Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  Their desires were identical. They wanted restoration, honor, position. But they had different perspectives, different emotions. It hardly mattered. They shared one overriding impulse.

  The hardness left his face, his voice. “Selena, I’ve thought of you a thousand times. And I’ve never stopped loving you. What horror befell you, to bring you here?”

  Nor had she ever loved him more, either. “I was stupid,” she said. “But I won’t be again. If you can help me to escape from here, may I…may I go with you?”

  Just a tiny skeptical flash in his eyes just then. He knew her.

  “Be with you,” she said. “Yours. Not only to make it up to you,” she added. “But now I am able to bring with me something that we both need, and something that was taken from you in the past.”

  “You?” he asked doubtfully. “That is more than sufficient, but…”

  “Money,” she said. “And I earned it.”

  This time the steel was in her tone, and he appreciated the quality of it, the hard, flinty self-knowledge and courage revealed in it. But he did not seem to think there was much to her promise. In fact, it didn’t matter. For Sean, she was enough.

  “For the second time in my life,” he told her, “and, God, how I wish I could stretch my arms across this table, and…For the second time in my life, I will take a risk for you. If you can get away from here on one of the next three nights. I haven’t the men to…”

  “I understand.” Selena thought fast. The little girl. “There’s also a baby,” she said.

  “Still not enough!” he cried, for the master’s benefit. “A child?” he asked.

  “Not mine, although I sometimes wish she were. I can’t explain it now. But she will have to come, too.”

  “All right. I’ve made my decision. I will do what I can. But…” and in his eyes appeared the slightly analytical remove that told Selena he remembered what she had been, how she had acted in Scotland, “…but, when I bring you from here, we are equals. I have never deceived you, and you must never…”

  Her welling tears, as genuine as love, stopped him.

  “How will I meet you?”

  “Ah, now we are reaching agreements,” he said, expansively.

  The maharajah looked over and smiled tightly. He pushed Ashina gently away from him. She would have to be ready to reward this fine European entrepreneur for yielding to the perquisites of Indian deities.

  “I have one friend. A black man called Davi. You see him there behind the master…”

  “I forbid you to call him that. To a Scot…”

  “I know. We are one in that belief. My slavemaster. If, tonight, I cannot be at a place by the palace wall where you will find a white cross with the name Gayle on it, then come back tomorrow night. And, if not that night, the third. I will send Davi in my stead…”

  “But after three nights, I cannot promise…”

  “I understand.”

  “But next year…”

  “There will be no next year,” she said, each word a chiseled letter in a piece of stone. “I am going to live again, I am going to be free, and I am going to make my life what it was meant to be.

  “Without hurting you anymore,” she added. “No deceptions.”

  It seemed to her that the voices in the room, the laughter, even the persistent flutes, grew still when she spoke. But it was only the effect of the blood rushing to her head, dulling her ears, as she said what she truly believed.

  “Selena,” he said, “you are instinctive. You are a natural force. You would not willfully hurt someone any more than a typhoon would. Now we must get you out of here, and have the life and position we were meant to have. I shall be at the place of the cross, three nights running. Name a time.”

  “Two in the morning,” Selena said.

  “I will speak to my colleagues and we shall be there, ready to flee. I shall seize the sky for my father and yours, mark my words! And I shall have you, too.” He paused. “And you shall have me. In total honesty. Fair and square.”

  “Fair and square,” Selena said.

  The truth of his promise was in his eyes. When one bargained with Sean Bloodwell, one knew that he would keep his word and never falter, until the terms of the agreement were violated by one of the partners to it. But he would not be the partner guilty of the transgression.

  The plans for escape were settled now, but all the risks were yet ahead. “Tell your slavemaster,” Sean said, “that we need time to think matters over. Tell him it may take as much as three days. And,” he added, knowing the politics of the region, “bring to bear all the pressure you can. Tell him we might even be able to make a better bargain with Rajasthan. We need not be hasty. It might serve us well to wait. Rajasthan will possess his territory if they make war against him and triumph. Tell him he had best bargain with us quickly if he wishes the support of British troops.”

  “British troops? Can you bring some here?”

  “No,” he said, “but the maharajah doesn’t know that. In the meantime, it will keep him confused. Now, tell him.”

  “Take those messages to your master!” he thundered, making it appear as if he had made his final offer.

  “At the cross at two,” he whispered. “Three nights running.”

  Then she returned to the maharajah’s table, passing the smiling Ashina, who planned to enjoy Sean as much as he enjoyed her. Selena made her face into a mask as she watched the concubine lead her own man, so long lost, into the canopy provided for the purpose. Servants drew the curtains closed.

  Davi was watching. He knew. Selena had risked her life now, irrevocably. And his, too.

  Sean was already coupled with the lithe, supple body of the concubine, Ashina. Near to Selena, but far away. She would see him no more, until they met at Gayle’s cross on the hill, by night. If they did not meet there, through some mischance or tragedy, they might never meet again. She could not bear to think of it, with freedom so close, with love once again beating inside her. Upon command, she retreated to the master’s bedchamber, imaged in the mirrors, purveying such delights as he savored, spectator to the whore’s art. When she did this, he sighed. When she did that, he moaned. And when she did the cunning things, he died the little death. She hated it. There was no emotion in it at all.

