Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  An unusual sound in the soft ripple of nighttime surf, an unnatural sound in water. Then again. Again, again, again, steady and growing louder. Muffled oars in water, and the thin hiss of a wooden boat sliding onto the sand. Selena stood up, and peered down the beach. Nothing, but…

  But there in the darkness, less than a stone’s throw away, three dark-clothed men in a boat, with feathered oars. One of the men jumped onto the sand. Her heart knew. It was Royce.

  Neither speaking nor crying out, she raced toward him across the sand. His back was turned; he was doing something with the boat.

  “Look out,” someone grunted. She reached him, arms outstretched.

  He whirled and grabbed at her. She flashed through the air, a dreadful, empty, sickening feeling, and slammed heavily down onto the sand, before her brain had a chance even to register his harsh grip upon her. For a moment she had no breath and the scudding clouds seemed to carry legions of bursting stars. Then his face came down over hers.

  “Selena!” he whispered. “Good God! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I…” she gasped. “I…have your message.”

  He was astounded. “You what? From Weddington?”

  She made an affirmative motion, fighting for air.

  “My God! Are you crazy?”

  She made the motion again.

  A moment then the white flash of his teeth. “Well, I guess you couldn’t hold out against your own nature anymore,” he said. “But warn me next time, all right? I might have killed you. The only thing that saved you was that I noticed my assailant was wearing a dress. That’s happened before, of course, but usually not from behind.”

  She saw an ominous-looking rope knife in his hand. He put it in his belt. She leaned up on one elbow, her head spinning slowly.

  “You really are the courier?”

  She nodded.

  He stepped to the boat and told the sailors to row out about a hundred yards and hold steady there. “If I’m not back in an hour, leave. Return tomorrow, same time. If I’m not here then, consider me lost, and take the ship to Sandy Hook, south of New York. There will be instructions for you there.”

  He rushed the boat into the water, and in a moment Selena heard again the dip and ripple of muffled oars. Royce took her hand and led her up the beach to a sheltered place in the dunes, a wild, eerily beautiful stretch of mounded sand, driftwood, and scrub brush that ran for a hundred miles along the Long Island shore. He brought her down to the sand with him. She waited for his kiss, his embrace.

  “Now tell me,” he said, his voice businesslike and brisk.

  She said nothing, astonished. He sensed her surprise.

  “We’ll have a moment later,.” he said. “The cause comes first. Quickly,” he ordered. “The message.”

  Selena buried her disappointment.

  “Lord Howe is at sea with five thousand men,” she began the recitation. “Eight hundred mounts, possibly a thousand, and more to come from the Maryland countryside. The loyalists there will speed his road to Philadelphia…”

  . “Philadelphia?” Royce said, shrugging in surprise. The night was so dark she could barely see him. If the cells and nerves of her own body had not told her it was he, her companion might have been anyone.

  “Yes,” she said. “Washington is still dug in at Morristown.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes. But he will try to move toward Elkton, in Maryland, to stop the British.”

  “No one will stop the British.” A third participant had entered the conversation. Royce and Selena whirled around. There was Lord Ludford, squatting in the sand only a few feet away. He gripped a big pistol, the hollow muzzle of which was blacker than the night. He moved the muzzle in a leisurely gesture from Selena to Royce and back again.

  “Well, if it isn’t the mighty Campbell,” he mocked. “Where is your sense of quality? I daresay you’ve been reduced to rutting traitor girls on the beach.”

  He moved the muzzle back to Royce. He kept it there.

  “Surprised to see me here? Don’t be. I did not expect to see you. It was your little friend, Selena, whose movements were of interest to me…”

  Selena did not even see the rope knife cutting through the darkness. She sensed movement beside her, a quick, deft, utterly ruthless thrust. Ludford’s arm, severed just below the elbow, fell onto the sand before them, hand still clutching the pistol. Ludford’s finger had begun to jerk against the trigger before Royce cut off his arm, and now the finger seemed to be trying to press the trigger, a reflexive twitching, but it was too late. Arm, hand, and pistol lay in a pool of blood; great gouts of blood spurted from Ludford’s stump, as his heart pumped wildly.

