by Susan Napier
‘She won’t believe you’re serious about me...not when you could have someone like her...’
‘She’ll believe.’ His mouth was back on hers, this time demanding entry, his own voice thick with sensuous abstraction. ‘If I appear to be madly in love with you her pride will demand that it be very serious—’
It was like a dousing with icy water. ‘If I appear’... He only wanted the outward trappings of love, not the sincerity that was in her heart. A lie implied was as damaging as a lie spoken, as Vanessa had good reason to know.
Lies had destroyed her ability to trust, had infected her relationship with Benedict from the start. Secrets and lies. She was even starting to lie to herself now, telling herself she didn’t love him. And if she weakened and became his lover, who would he use in turn to get rid of Vanessa when her love became an embarrassing inconvenience?
‘No—’ She pulled sharply at his hair to make him release her and when he staggered back in surprise she twisted away and darted behind the kitchen table. ‘No, oh, no! I’m not playing that game. Lacey Taylor is your problem, you deal with it. Don’t expect me to help you do your dirty work!’
Something in her expression must have warned him how close she was to full-blown hysteria, because he backed off hastily, uttering soothing noises as he retreated which poured salt into her invisible wounds. She didn’t want to be soothed, she wanted to be loved—for herself alone, without guilt or guile. And for no other reason than that she was worthy of being loved.
Over the next two days, however, Vanessa found her sense of proportion returning as Lacey Taylor gave no sign that she noticed anything odd in the way that Benedict and his butler cut at each other with insulting politeness. Of course, she was so busy complaining about everything from the lack of air-conditioning to the smallness of the bathrooms that Vanessa doubted Lacey had time to notice anything but her own discomfort. She made it clear that she only tolerated Whitefield because Benedict was there, although he was spending most of the day shut in his studio with his nose buried in a sheaf of ‘urgent’ contracts that his colleague had handily produced.
Dane Judson was quite another kettle of fish, however, and Vanessa became resigned to the casual irreverence with which he insisted on discussing Benedict with her. Dane was a cynic about life in general and love in particular, but he made Vanessa laugh and she was not unaware that he had deliberately set himself up to be an entertaining buffer. Benedict noticed, too, which didn’t improve his mood, and his retaliation was to invent some entertainment of his own.
‘Celebration? What kind of celebration?’ Vanessa asked remotely as she faced the animated trio in the drawing-room on the third afternoon following Lacey Taylor’s arrival.
Benedict’s mouth twisted at her rigid lack of expression. ‘What kind do you think it might be, Vanessa?’ he taunted cruelly.
‘It’s a birthday party—for this creaking old inn that Ben seems to have fallen in love with.’ Dane’s swift reply rescued Vanessa from her vocal paralysis. A birthday, not an engagement! ‘He says it opened a hundred and twenty years ago next Saturday so he’s decided to have a party to mark the occasion.’
‘A costume party,’ Lacey announced gleefully. ‘I’m going to get mine sent from the States. I know a fantastic little place in the Village...’
‘Don’t go overboard, Lacey; I’m throwing a casual party, not the social event of the season,’ said Benedict drily. ‘This is strictly for the locals who’ve been involved with the inn over the years so I want the atmosphere to be very relaxed and informal. Mrs Riley has said she’ll arrange the catering with a community organisation that needs the funds and members of the historical society are going to rent theatrical costumes—’
‘You’ve spoken to someone from the historical society already?’ Vanessa asked, suddenly feeling a creeping sense of paranoia. Why all this sudden sociability? She didn’t think he was just pandering to Lacey’s boredom with the bucolic joys of small-town living.
Blue eyes gleamed, as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘Mmm. Miss Fisher, actually. Such a charming, enthusiastic old lady!’
This of the twittering spinster he had driven for hours to avoid on the day that he arrived! Now she knew he was up to something. Gone was the moody, sullen stranger of the last couple of days and in his place a man who looked dangerously back in control.
