The Dead of Haggard Hall

by Marie Treanor

  Susan, who, being still in mourning, didn’t dance, held her own little court of rigid good manners, looking indulgently upon the pleasure of the young people. Perhaps I imagined that she no longer seemed so resentful, even though through the entire proceedings, old Lady Haggard sat by her side in an ancient black ball gown and a face like thunder.

  Every time I saw Prince Bela, he was dancing and quite clearly enchanting his impressionable partners. Emily, of course, was trying to find him a wealthy wife to ease his financial difficulties, but I thought a girl could probably do worse than be married to Bela. At least he’d make her laugh. Although fidelity might be an issue.

  Mr. Faversham, while retaining his innate dignity, also seemed to enter into the spirit of the event. Not for the first time, I wondered at his long stay at the Hall. I knew he was a family friend and Arthur’s official guardian as well as a solicitor, but did he have no other clients? Was he completely indigent like Bela, who, I suspected, had nowhere else to go but by whatever charity was offered.

  I moved among the guests, pretending, mostly, that I had things to do, and was glad to overhear many comments praising Emily and her ball, including the light, delicious supper that provided some respite for both dancers and orchestra.

  The ball would be good for Emily’s confidence as lady of the Hall. I was proud of her.

  I permitted myself another couple of dances, since I was asked and was curious to see if my reaction to Patrick’s closeness was unique. It was. But I enjoyed my dances anyway, and if I imagined Patrick’s brooding stare upon me, it seemed only to add an extra excitement. Although I never caught him staring —I was too discreet to observe him—I felt more than one surge of desire and jealousy that amounted to pain. And I was sure it was Patrick’s. Whatever else, I thought Caroline was right about him being a troubled man. And if Rose had betrayed him with Hugh Cartwright…

  By the final dance of the evening, I couldn’t tell if I was more exhausted or exhilarated—on Emily’s behalf, obviously—but I knew I would sleep happily tonight and, hopefully, without any visitations from the lust bag. I seemed to have enough of that commodity on my own.

  Emily hugged me as we parted on the stairs for bed. “Thank you,” she whispered in my ear.

  “It was all you,” I told her, smiling, and yet I was conscious of a little twinge of something very like disappointment. She’d found her way here now and no longer needed me, or at least wouldn’t for much longer. It was what I wanted, and yet I had less reason than ever to linger at the Hall.

  It didn’t matter, I thought, as I collected my candle and made my way towards the old wing of the house. Emily and I would still be friends without the vulgarity of posts and salaries coming between us. And Patrick wouldn’t stay here in any case. He had to work for his living. He’d go back to London and continue his journal. I needed to concentrate on what was wrong with the house, discover if I could, the cause of Martin’s death, and Rose’s, so peace could return here.

  Approaching the corner with the two steps up to Patrick’s bedroom, I dropped my barriers a little, just enough to feel his presence, warming, disturbing. I rounded the corner, and my heart plunged into my stomach. Patrick stood there in his shirt sleeves, leaning against the doorframe.

  I should have muttered good night with my head down and kept walking. But surprise had already brought me to a standstill. The flame from my candle seemed to throw shadows over his dramatic face, shrouding him in intrigue and mystery, which was just how I thought of him. His posture told me he knew all the attractions of his strong, virile body. He knew now how much I wanted him, what I was prepared to do for the pleasure of his caresses. I had given that away with my person against the ballroom wall in the friendly darkness.

  It was still dark, save for the light from my candle and that seeping out through his open door. But the situation was very different. I was ready for him this time, and I disliked a man who made assumptions.

  He held out his hand to me in silence, without a word, as if that was all he needed to do. If only he knew how little that did for his cause. I opened my mouth to tell him directly, had already lifted my foot to walk on, when I looked into his eyes and read…desperation.

  He wasn’t sure of me after all. He wasn’t sure at all, just covering himself from the hurt of rejection.

  Slowly, I lifted my hand and took his.

