Fire's Lady Page 2

  Her hand lightly grazed her left breast and a chill ran through her body. Each day, each hour, the lump grew larger and more deadly and she knew her time would soon be at hand. All these years she'd spent running away from the Almighty, only to have Him reach down from heaven to have the last laugh.

  She paused before the arched entrance to the drawing room to collect herself. The man stood near the window, his body silhouetted against the window overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, and she watched him, delighting in the fact that he was unaware of her presence. From the street below came the sounds of carriages moving gracefully over the cobblestones, the tinkling laughter of beautiful women and the low murmurs of satisfied men as they hurried to Maxim's for a champagne supper. She used to be part of that glittering world, the most glorious creature of them all—desired, adored, a diamond of priceless worth.

  She shook her head to clear her mind of these disturbing thoughts. There was no time for foolishness any longer.

  The man. Think of the man for he was the key to it all. He was elegant, handsome in his own way, but she knew an anger keen as her own hammered just beneath his smooth surface. He would be dangerous if thwarted but she had no intention of doing so. What Marisa was doing was right—she knew it was. Soon the chit would understand that the opportunity Marisa was handing her far surpassed any opportunity she could find roaming the meadows of Provence.

  Marisa sighed. She had no wish to hurt the girl; she even loved her in her own way. But the fury that raged within her these past twenty years had never abated—indeed, it burned hotter with each year that passed.

  Tossing her thick mane of coppery hair back, she straightened her shoulders and sailed into the room. Her jade green silk wrapper rustled a greeting and he turned to face her, his eyes hot and eager.

  "Magnificent," he murmured, taking her hand in his. "As always, magnificent."

  She endured the press of his lips against her flesh.

  "It is done?" she asked.

  His eyes held hers for a moment then a wry smile angled across his handsome face. "It is done," he said at last. "The arrangements have all been made. Soon we shall both have our heart's desire."

  Triumph swelled behind her breastbone.

  "But there is still the girl," he said, his eyes lingering at the opening of her robe. "What if she should change her mind?"

  Marisa gently touched his chin with her index finger. "She has no choice. She has no home, no support, no future. A chance like this comes but once in a lifetime. She will not change her mind."

  Marisa had known the precise words to say—and how to say them—to seal the girl's fate. Her unexpected visit to Alexandra's pitiful room in that farmer's cottage in Provence had been time well spent.

  "Maternal love is a strange emotion." An odd expression flickered across his face.

  She moved closer, letting the scent of her perfume envelop him. "Scruples at this late date?" she murmured as her breasts grazed the front of his coat. "How odd." The scheme had been his from the first. He had come to her in his greed and she had been powerless to resist this one final chance to strike back at the man who had turned from her so many years ago.

  "Have no fear, my love." His hands moved to her breasts. "My heart is as mercenary as yours."

  "You'll be in New York when she arrives?"

  "Of that you can be certain," he said. "I, too, have waited years for this opportunity."

  He bent low over her and swept her into his kiss. She let him take her body but her mind ran free and for a second she was that little servant girl, on her knees before the mighty Andrew Lowell.

  The time had finally come to remind him that Mary Margaret McBride had a memory longer than the night.

  Chapter One

  Long Island, New York - April, 1892

  For two weeks and three days Alexandra Glenn had tried to convince herself it wasn't really happening but now she could fool herself no longer.

  The pastures rolling past her window as the train rushed eastward were emerald and lush but they weren't the pastures she loved. Pale streaks of white laced the vivid turquoise skies just as it did back home, and if she closed her eyes tight she might be able to hold reality at bay just a little bit longer, and pretend she were back in Provence laughing with Gabrielle and Luc and the baby, pretend that Esme and Paul were still alive and her world a place of kindness and love.

  Opening her reticule, she unfolded the letter of instructions her mother had given her before she boarded the ship bound for New York. Her mother's scent, a powerful blend of jasmine and musk, rose up and mingled with tobacco smoke drifting through the train car. Alexandra's stomach lurched violently and she thrust the letter back into her bag and swallowed hard against her nausea.

