Seize the Fire Read online

  The awkward disrobing revealed an abundant figure in a stylish green gown, with a large diamond pendant at her throat. Sheridan glanced down at the offered redingote, mentally transforming the pearl buttons and expensive braided trim into shillings. He looked up hopefully. If Papa was this well padded, Sheridan hoped he'd hurry, and he needn't have gone to so much trouble, either.

  "Miss St Leger," he said, as amiable as the spider to the fly, "it's far too cold for either of us to stand here. Won't you join me somewhere more comfortable?"

  The feathers on her hat bobbled. It was like talking to a sheepdog. He resisted the urge to stoop down and peer up at her from below, instead throwing the blankets around his shoulders and drawing her firmly onto his arm.

  He cast about quickly for a place to take her, and settled on the tiny study near the front door as the only suitable option. It had been used recently by the steward, which suggested it was relatively free of his father's vicious pranks. It also contained a sofa of convenient length for criminal conduct.

  Mustafa appeared with a tea tray just as they were crossing the hall. While Sheridan settled Miss St Leger on the couch, Mustafa successfully re-created the din of a minor war with the coal scuttle. The skirmish, including full artillery, ended with Sheridan sending him to the devil—in Arabic, so as not to offend delicate feminine ears—and building the fire himself.

  He sat down next to his guest. "May I take your hat, Miss St Leger?"

  Her fingers curled. Behind her, a bank of tall windows painted with a collection of fictitious heraldry dyed the light gold and green, bringing out deeper colors in her dress. She fiddled with the comer of the leather book in her lap, saying nothing.

  "Are you hiding under there?" he asked, careful to keep his tone light.

  She hesitated, and then said, "Yes. I suppose I am."

  He liked her voice. It made him think of sable pelts, husky and soft. Sheridan reached up and gave the green ribbons a gentle tug, pulling the bow free. "I'm afraid, Miss St Leger, that I must claim the right to actually see whom I'm entertaining. How do I know you aren't one of those sthaga fellows, come in disguise to assassinate me?"

  A poor topic for levity, that, since it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility and thus no joking matter.

  "No," she answered, very serious. "I understand you to mean the thuggee sect of India? Why would you think so?"

  He ignored that piece of witlessness and lifted the huge, drooping mass of millinery from her head. She instantly lowered her face, staring at her lap, so that nothing was visible of her beyond the cluster of sunflower curls that framed the netted bun on top of her head. Intrigued by the curve of one plump cheek, he lifted her chin and made her look toward him, ignoring her flinch as he touched her.

  His first impression was of green eyes, wide as a baby owl's and just as solemn. Dumpling cheeks, a straight nose, and a firm little mouth—all ordinary, and all in common female proportion. There was nothing notably strange about her features—and yet it was an odd face, the kind of face that looked out of burrows and tree-knots and hedgerows, unblinking, innocent and as old as time. If she'd had whiskers to twitch it wouldn't have surprised him, so strong was the impression of a small, prudent wild creature with dark brows like furry markings.

  Strangely, she made him want to smile, as if he'd just pulled aside a branch and discovered a nightingale staring gravely back at him from its nest. He found himself reacting in the same way, consciously containing his moves and his voice, as if he might startle her away.

  "Hullo," he said softly, giving her a light, suggestive chuck beneath her plump chin as he let her go. "Honored to meet you, Miss St Leger."

  She held out the book. "This is for you."

  Sheridan looked down at the small volume. He opened it in the middle, read a line of some French nonsense about the "social compact," and then a phrase asserting that when a prince told a citizen it was expedient he should die for the state, that citizen ought to die.

  A nice idea. He hoped Monsieur Rousseau had been fortunate to experience the social gratification of perishing with a bullet in his belly and his legs torn off by cannon shot. Personally, having been invited to die more frequently than was polite in the interests of a bunch of blockheaded bureaucrats, Sheridan looked upon the sentiment with some skepticism.

