Melanie Jackson - Divine fire

But the bell was not silenced. It whined, it roared, just as it was intended to do. When the strident ringing persisted for a second minute, Brice knew it was the mailman with a special-delivery letter. Aaron Perkins was the quintessential mailman, and he had learned to be relentless with his deliveries here, going so far as to carry them to the door instead of leaving them in the mailbox by the side of the road because he knew she rarely checked it.

Disgusted at the interruptionthe third that morning, Brice threw down her pen and stalked to the door. She was going to change that bell, she really was! What had Mark been thinking?

Brice didnt answer that last question, for she knew Mark had been thinking of her and her inclination to get lost in her work. He had constantly scolded her about keeping balance in her lifesomething shed been bad about lately.

It took an effort to recall how to be cordial, but Brice forced her mouth into a smile of welcome before she opened the top half of her Dutch door. Hazy and unwelcome light shone in her squinting eyes.

Here ya go, Miz Ashton. Must be somethin important, so I didnt want to make ya come down to the post office to get itnot so close to the big day and all. Things are kinda crazy downtown right now. He handed her a large envelope with a gust of cold air.

Thank you, Aaron. I appreciate it, she lied, wondering what he was talking about. Big day? Had there been another anthrax scare? She really needed to watch the news occasionally.

Then she remembered. It was almost Christmas. The last-minute shoppers would be out in droves trying to get their delayed holiday purchases to parties around the worlda feat not accomplishable at this date unless one booked the Concord, but they would make the attempt anyway.

Brice was further annoyed at being reminded about the season of cheer. She did her best to ignore it. When it caught at the edges of her attention it was quite irritating. And when it really grabbed her notice, every string of lights and every Christmas tree was enough to re-break her heart. This was the season of love and familybut what did that matter when your love was senselessly dead and buried in the cold, wintry ground?

Brices smile turned bitter and her face began to ache. Her love had died, and she had not. Her family had died, too, but she still lived. That made her lucky, her friends said. But lucky didnt mean happy. Especially not at Christmas.

Have a good day, ya hear? Aaron called, retreating down the leaf-choked path, listing to one side because of the seasonal heaviness of his satchel.

I will, thank you. And you too. Dont let Jack Frost bite you on thenose, Brice answered, swapping nouns at the last minute, as she pulled hard on the tab of cardboard envelope she didnt want. She bumped the top half of the door shut with her shoulder and followed that up with a body slam. The door was surly. The wood had warped and needed to be planed. And she would get to it. Soon. Right after the doorbell. In the meantime, she had to be firm about latching the thing or it would spring back open. It was kind of like memory that way.

I dont believe it, she said a moment later into the propane-heated air. She stared fixedly at the letterhead that topped the expensive stationery, wondering if it was a hoax. Or a mistake. Maybe it was a hallucination brought on by hunger and overwork.

Muttering, Brice began reading the body of the letter, finding her way back to her desk by memory and not by sight. She sat for a while reading and then rereading to the soft hum of the furnace. She always ran the furnace after the first of October. Though the climate here was mild by most standards, she felt any cold deep in her once-broken bones.

I dont believe it, she said again when shed perused the letter a second time. But neither her abandoned coffee cup nor her dusty computer answered.

Brice Ashton stared, bemused by the paper in her hands. Normally, she would have been enraged at receiving such a presumptuous missive from a reviewerespecially in her own home. Reviewers were impossible! So many of them thought they knew more about the subjects of her research than she did, and were almost invariably wrong. It couldnt be her agent who had betrayed her. Or her publisher. There was etiquette to these things, after allbut how the hell had he gotten her home address if not from them?

Her building wrath died suddenly. In spite of the invasion of privacy, this note was an entirely exceptional thing. She viewed most critics the way she did dandruff: annoying but easily ignoredat least while at home. But this letter couldnt be disregarded. The tone was one of a scholar speaking respectfully to a peer, albeit in slightly arrogant and archaic prose that might be mistaken for mockery if one werent reading with a sensitive eye. And the kinds of detail that Damien Ruthven was describing could only be known to someone who had access to the Byron family archive of personal correspondence and who had spent a lot of time sorting through the material.

Or to someone who had a copy of Byrons lost memoirs.