Fires of Delight (17 page)

Jean had apparently resigned himself to the fact that Selena’s love was too great to breach, let alone break. A discussion followed, introduced by Jean, which led to the decision that Rafael would depart in a few days for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, there to make inquiries regarding Campbell and also to determine when the next ship would set sail for America.

“You’ll be safe there now, Selena,” Jean said. “Oakley and his men will be gone, having lost the war.”

“Oakley!” said Selena in disgust.

“Who’s that?” Yolanda wanted to know.

Selena told her, describing the lieutenant’s great bald head, hairless face, flabby fold of nose. She also added the information that, incongruously, the man was a gifted artist, able to paint with subtle, spectacular effect.

Yolanda listened, saying nothing, taking it all in.

“You speak of him as if the force of his hatred is with you still,” commented Martha, her odd ring glittering.

“I’m afraid it is. He is the kind who does not forget. I picture him pursuing me like a hound of hell. ‘We have a bond, Selena,’ he said. And he
believed
it.”

She shuddered. Yolanda’s eyes widened, and the candles flared. As the beauty lifted her hand to brush back a tendril of raven-black hair, Selena saw, in the palm of her left hand, a tiny five-pointed star, like a tattoo.

Another symbol
, she thought.
But signifying what?

Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the star was only a kind of beauty mark, a graphic residue of Yolanda’s superstitious, dream-haunted homeland.

After dessert, a rum-flavored banana puree spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, the dinner ended. Jean, rising from the table, said that musicians were waiting to play for them on the veranda. But Selena demurred. She felt very tired suddenly, a languor born of many things, not the least of which was the uninterpretable tension between Yolanda and Martha Marguerite.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “I think I’ll retire for the night.”

The two women, along with Rafael and Louis, rose as Jean helped her up from her chair. The men seemed disappointed that she would not be joining them, and the women pretended to be.

“Come on, Selena,” urged Jean, as he walked her toward the rose room, “change your mind. I find pleasure in your company.”

“I’d like to listen to the music, truly. But I’m so tired…”

They paused outside her door. “Let me come inside for just a little,” he said huskily, slipping an arm around her waist and cupping her bare breast in his hand.

“Jean—”

“Please. Just for a little while. You don’t know how much I desire you.”

Yes, she did. She could feel, through his breeches and her gown, exactly how much, and it was quite a lot. Moreover, his expert attention to her breast was having an effect. His lips were just above her own, and she very much wanted to kiss him.

“That time on board your ship—” she began.

“I’m thinking of the time on board my ship, and how you felt.”

“It shouldn’t have happened. I thought we’d agreed—”

“I don’t recall agreeing to anything.” He smiled.

“But what about Yolanda? Think how badly she’ll feel if she finds out.”

“Selena, she is merely my mistress. I’m in
love
with
you
.”

“But you said you’d send Rafael to Port-au-Prince to help me go back to America.”

“Yes. And in the meantime, you’re here. Just give me that time to love you, Selena. I want to make you feel what I felt with you. If I can. You may be surprised to find that you will love me too.”

He was rubbing his thumb lightly over her taut nipple, back and forth. Maddeningly, sensations flashed down through her body to where she felt his hard strength pressed against her.

“Oh, Jean, I just can’t,” she said, in genuine distress.

At that moment, she was all too ready to make love, and if it had not been for the image of Royce, she’d have pulled Jean inside her room, stripped in a flash, lain him down, opened herself to take him, to ride until there was no more.

“If I try very hard, I can pretend to myself that I was not totally responsible for the time on your ship. But if I give myself again, I’ll have to live with the knowledge that I’ve been deliberately unfaithful to Royce. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Sure I can.” He grinned, kissing her neck and running his hand along the sweet curves of her body. “Sure I can, but it makes no difference to me.”

He was jesting now and Selena realized—with just a faint, fading disappointment—that he had decided not to force the issue. Not then anyway.

“Good night, my love,” he said lightly, kissing her—too briefly, it seemed—on the mouth, and leaving the touch of a final caress on her bare breast. “I hope you dream of me.”

