Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  “Selena,” the man said gruffly, and lifted a huge hand toward her. Two of the fingers were missing, a bloody bandage wrapped about the stumps.

  She did not speak, but backed into a corner of the stinking hut—I should have done it in the cold hills. I should not have to end it here—and turned the blade of the knife upon herself.

  The man leaped for her, but before he did so, she had the time. She had the time to ram the blade into her heart, right up to the hilt, or to fall upon it, or to push against the wall, and feel the steel go into her. The promise flowered in her mind, and all that capture might mean, and everything that would be done to her. She knew what she must do, and she had the time to do it. But she did not do it. In that one mutable instant, she did not want to die. Not yet.

  Then the man was upon her, yanking the knife from her hand.

  “Dammit,” he muttered, “shut up and do as I say.”

  Outside, men were running for the hut. “Who’s in there? I saw a man go in. Is it MacPherson?”

  Selena, in a grip of steel, felt herself half flung and half dragged toward the pallet on which the terrified peasant couple lay quivering. Her captor’s beard was harsh against her face when he jerked her close and snarled:

  “You don’t move, and don’t say a word.”

  With that, he yanked aside the bedclothes on the pallet and shoved her down between the naked man and woman, throwing the blankets on top of the three of them. “And you,” she heard him snarl at the other two, “one word an’ ’tis yer lives.”

  Beneath the reeking blankets, Selena smelled their peasant fear, and all the rest of them there was to smell. Then the door crashed open again.

  “Don’t ye move, laddie!” came a voice at the door.

  And then the bearded man, contemptuously: “An’ what be the meanin’ o’ this, you scum? I be o’ McGrover.”

  “McGrover? We serve McGrover in this sector. What’s yer business in this hut?” The voice held a note of doubt.

  A third voice, at the door, told the others outside, “’Tis all right. ’E says ’e’s wi’ us.”

  “I be huntin’ MacPhersons, what else?” came the bearded man’s scornful growl. “We were riding in the Sidlaw Hills. Mayhap I lost myself and rode off course…”

  But even Selena, choking in the body-reeking pallet, heard the false note in his voice, and there was sudden movement in the room, a wordless oath, and the blankets were yanked away.

  She looked up into the haughty face of the purple-coated lieutenant who had stopped them on the road to Edinburgh. He had his instant, this time. He spent it opening his mouth in surprise, beginning a smile of cruel pleasure. It was a bad choice. He should have turned to face the bearded man, who brought down Selena’s knife at a point just above the nape of the neck the place on a man that is like the place sought by the bullfighter on the neck of his beast and blood leaped from the lieutenant like a red torrent as he dropped to the floor.

  The hut went wild for a frenzied moment. The bearded man pulled the knife from his first victim, sidestepped the rush of the second soldier, tripped him, and sent him flying headfirst into the fire. His screams came instantly. Selena leaped out of the pallet, seized a poker, and brought it down over the man’s head. The noise stopped, but too late. Already they heard the village waking. Two soldiers rushed into the hut, but the bearded savior pulled twin pistols from beneath his cape. Explosions flashed blue all around them. Two more dead.

  “Come,” he ordered Selena, jamming the pistols back into his belt. A fifth soldier burst in through the door at that moment, to be met in the face with a huge fist.

  “Ye left me one good one, an’ ye’ve ’ad it, now,” the bearded man said, actually laughing, showing Selena a ragged line of broken white teeth.

  He grabbed her hand.

  “Let’s go,” he said, looking out into the street.

  Everything had happened so fast that Selena did not yet trust her impressions. Obviously this man was a friend, and just as obviously he knew who she was, but…

  “That’s all of them,” he said, looking out into the village. In the doorways of many of the other huts, people stood in nightshirts, watching, looking on in the doleful, patient peasant way, afraid to act and not to act, afraid to live or to die.

  “Gutless bastards,” the man growled.

  “Who are you?”

