Donald frowned. “You’ve let that business at the office bother you too much. Father is better now. He’s working just as he used to.”
“Is he, really?” she said.
Donald looked uncomfortable. “Well, he’s not truly the same. But he does do his work. It’s at home he worries me most. He and mother rarely ever spoke. But now he mostly ignores me.”
“He is still angry?” Becky said.
“I think so,” he said. “I saw a letter on the desk in the hall, which was put out with the rest of the mail for the maid to take to the post office. In father’s handwriting, there was a letter addressed to Anne in Paris.”
Becky was surprised. “I’ve never known him to write her!”
“He asked me for her address one day,” Donald said. “That made me wonder. It must have been so he could send the letter.”
Quietly she said, “I suppose he feels Anne the only one who hasn’t betrayed him. It’s natural he should reach out for someone.”
“I think it’s sick and selfish that he should write to your daughter behind your back and probably try to turn her against you,” Donald said. “And against me as well.”
“I wouldn’t be afraid of that,” she told him. “I think you’ll find the letter has little to say about us. Your father always had a special feeling for Anne, and I think he’s sorely missed her lately.”
Donald frowned. “I don’t understand him. He’s a strange man!”
“We are all a little difficult to understand,” she said ruefully.
Julie complained, “Donald, you’ve talked about everything but why we are here!”
“I know,” he said, frowning.
“Go on,” the pretty dark girl urged him.
“I will,” he said. Then turning to Becky he continued, “I guess you’re not going to believe what we have to tell you.”
She smiled. “I think I know what it is.”
“What?” Julia asked.
“You and Donald are hoplessly in love and want to get married!” Becky said.
Julia blushed. “Is it so obvious?”
“I’m afraid so,” Becky said. And she went to the girl and hugged her. “I’m so happy for you both!”
Donald said, “What about Anne? I feel like a heel!”
She went to Donald and kissed him. Patting him on the arm, she said, “Anne will survive this all right. She has her Count André. And he’s really very nice. But you should write her a short note and tell her how you feel. Do it at once!”
“It’s hard to do,” Donald worried.
“It must be done,” Becky said firmly. “Let Julia help you with it.”
“If he likes,” Julia said willingly.
Becky asked her, “How does your father feel about the match?”
“He’s given us his blessing, but he doesn’t expect Donald’s father to show up at the wedding.”
Becky said, “You never can tell.”
As soon as Anne received Donald’s letter, she sent one to her mother. It was brief and said, “All is well! I’ve accepted André! We’re coming to see you next week. We must try and make England especially pleasant for him!”
Becky smiled and cried a little at the same time. So it was settled, and the two she loved so much need never know the truth. She wanted to have Bart with her so they could go over it all and laugh and talk. But there was no Bart. She was alone now.
According to Donald, his father had taken to long night walks. Sometimes he went as far as the docks. This was a dangerous practice with Bart in such a frail state, and the number of criminals prowling the docks. There were assault and robbery cases almost every night. But Bart subbornly had refused to listen to anyone and kept having these midnight strolls.
Becky had a frightening theory. She believed that he went out deliberately seeking danger, hoping to be attacked and perhaps killed. He was weary of life and so threw himself open to this needless danger.
Then Anne and her young count arrived. Becky was beside herself with joy at having two young people in the house for a while. She had been lonely, with only the occasional visit of Donald or Julia to cheer her up.
As soon as she and Anne had a moment to themselves, she asked her about Donald’s letter. “What did he finally write to you?”
Anne laughed. “It was so apologetic and intense. And I really didn’t care. I’d made up my mind to marry André.”
“Good! He’ll make a fine husband,” Becky told her daugher in the privacy of their bedroom, where women’s talk could be shared openly.
“I hope he is happy with Julia. She sounds nice,” Anne said.
“You’ll like her,” Becky said. “Her father is a dear friend of mine. And he is going to be a partner in the new firm.”
Anne’s pretty face clouded. “Oh, that!” She gave her a troubled look. “That must have been really bad!”
She nodded. “It wasn’t easy.”
“You and Donald voted against poor Uncle Bart!”
“Yes. We betrayed him. But for his own good. He doesn’t think so, of course.”
Anne said, “He wrote me.”
“Did he?”
“A long letter. It was touching,” Anne said. “He spoke of his loving you and his pride in Donald. And then he said something that I found truly touching, he told me he’d always loved me as his own daughter. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“It was very nice.”
“I wrote back,” Anne said, smiling sadly. “And I told him that since I’d never known my father, he had always been a father figure to me. And that I also loved him dearly. I apologized for not marrying Donald and hoped it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“I’m sure it won’t.”
“I must see him soon.” Anne said. “Poor old thing! You’ve all turned on him and neglected him.”
Becky reminded her, “He can be terribly cruel and proud when he wishes.”
