Phantasmagoria

by Madelynne Ellis

  The church. So recently a place of happiness, now a bitter reminder of the confusion she still felt over Edward, clouded even further by the kiss she had demanded of Henry. Regardless of whether Edward came tonight, she had to break it off. There could be no happy ever after between them, despite Vaughan’s reluctant blessing. She was sure now that Edward’s enthusiasm had been more than a little forceful and too much to endure for a lifetime. She much preferred Henry’s subtle intensity. She felt sure that he wouldn’t demand anything she wasn’t prepared to give. He had even baulked a little at revealing his plan for making her pig-headed brother see sense. He’d feared that she might be shocked or outraged by the suggestion.

  The thought raised a smile. For years her brother had misguidedly tried to protect her from rogues such as himself, and all he’d succeeded in doing was making her more vulnerable. She would be far more careful with her heart from now on. Meanwhile, she would repay him in a manner he would not expect, and hopefully make something right about this whole sorry mess.

  ‘Niamh, Niamh. Hurry, please,’ Mae squeaked excitedly, tugging her forwards at a faster pace. The young woman was completely thrilled by every new revelation and fever dream that arrived to assail them. She might have liked nothing better than to learn that there really was an ancient demon stalking them in order to feast upon their virgin blood, and not just Vaughan and a parade of household staff.

  ‘Stay close, now,’ Aunt Beatrice warned as the gravestones grew more thickly around them.

  ‘Worry not,’ said the colonel, and was rewarded by the grotesque sight of Mrs Alvanley’s fluttering eyelashes. Still, her coquetry aside, she would turn from simpering old maid to vengeful harridan if there was so much as a hint of a threat to her charges. Edward would be a fool indeed to strike while she was about.

  ‘Look, what are those figures about?’ Mae skipped forward, her shawl looped about her arms and her fair shoulders bared to the night breeze.

  Niamh squinted into the darkness. The mist had almost cleared, but the night itself was thick and the moon behind a cloud.

  ‘Don’t you worry, m’dears. I’m sure it’s part of the entertainment.’ The colonel protectively stepped to the fore, blocking Mae’s view. Not to be stopped, she stepped around him and clutched a nearby stone cross.

  The church bell tolled mournfully above them. Fearfully, mouths full of their beating hearts, they watched as four pall-bearers wound their way along the path from the lychgate, each stooped beneath their burden, with their figures completely obscured by billowing amorphous robes. Niamh’s imagination filled in the details of the cadaverous features that lay beneath.

  They grew closer and set the coffin down by the side of a freshly dug grave, then slowly the lid began to rise.

  Niamh knew well enough that this was another of Vaughan’s gruesome twists, another staple of the gothic romances she and Bella so enjoyed, but still she watched the tableau unfold, her limbs frozen and a hiss of fearful anticipation upon her lips. It seemed quite blasphemous to present such images on hallowed ground, but her brother wouldn’t give a damn about that.

  She expected another white lady or perhaps a capering skeleton to leap from the box. Instead, an ear-splitting scream rent the silence apart as the lid fell aside to reveal Sebastian’s demon, come all the way from Persia to drag one of them down to hell. Clearly what offerings Sebastian had so far fed it were not enough.

  It did indeed leap from the casket to pound the earth before them and brandish its blood-drenched claws.

  Mae’s scream rang out, while Mrs Alvanley fainted dead away into the colonel’s arms. He struggled a little to support her and had to beg the assistance of one of the pallbearers, actually the boot boy, in order to lower her gently to the ground.

  The demon, meanwhile, chased the still squealing Mae around the tombstones for a few delicious moments before dancing away in search of more tainted souls to consume. There were plenty of those about, Niamh was sure. Maybe it would encounter Edward and send him running.

  As if on cue, the Darleston twins emerged from the trees where they had observed the scene. ‘Bravo,’ exclaimed the elder while they both enthusiastically applauded Mae’s part of the melodrama.

  While the colonel fanned Mrs Alvanley, Niamh sought her smelling salts and waved them under her nose. Perhaps it was time they went inside and spared themselves any more frights.

  ‘But I don’t want to go in,’ protested Mae, as Neddy Darleston waltzed her between a row of crosses.