  Across the aisle a portly gentleman with absurdly small features puffed furiously on a Meerschaum, his pale face glistening like a peeled onion. From the moment the train left New York City her fellow traveler had alternated between smoking that hideous pipe and regaling everyone with stories about each and every town they rumbled through.

  Jamaica with its huge homes and flower gardens and manicured lawns was where he'd been born.

  Garden City with its acres of corn fields growing higher than a man could reach was where he'd met his wife.

  The open farmlands bounded by the Long Island sound to the North and the Atlantic Ocean to the south were where his father and his father's father had tended their crops.

  The town names grew more exotic as the train rushed along the south shore, names like Moriches and Speonk and Quogue that lay strange upon her tongue as she repeated them softly, calling to mind stories she'd heard about Indian tribes and beautiful maidens.

  Small whitewashed houses with unruly patches of marsh grass dotted the landscape. A toddler in a checkered dress of apple red stood by a lopsided wooden fence and waved as the train rumbled past and Alexandra swallowed hard, remembering the sturdy feel of her godchild Mireille slumbering in her arms in the benevolent sunshine of Provence.

  If she tried very hard she could conjure up Paul and Esme Charbonne, the couple who had sheltered her with their love each summer in the country and taught her to understand the true richness of life.

  But they were gone, weren't they? Gone like her dreams of someday meeting a kind and handsome man, a man who would both love her and understand her desire to capture the beauty of life by touching oil paint to canvas. For so long her dreams had sustained her, warmed her through cold English winters at the boarding school only to be destroyed at the hand of the woman who had given her life but little else.

  The metal door between the railroad cars creaked open and a conductor with a shiny black handlebar moustache swung his way up the aisle, bringing her back to unpleasant reality.

  "Bridgehampton! Next stop!"

  The conductor's flat American voice scratched against her ears like the sticks of emery she used to shape her nails. Her mother had made certain Alexandra was as fluent in English as she was in French but the English Alexandra had learned was sweet and musical, not the loud, angry tones she'd heard since landing in New York Harbor two days ago.

  She leaned forward slightly, ignoring the scent of dust and hair tonic rising from the seat before her, hoping to glimpse the town soon as it came into view.

  "Wonderful town, Bridgehampton," said the porcine man across the aisle. "Hull's Hotel is a fine establishment. Stayed there two summers running." He puffed on his Meerschaum then exhaled a pungent plume of smoke that burned her eyelids. "The missus and I are thinking of building a cottage here." His pale blue eyes regarded her with interest. "You from this neck of the woods?"

  Fluency in English was obviously no help in understanding the language as spoken in New York.

  "Neck of the woods?" she ventured politely.

  "You ain't a foreigner, are you?" He leaned across the aisle, jowls trembling with curiosity.

  She had to smile in the face of such unabashed nosiness. "My father was a British soldier but m
y mother is an American."

  "Grow up around here, did you?"

  Was that what he meant by that confusing phrase? "I grew up just outside Paris."

  "Paris, Illinois?"

  "Paris, France."

  "Never know it to hear you talk," he said then caught himself. "I mean no disrespect, missy. It's just you ain't got much of an accent."

  Alexandra could have told him about the dark years spent at Aynsley Hall with the stiff-upper lipped English girls, about the endless speech and elocution lessons Marisa had forced upon her, about the sharp rap of a wooden ruler on tender knuckles each time she lapsed into the rhythm of a lovelier language.

  "Thank you," she said finally. "Is yours a typical New York accent?"

  His puffy lips parted, exposing ludicrously tiny teeth, as he laughed aloud. "Missy, there ain't no such thing as a typical New York accent. You'll hear everything from Dutch to Irish to pure Yankee Doodle Brooklyn." His pale gaze moved over her face, across the snug bodice of her dark gold woolen traveling suit, all the way down to her worn leather boots with their endless laces pulled tight above the ankle bone. "You have family out this way?"

