A bottle of champagne awaited them on the nightstand and with great ceremony he popped the cork and poured the golden liquid into two glasses, then handed one to his wife.
"To fifty years, darlin'. It's been a grand trip."
"To fifty more, Jesse. I cannot imagine a more wonderful voyage." Five decades of love and sorrow, of tears and laughter and joy that encompassed all that a man and woman could share.
From downstairs came the laughter of their children and grandchildren and friends and as her husband drew her into his arms, Caroline Bennett Reardon knew that the best was yet to be.
The End
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Fire's Lady
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Excerpt from
Fire's Lady
by
Barbara Bretton
Revenge proves its own executioner.
~John Ford, "The Broken Heart"
Prologue
Hudson River Valley
January, 1872
"Drop the robe, girl." The man's voice was deep and authoritative, the voice of a man accustomed to giving orders.
Mary Margaret Kilbride was paid to obey orders. However, this time she pulled the wool wrapper closer to her naked body and prayed for a miracle. Not like this, she thought. This is not the way for him to find out.
"I'm too cold," she said, her voice low and husky. "If you would just be lighting the grate, then I could..." She let her words drift off, allowing the right shoulder of the wrapper to drop down a little, exposing the tops of her full breasts.
"Have you no head, girl? A fire in that grate could ruin the canvases I have drying." He started toward her, his golden eyes colder than the January streets outside the window. "Now drop that robe, Mary. This coyness doesn't become you." His tone grew lazy, seductive. "At least, not at this late date."
Visions of the hours they'd spent together tangled on his big brass bed made Mary suddenly weak with desire. She couldn't think of that now; now was the time to think of where that desire had taken her.
It had been three weeks since she last posed for Andrew at his studio overlooking the Hudson River and in those three weeks her body had ripened in a way his artist's eye would instantly recognize. Her breasts were rounder, fuller; her once flat stomach had grown softly swollen. Soon her condition would be so obvious that she would be unable to return to her position as maid at the Van Voorhies estate where Andrew had first discovered her. There would be nothing left for her but to return to her family in disgrace.
Her brothers and sisters would smirk at the high-and-mighty Miss Moneybags whose Prince Charming hadn't swept her away to his palace by the sea while Da would avert his eyes each time she lumbered across the room, heavy with another mouth to feed. The thought of being trapped in a life of endless toil with her only hope of happiness resting in the afterlife put terror in Mary's heart.
Andrew Lowell—and whatever sense of responsibility he might feel toward this unborn child—was her only hope. She wasn't fool enough to believe he loved her, but she was woman enough to know that passion could be the stronger force.
Mightier men than Andrew Lowell had been felled by their own sword.
"It has been a long time, Andrew," she said, leaning against the high back of the stool she sat upon. "I've been missing you." The jade green robe slipped from her other shoulder and she saw his eyes instantly drawn to the deep shadows between her breasts. She let her hands slide upward from her waist, drawing one long finger along the rich cleavage. Ah, yes, she thought. He is not so mighty that he does not want what I can give.
"The light will be with us only a few more hours, Mary." She saw him try to draw his eyes away from the splendor of her body and fail. "Surely your lust can wait that long, can it not?"
A rush of fear ran through her, threatening to undo her plan. Lust could wait, Mary knew, but her future could not. She extended one long bare leg, letting her toes graze gently against his thigh. Her smile was quick and triumphant as he gasped at her touch. "I can wait, Andrew, but perhaps it is you who cannot..."
"You're an evil girl." He grasped her foot in one large, powerful hand and placed it more fully against his body. "Doesn't that church of yours teach you about the fires of hell?"
Ah, but Mary Margaret knew all about the fires of hell. Hadn't her mother pitched fire and brimstone at Mary from the first time a man looked at her?
"Perhaps there are other fires I care more about," Mary said softly.
