Read Online Divine Fire by Melanie Jackson - Free Book Online Page A

through the Epistle and the Gospel, and who the choirboys are obliged to put back on his feet after each genuflexion. This all depressing, I can assure you. Well, I am done twiddling with the rosary beads while mumbling Aves, Paters, and Credos. The present moment is the one for me to inform you that I have decided to no longer be a girl, but to become a boy. As I am now a son, it is your duty to take over my education immediately, and I shall tell you how it is to be done.”
—Letter of Ninon de Lenclos to her father
    Brice looked out of her bedroom window, marveling at the glow that suffused the city. The worst of the atmospheric violence was over, though not gone. The wind still howled intermittently, as though the sly storm were snoring and napping off the coast. She had the feeling that it was gathering strength for another assault rather than resting up before it moved on. If she were paranoid, she might even think that that storm was encircling the city, zeroing in on Ruthven Tower.
    Brice had thought she understood about cold. She had a wool coat, a thick scarf, lined gloves, and a highly evolved mammalian brain that supposedly allowed her to prepare for a changing environment. But this storm was something different, a thing never encountered in southern climes. She might as well be a naked babe stranded on an unsheltered rock in a blizzard for all the protection her clothing afforded her. The storm felt like a killer, a vicious evil stalking the city. She hoped the homeless had found shelter before dark, because Death rode the frozen air and would happily gather up any souls left alone in the cold streets.
    Yet it wasn’t the cold keeping her awake now. It was her too-busy brain.
    In spite of the freakish encounter with a suddenly hostile Nature, her evening had been wonderful, and Damien Ruthven had kept his word—or implied word—that he would be a gentleman while she remained in his home. When midnight crept around, he’d poured a brandy, shown her to her room, and left her with nothing more than a smile—and nerves that shrieked because she hadn’t been given a good-night kiss. Or more.
    Brice got back into bed and tried for a third time to get comfortable.
    What was wrong? She’d had a hot bath and stepped into her favorite nightgown. Since her bed was a confection of down, comfortable and warm, and she was not usually of an insomniac temperament, Brice should have had no trouble dropping off to sleep. Yet here it was, three A.M., and she was still wakeful, in bed and then out again like a jack-in-the-box.
    It was probably the library, calling to her. Rare tomes had a way of whispering when there was no other noise to drown out their honeyed words.
    Brice rolled over, pulling the comforter over her ears, and tried humming herself to sleep. It didn’t help. She felt restless, feverish. And Damien’s face kept appearing before her even with her eyes firmly closed.
    Something was calling to her, that was for sure. Deciding that it had better be the books and not her host, she finally got up. She slipped on a robe and quietly opened her door. Nothing stirred.
    Satisfied that she was unnoticed, Brice padded down the short hall that led to the first floor of the library. She’d find something to read—that was the ticket. Something boring and statistical.
    She paused inside the opened French doors, listening carefully. The library had a cathedral-like silence, which was not to suggest that it was conducive to peaceful prayer. Any historian could tell you that murders happened in cathedrals too.
    Something was waiting for her. Something that might be very good. It might also be very bad.
    Brice shivered and cursed her too-active imagination. This was ridiculous. Nothing was here—nothing! But she decided—for no particular reason, she assured herself—against turning on the lights while she wandered around. Instead, she climbed carefully up the steep spiral stair, relying on the city glow from the tall