Lennox, Mary - Heart of Fire.txt

by Heart of Fire. txt (lit)

  like crystal and steel welded together. Leaning his forehead hard

  against it, he fought the frustration and tried to think of a way

  out of the cage that trapped him, but his mind was as useless as

  his trembling legs. Voices came to him like the muffled sighs of

  the ocean through a conch shell. The amorphous figures

  murmured and slowly took shape before him.

  Lights flickered on as torches flared. Nicholas could see

  buildings lining the square, the marble rosy in the light. Around

  him, men and women took their seats upon benches that led

  upward in a semicircle. A fine irritation jittered along all his

  nerve endings. He felt as though he were a beast in a pit.

  “Nicholas Rostov, you have formerly expressed a desire to

  wed Catherine Elizabeth Seraphina Galerien, of this country,”

  a voice declared from midway up the rows of seats.

  Desire, thought Nicholas, does not begin to cover it.

  “If this is still your wish, by what right do you claim her?”

  This answer, at least, came quickly to him. “I have no right.”

  Nicholas groaned, pressing against the invisible cage that

  held him. He couldn’t coerce, or outmaneuver, or argue logically.

  But Sera was there, he had heard her, felt her presence. He had

  come to tell her—he had lived to tell her—and nobody was

  going to stop him now.

  “I have no right to take you from the safety of this place,”

  he said in a voice that tried for calm but shook with emotion.

  “All I have is my love for you. I love you, Sera.”

  The small shadow at the periphery struggled, whether to

  run to him or away, he couldn’t tell. But the larger one touched

  her arm, and she quieted.

  “Let her come to me,” he called out to the dark shadows

  about him. “If just to say good-bye, let her come.” But the

  invisible walls hemmed him in, as alone as he had ever been in

  the gray Outlander world beyond this light. He forced himself

  to go on, ignoring the listening ears, the strangers prodding him

  for all his secrets. It no longer mattered a damn who heard him,

  as long as she did.

  “Sera!” His voice broke on a laugh that was half a groan. “I

  don’t think you understand what it means to me that you see

  what I am, all of me and still you love me.”

  He cleared his throat. “You never let me off, did you? You

  never let me hide in logic or pretension, yet you believed in me

  when I doubted I would ever be good enough. Because of you,

  I changed into a man whom my people actually seem to look

  upon with fondness. Because of you, Katherine is no longer

  afraid of me—or anything else. Rather amazing, isn’t it?”

  He gave a low laugh that caught in his throat. “I have no

  right to you, Sera. Bloody shame, isn’t it, because I love you

  with all my heart. I think I did from that moment in Hadar’s

  palace, when you told me how you might have a terrible disease.

  Do you remember how you decided that if one was disgusting,

  two would certainly keep me away?”

  Nicholas stared at his hands and muttered, “Now I’ve

  probably embarrassed you in front of your people and ruined

  my chances. But I came here so I could tell you. I shall love

  you until I die. That is all I have to say.”

  “Nicholas!” Her clear cry cut through the muffled air.

  The barrier shattered into a thousand pieces. Nicholas turned

  blindly toward the sound of her voice. Sera burst down those

  endless stairs into the pit and flung herself against him. His

  arms whipped around her. She lifted her face. Her eyes were

  shadowed, and her face was thin. But she glowed.

  Nicholas tried to grin. With the lump in his throat, it was

  too hard. He buried his face against her neck, breathing in the

  sweet scent of her body, fighting for control.

  Sera tugged lightly at his hand. “Come away,” she

  whispered, glancing about them, and he remembered himself,

  and where they were, and the scrutiny that she must feel from

  the inquisitors who stood witness. He followed her out of the

  square and on through a wide city street smelling of flowers

  and fresh, blessedly warm air, and he realized that Sera’s elusive

  scent came from Arkadia, itself.

  It was around them and part of her, and it was the earth

  that had nurtured her all her life. In the soft lamplight, the

  buildings rose about him in the classic Greek style, clean of

  line and perfectly harmonious. This was quite unlike any city

  he had ever seen, not even Montanyard. Sculptures stood

  everywhere, magnificent, finer than any he’d seen in Florence.

  The streets were broad, and the stone that made them perfectly

  cut. Somewhere singing in the back of his dizzy brain was the

  strangest feeling of ease exchanged for tension, as though he

  had finally, after years of exile, come home. The Temple Square

  was empty. The people must all still be gathered in the

  amphitheater beyond the mountain pass.

  Nicholas pulled Sera behind the columns of a great marble

  building and wrapped his arms about her. She nestled against

  him, her own arms holding tight. This was what he craved, what

  he needed to live again. Bending his head, he covered her lips

  with his own, to take her joy and give it back again. He cupped

  her cheeks and planted kisses over her nose, her mouth, her

  eyelids. The words he’d kept boxed inside him flew from his

  lips. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  In the dim light, he fumbled for the necklace and clasped it

  around her throat.

