Phantasmagoria

by Madelynne Ellis

  ‘Are you all right?’ Bella asked. She turned her head and gave her a quick smile.

  ‘I’m not sure. Do you think it worked?’

  Bella bowed her head. ‘Did he even watch us?’

  ‘Oh, he watched all right.’ Henry had a peculiar look on his face, as he emerged from the shadows at the far end of the tunnel. ‘Stood in the window and gawped at you. If that hasn’t shocked some sense into him, nothing on earth will.’ He squeezed Bella’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Give it a chance to filter through the laudanum haze.’

  ‘How much has he taken, Henry?’ Niamh asked, concern stiffening her back.

  Henry turned towards her and she self-consciously tugged Vaughan’s waistcoat down at the front, aware that his breeches left little to the imagination. They clung to her curves a little too well, a fact Henry could hardly ignore. ‘More than enough,’ he said, moistening his lips. ‘But I doubt it’ll leave any lasting damage unless he makes a habit of it. His pupils were like pinpricks the last time I saw him up close and he’s certainly gone a little crackbrained tonight, but your brother’s demons have always ridden him hard.’ He took her hand and pulled her a fraction closer. ‘We’d best not linger here too long. You ought to get changed out of his clothes.’ Niamh nodded and felt a blush heat her cheeks. ‘If he realises he’s been tricked, his vengeance is likely to be swift and brutal, and the plan will absolutely fail.’

  Bella nodded her agreement and all three of them walked back to the south tower. They paused outside the door. ‘I think I’m going to go in and see where he’s got to,’ said Henry. He bowed to them and went indoors.

  Niamh and Bella looked at one another. ‘Thank you,’ said Bella. ‘Though Lord knows if it’ll work. He might not even remember it come morning.’

  ‘Niamh, Bella,’ called Mae as she slipped out of the gatehouse, followed by Alicia a moment later. The pair joined them by the door. ‘Aunt Bea’s tucking in Fortuna. They’ve both had enough frights for one night and the colonel’s promised to sleep outside their door, just in case. What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ said Bella, allowing Niamh to slip away. ‘There’s a decapitated head at the top of the tower.’

  ‘Really!’ Mae squealed. ‘Alicia, let’s go and look.’ She took her sister’s hand and they scampered off, leaving Bella alone with her thoughts. Feeling slightly chilled, she went up to her room in search of a wrap.

  Niamh’s room was dark, apart from the smouldering glow of coals in the grate. She stepped out of Vaughan’s coat and breeches and shivered at the cold. It was nearly as chilly as outside since she’d stupidly left the window unlatched.

  Dressed in Vaughan’s oversized white shirt, she padded across the darkened room to close it.

  ‘Niamh.’ The sound of his voice chilled her further. Edward. No. Not in her room. Not now, while she was alone. She’d almost forgotten him in the excitement of the night.

  ‘Niamh,’ he said again, this time emerging from the shadows behind her. They turned in unison to face one another.

  ‘I told you not to come. I sent a message.’ The welt across his cheekbone from Raffe’s blow had now darkened to a livid shade of maroon.

  ‘I couldn’t desert you.’ He slid her wrap from her fingers and arranged it around her shoulders. ‘ Come now.’ With a singular purpose, he guided her towards the open window. There was a long drop on the other side, easily thirty feet until you hit the murky depths of the moat. She saw now that there was a grapple hooked over the stone sill. Its steel prongs glinted with the same ill intent visible in Edward’s eyes.

  ‘I’m not coming with you, Edward. I told you that even before I found out about Alicia.’ She backed away from the window even as he ushered her closer.

  ‘Hush,’ he said. Every muscle in his body pulled tight against hers. ‘Why should that affect us? It was a mistake and I never made her any promises.’ He clasped both of her shoulders, then sought her lips.

  ‘No.’ Niamh fought against his grasp by stamping on his toes. She pushed him off but there was no way past him. She was backed against the open window. ‘You deceived me. You lied to me. All you want is my money.’

  Edward shook his head in a twitchy nervous sort of way. His scowl, combined with the bruises around his eye, made him look sinister. ‘Do you think I’d take such a risk if I didn’t care for you? Your brother shot at me last time we met.’