  Chapter Thirteen

  His fingers closed convulsively around mine. I more than half expected to be dragged into the room and into his arms, probably only to fall on the bed and be ravished to distraction. But he touched only my hand and led me into his room in an almost courtly manner, closing the door before raising my hand to his lips and kissing it.

  “Am I right,” he asked, just a little huskily, “in believing I should not apologise for what happened outside the ballroom?”

  “Only if you regret it.”

  “Only if you do.”

  I considered him. “Would I be here to listen to apologies?”

  A smile flickered on his lips. Slowly, he bent his head, hesitated just long enough to release the inevitable butterflies in my stomach, and then fastened his lips to mine in a long, tender kiss that melted my bones.

  When it ended, I took back his mouth and began another. Only then did he take me in his arms and let me feel his arousal. But there seemed to be no hurry about him this time. Almost lazily, his tongue explored my lips, the inside of my mouth, as if learning me with exquisite sensitivity. I glimpsed the possibilities of this new, sensual seduction and was enchanted all over again. I raised my hand to his cheek, feeling the faint stubble re-growing there, and caressed with something like wonder.

  “May I?” he whispered against my lips, his fingers still on the fastening at the back of my gown.

  “Yes,” I replied, sliding one hand down from his stubbly cheek to his shirt buttons. “If I might also.”

  We undressed each other, a garment at a time, while I wondered when he would blow out the candles. It seemed he wouldn’t. When, with an embarrassment that was new to me, I hesitated at the waist of his drawers, he removed them for me, and my blood surged as he straightened.

  I had never seen such masculine beauty. Although, it must be said my previous experience of naked men was limited to Gideon, who’d been beautiful too in a quieter, more gentle way. Gideon had been a cerebral man. Patrick was overwhelmingly physical, broad-shouldered and muscular, every inch of him hard. His strong chest and flat stomach tapered to narrow hips and powerful thighs, with his penis standing up huge and upright between.

  While I gazed and gazed, he drew my chemise up and over my head. He dropped it, his eyes darkening impossibly, and I resisted the urge to cover myself.

  “Christ, you’re beautiful,” he muttered. “So damned lovely…”

  “Does loveliness have to be damned?” I asked unsteadily, trying for lightness to ease my sudden anxiety.

  “In my experience.” He caressed my shoulders, bent to kiss my throat.

  I shivered with bodily bliss while my mind worried. “Do you think I’m damned, Patrick?” I whispered.

  It was something that had bothered me for a long time, because of my gifts. A priest to whom I’d confessed them when I was sixteen had told me I was damned by God. Oddly, it was Gideon who’d slain that dragon, assuring me all gifts came from the Almighty and that if I was different, if my mother was, God meant us to be so.

  Patrick raised his head, his eyes startled. “Not you. Me. I behave badly around beauty.”

  I closed my arms around his naked back, feeling the muscles undulate to my touch as if every tiny part of him responded. He took me in his arms and lifted me, walking to the large, curtained bed, where he laid me softly on the pillows and settled beside me, teasing one nipple by circling his finger around it over and over while he watched my reaction. I turned my face into his shoulder and softly bit and licked h
is skin. He responded by bending and taking my nipple into his mouth, flicking it with his tongue. My breath came faster, my mouth opened wider on his shoulder.

  “You like such kisses,” he murmured. “Would you like me to kiss you everywhere I can reach?”

  Involuntarily, my hips lifted off the bed in need, and he shocked me by placing his palm between my legs and pushing me back down into the mattress, as if he knew what I wanted before I did. My body burned.

  “Is that a yes?” he whispered.

  I nodded dumbly, and he kissed my hair and my forehead, my cheeks and nose and chin. With a deliberation that was somehow bone-meltingly sensual, he slid his tongue over my lips and teeth and deep inside my mouth before fastening his lips to mine.

  I clung to him in bliss, wriggling to hold him, and stroked his muscled arms and shoulders and back. As he kissed his way lower as promised, he aroused me to fever pitch by his long, sweet attentions to my breasts, kneading and kissing with both soft and powerful caresses. The combination drove me wild, causing me to push upward into the still hand between my thighs. I moved against it, enjoying the friction.

