The Flame Read online

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  Amber Quill Press

  www.amberquill.com

  Copyright ©2008 by Jane Toombs

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  CONTENTS

  Also By Jane Toombs

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  Jane Toombs

  Amber Quill's Rewards Program

  * * * *

  THE FLAME

  By

  JANE TOOMBS

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  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  www.amberquill.com

  Also By Jane Toombs

  A Beguiling Intrigue

  Dangerous Medicine

  A Deceptive Bequest

  An Improper Alliance

  Ladies Of The Lakes

  Lord Devlin's Dilemma

  Love's Last Stand

  Love's Savage Sister

  Moondark

  A Most Unsuitable Bride

  Rebel's Revenge

  Snow Flower

  Temple Of Serpents

  Traitor's Kiss

  The Wrong Girl

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  CHAPTER 1

  Mary heard horses’ hooves and the clatter of wheels on the road. Running to the open window, she looked down from her third-floor room to watch as the dark outline of a carriage disappeared in the direction of the Randolph plantation. The fifth carriage in the last few minutes. Mary peered toward the Randolph place, seeing the distant glow of lights in the soft April darkness. Though she listened intently, she heard only the fading hoof beats of the horses.

  For a moment, she stood at the window, undecided. Rowena, her longhaired white cat, twined herself about her ankles. Lifting the cat, Mary stroked her, savoring the feel of soft fur against her face. Then she laid the cat in her basket and, draping a shawl about her shoulders, she unbolted the door of her tower room and stepped silently into the corridor.

  In her bare feet, she padded swiftly down the narrow, curving stairway to the second floor, where she paused on the landing. The old Jarvis house was silent around her since the family and most of the house slaves had long since left for the Randolphs’ party . Mary, who was Mrs. Jarvis’ maid, was neither family nor slave.

  As she raced down the stairs, the single lamp on the wall above her threw her shadow across the railing and into the entry hall. At the bottom of the stairs she made her way into the dim reaches of the rear of the house, crossed the deserted kitchen, eased open the back door and slipped into the mild Alabama evening.

  Her heart raced with excitement and anticipation. There was no moon, but the night was clear and the stars shone brightly, dimly lighting the way to the Randolphs'. Hooves thudded in the darkness behind her. Mary drew in her breath, leaving the road to seek shelter in the shadows as another carriage sped past. From inside came talk and laughter, and she pictured women in bonnets tied with gay ribbons as they bantered with men wearing silk cravats and tall gray hats.

  Mary sighed with longing and envy. Returning to the road, she hurried on, coming to the great oak where the Randolph drive forked to form a loop in front of the main house. She ran to the right, along a path that led into a grove of trees. The woods were dark as pitch, forcing her to slow to a fast walk, glancing warily about. She started when a man shouted behind her, not quite loud enough for her to make out his words. Her hand flew to her mouth. Esau? Micah? Were they following her?

  No, surely not. The shout must have been the welcoming of an arriving guest. She paused, listening carefully. No one was behind her. Mary ran on, her pace slower now, so she became more aware of the night sounds—the shrill croak of tree frogs, the distant call of an owl. Music drifted from the main house, a lively jig, and she heard the jolly sounds of people enjoying themselves.

  Her pace quickened more as she left the trees, slowing as she saw the light from the windows of two rows of cabins. The Randolph slave quarters. Soft night voices of the slaves murmured around her as she walked to a cabin at the far end of the rows. She listened, then knocked.

  Dillie opened the door and peered out. Looking past her into the lighted cabin Mary saw no one else inside. Good. She'd hoped Dillie would be alone.

  "Might've knowed,” Dillie said to her. “Might've knowed wild horses ain't gonna keep you away."

  "Come up to the big house with me, Dillie,” Mary whispered.

  "You gonna get us in trouble, Mary Vere, on account've you sneaking ‘round where you got no business. You gonna get me whipped good and proper, you and your wild ways."

  "All evening I've been listening to the carriages go by,” Mary said, “and hearing the laughing. Now I hear music and singing and I have to see for myself. What else can I do? Come with me to the house, Dillie."

  Dillie stepped outside, her shapeless brown dress making her seem even taller than she was. Her skin was a soft, pale brown, like her eyes. She was Mary's only friend.

  "Best not let Massa Micah catch sight of you,” Dillie cautioned as they walked between the cabins toward the big house. “Massa Esau, neither. Them boys got their eyes on you, Mary Vere. You know they been after you ever since they come home."

  "I'm not afraid of them. If I see either twin, I'll spit in his eye."

  Dillie laughed. “Now ain't you the cocky one. Why're you so mean to them boys? If they likes you and you be nice to them, they be sweet as sugar cane. Only last week Massa Micah brought me a red silk ribbon all the way from Montgomery."

  "What did you have to do for him?” Mary asked, her voice eager, but tremulous. “You must've had to do something to get the ribbon."

  "Dillie don't have to do nothing."

  "Don't tease me. What did you do?"

  "I ain't telling.” Dillie cocked her head and started to hum. “Hear that music. Don't it just make you feel like dancing?” She whirled around twice, then stopped and took Mary's hand, halting her. “You is young and pretty, not a no-account nigger like me. You is different—free like your ma was."