  ‘Well, you’re coming,’ said Niamh. With a violent sneeze, Mrs Alvanley revived. ‘We ought to make your aunt comfortable, and I need to find Bella.’

  ‘Stick-in-the-mud,’ Mae complained. She’d always been the most bubbly of the sisters, but after her encounter with Sebastian earlier she seemed borderline mutinous. That, and Niamh distinctly saw her wriggle her bottom against Neddy’s loins. The little minx’s eyes widened. Clearly, she’d found more than she’d bargained for.

  ‘Mae!’ Mrs Alvanley was on her feet again. ‘You’ll behave yourself this instant.’ She gave Neddy a particularly vengeful look. ‘Colonel, if you’d escort my niece, I’m sure Mr Darleston and Lady Niamh will help me back.’

  20

  VAUGHAN STRODE THROUGH the castle, his focus completely intent upon his next target. He had forced himself to play his role a while longer before he succumbed to his own pleasures, but now he had some vague idea of losing himself in the moment, and of letting Sebastian subsume him and take away the residual pain in his heart.

  De Maresi was in the north tower, in the sitting room of the suite he was sharing with Raffe. He had his back to Vaughan as he concentrated on working the strings of the marchioness’ grisly puppet, which was suspended halfway down the outside wall.

  Vaughan clasped a hand over his mouth. ‘Sh-shh!’ he hissed. ‘ Quiet now.’

  For once this was going to be entirely on his terms, which is why he bypassed the preamble. Having made quick work of de Maresi’s breeches, Vaughan parted his cheeks and slid home. The penetration met with only the faintest resistance and a groan from de Maresi, as his body yielded to the intrusion.

  ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Vaughan whispered.

  ‘Yes … God, yes …’ De Maresi tried to turn his head.

  ‘I said no sound.’ Vaughan pushed his gloved fingers into the Vicomte’s mouth. He knew their taste. It was oddly powdery, and curiously underscored with a hint of musk. A bitter, cloying taste, although he wasn’t sure if it was the smell and not the texture he found so enticing. Either way, there was something about the white kid gloves that he found entrancing, a pleasure only heightened by the sensation of de Maresi’s mouth around them.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘There’s no more after this.’ Vaughan ploughed him with long steady strokes that forced him face first against the wall. It felt good to dispense with the subtleties and just fuck for a change. The bliss centred on his cock grew more intense with each stroke until he was almost distraught with the sensation of it.

  ‘Are you hard, François?’ Are you desperate for a touch?’

  De Maresi squirmed in his arms. ‘Vaughan, I’m desperate.’ He tried to speak around the fingers in his mouth.

  ‘Shhh! I warned you.’ He caught the man’s earlobe between his teeth. ‘You’ll have to tug it yourself.’

  He clutched de Maresi to his chest, his mouth still hot about his fingers and lost himself in their motion. Time stretched on into infinity. It felt as though a thousand thorns were digging into his skin, and that each pinpoint of pain brought the agony of a little death. He felt certain that de Maresi felt it too. His gasps were deep and raw as he worked his cock in time with Vaughan’s rhythm. None of this was about lasting. It was all about coming.

  Their breath steamed up the arched glass window. The puppet strings hung limp across the sill. ‘How is it with sweet Gabriel?’ Vaughan asked. ‘What would he think if he saw you like this, your little protégé? Does he know w
hat you are?’ Vaughan pushed his fingers deeper into de Maresi’s mouth and felt the other man bite down hard. He snatched his bitten fingers away. ‘Have you tried to have him yet?’

  The groan that erupted from de Maresi’s throat expressed everything clearly. ‘I can’t, he’s skittish. He’s young, he doesn’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve never found age to be a great determining factor in such matters. Either he’s interested or he’s not.’

  ‘I still can’t. I gave my word to a lady.’

  ‘You never did,’ Vaughan snorted, temporarily losing his rhythm. De Maresi whimpered.

  ‘Not like that. I didn’t mean like that.’

  Understanding slowly trickled through Vaughan’s thoughts, followed immediately by peals of laughter. ‘Oh, now I understand! You promised his mother! That’s pitiful, François, truly pitiful. Imagine it. “You must understand, Gabriel dear, that I would bugger you senseless, but I promised your mama that my intentions were strictly honourable.”’

