Seize the Fire Page 5

  "I should go now."

  He made no move to help her with her coat. She struggled into it by herself and looked up from buttoning.

  "When you wish to contact me," she said, "leave a message with Fish at Upwell. I see him every day."

  His brush of black lashes lowered. He stared at the teacup and the diamond that lay next to it. She could make nothing of his expression, and yet she was disturbed by it. She wet her lips and picked up her hat, rolling the brim in her fists. "I cannot—Sir Sheridan…you must know there are no words to thank you."

  He looked up at her, a quick flash of gray, intensely cool in the warm light of window and coal fire. "Not yet," he said, with a lift of his brows and a ghost of that disturbing smile. "Take a page from your own book, Princess. Don't thank me yet."

  The imperturbable Mrs. Plumb spread out a bolt of silver satin on the bed in Olympia's room and stood looking down at it with one of those sideways tilts of her chin which emphasized her elegant cheekbones.

  "What do you think?" she asked. She was an extraordinarily handsome governess, with a statuesque figure, a tiny waist and an unerring fashion sense where Olympia's wardrobe was concerned, although Mrs. Julia Plumb herself was never seen in anything but the most modest of widow's weeds. "I believe it would make up into a lovely walking dress."

  Mr. Stubbins wrote poetry about her. Mrs. Plumb laughed at it, and asked why a fellow barely out of leading strings should waste his time playing the flirt with an old woman—although Olympia thought secretly that Julia seemed to like it well enough. It had made Olympia wildly jealous years ago, when Mr. Stubbins' soft golden curls and brown eyes, aflame with revolutionary fervor, had been the focus of her sixteen-year-old dreams.

  By now, at twenty-four, she'd long outgrown that infatuation. It was nothing but childish aristocratic vanity to care for such things. She poked unenthusiastically at the silver satin. "It seems overly pretentious to me," she said. "I prefer muslin."

  Mrs. Plumb ignored that, except for a little sniff. It gave her a certain status, Olympia supposed, to have a position in the household of a princess, no matter how unexalted. Olympia and Mr. Stubbins deplored such conservative and ignorant sentiments, but neither of them had the nerve to face down that chill and beautiful gaze by stating their opinions out loud.

  "The seamstress has the fashion illustrations I thought would suit you best," Julia said. "There are several that will compliment an excessively full figure very well, I think." She looked up from the bolt of satin, her fine blue eyes regarding Olympia with an opaque expression. "You took a lengthy walk this morning, for such a cold day."

  After the smallest of hesitations, Olympia turned toward the window and said, "I left a card on Captain Drake."

  She was annoyed to hear the words come out with a trace of defiance.

  "Indeed," Julia said mildly. "That was very forward of you."

  Knowing it was true only made Olympia more defensive. "He wasn't at home to me," she lied. "And it was not in the way of a social call at all. I think everyone in the neighborhood should pay him their respects, and I don't see anything 'forward' about being the first to do so. He is a very great hero."

  Julia stroked the satin with her forefinger. "Yes, so they say. But it was most unbecoming of you to go alone to visit a bachelor, no matter how heroic. I hope you will avoid that mistake in the future."

  Olympia felt herself turning crimson. "I only left my card."

  "People will gossip about such things," Julia said. "You have the dignity of your position to consider."

  "A pox on my position," Olympia cried. "It's good for nothing, to me or to anyone else."

  A faint dry smile played at the comers of Julia's shapely mouth. "Nevertheless—" Her tone grew heavier. "You're not to call on Captain Drake alone again. I'll have your word on it."

  Olympia raised her chin and inclined her head. "Very well," she said, choosing her words carefully. "I promise not to call on him at Hatherleigh Hall."

  She didn't promise anything else.

  "Thank you." Julia glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantel. "Now, I must go out this evening for an hour, if you have no need of me or the carriage."

  Olympia nodded, folding the fabric. After Julia had left, she remained staring out the window at the ice-crusted banks of the river, with the silver satin folded over her arm.

  It was a familiar view. She had stared at it for twenty-four years.

