Read Online Divine Fire by Melanie Jackson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Melanie Jackson
Tags: Fiction
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windows to show her the way into the aerie.
In that eerie light the room looked vaguely familiar, and after a moment of searching her memory, Brice realized that the library was almost a duplicate of one in Newstead Abbey. It was even furnished in a similar manner to one of the paintings of the interior done during Byron’s life.
She looked about quickly for a skull cup, like the one Byron had made of the monk’s skeleton he had found in the garden as a child, but there was none about.
Of course not. The similarity might even be an accident of taste. Newstead Abbey was a mansion built on the graves of the dead. She had never liked its setting. Who could live in a cemetery? This place wasn’t like that at all. Well, perhaps a little. It was just that the spiral stairs reminded her of something—maybe a scaffold in the moonlight—and the placement of the windows that brought Byron’s ancient home to mind.
Not pausing again until she reached the final tier of books, she climbed carefully up the last curving stairs and began inching along the catwalk. The railing reached her waist, but she suffered some strange form of vertigo so that it didn’t seem high enough to provide safety.
Brice was only half surprised when she reached a set of glass doors and saw her host standing outside, looking over the city.
His “magnetic” field had probably called her up here.
Or maybe she was actually still abed and dreaming all this.
She wasn’t taken aback, but the longer she thought about it, the more his being outside seemed peculiar. For one thing, the weather was still bitter. No more snow fell, but the temperatures was below freezing. Damien’s occasional breath was actually turning to frost and falling down about his feet.
Brice exhaled sharply, making her eyes focus. Bare feet? Damien wasn’t wearing a coat or shoes. Also, he wasn’t so much standing as squatting on the ledge, a careless hand resting on an iron chain. He looked more than a little bit like the large gargoyles he perched between. As she watched, steam began rising from his body in a cloud, and it swirled about him in a slow counterclockwise cyclone.
Torn between the temptation of opening the door and asking him why he was out in the night, and stealing away before she was noticed spying on him, she hesitated in the shadows.
He was beautiful, as beautiful as any midnight that had ever been. And it was not just his body that was appealing. She had found her prejudices dying out one after the other as they dined. Brice had barely noticed when the first small lie fell out of her mouth. She was used to social fabrication, but usually felt at least a small qualm when she involved herself in one. But not last night. And what should have been social lies, social politeness, had soon turned out as truth: She’d come to trust him—to actually want to speak her mind to him without reservation. And, lacking her previous distaste and wariness, resistance to his native charm was proving much harder to come by.
But he was also very odd, and—at least for her—maybe dangerous. She knew this, though she couldn’t say from what direction danger would come. However nonspecific, she believed her intuition. As sure as the sun would show up in the east tomorrow morning, she knew he would be trouble for her if she allowed herself to get any closer.
Or maybe it was guilt speaking. Could it be that simple?
Brice exhaled slowly and thought hard about the possibility.
Former friends—all well-intentioned people—had often said to her in smug, self-congratulatory voices that they, too, had suffered loss and yet survived to go on to better lives. They said she was clinging to her grief because of guilt—guilt that didn’t belong to her—and using it to push people away. At the time she had thought it nonsense. But were they right after all? Had she used tragedy to keep the world at bay?
On the few occasions when she had been confronted with this theory, Brice had
In that eerie light the room looked vaguely familiar, and after a moment of searching her memory, Brice realized that the library was almost a duplicate of one in Newstead Abbey. It was even furnished in a similar manner to one of the paintings of the interior done during Byron’s life.
She looked about quickly for a skull cup, like the one Byron had made of the monk’s skeleton he had found in the garden as a child, but there was none about.
Of course not. The similarity might even be an accident of taste. Newstead Abbey was a mansion built on the graves of the dead. She had never liked its setting. Who could live in a cemetery? This place wasn’t like that at all. Well, perhaps a little. It was just that the spiral stairs reminded her of something—maybe a scaffold in the moonlight—and the placement of the windows that brought Byron’s ancient home to mind.
Not pausing again until she reached the final tier of books, she climbed carefully up the last curving stairs and began inching along the catwalk. The railing reached her waist, but she suffered some strange form of vertigo so that it didn’t seem high enough to provide safety.
Brice was only half surprised when she reached a set of glass doors and saw her host standing outside, looking over the city.
His “magnetic” field had probably called her up here.
Or maybe she was actually still abed and dreaming all this.
She wasn’t taken aback, but the longer she thought about it, the more his being outside seemed peculiar. For one thing, the weather was still bitter. No more snow fell, but the temperatures was below freezing. Damien’s occasional breath was actually turning to frost and falling down about his feet.
Brice exhaled sharply, making her eyes focus. Bare feet? Damien wasn’t wearing a coat or shoes. Also, he wasn’t so much standing as squatting on the ledge, a careless hand resting on an iron chain. He looked more than a little bit like the large gargoyles he perched between. As she watched, steam began rising from his body in a cloud, and it swirled about him in a slow counterclockwise cyclone.
Torn between the temptation of opening the door and asking him why he was out in the night, and stealing away before she was noticed spying on him, she hesitated in the shadows.
He was beautiful, as beautiful as any midnight that had ever been. And it was not just his body that was appealing. She had found her prejudices dying out one after the other as they dined. Brice had barely noticed when the first small lie fell out of her mouth. She was used to social fabrication, but usually felt at least a small qualm when she involved herself in one. But not last night. And what should have been social lies, social politeness, had soon turned out as truth: She’d come to trust him—to actually want to speak her mind to him without reservation. And, lacking her previous distaste and wariness, resistance to his native charm was proving much harder to come by.
But he was also very odd, and—at least for her—maybe dangerous. She knew this, though she couldn’t say from what direction danger would come. However nonspecific, she believed her intuition. As sure as the sun would show up in the east tomorrow morning, she knew he would be trouble for her if she allowed herself to get any closer.
Or maybe it was guilt speaking. Could it be that simple?
Brice exhaled slowly and thought hard about the possibility.
Former friends—all well-intentioned people—had often said to her in smug, self-congratulatory voices that they, too, had suffered loss and yet survived to go on to better lives. They said she was clinging to her grief because of guilt—guilt that didn’t belong to her—and using it to push people away. At the time she had thought it nonsense. But were they right after all? Had she used tragedy to keep the world at bay?
On the few occasions when she had been confronted with this theory, Brice had
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