Forbidden Fire (2 page)

Well, not in this man. Aye, he still stared at her. But there was nothing other than that flicker of fire and impatience in his own gaze. The lean, rugged planes of his face remained hard.

Then for a moment, it seemed that something flared between them. Something hotter than the fire that lurked in the deep recesses of his blue stare. Something that left her completely breathless, trembling, and angrier than ever.

No, she thought, and she didn't know what it was exactly that she denied.

But it didn't matter. Something harsh and cold and perhaps even anguished extinguished the fire in his gaze. He stepped back.

He has changed, she thought. The boy had not been so hard. This man was steel.

Despite herself, she wondered what had changed him.

Then she worried about herself once again.

She knelt to pick up the tea service. To her surprise, he knelt beside her and impatiently began picking up the pieces along with her. He was brisk. Before she had loaded up two pieces, he had the tray nearly loaded.

“I shall inform your employer that this was my fault,” he said.

It was something, Marissa admitted grudgingly. But it
had
been his fault, completely, and she thought that she detected just a bit of condescension in his tone. She should have said thank you. She did not.

“As well you should,” she said softly.

He had started toward the doors again. He turned and stared at her. Into her eyes, maybe really seeing them for the first time. Then he laughed. “Perhaps they do breed little tigresses here in the old English countryside, too. You should be in America, girl.”

That blue gaze swept over her, then dismissed her, and then he was gone, striding into the library, closing the sliding pocket doors behind him.

Marissa swore softly beneath her breath and swung around with the shattered tea service. She paused, as did Katey, as they heard the stranger's voice rise and then fall. Katey smoothed her hands over her apron. Marissa offered her a wry smile, one that condemned the stranger. No one had a right to argue with the squire. No kinder man existed on the earth.

The exchange between the two men continued heatedly.

The doors slid open once again with a vengeance. “All right, all right! Have it your way—it will be as you wish!” the stranger exclaimed.

Now he was angry as well as impatient. He swept past Katey and Marissa without a backward glance, then paused in the hall, stiffening his spine and squaring his shoulders. He strode to the open doors of the library and stared in at the squire. His voice lowered, but none of the passion had left it. “All right, Sir Thomas. As God is my witness, I'd never cause you distress. But I warn you, sir, that you have gained little in your bargain. Little but the bitter shell of a man.”

“I have gained you, my friend,” the squire replied, his voice very light. “And that is all that I ask. I know the man.” He smiled. “I'll see you at the club before you leave.”

The stranger started to speak again, exploded with an impatient oath, then grinned. “Take care, you old goat,” he said, and there was affection in the tone. He swiveled and was gone, out the beveled glass double front doors.

Katey and Marissa stared after him.

He left the door open and mounted the brown horse in a leap, that curl of ebony hair still haphazardly hung over his forehead.

And then his eyes touched Marissa once again. He inclined his head gravely, and a taunting smile seemed to curve his lip.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to race to the doorway and swear that she'd not end her days as a maid to be so easily disdained. She'd rise above them all, above everything. She'd die a lady, greater than any they had ever seen.

“Marissa, my dear. Come here, please. I'd dearly love it if you would read to me now. Something from Dickens, I think.”

It was the squire calling her. The one man who could make her swallow her pride and bitterness and her longing.

“Aye, Sir Thomas. I shall come,” she agreed quickly. But she was still staring at the door as Katey closed it.

Her lips tightened. Aye, she would die a lady, she swore it. She had already come far, she assured herself, and she brought her fingers before her face. Her hands were clean. They were not covered by the coal dust that had left her dearly beloved uncle hacking away night after night. She lived in the manor where brass and wood shone. Where the air was clean.

And she read. She read the classics, and she knew the great operas, and she could speak in a voice to mimic any woman who claimed to be her better.

“Marissa?”

Katey came for the tea tray and Marissa smiled gratefully. Then she entered Sir Thomas's study.

