Fires of Delight by Vanessa Royall

aside.
    “Ye seen a woman swim onto shore?” yelled one of the redcoats, racing toward them across the dock, the muzzle of his musket brandished like a guidon. “I say, ha’e ye seen…?”
    And he saw Royce lift Selena onto the prancing horse, swing up behind her, spur the beast, and gallop off into the night.
    “’E forgot t’ ask me m’ name!” complained the now earth-bound horseman sullenly. “’E promised t’ share the reward money wi’ me, but ’ow can ’e do tha’ when he don’t even know me name?”
    “Oh, ye ninny and ye oaf!” decried the musketeer, as he realized that Selena had been snatched from under his very nose. “Ye’ll be lucky not t’ be ’anged, ye stupid lout.”
    With one arm around Selena, holding the reins with his free hand, Royce urged the fleet chestnut gelding along the waterfront. Selena saw the closed windows of shops flash by, and the darkened facades of houses shuttered against the night. She was freezing. The smooth leather of the saddle, as she rocked in rhythm to the horse’s pace, felt sensuous, solid. But far more comforting was the presence of her beloved, better even than this strong horse or the refuge toward which it carried them. She began to feel warmer.
    “They are looking for you,” she told him, turning her head slightly. “I heard talk in the fortress.”
    She saw his strong teeth glinting. “It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before, now, is it?”
    Then he laughed and so did Selena, and everything in the world was fine and good.
    Perhaps half a mile from the point at which Selena had come ashore, Royce slowed the pounding horse and turned it into an alleyway. Here he reined the beast to a walk, picking their wayslowly far back into a tiny canyon of darkness between two rows of brick houses. He was looking upward, searching for something. Selena could not imagine what.
    “Home,” he said then, halting the animal, “for the time being anyway.”
    He stood up on the beast’s back as the animal shifted nervously, and pulled Selena up as well. Her bare feet slipped a little on the smooth saddle.
    “All right,” he whispered, “feel up along those bricks. You’ll touch a ledge—”
    She did.
    “It’s a window. Open, I hope. Pull yourself up and crawl inside. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
    Don’t leave me , she wanted to say, but did as she’d been told, clinging to the ledge for a moment, catching a toehold in the bricks. The ledge scraped against her belly and thighs, but then she was up and over and into a dark room. The outline of a table and chairs took shape in the gloom. Outside, in the alley, she heard the receding clip-clop of the horse, followed by a burst of excited shouting.
    The redcoats! They had spied Royce!
    The thought was too much to bear. For a moment, Selena debated whether to cry or not, but before she could decide, she felt the floor tremble ever so slightly, heard footsteps coming nearer, closing on her in the night.
    A door opened.
    “Selena? It’s me. I’m safe. The British are chasing a horse.”
    Royce drew the curtains on the window through which Selena had entered, and then they held each other and lost themselves in a kiss that went on forever. She had grown to know the many nuances of his kiss, lazy or searching or tender, playful or powered by raw passion. But this kiss was one of gratitude and relief. He could hold her again, and she him, and it was as if a shroud of serenity descended out of the darkness to protect them.
    When at length they drew apart, he lit a candle on the table. Selena saw a small, neat room, sparsely furnished. In addition to the table and chairs, there was a washstand with a cracked porcelain pitcher and bowl, a battered waist-high cupboard, and several rolled-up packets of bedding piled along the wall.
    “Our agents use this place from time to time,” Royce explained. “It’s behind a false wall at the back of a harnessmaker’s establishment. Erasmus Ward stayed