  "You're not no-account, Dillie. You're my friend."

  "I knows that. But you got something waiting out there for you.” She swept her free hand wide. “Me, I stay here. You don't. Not with no Micah Randolph. Esau, neither."

  She released Mary's hand, and they walked beneath the trees with the music, the talk and the laughter leading them to the house.

  "Tell me about your pa,” Dilly said.

  "You don't want to hear about him again."

  "I truly does. Tell me. It be like one of them stories you reads to me out of your books."

  Mary sighed, but, as she began to talk, she smiled. “My pa,” she said, “or so my ma told me before she passed on, was nothing like the folks hereabouts. Not like the folks in Montgomery, either. He was a gentleman from the north, a traveling man. Not the kind of traveling man who sells need
les and pins or pots and pans. He didn't have to travel, not my pa. He went from place to place because it pleased him."

  Dillie shook her head. “Don't that beat all. Going from place to place ‘cause it please you, not ‘cause you has to. ‘Course he was a white gentleman, you tole me."

  Mary nodded. “He didn't travel by himself, either, not my pa. He had what they call a ‘retinue’ with him. This was really servants like me, who waited on my pa and brought him whatever he wanted. He'd say, ‘I'm feeling mighty hungry,’ and one of the servants would ask, ‘What do you fancy for breakfast, sir?'

  "My pa would say, ‘This morning I fancy steak and eggs and grits and coffee,’ and the man would bow and say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and go fetch whatever it was my pa wanted."

  "Just like ole Massa Randolph when he be sick abed."

  Mary sniffed. “My pa could buy and sell the Randolphs ten times over, so my ma told me. He was handsome, she said, and in a crowd he stood a head taller than the other men. That's how come I'm not short, like she was. Not a young man, not my pa; he had gray in his hair. And he was kind and loving.” Her voice lowered, becoming wistful. “Someday..."

  "Someday?” Dillie echoed as they left the dark of the trees and paused in the shadows beside an open verandah, where light from high windows lay in long yellow rectangles on the floor.

  "Some day,” Mary went on, “my pa's coming back to Alabama to claim me for his own. He'll take me with him, and we'll ride in his very own train car to New York, where we'll live in a special mansion with servants to run and fetch for us. I'll dress in beautiful silk crinolined gowns, and I'll have more furs and jewels than I rightly know what to do with. A carriage drawn by six white horses will take me wherever I please to go."

  "I hope your pa come for you like you say,” Dillie told her. “I pray he come."

  "He will. I suspect he's sick and that's why the money stopped coming from the bank in San Francisco. That's why my ma had to hire out before she died and why I had to go to work for the Jarvises."

  "What if he's real sick?"

  "Then maybe I'll have to go find him, wherever he is, and nurse him back to health."

  "How'd you ever do that?"

  "I'll find a way. Someday. And when he's well, I'll ask him to come back here and buy you, Dillie, so you can be with me and not have to work so hard."

  "I'd purely like that."

  They smiled at each other before Mary took Dillie's hand and led her up the steps to the verandah, where they crept along, keeping in the shadows until they were only a few feet from the windows. Inside, elegantly dressed couples danced around the ballroom to the orchestra's lilting music. The women looked dazzling, their faces flushed, their eyes sparkling. The men, several in officers’ uniforms, were proud and handsome.

  "That be Micah,” Dillie whispered, pointing toward a stocky, blond man lounging in a doorway across the ballroom. “Or be it Esau? Lord, I oughta know which one."

  "What's it like?” May asked. “What's it like being with a man?"

  "You be seventeen, right?"

  "Almost eighteen."

  Dillie nodded. “You gonna find out for yourself real soon."

  "Tell me, Dillie."

  After a pause, Dillie said, “'Tain't a thing a body can rightly tell about ‘cause it be different every time. Maybe like drinking on a Saturday night, all wild and screaming and scratching mean, or like a jubilee, making you wish you could go on forever. That's what I been told anyways. Ain't never been no jubilee for me."

  "For me, it will be,” Mary said. “If being with a man can't be a jubilee always, then I want no part of it."

  Dillie threw back her head and laughed.

  "Shh!” Mary warned. “They'll hear you."

  Dillie put her hand over her mouth, but a giggle still escaped. When she quieted, she said, “Mary Vere, sometimes you be so smart and some other times you be so dumb. Don't know what's gonna become of you."

  Mary was about to reply when something inside caught her eye. “Look,” she whispered, stepping closer to the windows. “That man talking to old Mr. Randolph. I never saw him around these parts before."

  The man was of medium height, slender, with silvering hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and a short, pointed beard. As he talked, his hands moved ceaselessly.

  "Must be one of the gentlemen what come over from the Longstreets’ today. Hear tell they's going back tonight, then they's heading on west. Lord, I wish I be going along. Caesar says there be two of ‘em."

  Caesar, Mary knew, had been the Longstreet coachman for many years and was a cousin of Dillie's.