  He slipped lower, sliding out of my hold to kiss his way down my stomach to my hips and thighs. All I could reach of him was his head, and then not even that as he kissed his way down my leg, licking the crease behind my knee and then on down my calf and shin to my foot.

  I smiled as he bent my other leg at the knee and began on that foot too, working his way up to my thigh. Only then did he remove his hand from between, and my heart fluttered helplessly at the thought of him kissing those curls—a hard kiss, perhaps, so that the ache farther inward would be relieved…

  But it seemed it was to be a long kiss, for he parted my legs wider and settled between before pressing his mouth to my pubic bone. I pushed upwards in bliss, and to my surprise, his lips slid inward to the crease above my thigh and I realized that even there he would kiss. A flood of heat swept over me like a tidal wave. I think I whimpered, but he was so intimate by then, he must have seen and felt the moisture of desire against his probing lips, now whispering among my most secret folds to find the little bud that gave such pleasure.

  His lips brushed against it, making me gasp and seize his hair between my reaching fingers. The soft, blissful kiss grew stronger, pulling, all but blinding me with sharp, intense delight. I felt his tongue, even his teeth, and the kiss went on and on. I could not be still, couldn’t have prevented the wriggling of my body if I’d tried. He held my hips to steady me, then pushed his tongue deep inside me and I exploded into joy.

  I felt his lips move still in their rhythmic kiss as I writhed beneath them in blind, helpless ecstasy, shaken to the core by a pleasure that went on and on.

  When I could see again, I tried to draw him back into my arms. He glanced up at me, smiling wolfishly with glistening lips and burning eyes. But he ignored my feeble tugs and suddenly I was on my front and I felt his lips on my buttocks. Weakly, I began to laugh.

  “Even there?” I got out.

  “Even there.”

  Still boneless and consumed with after-tingles, I didn’t object. His intimate kisses moved on up my back until he was lying on me, his weight largely on his elbows as he kissed my sensitive nape and those after-tingles soared, bringing me back to the verge of climax.

  I realized his arms were trembling with his own suppressed need, and tried to speak, to invite him. “What can I do?” I gasped into the pillow. “For you?”

  “This,” he whispered in my ear, and moved, drawing my hips suddenly upwards with him as he knelt. I felt his member probe between my legs, reigniting the fire there, and then, with a groan that moved me almost to bliss, he pushed slowly inside me.

  I reared up, gasping at the sensation, because I wanted to see him, and his arms closed around me, his hands over my breasts as he found my mouth and kissed me while pushing into me in slow, unbearably sweet strokes. He groaned and sighed his pleasure into my mouth, increasing my own tenfold. I held his hands over my breasts, pushing into them and against the hard body behind me.

  Although his body was loose, enjoying every abandoned movement we made, I felt his tension, his need. But he wouldn’t let me increase the pace. Instead, he freed one hand from my grasp of it against my breast and instead held me between my legs. I gasped and his kiss deepened. His fingers caressed among my soaked folds, holding me firmly, stirring me as he continued to thrust into me in slow, aching strokes. The pleasure built and built and although I knew it could be no greater than what he’d already given me, I moaned with the need to have it now.

  He didn’t let me, but went on stroking inside me, stoking the fire until his whole body trembled with it, and then, on the very brink, I flung up my arm behind me, around his neck, he opened his mouth wide and let us both fly into climax.

  Somehow our slack mouths held together as the pleasure shook us, our sweat-dampened bodies writhing and sliding together for a long, long, time. When, it seemed, we could breathe apart, he pushed me forward onto my stomach once more and lay over me, still buried deep inside, twitching for my pleasure and his.

  “If that’s damnation,” he rasped, “I’ll take hell.”

