The Elusive Flame (53 page)

“
If
we catch her,” Rudd offered, beginning to doubt that they were the crafty ones in this cat-and-mouse game. In fact, the girl had seemed pretty confident of her aim when she had peered down over the railing. He was sure he had glimpsed an expression of gleeful anticipation on her beautiful face.

Compresses were applied to the ragged nubbin that remained of Alistair’s ear. Then his head was swathed in a towel to hold them in place. In dire distress now, he had lost the verve for adventure in this chase which he had heretofore been enjoying. He was out to seize the wench, and with every word he muttered he made it clear that from the moment they caught her, her life would be a hellish, torturous torment until the day she died.

The two wandered through the upper rooms, looking into every nook and cranny. It seemed weird but in the midst of their lofty search, they heard a siren’s faint, melodic call from the lower depths. After creeping downstairs, they stepped cautiously to the marble floor, trying to avoid the larger pieces of broken glass that threatened to pierce the soles of their shoes. Even so, Rudd had to pause and set his lantern down to pick out one such splinter.

The lamps in all of the rooms had now been snuffed, and though the two men peered into the surrounding darkness
, seemingly from out of nowhere a white specter soared toward them, emitting a shriek that was definitely of a female origin. Warbling screams of fright erupted from the two men, and in goggle-eyed fear they retreated from the winged demon that flew at them from the darkness, stumbling over their own feet in their haste to scurry out of its way.

Having forayed through the kitchen while the men were searching upstairs, Cerynise had come away with a spool of stout twine, a heavy iron kettle and a large bag of flour with which to weight it. It had met her mood to drape a sheet over the kettle to make it appear ghostly. The twine she had cut to a length longer than she was tall. One end she fastened to the handle of the pot and the other end to one of the spindles of the balustrade. After wrapping another length of twine around the kettle, or rather the belly of her spook, she had clasped the opposite end and then retreated as far as she could go back into the shadows beneath the stairs. There she had waited, much like a spider for a fly, until her victims ventured into her trap.

This time it was Rudd who caught the brunt of Cerynise’s attack. Her contraption nearly lifted him off his feet when it slammed into him. It certainly served to spill him backward to the floor where the glass had been liberally distributed. There he lay as if frozen, staring upward in a stunned daze while the ghostly pendulum swung tauntingly to and fro above him.

“Are you alive?” Alistair queried, seriously doubting the fact, for the lawyer was staring up the ceiling fixedly and really didn’t appear to be breathing. Perhaps all these years his companion had been suffering from some unknown malady that, at the moment of impact or at sight of the ghostly apparition, had stripped away his life. He thumped a fist rather harshly into the rounded chest, trying to provoke some response, and with a loud wheezing intake, Rudd sucked air into his lungs once again.

“What hit me?” Rudd gasped, thankful he could breathe again.

“A ghost,” Alistair retorted satirically. “Of Cerynise’s making.”

Rudd swallowed and tried to move, then, gingerly feeling the back of his head, realized there was now a huge knot where his noggin had bounced on the marble floor. That was not all. He could feel something sharp piercing both his shoulder and backside. Rolling over, he allowed Alistair the honors of prying the pieces of shattered porcelain out of his flesh.

“It was unwise of you to ever throw Cerynise out of your aunt’s house,” the solicitor reminisced morosely, as if he had just had an afterlife experience in the nether depths. “I don’t think she has ever forgiven us.”

“I’ve got a lot more to forgive her for,” Alistair growled, peering into the shadows beneath the stairs. Holding his glass lamp aloft, well above his right shoulder, he crept forward cautiously, certain that he had seen some movement in the darkness beyond its glow. “Are you hiding back there, Cerynise?”

The bronze bookend was like a bat flying out of hell. It crashed into the lamp, breaking the glass and spilling oil down the whole side of him. It quickly erupted in flames. Alistair shrieked in sudden anguish and terror as the fire rapidly fed into his clothing and began to sear his flesh. In a panic he whirled and raced past the stairs, frantically snatching at the burning bandages on his head. Rudd was just struggling to rise, but gasped in horror and ducked out of the way as the human firebrand leapt over him. In another moment the front door was jerked open, and Alistair went screaming into the torrential downpour beyond the porch. Rudd staggered to his feet and, holding one hand to the back of his head and the other against his bleeding rump, limped to the front door where, far beyond the porch, his partner-in-crime was presently getting thoroughly drenched.