  “All right,” Royce said, still very calm. He motioned Selena back, away from the blood. He stood up.

  “God, I’ll bleed to…” Ludford began to scream, trying to grip his arm with his remaining hand, to stanch the flow of blood.

  Royce put the rope knife to Ludford’s neck.

  “Shut up or you’re dead already. First, I want you to apologize to Selena for your language.”

  “But I’m dying!”

  “I only care when quality dies,” Royce said. “Now apologize.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ludford babbled. “I’m sorry…” The blood was everywhere. Selena felt sick.

  “Sorry? Sorry for what?” Royce was very calm.

  “For my language. For…”

  “For everything?”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes oh…”

  “Good,” Royce said. “That’s called by the clergy an act of contrition. Now you’re supposed to go straight to heaven…”

  He shoved the knife directly into Ludford’s left eye, right through the socket and into the man’s brain. Ludford jerked upward to his full height, left the earth, as if jumping, and came crashing down, the bloody husk of what had once been a man.

  “Damn,” Royce said now, as they stood looking down at Ludford, and the blood, and the severed arm, and the gun. “That was stupid. I lost control of myself. When I sense a battle, I can’t hold myself back.”

  Hold himself back? He’d been cold as ice throughout! She must summon an equal composure if she was to tell him about Hale, about Dick’s fear that his network was collapsing. Taking a deep breath first, she told him the rest of the message with which Dick Weddington had charged her, the plans of Lord Howe.

  “I may be too late already,” he calculated. “They must have landed along the Chesapeake Bay by now. But I’ll have to try and get there…”

  The two of them stood there on the empty beach. Not much time until the boat, waiting for him, was supposed to go back to the Selena. He could not afford the time, and now, with Ludford dead, a twenty-four-hour sojourn here on Montauk was unthinkable. The British would be swarming across the peninsula shortly after dawn.

  “Selena, you’re at the Colony?”

  “Yes. And…and Veronica is there, too. She was with Ludford…” She did not know exactly why she said it. Was she testing him?

  “Then let me take you back there. I have to do something anyway.”

  So saying, he bent down, wrenched the pistol from the rigor mortis grip of Ludford’s dead fingers, and jammed it into his belt. Then he lifted the security director up over his shoulders and started down the beach toward the hotel. Selena followed. She was half afraid of Royce having seen again that sudden flicker of violent totally inexorable strength and decision. But, more than ever, she felt all the force of her love. Already, she knew that there would be no time to talk, nor to resolve anything. No hope that she could bank the fires and put to rest the passion that still arose when she thought of him. And unless she put those passions to rest the future would be restless and unpredictable. There are some things in life that must be resolved. If not, life turns into waiting, and it is often a waiting for something which can never come. If that is what was to happen, then it was best to know it from the beginning. She might spare herself the pain, and save herself the heartbre
ak.

  “In the cellar,” she said, as he strode along the beach with his burden of death, “you were the one, weren’t you?”

  He said nothing, walking.

  “McGrover,” she prodded. “You returned that night.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “We must care for each other, and see that scores are settled. We will be true to each other in our way, even if we cannot have each other now.”

  Selena felt as she had the time McGrover had come threatening her at the house on Bowling Green. Afraid no more. But this feeling was more powerful. It was transcendent, traveling out in currents toward Royce, to be returned by him. It happened in silence, walking. But they were one, in a mystical sense, in a sense more fateful than they had become one in body, long ago. And still there were miles to go.

  Two lights burned in the windows of the Colony. One in the lobby, one in an upstairs suite. The torches along the boardwalk had been extinguished. Royce did not hesitate. He bore Ludford up the boardwalk, and up the entrance stairs. One light was on in the lobby. A clerk, dozing behind the desk, looked up too late to see Selena reach the upper floor, but he did see Royce climbing the stairs. And Royce saw him.