  He looked at her. “I’m Will Teviot,” he said. “I’m one of your father’s captains. An’ will ye look at this!” With a sweeping gesture of his arm, he indicated the surrounding peasantry. “Do ye know what? McGrover ’imself was ’ere in this village today, an’ on the morrow all these good people were t’ be huntin’ for ye in the ’ills.” He turned toward the man and woman, whose hut had, in an instant, become the setting for frenzied violence. The woman was wrapped in a blanket now; the man had managed to get into a pair of breeches. He stood there, barechested, barefooted, doing a jittery dance in the lieutenant’s purple blood.

  “Tell Lady MacPherson what yer stinkin’ plans were, Pig.

  The woman buried her head. The man never stopped his absurd dance as he denied.

  “Aw, naw, yer ’ighness, yer lordship, t’wam’t t’ be lak ’at a’tall. Aw naw yer ’ighness…”

  “See this!” Will Teviot raised his mutilated hand. “The scum you serve like low dogs cut these fingers off me in Edinburgh, because I want Scotland free. And see these?” He smiled brutally, showing his shattered teeth. “Darius McGrover did this for me with an iron bar. But I escaped. I got away, an’ no luck to you.”

  He took Selena’s knife, made one step forward. His arm made an arc in the air, too fast to follow, and there was a sound not unlike the scritch of a scissor snip.

  Blood was everywhere, and Will Teviot held a man’s head in his huge hand. “Pig,” he said. “We’re not done yet. Here ’e is, sweets,” he said, and tossed the severed head onto the pallet, where the now-screaming woman swayed in terror. Selena herself felt faint, unreal, as if she were drowning in nightmare waters, but something kept her going, something that was more than Will Teviot’s steel. It would be some time before she realized it was her own steely will, growing inside her.

  “Ye want ’er tongue, do ye?” Will was asking.

  Selena shook her head. “Let’s go.”

  They went outside and Will picked the best of the military horses for her, as well as blankets and a soldier’s greatcoat. Checking saddlebags, he found food and whiskey, and strapped them onto his horse, then mounted himself.

  “Ye’ve a dead neighbor, my friends,” he called to the silent, watching peasants. “Just remember that Darius McGrover did it to ’im, as ’e’ll do it t’ you.”

  Then they were on the horses and galloping from the village, flying toward the Highlands, under moonlight.

  Much later, they stopped, dismounted, and Will Teviot unbuckled the saddlebag of supplies. Directly, he uncorked the whiskey and took long gulps of it.

  “Do na mind m’ manners, Selena,” he grinned. “These are rough times ’at we’re livin’ in. But I swear some nights I do lak ’em fine.”

  He handed her the bottle, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she wiped the mouth with the palm of her hand, hoisted it, and drank. Ravenously, they ate smoked meat and fresh bread. “Them Britishers know ’ow t’ travel,” Will begrudged, and he told her what had happened.

  He himself had been arrested at the castle on the night of the ball, and imprisoned in the dungeons beneath. As a Rob Roy captain, his torture had been observed by McGrover himself, who watched as first one finger and then another were cut off. “The pain was terrible, but I kept cursin’ McGrover an’ King George,” Will said. “O’ course, the pain would’ve been much greater, but McGrover lost ’is temper and ’it me in the mouth. I passed out. Very unprofessional. When I come to, I was alone, and they hadn’t bothered puttin’ me in chains. ’Twas very noisy, too, with all the screamin’, an’ I got away.”

  Later, he had learned from Gil that
the MacPhersons had been landed at Pittenweem, then headed for the Highlands. Will Teviot organized a mission of his own, and set out to find them.

  “An’ we did, too, sure enough. Yer father an’ Brian’ll be ’eadin’ north wi’ the rest o’ my men. I’m Rob Roy captain of all Ross and Cromarty Province. We can cross that country with ease and in safety.”

  “Cross it? What’s our destination?”

  “A tiny village. Kinlochbervie. Way out on the northwest coast. Ye’ll stay there until spring. No one’ll get ye there, not even McGrover. The land’s too rough, and the Rob Roys’ll protect you in the Highlands.”

  If they could get there, safety seemed possible. Selena knew that country from her summers in Mount Foinaven, at the hunting lodge. She allowed herself to think of the future, and even of Royce Campbell, who, bought and paid for, would be at Liverpool in the spring. But the thought of Royce made her feel betrayed again, and guilty and confused, all at the same time.