  She shook her head. "No, sir."

  He beamed approvingly. "Have lovely manners, you do, missy. So what brings you here?"

  Alexandra sought a way to state the facts without the emotional overtones that had plagued her all the way across the Atlantic. "Employment," she said finally. "I have a position awaiting me in East Hampton."

  How simple it sounded. How complicated it all had been.

  "I have found you an excellent position," Marisa had said a fortnight ago when she unexpectedly appeared at the cottage in Provence. "You will assist the gentleman of the house with his work and in return you'll receive room and board." She had mentioned a small cash stipend to be paid in addition and Alexandra burst into tears. "For God's sake, child, stop wailing. This is the only way. I simply cannot afford to let you continue on as you are, living like a beggar here with Gabrielle and that wretched blacksmith she calls a husband. Think of your pride! It is time for you to find a life of your own."

  "But I do have a life of my own, Mamma!" She tugged at her mother's lace sleeve in desperation. "I help with the baby and I go to the village for food and I earn money by modeling for the—"

  Marisa raised her hand imperiously. "I'll not have my daughter playing nursemaid to a pair of country fools. I had hoped when the Charbonnes died you would have lost your taste for country living. I have made plans for you, Alexandra, plans that can secure your future, and I'll not be having your own lack of ambition stand in my way."

  The sudden shift from French to the lilting English Marisa reverted to when agitated, startled Alexandra and in that moment she lost her chance to argue that she did, indeed, have ambition but her ambitions were tied up with happiness and love—concepts her beautiful, grasping mother would never understand.

  Eight days later Alexandra kissed her old friends goodbye outside the tiny farmhouse and started up the road to await the carriage that would take her to the harbor and her new life.

  With all her heart and soul she wanted to throw herself upon their mercy and beg them to let her stay. She would cook and clean and care for the baby. She would model for the artists who summered in Provence and willingly hand over every sou to Gabrielle and Luc if only she could stay where she felt safe and loved.

  "I don't want to go," she said, choking back hot tears. "My life is here. Everyone I love is here..." Please ask me to stay, Gaby. Please... please... please...

  But, as with all her dreams, this one vanished in the bright sunlight. Gabrielle loved Alexandra as a sister but she loved her husband more. Heavily pregnant with her second child, Gabrielle had not been blind to the looks of longing on her virile husband's face each time Alexandra entered the room and Alexandra listened, stunned, to her friend's fears.

  "I'm sorry," Gabrielle had murmured as they made one last goodbye. "He's all I have... he's the father of my children. I cannot take the risk."

  And so her fate had been decided.

  Without money or position, without a husband or family to love her, Alexandra was caught in the web of her mother's design, helpless to pull free. Everything familiar and dear had been left behind and she knew that stopping the speeding train in which she sat would be easier than returning to the life she'd once loved.

  And so there she was, alone in a strange country with only this cigar-smoking gentleman to know if she lived or died. The train rounded a bend then slowed as a weather-beaten station came into view. Staring out the window, she saw a white-haired driver, thin as the whip resting beside him, keeping pace with the train as his spirited bay maneuvered the trap along the well-traveled road.

  "Mrs. Halsey's trap," the man across the aisle informed her, gathering up his New York Times and pulling his massive body up from the red leather seat. "Mr. Halsey owns the bank in Southold. Think I'll stroll into the club car and pay my respects to her. Good luck to you, missy."

  Alexandra breathed a huge sigh of relief as he maneuvered his bulk toward the door to the next compartment. The truth was, their conversation couldn't have stopped at a more fortuitous moment for the pounding of her heart as the train eased into the Bridgehampton station made it nearly impossible to think clearly.

  For the second time she reached into her reticule and brought out the letter of instructions. Marisa's childish scrawl seemed at odds with the ivory parchment paper, as disconcerting as her occasional lapses into brogue-accented English.

  Ask the conductor to assist you, and then wait with your bags near the station door. Someone from the Lowell house will fetch you shortly.