  ‘I think you’d risk anything for gain. Did you think I wouldn’t find out about you? Alicia is my friend.’

  Edward drew himself up to his full height so that he towered over her. Niamh clung to the windowsill. The wind caught her hair and fanned it around her face. ‘You’ll come with me,’ he said, and he caught her wrist in an iron pinch. ‘I’ve a special licence. Everything is arranged for dawn.’

  ‘Let go of me.’ She struggled, but fear of falling limited her movement.

  With a sadistic chuckle Edward lifted her onto the sill and covered her mouth while he pushed a hand up her bare thigh under the shirt. ‘I don’t know which I’ll enjoy most, hearing you say, “I do” or feeling you tight about my cock.’ His gloved fingers dipped into the lips of her quim. Niamh bit his fingers where they covered her mouth and screamed, ‘Vaughan!’

  ‘Bad move.’ He pulled his fingers from her sex and sniffed at her musk upon the leather. Niamh froze as he pulled a leather belt from around his waist, thinking he would strike her, but instead he tightened it around her waist. She felt the buckle cold against her back, then the snap of metal. She lifted her knee and caught him between the leg, but not hard enough. He doubled but recovered quickly and, despite her kicking, shoved her backwards out of the window.

  For a horrid moment, she was precariously balanced; her upper body suspended over the moat and her legs still curled over the ledge. The door burst open, and Mae and Alicia Allenthorpe rushed in. ‘Let her go!’ Their breasts heaved from the effort of the sprint down from the roof. They’d found weapons. Alicia brandished an iron poker that she’d obviously snatched from Vaughan’s room and struck him hard across the arse. ‘Bastard!’ With a yowl of pain, he jerked forwards straight into Niamh.

  Niamh screamed as she fell. She anticipated the impact of freezing water, but she stopped a few feet above the moat with an abrupt jerk, and found herself dangling like a spider on a silken thread.

  Above her in the tower there were screams of panic, drowned out by a loud clear shot.

  Vaughan lurched out of his opiate haze and up out of the chair into which he’d sunk. The crack reverberated in his skull like a tin drum in his ear. ‘What in the name of God was that?’

  ‘Another of your phantasms, no doubt,’ drawled Connelly from the other fireside chair. Once he’d realised Vaughan was no longer a threat, he’d made himself comfortable with the brandy.

  ‘Sounds like fireworks,’ said Henry Tristan, rushing to the window.

  Vaughan shook his head. ‘The hell it was. It was a gunshot.’ His flintlock, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  He hurtled out of the room and across the drawbridge into the south tower with his beribboned breeches flapping about him like extra appendages. The door to Niamh’s room stood open. Vaughan charged in to find two pert bottoms facing him, their owners leaning out over the window ledge and his flintlock pistol spinning like a top upon the wooden floor.

  Vaughan stilled it with his foot. ‘What the devil is going on?’

  21

  BELLA DIDN’T HEAR the noise, up in her room on the other side of the castle, and even if she had, it probably wouldn’t have stirred her from her thoughts. She had no idea if their performance would have any effect on Vaughan, but anything was worth a try. She’d linger until tomorrow and try to talk to him again then. If his feelings hadn’t improved since earlier, she’d consider Raffe’s offer. Hell, she’d already given it serious thought. She could do far worse than be with him, regardless of the fact that she loved another man. Raffe, she was sure, would do his best to see
her happy.

  ‘Bella?’

  Speak of the devil and he appears. Raffe strode into the room and sat down on the bed beside her. ‘ I’ve been looking for you all night, where have you been?’

  ‘With Henry,’ she said, not meeting his eyes. No need to admit that she’d been deliberately avoiding him. Not out of any lingering contempt but because until she could give him a firm answer, there would be an unavoidable awkwardness between them.

  ‘Have you given my offer any thought?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t press me, Raffe. I can’t give you an answer yet.’

  Lips pursed and brow furrowed, Raffe sank back into the mattress, an action that reminded her far too sharply of Lucerne, and a wave of loss threatened to destroy her composure. Bella stared at Raffe, focusing on his muscular build and earthy manliness, the contrast between him and Lucerne, until her scrutiny caused him to reach up and touch her.