She moved her leg slightly so the jade green robe fell away, drawing Andrew's eyes from her ripe breasts to the hidden pleasures barely shielded by the robe. Inside her head, Bridget's keening wail raged, foretelling an eternity of fiery damnation. I won't listen, Mary thought. I can't listen.
Her mother had never known what it was like to be twenty years old and filled with a longing for something she could not define. Bridget had never known how it felt to be trapped by an accident of fate, carrying a child she neither planned for, nor wanted.
Mary would rather risk an eternity in hell than allow this one miraculous chance to escape the shackles of her heritage slip through her fingers. She looked at Andrew, putting all the heat and power of her desire into her gaze.
Hellfire was a small price to pay for a life of splendor.
"The fire is inside me, Andrew." She threw her head back and looked at him through half-closed eyes, letting her fingers dance gently along the inside of her thigh. "Dare you risk being burned?"
The sound Andrew made was deep and fierce, almost savage. He dropped to his knees and buried his lips against the secret heart of her desire. Against her will the exquisite tension began to build inside her.
His lips and tongue were doing magical, incredible things to her body. She leaned more fully against him as the woolen wrapper slipped from her shoulders and fell unnoticed to the floor. Small incoherent cries punctuated the chilly air of the studio as he brought her closer and closer to that mystical place he'd introduced her to months earlier.
She was fire and flame, burning with need, as she arched her body in an effort to touch him. He bit her inner thigh sharply then pulled her into his arms. His large hands lingered over the roundness of her belly. She held her breath. He hesitated a second as if the feel of her were somehow puzzling. His hands moved upward toward her breasts and too late she tried to move away from his touch.
"No, Andrew," she said as he lightly stroked the nipples that swelled to meet his hands. "Please, no."
"'No' is a new word in your vocabulary, Mary," he murmured as the rosy peaks hardened at his touch. "Is it a new game you care to teach me?"
His hands slid down her rib cage then back up again. Breasts that once barely filled his palm now lay heavy and ripe in his hands. Mary stared at her firm white flesh against the deep tan of his skin.
There was nowhere to hide.
She looked up at him, noting for the thousandth time the hard glitter in his golden eyes. "I am with child, Andrew."
He flicked one nipple with his thumb and she winced, more from the casual nature of the gesture than from any physical discomfort. He studied her blossoming body as he would study a still life arrangement he wished to paint.
"So it would seem." He drew away from her and reached for the decanter of brandy he kept in a cabinet near his brass bed. "And who is the lucky father?"
He took a long swig straight from the bottle and in that instant she knew all was lost.
"The baby is yours, Andrew," she said, trying desperately to keep the sound of her heritage from her voice. Her need should not be so obvious. "You should be knowing that."
"I should be knowing no such thing." He mimicked her cadence and tone with wicked precision. "What you do when you leave this studio is of no consequence to me." He offered her some brandy and she shook her head. "I have seen the way Van Voorhies watches you swing those pretty hips of yours when you serve dinner. How do I kn
ow you haven't been tumbling with him right beneath Katarina's nose?"
"You are the only man I have been with," she whispered, unmindful of her nakedness in the chilly studio. She could see her future disappearing before her like the mist that settled each evening over the valley only to vanish come morning. "Surely there is in you a bit of pleasure that out of our union a child will be born."
Andrew placed the decanter down on the cabinet and froze her with a glance. "I have no time for this, girl," he said as she slipped her robe back over her ripe body. "You should have known that from the start."
"But I love you," she lied, feeling the fires of damnation flicking closer to her soul.
"You love what I can offer you, Mary Margaret Kilbride. Nothing more than that." He leaned back against the cabinet and crossed his powerful arms across his chest. "I have seen enough doomed marriages begin with more convincing lies than yours."
"I wouldn't be lying to you, Andrew. Do you think I would have lain with you had I not felt something?"
Andrew threw back his head and laughed. Winter sun streamed through the skylight; his deep black hair sparkled beneath it. "Oh, I know exactly what you felt, Mary." He reached out and touched that spot between her thighs that had moments before known his kiss. "It has precious little to do with love."
