Private Research: An Erotic Novella

by Sabrina Darby

  But that was all I really knew about Sebastian. After reading through two of his grandfather’s journals (which at one point had devolved into an almost pornographic description of some of his experiences at Harridan House), I was beginning to know more about the inner workings of that man’s mind than about the man with whom I was sleeping. Sebastian avoided discussions about work, about the regular poker game that he said would keep him late on Fridays, about family (other than what was necessary for the research), and about any of his obsessions other than sex and Harridan House.

  Why?

  Not that it really mattered. I only needed to know what was relevant to the job for which he was paying me. The fact that we were having sex was a side matter, a perk and an indulgence.

  Halfway through the morning, I put down his grandfather’s journals and turned my attention to the mystery of Anne Gracechurch and James Mead. Which lasted all of ten minutes before I went to visit my usual Internet haunts and to check my e-mail.

  There was yet another message from Sophie, who I still hadn’t managed to connect with via phone, asking if I was okay.

  I pressed reply, again. I’d done this a dozen times over the last few days but always ended up closing the e-mail without writing a word. Everything had changed since Sunday.

  Everything.

  But Sophie was the type who grew more convinced something horrible had happened the longer there was no communication. If I didn’t want her asking the British police to hunt me down, I had to say something.

  Soph,

  Staying longer. New situation . . . Will tell you everything when we chat. I’ll be online most of the day.

  M

  I sent my mom a brief e-mail as well.

  Bumped into a friend in England. Staying a bit longer. Research going well.

  The question was, which research was going well? Gracechurch? Harridan House? Or my exploration of Sebastian’s body and all the ways to give and receive pleasure?

  A HOT TONGUE on my sex, licking, sucking, thrusting up into me— I woke in a shuddering, bucking orgasm, struggling against the hands that restrained my hips.

  “Good. You’re awake.”

  Cool air touched me where his mouth had been. I cracked my eyes open, still reeling.

  “We have a drive ahead of us.”

  I closed my eyes again. Or maybe I’d never opened them. Maybe I was still dreaming.

  Except the feel of his fingers pinching my oversensitized clit was all too sharp and real. I yelped and swatted his hand away. He had an unnerving tendency to treat my body like his personal playground. Not that I really minded, but—

  His hands grasped my thighs firmly, pushing them back apart, and I knew, even before the heat of his body settled between mine, what was to come. With a contented sigh, I gave in to the hot length of him sliding into me. I could wake up this way every day. If only it weren’t so early.

  I reached for him, wrapping my legs around his hips and pulling his chest close to mine.

  “What time is it anyway?”

  “Six. We need to get to Yorkshire by luncheon, or my aunt will be very put out.”

  Yet he was still sliding in and out of my body leisurely, as if we had all the time in the world.

  “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday that we were going?”

  “Because,” he said, in as exasperated-sounding a voice as I had, “I didn’t know we’d be going until this morning.”

  Which then, of course, led me to wonder how long he’d been up.

  “No more questions,” he muttered, moving a bit more roughly, and the force of the motion took my breath away. Which he’d clearly wanted. Then he pulled out abruptly and turned me over, running his hands over the curve of my backside even as he slid back in. As every thrust pushed me forward into the pillows, I realized the significance of this trip: first, I’d be meeting his family, second, I’d be visiting the estate of a viscount, and third, he must have learned that his family did in fact keep records dating back centuries, or we’d have no reason for the drive. Sebastian’s fingers moved to the slick flesh between my legs, manipulating the small rise of flesh once more, and this time the release was harder, overwhelmed by his movements as he sought his own rising pleasure and by the weight of his body as he collapsed over me, pressing me down into the mattress.

  THE FIRST HOUR on the road passed by in a blur of music and music podcasts, from Top 40 to drum n’ bass. I fell asleep within ten minutes of being in the car and woke up on the M1 to Yorkshire with a stiff neck and surrounded by the incredible green of the countryside.

  It felt good to be outside of London and on the road.

  “Did you grow up there?”

  “At Stanton Hall?” There was a bit of incredulity in his voice, as if the answer should have been obvious. “No. Mum did, of course, and we spent quite a few summers and breaks there, but she moved to London when she married.”

  “So your mother lives in London?” That surprised me a bit. I’d only been staying with him for a few days, and sleeping with him for hardly longer than that, but somehow the idea that he had family so close at hand didn’t seem to fit. “Do you see her often?”

  “No. She lives with my sister. In Manchester.” He didn’t elaborate when I waited for more. I wasn’t particularly close with my own family. I loved them. They’d raised me well enough and done the best for me that they could on the salary of a Minnesota public-school teacher and a social worker, but in the last five years I’d visited my hometown once.

  I wanted to know more. About his life, about what had shaped him to become who he was, but I wasn’t certain how to delve deeper.

