Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  “And how did you fare in Port-au-Prince, my dear?” inquired Martha, when Jean had gone inside to his ablutions.

  “Not so well,” Selena admitted. “Not so well.”

  Martha got up and left too, leaving Selena with Rafael, who came from the ship looking fit and happy.

  “You’ve had a successful trip?”

  “One of the best, Selena.” He sat down with her, helped himself to a mug of brandy, and lowered his voice. “I saw your Royce Campbell in Caracas,” he said.

  Selena’s heart skipped several beats. “You saw him?”

  “In truth, I spoke to him. I told him you were here. But Jean does not know about this. He is in love with you, as you know, and I did not wish to upset him.”

  “What did Royce say?”

  “That he would sail here for you. In fact, I was somewhat surprised to see you. Campbell left Venezuela a week before we did. He ought to have arrived here by now.”

  “You’re sure you told him how to reach Hidden Harbor?”

  “Yes. Precisely. I drew him a map. He was very happy when he learned that you were safe. But, Selena—”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you…are you really sure about that man?”

  “Of course I am! Why would you ask such a question?”

  “I get the feeling, Selena, that he is involved in something very complicated and very dangerous. At every port, things seem to be going on just beneath the surface. It is nothing that one can put a finger on, but the feeling is there, and Campbell seems to be a part of whatever is happening.”

  This was information Selena did not wish to treat. She would discuss it with Royce when they were together again.

  But she did mention the hapless LaValle from Port-de-Paix.

  “I cannot say I am surprised.” Rafael nodded. “Now that man was something of a scoundrel—”

  And Royce dealt with him! Selena brooded.

  “—and in the end scoundrels always meet such fates. Well, I suppose it is better than dying in one’s bed. Now that is ignominy for you!”

  They both laughed. “Ending up as a shrunken head on a pagan altar is not exactly noble, either,” said Selena.

  Rafael was mystified. “What do you mean?”

  She told him about Yolanda’s primitive chamber.

  “You’re jesting,” he exclaimed. “You’ve been listening to too many stories about Haitian black magic.”

  “No!” she said, getting up and taking his hand. “Come along and I’ll show you.”

  She pulled him along to the end of the veranda, gesturing toward the garden outside Yolanda’s quarters. “Have a look at that!” she challenged.

  “So?” he asked, puzzled.

  Couldn’t he see? She turned toward the garden.

  It was immaculately manicured, just like the one outside her own rose-tinted chamber. The grass was clipped level and short. Plants and flowers stood placidly in their perfectly tended beds.

  This must be how people feel when they begin to lose their minds, Selena thought. “Well, come and see something else,” she ordered, pulling Rafael along with her over the veranda railing. So eager was she to prove the validity of what she’d seen, she didn’t even care if anyone saw them crossing the lawn and approaching Yolanda’s French doors.

  “What am I supposed to say?” Rafael asked in bewilderment as she bade him look through the glass into Yolanda’s strange room.

  “What? Isn’t it obvious?”

  Selena herself peered inside.

  And saw only a room like her own, except painted in a light shade of becoming blue. Yolanda was sitting on her bed, pouring a glass of rum. She saw them and came over, opening the doors.

  “Yes?”

  “I was…we were just…admiring your garden,” Selena faltered.

  The Haitian permitted herself a slow smile. “Come in and join me in a drink?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “Selena, are you sure you’re all right?” Rafael inquired solicitously when they were back on the veranda.

  “I don’t know,” replied Selena. “I guess I just don’t know.”

  Oh, Royce! Get here soon!

  Darkness had fallen. Dinner time drew near, and Selena was seated before the mirror in her room, brushing her hair. Slowly, methodically, she brushed and brushed. The very mindlessness of this grooming ritual had a calming effect, of which she was badly in need, and the thin silk chemise she wore felt cool and luxurious on her skin. Across the back of her chair lay the gown she would wear, a sea-green velvet dress with dark-green piping. It covered both breasts, but not too completely. She hoped Jean would like it.

  On the inside of the hem, minutes earlier, she had stitched an eye, a cross, and a small five-pointed star.

  “When in Rome…” she murmured. “What is happening to me? Here I am, a modern woman, bereft of superstitions, apparently beginning to believe in dark forces. And yet I know what I saw in Yolanda’s room!”

  The black image of that terra-cotta phallus with its many-faceted glitter stood out as clearly in her mind as Coldstream Castle. She vividly recalled the shrunken heads. And Yolanda’s evocative scent was as real here at Hidden Harbor as it had been aboard the Liberté.

  “I am not dreaming!” she said aloud. “I am not going mad!”

  “I certainly hope not,” said Jean Beaumain, slipping into her room.

  Embarrassed, she started to get to her feet, but he crossed the room quickly, grinning, and took her into his arms. He wore a loose-fitting white shirt and scarlet breeches, and smelled of brandy and soap.

  “Jean…” she said, but his kiss cut off a half-formed, complicated thought, which combined her pleasure at seeing him again, a concern that he still wanted her as much as before, and a need to tell him what had transpired since his departure.

  Moreover, it felt good—God, did it ever feel good—to be kissed and held again. She decided to let herself go with the kiss a little, to enjoy it fully, but that decision, once made, weakened her resolve when it came time to decide to stop. So she didn’t decide. And then he was kissing her harder, pressing against her, bursting with strength and hard need. She was not even aware that he had pulled the flimsy chemise down over her shoulders until she felt his hands on her breasts, gentle and sure. Need rose in her like a pillar of fire, and she clung to him, her eyes closed, still kissing him, as he lifted her and carried her to the bed. He did not remove the shirt covering his scars, but somehow his breeches were off, her chemise was on the floor, and he was inside her as far as could be. The love was like a sudden summer storm raging out of a clear sky. Selena felt the first ripples of approaching ecstasy like warning droplets of rain, and before she could move or take shelter, the storm broke savagely all around, tremendous in its fury, spent itself in violent jolts of power, leaving both of them drenched and shuddering in the afterglow.

  “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 m
ove. 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.

  8

  A Cross in the Sand

  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 d
ie 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.”