His Fire Maiden

Chapter 2

Getting married was a happy dream that had filled Vivienne's girlhood thoughts and promptly left as she grew older. She well knew the face that looked back from the mirror each morning. She was not foolish enough to pretend that she was without beauty. Vanity may be a sin but so was lying. She was fair of face and form, though she knew many a girl who looked better.

However, as a woman without fortune or title, she received few offers of marriage. The most consistent offers came in the form of teasing shouts from market vendors when she walked to Covent Garden each Saturday morning. How then, she thought as Daisy pinned white roses in her hair the following morning, had it come to this?

Perhaps it was a dream. The woman in the mirror didn't look at all like her. She was too pale. Her pink gown, one of many provided by Lord Reginald's money, ruffled and frothed around her like a confectionary. Vivienne turned away with disdain. It was the image of an innocent and a maiden. She was neither. And yet he had come for her. Why?

She did not believe Father's nonsense about him wanting her for her beauty. There were plenty of pretty daughters of utterly bankrupt, thus desperate, nobles for a wealthy man to chose from. What, then, did he want? What has the world come to when men such as he are permitted to roam the streets... Perspiration bloomed along her upper lip. And yet Lord Reginald did not know precisely what he was acquiring when he took Vivienne as his bride, did he?

To create fire by mere thought. It was the stuff of myth. She had discovered the talent quite by accident. And had burned through her share of disasters. Father and Mother had forbidden anyone to ever speak of it and, more to the point, for Vivienne to ever use her talent again. Poppy had simply disappeared in the library to search for an explanation; she never found one. Only Daisy had been impressed, though quite put out that she did not possess a similar unearthly talent. As for herself, the question always remained: Was she a monster? Both beauty and beast rolled into one unstable force? Despite her desire to know, there was the greater fear of putting the question to anyone and seeing them turn away as Martin had. So she kept it inside. She would not tell her husband to be, no. But she took comfort in the notion that she was not without defenses.

Poppy and Daisy's mutual disregard for Father kept them at a distance as Father hovered by her elbow, guarding all possible attempts to escape. Their chatter was no more than a din, Father's hand upon her arm a ghost, as they made their way to the small family chapel by the river.

Reverend Spradling met them at the door. The brackets around his fleshy mouth cut deep as his eyes slid from Vivienne to Father. "Lord Reginald is..." He tilted his head and pulled at the cassock hugging his bulging neck. "He is waiting in the vestry."

"Grand," said Father with an inane smile.

"He wants to talk to Miss Roberts in private," the reverend interrupted as Father tried to walk through the doorway. "I told him it was inappropriate but he was most insistent."

The two men turned to Vivienne. So now her opinion mattered, did it? She might have laughed, only she feared it would come out as a sob.

"Very well." She gathered her skirts. Her fingers had turned to ice long before, and the ruffles slid from her grasp. She took a firmer hold. "I won't be but a moment."

Slowly, she walked toward the vestry door looming before her. She would finally face the man who would be her husband, the man who sent brutes to hospital and caused women to swoon with terror.

He stood erect as a soldier at the far end of the little stone room. Women, she thought, letting her gaze sweep over him, could be utterly ridiculous.

She closed the door and waited for him to speak.

"You came." He could not fully stamp out the surprise in his deep voice.