  Sometimes she wished she could offer her royal diadem to Julia, who would have made a much better princess anyway.

  Three

  * * *

  Sheridan lay propped up on his elbow in the shadowy depths of his father's bed, watching the woman who had been his father's mistress for as long as he could remember. She tilted her chin, rebuttoning the last button at her throat and adjusting the tiny bows on her demure bodice in an elegant whore's gesture.

  "Julia," he said lazily. "Charming as ever." He lay back, locking his hands behind his head. The chill air cooled him, playing over the perspiration on his chest and arms. He eyed the modest dress and virtuously simple hairstyle. "A true credit to Christian womanhood."

  The single candle caught purple highlights in her black satin dress. She leaned near, tracing her forefinger around his mouth. Sheridan allowed his lips to part, tasting the salty tang of arousal and satisfaction that lingered on her hand. He stirred, turning toward her to catch her wrist, kissing the cup of her palm.

  She pulled her hand away.

  He dropped his head back with a sigh. "So," he said flatly. "Now we come to the point, do we?"

  She drew her finger down the side of his face and jaw, ending in a light circling tease on his chest. He pushed her hand off and locked it in his fist.

  "My dear," he murmured. "Let's omit the second round of compliments for the moment. Just what is it you want from me?"

  "Sheridan," she said huskily, raising their entwined arms and caressing his hand with her lips as if his hard grip on her were only a fondling hold.

  "Looking to take up residence again?" He let her kiss the back of his hand. When she met his eyes, he deliberately ran an assessing look up and down her splendid figure. "I can't say you haven't got talent and experience, and you appear to have aged remarkably well. How old are you?"

  Heat flashed in her eyes. She lowered her lashes and bit him lightly on the side of his palm.

  Sheridan set, led back and looked up at the canopy with a faint derisive smile. "I couldn't have been much under six years old when my father set you up for his doxy. You were no infant then, and that was nigh on three decades ago. How many years do you have on me? Eighteen? Twenty?" He pulled his hand away easily. "Sorry, m'love, the position's open, but I'm only considering applicants with a reasonable number of working years left in 'em."

  "You're a bastard," she whispered. "You always were."

  He stretched and sat up, kicking the blankets aside. "Runs in the family."

  "Your father was good enough to me."

  "Was he?" Sheridan reached for his clothes. "You're clearly a leg up on me, then." He pulled his shin over his head. "Did he leave you any money?"

  Her shoulders went still for an instant. Sheridan took note of that, and silently carried on with his dressing.

  She ran slender fingers over the carved back of a chair. "Haven't you read the will?"

  "Not that it's any of your business," he said mildly, buttoning his waistcoat and disdaining the crumpled neckcloth. "I've an appointment with the solicitor tomorrow. I can't say my hopes are very high. Pardon me, but I'd suggest you don't sit in that particular chair, unless you'd like a fountain of ice water applied to your magnificent derriere."

  She straightened hastily and cast him a glance.

  "Yes," he said, "yet another sample of my dear father's delightful sense of humor. The place is mined with 'em. All the beds except this one are stuffed with horseshoe nails. The doorbell is rigged to dump snow on arriving guests. The wardrobe doors slam closed on your hand
the moment you touch anything inside, and if you step on the wrong spot on the staircase, it collapses, and you plummet down to God-knows-where like a shot cuckoo." He kicked his foot down into his bootheel and stood up. "Bloody hilarious. I damned near lost a leg."

  When he lifted his head, Julia was gazing at him with a peculiar expression. "I didn't know," she said. "I…left before he built this house."

  "Ah. Turned you out, did he? What a shame. It must be lonely for you these days, Julia. Trying to think up ingenious viciousness all on your own. What a jolly pair of hellhounds the two of you made."

  She smiled, an odd, twisted little curl of her lips, and came across the floor to stand in front of him. She rested her hands on his shoulders, her blue eyes roaming over his open collar and up to his jaw and face.

  "When last I saw you," she murmured, "you were sixteen and had pimples."

  "And you were a beautiful whoring bitch, just as you are now," he said politely. "I was madly jealous of the old man."

