Lord of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

gleamed bone-white, while the road floated precariously above the forest, a sheer, high pass that hugged the mountain on one side. On the other yawned a gulf of empty darkness. She moved to the edge of her seat and stared down over the dizzying drop into the wooded ravine. You could throw a stone and it would fall forever, she thought. As her gaze pierced the deepest recesses of the black abysmal forest, suddenly she saw it—a distant flicker of fire.
    “There’s a light! Nellie, do you see it? There, in the valley!” She pointed in excitement. “There!”
    “Yes, I see it!” her maid cried, clapping her hands. “Oh, Miss Alice, at last, it’s
Revell Court
! It must be!”
    Suddenly animated, both women called to Mitchell, the coachman, who was slumped down in dejection on the driver’s box. He let out a cheer when he, too, saw the bonfire burning like a beacon in the valley.
    “By Jove, we’ll be there in ten minutes!” he boomed.
    Even the horses picked up their pace, perhaps smelling the distant stable.
Alice felt new life rushing into her veins. She hastily dug in her reticule for her combs and began trying to put her hair into presentable order. “Oh, how I long for a warm bed,” she said ardently. “I could sleep until
noon
!”
    “Bed, pshaw! I’ve had to use the w.c. for the past two hours,” her maid retorted in a whisper as she buttoned up her pelisse over her plump bosom.
    Alice chuckled. As they came down to the bottom of the valley, the carriage clattered across a stout wooden bridge that straddled a small, lively river. She was taken aback to notice how the cascade spurted straight out of the living rock. Falling in rills and milk-white spume, the little river glistened in the moonlight, churning and eddying in countless miniature gullies beneath the bridge.
    “There’s the house,” Nellie exclaimed suddenly, pointing out the other window.
    Alice peered out eagerly. In the foreground loomed tall wrought-iron gates whose formidable pillars were topped with rearing stone horses. Beyond them, the courtyard bustled with activity as servants in maroon-and-buff livery hurried about, tending to the dozen or so carriages lined up there. It seemed their host was entertaining,
Alice thought uneasily, half certain that she recognized some of those carriages from on the road today. The house was an ivy-covered, red-brick Tudor mansion built in a U shape around the courtyard, with two large gabled wings that jutted forward symmetrically from the sides, their banks of mullioned windows reflecting the glint of the great iron torch stand that towered in the center of the cobblestone courtyard.
    This was the wheel of fire that had beckoned to them from the distance, she realized, and as she gazed at the dancing flames, writhing and reaching for the black velvet sky, she was filled with the strangest intuition that the unknown object that her heart had yearned for in secret was very near. Then her bemusement turned to dread as half a dozen armed guards—big, menacing men in long black coats—materialized out of the shadows and began marching toward her carriage, each with a rifle under his arm. They yelled roughly at her driver to halt.
    Mitchell had not expected armed guards any more than she had, but when Lord Lucien’s men continued shouting at him, telling him he must turn the coach around and leave,
Alice’s fury soon overtook her fear. She jumped out of the carriage without warning, her long, fur-trimmed cloak swinging around her as she angrily marched over, going to her driver’s defense. She was too incensed, hungry, and irritable from the day’s exertions to accept this sort of insolent trifling from servants. Ignoring their requests—veiled orders—for her to get back in the coach, she stood arguing with them in the cold for a quarter hour. It seemed there was a written guest list, and her name, of course, was not on it. But that was only the beginning. When they told her she must give the