‘But—next week?’ Vanessa stuttered. ‘You’ll hardly have time to organise invitations, let alone extra staff—’
She might have known that he’d have all the exits covered. ‘The invitations can be verbal and we won’t need staff. I told you, it’s going to be casual, a BYO affair where everyone can feel comfortable, like a block party—except the whole community’ll be involved. Most people will be happy to pitch in and help where they can. So, you’ll be here, Vanessa, but in costume like the rest of us.’ He leaned back in his chair and inspected her from neat crown to sensible toe. ‘And I think I have the perfect costume for you...’
Right. Perfectly dreadful, no doubt! Vanessa didn’t trust that crocodile smile. Before she was sucked completely into the whirlwind of activity that Benedict’s brilliant idea generated, she made sure that she obtained a suitably sedate costume from Miss Fisher and had tucked it safely away in her room well in advance.
By the time seven o’clock the following Saturday evening rolled around Vanessa felt so distracted by the million and one calls on her attention that she had actually half wriggled into her chosen dress before she discovered that it refused to fit.
That was because it wasn’t the dress she had originally hung carefully in her wardrobe. That one was plain and decorous, as befitted an authentic Victorian lady. This one was all crimson satin flounces with black piping, with a neckline that made Vanessa’s eyes widen and a waist that made them water.
The other dress was nowhere to be found and when Vanessa found a box in the bottom of her wardrobe containing a stiffened black basque she knew why.
The crisp, precise writing on the lid of the box needed no signature.
I’m sure you recognise the dress. It’s from the daguerreotype of Meg on the copy of the Playbill in the judge’s files. I had to guess the colour, but the dressmaker assures me that the rest of it is copied faithfully from the original—hence the need for this...
And then, as if written merely as a careless afterthought, ‘Do you dare?’
As if she could be manipulated by a childish challenge! Even as a child Vanessa had never been one to accept a dare without carefully weighing the risk against the all too likely consequences.
But sometimes the choice wasn’t so simple, she thought, nervously remembering that Benedict had ruled that anyone not attending the party in costume would be required to pay a public forfeit. She had a feeling any forfeit he demanded of her would be considerably more trouble than taking up his stupid challenge. Maybe he expected her to choose the forfeit. After the difficult week she had just had, the last thing she wanted to do was to face another fraught decision.
She almost chickened out when she saw the results of her eye-watering battle with the hooks down the front of the rigidly boned corselet. Hourglass wasn’t the word. From the generous flare of her hips her waist was nipped in to breathless smallness, her pushed-up breasts almost brimming over the satin demi-cups of the bodice. Against the black satin her skin looked starkly pale, the erotic contrast even more intense when she had donned the black stockings that were supported by crimson garters at mid-thigh.
‘You have no idea what turns a man on.’
She certainly did now. The thought of Benedict personally choosing this time-honoured instrument of feminine torture and male titillation made her go hot all over. Practical application apart, the undergarment was frankly indecent.
Perhaps Meg wasn’t a totally innocent victim of unsolicited male aggression after all, thought Vanessa as she donned the dress which now fastened easily over her compressed flesh. Thank goodness the dressmaker had included a very unauthent
ic zip under the arm!
Even with the dress on Vanessa found she couldn’t forget what was underneath; it was physically impossible. Every breath she took was sharply curtailed by the curved bones pressing against her abdomen and the lush over-abundance crowding the low neckline kept catching her eye when she looked down. She couldn’t even see her black buttoned half-boots unless she craned her neck past the wanton obstruction, she realised with a little frisson of wicked amusement as she brushed her loose hair and applied her make-up with a heavier than usual hand.
She was startled by the numbers already present when she had finally psyched herself up sufficiently to emerge shyly from her room a few minutes before the party was officially due to begin. It appeared that no one intended to miss a single minute of fun, and consequently masses of people had arrived early ‘to help’, and then decided that the best help they could provide would be to create an atmosphere of raucous conviviality!