“I know,” Anne said gently. “But, mother, he’s old and he’s been badly hurt.”
She rose quickly, not wanting to display tears on this first night of having her daugher home. She went to the door and said, “I’ll check on André and see if he’s comfortable in his room.”
Anne laughed. “He will be. André can be comfortable anywhere!”
The pounding came on the front door in the middle of the night. Becky’s housekeeper answered the door and then came to rouse her.
“What is it?” Becky asked, sitting up sleepily.
“It’s a servant from Mr. Woods’ house,” the woman said, holding her robe close around her. “The shipyard is on fire!”
Anne had been awake. “The shipyard?”
“Yes. It is on fire,” the housekeeper said.
“We must go down there,” Becky said. And she told her housekeeper. “Thank the servant and ask him to get us a carriage to go down to the yard. We’ll be ready in ten minutes!”
And almost exactly ten minutes later she, Anne, and a sleepy André were in the carriage on the way to the docks. The blaze could be seen long before they reached the water’s edge. The flames rose high in the sky and could be viewed from many parts of London.
When she reached the wharf, Becky was the first one out of the carriage. She ran through the crowds which had gathered in search of Donald. She finally found him giving instructions and information to one of the fire chiefs. When he finished, and the man in the red uniform and gold helmet ran off to follow his instructions, he turned to her.
She looked up into his tired, soot-covered face and said, “Where is your father?”
“I don’t know,” he said, turning to gaze at the fire. “He was here. A terrible night for him. His last ship gone up in smoke!”
“What happened?”
“No one knows yet. It started down below somewhere and spread before it was noticed,” Donald said. “It’ll be a total loss. And she didn’t even get off the stays!”
“Are we insured?”
“Insurance will cover most of it
,” he said. “But it’s my father who will be hurt most. This was his last personal effort.”
“I know,” she said. “I must find him!” And she began moving among the host of strangers, thinking she saw Bart somewhere and then finding it was someone else. Then she recognized one of the watchmen and went to them.
“Mrs. Gregg!” the man said, lifting his cap respectfully. “A terrible night.”
“It is,” she said. “Have you seen Mr. Bart Woods?”
The man looked upset. “I have, ma’am. I saw him just after I got here.”
“Where?” she demanded, “Please tell me. I must find him!”
The old man looked sadly towards the blazing ship. “I don’t think you will!”
“Why not?” her voice rose in panic.
“The last I saw of him he was walking alongside the yard; making straight for the ship, and her all flames from end to end! I shouted to him, but he paid no heed to me! Went straight on and I swear, you may not believe this, he went on board her! And that’s the last I saw of him, or ever will if I know rightly!”
Had it not been for the crisp night air and the desire to get back to Donald, she would have fainted. She swayed a little, and the old man stared at her in alarm.
“You all right, ma’am?” he asked sharply.
“Yes,” she said in a faint voice. “I will be. Just let me get away!” And she turned her back to the flames, heat, and smoke and began a desperate search for Donald. She found him again where the fire chiefs were conferring and clutched his arm. “Donald! Listen to me!”
“What?” he turned to her; she saw the fear in his face.
“He’s on board that ship!” she said hysterically. “The watchman saw him go! He tried to stop him, and Bart wouldn’t listen!”
Donald nodded. “I guessed he’d done it when we couldn’t find him.” His sooty face was highlighted by a sudden burst of flame as a large section of the burning vessel collapsed.
• • •
Winter came to London, and then another summer. The firm of Gregg, Kerr, and Brown had new yards—business was prospering. Donald and Julie married and bought a new house not far from her father’s estate. He left his mother to live with a widowed cousin and the servants. She was so deep in spiritualism that she scarce had any time for the world of living in any case.
The body of Bart Woods was never found. In lieu of a burial, a special plaque was erected on the face of the office building in his honor. Anne and Count André were married in Paris and made their home there. She was already pregnant, and she confided to her mother that if it were a boy, she would surely call him Bart.
Becky and Davy Brown found themselves much as they had been at the start—they were both free and alone. But life had wrought many changes in them and in their views of life. Becky still loved Davy truly; the flame had ebbed over the decades, but there was still a spark there.
Davy invited her out to Tenby Hall for the weekend and promised that Donald and Julia would be joining them. But first he took her for a stroll in the gardens to show her some of his fine new flower beds. They paused by the big fountain in the middle of the gardens and smiled at their reflections in the rippling water.
Becky, looking at her slightly overweight figure, said with a rueful smile, “Hardly the girl who carried trays in the tavern!”
Davy chuckled. “I wouldn’t want that girl now. She’d be far too young for me.”
“What about me?”
“You’re just exactly right,” Davy said, embracing her. “And so you always will be for me!” She knew the circle had been completed—she was returning to her first love. The perilous loves that had brought her this far were already fading into memories—some bitter, some sweet!