  “Fellow had a bit much,” he joked to the clerk, who, in the gloom, saw a uniformed gentleman a bit the worse for wear being trotted up to bed by a sympathetic friend. The clerk went back to sleep; no one was expected for the night. No one would bother him.

  On the second floor, Selena stood aside. Royce said nothing. He knew. He climbed the stairs to the third floor, where the light had been. Selena followed. Then down the corridor, to a closed door. He knocked.

  Royce waited for Veronica to open the door. Selena stood off to one side, out of the light, so that she would not be seen. “Yes?” Veronica called invitingly. Royce did not respond, but in a moment the door swung open. Veronica was smiling. She saw Royce. And Ludford. Royce put Ludford’s body gently on the floor, just inside the room.

  “Here’s your entertainment for the night,” Royce said.

  Ludford stared blankly and forever at the ceiling.

  For just a moment, Veronica looked as if she would faint, and then Selena was sure Royce’s former mistress would scream. But the woman was as hard as she was haughty. She lifted her chin and faced Royce. Her smile was rather weak, but she was smiling.

  “Darling,” she said, “how very kind of you to think of my happiness after all this time.”

  “And how vary characteristic that your happiness should be the first thing to come to your tongue.”

  Veronica heard that, but she did not care.

  “By the by, your Scottish tart is stopping here. Is that why you’ve come by?”

  “I have no idea whom you’re talking about,” said Royce, protecting Selena, “but I would advise you to watch your neck. You are in a dangerous game with these British.”

  Although not loud, the conversation awakened a man in an adjoining room. “What’s going on out there?” he called roughly.

  “What’s happened to you, Royce?” Veronica asked, struggling to keep her eyes off Ludford. “You were once an intelligent man. Any day now, your head will be shaved to the neck by a British cannonball. You no longer know what you are about.”

  The man in the next room was rumbling and stumbling toward the door, muttering about the disturbance, the late hour…

  “We shall see,” Royce said and slammed the door. Then, taking Selena by the arm, he raced with her down to the end of the corridor, where a double window overlooked the porch. He helped Selena out onto the roof of the porch, and she waited there while he climbed out. She saw Veronica come out of her room; Veronica began to scream. The man in the adjacent room peered out and looked around. Royce was halfway out of the window. Traudl, holding her robe fearfully in front of her breasts, also appeared in a nearby doorway. She saw Royce Campbell only from behind. But she saw Selena clearly, the light of the hallway lamps falling gently on her face. Then Royce edged out to the end of the porch, dropped catlike down onto the sand, and whispered for Selena to follow. He caught her as she dropped down. The only thing that delayed pursuit, and thus allowed them to have a few moments unobserved, was the horrified discovery of Ludford’s body by guests of the hotel.

  “Selena,” Royce told her on the dark beach, “I must leave. Again.”

  “I know.”

  They clung to each other for an infinite second.

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes. I’ll say I was out for a walk. No, I’ll say I was on the porch. I’ll say I saw a man running.” Everyone but Traudl will believe that, she thought. At least for now. “Now, you go. I’ve got to get in. The baby will be disturbed.”

  “I’m sorry. Now you are more involved than before, and that is dangerous. I cannot even remain to help you.”

  “Don’t think of it. I just wanted…I wanted to talk to you. One last time…at least…”

  Royce stiffened when she said one last time. She sensed the words hurt him, or surprised him.

  “So that is truly your final choice? Nothing comes later?”

  A person is defined by choices that are free.

  “I’m not free to choose,” she said. “At least, I don’t think I am. Not now. Not yet.”

  Be with me! Be mine! she wanted to scream. Upstairs, in the hotel, Davina began to wail.

  “No, you’re not free,” Royce said. His lips were on hers for such a short time that, later, she almost believed the kiss had been imaginary. “Freedom is first belief, then fact.”

  “Good-bye, Selena. We both have much to do.” With that he was gone down the beach, and like a phantom he disappeared into the night.

  Selena rushed back into the Colony. Veronica was loudly commanding the attention of everyone.

  “It was Royce Campbell!” she cried, over and over. “It was that rebel pirate with a price on his head!”

