Flames of Desire Page 6

  Father sent a message:

  Order the village carpenter to fashion a coffin. Hire a coach to bring Grandmother home. You are alone, but you must do it. You shall. Make haste and be strong. Father.

  Selena did not like to recall the long days and nights, rocking in the hired coach, with the ghostly burden strapped onto the luggage platform above her head. And there were still nights when, in her dreams, she heard the hollow thunder of ghostly hooves upon the rocky roads of Scotland. Somewhere in the darkness of the past, the drooling, maniacal coachman Selena had hired cracked his whip and the journey had begun. Selena never forgot the sense of duty, nor the frightened stares of the people in the lost hill towns when they spied the shape and nature of her cargo, and stepped back quickly from its path. “’Tis the daughter o’ a nobleman fra’ the south,” they muttered, as the wet, blown horses were unhitched and replaced by fresh beasts, “an’ no more than a child, yet she be mad an’ driven as a loon.” No, they did not understand what it was like when you did what you must, and the long journey burned itself into her brain. Alone, at nine, with a babbling coachman and the body of a loved one, she traversed all Scotland. In a strange, yet real sense, the country had become hers; a bond had been formed, even more powerful than one of blood alone. And on those nights when the dream came to her, she did not so much recall the terror and haste of the trip, but instead the golden stubble on fields of harvested wheat, the stark, relentless beauty of the moors, and the flickering candles in the windows in the houses in the high hills of Scotland.

  And she brought Grandma home. Home to the good earth of Coldstream. That was half her life ago. She had done her duty as a MacPherson, and done it alone.

  And now she was a woman, in yet another coach, and Father looked at her in that way he had and spoke again of duty. The inference was clear: you are a MacPherson, and there will be times when you will be called upon to act as one.

  This was one of those times.

  “Selena, you must marry Sean Bloodwell at once. Directly after the New Year. It has all been arranged.”

  Selena was stunned. She felt pressed back against the cushions by a force against which she was helpless. She’d known for some time, of course, that her father was angling for just such a union, that Sean meant to speak to him about it, but she truly thought they would give it more time, and even take her own feelings into consideration, although, in these modern times, such solicitousness was discouraged.

  “I’ve been in communication with Sean,” Lord Seamus was saying. “We shall make the announcement on the night of the ball.”

  The night of the ball! The night she had planned to capture Royce Campbell!

  This cannot be happening, she thought. It must be the wine I drank at the inn. It must be…

  “Upset?” Brian asked, smirking. “You didn’t even guess, did you? That’s what you get with your mind on that scoundrel Campbell all the time.”

  His father silenced him with a glance and proceeded to explain as best he could. He sensed what she was going through, but, after all, she was young, she would get over her infatuation with Campbell. And, as her father, he knew best.

  “It is an extremely good match, an excellent match,” he said. He was not trying to convince her; he was merely stating the facts, as he saw them. “Certainly, Sean is not of the nobility, but that is a small matter. I daresay, with the world going as it is, his chances of elevation to the peerage are quite good, possibly within five or ten years, maybe sooner, if he contrives to swell the coffers of the Empire as he has so astutely swelled his own. And, as a husband, you could not have better.”

  I could have Royce Campbell, she thought.

  “I won’t claim you’ll have no difficulties. Every marriage does. Nor even that, once in a while, he won’t yield to certain temptations. But he has assured me of his desire to cherish you as a wife. Moreover, he is an intelligent, understanding man, and he will treat you well.”

  Brian was listening to their father, nodding vigorously. Bloody Brian!

