“Well, le Gayne did, if you want to count that. I don’t.”
“If you want a kiss, I can give you that, to satisfy your curiosity,” he offered. “You don’t have to pretend to want to learn how to do it.”
“I do want to learn,” she mumbled.
“But why? You’re not going to—” He stopped himself. She did not need him to remind her that she was never going to have a lover or a husband.
“Maybe…maybe it is part of why I am still here,” she said. “I did not care for le Gayne, but I wanted to be a wife and mother. I wanted to
live,
as fully as I could. Even while I was dying I wanted that. I wanted to experience everything I never had a chance to.”
“So I kiss you, and poof, you’re gone to the afterlife?”
She shrugged, her face half turned away. She looked human to him in that moment, completely a woman who had made herself vulnerable to a man by revealing some secret part of herself, and making a request that embarrassed her. Frances had made the same movement when they had talked about lovemaking.
He swung his legs off the chair, and she scooted out of the way as his feet came down beside her. He reached for her, and for a moment his hands tingled with warmth as they went through her; then she solidified, and when he tried again he felt the give of supple flesh.
He pulled her gently toward him, until she was sitting sideways on the ground between his legs, one of her long thighs covering his right foot in heavy warmth. Her eyes were open wide, watching him warily. She held perfectly still as he bent down toward her, his hands on her shoulders holding her in place if she should suddenly bolt.
Her sweet, warm scent filled his head as he came close to her, his lips hovering less than an inch above hers. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling her, feeling the gentle touch of her breath on his skin, and then he set his lips lightly on hers.
They were slightly parted, and smooth like the skins of cherries. He felt the quiver of her body in his hands, and in the irregular breath she let out. He moved his head, brushing his lips across hers with a light touch that set his own nerve endings shimmering. With the tip of his tongue, he lightly stroked her full lower lip, then took it between his own lips, pulling at it gently before letting it slide free.
He moved one hand along her shoulder, and then up under her hair to the nape of her neck, the silky strands against the back of his hand warm from her heat. He felt her hands settle on his knee and thigh, tentatively, almost as if she was afraid to touch him. He bore down firmly on her mouth, and supported her head with his hand as she bent back under the pressure. The hands on his leg squeezed. He eased off and nipped at her lips with his own, then forced her mouth open and thrust his tongue inside, rubbing it against the texture of hers, letting her taste him as he tasted her.
She made a soft cry deep in her throat, and the sound went straight to his groin.
Beth knocked on the door to the tower room. “Alex? It’s Beth.” She waited, then knocked again. Sophie and Nancy rustled behind her, huddling close, eager to escape the dark coolness of the tower stairs. “Alex?”
She lifted the latch and pushed open the door a few inches, peering into the room. She doubted he would welcome three women invading his private study without invitation. “Hello?”
She opened the door all the way, seeing that the room was empty. There were no lamps or candles lit, her own candle throwing the only light over the desk and gleaming orrery. They all three stepped into the room, and then Beth’s candle guttered in a draft.
“He must be up top,” she said, going toward the steep stairs to the roof.
“This is worse than visiting a sorcerer in a novel,” Sophie complained, following with Nancy. “Why couldn’t he have left a lamp burning?”
A sound caught Beth’s ears. “Shh!” Beth hissed, hushing her friend. “Do you hear voices?”
They all three held motionless at the foot of the steps,
listening. “If you want just a kiss,” Alex was saying, “I can give you that.”
They turned wide eyes on each other. A female voice answered, and in a hope against hope, even as the hairs on the back of her neck began to rise, Beth asked Nancy, “Is that Marcy?”
Nancy shook her head no. “I don’t know that voice,” she said.
“Then who is it?” Sophie whispered.
“Shhh,” Beth commanded, and they all continued to listen. “Even while I was dying I wanted that,” the woman was saying. “I wanted to experience everything I’d never had a chance to.”
“So I kiss you, and poof, you’re gone to the afterlife?” Alex replied, and then there was silence, followed by a shuffling of movement and the peculiar, heavy-breathing quiet that comes when two people kiss.
Beth handed the candlestick to Sophie, grabbed her skirts in one hand, and climbed quickly up the steps, her heart thudding in sick terror. Her head came out the hatch, and she saw Alex in the red light of his lamp, leaning forward from his chair with his arms entwined with a shining white light, formless and inhuman.
“Alex!” she cried.
Immediately he jerked back from the light, which vanished the moment he released it.
