Forbidden Fire

Prologue

Yorkshire, England

March, 1895

The first time Marissa saw the stranger, she was not quite ten years old. But she knew from the moment she saw him that she’d never forget him.

It was cold that day. It was always cold in the small coalmining town, for the fires were meager, and they never seemed to warm the little one-room hovels where the miners lived. Or maybe it was cold because there was no glass in the windows—they were covered in the winter and spring with whatever newspaper or sacking could be found.

And spring had brought heavy rain that year. But not even the rain could wash away the continual pall of black that seemed to hang over the town. The coal dust from the mines seemed like a miasma that clouded just the land that belonged to the mine. To Marissa, the very color of the air was different, and where the black cleared away was freedom. A different world. And her whole meaning in life came to a longing to escape the cloud of black.

The rains merely turned coal dust to mud.

On that day she saw the stranger for the first time, she had donned a clean dress and a pinafore she had studiously scrubbed herself, determined that it would be white. And she had brushed and braided her hair. It was wild hair, a deep red blond in color. Uncle Theo said it was like a sunset, but when she had first come to the coal-mining town, the children had laughed and called her carrot top. She was as tough and determined as any of them, and they’d eventually come to respect her, but they resented her, too. She was an outsider, and she could read and write to boot. She’d put on airs, Uncle Theo had told her.

Well, she’d had the right. She was the daughter of a Church of England minister, and she’d spent her early years in a far different life. She’d seen enough of the great manors to know that she longed for the life of a lady. Longed for it with every breath of her being. Marissa clung to her pride and her dreams as if they were floats and she were adrift in a vast ocean.

On the day she met the stranger she had just been coming from Petey Quayle’s house. His mum had been down with the ague, and Uncle Theo had sent her over with his special chicken soup. Mrs. Quayle had been grateful and very kind, but Petey had determined to plague her silly. She had barely walked out of the house before he had come running up behind her calling out her name. Turning, she knew that he meant to knock her into the mud, and so she had started to run.

It was all the stranger boy’s fault. It was, it really was. He came striding around the corner of the pony shed, and Marissa barely had a moment to glance at him before she plowed straight into him. But that one glance burned itself on her memory. He was so perfect. A boy, but a very tall one. Years older than she was. Maybe even a man. He was certainly tall enough. Tall, but very slim. Perhaps eighteen or nineteen. And impeccably dressed in clean fawn trousers, a cranberry vest and a light brown jacket.

She was running too fast to stop, but just before she hit him she met his eyes. He might have been young, but they were a curiously disturbing blue. A blue that stared and probed, and looked into the heart. And his hair was black. Jet black.

My word! someone at his side snapped.

Marissa didn’t see who it was at first. She had lost her balance and was falling straight into the mud that she had been trying so very hard to avoid.

Here, let me help you up! the boy said, reaching for her.

She glared up at him, knowing how filthy the mud had made her. You knocked me over!

I most certainly did not, young lady! You ran straight into me.

Out of the way, you little coal rat! How dare you speak to a young gent so! the other voice snapped. It was Mr. Lacey, the manager of the mines. Short and portly, he was also excessively cruel. She sensed that his cruel treatment of a people doomed to work the mines from birth stemmed from his hatred of the wealthy shareholders he was forced to report to.

Lacey and the young man were not alone. They were accompanied by an older man, white-haired and genteel, with the same blue eyes the boy had.

Here, here, Lacey! he protested. There’s no cause to bring the child grief!

He seemed a nice man, but Marissa saw a pity in his eyes that cut her to the quick.

I’m no coal rat! she seethed, determined to rise on her own. As she did so, she made certain that the mud flew and that a few big globs hit Lacey. Lacey swore vehemently.

Father, the boy protested, I think this man’s language quite unnecessary before a child.

She’s a trouble-causing coal rat, whatever her airs! Lacey insisted. And if you cause any more trouble with these fine people here, I’ll take a switch to you myself tonight. And see that old uncle of yours thrown out!

The white-haired man stiffened. The girl can cause no more trouble. I’ll not invest here. I’ll not invest in human misery! He walked away.

Lacey stared at Marissa furiously, then ran after the man. Wait, sir, he called.

But the boy stayed. There was pity in his eyes, and Marissa couldn’t help it, she hated him for it.

He tossed her a coin. A small gold one.

It would have probably fed them for a year.