“I think we should leave before she kills us,” Rudd called out to the suffering man above the roar of the storm. “I’m not sure we should rile her any more than she is.”

“
I’ll rile her!
” Alistair blared from the front lawn. “
I’ll impale her on a pike and let her carcass rot in the sun!
”

“What sun?”

Alistair sought to gnash his teeth at his cohort, but the pain evoked when he tried to draw his lips back made him immediately regret his effort. “Never mind, you dunderhead! Just help me get back into the house. I’m drowning out here.”

“Well, at least you’re no longer burning,” Rudd reasoned mutedly. He hobbled down the front steps and solicitously served as a human crutch to the half-seared man. By the time the two got back inside, their clothes were soaked and pools of water collected around their sodden shoes and spread in ever-widening circles. Walking on the marble floor proved hazardous. They went slipping and sliding with arms flailing wildly in a concerted effort to balance themselves. Though Alistair’s wobbly legs threatened to collapse beneath him before he ever got there, Alistair reached the nearest bench and lowered his skinny rear onto the seat. Rudd clumsily skated over to the table where he had left his lamp and brought the light back to inspect the other’s burns. It was worse than he had first imagined, for the whole right side of Alistair’s face had been cooked. Raw flesh oozed beneath thickly curling, blackened crisps that, a few moments ago, might have been an outer layer of skin. Rudd seriously doubted that his partner would have to shave that particular side of his face ever again.

Grimacing at the sight, Rudd drew a handkerchief from his coat pocket, squeezed the water out of it, and solicitously tried to wipe away the charred peelings, succeeding only in extracting a fierce yowl of pain.

“My face is burnt, dammit!” Alistair railed in torment. “That’s what the little twit did to me, besides burning half my body!”

“At least your ear is no longer bleeding,” the lawyer counseled, curling his lip in repugnance as he inspected the charred glob. When he looked at his companion in
profile from the right angle, it was extremely difficult to determine if he was human.

Alistair choked in outrage. “I can’t even feel it anymore with all the torment I’m in!”

Rudd stepped back to survey the whole man and saw that, along Alistair’s right side, all that remained of his coat and shirt were blackened shreds adhering to his bony chest and arm, which were crisply burned. Most of the hair on his head and chest had been singed to the roots, and his eyebrows were completely gone. Just looking at him made the lawyer cringe.

“Are you sure you want to continue our efforts to catch the girl?”

“Go find something to dress my wounds!” Alistair muttered.

“The captain may come back any moment now,” Rudd reasoned.

Alistair snorted. “He’ll likely wait until the rain slackens.”

“It doesn’t appear likely that that will happen any time soon. I think we should leave while we still can.”

“
No!
” Alistair roared. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to kill that bitch, even if it’s with my dying breath.”

“It may well be,” the lawyer responded ruefully. “We’ve clearly been outwitted by her.”

“
Never!
”

“I’ll go see what I can find to tend your burns,” Rudd offered submissively. Wary of his feet flying out from under him, he made his way with painstaking care down the corridor, leaving a watery trail behind him. Once he entered the kitchen, he lifted the lamp high to light the path around the table and squished his way carefully toward the pantry. It was a common practice for salves and such to be kept in a kitchen, where most burns occurred, and he expected that his search of the closet would prove successful. But first, he’d have to make sure the two men were still unconscious and wouldn’t attack him once he opened the door. He didn’t know if they could do any
more damage to him than the girl had, but he wasn’t willing to give them a chance.

He was just passing the dining room door when the rays cast from his lantern touched on something that made his nerves stand on end. With a startled gasp he glanced around, just in time to see Cerynise with an iron poker poised above her head. In the next instant the rod came swishing downward through the air. Rudd threw up an arm to protect himself, but too late. His cry of alarm dwindled to a mute groan as the poker struck his head. A fiery pain exploded in his brain, and he stumbled forward to his knees, still clasping the hurricane lamp in a desperate grip lest he, too, find himself set on fire by spilling oil. In a dazed stupor he grasped hold of the girl’s skirt. The rod was lifted once again and brought down, darkening his awareness to a pinpoint of light as he toppled aside. Then that, too, was snuffed as a third blow was delivered.

