Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  “What are…?”

  But Royce had already seen them. “Rats!” he cried, alarmed. “Tell the men to use rifles, clubs, anything. We can’t let them on board!”

  His agitation sparked something in her mind, something important that she had to tell him, but there was no time, because Captain Randolph called across the water.

  “I’m sending my ambassadors, Campbell!” He laughed bitterly, defiantly. “They have your breeding, knowing every scum hold from Jamaica to Mombasa and points between.” Then, to Selena, “Well, my dear, I won’t be so presumptuous as to ask for an invitation aboard, but it is a pleasure to see you once again.”

  Roberta said nothing, dancing in seawater now. He pulled Randolph back to the mast, and the two of them began to climb slowly, as the Meridian sank, as the water rose.

  “You have what you deserve,” Royce called into the face of the sea. Beyond them, sourceless, was that sound, a dull, distant roaring now, implausible and premonitory.

  “Will you take aboard my crewmen?” Randolph asked, and pointed to a couple of lifeboats, in which maybe a dozen snarling sailors battled the rats, screaming from the bites. On the Highlander, too, sailors were shooting and clubbing, and the air was filled with the frantic squealing of the beasts.

  “I’ll promise them water and bread, that’s all,” Royce told him. “No sane man takes vipers aboard. We’re at thirty-one degrees west, forty-two north. If they go directly to the south, they’ll reach the Azores. It’s more chance than you gave Selena.”

  “As if you cared,” Randolph called, quite in good humor. “You only sought a provocation to gun down an all-but-helpless freighter.”

  Royce’s jaw tightened, and the blood went to his face. She could see it there, a sign of his rage, even beneath his deeply tanned skin.

  Rats had overrun the lifeboats now, and they scrambled up the wooden hull of the Highlander, screaming like enraged birds. “Close all portholes and hatches,” Fligh ordered. “Don’t let them get below decks!”

  The roaring sound came out of the background then, and turned into steady, growing thunder. A great ripple of white water formed, turning slowly, slowly, around the Meridian. Randolph and Roberta climbed faster and faster to the top of the wavering mast, but it was sinking now almost as fast as they climbed, pursued by a black and glistening pack of rats, so thick they looked like black bees swarming on the branch of a tree. The circle of water spun faster now, a dance of colors on the sea, flashing dancers around a Maypole on a village green. But at the center of the circle was the mast, and great thunder filled the heavens, obscuring now even the pealing of the frenzied rats. It was the whirlpool, sent by nature herself to fetch the Meridian to the floor of the sea.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Fligh cried to the sailors in the rigging, and the men scrambled to turn the ship. He was shouting more orders, but now it was impossible to hear him at all, with the roar of the vortex all about. She held her ears against the sound, watching with a kind of fascinated horror, a trembling wonder, while the waters parted in a deep and whirling funnel, black, green, at the center of which turned the Meridian. Randolph and Roberta were clinging to each other now, at the top of the mast. They were afraid, and no longer attempted to conceal it, but they did not expect quarter, nor did they ask it.

  Selena noticed that Royce was studying them with a satisfaction she found much too grim, in spite of what they had done to her, and would have done. She put a hand on his arm. He looked down at her, eyes glittering.

  “Let’s throw them a line?” she asked tentatively. She had to shout.

  His surprise showed clearly. Cupping his hands, he yelled: “This is for you!” into the howling maw. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “It’s all right. It’s all right. We can’t do this…” and, seeing a coil rope near the railing, she ran for it, stepping over the bodies of dead rats, the flopping, writhing bodies of dying rats. It was hopeless, of course, there was no way she could have thrown the rope into the center of the whirlpool, nor even propelled it that far with the harpoon gun Royce had used to rescue her. But she tried to do it, anyway, and from the whirling mast, Captain Randolph’s face showed wonder and something that was almost like respect.

  “No, Selena,” Royce was shouting, holding her back. “You must rid yourself of enemies…”

  “But they’ll do me no harm now…”

  “An enemy is always dangerous, and remember that. The knowledge may save you one day.”

  He took the rope, loose in her hands, and dropped it to the deck. Confused, her mind whirling with thoughts of survival, remorse, love, regret, need, and desire, she let herself relax. His arms encircled her, and she leaned upon his strength as they watched the mast spin wildly, so fast that rats were cast off by centrifugal force, and Randolph seemed one with Roberta. The immense storm of sound came to crescendo then, as the black whirlpool seized its sacrifice. With a sudden, crashing thunderclap, the waters came together, closing about the Meridian, and great waves slammed together, filling the emptiness in the heart of the deep. Then, almost mysteriously, all of it was green again, and gently rolling, a timeless, hungry beast, appeased, returned to sleep. All was vast and silent. White sails fluttered above. Gulls and cormorants were circling.

  Selena felt his hand on her heart, and felt her heart beat strong and steady against his hand.