Beth scampered up the last few steps and dashed over to him, reaching out as if to take his hand, and then at the last moment refraining, some instinctual part of her not wanting to touch him. He looked stunned. “Alex? Are you all right? Alex?”
He seemed to gather himself together, then scowled up at her. “Yes, what is it?” His eyes slipped away from her face, going to a corner to Beth’s right before coming back to her again.
She straightened, every hair on her body standing stiff, the skin of her face fairly crawling with the sense of being watched by the unseen.
“Alex, come down from here,” she said with false calm. “Underhill needs your help. He’s been badly beaten by Sommer.”
“What?” Alex all but shouted, coming quickly to his feet. “Where is he?”
“Nancy is below. She’ll explain everything. Mrs. Hutchins is with him now.” She gestured for him to precede her down the stairs, and he quickly obliged, his concern for his manservant evident.
She stood for a moment longer than necessary on the rooftop, her eyes scanning the empty darkness that was alive with awareness. She shivered, and then followed Alex below.
“Otto, here, boy, come on,” Serena said softly, crouching down and holding out her hand to the hound. “Come on, I won’t hurt you.” The dog, head and tail down, ears back, gave her a wide-eyed, distrusting stare and slunk off down the hall.
Serena sighed, straightened, and followed. She had been at it for over an hour, and was coming to the conclusion that Otto was a cowardly, dim-witted creature only barely worth his feed. Her attempts to befriend the beast were getting tiresome, but she had decided it was in her best interest to do so, and she would not give up, however difficult the loathsome canine was being.
Surely there must be some intelligence in the animal, some redeeming feature. Woding doted on the thing, after all, and that in itself was her primary motivation.
She tracked Otto into the library, through the entry hall, and then up the stairs. He didn’t run so much as keep up a slow trot, pausing occasionally to see if she still pursued. He was probably getting as weary of the game as she was.
Stupid dog.
If he’d just sit still and let her pet him, they could both be done with this.
The door to Woding’s bedroom was ajar, and Otto pushed his way inside. Serena followed, closing the door behind her, trapping him inside with her.
“Ot-tooooe,” she crooned. “Ot-tooooe.”
The dog went from door to door, pawing at the wood, looking for an escape as she came closer and closer. “Woo woooo!” he cried.
“Ot-tooooe, nice doggie, come make friends. I won’t hurt you.”
“Woo wooo!”
The whites of his eyes were showing, and she could see his flesh quivering. Maybe if she pounced on him and held him tight, he would eventually give in through sheer exhaustion.
She was about to act on the thought when he made a dive for the bed, scrambling beneath it, making the mattress buck and bounce as his back hit against the underside. “Wooo oo ooo,” he cried from his cave.
She rolled her eyes. Beezely would never be such a coward. She went and sat on the bed, looking about the empty room, wishing Woding were there even as she was glad he had been gone for two days. She had a certain nervousness about seeing him again, after such an intimate encounter. She worried that he might regret it, or might have found her kisses unskilled and repulsive. He might never want to repeat the experience.
There had been a great deal of activity in the house since Beth interrupted their kiss. The doctor had been sent for, and had declared Underhill to have a few cracked ribs and bruised internal organs, but to otherwise be in working order. He would, of course, require a great deal of rest and care, but still he refused to stay anywhere but in the stables.
Sommer had driven the carriage at a reportedly hell-bent pace to an inn on the far side of Bradford-on-Avon, and there proceeded to drink himself into a near stupor. Unfortunately, he had been conscious enough to climb back into the coachman’s seat. No one knew quite where he had been headed, but he took a corner on one of the country lanes much too fast, and was thrown from his seat, landing in a watery ditch, where he promptly passed out.
The horses had had the wit to stop, and when the next passerby came some hours later, the abandoned carriage
prompted him to check for injured persons. He found Sommer half-dead from the chill of the water, and back in Bradford-on-Avon a doctor was again summoned.
Woding had had no choice but to release Sommer from his employ, both for the attack on Underhill and for his recklessness with the horses and carriage. Much to Nancy’s delight and Woding’s surprise, Nancy out of necessity became coachman, and Woding had accompanied her on her first outing, returning Beth and Sophie to their respective homes.
Serena had stayed away from the turmoil except for moments of spying to check in on events and Woding’s whereabouts, and spent most of her time in the garden. She needed the time alone to sit in solitude and obsess over those moments in Woding’s arms, and on what might or might not happen between them in the future.