  ‘That’s enough, Vaughan!’ De Maresi brought his palm behind him, hard into Vaughan’s ribs. He threw him off and turned around. ‘I don’t need to play your contemptible games.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you?’ Vaughan grasped de Maresi’s cock, which was still hard and weeping tears of precome. ‘You’ll play this final one to the end with me.’

  ‘Cur,’ de Maresi snarled as their mouths met. ‘You’ve only ever used me.’

  ‘As you have me.’

  Vaughan’s body trembled with a foretaste of orgasm. He rolled his hips in a figure of eight, jerking himself against de Maresi’s thigh as he masturbated the other man’s cock. The thorns were piercing his skin again, and somewhere in his dream world he wasn’t with de Maresi but a blond-haired angel.

  ‘What would sweet Gabriel think if he saw you like this?’ he said again, hardly conscious of the repetition.

  ‘Shut up, Vaughan. Shut up!’ de Maresi screamed, and his cry of annoyance turned into one of blissful anguish. His come stained Vaughan’s hose, but that was a mere irritation, as his own cock bucked and he started the blind climb towards orgasm.

  Vaughan let the physical effects roll over him, his emotions so complex and contorted he barely recognised them as his own. His knees buckled and he clung to de Maresi, not letting go until every last drop had been milked from his cock.

  ‘Vaughan,’ de Maresi whispered. They stood pressed together, sticky with sweat and semen, until their cocks grew soft. Only then did Vaughan peel himself away and clean himself up.

  De Maresi turned to him for a kiss, but Vaughan raised a hand between them. ‘Save it for Gabriel.’ He patted de Maresi on the shoulder. ‘We’re done.’

  Bella was exhausted, though strangely at peace. After Lucerne had made first one fateful announcement and then a second her world had fallen to ruins. Every moment since had felt like the real horror here was simply a welcome diversion. Why that had changed she wasn’t sure but Henry’s company had helped a lot. It felt good to laugh and scream. They’d stood on the roof and had howled at the moon until their throats were sore and her ribs ached from laughing. They’d even seen the demented Sebastian striding across the courtyard in his enormous hat, bellowing his threats and desires. Round the battlements they’d followed his progress, up onto the narrow stair that housed the flagpole where a bloody, severed head had fallen at her feet.

  Henry had laughed so much at her almighty screech that once she’d calmed herself, she’d thrown the waxwork at him and left a bloody splodge on his cassock.

  ‘You knew,’ she said.

  ‘You’re damn right I knew. I had to winch the bloody thing up there.’ Henry dabbed at the tomato paste in disgust. ‘It wasn’t easy either, since you and Lady Niamh crop up like mushrooms. One of you always appears at the most inopportune moment.’

  ‘The thing in the coach house. That’s what the fishing line was about, wasn’t it? I knew he was just trying to distract me by taking me down to the lake.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Henry mopped the goop on his torso some more, then held up his soiled handkerchief in disgust. ‘I think I’d better get changed.’ He tugged the unflattering robe over his head, leaving him in his shirtsleeves and breeches. Bella saucily tapped him across the backside with her fan.

  ‘Hey. You’ll get us both into trouble doing things like that.’

  ‘I won’t tell Niamh and Vaughan won’t care.’ The thought instantly sobered her. Apart from that one awkward encounter in the great hall at the start of the evening, she hadn’t seen him all night. It was almost as if he were deliberately avoiding her.

  ‘About that plan,’ said Henry. He didn’t finish the sentence; just let her reflect on the possibility.

  Bella bit her thumb. She wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure if it would work or if she could play her part with enough conviction, but she supposed anything was worth a try. Assuming Niamh really was game.

  Niamh emerged onto the roof a few minutes later while Bella was still cogitating the plan. Henry gasped at the sight of her. Bella turned, and the effect of the costume blew her doubts away. Sable ringlets across Florentine silk and a lithe, slim figure encased in tight pantaloons and black boots, with the soft, purposeful tread of a cat. Save the eyes and a few inches’ height, they were identical.

