Seize the Fire Read Free Page A

Norwich papers had announced that Captain Sir Sheridan was coming home. A potted plant perhaps had not been a perfect choice of tributes, but she did not excel at needlework, so an embroidered banner had been out of the question. She'd fantasized about a presentation-sized oil painting of the glorious naval battle, but that was far beyond her pin money. So she'd settled for the plant, and a gift from the heart—her own small, leather-bound and gilded copy of Jean Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract in the original French.
    She knew just what Sir Sheridan would look like. Tall, of course—splendidly tall in his blue captain's uniform with immaculate white breeches, a white-plumed chapeau bras and gold epaulettes. But he wouldn't be handsome in the ordinary style. No; she envisioned a plain face, a dependable face, saved from homeliness by kind eyes and a noble brow, and perhaps even some freckles and a touching way of casting down his eyes and blushing when confronted with a lady's regard.
    She'd pondered what to say to him for days. Mere words seemed inadequate to express her admiration each time she thought of how he had thrown himself beneath a falling mast in order to save the life of his commander and then boldly leapt overboard into shark-infested waters to prevent a live bomb from destroying the ship. She wished she had something more than a frozen fuchsia plant to honor him. And yet she'd dreamed, deep down in the depths of sleepless nights, when the house seemed very quiet and her life seemed very small, that he would smile and understand, and value a potted fuchsia as if it were a medal of royal gold.
    But those were dreams. Now that she was here at his door, her heart beat a slow thud of self-conscious terror, confirming her worst suspicion about herself—that in spite of what she wished to be, and ought to be, and would need to be, she was a coward at the bone.
    The bell sounded dully beyond the ornate door when she pulled the chain. The moment she let go of it, a quantity of heavy snow cascaded from the portico's roof, pouring over her shoulders and bonnet and landing on the stone with a muffled thump. The front door of Hatherleigh Hall opened just as she was wiping her face and peering out through the broken and bedraggled plume of a green-dyed hat feather.
    A small brown man with bare feet and a red fez on his shaved head stood in the doorway, trailing multitudes of blankets wrapped snugly around his body. The servant ignored Olympia's snow-damage and made a rakish bow, sweeping the step with the corner of a blanket. He looked up at her, blinking and squinting with dark eyes in a round face. "O Beloved," he said in a liquid soprano. "How may I serve thee?"
    Olympia, standing with snow in small piles on her shoulders and a lump melting off the tip of her nose, wished she might sink through the stone. Finding that option closed, she forged ahead as if nothing had occurred and placed a slightly damp calling card in his shivering hand.
    "Ah!" he said, tucking it beneath his fez and hitching up the blankets. Leaving the front door standing open, he led her through the vestibule and across the polished chessboard of pink-and-white marble into the looming depths of a great hall.
    Olympia darted discreet glances at the shadowy cavern. Carved wood flowed up the walls in ornate rhythms, punctuated by dusty banners and dark glittering sunbursts of steel: broadswords and sabers, axes and pikes and pistols, all arranged so artistically that they seemed something else entirely until she looked twice.
    With much nodding and bowing, the servant told her she must wait at the foot of the paneled staircase. Instead of walking up the stairs he mounted the banister, sliding himself to the top like a monkey up a palm tree, where he disappeared into the gloom above. Far off in the house she could hear the slap of his feet on smooth wood, and then his voice, awakening echoes in the huge hall. "Sheridan Pasha!" The name was