Rage, towering and pure, rose up inside Mary and before she could think of the consequences of her action, she swept his painting of her off the easel with the back of her arm. The sound of ripping canvas filled her with exhilaration.
"I curse you, Andrew Lowell," she raged, unable to hide the lilting sound of her parents' homeland any longer. "I curse your black heart into eternity."
"Such arrogance, girl. If you do indeed have the Almighty's ear, have Him send me a less fertile model next time. God knows, you're a fine piece, but your price comes too high for me." He bent down to pick up his scattered tubes of paint.
Mary watched the elegant line of his body and imagined how it would feel to plunge a knife into that beautifully muscled back. With one supremely indifferent sentence, he had crushed her dreams of a better life, the life she knew she deserved.
"You're a cruel man," she said as she gathered up her clothing one final time. "You'll pay for this one day, Andrew Lowell. Never think I will be letting you escape."
Andrew arched one elegant black brow. "Is it money you want then? Why didn't you say so?" He opened the drawer of the chest and pulled out a banded stack of greenbacks.
There was more money there than Mary had ever seen in her life—enough, she was sure, to see her through her confinement and to start her on her way to better things. Try as she would, she couldn't mask the hunger in her eyes.
"Will this soothe your wounded soul?" Andrew tossed the money at her; the bills broke free of the band and scattered at her bare feet.
Walk out, Mary Margaret, her mother's voice whispered in her ear. Have some pride, child.
Pride was well and good but pride wouldn't get Mary Margaret to where she needed to be. Pride was for the ladies in their fine silks and satins whose heads rested easily each night on pillows scented with French perfume, not for a girl who slept in a room above the kitchen with an unwanted babe growing in her belly.
She was only Mary Margaret Kilbride and, God forgive her, she bent at his feet and picked up every last dollar herself.
"Now, off with you, girl," Andrew commanded. "I have no more time for such nonsense."
Mary stuffed the money into the pockets of her robe. So much more could have been hers—so much more.
"You'll wish you had never crossed me, my fine Mr. Lowell." She placed her hands over her barely-rounded belly and looked straight into his golden eyes. "Some truths cannot be denied."
"You speak nonsense, girl." Andrew picked up a fresh canvas and placed it on the easel where the destroyed one had rested. "Spare me your ancient Gaelic curses." He pushed a lock of heavy dark hair off his forehead with a gesture that had once made her pulses quicken. "You'll find some poor unsuspecting fool and pass your bastard off as his, have no fear. It wouldn't be the first time a man had been fooled by a pretty pair of blue eyes."
He turned away from her and resumed his work, dismissing her as completely as if she had ceased to exist.
Mary stood quietly for a long moment, committing the scene to memory.
"I'll belong to no man," she whispered, "but they will all belong to me."
And Andrew Lowell was no exception. She no more wanted this child than he did, but the luxury of turning away belonged only to the male of the species. One day in the future he would see that everything in life came full circle.
Mary Margaret Kilbride would see to that.
* * *
Paris
March, 1892
Marisa Glenn lowered the flame on her gas lamp then leaned forward to inspect her face in the mirror once again. They were still there, those tiny lines around her eyes, but not quite as visible as they had been moments ago.
Each day it grew harder to keep Time at bay. The deceptions grew more elaborate, the need for them more acute. The crow's feet, the beginning of softness in the muscles of her long legs, the random strand of silver in her coppery hair—all of these things struck terror in Marisa's heart.
For the past twenty years Marisa's beauty had given her power and power was the one thing she craved. She had made a considerable fortune as the most sought after—and notorious—artist's model in all of Paris, accepting both praise and presents with equal aplomb.
The beauty was still there, it was true, but of late she had learned to rely a bit more on charm and a bit less on allure to get her way with men. Adjustments, yes, but adjustments Mary Margaret Kilbride had learned to make over the years.