  Yet, even as she listened, Selena knew the truth of her father’s words, and other memories came back to trouble her. She remembered the picnic on the banks of the Teviot. She’d just turned sixteen, and had just recently met Sean. A practiced flirt with an eye for challenges, Selena lured Sean away from the Coldstream group, and they lost themselves in a thicket of lilac at the bend in the river where the willows hung heavy and lush. His kisses then had been like new fire, and she let him undo her bodice, thinking, Now it’s going to happen. And she would have let it, because that summer Sean Bloodwell was better than anything she could have imagined, and she would have married him right then if her father agreed. But, in the distance, members of the family and servants were calling them to some stupid game. Later, there had been times just as intimate, yet somehow not as exciting, but when he escorted her to the races in Dundee, or to the great country hunts, she always felt proud of his fine appearance, his bearing, his dignity. In fact, she thought, Sean would be perfect. If only she had not met Royce Campbell.

  That meeting had changed everything. The price of the future would be high, she realized, and she had only begun to pay.

  “…Selena, I mentioned politics before, the Rob Roys. According to our plans, and based upon intelligence information we have received, the Americans are on the verge of declaring their independence from England. Some of us wish to help them, so that later they might reciprocate, and help us to throw off our own burden. I say this knowing full well the risk we face should McGrover discover the nature and extent of our enterprises. I say it also out of self-interest. As you know, our lives are being altered. We are neither as wealthy nor as powerful as once we were. I must look out for the Rob Roys as well as for us. So I must provide for your future, and in that way look out for you, too.”

  He paused, to see how Selena was taking all this.

  He saw her stubborn expression, sighed, but went on anyway. “Selena, I am sure I appear to be arbitrary in this affair, and, God forbid, unromantic, but you will understand in time that it is necessary and right.”

  He stopped talking. She looked at him. Her father, whom she had loved and respected forever. And obeyed, too, at least most of the time, and always in the important things. How could he be doing this to her?

  The tightening in her throat was genuine, and so was the trembling of her lips. She could have held the tears back, but they were there, and, anyway, it was time for desperate measures.

  “Why, Selena, what’s wrong?”

  It all came tumbling out. She did not love Sean. She loved Royce Campbell. They had been…alone last year, and they would meet again at this season’s holiday.

  “I knew it!” Brian cried cheerfully. “When I see that rogue I’ll slap his face for him. I’ve been waiting—”

  “You’ll do nothing,” Lord Seamus told him. He left his seat in the coach, slid over to Selena’s side, and put his arm around her, as he had so often when she was a little girl.

  “There, there,” he said, as she wept softly in his arms, “there, there.” He went on soothingly, as Selena went on crying, but she watched carefully through her tears to see if the crying was having an effect. It wasn’t, so she cried still harder.

  “You’re just eighteen,” her father was telling her again. As if that were relevant to anything at all! “Let me tell you something, too. Sir Royce is bound for trouble. He’s much too rash, much too taken with himself. Look at the facts. You cannot help but have heard about his women. Unlike Sean, who would be faithful and loving and always at your side when you needed him, Royce Campbell would be all over the world, aboard strange ships, with strange women, doing God knows what in either case. Would you want to be married to a man like that?”

  “Y…y…yessss,” Selena sobbed.

  Her father pretended not to hear, and pressed her head down on his shoulder, to stroke her hair. Brian feigned indifference to the proceedings.

  “And, more than that, Campbell’s life
will be filled with danger. I would not be surprised if it was rather short. He is too reckless, too rebellious. The nobility does not trust him. Even his own clan looks askance at his adventures. The search for glory and recognition is a fine thing, to be sure, and the world has advanced because of men who sought those things, but there must be a reason for it. There must be a cause in which the adventurer believes. Royce Campbell believes in nothing and no one, with the possible exception of himself.”

  “I don’t think so,” she cried. “How can you say that?” Father seemed about to reveal something, then thought better of it. “Let us just say that I’ve been audience to propositions of his, and let it go at that.”

  Last year, she thought. That time he came to our quarters. Had something occurred between Royce and her father to make him so unresponsive to her in the alcove? Oh, no, if that was it, if something like that had occurred…maybe her father had already warned him away! And he wouldn’t have thought of her at all during the entire year. She had to know.

  “Father…”

  “Yes, child.”

  “Did you…did you ever speak to Sir Royce about…about me?”