  “Your sister’s older, right?”

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “She was the middle child, if that’s what you wanted to know.

  The way he said that made me feel horribly guilty, but I did want to know more. Like how his father and brother had died and how that had affected him.

  Of course, I wasn’t willing to talk about my life in great detail either. Then again, aside from the last two years that I had reason to want to obscure from Sebastian, my life was fairly ordinary. Both parents still living, middle-class, working hard in a world where the American Dream was proving over and over again to be a figment of the early twentieth century’s collective imagination. My younger sister had stayed locally, pursuing a stable career as an accountant. She’d just gotten engaged, so likely a wedding would be a reason to return home soon.

  We stopped off for a coffee and bathroom break at Newport Pagnell and then again, nearly two hours later, at Woodall. I wanted to get off the main road and explore, but we were on a schedule, and Sebastian assured me I’d have my fill of winding country roads when we exited the motorway north of Leeds.

  The farther north we went, the thicker the cloud coverage and the more insistent the threatening shade of grey, until finally we were driving in a shower of rain, which I loved.

  Just after 11 A.M., we reached our exit and headed toward Stanton Hall, near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, which meant little to me since I knew next to nothing about English geography. All I knew about Yorkshire, in general, was the literary people associated with it, from the Brontës to Ted Hughes to Tolkien. I had very romantic notions of the area, and so far, as we drove in this moody downpour, it was fulfilling my expectations.

  It took us another thirty minutes of smaller and smaller roads before we pulled onto a long drive flanked with tall trees.

  Excitement rose within me. I’d been to a few historical houses over the last few months, but this felt different. Here I’d have access not usually given to the public.

  Here, I wasn’t the public.

  Stanton Hall was a fairly modest manor. As we came closer, Sebastian pointed out details about the house. It had been updated in the midtwentieth century to include all the modern conveniences, and then again in the last ten years. It currently boasted solar panels and a whole host of other environmentally friendly improvements. De
spite the updating, its seventeenth-century bones were still apparent.

  And there was staff. Like it was a hotel or something. From the moment we parked, there was someone to take our bags and hand us umbrellas. Perhaps I had once fantasized about living in a house like this, back when I was sixteen and reading Evelina or Pride and Prejudice for the first time, but I could no longer imagine it. Of course, no one could keep a house of this size clean or in good repair without the appropriate help.

  Edie Bosworth, or rather, Lady Stanton, greeted us at the front door. Sebastian’s aunt was a slim, petite, stylish woman of about sixty, in a silk wrap dress with dark hair cut into a bob, which showed off a pair of oversized diamond studs.

  Or what I thought was oversized. Likely, they were all the rage amongst her set.

  “Sebastian! Such a pleasure to have you here.”

  He bent down to accept her embrace and kiss on the cheek before stepping back to introduce me.

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Mina. Well, the two of you will have to tell me all about this mysterious research project over lunch. But before that, Sebastian, darling, you can have your usual room. I’ve put your guest in the pink room next door. Harry won’t be back until dinner, so it’s just the three of us.”

  I followed Sebastian up the staircase. A large painting of what looked like a young Edie, someone I assumed was her husband, and a dark-haired little boy, hung on the wall, and next to it were other smaller oil paintings. Of landscapes and of people I gathered were Bosworth ancestors. It all looked very traditional, and I wondered where they would hang the more modern art, assuming they had any interest in art outside of family heritage.

  FOR LUNCH, WE sat down at the end of a dining table that could seat fourteen comfortably and possibly squeeze another two in if necessary. But the formality of the meal stopped at the decor. The cook, or maybe one of the maids, had set out an assortment of sandwiches and cold salads.

  After a few brief questions about me and my visit to England, Edie switched to a discussion of family. Her sister had recently moved to Spain with her husband, a retired surgeon. Their children were all married with small children of their own, and I listened to a brief recital of how Marissa was studying Mandarin Chinese and Alex was preparing for his 11+ Common Entrance Exam.

  “If you’d come up last weekend, you would have caught Lydia.” This was Edie’s youngest daughter. “But she’s off again, to Bali.”

  “I saw her in London not too long ago,” Sebastian said. “I went to her exhibit in March. We all had dinner.”

  “Nigel, too? He’s in Monaco,” she said.

  “Naturally. The race is this weekend.”

  “I wish he’d settle down already. At this rate, I’ll be seventy at his wedding.”

  “That’s assuming he ever marries. I’m sure Ned will be more than happy to take on the burden of continuing the family name.”

  Edward Bosworth, I thought instantly. Sebastian’s other uncle, who had three sons, both under the age of ten.

  “Hmmph.” Edie shot Sebastian a rather dirty look, and I wondered if their relationship was usually this tense and borderline acrimonious. It seemed odd, considering Sebastian felt right at home at Stanton Hall.