  It was high May, and the night still and star-filled, the Highlander riding the gentle waters slowly southward. “All’s clear to starboard,” called the sailor on watch in the crow’s nest. “All’s clear to port.” And all was well in the captain’s cabin, too, the door secured, and one candle burning. Royce and Selena, alone after a fine dinner of broiled swordfish and Bordeaux, were silent. It was almost a conspiracy of silence, as if, before speech was permitted, with all its nuances, explanations, and misinterpretations, another communication had to occur. His glance was a wish, her embrace, an answer. She lost herself in his kiss, remembering his hands as they touched her again in all the places no longer secret to him. Her body throbbed, already flowing with desire, and he smiled at the rude gracelessness of the sailor’s blouse, lingering over each of the button catches, then kissing her breasts as the cloth fell away. Her body arched with tension, need, and she in turn knelt before him, an act not of surrender but acquiescence to their mutual desire, and freed his body in order to possess it for her own. Then she rose and he knelt in his turn, to draw down from the swell of her hips, down across golden thighs, the sailor’s breeches. A long kiss of promise and wonder, and his shirt fell to the floor, a gleaming swath of white under the candle. Selena held her breath, still silent, aching with need, as he lifted her into the hammock.

  There was no more waiting; neither of them could wait.

  He was gentle, at first and each approach, each stroke, was almost like a question. Their mouths were as ravenous for each other as their bodies were, but in the fire of their unceasing kiss the memory of shared pleasure enhanced the sensation of this moment, and all the time lost since December was nothing. Selena fitted herself beneath him, moving with him, proudly feeling his urgency throb within her, proud at her ability to make his strong, gleaming body tremble in her arms. Then he drew up her long legs around him, crossed behind his back, riding higher, faster on her now, and her fading mind listened as she gasped and moaned, felt her body open and plunge, only to open and clutch and plunge again, maddened in joy and agony, wanting them both, wanting both now and forever.

  There were many things in her mind, many questions of her own. She thought they could safely wait. She thought this union could mitigate whatever might still be dark in their relationship, whatever lay in wait for them. Questions, words, can always be saved. Sometimes they go away and speak most eloquently in silence. Other times it is best not to speak at all, and this was one.

  Selena felt the pressure building, but she no longer possessed enough of her conscious mind to hold on to reality. The candle flickered, and from far away she felt h
er body moving faster and faster and close to her, so close to her, was the sweet, hot body of her beloved, so little-known, so well-loved, and it was moving into her with strokes so powerful they made her gasp, as if in pain, but left her wanting another and another. And it came, too, and again and once more and then she cried out, clinging to him, and all of the world, all sensation, lived for an instant in an evanescent pinpoint of her body. He was her body then, and she his, in soul, in flesh.

  For a long time afterward, they were silent. Clinging together, still they were apart. It was as if the piercing pleasure of intimacy had intensified an issue that had yet to be resolved. “This time it was fortunate for you, too,” Royce said at last, leaving her slowly, and easing beside her.

  Selena’s breath, still ragged, shrouded the true doubt in her question: “What do you mean?” she asked, remembering his enigmatic response to their first lovemaking. “What does that mean? Fortunate or misfortunate?”

  “I’ll tell you, but you might not believe me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

  “Because I think you know, without wanting to admit it, that love is more complicated than it seems. We are really not right for each other, in many things, which is why…”

  Not right for each other? After the glories their united bodies, even souls, had just attained? What was he talking about?

  “That was why, when we first…became close, I had to tell you there were some things you would not understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said softly, pushing as close to him as she could, feeling his essence already running from her body. A symbol of his leaving her again? No, it could not be. She would not let it be! “None of that matters now.”

  “I hope not. I really do.” He nuzzled into her neck, where it met the shoulder, and caressed her breasts with his fingertips.

  Yet, reluctant as she was to let it, her mind came to the fore. “But why did you take me? On the ship? When you knew we would have to part? And why did you take money from Sean Bloodwell?”

  She moved away from him, just a little.

  “That’s what I mean,’’ he said. “All I can do is tell you. Truth lies more in the belief of the listener than in the words of the speaker, but now, if you accept what I have to say, both will be equally true.”

  “No matter what,” she told him in a voice that she recognized as frightened, “I believe you love me. I’ll always believe that.”

  I have to, she said to herself. I’ve come back from the dead to know this love. I cannot lose it now.

  But, she remembered, too, that he had once said: A piece is just a piece in what was a very impressive counterfeit of conviction, if it was counterfeit at all.

  “There was something special, something different about you,” he was saying, “and it bothered me.”

  “Bothered you? I should hope so. But in what way?”

  “My desire for you was never in question, not from the first time I saw you at the ball. But I sensed something in you that made me wary. Because you were different, I knew that we could not simply make love to each other and then go our separate ways. Or, rather, I knew that I could not go away that easily…”

  “As you have been used to doing!”

  He smiled. “You must not believe every story you hear. And, obviously, I was right. You are not the kind of woman to relinquish the things you want. So I was wary. It is difficult to leave a woman like you…”

  “Good,” she sighed, snuggling close to him.

  “…and it is impossible to forget one…”

  “Better.”