There was one adjustment, however, that was impossible, even for Marisa Glenn.
Hanging on the wall across the room was a portrait of a beautiful young woman whose dark curls tumbled across slender shoulders and whose golden eyes held the summer sun in their depths. "La Romantique," they called her in the society columns, a mysterious Gypsy-like young woman from Provence whose loveliness lured the finest artists way from the boites of Paris into the pastures of Provence to capture her on canvas. They said her wild beauty was eclipsed only by the sweetness of her heart. Artists who once worshipped at Marisa's feet now clamored for La Romantique.
To grow old and ugly was one of life's cruel jests.
To be replaced by one's own daughter was the cruelest jest of all.
"Madame?" Liane, her maid, stood in the doorway. Not even the dim light could obscure the deep furrows of worry on the woman's brow or the concern in her brown eyes.
Marisa absently touched her own brow. Liane had been with her since Marisa arrived in Paris almost nineteen years ago, but the years hadn't been as kind to the maid as they had been to the lady. Although both women were nearing forty, Marisa still had the look of a pampered pet while Liane showed the passage of the years in the deep lines etched around her eyes and the silver in her chestnut hair.
Marisa reluctantly drew her eyes from her reflection. "He is here?" she asked, looking up at Liane.
"In the drawing room," said the maid, her hands plucking nervously at the crisp ruffles on her apron.
Marisa sighed and rose from her chair, smoothing the folds of her dressing gown of China silk. "We'll have tea in one half hour."
Liane nodded as Marisa glided toward the door.
"Madame—" Her voice faltered.
Marisa paused in the doorway. "Have you forgotten something, Liane?"
Liane's composure shattered like crystal beneath a boot heel. "Madame, I beg you reconsider. Revenge is never sweet, never! Think of the child, sil vous plait. She deserves better."
"And I deserve a servant who understands her position in life. You forget yourself, mademoiselle."
The fool! The servant had no right to tender an opinion, even if she was privy to Marisa's secrets. How dare the woman presume to tell Marisa how to run her lif
e. Years she'd been waiting—so many years—for this opportunity. How dare Liane presume she could dissuade Marisa with her simple pleas?
Nothing could stop her now. The plan was too well prepared; the prize too close at hand.
And time was running out.
Beneath the lace and satin, the perfume and powder, her own destiny—the beginning of the end—burned white-hot.
There was something almost fitting about the irony of it all, she thought as she made her way through her quiet hallway to the drawing room where the man awaited her. The softness of her breasts, their perfection, had captured the imagination of a generation of artists, who had flocked to Paris to join the Impressionist movement—and many a man had found excitement in her bed as she cradled his head in that fragrant valley between those breasts.
Her hand lightly grazed her left breast and a chill ran through her body. Each day, each hour, the lump grew larger and more deadly and she knew her time would soon be at hand. All these years she'd spent running away from the Almighty, only to have Him reach down from heaven to have the last laugh.
She paused before the arched entrance to the drawing room to collect herself. The man stood near the window, his body silhouetted against the window overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, and she watched him, delighting in the fact that he was unaware of her presence. From the street below came the sounds of carriages moving gracefully over the cobblestones, the tinkling laughter of beautiful women and the low murmurs of satisfied men as they hurried to Maxim's for a champagne supper. She used to be part of that glittering world, the most glorious creature of them all—desired, adored, a diamond of priceless worth.
She shook her head to clear her mind of these disturbing thoughts. There was no time for foolishness any longer.
The man. Think of the man for he was the key to it all. He was elegant, handsome in his own way, but she knew an anger keen as her own hammered just beneath his smooth surface. He would be dangerous if thwarted but she had no intention of doing so. What Marisa was doing was right—she knew it was. Soon the chit would understand that the opportunity Marisa was handing her far surpassed any opportunity she could find roaming the meadows of Provence.
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