  She acted as if he had not spoken, leaning away and measuring the breadth of his shoulders with her glance. "You've certainly grown out well."

  "Thank you."

  "And a hero. A Knight of the Bath."

  He inclined his head modestly.

  She slid her fingers up into his hair. "I wouldn't have thought it."

  "Oh, I imagine I can be quite a knight in the bath." He flicked her cheek. "Would you like to go another tilt?"

  Her slight smile flattened. Her bosom rose and fell in a deep sigh. Sheridan grinned and pushed her back.

  "Too damned cold for a bath," he said. "I'm all grown up now, you see. I don't need you to pat me on the head and tell me I'm a good boy—which I ain't, I can assure you." He reached past her for a hairbrush from the dressing table. When he'd dragged the brush through the thick tousle of his dark hair, he eyed her again where she stood planted in front of him. "Still here? What do you want from me, my dear?"

  She was silent.

  Sheridan moved past her to pick up his coat. "Not money, I hope. I'm perfectly flat. You should have inquired as to financial particulars before you jumped beneath the bedclothes so eagerly." He slung the coat over his shoulder and gave her a lopsided smile. "Call it a charity job. Or a patriotic gesture. In lieu of singing 'Rule Britannia' on behalf of the homecoming hero."

  "Sheridan," she said quietly, "I have something to tell you."

  Her tone brought him up short in the doorway. He looked over his shoulder.

  "I can save you a trip to the solicitor," she said. "I know the terms of your father's will."

  He leaned against the doorframe. "Ah. Yes. I had my suspicions. It all goes to you, does it?" When she made no answer, he rubbed his chin. "Well, you certainly did more work for it than I."

  "You never came to see him," she said softly, her face growing wistful. "Not once, after you were grown."

  It was one of her best tricks, that look. As a boy, he had been gulled by it times without number. He stared at her face, that lovely affectionate lie, and felt something dangerous spring awake in the depths of his brain, as if a sleeping wolf opened golden eyes in the dark.

  He made an effort to give her his sweetest smile. "I disliked him excessively. And there was the small matter of various admirals, you see, who kept suggesting that I postpone my social engagements until I was no longer needed to blow up hapless foreigners in the interest of His Majesty's peace of mind."

  "You might have left the service anytime these twenty years."

  The wolf lay there, watching from the shadow. He imagined a wall, built a cage brick by brick to keep that other self at bay. With his fists safely trapped in his pockets, he said, "And done what, my love?"

  She clasped her hands and looked down with a little shrug. "Gone into politics, perhaps. Certainly with your reputation you could have—"

  "Starved to death quite nicely, I'm sure. You seem strangely naive for a woman your age, Julia. Medals are helpful, no doubt, but it takes hard cash to buy a seat in Parliament. And no"—he pushed himself away from the door abruptly—"my father would not have paid for it, I assure you."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know it," he said deliberately. "Do you think I'm still a ten-year-old fool, dear?"

  Her smooth brow creased in a little frown. "What will you do now?"

  Sheridan east his coat over a chair. He walked to a small table and picked up the dusty decanter that sat atop smooth mahogany, blew on the crystal stopper and opened it, sniffing the contents. "Do you suppose this is actually brandy, or some droll imitation that will cause me to fall down in amusing convulsions?"

  "I worry for your future," Julia said.

  He ignored that and set the decanter down again. "Best to let Mustafa try it. Nothing will kill him. I've attempted it myself several times, but no luck."

  "Sheridan," she said, "what will you do now?"

  "Now that I have no prospects whatsoever, you mean." He turned to the window, where the last ghoulish gray of daylight still flowed into the candlelit room. He put his hands on the sill. "I've been thinking about that. Cataloging my assets. I have my medals—I imagine those will bring a farthing for the lot, at the very least. My epaulettes might be worth fifteen guineas if I cleaned 'em up well enough. I've a presentation sword I can pawn." He leaned on one hand and massaged the back of his neck. "But perhaps I should keep hold of that. I'm a knight, after all. I might post a notice outside debtors' prison. 'Dragons slain. Princesses rescued. Naval battles and accidental harebrained heroics a speciality.'"

