Forbidden Fire (3 page)

When she came back, a bargain had been struck. She would live at the manor during the week, she would work, she would receive a salary, and she would resume her education.

There was nothing like it. Nothing like it on earth. She moved into the manor, into a room in the attic. It was a small room, but it was hers—all her own. Six days a week she worked and studied, and on the seventh, the Sabbath day, she went to church and then she went home to her uncle. She never went empty-handed. Thanks to the squire, she brought hams and fowl and fruit and vegetables and fresh-baked breads. And Uncle Theo would have his friends over, and they would all share in the largesse. She would read to Theo and his cronies, and sometimes she would try to teach some of the little blackened urchins of the other mine families, and she knew that her uncle was very proud of her, and she was proud herself.

She had escaped the coal dust.

Living with the squire and Mary was easy, despite the fact that she worked very hard and studied even harder in her determination to become a lady. Most of the time, she was happy. Very happy. Mary was her employer, but she was also her very best friend. They dreamed together, Mary of love, Marissa of riches grand enough to feed the entire mining population. Marissa learned her mannerisms from Mary, and she copied Mary's accent. She excelled Mary in their history classes, mostly because she loved the tales of brave seafarers and pilgrims and the London Company and all those others who had set out to forge a new life. She was also exceedingly quick with mathematics, since math was useful with money, and she knew that little could be done without that commodity.

She had always thought that the town by the manor was so big, compared with the small community of the village. With Mary, she traveled farther, to the county seat of York. She was fascinated to see the wall that the Romans had built still standing, and she marveled at the magnificent York Minster Cathedral, awed by the age and grandeur, so close to the squalor in which she had lived.

It was as if the cloud that hung over the coal village had been a prison of a kind. It had kept her from viewing anything beyond it.

The years had passed, and most of the time she was pleased. And proud.

Most of the time …

Marissa frowned, wondering what uncomfortable thought hovered in the dark corners of her mind. Only upon occasion did she feel any less the lady than Mary herself. She could hold her head high in any company, and she had been attending the opera and the theater with Mary and certain acquaintances to perfect her current masquerade.

But every once in a while …

Then she remembered. Blue eyes touching her, racing over her, seeming to see her for what she really was. A British maid graced with a burning will to succeed, and a kind-hearted employer and the friendship of his daughter. Those eyes had made her feel so uncomfortable. Vulnerable and naked, as if they could strip away every pretense. They had done so to her when she had been a child, and when she had been a woman. They had made her feel hot and flushed and uneasy. And even now, when she most needed her confidence, they seemed to intrude upon the moment.

“Mary, maybe we're making a mistake! Maybe this fellow is kind, and we should be honest and truthful. Maybe he wants a ward even less than you want a guardian! You should deal with this man Tremayne yourself,” she murmured suddenly.

Mary's dark warm eyes clouded with pain. She hurried anxiously across the handsome Victorian parlor of their suite. “Guardian! And I'm nineteen already. How could my father have done such a thing!”

“He loved you very much, Mary,” Marissa supplied gently. “Truly, I don't think that he meant to hurt you. Mary, your health has never been good, and you've always been so kind and compassionate. I'm certain that your father was afraid that perhaps a fortune hunter might take advantage of that very loving nature of yours. And he might have swindled all your money from you. And left you. Oh, Mary, he was mistaken, but he was a good man. And he did love you!”

“If only I had told him the truth!”

Marissa didn't think that it would have helped any for Mary to have told her father the truth.

Mary was in love, and she had been in love for well over a year. The problem was that she was in love with a young Irish clerk named Jimmy O'Brien.

Marissa liked Jimmy, very much. If she hadn't liked him so much, and liked him from the very beginning, she wouldn't have helped Mary this far.

Though indeed, there were times when Marissa still considered Mary to be a fool.