After she had briefly checked that the women from the local school’s parents’ association had everything under control in the kitchen and their husbands had the bars up and running, Vanessa allowed herself to be quickly swept up in the noisy ebb and flow of friends and acquaintances and strangers, the mutual hilarity over costumes providing just the ice-breaker that Benedict had planned.
The night was fine and summery, and it wasn’t long before people began abandoning the crammed house and the garage where a small stage had been set up for the band, to spread out over torch-lit grounds. The sprawling chaos provided the perfect camouflage as far as Vanessa was concerned and for the first hour, until dusk turned to velvety darkness, she flitted in wary circles, only once stumbling across Dane pouring punch behind a potted orange tree for a giggling shepherdess. His green breeches and flowing white shirt were in studied disarray—he was Don Juan, he informed her with a wink and an amused leer at her plunging neckline.
A little while later she saw Lacey at a distance, holding glittering court as an extravagant Queen Elizabeth I under the spreading elms by the lakeside bar. Benedict was one of her courtiers, unexpectedly dressed in the starkly plain black and white garb of a Puritan, and Vanessa was maliciously pleased to see how jarringly out of place he looked beside his flamboyant, red-headed Queen.
Some time later she was watching the dancing inside the cavernous garage, waiting for Richard to return with another glass of pleasantly intoxicating punch, when a black-clad arm suddenly slid around her tiny waist, drawing her sharply back against a lean, hard body.
‘Hello, Meg.’
For the briefest instant Vanessa allowed herself to lean against his welcome strength.
‘Benedict.’
He didn’t move and she didn’t turn. This tiny moment of possession was too precious, too private to be shared...even with him.
‘I’d accuse you of being elusive,’ he murmured, ‘but in that dress I suppose it’s the last thing you could be called.’
She tossed her head, barely missing his chin. ‘Whose fault is that? I didn’t want to wear it!’
‘But you did.’ His arm tightened.
‘I—didn’t have any choice.’
‘There are always choices, Meg. The ones we don’t take are often as revealing as the ones we do. Dance with me?’
He spun her in his arms and looked down at her. Not at her breasts but at her red-painted mouth. He was kissing her with his eyes. Even though he had his glasses on she felt the full impact of that look. His hand fluffed her hair. ‘Dance with me, Meg?’
‘I’m waiting for Richard,’ she said breathlessly, sure it was the wretched basque that must be starving her of oxygen. ‘He’s away getting me a drink...’
He looked over her head. ‘He’s talking to Lacey. Let him stay away. Besides, he’s not in costume.’ He looked back down at her, taking off his tall buckled hat and casting it carelessly aside, revealing the cropped darkness of his hair which so suited the austerity of his garb.
‘He didn’t have time—he’s just come back from ten days in Melbourne. He only got back tonight. He’s virtually come straight from the airport.’
‘Tough!’ Benedict looked triumphantly unimpressed. ‘He has to surrender something of value for his transgression. You can be his forfeit to me, Meg.’ He began to sway, drawing her into his arms and slowly blending into the passing flow of couples.
‘I didn’t think Puritans did anything as frivolous as dance,’ she said shakily as she instinctively matched his languid rhythm.
‘Oh, we can be seduced into the sins of the flesh like any other mortal. We just take leave to feel more guilty about them afterwards.’ He had both hands at her waist now, holding the centres of their bodies lightly together as he moved, the brush of his legs in their thick black breeches catching at her satin skirts.
‘I’m afraid what I know about seduction could be written on the head of a pin,’ Vanessa responded haughtily.
His steps faltered, but not his gaze as his mouth crooked wryly. ‘What fool phrased his compliment to you so badly? True seduction isn’t about knowing, it’s about being...’
His eyes gravitated inexorably to the plunging neckline of her gown. His nostrils flared, his sensual memory recognising the distinctive scent rising from the warm texture of her flesh, the scent that had lingered in his bed. ‘Just be you; that’s all you have to do to seduce me.’
‘You mean, be Meg,’ she said wistfully. In this dress she wasn’t supposed to be her ordinary self, she was his erotic fantasy come to life.