  He flipped back and paused at the flyleaf. In a careful hand, Miss St Leger had written something in Latin. Since Sheridan's formal schooling had ended at the age of ten, he could only frown at it and hum-hum and look wise, not wishing to tarnish her image of hire, which was clearly exalted and ought to be taken advantage of before the new wore off.

  "Thank you," he said, looking up at her. "I'll treasure this."

  Her lips parted slightly. She managed to smile without smiling, her serious face ashine with pleasure—real pleasure, which was something he recognized only because he'd never seen it before, not on any of the hundreds of faces which had smirked vainly or proudly or coyly at him as he played out his hero farce.

  It was Sheridan who looked away, feeling unexpectedly awkward. She was outlandish and yet curiously lovely in her sparrowish, humble way. It made him uncomfortable. He was partial to beautiful women; he liked prettiness as well as the next man. But this was something different. Something that touched him in obscure and half-forgotten places. In his soul, he might have said, if he'd thought he still had one to stir.

  Which he didn't, as he proved to himself by lowering his eyelids and enjoying the deliberate and easy kindling of more familiar sensations. Her dress, cut in a modish horizontal line across her bosom, revealed quite enough to assure him that nothing artificial amplified the swell of her breasts. The straight neckline made an inviting path, starting low on her shoulders and crossing the opulent expanse of skin at a point that on most females would have been perfectly modest, but which on Miss St Leger clearly showed the shadowy prelude to a luxurious cleavage.

  He shifted the blanket a little to hide his interest, which was rather more than intellectual, and bought some time by pouring for them both. Undecided on the best approach to achieving a considerably closer acquaintance, he found himself sitting next to her and sipping like a schoolboy at a charity tea.

  Her motives still baffled him. It was beginning to look unlikely that Outraged Papa would appear. Possibly she was going to ask Sheridan for money for Distressed Needlewomen or something, but if so, she was taking her sweet time about it. He looked at her slantwise and saw her chew her lower lip, obviously working herself up to the point.

  He sipped again and waited to see what it was. Watching her face, rolling sweetness on his tongue, savoring both after months of forced abstinence from every civilized pleasure, he slowly allowed himself to slide into tranquil sensuality. He appreciated simply existing, enjoying the cool air on his face and the warmth the blankets radiated back from his bare skin, the feel of his spine pressed up to the solid horsehair couch. His career had taught him one true thing amid the folly—there were few enough moments of peace in life. He took this one and treasured it with sincere gratitude, which was as close to religion as he came these days.

  Miss St Leger stopped chewing her lip. She seemed content with the silence, sitting with the mute patience of a dog or a cat, staring pensively into the struggling fire. Her lowered profile emphasized her chubby chin, creating a picture that Sheridan found genuine and vulnerable to the point of painfulness. She should have known better than to display her little faults so conspicuously; any other woman he'd ever met would have. Spinsters whose beauty had gone to wattle still had the presence of mind to preen and maneuver themselves into presenting their best angle to a new acquaintance. He wondered if she had ever set out to seduce a man before.

  He caught himself in that thought. Vain bastard he'd become, with all the misplaced glory and its agreeable effect on females—but for God's sake, what else could she possibly want from him? To call like this, alone, unchaperoned…he'd been out of the country for a long time, but no
t that long. Morals had not become so cavalier in his absence. The consequences for her were monstrous, and yet there she sat, asking nothing, hinting nothing. If she'd simply wished to bestow upon him a dead pot plant and seditious literature, she could have had them delivered. And certainly ought to have.

  As he observed her in musing silence, a novel thought occurred to him. It slipped through his mind so subtly that it seemed to mingle like smoke with his physical perceptions, with the way the dim light through the stained-glass window fell across her hair in little iridescent rainbows, and the scent of old tobacco and dust lingered in the room. He wondered, absurdly, if this was what she had come for—simply to sit in the stillness and be alive and share it with him.

  Something inside, some tiny something he hadn't even known was there, seemed to unfold, to spread tentative petals open like a desert flower sensing rain.