Buy yourself a new pinafore, he said.

He turned his back on her. Dismissing her.

After all, she was only a coal rat, needing a handout.

Take this back! she spat furiously, and she threw the coin at him. She fled home, very nearly in tears.

That night, when she went out to get water from the well, Mr. Lacey had caught hold of her. Before she could struggle free, he’d thrown her over his knee and given her several good stripes with a hickory switch.

With tears in her eyes, she bit him. Bit him hard. He screamed, and she was free.

Marissa never told her uncle.

Neither did Lacey.

And Marissa didn’t even hate Lacey anymore than she already did. She understood Lacey. He was certainly no better than she was.

But she hated the boy.

She hated him for being impeccable. And she hated him for being handsome. And she hated him for his deep, rich voice with its American twang.

She hated him because he was free from the black miasma that hung over the town.

September, 1904

The second time she saw him was almost ten years later. She recognized him immediately, even though he had changed immensely. But it would be nearly another whole year before she would know his name.

And his place in her own destiny.

She had changed, too, of course. She was full grown. And she was no longer living in the coal village.

The thing she would remember most was his impatience. He was impatient even before he entered the house.

Leaving the squire’s library with a tea tray, Marissa heard a thunder of horse’s hooves on the driveway leading to the house. She had known that an important American acquaintance was coming to see the squire, but she had expected him to arrive in a carriage, or perhaps one of the new motorcars so popular among the fashionable and the rich. She certainly hadn’t expected him to come tearing along upon the back of a big brown horse.

She paused to look through the ancient bay window of the manor house, and so she first saw him. He was very tall, and sat the horse well, and dismounted from the animal with an equal flare. His dark well-cut hair was wild from his ride. A waving lock of ebony curled over his forehead as he dropped the reins of the horse and nodded curtly to the squire’s stable boy. He headed for the house with long, confident—no, arrogant!—strides, and his impatience was also visible in those strides. He was handsomely dressed, hatless, but wearing tight fawn riding breeches, a crimson vest and navy riding frock along with his high black boots. Marissa stared at him, remembering him, until he disappeared from her view as he leaped up the porch steps and rang—no, attacked!—the doorbell.

Katey, the squire’s slim, elderly housekeeper, arrived to open the door. Marissa was left standing in the shadows outside the sliding doors of the squire’s library. Poor Katey was nearly swept from her feet as the stranger stormed in. She stepped back hurriedly, and still he did not pause.

Sir Thomas is expecting me, he said, his accent very much that of a Yank.

Marissa didn’t wonder at that, for Sir Thomas had a multitude of friends and associates who were Americans, many of whom came to see him at the manor, but most of his friends were older men. This stranger was not old. Even his voice indicated that he was in his prime. It was deep, rich. The type that when spoken low still seemed to reverberate and take command.

And somehow enter into the body and soul. Marissa felt that voice, deep and masculine, as if it touched her like a fingertip, rippling along her spine.

It was the boy, she realized. The boy from the coal town. He, too, had grown up. He was very much a man, and had been for many years, it seemed.

As he strode past Katey, she must have moved in the wrong direction or made some other fateful mistake, for a second later, he was plowing into her. The tea tray went flying, and Marissa was thrown against the wall.

She cried out in distress, knowing the cost of the Chinese porcelain tea set.

Damn the man! He seemed ever to be her downfall!

She expected him to push past her, but he didn’t. He paused, reaching not for the tea set, but into the shadows to touch her arm and pull her out into the light.

She stared into his eyes. As she remembered, they were very blue. Dark blue. Startling, striking, against the strong, tanned planes and angles of his face. A clean-shaven face, with a hard-set jaw, and a curious fire burning deep in the centers of those eyes. Eyes that roamed over her hastily, from head to toe, assessing her, she thought, as he would soon assess the tea service.

For damage only.

Are you all right? he demanded crisply. There was no recognition of her in his eyes. Who would remember a little coal rat from all those years ago?

And now she was merely the maid.

She nodded, jerking her arm free from his touch, suddenly nonplussed. Her heart was beating too rapidly, her breathing was coming too quickly, and although he was showing her—the maid—a definite courtesy, she resented that very concern.

Or did she hate the fact that he was looking at her with such detachment? Or that she was wearing a starched white apron over a very plain gray day dress and that what she considered to be her crowning glory—that carrot red hair turned into a headful of wild, red-gold hair that tumbled to her waist in long, thick waves—was completely hidden by her matching starched white cap?