Her first true kiss. She forgot about Otto under the bed as the scene replayed itself again in her mind. She found that she could re-create some of the sensations just by thinking about it, feeling the same paralyzing sense of being the helpless recipient of his touch. It was as if all thought, all ability to control her own actions had left her, leaving her mind consumed by the sensations of her body. She could have sat there all night, between his knees, letting him kiss her as he wished.
She was a shameful, wanton creature, and what was worse, she did not care. After many hours of careful consideration, she had decided that her possible eternal damnation did not matter so much as the chance to feel Woding’s naked body against her skin. If his kisses were so wonderful, then surely sharing his bed would be paradise on earth. She had no reason to preserve her virginity any longer, so why not? And perhaps it would be only as real as sex in a dream, where one woke with the lingering sensations and a sense of guilt, but nothing had truly changed.
The room was dimming as the sun began to go down behind the heavy blanket of clouds that had concealed the sky all day. The shadows in the corners began to grow and darken. Otto’s whining settled into an exhausted quiet.
Why shouldn’t she experiment with sex? It would hurt no one, least of all Woding.
A shadow moved. She saw it from the corner of her eye, and jerked her head, staring wide-eyed. Nothing. Then, as if with a pulse that pumped it larger, a shadow swelled.
Serena crawled backward to the head of the bed, her skin going cold and sweaty at the same time, her breath seizing in terror. The shadow, expanding to fill half the room, floated toward the bed, stopping at the foot and then pouring itself between the posts toward her.
She screamed, her cry changing from one in the silent ghost realm to one that the living could hear, a scream of utter terror. Otto came bumping out from beneath the bed, his claws scrabbling on the wood floor, and once on his feet began to howl. “Aaa rooo roo roo!” he bellowed, adding his voice to Serena’s.
The roiling shadow paused as if distracted, giving Serena a moment’s sanity within her terror. In that moment she remembered the prayer that had worked before, and shut her eyes, clasping her hands before her and bowing her head. “Hail Mary, full of grace…” she recited, going through the rosary with a desperate hope that it would again drive away the shadow. Her sinful thoughts of moments earlier weighed on her mind, creating a crevasse of doubt in her worthiness.
She felt a cold, damp touch over all her skin at once, as if the shadow were enveloping her. She felt it begin to seep into her skin, pressing inward. “Nooo!” she cried, breaking her prayer and opening her eyes. Blackness was all around her, and it filled her mouth as she screamed.
Dimly, she was aware of Otto lunging at the shadow, biting at the insubstantial shape, and then she knew nothing.
The castle was quiet as Alex came inside. It felt vacant to him, and perhaps it was, he realized. Sophie was on her way home, Beth was back on her farm, and Mrs. Hutchins was down in the stables tending to Underhill. Marcy and Dickie had the day off, and as far as he knew had gone home to the village to visit their families.
He stood still a moment, feeling the emptiness around him, and savoring what it meant. No more interruptions, and he would have private time with Serena. That kiss they had shared—it had been like nothing he had ever experienced. Beth had not made reference to what she had seen, but the look in her eyes had told him that she was frightened, although whether
of
him or
for
him, he did not know.
Neither did he care. All he could think at this moment was that he felt more alive than he had in years, and felt the blood coursing through his body as if he were a youth again, his body aching to touch the female form. He had thought himself long through with such lustful obsessions.
He started up the stairs, and then a sound caught his attention. He paused, listening, and it came again. It sounded like Otto howling softly, a plaintive, forlorn cry.
Frowning, he jogged up the stairs and down the hall, following the sound to his room, where it barely penetrated the thick door. The sound stopped as he put his hand on the latch and opened it, and then Otto almost knocked him down, leaping upon him.
“Here, boy, how did you get locked in my room?” he asked the dog, who licked his face and then dropped down and trotted over to the bed. The curtains were half-closed, so all Alex could see was that Otto stared at something, and then began again his plaintive cry.
Curiosity and apprehension crept up his spine as he approached, and then he saw that it was Serena who lay upon the coverlet, her limbs as lifeless and broken as a rag doll’s.
Her eyes were partially open, but no white or iris showed, only an orb of blackness beneath the lid. Her usual illumination was dimmed, and she looked as if she were fading into the shadows.
It reminded him of his last sight of Frances, pale and spent in their bed, the fever having drained the life from her.
“Serena!” he shouted, breaking free of the spell of horror in which the sight of her had caught him. He knelt on the bed and reached out to shake her, but his hand went right through her. “Serena!” he yelled again. “Wake up! Do you hear me? Wake up!” He brushed his hands through her, trying to stir some reaction, his hands feeling only a faint tingling as he did so.