‘I mean be Vanessa,’ he told her huskily. ‘Infuriating, irresistible Vanessa. Do you know why I asked you to dance?’
She shook her head dizzily, and he answered his own question with a frank explicitness that made her breathing sharp and shallow.
‘I wanted to see your lovely breasts move for me. I wanted to watch them sway and ripple like cream with every tiny, delicious motion...every breath, every sigh. I remember how hot and spicy they tasted in my mouth, how taut and swollen they felt when I cupped them in my hands... Do you think any one would notice if I bent and put my mouth just there...in that milky soft crevice...?’
‘I would...!’ Vanessa clutched at his forearms, her shallow gasps turning to a startled moan as her head fell back and her knees sagged. The tiny red spots in front of her eyes turned black.
‘For God’s sake, Vanessa, don’t play the swooning Victorian maiden on me now!’ he said with rough amusement that turned to rueful dismay as she continued to sink, her back arching limply over the span of his strong hands...
He uttered a harsh sound of dismissal as someone offered assistance, half lifting, half carrying her wilting figure off the makeshift dance-floor and through the brick archways lining the back of the garage, to one of the old stable loose-boxes, kicking the bottom of the dilapidated half-door shut behind them. Here at least they were private, if not peaceful, the open half of the door letting in a flood of yellow light along with the insistent throb of music and cacophony of voices.
‘Vanessa? You’re not going to actually pass out, are you?’ he asked with ragged humour as he propped her against the wall, protecting her bare shoulder-blades from the rough wood by sliding his arm behind her.
She pressed a hand to her compressed stomach and shook her head muzzily as she panted, ‘No...I just couldn’t breathe for a moment. It’s being trussed up in this dress—I can’t seem to breathe and dance at the same time. Thank God women liberated themselves from their corsets years ago!’
She took several more quick, heaving breaths before she became aware of the carnal expression on Benedict’s face as he slowly removed his glasses.
‘It wasn’t the dancing that took your breath away,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It was me.’ And having uttered that literal truth he abruptly did what he said he had wanted to on the dance-floor. The feel of his mouth sinking voluptuously into her mounded breasts made Vanessa briefly panic again and then her eyes fluttered closed and she gave up worrying about breathing altogether.
&nbs
p; Oh, what a lovely, lovely way to die, she thought as wave after wave of suffocatingly sensual delight clogged her heart and lungs and set her blood pulsing thick and sluggish in her veins. The faint bristle on his chin rasped erotically across her tender skin as his fist caught the bottom edge of her gown, dragging it up past her calf, her knee...holding her upright against the wall with his body as he slipped his hand further up under the crushed satin flounces to stroke the strip of satiny inner thigh laid bare between the garter and basque. Rivulets of fire flowed wherever he touched and lingered...
‘Open your mouth; I need to be inside you,’ he groaned, pulling his arm from her back and cupping one half-exposed breast possessively as he sought her surrendering lips hungrily.
Even through layer upon layer of satin she could feel his all-consuming need and suddenly nothing mattered but to assuage it. She ran her hands up his arms to cup his head, guiding him to the pleasure of them both, gripped by a fiercely erotic tenderness, her heavy eyelids lifting just in time to see—
Richard’s mixture of pained regret and embarrassment as he turned away, gallantly trying to shield the couple inside the box from the shimmering figure at his side. He wasn’t quick enough. In a split-second Lacey’s beautiful face ran the gamut from curiosity to shock, disbelief and anger before she spun on her heel and stalked away in defiant disgust.
Vanessa stiffened and pushed at Benedict, whose realisation that they weren’t alone had done nothing to bank his desire.
‘Oh, God—Richard and Lacey,’ she whispered despairingly. ‘They must have seen us leave the dancing, and wondered what was wrong—’
‘They had to find out some time. Now maybe Wells will stop sniffing around and find his own woman...’ Benedict’s crudely gloating satisfaction was like a slap in the face.