  She crumpled the letter and wished she could open the window and toss it onto the tracks but the train had stopped and she found herself looking at the biggest stagecoach she had ever seen. The coach waited next to the station building; the four perfectly matched black horses pawed the ground restlessly. On the lacquered black surface of the door, the words "Rackett & Fithian" had been painted in blood red letters and she watched, mesmerized, as the driver of the coach rubbed a white cloth over the shimmering surface.

  Certainly such a fine conveyance would never have been sent for a lowly assistant like Alexandra, especially one who, as yet, hadn't a notion as to what her duties would be.

  She gathered her belongings and exited the train, ignored by the two burly Irishmen who were loading Saratoga trunks and canvas valises into the hold of the stagecoach.

  The conductor with the handlebar moustache unceremoniously dumped her own valises and battered trunk near the depot. Hand outstretched, he stood before her until Alexandra finally took that hand and shook it, tendering her grateful thanks for his help.

  Muttering the odd word "skinflint," he wheeled around and stormed back to the train, leaving Alexandra puzzled and feeling vaguely guilty although, for the life of her, she couldn't fathom why that should be the case.

  "Missy?"

  She turned around, hopes soaring again, only to see her traveling companion.

  "Your carriage ain't here yet, missy?"

  "Not yet," she said, smiling at the thin, sour-faced woman next to him. "I'm certain it shan't be much longer."

  "This place gets mighty lonely once the train pulls out. Maybe Mrs. Halsey here would be kind enough to offer you a lift."

  It appeared the elegant Mrs. Halsey had ideas of her own, however, and those ideas did not include offering transportation to weary travelers. "I have no doubt the young lady's coach will be here shortly."

  A deep stain rose up Alexandra's throat and enflamed her cheeks and she prayed her portly protector would not pursue the matter. Besides, judging from the dimensions of the conveyance, she doubted if there would be room for him and the birdlike Mrs. Halsey, much less a third person.

  "Come, Harold," the grand dame ordered. "Time is money. I must be on my way."

  Tipping his hat, a regretful Harold scurried after the banker's wife, his bulk shiverin
g with the exertion like a dish of blanc mange in a windstorm.

  Alexandra could almost hear the Halsey trap moan in protest as the spindly driver cracked his whip and they left the station. A moment later, the huge coach followed in its tracks, disappearing around a curve in the road eastward and suddenly Alexandra realized she was completely alone.

  Overhead, seagulls glided effortlessly, their raucous cries mingling with the smell of salt water, reminding her once again how far she'd traveled—and of just how alone she was. A line of scrub pines edged the station but the roar of the ocean told her the Atlantic wasn't far away.

  For the hundredth time in less than three weeks, tears filled her eyes. What on earth was happening to her? She had spent the first nineteen years of her life priding herself on the fact that she never cried and now she found herself a veritable fountain. Tears certainly weren't going to change things, she chided herself. Tears weren't going to whisk her back to France, were they? And tears certainly weren't going to conjure up a coach and driver, no matter how fervently she might wish for one.

  Alexandra pinched herself sharply on the tender skin of her left wrist to stem the tide of tears, and just in time, for moments later a large trap drawn by a sleek chestnut rounded the slope just beyond the station and headed straight for her.

  The body of the trap was black lacquer, same as the venerable Mrs. Halsey's, but that was where all likeness ended. This trap was nearly double in size, with enormous spoked wheels, and a fine stripe of deep gold outlining the inward curve near the driver's seat and the angular shape of the carriage itself. A lamp of polished brass was attached to a narrow panel of carmine just forward of the passenger section, lending an elegant yet sporty air to the vehicle.

  The driver, possessed of the same elegant yet sporty air, reined in the horses a few yards short of where she stood. This was no aging retainer like the one who had met the banker's wife. This man was no more than thirty, if she didn't miss her guess, with a full head of perfectly barbered blonde hair and a smile she couldn't help but answer with one of her own.