  Lord Seamus laughed. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t, and I don’t intend to, either. I—”

  “But I must see him, at least once, in Edinburgh. If he’s there.”

  Oh, be there. Please be there.

  “And why is that, might I ask?”

  “Because I promised him I would.”

  “You promised him?”

  “And I suppose he loves you?” Brian interjected, with no little amusement. “A man that’s bedded the love artists of Egypt and India, in love with a sweet, provincial Scottish lass—”

  “Stop it,” Lord Seamus commanded.

  “It was my word of honor,” Selena said. “It is all quite respectable, and I shall disgrace no one.” Except possibly myself.

  Her father thought it over for a long time, not bothering to conceal his skepticism. She tried, to look as mournful, and as innocent, as she could. Selena felt entirely justified. If her father would marry her away so abruptly, did she not have the right, at least, to speak to Royce Campbell? To see if she had been mistaken about him?

  “All right,” Lord Seamus said. “But you must do so within bounds of the strictest propriety. None of this balcony business, do you understand? I know Campbell and his kind.”

  Meekly, she agreed, trying to devise a plan. Everything depended on its success, but she hadn’t quite decided what would happen, even if she was right about Royce Campbell. Her father’s last words showed her just how desperate the situation was:

  “And you are going to marry Sean Bloodwell. Our discussion of the matter is ended.”

  The MacPhersons reached Edinburgh shortly before midnight. Wind-driven snow slanted down like angry spears in the lantern-dotted darkness, stinging their faces as they went into the castle and were shown to the chambers reserved for them. Selena had barely been able to feel her fingertips and toes for hours, because of the cold, and now her skin began to burn and throb. But there was hot wine and, even better, a hot perfumed bath with rose petals strewn atop the steaming water. And there were breads, cheeses, and a thick, spicy lamb stew to eat. Later, Selena went to bed beneath a canopy of heavy silk, with golden tassels hanging down, resting her head upon pillows stuffed to bursting with goosedown, her young, lovely body caressed by coverlets of satin. Servants had taken her bright gowns from the traveling trunk, and they hung in a glorious row, ready for service in her conquest, shimmering in the light of the guttering tapers on the walls. They, were for tomorrow, for Royce Campbell, for the future. If there was one. Tomorrow, of course, she would see Sean Bloodwell too, and all the rest of it, but just now that made no difference. It was something that would never happen.

  And she did not know, this glittering princess of old Scotland who was locked inside the body of a clever, lusty girl, that destiny has few gold rings. But many mazes.

  So, still a princess, she dropped down and down into the blue pool of sleep, her thoughts jumbled together at first, impressions coming one upon another. Father’s seriousness in the coach. Brian’s unsettling remark about “a man that’s bedded the love artists of Egypt and India.” She touched her breasts and body, trying to hold back the thought: Could it be that I’m unready for him in that way? Then the slow flashing of patterns of light as sleep came, and the blue pool shimmered. Years ago, and Brian with the bloody knife, standing above the dead McEdgar, and the hoofbeats once again, in the Highlands, nine long years ago, sounds and images all mysterious now as the veil fell upon her. The face of Royce Campbell smiling through time, the purple-cloaked lieutenant on the road this morning. Except now, as she fell and fell onward toward the dreamless blue, the lieutenant’s face turned dark and narrow, beaklike, and a soaring hawk appeared in her mind. The towers of Coldstream Castle crumbled in strange silence. Sadness passed within her heart as tall stone towers fell in dust, but then she heard from far away a rhythm that was deeper than her heartbeat, yet which arose therefrom, a rhythm older than the sea, older than time, more compelling even than blood, and it called duty duty duty as she fell the final measure and slipped into the pool.

  Her own blood softened then, and her heart leveled out, beating fine and very slow.