  She turned and looked up at him, her great, unblinking eyes full of cryptic forest wisdom. He thought foolishly: Let me stay here. I need this.

  "I've come to ask you a favor," she said.

  If she'd dashed him in the face with her tea dregs, she could not have shattered the instant so effectively. He set his cup on the saucer. "Naturally." He smiled, aware of the way his mouth didn't quite manage humor, but caught at irony. "What is it, Miss St Leger?"

  Olympia had been gathering herself piece by piece to get to this moment, amazed in every second at his tolerance and simple hospitality. It was immensely encouraging, far more than she'd expected, that he would sit so patiently while she dealt with her terror. Afraid now that her daring would collapse if she hesitated, she began to speak as quickly as possible.

  "Of course I have no right to ask anything of you, I know," she said. "But I am desperate." She hesitated, saw one dark eyebrow begin to arch at that, and rushed on. "I must leave the country, and I don't know how to go about it, and I have no one I can ask to help me."

  He put his cup on the side table. The sofa creaked as he stood up, pulling the blankets over his shoulders. At the hearth, he picked up the iron poker, rotating it in both hands for a moment, looking down at the brass handle. Then he turned to the fire and shifted some of the coals.

  Facing away from her, he asked, "What have you done?"

  "Oh, no," she exclaimed hastily. "You mustn't think that! I haven't explained myself well, of course—but please be assured there is no crime of any sort. I haven't done anything. I'm not fleeing, exactly. It is that I must get to Rome as soon as possible. The reason is…" She wrapped her fingers around themselves and squeezed. "Personal."

  He looked sideways at her. "I see. Personal."

  It seemed astonishingly rude to reserve her reasons, now that he'd pointed it out. But the whole thing was awful and outrageous anyway, almost unreal, so impossible did it seem that she'd actually come here, that her body had taken the steps her mind had only imagined.

  He stood in stillness by the fire, The blankets had slipped off one shoulder to hang down his bare back. She stared at his arm, the long, relaxed curve of muscle down to his wrist and hand, where his fingers rested loosely around the poker. Behind him, amber light picked out the pattern on the stylish wallpaper in a dull sheen of gilt.

  "It isn't completely personal," she added. She stared at her lap, and then forced herself to look up at him again. "It is in the cause of liberty, in a way. I suppose that must sound peculiar. But I…I seem to have some political significance, you see, and I am to be coerced into something that will be very detrimental for my…country."

  "Miss St Leger, I'm afraid I don't understand a word of what you're saying."

  "Perhaps you won't believe me," she said. "That's why I didn't tell you instantly, because I wouldn't blame you if you thought it was a hum. But I am not an Englishwoman. I'm actually—" She hesitated, and lowered her head. "I'm actually what the world is pleased to call a—a royal per-

  sonage. King Nicolas of Oriens is my grandfather."

  The poker clattered against the hearth.

  "It's true," she said.

  "Good God." He stood up straight. "Good God. Do you mean you're a bloody princess?"

  Two

  * * *

  Yes." Olympia sat up straight on the horsehair sofa and stared ahead, her hands tightened into fists. She pressed them tightly together. "And I have received a communication. My people wish me to return to Oriens."

  It was a small lie, saying that her people wanted her. Actually, she hadn't meant to say that, but somehow to admit her complete impotence to a man of action like Sir Sheridan Drake was too painful. And as if that fib weren't shameful enough, with a kind of detached horror she heard herself expanding on it.

  "I've been told that I am needed for the cause," she said. "To help lead the revolution which will bring them to freedom and establish democratic principles. So I must return."

  Sir Sheridan blinked at her. "To lead a revolution?"

  Olympia nodded.

  "What a singular notion," he said.

  She moistened her lips and hung her head. "You will think I'm the greenest of greenheads, of course. To ever hope that I could achieve such a noble end! But please, Sir Sheridan—if you can only conceive of what it is like. You've fought in the cause of freedom and human dignity; you've risked your life. But can you understand what it has been for me? To be kept here like a bird in a cage, in exile"—she lifted her head scornfully—"for my safety, they say, and so I'm coddled and nursed and hedged about while my people suffer oppression—and I, who am morally responsible because of my position alone, have done nothing to aid them!"