Jimmy was a fine man. He was a struggler, a survivor, like Marissa was herself. He had left Ireland with little more than a good head for figures and a determination that no more potatoes could be eked from his meagre portion of land. He had a sense for fine wools, and he had managed to obtain a good, decent job with a fine merchant. He bought for his employer, and his eye was keen, and the merchant's shop was doing much better under Jimmy's care.

Mary and Jimmy had met, and fallen in love. The words of warning that her father would never accept the hardworking young merchant had not done a thing to turn Mary aside from her reckless affair. She had never told her father about Jimmy O'Brien, and Marissa had covered for her again and again when she had left the house in sunshine or twilight to carry on her liaison.

“Mary!” Marissa had warned her repeatedly. “You've grown up with everything you might wish handed to you on a very elegant silver platter! You're accustomed to servants and ease. Mary!” She had grabbed Mary's small delicate hands with their silk-soft flesh. “Mary, life cannot be so easy if you elope and marry this man!”

“You don't understand what it is to be in love, Marissa,” Mary had assured her. “I would work for him, I would die for him!”

Such vehemence and passion from shy Mary were quite impressive. But Marissa merely replied, “And you don't know what it is to watch children starve.”

Their argument became moot, for it was then that they discovered the squire was ill. And it was not too long before the doctors informed Mary that there was no hope, her father was going to die.

That night she and Marissa had grown closer than ever, crying, hugging one another through the night for what little comfort they could offer one another.

Mary never told her father about Jimmy O'Brien. There was no need to distress a sick man so. When the squire had whispered his last goodbye and Mary had learned to live with the loss, then someday she would marry Jimmy. And in the meantime, Jimmy O'Brien stood by her side. In those weary hours when Mary's father's illness was greatest, Marissa would tend to the squire, and Mary would disappear with her lover. He gave her a comfort that not even Marissa could provide.

Squire Ahearn breathed his last on a beautiful late summer morning. The sun was shining; the daffodils were in full bloom. Both Mary and Marissa had sat beside him at the huge bay window, and he had breathed in the fresh scent of the day, closed his eyes and died.

And three days later, after a very proper funeral, he had been laid to rest in the bosom of his ancestral tomb. Despite the knowledge of certain death, Mary and Marissa had grieved deeply, barely managing to speak to one another for days.

Marissa's Uncle Theo had been heartily worried about her, and so, when Sir Thomas had been dead about ten days, she had left to spend time with Theo at his cottage. She had cleaned away more coal dust, and she had convinced him that Mary was raising her to an income so high that Theo no longer needed to work in the mine. His cough was bad, hacking, almost a continual thing, and Marissa could not bear it. She had just watched Sir Thomas die and she was not about to let Theo follow him. She knew that she told the truth. Mary would be a wealthy woman now, and she could provide for herself and Jimmy and, in truth, offer Marissa a very fine salary, indeed.

But when Marissa had come back to the manor, she had discovered Mary as pale as death, sitting before the fire in her father's library, staring at the flames but not seeing a thing. She had rushed to her friend in fear, and had found Mary's flesh as cold as ice despite the warmth of the fire. Marissa had cried out, hurrying for the sherry. She had forced a sip through Mary's lips, and her friend had looked at her at last, huge teardrops forming in her eyes and falling down her cheeks.

“Oh, Marissa!”

“What, Mary, what is it? I am here!”

“Oh, my God, Marissa! How could he!”

“How could who do what?”

“Oh, Marissa!”

“Mary, Mary, calm down now. Please, you must tell me what has happened! It's Jimmy, is it? What has he done? Why, if he's hurt you—”

“Jimmy would never hurt me!” Mary cried.

Marissa breathed a sigh of relief. “Mary, then please, what has happened?”

“It's father.”

But the squire was dead and buried, and Marissa could not begin to understand what had happened.

“Mary—”

“Oh, how could he have done such a thing to me!”

“Mary, what in God's name has he done!”

And at last Mary began to talk, trying to explain the substance of her father's will. Mary had not yet reached her majority. And so her father had arranged for a guardian, someone to control her fortune until she had reached her twenty-fifth birthday. Someone Mary did not even know, one of his American associates. And there was even more to it than that.