  I smiled into the pillow, warm and sated and more astonishingly, intensely happy than I could ever recall being in my life. And just like that, with Patrick’s weight upon me and in me, I fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  I woke to a warmth I hadn’t known for more than two years: a man curled around my back. Only this man was naked, as was I; Gideon and I had never slept so. The memory of last night’s loving was strong and sweet. He’d left his seed inside me. Soon, very soon, I was going to have to think about what I was doing with a cool head. But not yet, not now. It was still mostly dark, with the first light of dawn only beginning to seep through the curtains, and Patrick’s arm was heavy over my waist, his member, not quite soft, nestling against my bottom. I let this amazing new intimacy enfold me and closed my eyes once more. In a moment or two, I might push back just a little and see what effect it had. For now, I was contented with the gentle excitement of my awareness that could grow so easily into raging lust.

  Lust. For the first time since encountering Patrick at his bedroom door, I thought of the “lust bag” who pestered my nights. There had been no sign of it last night, or if it had been there, I’d been too involved in my own feelings and the pleasures of this world to notice. But now I’d thought of it, I imagined it hovering not too far away, making the invisible air pulse in the darkness.

  I made sure my barriers were in place to keep it out, and settled back into Patrick’s hold. I let my hand fall over his on my waist, savouring the physical closeness that spoke of so many other possibilities.

  His hand moved under mine, at first, perhaps, an involuntary movement of sleep, but then his fingers began to caress the skin of my waist, softly stroking around the curve to my hip, then inward over my belly. My breath caught as his hand splayed there, his fingers almost stretching down to the place that still ached from last night’s loving. I didn’t care about that. I knew from the early days of my marriage that the pain would be brief and vanish as the serious loving began.

  In any case, I already knew what his wonderful hand alone could do to me…

  But his hand swept upwards, not down, finding the curve of my breast and cupping. His thumb glided over my nipple and the delicious tingles of pleasure spread downwards, joining with the moist heat between my legs to envelop me in delightful, sleepy desire.

  His hand stilled. I wondered if he’d just wakened and realized what he was doing and to whom. I wondered if he regretted inviting me to his bed, thought the less of me, in spite of everything, for my being here. I was afraid to breathe while I tried to harden my heart and prepare for the kind of rejection I’d never before had to experience.

  Then his hand moved again. His breath brushed my ear, swiftly followed by h
is lips and his tongue, teasing, exploring. Against my naked buttock, his manhood grew and hardened with gratifying speed. He pushed his hips forward, nestling it between my cheeks, and moved lethargically as if already loving me. His breath on my ear quickened. His tongue flickered and his mouth moved over my cheek while his hand on my breast softly kneaded.

  Then, quite suddenly, he pulled me over onto my back and loomed over me. My heart turned over, for at dawn, rumpled in sleep and in the grip of morning lust, he was all I’d imagined and more. His hot, clouded eyes, the wickedly sensual curve of his lips, promised new pleasures. The muscles of his shoulders and arms were frankly beautiful, and I was already reaching up to touch them when he slid right over me and settled in the cradle of my hips.

  Suddenly, there was nothing remotely lethargic about my desire or his.

  “Barbara,” he murmured, that wicked smile playing around his lips. “Good morning.” And just like that, he entered my body, which was already more than wet enough to welcome him. Still, my mouth opened wide in shock as well as pleasure and just a little pain.

  “Patrick,” I gasped and lost my mouth in his slow, sensual kiss. He remained still within me while we kissed and my arms crept around his neck to hold him. In fact, it was I who made the first movement, an involuntary upward push of my hips in response to his kiss.

  He dragged his mouth free. “Are you sore?” he murmured with a frankness I had not encountered even in my marriage. “Will I stop for now?”

  Laughter and something else caught in my throat. “For now?”

  He grinned, for all the world like a naughty schoolboy. “Well, there is always tonight. Would you prefer it?”

  He meant it. The idea that he couldn’t resist entering me and yet was holding himself in such check so as not to hurt me, enchanted me. As his smile faded, I touched his face his lips, tracing the curve while a very different and yet pleasurable ache spread through me.