Fires of Delight (2 page)

“I see that you have an eye for good art,” Oakley said, not without respect. “I accept the compliment of your interest.”

“You have chosen the work of good artists.”

“Thank you once again,” Oakley said. “I am the artist.”

Astonished, Selena glanced once again at the massed paintings. This time she noted, too, the nature of the wall on which they hung, grainy and soft-looking.
Cork!
she realized.
How unusual!

Then Oakley sagged into his chair and withdrew from his pocket a handkerchief of white silk, inhaling from it. Selena caught the strong scent of an astringent eau-de-cologne and she understood. This huge beast into whose clutches she had fallen had some sort of respiratory ailment. Cork was believed to filter the air; cologne was considered a specific in cases of asthma.

Indeed, the mere effort of standing for a moment seemed to have affected the officer. “Let us proceed,” he said, wheezing slightly and dipping a quill point into the fountain of ink. Preparing to write, he fixed her with a merciless, baleful stare. “Today we shall have but a preliminary interrogation. I abjure you to answer my questions with the utmost truth. Your answers will be examined diligently for their veracity. If I find that you have lied or engaged in conscious obfuscation, we shall have a second appointment tomorrow morning in far less pleasant surroundings, the walls of which will be equipped not to enhance my comfort but to mute your screams.”

Selena started. He meant every word of it. This strange man, who respected beauty but who was himself so ugly in feature, held his life in a balance of frigid intellect and private passion, characteristics of the most remorseless fanatic. Oakley combined the disparate aspects of beauty and beast.

“Your name?” he asked quietly.

Selena gave it and he wrote it down.

There followed a series of colorless questions as the lieutenant sought the basic facts of Selena’s life. Even as she answered, she was trying to prepare herself for the dangerous questions that were sure to come. Once, while taking her to the exercise yard, Corporal Bonwit had said something about “heading home soon.” Had he meant returning to England? And if so, did that mean the British were winning the war? Or losing it?

“Now,” he said, lifting his eyes from the parchment and looking at her, “is it not true that your father, Lord Seamus MacPherson, was executed for treason against His Majesty?”

“No. He was assassinated. By an agent of military intelligence. Like you.”

The memory of her father’s death was burned into every fiber of Selena’s being; she would carry it with her beyond the grave. The two of them, father and daughter, had fled Coldstream Castle one step ahead of Darius McGrover, special agent to the King. They had found refuge in a stone hut in far-off Kinlochbervie, a fishing village on the coast of northern Scotland by the tumbling seas of the North Minch. But McGrover pursued them there. And Selena had been forced to watch, bound and gagged, while her father’s throat was cut.

“Ah!” replied Oakley, with his fey smile. “You are referring to
my predecessor here in America. And wasn’t his body recently found near the luxurious Battery Park home you shared until recently with your former husband, Lord Sean Bloodwell?”

Selena fought for control of her emotions. Oakley’s question upset her in several ways. First, it was she who had killed McGrover, avenging her father’s death by severing the assassin’s windpipe in the cellar of her own home and watching the frothy black blood of his evil life bubble away. Although she called it vengeance, the law had other eyes. Second, mere mention of Sean’s name was painful to her. She had married him years earlier, after hearing news that Royce Campbell was dead. And she had grown to love Sean too. But Royce’s reappearance, alive and well in America, had changed everything. Sean had sensed it, saw it, and permitted her to go. He had always known of her depthless, awesome bond to the Highlands warrior, had understood with the grace of his clear mind and honest heart that fettered love led to nothing but unhappiness. Finally, Sean had been a Loyalist, devoted to king and crown, in reward for which he had been elevated to the peerage. Their lives had taken startlingly different paths, which Selena simultaneously accepted and regretted, because theirs had been a genuine affection.

“I am waiting for your answer, Selena,” Oakley said, pressing the silk handkerchief to his shapeless fold of a nose.

“I don’t know anything of McGrover’s fate,” she replied, “except that if he is truly dead I am not sorry.”