“What?” Marissa demanded blankly, trying to assimilate everything Mary was saying.

“He betrothed me to this man!”

“No one can force you to wed this man, Mary.”

Mary groaned anew, burying her face in her elbow where it lay upon the arm of the chair. “Marissa, if I do not wed him, he is free to control my money until my thirtieth birthday! He will be free to take over the house—everything!”

“It can't be so!” Marissa assured her, and Mary looked to her with hope. “We'll talk with your father's solicitors and they'll fix things for you.”

“No, they won't! They'll be loyal to my father. I don't even know any of his solicitors. Father never involved me with business, and I never worried about it.”

“We'll fix things.”

“I can't talk to his solicitors.”

“I can. I'll call them, and say that I am you!”

Marissa did so, and she was heartily disturbed. Everything that Mary had told her was true. They were in a desperate situation.

The squire had even arranged for a special marriage license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. No banns needed to be cried if Mary chose to marry her guardian. The deed could be done immediately so that the man need hardly stay away from his business in America.

To Jimmy O'Brien's credit, he swore that night that the money meant nothing to him, nothing at all. He loved Mary. His place was nothing but a hovel now, but he would work hard, so hard, and he would save the money to buy his own shop. He would live with Mary anywhere, and with their faith in their love, they would survive.

The two held hands before the fire in the squire's library and stared into the flames, bliss in their eyes. Marissa, with her own problems facing her, left the two of them alone.

But by the next week, Mary had caught a fever. She was desperately ill, and Marissa spent all her time at her bedside, bargaining with God, pleading, promising that she would do anything to save her. Jimmy, too, sat by her bedside.

Mary had not just rescued Marissa from the coal dust. She had been her friend. Marissa had never forgotten the bitterness of those years, or ceased to long for something better for the poor people there. She was afraid that she would carry some of the bitterness and hatred to her grave. But Mary had given her hope, and allowed her dreams to fly.

There was little that Marissa would not do for her.

Mary took a turn for the better. The doctor warned Marissa then that Mary was not strong, that she needed to take the gravest care. She must avoid chills, she must not work too hard.

Jimmy and Marissa were desolate. Jimmy did love Mary, enough to give her up. There was no way for Mary to go and live in a hovel—whether love flourished or no.

“I can't have her, and I can't give her up,” Jimmy said, his freckled face lean and haggard and anguished. “I can't leave my Mary!”

“I can get a new job, I can do something—” Marissa began.

“And support us all?” Jimmy scoffed. “Ah, Marissa, you are spirit and strength and wonderful courage and beauty, and I love you as deeply as does Mary. But Marissa! You've your uncle to care for. There's nothing left to be done. Aye, but there is! I shall wait for Mary if needs be until we both be forty, fifty or sixty! I'd wait until my grave!”

Marissa almost smiled, he was so earnest and so dramatic.

“Jimmy, that much waiting would do in us all! No, there has to be some way, something that we can do!”

They didn't come up with any conclusions that night. And Marissa went to bed wondering once again how the squire could have promised his young and beautiful daughter to some old and withered crony, no matter how wealthy and prominent the man might be.

It was the next day when the idea—outrageous as it was—occurred to Marissa.

Mary lay in her bed, silent, her face pale, her cheeks gaunt. Jimmy idly stood by the fireplace, teasing the flames with the poker, and Marissa sat by Mary's bed, silent, too, no longer pretending to read.

“Mary! I can do it!”

“What?”

“I can be you!”

“Oh, my Lord!” Mary breathed. Jimmy stared at them as if Mary's fever had caused them both to go daft.

“Oh, my God! Could we pull it off?” Marissa demanded.

“I know we could. I've never met this man. He's a Californian, or something American like that.”

“But everyone here would know us—” Marissa began, then she laughed. “Mary! The solicitors already think I'm you. Oh, we can do this! We'll plan very carefully. We'll go to London! We'll meet him in London.”