  “…and our lives were complicated enough…”

  “As long as we’re together,” she said fervently, “there is nothing we cannot confront. Didn’t you know that?”

  “…Selena, I’m an adventurer, and now I’m an outlaw. I did not want to unsettle your life, as I knew would happen, because I knew how much I longed to have you, and I felt the same thing from you…”

  Oh, yes!

  “…and when we finally did have each other that last morning on the Firth of Forth, it was not something I had intended. It was just that I could no longer hold myself aloof from you…”

  Selena felt a warmth flow through her body, into every tiny nerve and cell, that was as keen and piercing as his possession of her had been.

  “…so that is why I spoke of fortune and misfortune. The pleasure you gave me, give me, is quite extraordinary, because there is meaning, feeling within it, not like some of the others…”

  The love artists of Egypt and India, she thought, jealous.

  “…and that was fortunate. But I was afraid that knowing me would lead to your misfortune. Can you understand that?”

  Oh, yes. Now she understood everything! He had been in love with her the whole time, just as she had dreamed. And there was something in him, some force, some power of concern and understanding that was hidden behind the violent, daring, venturesome part of his nature. This glimmer of knowledge, glimpse into the shadow of his soul, made her love him all the more, and inflamed her body again, so that it felt as if she had not yet enjoyed and been enjoyed by him, and she turned to him with a cry that begged.

  Reverent as it had been with them the first time, now it was wild. Nothing mattered now but the pleasure, the need, which would unite her to the dark side of his nature just as, before, she had been joined by tender love to the sweet part of him. A formless, savage moan escaped her. She came upon him this time, seeking the expiation of her blossoming need, which was also his, came down upon his body and took it unto herself. His hands were hungry against her flesh, and he pulled her mouth down to his. But it was too wild. She could not keep still for his kiss, not even for his kiss, and her head tossed from side to side, whipping him with her long hair, and her body cast back through aeons of buried secrets, dark knowledge, calling up the art of rampant flesh, the tender, soaring, violent art, and she rode only for that art to give him give him give him…

  …all there was.

  “Oh, God,” he sighed, as, again, they lay closely beside each other.

  Selena, still trembling and quivering, could not speak for a moment. And then sudden, peremptory pounding on the door.

  “Damn,” Royce muttered. “I gave instructions. Yes? Who is it?”

  “Fligh, sir. I’ve got to see you right away.”

  “Dammit, Fligh, I told you…What is it?”

  “Sir, I can’t say.”

  “Can’t say? What do you mean by this, man? You know I was to be left alone, and that order included you.”

  The silence was sullen.

  “Well? Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir, but…”

  “No excuses, Fligh. We’re in warm and easy waters, and if there was an enemy ship on the horizon you’d tell me. So…”

  “But, sir…”

  Royce’s voice was uncharacteristically harsh. Selena thought that harshness was probably necessary in dealing with the tenacious, humorless Fligh.

  “Go away,” he ordered. “Right now. I’ll be on the bridge in a couple of hours.”

  Silence. They sensed Fligh standing just beyond the door.

  “Now,” Royce ordered, and in a moment they heard the footsteps reluctantly retreating down the passageway.

  “Damn him!” Royce said, not without affection. “He’s the best first officer I’ve ever found, but a stickler on every little point. I keep getting interrupted…”

  He laughed.

  “What is it?”

  “I just remembered that time at Edinburgh Castle. When you came crashing into the room where Veronica and I were…”

  Veronica! She had forgotten about Veronica, all those rumors and stories.

  “What about her? What about Veronica?”

  “We’re to be married,” Royce said casually. “On June twenty-second. The summer solstice. In Jamaica.”

  Selena’s heart turned to stone. Nothing had happened between them, here or ever. It had al
l been a mockery. Nothing made sense. And, with mounting horror, she remembered how rich the Blakemores were supposed to be, how recklessly acquisitive Royce Campbell was, even though he wanted for nothing. And, she remembered, this Scottish girl named Selena MacPherson who was naked in the hammock beside him had not a pence to her name, not even her own clothes for him to remove. And she was just as much an outlaw as he.

  She thought of these things in the space of a heartbeat. A tiny abyss, like a whirlpool of the soul, opened within her, spinning to draw her down.

  “But that’s over now,” Royce said, his voice soft and assured. “It seems my plans have changed.”

  And then it was as if fifty thousand distant stars exploded in a symphony of heaven.

  “We’ll sail down to the Canary Islands,” he was saying. “I know a marina there where I can get the mast repaired. Then we’ll go to America. I have a plantation in Virginia. We can live there. If you like.”

  Live? He had said “live there,” but he had not said…

  “Do you think that sort of…of settling down will…”

  “Who said anything about settling down? We’ll spend some time there each year, and…”

  “And what am I supposed to do?”

  He leaned up on an elbow and regarded her closely. “Why, come with me, of course. Isn’t that what you want?”

  Yes, it was, but…

  “…and you’ve nothing to lose now,” he was saying. “You are free. Your old life is gone. You can do anything you want, now…”