“I probably will,” she murmured to herself, entering the rose room and closing the door. There were few physical sensations in the world worse than to be completely ready for love, but not to
be able to do anything about it! The trouble was that, even though one’s mind and body recalled the precise shape of a man, memory could never hope to approximate, let alone experience, the actual feel of him deep down.

Deciding against another bath, Selena undressed, hung up the shameless wisp of cloth she’d been maneuvered into wearing by Martha, and slipped naked between the satin sheets of the voluptuous bed. Warm climates had their advantages. In cold Scotland, a person would invite the grippe or worse without flannels and stockings and a nightcap. Unless, of course, one could find an agreeable partner.

Gradually, attenuated desire sank away until the next time it should be evoked, and Selena drifted toward sleep. The moon had risen, soft and majestic in a star-riven sky, filling the bedroom with a lambent, rose-tinted haze. Selena watched the way in which the color changed as the moon eased across the sky, saw through veiled eyes the shadows of the rubber plant on the floor.

And saw Lieutenant Clay Oakley standing beside the rubber plant!

She sat bolt upright, incapable of crying out, and clutched a sheet to her bosom.

It was Oakley all right, in all his leering, muscular malevolence, and he advanced toward her with heavy, implacable tread. There was something unusual in his gait, jerky and uncoordinated, as if he were a dead man called from the grave by strange powers to attack Selena in the night.

“What do you want?” she managed, her voice barely a whisper.

He said nothing, just stared at her out of his enormous, icy eyes. She saw in his right hand something slim and long like a stiletto, but as he approached her bed and loomed over her to strike, she saw that he held not a weapon at all but…

An artist’s paint brush!

Then he melted away, disappeared instantly, utterly, into the rose-colored air.

And Selena was alone.

My God!
she thought, getting out of bed, feeling the cool floor beneath her feet. “What on earth—?”

Her mind was whirling, her heart pumped crazily, but she forced herself to be calm and tried to think.

Oakley had been there, true to life in every detail. But why the paint brush?

After several minutes of tumultuous consideration, Selena thought she had the answer. At the dinner table, she had vividly described Oakley for the benefit of the others. And she had added the information that the peculiar lieutenant was a painter. Thus, someone present at the table, in order to terrify Selena, had projected the image of Oakley into this very room! The paint brush was an incongruous error, either of perception or projection, but there was no denying the vast, eerie power of…

Who?

Yolanda, with her brooding aura and barely hidden animosities?

Or the apparently serene Martha Marguerite, with her singular ring?

Or someone else—one of the silent, scurrying servants perhaps—who had an unknown reason to harass the new guest?

Selena did not know.

Agitated, unsettled, she pulled on a robe and began to pace about the room. Should she go and tell Jean Beaumain what had happened? He would be on the veranda with the others. She could hear the sounds of violins in the distance, a song half-forgotten, melancholy, inexpressibly heartbreaking, conveying the sadness of someone who had already been dead for centuries.

No
, she decided.
I don’t know what is happening, or why. I won’t make a fool of myself. I’ll bide my time
.

Continuing to pace, she wandered over toward the rubber plant and felt, beneath her bare feet, the grit of dirt spilled on the floor.
What?
she thought.
I cleaned very thoroughly when I hid the pouch
…

Unless—!

Her premonition proved to be correct.

The soil in the pot, around the roots of the rubber plant, had been disturbed.

The pouch of jewels was gone.

Rafael journeyed to Port-au-Prince and returned a week later, the bearer of much news, most of it disquieting. He sat with Jean and Selena on the veranda in late afternoon, the three of them sipping tea and sherry.

“First of all,” he said, “Lieutenant Clay Oakley and a number of his men are in Haiti now. I saw him myself in the barroom of the Black Prince Hotel, a most disagreeable-looking man, if I do say so. And, Selena, he is looking for you.”

“I
knew
it,” she murmured.

“The British defeat in America seems to have stung him badly. There is much talk of recoupment and revenge. He is showing, to whomever will pay him heed, a handbill with your likeness on it.”