  "You're in debt?"

  "Oh, yes. Quite spectacularly." He laughed, looking back at her. "And the devil of it is, I didn't even have any fun getting dipped." He shrugged. "Can you imagine that just a few years ago I swallowed the bait again—that I was idiot enough to believe my father when he offered to loan me the money to invest in a stock he recommended? One of these damned railway notions, it was—with a locomotive engine, if you can credit that. It was certain—certain, mind you—to make so much blunt hauling coal, I could afford to leave the navy within the year."

  She stood watching him, her fine lips pursed.

  He shook his head and stared out the window. "I was ripe for the taking, I'll tell you. Been hanging off Burma in the monsoon for six months, waiting on those poor suckers of marines holding Rangoon. Foodstores all gone rotten in the heat—flies everywhere, mud stink and rain and nineteen out of twenty on board dying of dysentery or cholera or some goddamned disease that I don't even know the name of—and the putrid corpses showing up in the mud flats every time the tide went out. No land transport, the stinking Irrawaddy in flood; not allowed to go back, no way to go forward—and here's this letter, delivered specially by a crisp-looking fellow in a chartered yacht who had me on board to dinner. We had venison pie and lemon pudding and a roasted pheasant. And fresh rolls." He leaned his hands on the windowsill and lowered his head between his arms. "Do you know what fresh rolls taste like? They're soft. They're soft. I could have cried. And then he handed me that letter from my father, and explained all the documents, and I…"

  Silence closed in on the room. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, and his heartbeat pounding in fury—at himself, who should have known better, at one insane moment of weakness that had taken all his hard-won savings and bought him disaster for life.

  "Well," he said, pushing away from the sill, "you can guess the end of this story. The railway is of course a dead issue, the authorizing bill having been thrown out of Parliament. I believe it was determined that the line would disturb the afternoon naps of two spinster ladies in a cottage outside of Crewe. I own the whole of the shambles, since it appears there was a minor clause in the documents which guaranteed I would assume on my loan the shares of anyone who wished to sell. Oh, and yes—here's the best part. My esteemed father also thought it would be a humorous touch to barter my note to a moneylender in St. Mary Axe, who hasn't ceased dunning me since for his four hundred thousand pounds
."

  Julia gave a little gasp. "Four hundred…"

  He smiled. "It really is a vastly amusing tale, don't you agree? But you take your inheritance, Julia, and don't mind me. I won't inconvenience you. My moneylender's still a bit reluctant to press a patriotic figure like myself, but I think I'd best be off directly." He swept up his coat and shrugged into it. "I'll just skulk back to India, steal myself a wooden bowl and sit on a street corner with the rest of the beggars, looking suitably wretched."

  She stood still and erect, staring at him thoughtfully. Her figure seemed carved of black-and-white marble. Sheridan grew impatient. He was about to send her to the devil when she seemed to start out of her reverie. She frowned and asked sharply, "Is this the truth?"

  "Do you think I dreamed it up?" he exclaimed. "If only! I ain't here to weep because the old bastard finally had the grace to cock up his toes, I'll tell you that. I knew he wouldn't leave me anything apurpose, but I hoped to hell he might have died without a will." He curled his lips and held out his arm in a stiff little bow toward her. "No such luck, apparently."

  "No," she said. "No such luck."

  "Well." Sheridan shrugged. "Nice of you to stop by for a sympathetic coze. Or was it in the way of an eviction call? I suppose the house is yours, too—although I warn you, it's a damned cold mausoleum full of vicious pranks." He swept a look around the room. "And ugly to boot."

  Her fine bosom rose and fell in a sigh. She said slowly, "I imagine this bitterness was to be expected. I'd hoped we might deal together better."

  "How kind of you. But I see no reason for us to deal at all, my dear. I do like a wench with experience and style, but not on these terms, thank you. I'll just be collecting my—"

  "Sheridan," she said. "Stay a moment and listen. Your father did leave his fortune to you."