There had to be a way to revive her, to wake her. He couldn’t just sit here and watch her fade away, as she seemed to be doing before his very eyes, as if she were dying. A ghost could not die!
In a fit of desperation, he threw his body through hers, stretching out so that his own form occupied and surrounded every inch of her own, bending his arms so that they matched the pattern she made on the bed. A slow tingling went through his body, a faint echo of what he had felt that time they had crossed through each other in the hall.
“Come on…” he urged her in a whisper. “Wake up.”
He closed his eyes, concentrating on his breath and heartbeat, willing them to fill her with whatever life it was she needed. The tingling grew stronger, becoming an electric current over his skin, then undulating through his muscles. He felt his manhood grow hard, and then bits of her memories began to fill his mind, and she moved, sitting up through him, gasping.
He rolled away and sat up beside her, shaking. “Serena?”
She turned her eyes to him, and they were normal now, and her glow once more illuminated her fine skin. “Woding?” she asked, her voice quavering. “What are you doing
here? What happened?” Before he could answer, her eyes widened, and she said, “Le Gayne.”
“Here?” he asked, his short-lived relief turning quickly back into alarm.
“Otto saw him and tried to chase him away.” She turned to the dog, then crawled across Alex’s legs to the edge of the bed, where Otto sat on the floor, his sad eyes watching everything. The dog’s tail thumped on the floor as Serena reached out and petted his head. “You are such a good dog,” she said softly. “I’m sorry for ever being mean to you.” She lowered her face, and Otto tried to lick it.
She materialized, and Alex felt a quivering in her body, where it half lay against his legs. She had her face down, letting Otto lave her cheeks. “Serena?” The quivering continued.
Ah, damn.
She was crying.
He pulled her up into his arms, sitting across his lap with her buttocks wedged between his thighs. She wrapped her arms around him and wept into his neck, her tears silent except for the harsh gasps of her breath.
“It’s all right; he’s gone,” Alex murmured to her, rocking her back and forth as he’d seen his sisters do with their children.
A bone-jarring shudder went through Serena, and then a high, keening sound emerged from deep within her throat, sending the hair on the back of his neck straight up. He grimaced, holding her more tightly.
He did not know how long they had been sitting that way, or how long ago her tears had stopped, when he noticed that her lips were pressed against the bare skin just below his ear.
It was an innocent touch, surely. She moved her head, her mouth now ever so lightly touching moistly upon his ear, her breath a soft, warm whisper. That gentle exhalation of air traveled right into the core of his brain and snaked in a spiral down to his groin. How could she be so
warm?
She shifted in his lap, and he became aware of her breasts, rubbing him through the layers of her garments. He had never felt her against his body like this, except for dim memories in dreams. She felt so solid, so real. Her body had the heavy weight of flesh, and her arms around his neck were strong with muscle. A deep, rich, feminine scent of skin rose from her to mingle with the sweet-hay scent of her hair, and he held her close, pressing his face against her cheek and into her hair.
He let his hand rub against her back, feeling for the first time the heavy, silken texture of her white surcoat. It moved against the pink woolen underdress, and he did not know if there was yet another layer beneath that. If he pressed hard enough he could make out the ridge of her spine, the angles of her shoulder blades, and the narrow hills and valleys of her ribs. She arched her back in response, pressing herself against him, her mouth opening on his ear.
Her tongue came out and traced lightly over his lobe. The sensation made him groan, and made him want to hear a similar response from her.
From behind he gently gathered her hair and pulled it away from the side of her neck, letting his fingers get lost in the warm, silken locks. She shivered in his arms, her neck bare and exposed, the neckline of her garments not starting until her collarbones. Her skin was as pale and smooth as custard, the only thing he could see in a room that had grown completely dark as they sat in each other’s embrace.
He parted his lips and laid them where her neck curved to meet her shoulder. Her hands gripped the back of his jacket, her fingertips digging into his flesh, and the rest of her remained perfectly motionless, waiting.
He pressed his lips more firmly against her skin and kissed her gently, then moved his kisses up the side of her neck. He heard her drag in a shuddering breath, and she tilted her head farther to the side, giving him more room, laying herself
bare to his mouth. He made his way up to the bottom of her jaw, and reached up to brush back stray strands of pale blond hair from her cheek and forehead, leaning back a bit so he could look her in the eyes.