  "Watch how the gentleman flaps his arms about like a bird caught indoors,” she said. “He be a French monsieur, Caesar says. Can out-talk ole devil hisself, but his friend don't say hardly nothing."

  All at once the bearded stranger stopped talking and stared directly at the window. He sees me, Mary thought and ducked back into the shadows.

  "You best stay outta sight,” Dillie told her, “or gonna be bad trouble. Look there, dancing with the Jarvis girl, that must be the monsieur's friend."

  Mary focused on Sophia Jarvis. Staring at the stranger, Mary's mouth opened and she drew in her breath, her hands clutched together. “Dillie, oh, Dillie,” she whispered.

  "What? What be the matter?"

  Still mesmerized by the tall stranger waltzing with Sophia Jarvis, Mary couldn't answer. He was a head taller than any of the other men, clean-shaven, with a thin white scar etched on his left cheek. Though big, almost burly, his step was light. He wasn't handsome exactly, though his brown hair had a graceful wave and his brown eyes glinted in the lamplight.

  "What got into you, girl?” Dillie asked. “You look like you been walking over your own grave. Or worse."

  "I know him,” Mary managed to say.

  "You does?” Dillie peered into the room. “I never set eyes on him before in my life. Where you know him from, girl?"

  "I've never seen him before, either,” Mary admitted. “Yet it's like I've known him all my life."

  Dillie gazed at her in awe. “You mean he's your pa, come to fetch you after all these years?"

  "No, of course he's not my pa. He's too young, for one thing. I can't explain. It's as though I know him without ever having set eyes on him before.” He was, Mary thought, like a knight from one of Sir Walter Scott's books, a gentle knight, yet strong enough to slay dragons with a single blow.

  "You is purely addled,” Dillie said. “Maybe you been sitting in your room up there in the Jarvis tower too long reading them books. My mammy always say the best cure for addled be a good licking or a good loving, one or both. She say—” She broke off, her hand going to her mouth as she glanced around. “Someone coming,” she whispered urgently.

  Grasping Mary's hand, she tried to pull her away. But Mary shook her off, her gaze still fixed on the stranger dancing inside. “I ain't staying,” Dillie told her and ran from the verandah.

  "You're like a Dickens waif, her nose pressed against the lighted windowpane of a candy shop, dreaming of the sweets within,” a man's voice said.

  Startled, Mary looked away from the ballroom into the shadows where the voice had come from. The bearded stranger she'd seen a few minutes before stepped into the light and bowed elaborately.

  "Philippe Manigault at your service, mademoiselle,” he said.

  In spite of her alarm, Mary found herself smiling.

  "You now have an advantage over me,” Philippe said. “You're privy to my name, though I don't know yours."

  "I'm Mary Vere,” she told him. “From the Jarvis place, down the road."

  "Mary Vere. The bitter truth, perhaps."

  "I'm afraid I don't understand."

  "The meaning of your name. But, ah, what's in a name? ‘That what we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.'” Philippe shook his head, then looked out at the panoply of stars overhead. “On such a night as this—” he began. “What comes next? I don't remember. I truly don't rem
ember. It's been so long since last I trod the boards declaiming Shakespeare."

  "You're an actor?"

  "One man in his time plays many parts. Here you see Philippe Manigault, thespian, lover of the true and the beautiful, a romantic, a man-of-the-world and also, alas, a gambler. When I saw your pale face through the window, I made a wager with myself, as I'm wont to do when there's no one else willing to cover my bets. Gambling's my one vice. It keeps me from attaining dull perfection. What comes to perfection perishes, or so the poet says."

  Mary found him fascinating, if confusing. “What was your bet?” “The one I made with myself? I wagered that you were really a princess in disguise, a Cinderella searching for her fairy godfather. And I won my bet, for you are, you are. Mary Vere, beneath that drab garment I refuse to dignify with the word gown, is a beautiful woman waiting to be born. Wouldn't it be a triumph or triumphs if I were to serve as midwife at such a birth?"

  "I don't understand half of what you're saying."

  "Here, let me look at you. Come closer ... don't be afraid. I spring from a branch of the Charleston Manigaults and, as you may or may not know, their motto, and mine, is ‘No lady need fear.’ That's a free translation. The motto's in Latin, of course."

  "You're making sport of me,” Mary said, not moving.

  "No, I'm not, I assure you. When you know me better, you'll realize I'm never more serious than when I appear to jest. My only possessions are my wit, my dreams and my tongue—and I mean to use all three as best I can, God willing. Now step into the light and let me look at you.” When she inched forward, he said, “Good. As I suspected, your hair's as dark as the blackest night, your eyes the warm gold-brown of topaz, your skin as pale as the quarter-moon."

  "More Shakespeare?” she asked.

  "No, undistilled Manigault. No poet ever breathed who could do you justice, Mary Vere."

  Inside, the orchestra began another tune. “Ah, a Viennese waltz,” Philippe said. He bowed and held out his arms. “May I have the pleasure of this dance, mademoiselle?"

  Unable to help herself, Mary smiled up at him and curtsied. “You may."

  He took her hand in his, and before she realized his intent, he was leading her across the verandah to the door opening into the parlor next to the ballroom.