  All right, I’ve had to survive, she thought but when I leave here I shall be only for Sean. We are apart, but already together.

  She worried most about revealing—by a gesture, a look, a quiver in her voice—that she had a plan to escape. Already, she was certain the maharajah regarded her more suspiciously than usual, even now, when he was satiated, lying beside her. She fought to stay calm.

  “So the big fellow gave me three days to think it over, did he?” the master asked lazily. “And what was your estimate of him?”

  “I thought he was hard to deal with,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean quite that,” he returned, reaching over and kneading her breast possessively. “I wondered if you were as taken with him as you seemed.”

  Had it been that obvious?

  “You know that I am yours,” she told him, cringing inside, giving him a sensual caress. “My rapt attention was designed to lull his suspicions. And I did learn of the possibility that he might be able to supply you with troops, should Rajasthan attack…”

  He let out some sort of Hindu oath and moved away from her. Mention of the war reminded him of all his troubles.

  “Yes,” he snapped, “and now you see! Had it not been for you and Davi, and that so-called trial of yours, none of this would have happened, and everything would have gone on as before. Perhaps I was right all along. Certain tilings should not be known. Knowledge causes more problems than existed previously.”

  “You could have gone on not knowing who killed Gayle?”

  “I think so. I have the child to remind me of the happy times. And when she grows up…”

  He did not finish. He did not have to. And, with a growing sense of horror and incre
dulity, Selena grasped what he had in mind for tiny no-name: a horrible form of sexual reincarnation. Now she could not fail to take the child with her. In fact, if the child did not go with her, she would have to remain, to protect her, and try to escape later.

  Now, if she angered him—a little, but not too much—he might send her away, and she could start the plan…

  “Knowledge is never a problem. It is what you do with it. And it was you who insisted on pulling out Ku-Fel’s tongue and sending her back to her homeland in disgrace. And now such rashness may bring a war…”

  “Silence, woman! You know nothing of our ways. There were things I had to do.”

  “You wish me to leave?”

  His eyes turned crafty, and he encircled her waist with his arm. His skin was hot against her naked belly.

  “So that you can share your delights with the Britisher?”

  “He’s not British, he’s Scot…” she said without thinking.

  His eyes were hard with a knowledge she did not like at all. Anger. Jealousy.

  “In future, I believe I shall deal directly with the trader,” he snapped. “Take from your mind any ideas, my bright one, of seeing that man again. And if you so much as try…” His hand was on her throat, tightening menacingly. “…I shall have you impaled upon a spear and set in the market of Jabalpur. You may think you writhe well for me here in my bed, but you have no idea how poetically a woman twists and moans when she is lanced by the impaler’s spear.”

  He meant every word of it. She saw that angering him had done no good, but merely made him more suspicious.

  “May I check on the child?” she asked.

  “She is fine. The nurses are with her. Do you wish to leave me?”

  “No, no, of course not. I only…” And to distract him, she moved close into an embrace and tried to stir his lust.

  “No more tonight,” he said, pushing her away. “Let us sleep. My cares are many, and tomorrow will be trying.”

  But he slept restlessly, and Selena lay rigidly beside him, waiting for an opportunity to slip away. It never came.

  At noon of the following day, Selena was brooding in the nursery. True to his word, the master had forbidden her to leave his wing of the palace. The little girl was playing happily with some of the Indian children of the maharajah, when Davi entered.

  “Were you able to see him?” she asked excitedly. “What did he say?”

  Davi looked grim. “He was disappointed, of course. But there is another matter.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your man’s colleagues have refused to support him in abducting you. They refuse to take the risk. He will be alone.”

  She thought of Sean and herself, alone in Central India, five hundred miles from Bombay and the sea. He would have but one horse, probably, and the baby with them…

  “But again he will be there tonight. His fellows did agree to stall the master for another two days. Your other problem is Ku-Fel.”

  “Ku-Fel! What do you mean?”

  “The Rajasthan army is approaching. Slowly. But there is no doubt of it now. They are coming in force, and Ku-Fel herself rides at the head of the columns.”

  The fact struck Selena with the force of a blow. Even if she and Sean were able to escape the palace, they would still have to elude an army that was swarming toward Jabalpur. An army led by someone who would be indisposed to let her go anywhere but to the land of the dead. Slowly, at that.

  “I have thought of this matter,” Davi was saying. “I have considered the situation—the Sherpas, the security, and the closeness with which you are watched. There is something you must do, if you are to be free.”

  She looked at him, waited.

  “There are times when to do such a thing is necessary,” he was saying. “And there are times when it is just. As in the instance of Haruppa…”

  Murder! He was speaking of murder, but whose?

  “To be free, you may have to kill him,” Davi said. Murder the maharajah in his bed. No. She could not do it.