Oakley laughed, a liquid, gurgling sound. “We shall, in time, learn what you know. Truth has a way of surfacing. Tell me, how does it feel to know your former husband possesses the legitimacy and honor you yourself so deeply covet?”

The man had an uncanny knack for sensing weakness! More than anything except Royce, Selena desired to reclaim Coldstream Castle, her rightful home. On countless nights she had dreamed of the as yet unimaginable day on which she would ride into the hills of her beloved Scotland, see great bonfires of greeting blazing on those hills, see Coldstream looming on the cliffs above the North Sea. And there were times beyond number when she had thrilled to think of herself riding through the castle’s mighty gate, beneath the keystone in the arch that read
Anno Domini 1152
, with her people cheering all around. Someday, somehow, she and Royce would return to Scotland in triumph,
but that time seemed far away, a glimmering wisp of hope to a prisoner in a fortress in America.

You are never defeated unless you believe it
, she thought once again. “I am glad for Lord Bloodwell,” she said. “He has won his heart’s desire, and he deserves it.”

“And what is
your
heart’s desire, my fine young lady? A man? A castle? Is that all? You disappoint me. In time, the man will die. So will you. In time, the strongest bastion will crumble into dust. Even those paintings that I have created will some day fade and wither. No, a person like you must be driven by something more, by something timeless. Or am I overestimating you?”

“What I want you could not give.”

“Tell me, and we shall see.”

“Freedom,” Selena said.

“For yourself? That is easy. Just answer certain questions of a military nature that I am about to put to you now, and in no time you will be walking the streets of the city, free as air, and dressed in garments more suited to your beauty than those rags you have on—”

“I do not mean freedom for myself,” she interrupted, “but for this country, and for the people in every nation who struggle against tyrants!”

Selena spoke heatedly. She thought that Oakley would be angry. Instead, he simply shrugged and gave her a look that he probably meant to be understanding and indulgent. “You
are
very young. Your tyranny is my freedom and vice versa. I seek a world in which I am at liberty to honor my king and strengthen his empire. You and your bloody ilk would deny me such liberty. Thus I must crush your petty idea of freedom in the cause of a greater and more noble good.”

“Who are you to say?”

He smiled. “Because I sit here backed by the greatest empire the world has ever known, and you stand before me in a filthy dress.”

“Your men took away my clothes—”

“I’ll rip that dress off your back too, if you’re not careful. Enough of this.” He took up the quill again and dipped it expertly into the inkwell. “Where is General Washington going to attack?” he asked suddenly. “New York or Yorktown?”

Too late, Selena understood that Oakley had been distracting
her until now with questions and conversation of a vaguer nature. The dangerous part of this confrontation had come abruptly, and she was off-guard.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, stalling for time as he gelid eyes bored into her.

“Lie to me like this tomorrow,” he snapped, “and before you have time to take a breath I will scar you for life from temple to jaw!”

Disfigurement. Selena felt a wave of nausea pass through her, and realized how long she had been-standing there. Her legs were beginning to ache; a hot flush of fear brought beads of nervous perspiration to naked skin beneath the clammy dress. Lieutenant Oakley knew exactly where and how to strike. Selena had imagined the prospect of pain, but not mutilation…

“Naturally,” said the interrogator soothingly, “a woman as lovely as you will want to protect her appearance. One never knows how a man like Campbell would feel about bedding a hideous wreck of flesh…”

He let his voice trail off ominously. Selena suppressed a shudder.

“Let me make this a bit easier for you,” Oakley said. “I know that the French Count Rochambeau and his army are in Newport. I know that Washington and his men are north of here, in White Plains, New York. They will shortly join forces, ten thousand men in all. With that number, they could dislodge us from New York. But that would be but a partial victory. Our main battle force, under General Cornwallis, is in Yorktown, Virginia, along the Chesapeake—”

Selena nodded. She knew all this. Royce had told her.

“—and defeating Cornwallis,” Oakley continued, “would in effect bring an end to the war. But to attack Yorktown, Washington must cover a great distance. Besides which Cornwallis has a fleet in the Chesapeake Bay to support him. It would be stupid, even suicidal, for Washington to attack Yorktown without naval support of his own, and we have learned the hard way that the Virginian is neither stupid nor self-destructive.”

