-green ocean, seeking a glimpse of the ship that bore her name. She knew that it hurt Jean to see her there, he who had done so much for her and treated her so well, with her heart set upon finding another man.
Years afterward, Selena would still remember, with heartaching clarity, the unvoiced tension of emotions she bore then, knowing that Jean was helping her to find Royce but hoping that she would not; knowing that, if she did find Royce, he might, as Oakley had reported, be gone from life.

Oh, please God, if the
Selena
went down
, she prayed—she prayed but little, yet this was a genuine prayer—
let her have gone down in shallow water, so that I will at least be able to gaze upon the place in which she lies. Don’t let her be gone forever in the trackless deep
.

So sure was she that the ship was lost—especially when no trace of wreckage appeared—that Selena even began morbidly to imagine divers, centuries hence, coming upon the great, black, decaying relic of hull, to find within only washed, white bones and crumbling timbers. One of them might swim with languid curiosity through the space that had been Royce’s cabin, neither knowing nor caring that once, three or four or five hundred years earlier, the best of Highlands warriors had made love there to Selena MacPherson, a Scottish girl lost to time. They could no more touch her, or know the reality of her years, than she could know theirs.