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.crimsonromance.com
Copyright © 1979 by W. E. Dan Ross
ISBN 10: 1-4405-7291-7
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7291-3
eISBN 10: 1-4405-7292-5
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-7292-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com
Flame of Love
Clarissa Ross
Avon, Massachusetts
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Copyright
Chapter One
London, September, 1846
As midnight approached, the thick, yellowish fog had spread throughout the city. It was now no longer possible to see more than a few feet in any direction, and the glow of the hissing gas lamps at the occasional street corner made no inroads against the almost impenetrable shroud of mist. It was no longer safe for pedestrian or carriage to be abroad on such a night. Yet there were a few of each still groping their ways to various destinations.
One of these was seventeen-year-old Fanny Hastings. The pretty red-head clutched her gray cloak about her and made her way along the winding, cobblestoned street in which she found herself. Since reaching Central London from Brenmoor an hour or so earlier, she had wandered about aimlessly. She had literally fled from Brenmoor Castle where she had been a maid in the employ of the Marquis of Brenmoor. As she clung to the small valise which contained all her worldly belongings she tried without success to chart a path for her future.
Now the result of her impetuous action was all too apparent. She was alone and friendless in the great city of London, which she’d only heard told about in grim tales by Marsden, the butler at the Marquis of Brenmoor’s. And that worthy gentleman had not painted a warm picture of the teeming metropolis.
“London is a sinful city without a heart,” the tall, dignified Marsden had warned her. “Best to avoid it altogether and be on the safe side!”
Marsden had been her superior in the busy household of the Marquis to which she’d gone on the death of her mother. Because her mother’s cousin, Lily, had long been the cook in the grand mansion, it was there Fanny had gone when her mother’s death had left her completely alone in the small country village where her widowed parent had toiled as housekeeper for the elderly scholar, Timothy Creighton.
Fanny, young as she was, might have carried on in her mother’s footsteps as housekeeper for the fine old gentleman had not the same fever which carried her mother off also killed the old man in the early part of December. His tight-fisted nephew came to sell the house and settle the estate, and Fanny was given a few shillings and a stagecoach ticket to Brenmoor Castle on the outskirts of London.
Lily Kendall, a stout, kindly woman in her middle years, had taken her first startled glance at Fanny and exclaimed, “You must be Mary’s child! You’re the very image of her!”
Tears in her eyes, she’d admitted, “I am, dear cousin. I have come to you because I had nowhere else to go!”
The matronly spinster had taken her warmly in her arms and said, “And why should you turn to anyone else when Lily Kendall is alive and well! Don’t you worry no more, the Marquis will give you a position!”
And so he had. Fanny, after a warm dinner and a good night’s rest on a cot in a small attic room, had found herself nervously presenting herself to the Marquis the next morning with Lily standing in the background to give her any needed support.
Her Aunt Lily had warned her that the Marquis was often of uncertain disposition in the mornings. He was also a widower and a veteran of the French camp
aigns under Wellington. He had married shortly after his soldiering and his titled, frail wife had given him three sturdy sons.
The Marquis had not married again and was hardly likely to now that his three sons were full grown with the eldest twenty-four and the youngest twenty-two. His adoring wife had dutifully borne him an heir each year until her own health, sadly deteriorated, had doomed her to a few months of illness and then death. The Marquis had never recovered from the blow, and along with it he suffered from a leg wound received at Waterloo which had forever ended his riding days, causing him to use a cane and walk with a decided limp.
On that first morning he had sat at the desk in his study like the grim martinet he was. His hair was gray and thinning and he had the kind of strong, lined face with a prominent nose which somehow made the nervous Fanny think of an eagle.
The heavy gray eyebrows met in a frown and the Marquis commented, “You speak very well, girl. Not at all like one of the lower classes. Where did you get your education?”
“I was most fortunate, sir,” she said. “My mother took care of a scholar and I lived in the house. As part of her wages he gave me lessons in any number of things.”
“Consider yourself a lucky girl,” the Marquis said in his odd, hoarse voice, a result of chronic bronchial trouble. “Do not lose your fine way of speaking. It may serve you well in life.”
“Yes, sir,” she said quietly, looking down.
“And you are an orphan you say,” the Marquis went on. “May I ask what happened to your late father?”
Fanny looked directly at him now, her large green eyes wide. “My father was a strolling player, sir, a man of great talent. Many years ago he left my mother to search for employment in the theatre at Bristol. He never did come back. The letters my mother sent to him were returned so we presumed he had died.”
The Marquis scowled and moved his cane a little. “I should say the fellow deserted her! That you and your mother were abandoned by this scoundrel of an actor!”
She protested hotly, “We have never thought of it that way. My mother always said he was a kind man with fine manners and speech. That is why I have wished to learn to speak well. I would like to be an actress one day!”
Vintage Love Page 121