  He cleared his throat, frowning at her as if she were a navigational chart that had proved to be grossly inaccurate. He started to say something, stopped, then shook his head. "You've floored me."

  "I know it must seem quite mad."

  He laughed. "Rather."

  "I suppose you need not believe it, if only you will help me."

  For a long moment he looked at her, and then shook his head again with another soft chuckle. He leaned one arm against the mantel and toyed with a misplaced inkstand, smoothing his forefinger down the fringe of a feather quill. "I believe it."

  "Then you will help—"

  "Ah—let's not proceed so fast, Miss St Leger. Or is that your real name?"

  "Well, to be more precise, it's Olympia Francesca Marie Antonia Elizabeth. The St Legers have ruled in Oriens since Charlemagne."

  He gave the quill another meditative stroke and slanted her a look, as a lazing wolf would cock an ear to a distant sound—not alarmed, but almost imperceptibly more intent. "Oriens lies in the French Alps, does it not? Why go to Rome if it's Oriens where you're wanted?"

  Olympia kept her back straight. "The Alps of Oriens are not French."

  "Nevertheless," he said, "they're a considerable distance from Rome."

  "I must pass through Rome for another reason. I told you, I am under coercion."

  "What kind of coercion?"

  She looked down at her lap. "Will you help me?"

  In the long pause, the fire hissed softly.

  "We are at an impasse, ma'am. I'm not in the habit of committing myself to dubious positions on questionable information."

  She considered that, sorting the reproof from the important thing, which was that he wasn't dismissing her out of hand. Of course he would want to know everything. And it wasn't as if she couldn't trust him. He was a champion of freedom. He'd risked his life in the fight to rescue the Greeks from their degrading slavery under the Ottoman Empire. He'd proved his love of liberty by action under fire—which was far more than Olympia herself had ever done for the cause of democracy.

  No—it wasn't his integrity that made her hesitate; it was her own cowardice. Her own miserable cowardice and shame that she could not cope alone with the disaster thrust upon her. And worse, the niggling fear that rose up in her throat when she looked at him and saw what he was—not the safe, freckled, boy-man here of her dreams, but a man in fact: quietly sanguine, qui
etly confident, quietly asking real and pointed questions about an all-too-real situation.

  It was that fear she shrank from most: the perverse dread that if he understood, he would be convinced to help—that events would be set in motion which she could not stop. And she would fail. She would find that she was inadequate to the role that destiny had set her.

  "It's very complicated," she mumbled.

  He snorted. "If it's anything to do with that mare's nest they call continental politics, I don't doubt the particulars will reduce my brain to a stupefied wreckage. But I'll endeavor to muddle through."

  Under his steady, slightly impatient gaze, she ran out of evasions. "You know where Oriens is located?" she asked hesitantly.

  "Between France and Savoy, is it not? A splotch on the map about the size of a tea stain." He waved his hand. "That was before Bonaparte, of course. God only knows where they've put it now."

  "It's still where it has always been," she assured him. "The congress at Vienna left it intact, and restored my grandfather to the throne."

  "Fortunate. Ah, but I had forgotten! You are to have a revolution shortly. Was that part of the plan proposed at Vienna, or is it in the nature of an extemporaneous uprising?"

  "It is extemporaneous, as far as I am aware," Olympia said. "Do they plan such things in congress?"

  He looked at her, and went back to studiously stroking the feather. "I daresay a parcel of drunken diplomats is capable of anything. But continue with your own story, please."

  She twisted a fold of her gown around her finger. "Oriens controls the best passes between France and Italy, you see," she said. "They are open all year round, even in the worst of winters. And my grandfather has a treaty with Britain for their use."

  "Mmm. In return for protection from overly friendly neighbors."

  Olympia smoothed her dress and then folded it around her finger again. "I think that is putting it too nicely."