She resented the very beating of her heart, the way his hand had felt upon her arm, hot, strong. She didn’t understand any of her feelings, but she resented him from the depths of her heart for them all. For the way that his eyes flickered over her with that curious fire. For the way that they, like his voice, seemed to touch her, and send a lap of fire racing down the length of her spine.

Pride, she thought mournfully. Everyone told her she had too much of it. Her father had said so, her uncle, Sir Thomas, even Mary, who could find fault with no one.

I’m fine! she snapped. She realized that his gaze was locked with hers. He seemed, at least, intrigued with her eyes. To her discomfort, she flushed. She had been told that she had fine eyes. Green eyes, cat’s eyes, so said Sir Thomas. Eyes with a startling rich color, darkly lashed and just slightly tilted. Eyes that demanded a second glance, Mary had once informed her. Far too imperious and flashing for a maid, and far too … well, sensual, Mary had also commented. Eyes that could arouse far too many emotions, too many passions, Sir Thomas had warned her.

Well, not in this man. Aye, he still stared at her. But there was nothing other than that flicker of fire and impatience in his own gaze. The lean, rugged planes of his face remained hard.

Then for a moment, it seemed that something flared between them. Something hotter than the fire that lurked in the deep recesses of his blue stare. Something that left her completely breathless, trembling, and angrier than ever.

No, she thought, and she didn’t know what it was exactly that she denied.

But it didn’t matter. Something harsh and cold and perhaps even anguished extinguished the fire in his gaze. He stepped back.

He has changed, she thought. The boy had not been so hard. This man was steel.

Despite herself, she wondered what had changed him.

Then she worried about herself once again.

She knelt to pick up the tea service. To her surprise, he knelt beside her and impatiently began picking up the pieces along with her. He was brisk. Before she had loaded up two pieces, he had the tray nearly loaded.

I shall inform your employer that this was my fault, he said.

It was something, Marissa admitted grudgingly. But it had been his fault, completely, and she thought that she detected just a bit of condescension in his tone. She should have said thank you. She did not.

As well you should, she said softly.

He had started toward the doors again. He turned and stared at her. Into her eyes, maybe really seeing them for the first time. Then he laughed. Perhaps they do breed little tigresses here in the old English countryside, too. You should be in America, girl.

That blue gaze swept over her, then dismissed her, and then he was gone, striding into the library, closing the sliding pocket doors behind him.

Marissa swore softly beneath her breath and swung around with the shattered tea service. She paused, as did Katey, as they heard the stranger’s voice rise and then fall. Katey smoothed her hands over her apron. Marissa offered her a wry smile, one that condemned the stranger. No one had a right to argue with the squire. No kinder man existed on the earth.

The exchange between the two men continued heatedly.

The doors slid open once again with a vengeance. All right, all right! Have it your way—it will be as you wish! the stranger exclaimed.

Now he was angry as well as impatient. He swept past Katey and Marissa without a backward glance, then paused in the hall, stiffening his spine and squaring his shoulders. He strode to the open doors of the library and stared in at the squire. His voice lowered, but none of the passion had left it. All right, Sir Thomas. As God is my witness, I’d never cause you distress. But I warn you, sir, that you have gained little in your bargain. Little but the bitter shell of a man.

I have gained you, my friend, the squire replied, his voice very light. And that is all that I ask. I know the man. He smiled. I’ll see you at the club before you leave.

The stranger started to speak again, exploded with an impatient oath, then grinned. Take care, you old goat, he said, and there was affection in the tone. He swiveled and was gone, out the beveled glass double front doors.

Katey and Marissa stared after him.

He left the door open and mounted the brown horse in a leap, that curl of ebony hair still haphazardly hung over his forehead.

And then his eyes touched Marissa once again. He inclined his head gravely, and a taunting smile seemed to curve his lip.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to race to the doorway and swear that she’d not end her days as a maid to be so easily disdained. She’d rise above them all, above everything. She’d die a lady, greater than any they had ever seen.

Marissa, my dear. Come here, please. I’d dearly love it if you would read to me now. Something from Dickens, I think.

It was the squire calling her. The one man who could make her swallow her pride and bitterness and her longing.