“
Rudd!
” Alistair called in a tone of panic from the front of the house.

Almost calmly, Cerynise placed the poker beside the solicitor’s still form and picked up the hurricane lamp that had settled rattlingly to the floor. Moving through the dining room at a leisured pace, she watched the radiance reach out beyond her, flowing through the doorway into the central hall.

Alistair heaved an audible sigh as he noticed the approaching light. “I thought something had happened to you. I heard you scream.” Silence continued unswervingly, and the scorched man struggled upward from the bench in intensifying alarm. “Rudd? Is that you, Rudd? Why don’t you answer me?”

“I’m afraid he can’t, Alistair,” Cerynise replied, moving like a wraith into the hall.

Alistair gasped and backed away. “What did you do to him?”

She smiled stiffly as she passed the stairs and set the lantern aside on a table. “Put him out of his misery, I would presume.”

“You mean…you…you killed him?”

Though Cerynise couldn’t tell much from his blistered face, his tone had certainly sounded incredulous. “Perhaps.”

“How could you…?” Alistair began, and then abruptly remembered what she had already done to them. Suddenly he was afraid, enough that the hairs on the back of his neck, at least the few that were left, stood on end. “Keep your distance, bitch! Stay where you are!”

Ignoring his ultimatum, she glided ever-nearer. “Why, Alistair, what could I possibly do to you that you haven’t already threatened to do to me?”

His eyes widened until she could see the whites, a sharp contrast indeed against his scorched skin. A warbling wail of fright burst forth from his singed lips. He wouldn’t put it past the wench to employ some of his own threats to do him in. “You’re a fiend!”

Her poise amazed Cerynise. She had never dreamt that she could remain unruffled in the face of danger. She had always been afraid that she’d panic in a dangerous situation and be utterly useless to herself and everyone around her. Silently she thanked heaven for her aplomb.

“Now really, Alistair, what right has a kettle to besmirch the pot and call it black?” The incongruous humor of her statement drew a chuckle from her as she peered into his blackened face. She slipped a hand into her pocket, taking hold of the butt of the pistol, and shrugged casually. “I shouldn’t make jests when you’re obviously in pain, should I, Alistair?” She shook her head sadly, and then, without pause, changed the subject. “So! Would you like to take Rudd’s advice now and give up the fight?”

“
You slut!
” the thin man bellowed. “What
more
could you do to me that you
haven’t
done already?”

“Put you out of your misery,” she offered.

Jerking forth a pistol from the left side of his coat, he smirked lopsidedly with a measure of triumph. “My turn, bitch!”

The hazel eyes reflected the light of the lantern as Cerynise flicked a glance toward his weapon. “Before you kill me, Alistair, would you mind telling me one thing? Why have you done this? Why did you journey all the way from England to create havoc in my life? Do you hate me so much?”

“Why?” The man scoffed at her lack of insight. “For money, of course. What else?”

“Money?” Cerynise’s brows gathered in confusion. “But Lydia left you everything. Wasn’t it enough?”

His laughter was short-lived and chilling. But then, he had always seemed more demon than man to her.

“You stupid, senseless twit!” he choked and then shuddered at the pain enveloping him. “Lydia left me nothing! She couldn’t see anyone but you after you came to live with her. You turned her affections against me. She wrote a new will, leaving you everything. She couldn’t even spare me a farthing.”

His answer was almost more than Cerynise could comprehend. “But I saw the will,” she reasoned. “You showed it to me. It declared you as her sole heir.”

“That was the
old
will, one which Rudd had drafted long before you became Lydia’s ward. She went behind our backs, she did, and made a new one on the sly. But I wasn’t cognizant of that fact, and I became desperate, you see. My creditors were harping at me day and night, threatening to imprison me. I held them off as long as possible, hoping Lydia would do me a favor and die, but the strain was too much, and I wanted to live.” He shrugged one shoulder lamely. “Her last night on earth…I visited her and put hemlock in that foul-tasting tonic she always sipped in the evening.”