  ‘If you’re planning on turning me down, I’d rather you just told me.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ She lay back beside him so that their heads pressed together, and they lay in silence for several minutes just staring at the dark wood ceiling beams. She felt weary, but she didn’t think that she’d sleep, not without something to take her mind off things. She guessed the phantasmagoria had done that for a while, up until the point when she’d kissed Niamh. She’d had to convince herself that it was Vaughan and not his sister, just to make the performance more real, and then she’d let her passion burn for him as if it was the very last kiss they’d ever share. Perhaps it was.

  Beside her, Raffe rolled onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. ‘You do know he doesn’t give a rat’s arse about you, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said vaguely. Henry, Niamh and her gut instincts told her otherwise.

  Raffe sat up. His frown had forced his handsome face into wrinkles, and she caught a flash of what he might look like twenty years down the line. Still ruggedly handsome, but slightly more weathered. Age, she decided, would improve him.

  ‘Bella, he’s bored with you. Everyone says he’s been trying to steal you from Viscount Marlinscar for years, but since you broke it off yesterday you’re not a challenge to him any more.’

  ‘That’s not what happened.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ He cocked his head to one side.

  Bella got off the bed and turned to face him, her hands on her hips. Raffe rolled onto his side, a frown troubling his brow. ‘No.’

  He took hold of her hands and pulled her before him, so he sat staring up beseechingly into her eyes. ‘I’m offering you a good life. You know it yourself, and face it: your reputation is in tatters. If we marry, none of that will matter. Society will have to accept you.’

  She’d churned the same argument over in her thoughts, but the risk of social ostracism wasn’t enough. ‘Do you honestly think I care what people think? I’ve been sharing my bed with two men for the last three years. I think if I was worried about my reputation, I’d have been more concerned about it then.’

  His eyes widened and his mouth fell open in a gasp of disbelief. ‘Both of them?’ he blurted. Clearly the truth of her relationship with Vaughan and Lucerne wasn’t quite such common knowledge as she’d thought. ‘You don’t mean separately either, do you?’

  Bella let his hands slip from hers and quietly shook her head.

  Raffe’s broad shoulders slumped. ‘I guess there’s no way to compete with that. God, you must think me a right flaming fool.’

  ‘Raffe.’ She touched his forehead, not really sure how to comfort him, but he didn’t look up. Bella frowned. What had happened to simplicity? When had everything in her life become so serious and tangled? In Yorkshire … at Lauwine … nothing had been this complex. She’d slept with three men once in one day and felt no guilt at it. She’d wanted Lucerne but taken her pleasures elsewhere too, and she’d been happy except for a few minor hiccups. Bella stared at his bowed head and tried to remember what she’d thought of him when they’d first met. It was only a few days ago. She thought she’d admired him; he’d been dashing and tall, if a little too forward. His smile, she remembered, had been wicked.

  She wasn’t quite sure when she made the decision but she was conscious of the change it made her feel inside herself. London had changed too many things. It had altered her in ways she hadn’t expected and in ways she wasn’t sure she liked. It was time for the old Bella again. She’d take Raffe to her bed tonight; there was no earthly reason why she shouldn’t. Besides, in some ways he was just like a tidier version of Mark, her former groom, who’d liked to stud for her. Then tomorrow she’d have it out with Vaughan, and if he couldn’t manage to be polite, then she’d have done with him and make the best of things with Raffe.

  She touched his brow again and drew her fingertips down to his lips. ‘Stay with me tonight.’

  There was a curious glint in his eyes when he looked up at her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Bella leaned in and kissed him slowly, luxuriating in the feel of his mouth against hers. He tasted of spiced oranges and cinnamon, and he groaned nicely as she straddled his lap.

  Edward was gone and it was unlikely he’d ever be back. After he’d pushed Niamh out of the window, Mae had shot at him. It seemed she’d missed, something attested to by the chunk missing from the window frame, but Edward hadn’t stuck around to chance his luck again. He’d jumped, dropping into the moat with an explosive splash, which had left Niamh soaked to the skin and blowing like wet washing in a gale.