  He’d severed another tie. Soon he’d sever them all. Vaughan left de Maresi shocked and soiled by the window in the north tower and headed back towards the great hall. He’d assuaged his lust a little too, although his skin still felt tight and exquisitely sensitised, but he was far from satisfied. His demons demanded more willing victims, perhaps every soul in the castle, before he’d finally rest at peace again.

  There was nobody in the great hall. Presumably they were all still running like frightened mice about the gardens, set upon by his phantasms and ghosts. Vaughan crossed to the window and threw open the shutters on the central window. Moonlight spilled onto the stone floor, bathing the darkened hall with its silvery-blue glow. The mist was gone and lights twinkled in the upper storeys of the gatehouse, where he assumed Mrs Alvanley had taken herself to bed. The great gate still stood open, welcoming all into the arms of wickedness.

  A lone figure appeared upon the bridge, her long white gown billowing around her. Long brown curls tumbled down her back. Bella. Pain stabbed his chest like a lancet.

  He could hardly face looking at her. When he’d first planned this night of phantasms, he’d intended to end it in her arms and Lucerne’s. The three of them pressed naked together in his bed, hot skin moving against hot skin, their limbs entwined. But there was no possibility of that ending now. There never would be. Lucerne was gone, and Bella was going.

  Vaughan gritted his teeth as images of his two lovers crashed through his brain, wearing away the icy sanctuary he’d constructed around his heart.

  Outside, Bella came to an unsteady halt just inside the gateway. She hadn’t seen him at the window for her gaze was cast back the way she’d just come, fixed upon her pursuer. Devonshire, he wondered, or one of the other rakehells out to seduce her. He didn’t think she’d run from a ghoul. After a breath, she sprang forwards again but not fast enough; the hunter already had her. He spun her into his arms and thrust her back against the stone archway. Their bodies pressed so close it seemed they’d almost melded into one. Bella’s arms entwined the man’s back to rake at his coat. His dark hair fell in a cascade of ringlets down his back as their mouths locked together, their kiss deep, frenetic and passionate. So intense he was almost embarrassed to watch it.

  Heat washed through his groin. Hatred surged like a forest fire in his chest. But it made no sense. How could he be jealous of himself? For the vision before him was of himself with Bella. His mouth crushed hers. His hands moulded her breasts, cupped her bottom and pulled her firmly against his hungry loins.

  Yet he was here, and Bella had no right to entwine herself around him so tightly. None of it made any earthly sense. He pressed his fingertips to his face, then looked down at his hand
s, terrified that he would find them insubstantial, himself no more than the ghost of his long dead ancestor whom he’d raised for the night.

  His palms seemed solid enough and a cold sweat broke out across his brow, and shivers trembled down his spine.

  Beneath the gateway, their passion burned. The taste of her kisses shivered down his throat. A tightness clenched his chest while her fingers traced lightly over the sensitive skin of his stomach. His gaze was locked upon them. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t turn away.

  Bella’s hand slid lower, skimmed over the surface of his cock, then kneaded him harder. Her teeth troubled his earlobe. His mouth closed upon her throat. He no longer knew where the dream began or ended. Which version of himself was real? He felt every caress as if it were against his own skin until he was hopelessly aroused, his head pounding with the insanity of it all.

  Vaughan slammed the shutters closed and put his back to them. No more. He couldn’t take any more. The vision stirred all the emotions he’d been working so diligently to bury. He swept through the great hall and upstairs into the solar. Connelly cowered in a corner when he swept in but Vaughan ignored him and reached for a drink.

  He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know who he was any more.

  It was done. Vaughan had seen them. Niamh didn’t know if their plan had worked or what the effect would be. Only time would tell. She rested her back against the curved wall of the tunnel and let out a long expressive sigh. She’d experienced few kisses in her life: Edward’s, Henry’s, her brother’s … None of them kissed like Bella did. None of them melded their mouths to hers softly but as if a fire raged inside her. Her instincts had told her to pull away. The kiss had shaken her just as thoroughly as Vaughan’s but she’d had to continue. The performance had to be convincing. And that meant passion.

  She knew how Vaughan kissed – with his entire body, almost his entire soul. How he could walk straight afterwards, she didn’t know. She could barely breathe.