She tried to unwind her clenched fingers, to smile. But somehow, the stranger had left daggers in her heart. She wanted nothing more than to find some form of retaliation for the way he had made her feel.

I will rise above him, I swear it! she promised herself. I will be a lady so great that I can secretly smile and laugh at his discomfort.

But neither before nor after the time she spent reading with him did the squire mention the stranger. And by bedtime, when she could allow her lashes to fall over her eyes, she could still see his eyes upon her, the handsome bronzed and arrogant face. The curious touch of pain that had so briefly come to his gaze.

I will show him, she thought.

She was as determined as she had been as a child.

But in the morning, she smiled at her own foolishness. She'd never show him anything. She'd most probably never see him again.

But she would. Fate was destined to bring him back into her life.

And indeed …

She would show him.

Chapter One

London, November, 1905

“H
e's coming!” Mary cried with distress. She allowed the heavy velvet drape to fall into place over the window and looked anxiously at Marissa. Mary's pretty face was pale, and her warm brown eyes seemed huge against the narrow contours of her face. She had lost too much weight, Marissa thought.

It had been a terrible time for Mary, for the squire had died just a month previously after a long, painful illness. Both girls had spent endless hours at his side, doing whatever they could to ease his discomfort.

No matter what their differences, Mary had loved her father. Marissa, too, had loved the squire. They both missed him.

We loved him, we miss him! Marissa thought wryly. And here we stand, determined to undo his dying wish.

“Oh, my God!” Mary moaned, nervously lacing her fingers together. “Are you sure you will be all right?” she anxiously asked Marissa.

Marissa wasn't sure at all. Her breathing was coming too hard and too fast, and butterflies the size of the Jabberwock were flying pell-mell through her stomach. But she'd faced far harder tasks in her life, she was certain. And she had been told that for a brief and shining season, her mother had begun to rise as a young actress upon the London stage. Marissa knew she was a gifted mimic. The act she played today would be for Mary's benefit.

“I'm going to be fine,” Marissa assured her friend.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the hotel suite's elegant free-standing mirror.

She would be fine. She certainly looked the part of the lady today. She was clad in one of Mary's beautiful white silk dresses. The tiny buttons were shimmering little pearls that ran from hem to throat and from wrist to elbow. Her skirt was floor length and in the height of fashion, narrow, conforming handsomely to her figure. Her petite boots were beige leather, and buttoned all along her ankles.

Her hair was swept up off her neck and held in place just above her nape by a gold barrette that matched the brooch at her throat.

She was elegant in the most casual way. Mary knew clothing.

Marissa folded her hands negligently and managed to smile at Mary. A tea service was already set on the oak coffee table for her convenience at the arrival of their guest. And she and Mary had played at tea for a long time now.

A very long time.

When Marissa's father, the Reverend Robert James Ayers, had been alive, Mary and Marissa lived close to one another. Robert Ayers had been the vicar at the beautiful old medieval church in the squire's parish.

Marissa had loved and admired him greatly. He had been destined for the coal mines like his brother Theo, but he had proven such a promising child that the vicar of Leominster parish, twenty miles away, had taken him in. Robert had loved to study, and he had grown to love the church, so he had taken his benefactor's place when Father Ridgefield died.

As the child of the local vicar, Marissa had enjoyed many advantages. She had been brought to the manor house for tea on her sixth birthday. Poor Mary had been forced to entertain her. Marissa had presented herself as Miss Katherine Marissa Ayers of Leominster Parish House, and had grown furious when she had seen the other girl laughing. She had hopped up, ready to forget all about being a lady and tearing out a bit of her hostess's hair, when Mary giggled anew and held out her hand in protest of violence.

“I'm not laughing at you,” she said. “Truly, I'm not! It's just funny, that's all. You see, I'm really Katherine, too, Katherine Mary Ahearn. Oh, don't you see. Our names are so very alike.”

Marissa tossed her head. “I'm known as Marissa.”