  Selena stayed in the background for a few moments, before hurrying off to her room. In spite of the circumstances, she felt a grim satisfaction when she heard Veronica wail. There was shock in Veronica’s cry, that was true, but there was also the faintest note of a woman scorned. But Selena knew a spurned woman could be dangerous, and she suppressed the impulse to savor the fact that it was she Royce loved, not this woman who had once smiled boldly at her from Royce’s bed. Selena had other problems, the first of which was Traudl. The nursemaid looked up at her when Selena entered the room, her eyes wide with fear and accusation. She was holding Davina, who had stopped crying. Selena reached out and took the child.

  “There, there, it’s nothing,” she soothed.

  She did not look at the Dutch girl. The righteous anger of God was in Traudl’s eyes.

  Late the next afternoon, Lord Bailey came out from New York. He had been Lord Ludford’s aide-de-camp, and was now elevated to his commander’s position. He sought information about the terrible assassination, and was pleased at his shrewdness in deducing—aided by Veronica’s testimony—that Royce Campbell had been the culprit. Bailey was also greatly taken by the distraught woman, and tried his best to comfort her. And, being a Lord, he naturally refrained from speaking to any servants or to anyone else of an inferior rank. It was fortunate for Selena that his sudden promotion in rank had affected only his bearing and not his brain.

  Time Will Turn Back

  If she lived to be a hundred, Selena would never forget the roll of the drums. Stirring, unsettling, premonitory, hypnotic, their sound bounced off the stone walls of the fort, echoed and reechoed on the cobblestones outside the guardhouse, melded in the luminous October air, and rippled along the waterfront of old New York. It was a horrible, telling toll of sound, those drumbeats, fateful and relentless. Up on Bowling Green one could hear, and all along the Battery, and even as far away as Wall Street. People who had not gone down to the fort to watch the spectacle stopped one another on the street or heard the sound and looked up from their desks, nodding sagely or sadly at their fellows. “Well, hear those drums? Aye, they
’ll be a-hangin’ him very shortly now.”

  I’m not going to be able to bear this, Selena thought biting her lip. Then, disgusted with her cowardice, almost physically sick with guilt and impotence: You’d better bear it. He has to.

  Since returning from Montauk, life had been a nightmare. September and October, the most glorious months of the year, had slipped by, barely noticed. Even the surprising American victory over “Gentleman Jack” Burgoyne at Saratoga, and the subsequent entry of France into the war on the side of the rebels, failed to stir Selena. British Security was in a panic, however; New York was very tense.

  If it was true that Selena was no longer afraid, it was also true that she had ceased to care whether she was afraid or not. Almost. But she sought in vain a ray of light a kind face, a happy word: anything that would offer surcease from the sorrow into which she had been plunged, and her dark, painful knowledge of the reasons for that sorrow.

  And all the while that Selena was crushed by sadness, burdened by powerlessness, Lord Bailey’s minions performed upon their prize captive the spine-shattering techniques of a trade at which Darius McGrover had excelled. First, they beat the soles of his feet with rods of wood and iron. Then the joints of his fingers were crushed, one after another, in the slow, shrieking pressure of the thumbscrews. Then pincers and metal bands were applied to various parts of his body, and tightened gradually to extract blood as well as information, and to crush bones as well as glands. Each day, day after day, the man was brought into a dark hole at least seventy feet below the surface of the earth, and each day he screamed his way into unconsciousness. Finally, Lord Bailey was told that the man had broken. Even if he possessed any more information, it was of value to no one. He was a babbling lunatic now, driven mad by pain and privation.

  “All right,” Bailey said. “Let’s get the trial over with and hang him high.”

  The nightmare had begun on the very evening Selena, Davina, and Traudl returned from Montauk. Throughout the trip, Traudl had said nothing, just stared out at the passing landscape, oblivious even to Davina’s entreaties for games or endearments. Selena was anxious about the nursemaid, and could only guess at the pressures of the simple girl’s conscience. Had she known for certain just how relentless those pressures were, she would have worried more.