  The Night of the Hawk

  “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  Lord Seamus smiled encouragingly, just before it was time for Sean Bloodwell’s appearance. Selena lifted her breasts, squared her shoulders, and put on a smile, wondering: What is the right thing? What I am told to do? Or what I believe I ought to do? Her own sense of propriety, and her knowledge of the worth of a good marital alliance, told her that her father was correct. And he must be obeyed, too, must he not? Yet her heart throbbed dully, a voiceless murmur that was, this morning, neither private protest nor outright rebellion, as if now it said, all right then, duty, by all means, duty.

  But not yet!

  Sean Bloodwell entered the room, smiling, and, as always, he seemed to take charge of it merely by his presence. He shook hands with Lord Seamus, bowed to Selena, a well-built man of good height, good cheer, with an open, direct look that almost concealed the hint of steel. He wore a blue velvet dress coat, with knee breeches, and a white silk shirt ruffled at cuff and collar. He glanced at Lord Seamus: Has Selena been told? his eyes asked.

  Her father nodded. Selena said nothing, and her uncharacteristic silence was immediately noticed by both Sean and her father. Lord Seamus did not look worried, not precisely.

  “Perhaps my presence is needlessly…ah…complicating matters. I’m sure you two young people will excuse me.” With that, he went out, leaving her alone. Selena didn’t know if she liked that or not. She might speak a bit more frankly, true, but then it occurred to her that everything had been settled and there was really nothing to say.

  Sean surprised her.

  “I can see by your dour expression that you’ve been informed of the good news.”

  He spoke lightly, but there was the faintest undertone of pain in his voice.

  They stood there looking at each other. Finally, she sat down in the corner of a long divan, covered with a sleek fabric of burnished gold. You are in our thoughts each moment. Make haste and be strong, her father had said.

  “It’s not that I’m unhappy,” she began, fumbling. “It is…it is more the suddenness of it…”

  “Is that really it?” he asked, and she remembered he was not a man so easily misled. He came over and sat down beside her, touched her face gently, and let his hand fall. “You know what you mean to me,” he said; “at least I hope you do. So, be honest. Perhaps, in my affection, I did not properly judge your feelings before I spoke to your father. If so, I apologize. Are you certain that your surprise is due to the haste of the matter?”

  He leaned forward and looked at her closely, his mind, his life, waiting behind those shrewd green eyes.

  Selena nodded. Sean considered the situati
on. He seemed to come to a decision.

  “May I speak frankly?”

  She nodded again.

  He took a breath. What he was about to say was clearly not the speech he had planned for this day. “Selena, I love you. But before I marry you, I must know that you are sure.”

  She looked up at him, disbelieving. This kind of thing did not happen, once a marriage was arranged. Immediately, she began to worry about her father’s reactions, the failure of his many-faceted plan.

  “Because if you’re not sure, neither of us will have happiness or peace, and without those things what is the worth of marriage anyway?”

  Selena said nothing, trying to put this unexpected response into perspective.

  “Do you agree with me?”

  “Yes,” she heard herself saying in a small voice. Now that it appeared she did have a choice, she was torn between emotions. Sean put his hand on hers. His touch was tender, yet assertive and even proprietary. After all, his hands had known almost as much of her body as Royce Campbell’s had known…

  That thought jarred her back into alertness. Royce Campbell was as good as in the room with them. But, if Sean sensed it, he was not disturbed. This was between the two of them, and he wanted to have it out so there would be no misunderstandings later.

  “I admire you, too,” he was telling her. “Your spirit and your strength. And I would give a large part of my life—the rest of it, in fact—to help guide you to the power that can be yours.”

  “What are you talking about?” she interrupted.

  He smiled. “You really don’t know who you are yet, Selena. Or what you might be capable of doing. When you do learn these things, and you will if life is kind to you, there will be very little of which you won’t be capable. You must discipline your instincts, Selena, and put them to work for something you want…”

  Royce Campbell, she was thinking.

  “…and I am ready to help you, and to share life with you. Selena, you and I together could be capable of anything, of attaining every goal we set for ourselves.”