“Oh, Lord,” Selena said.

“Very curious. He carries with him at all times a scented handkerchief and breathes through it constantly.”

“It seems to be his one weakness,” she explained. “It is as if there is not enough air in the world for him.”

She did not understand how that weakness could do her much good, unless it were to lead to premature demise.

“Also,” continued Rafael, “there is news that Royce Campbell was sighted aboard his ship near Trinidad—”

“Yes?” she exclaimed excitedly, as Jean tried to veil a frown.

“—and he is looking for you as well.”

“Oakley is much closer,” Selena said. “Are any ships due out for America or Trinidad?”

“There are always some. But suppose you went to Trinidad? Royce might already be gone.”

“Eventually, he might come here,” she said hopefully.

Jean Beaumain took a swallow of the sweet sherry and set down his glass. “Selena,” he said, having made a decision, “it would be too risky for you to appear in Haiti just now, for any
purpose. I will tell you what I shall do: When next we learn of Royce Campbell’s whereabouts—and I will make sure we are kept informed—I myself will take you to him aboard the
Liberté.”

“Would you do
that?
” she cried, delighted.

He was surprised, but not at all displeased, when Selena bestowed an affectionate kiss upon his lips.

But that decision, so readily made and received with such joyous acquiescence, proved to be dependent upon the future convergence of disparate and unpredictable people and events. News of Royce would have to reach Haiti and St. Crique. It could not be old information; Royce would have to be within reasonable sailing distance. And Jean Beaumain would be the one to make the decision about when to weigh anchor.

He held all the cards so to speak. Selena was in his power, as well as indebted to him.

Fall turned to winter on St. Crique Isle, but it hardly seemed to matter. The days were warm, as were the nights. The skies were peerlessly blue, and out on the ocean the mighty Gulf Stream moved in its mysterious current. Time itself seemed to slow down as week melted into week, and an odd, uncharacteristic lethargy settled over Selena. Always so vibrant, she was puzzled by it, and finally thought that she recognized the cause of her state: she had begun to accept the apparent powerlessness of her situation here. Instead of instigating a search for her missing treasure, she had settled in to wait for some hint or clue about who had stolen it. Instead of actively pursuing relationships with Yolanda or Martha Marguerite—relationships which might at least have provided the clues she needed—she had kept her distance from the two woman, a distance with which they seemed quite comfortable, thank you. Martha continued to coddle and fuss over Jean as if he were her son, and to chatter about Paris. Yolanda disappeared with Jean for great parts of the day, and always for the night, to gift him with sensual delights that Selena could all too readily envision.

Selena was in the library when she decided that she’d had enough of waiting, of leisure, of debilitating inactivity.

“I am going to act!” she declared aloud, to the sudden, startled carping of a couple of caged mynah birds. “I am finished with laying about!”

In truth, what roused her to this pronouncement was not completely
her own impulse. A piece of news in a British paper, which Rafael had brought back from another of his gloomy forays to Port-au-Prince, caught her eye and quickened her blood.

LORD BLOODWELL APPOINTED TO HIS MAJESTY’S SERVICE

Lord Sean Bloodwell, by order of His Majesty George III, has been appointed to the diplomatic corps. He will serve as Deputy Minister for Anglo-French affairs, a most crucial area at this time due to the turbulent winds of revolutionary havoc stirring the Continent.

Lord Bloodwell, a Scots commoner who rose to mercantile fortune in the American colonies and who was elevated to the peerage for his unswerving loyalty to His Majesty, has stated: “War is a horror that must be avoided unless there is no honorable alternative. But revolution is a terror that rips nations and families apart…”

Ah, did Selena not know it! This man, whose life she had once shared, had been all but heartbroken when he’d learned that her loyalties were with the Colonists, with the revolutionaries, with the enemies of his monarch. Yes, they had been different people, but had that fact diminished the pain of their foredoomed separation. No, it had not.

Yet Sean had gone on, forgiving her, permitting her to go her way, yes, but proceeding along the path he had planned for himself. He was
doing
something!