“And Father calls me Mary, so we shan't have a bit of confusion. Please, I'm really glad that you've come. I'm so very lonely so often.”

Marissa had played with Mary often enough, but then her father had died. And with his death she also lost Mary, for she had gone to live with Theo in the mining town. She had hated her new life, but she had loved Theo, a wonderful man, uneducated, unable to read, but with a charming smile, laughing eyes and a way of telling a small girl a story that could make her smile and fall asleep curled into his strong arms.

Life was much worse for other children, Marissa knew that well. Especially orphans. Many of them were beaten and abused by their relatives or stepparents. She had known nothing but kindness.

Kindness … and coal dust.

She had wanted to repay her Uncle Theo in any way she could. And so she had swept and cleaned and cooked, and had done her very best to keep his clothing laundered and mended, and to make their small cottage a home. But when her lessons ended she had known she would soon be sent off to work, for there was no other way for a child of her class.

During the days, though, she had dreamed.

Especially after she had seen the strange boy with his impeccably clean clothing.

She had dreamed of the grand manor where she had studied with Mary. And she had remembered Mary's delicate white hands, and the furniture that never reeked of coal dust.

And then one Sunday, when Uncle Theo and she had been able to borrow a pony cart and had taken the long drive to Leominster instead of attending the small chapel in the coal town, she had seen Mary again. Standing by the squire's side, she was tall and lovely with her burnished brown hair and warm brown eyes and her beautiful fur-trimmed winter coat. She had grown up. They had both grown up, into young women. They were nearly fifteen.

Marissa looked at her hands, curled around her prayer book. Her nails were broken and ugly, her hands chapped.

And she knew that Mary's hands would still be small and elegant and lovely.

When the last blessing was bestowed, Marissa turned to flee. She did not want to see Mary.

But it seemed that the squire had seen her, for she had barely exited the ancient church with its spires and saints and gargoyles when his hand fell warmly upon her shoulder.

“Why, 'tis you, Marissa, child! We were heartily bereaved at the death of your father. And we missed you dearly, Mary and I. How have you been keeping yourself?”

“Quite well, Squire, thank you,” Marissa murmured, wishing she could run. But Mary was behind him. Marissa thought she would lift her elegant nose and turn away from the coal child Marissa had become. But Mary stepped forward and hugged her enthusiastically. “Marissa!”

Before the day was out, Marissa and Uncle Theo had been taken to the manor for tea. Uncle Theo had stared around uncomfortably, and he had spilled his tea and used all the wrong silver, and the blackness of coal that the years had etched into his long bony fingers was glaringly dark against the Ahearns' elegant china, but it didn't seem to matter. Marissa could remember having tea as a child, and then she was ashamed that she could judge an uncle who had been so very kind to her. And seeing Sir Thomas and Mary, she swallowed hard and thought she had truly learned a lesson. Class and elegance did not lie in upturned noses, but rather in the graciousness inherent in these people. When she said thank you and goodbye to Mary and the squire, Marissa came as close to being humble as she had in all her life.

Three days later, the squire visited them in the squalid little coal town, and he suggested that Marissa should come to live in the manor house. Theo refused charity, but Sir Thomas promised that she would be a maid and earn her keep—and her education.

“I cannot give me niece away,” Theo said with deep emotion.

“And would you have her grow to womanhood here, marry a miner and watch him die of the black lung only to struggle on to raise an army of little ones herself? I don't ask you to give her away, good man. I ask you only to give her a wee bit of opportunity. I say it from my heart, for my daughter and myself. And in memory of your good brother.

“Good Lord, man! Would that I had authority over this place! I despise the way it is run. But Ayers, man, I can help your girl. Perhaps I haven't the power to change the mine, but I do have the power to change her life. And we are still close enough that she can see you often. She loves you, and she will not be far.”

Theo hesitated for only a moment, seeing the earnest appeal in Sir Thomas's eyes. “Go on out, Marissa,” Uncle Theo told her. “The squire and I have much to discuss.”