  It was lucky, Niamh supposed, that he had jumped because Vaughan had rushed in just a moment later and, despite the hampering of his senses, she was certain that he wouldn’t have missed. As it was, Mae and Alicia practically had to sit on him just to stop him tearing off in pursuit. Henry had organised the rescue with the aid of the other men. They’d hauled her back in through the first-floor window, for that had seemed less arduous and somewhat safer than driving a punt around the moat and lowering her onto its moored surface. She’d finally slithered back over the window frame, dripping wet and feverish with cold, still attached to the rope with something that looked like a cross between a wrist iron and a piece of riding tack.

  Now she was huddled in her bed in her thickest flannel nightgown, just about warmed through, and feeling exceedingly lucky to not be wallowing at the bottom of the moat with whatever other corpses lay at its murky depths.

  Nobody seemed to have noticed she was wearing one of Vaughan’s shirts and not her gown and shift when they pulled her back in through the window.

  Vaughan slipped into the room carrying a tray on which rested two steaming mugs. He perched on the bed beside her and offered her a drink – chocolate laced with his best Jamaican rum by the taste of it. Niamh gave him a purse-lipped smile. He seemed more himself than he’d been just twenty minutes earlier when he’d been forced out of the room by the combined efforts of Mae, Alicia and Henry, but his pupils were still tightly contracted so that his eyes were all deep violet.

  ‘What was he doing here?’ he asked.

  Niamh cradled the mug, allowing the hot liquid to warm her hands through the pottery. ‘I didn’t invite him, if that’s what you think. I told him not to come.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Vaughan stared thoughtfully into his own drink, which he showed no signs of touching.

  ‘You should have told me about Alicia earlier.’

  ‘I assumed she’d mentioned him herself. You do claim to be close friends.’

  Niamh dipped her head. He had a point. They’d all been keeping far too many secrets this past year, and no good had come of any of it. She supposed that’s what made her want to speak now. Her brother was hurting. He was not self-destructive by nature, leastways not in any ordinary sense, but he wasn’t coping at all well with Lord Marlinscar’s departure. Normally graceful and still, he was twitchy and distracted. She watched him pick up the poker and stab the coals, causing several sparks to fly up the chimney.

 
; ‘Vaughan.’ Niamh returned her drink to the tray that lay upon the coverlet and swung her legs out of the bed. Almost immediately, he was by her side again.

  ‘Stay warm,’ he snapped, although he tucked the blankets around her gently. ‘I’ll leave you to sleep. We can discuss things when you’re rested.’ He pressed a burning kiss to her forehead.

  ‘Wait.’ Niamh curled her fingers into the thick lapel of his coat. ‘Bella.’

  Vaughan shook his head before she had a chance to explain. Regardless of his black look, she began again.

  ‘You’re hurting her. And I like her.’ He tried to pull away but she held on tight to the cloth. ‘Hear me out, Vaughan. You ought at least to know. Raffe’s asked her to marry him.’

  ‘He’s what!’ Vaughan was off the bed and halfway to the door before his brain caught up with his gut reaction. ‘Confound the bastard! I didn’t invite him here so he could make doe eyes at my …’ He clamped his mouth closed tight. Niamh stared expectantly at him.

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My whore.’ He held her gaze, daring her to refute him but shaken by the revelation of what was unspoken.

  ‘You’re going to lose her,’ she hissed, holding his intense gaze. ‘And then where will you be, brother?’

  Vaughan’s rage contorted his beauty into something every bit as horrific as the parade of phantoms he’d set before them that evening. ‘I never had Bella,’ he snapped.

  ‘Fiddlesticks!’

  Vaughan’s eyes glittered. For a moment he looked as if he was going to swear at her; instead he swirled away from her so his coat fanned out behind him and he threw himself onto the chaise longue. ‘I can’t expect you to understand. You thought Edward was heaven-sent just because he flattered you.’ He pulled his knees up to his chin. ‘It was plain there was no passion between you.’

  ‘There’s plenty between you and Bella.’

  Vaughan blinked slowly, his expression growing suddenly guarded. ‘ Some, perhaps.’