Aye, Sir Thomas. I shall come, she agreed quickly. But she was still staring at the door as Katey closed it.

Her lips tightened. Aye, she would die a lady, she swore it. She had already come far, she assured herself, and she brought her fingers before her face. Her hands were clean. They were not covered by the coal dust that had left her dearly beloved uncle hacking away night after night. She lived in the manor where brass and wood shone. Where the air was clean.

And she read. She read the classics, and she knew the great operas, and she could speak in a voice to mimic any woman who claimed to be her better.

Marissa?

Katey came for the tea tray and Marissa smiled gratefully. Then she entered Sir Thomas’s study.

She tried to unwind her clenched fingers, to smile. But somehow, the stranger had left daggers in her heart. She wanted nothing more than to find some form of retaliation for the way he had made her feel.

I will rise above him, I swear it! she promised herself. I will be a lady so great that I can secretly smile and laugh at his discomfort.

But neither before nor after the time she spent reading with him did the squire mention the stranger. And by bedtime, when she could allow her lashes to fall over her eyes, she could still see his eyes upon her, the handsome bronzed and arrogant face. The curious touch of pain that had so briefly come to his gaze.

I will show him, she thought.

She was as determined as she had been as a child.

But in the morning, she smiled at her own foolishness. She’d never show him anything. She’d most probably never see him again.

But she would. Fate was destined to bring him back into her life.

And indeed …

She would show him.

Chapter One

London, November, 1905

He’s coming! Mary cried with distress. She allowed the heavy velvet drape to fall into place over the window and looked anxiously at Marissa. Mary’s pretty face was pale, and her warm brown eyes seemed huge against the narrow contours of her face. She had lost too much weight, Marissa thought.

It had been a terrible time for Mary, for the squire had died just a month previously after a long, painful illness. Both girls had spent endless hours at his side, doing whatever they could to ease his discomfort.

No matter what their differences, Mary had loved her father. Marissa, too, had loved the squire. They both missed him.

We loved him, we miss him! Marissa thought wryly. And here we stand, determined to undo his dying wish.

Oh, my God! Mary moaned, nervously lacing her fingers together. Are you sure you will be all right? she anxiously asked Marissa.

Marissa wasn’t sure at all. Her breathing was coming too hard and too fast, and butterflies the size of the Jabberwock were flying pell-mell through her stomach. But she’d faced far harder tasks in her life, she was certain. And she had been told that for a brief and shining season, her mother had begun to rise as a young actress upon the London stage. Marissa knew she was a gifted mimic. The act she played today would be for Mary’s benefit.

I’m going to be fine, Marissa assured her friend.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the hotel suite’s elegant free-standing mirror.

She would be fine. She certainly looked the part of the lady today. She was clad in one of Mary’s beautiful white silk dresses. The tiny buttons were shimmering little pearls that ran from hem to throat and from wrist to elbow. Her skirt was floor length and in the height of fashion, narrow, conforming handsomely to her figure. Her petite boots were beige leather, and buttoned all along her ankles.

Her hair was swept up off her neck and held in place just above her nape by a gold barrette that matched the brooch at her throat.

She was elegant in the most casual way. Mary knew clothing.

Marissa folded her hands negligently and managed to smile at Mary. A tea service was already set on the oak coffee table for her convenience at the arrival of their guest. And she and Mary had played at tea for a long time now.

A very long time.

When Marissa’s father, the Reverend Robert James Ayers, had been alive, Mary and Marissa lived close to one another. Robert Ayers had been the vicar at the beautiful old medieval church in the squire’s parish.

Marissa had loved and admired him greatly. He had been destined for the coal mines like his brother Theo, but he had proven such a promising child that the vicar of Leominster parish, twenty miles away, had taken him in. Robert had loved to study, and he had grown to love the church, so he had taken his benefactor’s place when Father Ridgefield died.

As the child of the local vicar, Marissa had enjoyed many advantages. She had been brought to the manor house for tea on her sixth birthday. Poor Mary had been forced to entertain her. Marissa had presented herself as Miss Katherine Marissa Ayers of Leominster Parish House, and had grown furious when she had seen the other girl laughing. She had hopped up, ready to forget all about being a lady and tearing out a bit of her hostess’s hair, when Mary giggled anew and held out her hand in protest of violence.