  “Blue and white,” he murmured, tracing the oval of the

  brilliant sapphire, feeling the soft skin above her collar bone

  with the back of his hand. “The colors of Laurentia.”

  “Red and white,” she said, drawing his hand to the rubies

  and diamonds of the chain. He could hear the smile in her voice.

  “The colors of Beaureve.”

  Laughing, he lifted her high and twirled her so many times,

  he lost count. “I love you,” he said again, for all the times he

  had not said it. And then, because it was a serious decision she

  had, after all, made in the midst of high emotion, he asked,

  “Are you sure?”

  The moon rose, silver and full, and he saw the radiance

  again on her face, and the teasing smile that he had seen before

  only rarely. It had the same effect it always did on him, turning

  him heated and eager in a flash.

  “How many times must I agree to marry you, Nicholas

  Rostov? Indeed, I do not believe you have formally proposed

  even now.”

  He pulled her up against him, letting her feel his heat and

  his need. “Once upon a time,” he said between butterfly kisses

  to her cheeks, her chin, the soft, upward curve of her mouth, “a

  king got himself well and truly lost. And a beautiful princess

  took pity on him.”

  She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back,

  ardent and joyful and sensual beyond his wildest dreams. “What

  happened then?” she whispered.

/>   “She married him.” He buried his face in her neck, breathing

  in her scent, which was the perfume of the flowers all about

  them. “And they lived happily ever after.”

  Epilogue

  A week later, Sera watched the moon rise over Arkadia.

  The light shone into the room where she stood with Nicholas

  behind her, his arms wrapped about her waist. It was their

  wedding night, and there was nothing more she would have

  wished than this—to have him warm and strong at her back,

  sharing her world, whichever one it would be. Waiting to be

  wed would have seemed torment, for they were not permitted

  to be alone with each other for more than a few minutes at a

  time. But there were compensations for her body’s hunger for

  him. This week she had seen Nicholas’s face light at the sight

  of scientific discoveries at the academy, at the feel of a Hill

  horse beneath him, and at the sounds of intense, earnest debate

  among young men and women in the agora.

  He had spent hours with her grandfather, discussing

  oligarchy and democracy, for Arkadia had been in transition

  from the former to the latter since the tenth century, when the

  eugenics program was discarded. Most of all, she treasured the

  look of relief and happiness on his face when he gazed through

  Grandfather’s scrying glass and saw the French troops hurrying

  away from Laurentia’s border, toward France.

  Never, she thought with a blush and a shiver of anticipation,

  had he looked so young, so eager and relaxed, except after their

  bodies had met and merged in love.

  This night, she had seen his even deeper joy at the sight of

  her, sitting suddenly shy in her crimson gown and veil when he

  came to “abduct” her from her home.

  Her kinsmen and her friends had put up very little fight

  when Nicholas and Jacob Augustus appeared at Grandfather’s.

  There had been much laughter and applause when he had swept

  her up in his arms and carried her from her childhood hearth

  while Jacob, as groomsman, ran ahead to bring the horses for

  the bride and groom to ride away.

  Jacob had taken time to get to know Nicholas in the last

  week, as if to make up for the prejudice that had unwittingly

  caused her so much unhappiness. And in the end, he had

  confessed a genuine liking for the king, intensified by his study

  of Nicholas’s genealogy. Hill blood ran in the Rostov line from

  Sophia, the daughter of a Russian prince and an Arkadian

  mother, who had met and fallen in love with Nicholas’s

  grandfather. It was Queen Sophia’s room that had the hidden

  staircase and the wondrous wallpaper that included a bird from

  the Hills.

  This discovery explained many things to Jacob. He now

  knew why the king felt that little prickle at the back of his neck,

  why he could fend off recurring pneumonia with the force of

  his will alone, and why he was able to hear Emmanuel’s warning

  on the battlefield in the Brotherhood camp. Jacob surmised that

  the Hill blood running in Nicholas’s veins was what had toppled

  his sister into delirious love in the first place.

  Sera could have told Jacob that Hill blood hadn’t a thing to

  do with her love for Nicholas, but she wanted to encourage his

  new interest in the Outlander world. For if Jacob, the future

  Mage, became curious, others would follow, and the bridge

  between both worlds would strengthen.

  “What are you thinking?” Nicholas wrapped her closer, his

  breath a warm, soft huff against her ear. She bent her head to

  one side, giving him access. A jolt of heat swept through her

  when she felt his soft kisses on the sensitive skin beneath her

  ear.

  “Among other things, how delighted you were with the

  wedding present your groomsman gave you.”