  “Tell me,” she asked Will, “that night at the castle. Did you see or hear anything of Sean Bloodwell?”

  “Nay, I didna see ’im, but I’m sure they were lookin’ for ’im.”

  “He wasn’t a Rob Roy, though?”

  “Nay. Nay, but ’e gi’e us money. I doubt if McGrover’d be makin’ great distinctions on a point like ’at.”

  Soon they remounted and rode on through the night. Dawn came finally, and Will said they were in safe country. But Selena thought the sun was a liar. Daybreak promised nothing more than the beginning of long darkness.

  Bitter Sanctuary

  “But I heard two pistol shots,” Selena said, half-laughing, half-crying.

  “Brian did no better than you,” Lord Seamus replied, holding her close. “When the time came to do as I’d told him, he tried to take out two Rob Roys instead. Had they been the King’s men I do wish his aim had been better.”

  “That I guarantee,” Brian promised. “My marksmanship needs some work. But I will guarantee too that if the Britishers want me dead, they must do it themselves. I’ll not give them help, nor even think upon it anymore.”

  Their father had no such bravado. “Someday it may be necessary again.”

  Then, exhausted from the trip through the Highlands, he slumped to the pile of blankets on the floor of the stone house, and looked around. “Well, it’s solid, anyway,” he said.

  “Aye, that it is,” Will Teviot agreed. “They’ll be no Britishers can get ye ’ere.”

  Will and Selena had arrived in Kinlochbervie, a tiny, rock-rimmed fishing village, two days previously. They knew Brian and Lord Seamus would be along at any time, and the problem was to find lodging for them to spend the rest of the winter. Kinlochbervie had been chosen by the Rob Roys as a hiding place in extremis—an exile, truly—but what it offered in remoteness it lacked in accommodations. The inhabitants numbered no more than a hundred souls, almost all of them fishermen, and if the arrival of strangers in the middle of winter stirred their curiosity, it also nudged the acquisitive instinct. Will Teviot towered over them, asking for “a sturdy house for a few fortnights,” and jingling gold pieces in his leather purse. They looked up at him, awed at his height but suspicious nonetheless, and they looked at Selena beside him, her gender unconcealed by the cloak and the uniform beneath it. There was a long moment of doubt, until Will explained that he was the girl’s guardian and that her father and brother would be arriving shortly. They would be staying awhile because of the father’s health, Will explained, smiling at them as warmly as possible with his jagged line of broken teeth.

  He jingled the money again.

  So one old fisherman and his wife and his rickety son moved out of their stone hut, and made arrangements to quarter in the cellar of the village church—after promising the dubious pastor a “worthy measure” of their golden windfall. The hut was at the edge of the village, on the high, rocky cliff that overlooked the wild winter waters of the North Minch. It had but one room—there would be no privacy—and one fireplace with an iron grill suspended in it, on which to cook. There were no beds, and only a few stools and a block of wood that resembled a table and stank of fish. Fishnets and fishing equipment hung from the walls, and long poles rested in curved hooks that were screwed into the ceiling, which was itself so low that Will Teviot had to crouch over every time he entered.

  “Twill be terrible crowded, and no lie,” he muttered to Selena, as they inspected the place for the first time, “but there’s no choice we ’ave, as you can see it.”

  She agreed. At that point, shelter—any shelter—meant rest. She did not reckon with the fact of their bodies confined in that tiny space, not until her father and Brian rode into the village two afternoons later. Lord Seamus, clearly exhausted and genuinely sick, embraced her with great love, and collapsed on the floor. Selena put the kettle over the fire for tea, and cast a worried glance at Brian. His answering look confirmed her worst fears. Their father was very ill.

  “So this is be our refuge,” said Brian, looking around. “’Tis hardly Coldstream, is it?”

  “Do not speak of Coldstream,” she said hotly, and stared into the fire. Since arriving here in Kinlochbervie, Selena had resolved not to think of the past, nor of the future beyond April, when they would board ship for America. This was limbo, in the language of the ancient church, and when you were in limbo you were neither here nor there, although you still existed. That was how it would be, she had resolved. She would live, but she would not feel, and she would think of nothing painful.