I’m not laughing at you, she said. Truly, I’m not! It’s just funny, that’s all. You see, I’m really Katherine, too, Katherine Mary Ahearn. Oh, don’t you see. Our names are so very alike.

Marissa tossed her head. I’m known as Marissa.

And Father calls me Mary, so we shan’t have a bit of confusion. Please, I’m really glad that you’ve come. I’m so very lonely so often.

Marissa had played with Mary often enough, but then her father had died. And with his death she also lost Mary, for she had gone to live with Theo in the mining town. She had hated her new life, but she had loved Theo, a wonderful man, uneducated, unable to read, but with a charming smile, laughing eyes and a way of telling a small girl a story that could make her smile and fall asleep curled into his strong arms.

Life was much worse for other children, Marissa knew that well. Especially orphans. Many of them were beaten and abused by their relatives or stepparents. She had known nothing but kindness.

Kindness … and coal dust.

She had wanted to repay her Uncle Theo in any way she could. And so she had swept and cleaned and cooked, and had done her very best to keep his clothing laundered and mended, and to make their small cottage a home. But when her lessons ended she had known she would soon be sent off to work, for there was no other way for a child of her class.

During the days, though, she had dreamed.

Especially after she had seen the strange boy with his impeccably clean clothing.

She had dreamed of the grand manor where she had studied with Mary. And she had remembered Mary’s delicate white hands, and the furniture that never reeked of coal dust.

And then one Sunday, when Uncle Theo and she had been able to borrow a pony cart and had taken the long drive to Leominster instead of attending the small chapel in the coal town, she had seen Mary again. Standing by the squire’s side, she was tall and lovely with her burnished brown hair and warm brown eyes and her beautiful fur-trimmed winter coat. She had grown up. They had both grown up, into young women. They were nearly fifteen.

Marissa looked at her hands, curled around her prayer book. Her nails were broken and ugly, her hands chapped.

And she knew that Mary’s hands would still be small and elegant and lovely.

When the last blessing was bestowed, Marissa turned to flee. She did not want to see Mary.

But it seemed that the squire had seen her, for she had barely exited the ancient church with its spires and saints and gargoyles when his hand fell warmly upon her shoulder.

Why, ’tis you, Marissa, child! We were heartily bereaved at the death of your father. And we missed you dearly, Mary and I. How have you been keeping yourself?

Quite well, Squire, thank you, Marissa murmured, wishing she could run. But Mary was behind him. Marissa thought she would lift her elegant nose and turn away from the coal child Marissa had become. But Mary stepped forward and hugged her enthusiastically. Marissa!

Before the day was out, Marissa and Uncle Theo had been taken to the manor for tea. Uncle Theo had stared around uncomfortably, and he had spilled his tea and used all the wrong silver, and the blackness of coal that the years had etched into his long bony fingers was glaringly dark against the Ahearns’ elegant china, but it didn’t seem to matter. Marissa could remember having tea as a child, and then she was ashamed that she could judge an uncle who had been so very kind to her. And seeing Sir Thomas and Mary, she swallowed hard and thought she had truly learned a lesson. Class and elegance did not lie in upturned noses, but rather in the graciousness inherent in these people. When she said thank you and goodbye to Mary and the squire, Marissa came as close to being humble as she had in all her life.

Three days later, the squire visited them in the squalid little coal town, and he suggested that Marissa should come to live in the manor house. Theo refused charity, but Sir Thomas promised that she would be a maid and earn her keep—and her education.

I cannot give me niece away, Theo said with deep emotion.

"And would you have her grow to womanhood here, marry a miner and watch him die of the black lung only to struggle on to raise an army of little ones herself? I don’t ask you to give her away, good man. I ask you only to give her a wee bit of opportunity. I say it from my heart, for my daughter and myself. And in memory of your good brother.

Good Lord, man! Would that I had authority over this place! I despise the way it is run. But Ayers, man, I can help your girl. Perhaps I haven’t the power to change the mine, but I do have the power to change her life. And we are still close enough that she can see you often. She loves you, and she will not be far.

Theo hesitated for only a moment, seeing the earnest appeal in Sir Thomas’s eyes. Go on out, Marissa, Uncle Theo told her. The squire and I have much to discuss.

When she came back, a bargain had been struck. She would live at the manor during the week, she would work, she would receive a salary, and she would resume her education.

There was nothing like it. Nothing like it on earth. She moved into the manor, into a room in the attic. It was