  She could feel his lips curve against her skin. “The Hill

  cloak! Sera, did I ever tell you how much I wanted to travel?

  When I was a boy, all I could think about was what the Pyramids

  must look like, and the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal.

  I never thought I’d be free enough to do such a thing. And now,

  we can go anywhere we want, and be back by suppertime.”

  How she loved his joy. Such a man as her husband would

  never grow old. “Do you remember Jacob’s instructions?”

  “I should hope so,” Nicholas said with another huff of air,

  this time not so gentle. “They were certainly simple, although

  several months ago, I wouldn’t have believed in such things as

  Hill cloaks and beautiful, magical, stubborn women.”

  She smiled at that last and turned to twine her arms about

  his neck. “Tell me how to use a Hill cloak,” she said, rubbing

  her lips against the smooth skin just above his collarbone.

  “Tomorrow,” he murmured against her hair. “I can’t think

  when you do that.” His hand traveled up her side, cupping the

  fullness of her breast. She gasped as his palm grazed the nipple.

  Memory and privation sharpened her hunger, and she arched

  into his hand. But there was one last gift she wanted to give

  him before she surrendered to the need coursing through her

  body.

  “Now,” she whispered.

  He sighed and drew her close. “Either I think very hard of

  the exact place where I want to be, or I hold your hand, and

  you’ll guide me. Jacob also said that certain sensations would

  be… unsettling and that I should let you guide me the first time

  or two. But I know where I want to go.”

  “Where?”

  “To bed. With you.” Nicholas kissed her again, maddeningly

  exciting little teases along her throat and down, lower.

  “There will be a bed, I promise.”

  The cloaks lay across the couch by the window. Sera

  carefully fastened one about Nicholas’s shoulders. “Don’t put

  the hood up until it’s time,” she said, with frightening visions

  of Nicholas lost on the wind.

  “I have better things in mind for tonight than waiting for

  you to rescue me, Sera.” His eyes danced with excitement as

  she fastened her own cloak. “Take me to a nice, big bed where

  we can make love all night.”

  “Hold on to me,” she said, reaching out for his hand.

  Nicholas lifted the hood over his head. The world

  disappeared in a whoosh and swirl of air. He held on tight to

  Sera’s hand, sailing on the wind like a hawk high above the

  earth below them. The stars and the moon glowed, cold and

  remote above them. His nose was cold, but everything else was

  blessedly warm beneath the cloak’s thin wool. What magic had

  they woven into the warp and woof of the fabric? His heart

  pounded, his eyes watered against the wind, and he brushed

  them with his free hand, to better see rivers below him like

  shining silver ribbons.

  Excitement thrummed through him. This, then, to fly above

  the world at will, was the freedom he had always craved. He

  felt the earth beneath him coming up fast. For an instant, his

  insides lurched in sickening fear of a crash.
Wildly, he looked

  round him, but the place was a blur in the darkness.

  Softly as a feather, they touched down into warmth and

  light. He blinked, disoriented. His feet felt boards beneath them,

  his hands the blaze of a fire. He drew down the hood of his

  cloak and looked about. His great, canopied bed with the crown

  at the top rose on the dais directly before him. Sera stood beside

  him, beautiful in the firelight as she unfastened her cloak and

  laid it carefully upon the chair in his room. For a moment, he

  didn’t understand her, and thought this must be some joke she’d

  thought to play.

  But she came to him with that radiance on her face and

  unfastened his cloak.

  He caught her fingers in his hand. “Why? Why of all the

  places in the world, here, in my room?”

  She raised his hands to her lips and very softly kissed them

  both. When she lifted her gaze to him, he saw that her eyes

  were that serene, deep blue of an ocean on a perfect summer

  morning, when the world is new again.

  “I’ve brought us home, Nicholas,” she said.

  Home. It was such a simple word. And with it, she gave

  him everything—her allegiance, her happiness, her complete

  trust.

  If he had learned one thing in the last months, it was to

  accept a gift of love without reservation. He scooped his wife

  up into his arms and carried her to his bed. She held on tight to

  the nape of his neck, warm and soft in his embrace. As he laid

  her down, she smiled up at him, a full, rich curving of her lips

  because he had understood her gift. Aye, he thought bending to

  her, a man who holds tight to the blessing in his arms may be

  flawed in a million ways, but he’s no fool.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mary Lennox grew up dreaming of places where magic

  and happy endings coexisted. She woke up long enough to leave

  graduate school, marry an irreverent lawyer and tour the world.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the medieval beauty of

  Europe’s cathedrals, the grimness and glory of Russia, or the

  exotic mysteries of India. The only way to top that experience

  was to turn carpenter and build with her husband her perfect

  house on a tranquil horse farm in Appalachia, home-school her

  kids from grades k-12, and gallop her horses on the wooded