  Like most resolutions, it was easy enough to make, far more difficult to follow.

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for what she had to face. At Coldstream, there were servants to tend to every conceivable task, servants to light the fires in the morning and to bring tea upon awakening. Servants to lay out one’s clothes, to bathe one, to fetch one’s food, or book, or horse. Servants to dim the candles in the eventime and close the canopied bed curtains on love or slumber. Here, in Kinlochbervie, there was their father, and Brian, and Will, and Selena. Mostly Selena.

  The problems were obvious: Lord Seamus was sick, food was scarce, the stone house was crowded, winter was harsh. And they could never let down their guard. In spite of the remoteness of the village, and the Rob Roys on watch in the Highland passes, anything might happen, and they would have to be ready to fight or run when—and if—it did. But immediately after the almost euphoric joy of their reunion, tensions began to grow.

  It was inevitable, given the circumstances. Lord Seamus needed constant care. Within hours of his arrival, he was deep in fever, tossing about on the floor, and alternately throwing off his blankets, his face pouring sweat, or gathering them about him, shivering like a hanged man at the end of a rope. He gave speeches of portentous gibberish, waving his arms, eyes wide and wild on a vast but unseen audience. He thundered doom and justice upon invisible malefactors. Then he collapsed again. Finally the fever passed, but he was so weak they had to lift his head to spoon hot tea into his mouth.

  In the meantime, Selena had to cook, an unfamiliar task made more difficult by the fact that little existed with which to do it. Brian’s task was to gather wood for the fire—no easy job in winter on the seacoast—or to buy peat with the dwindling supply of money which also must be used to purchase food. Will Teviot made that his business, and went off daily to the houses in the village, but all he brought back—all there was in the village—were tiny bags of beans, grudgingly sold and dearly bought, which must be boiled for half a day in order to be edible. Or slabs of half-dried, half-rotten fish, or once, with great heartiness at his success, the frozen carcass of a hare killed in the Highlands by a boy with a slingshot. Selena had no idea what to do with it, and when her discomfiture became obvious, Will roared with laughter, shoved a sword through the animal, and devised a barbecue above the fire. They drank the last of his good whiskey that night, and had a feast, too, but it was the end of the line for them. In the days thereafter, everything deteriorated.r />
  Will and Brian were high-spirited, strong-willed men, and Lord Seamus was too ill to exert his usual influence over them. They had planned to divide tasks evenly, and to alternate their watches through the night. But very soon the monotony of confinement, the crowded conditions in the hut, put the lie to their stated intentions. His whiskey gone, Will began to frequent the mead shop in the village, where he spent money needed for food on great quantities of potent but harsh brandy, and malt Scotch so thick you could float an egg on top of it. Then he would return to the hut to sleep and sweat in front of the fire, his drunken snores rattling all night long. Brian laughed at first, then cursed, swearing he could stand no more of it.

  Selena slept in the corner opposite the fireplace. It was the coldest place in the hut, but she had ensured herself a measure of privacy by draping a large blanket over the two stools, then sleeping behind the barrier. The men did all they could to accommodate her, but the stone house was simply too small. It was not long before she felt Will’s dark eyes on her constantly, and at night when she lay awake listening to the fire and violating her resolution not to think about the past, the demands of her own nature, fully awakened by Royce Campbell, came to tempt and taunt her. They were complicated things, love and desire, and she tried at first not to think about them. But she could not abandon the puzzle. I have now known passion, she thought, and the memory of the feeling was almost as keen as the feeling itself had been, the memory of desire evoking greater desire. But Royce Campbell was the complication, because not only were love and desire intermingled, there was also the matter of his cynical, deceitful nature, which she could neither match nor interpret. The sadness came then, when she let herself think about Royce, because that led her to think of Sean Bloodwell. And then the guilt would rise, and she would remember—tears flowing now, sobs stifled—all the plans their father had made. They were gone now, as lost as the summer day when Sean Bloodwell had undone her bodice and told her for the first time that he loved her.