“At least you have learned something,” replied Selena, managing a show of bravery.

“Why did your renegade lover journey to Haiti earlier this year?” Oakley pressed, leaning forward and glowering.

He’s guessed!
Selena realized frantically. Royce had gone to Haiti as a messenger from George Washington to the French Comte de Grasse, who had anchored his fleet there awaiting instructions. France, even though under the burden of a monarchy that was in many ways even more oppressive than that of Great Britain, was striking at the English by supporting the colonial upstarts. And at this very moment, Selena knew, de Grasse was sailing northward to aid Washington in what was hoped would be the final battle in the war for American independence.

At Yorktown!

“Royce Campbell is a sailor,” said Selena. “That’s all.”

“Hah! He is a gunrunner, a smuggler, a complete opportunist—”

“He is not!” Selena cried.

Yet once—it was true—he had been. Selena admitted it to herself. The Royce Campbell she had first known would not have troubled himself for one second over the outcome of a political struggle, let alone an enterprise without the two elements he cherished most: high adventure and monetary gain, not necessarily in that order.

She believed that her dedication, her conviction, her own unyielding spirit had changed and gentled him.

She remembered the Christmas ball in Edinburgh at which they had first met, Selena just seventeen. He had stepped out of the shadows at the edges of the vast ballroom and asked to be her partner in the Highland fling, a tall, lean, broad-shouldered animal of a man whose black-velvet dress coat and diamond-pinned cravat seemed out of place beneath a rugged visage and peremptory eyes. The fling was wild, as always, and the ever-strange, haunting whine of the bagpipes underscored the pace of the dance. About them, dancers shouted and leaped, whirled and spun. Selena had never felt as free, nor danced as well. All around the ballroom, dancers flashed and twirled, and when it came time for her and Royce to take their places in the circle, they had already become strangely mesmerized by motion and music, caught up in a dark attraction that was more than dance, more even than the physical magnet of their opposite natures.

“Look at them,” someone shouted, as she and Royce Campbell danced toward then away from each other in the leaping steps of the fling. Selena felt the blood pumping from her heart, her lungs
aching for air, but it was glorious. Her golden hair was flying, her body too, and her very soul screamed for joy.

Royce had danced wonderfully too, with never a wasted motion, all economy and grace and style. And all about him, like an aura, was the glitter of the Campbell legend, of men who were more than mere men, of the timeless, moody penumbra of the Highlands. The Campbells were ready in the day, ready in the night, always ready for love or gold or glory. And if the wildest of them all had chosen her for this dance, what else might he have in mind?

The music pounded on and finally dancers began to drop out from exhaustion, but she and Royce kept on, the audience shouting encouragement, clapping time. Her lungs were shrieking now, and every muscle in her legs begged for mercy. But if he could go on,, so could she.
That is it
, she had thought.
We are both thoroughbreds. We are the best
.

Afterwards, he had led her out onto a balcony overlooking the North Sea. There, with the
aurora borealis
blazing in the enchanted winter sky, they clung to each other in the cold wind, and he kissed her for the first time. It had been the beginning of everything, of a love—she was sure—that not even death would be powerful enough to end…

And Selena believed that she had changed him, not by curbing or taming the seignorial impulses of his matchless nature, but by using her love to evoke the compassion that had lain dormant in his heart until they met.

Was she wrong?

Lieutenant Oakley certainly thought so. “How much do you really know about this lover of yours?” he asked sarcastically, smoothing the feathers of a quill pen. “Did he ever tell you that an agent of mine approached him to spy for us?”

“No, that’s not true!”

“Yes, it is. It is true, my dear. And do you know how he responded? He said that we could not afford to pay him as much as the Colonials. That was, unfortunately, true. Lord North and His Majesty are men of economy.”

Selena was about to reply that Royce accepted only expense money for his efforts—even General Washington was paid expense money by the Continental Congress—but then she saw the trap. Admitting such a thing would prove to Oakley that Royce
was
in the employ of the American revolutionaries. She bit her lip and said nothing.