  “I will be able to create a diversion of some sort,” he was telling her. “You can leave that to me. I shall be able to free the way for you, at least for a short time. But, to get out you may have to…”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t! I’ll wait until he is asleep, and then…”

  “I know that you wish it to be done without harm to him, but think of what it is you are going to have to do. First, you must somehow flee the bedchamber itself. Then you must make your way to the nursery, take the child in spite of its nurses, and go to the outer wall…”

  There was another thing, too, Selena was thinking, not even forming the words in her mind. But Davi was worried enough already. If he thought she had yet another task to perform before she left the palace, he might retreat into the paralyzing fear that he had learned over the years.

  “…and, even there, your problems have only begun. So you must be ready to do what is necessary.”

  Good advice. Hard advice. She remembered how it had been at Foinaven Lodge, the blade in her hand, Darius McGrover’s eyes fixed upon hers. She had failed that time. McGrover must have laughed at her lack of nerve. She had not done what was necessary, and he had come after her. Even now, somewhere, he must walk the earth, forgetting nothing.

  She remembered Captain Randolph and Roberta, climbing the mast, pursued by rats, and the Meridian sinking, spinning in the vortex of the sea. She would have tried to throw them a line, but Royce Campbell had stopped her.

  You must rid yourself of enemies, he had said. That’s why you’ve come to this.

  An exile. An outcast. A slave who must tremble before the casual mercies of strange masters…

  “You wish to be free,” Davi said. “And you wish to live your dream, returning home one day…”

  “But I don’t know if I can do it.”

  He said no more, and simply looked at her.

  “You must decide. After that, I shall help in whatever way is necessary.”

  She nodded.

  The day passed, and Selena was in turmoil. No, it must be possible to escape without doing murder! And if she had to do it, how might it be done? Could she? McGrover had eluded her just by looking into her eyes and daring the blade. By dinner, she was sorely distressed and several of the concubines took note of it.

  “Why, Selena,” one said spitefully, “is it your time? You look so pale and thin, with all the blood gone.”

  The others cackled gleefully.

  And when it came time for Davi to summon the woman of the master’s choice, he passed down along the tables to Ashina’s place and whispered to her!

  Did the maharajah know what she was planning? How was that possible? Unless Davi…

  “I do not know,” Davi told her later. “He said ‘Ashina.’ That’s all. You are to spend the night in the nursery.”

  And so the second night was lost, under guard of far more Sherpas than was necessary to watch one woman and a babe. Selena could not sleep, and instead knelt for a long time by the child’s crib, watching her sleep, watching her grasp the blanket with her tiny hands. Watching her sigh quietly in her sleep, blissfully ignorant of all the happiness life had already bestowed upon her, and of all the danger yet to come.

  Danger may come but harm shall not, Selena decided then. She would do whatever must be done. Death would be better than to live in slavery.

  “Davi,” she told him in the morning, “take the master a message. Tell him that tonight I have a new delight for him, that he has never experienced with any lover before. Did you see Sean at the place of the cross last night?”

  “Yes, and he grows anxious for your safety, for tomorrow he must leave without you.”

  “That will not be. We are leaving together. And the child, too. You offered your help, but I must warn you it is dangerous. Will you do it?”

  “I will,” he said, with just the slightest tremor.

  “Then tonight we move,” she said. ‘Together. One. There is no more
love than that.”

  “I only hope that I have love enough,” he mourned.

  “You do,” she said, and embraced him as she would have a child. Then, with total trust, she told him her plan. He listened, his tragic eyes wide, dark upon the risk of it, the dangerous unpredictability.

  “So you begged for my attention, did you?” smirked the maharajah that night lounging on his love couch. “And what can you give me that I have not already experienced?”

  “You shall see,” Selena smiled, and allowed the wisp of gown to slip down from her shoulders, off her breasts, hips, and to the floor.

  “You are beautiful, as always,” he admired. “But promises must be kept as well as made.” He drew aside his own clothing.

  “Come. There is much to do. We may begin the battle with Rajasthan tomorrow, after the executions.”

  The word startled her, but she managed to control herself.

  “Executions?”

  “I am killing the Englishmen,” he said. “All of them. They made mention of troops, but none are forthcoming, and…”

  “But if it was a promise, they would keep it,” she said hastily. “It is a long way from Bengal, and…”

  He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “What do you care?” he asked.

  “I…why, not at all,” she said, and let her hands languorously fall across her breasts, down her stomach and thighs. His eyes followed.

  “Yes, and the English will be gone, and I will crush Rajasthan, keep the dowry, and once again the world shall be mine. Now, proceed.”

  It is going to happen now, she thought. Davi! Be ready!

  He lay back, amused and expectant. She knelt before him, leaned over him. Then, from a small pouch of beige leather, which she had brought into the bedchamber—she had told him that it contained his “surprise”—Selena withdrew a tiny jar and unscrewed the top. Inside was a pungent cream, a small dab of which she touched to her fingertips.

  “You must relax,” she soothed. “Lie back and relax. You must enjoy every sensation.”

  He did, and Selena first touched a small drop of the cream to the smooth red tip of him. He sighed in pleasure and writhed slightly. The cream, she knew, would be tingling his skin, an effect that was hot and cold at the same time. Ku-Fel had given her the cream months ago, for use on a special night.