  “So, what exactly are you researching, Sebastian?” his aunt asked, switching the subject.

  “That private club Grandfather mentioned belonging to during the war. I was curious about it.”

  “Your grandfather.” She shook her head, her lips twisting. “I don’t now why he left all those ridiculous journals to you. He must have thought his life was fascinating, but he never left the estate. Not in the fifty years that I’ve lived here.”

  But Edie knew nothing about the young Colin Bosworth, who, according to his journals, had lived a quite scintillating life. I was curious to keep reading them, to see how he had charted his change from man-about-town to staid country gentleman.

  We all had the capacity for change.

  “And really, they should be in the library for posterity,” Edie continued.

  “The library you’ve been wanting to overhaul and throw into storage for decades?” Sebastian asked, clearly amused.

  “As it should be,” his aunt said defiantly. “Nobody uses the library or a single thing in it. This place is a mausoleum to the past, and it isn’t even because we’re limited by the National Trust. If we can have solar panels, why can we not have a modern interior?”

  The topic seemed one that had been well trod, but it offered the beginning of an insight into Edie Bosworth, who, unlike my first impression, apparently felt stifled by the trappings of history, the burden of a title and an estate.

  Sebastian shrugged.

  I picked at my food, spearing individual peas on my fork and lifting them one at a time to my lips. This conversation wasn’t my battle, and the only thing I needed to do was be polite, noncommittal, and available for research.

  “In any event, whatever you want would be in the library or the attic,” Edie said with a sigh, as if realizing her complaints had fallen on deaf ears, and there was no point in continuing.

  Which meant it was time for me to start the polite part. “The drive from the M1 was so beautiful,” I said brightly. “What are the cannot-be-missed sights in the neighborhood?”

  AFTER LUNCH, SEBASTIAN walked me through the gallery, which was filled with more paintings of his ancestors.

  “This is incredible.” I tried to imagine Sebastian growing up here, spending his summers running about this huge house. My own childhood home could likely fit in the gallery alone. “Were you ever jealous? You know, that your family had to live elsewhere?”

  “Yes and no.” I looked at him in surprise. I hadn’t really expected an answer. Sebastian usually avoided anything that delved beneath the surface. Beneath his surface; he’d been more than happy to listen to me fall apart earlier in the week. “I have a healthy respect for history. For my family’s history, which no one else in the family seems to have.”

  Apparently, the estate had long since been whittled down to the bare bones to pay for debts incurred over the centuries. The current wealth came from Sebastian’s late grandmother, who had been the heiress to a whisky fortune.

  “Preservation is essential,” he continued, “and England has its own unique approach to melding its history with the present day.”

  A history I was fascinated by, or I wouldn’t have spent my time studying nineteenth-century English literature. Yet, the older I got, the more perspective I had, and maybe even the more I struggled financially, I found myself slightly resentful of the idea of an inherited monarchy in modern times that owned so much of a country’s land.

  As if he could read my thoughts, Sebastian continued. “At the same time . . . I think aristocracy as a measure of self-worth is ridiculous. Wealth begets wealth. It is much easier to stay wealthy and privileged than it is to get there from nothing.”

  Nothing being where I came from. Nonetheless, I’d never wanted wealth. Sure, I’d daydreamed about castles and manors when I was a child, but I just needed enough—enough to not have to worry, to be comfortable. To finish my dissertation and achieve the very academic dream of graduating and finding a university position.

  “Wealth also apparently begets depravity. At least in your family,” I teased. “So let’s get down to business.

  We found the household estates in the library, where most of the bound family documents were kept. Big leather tomes. Loose items, such as correspondence, were potentially in the attic. Which was not particularly good news as heat rose, and the ravages of time were more likely to be visited upon items stored in a non-air-conditioned space at the top of the house.

  “I very much doubt the annual membership was paid out to ‘Harridan House,’ ” I said dryly, one of the books heavy in my lap. “From all the research you’ve done so far, I’d guess whoever collected the funds wanted it to seem as innocuous as possible, so we’re looking for holding companies, trusts, names of solicitors.”


  “Which could be hundreds, if not thousands, of entries for each year.”

  “Yep. But if we compare that long list from the year your grandfather last frequented the club to the year after, we should find where they no longer overlap. Which should be a much smaller list.”

  I handed him the volume for 1942 and 1943, being the one resting on my thighs. Then I retrieved a notebook and pen from my backpack and gave it to him.

  “And this would be why I’ve enlisted your services,” he said, taking the items obediently.

  I pulled my laptop out and opened it, starting a new document for my list.

  I slanted a glance over at him. “I think you just wouldn’t get the same perks and the all-inclusive service if you used a professional researcher.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m fairly persuasive.”

  “Ew.”

  He laughed. “Contrary to what you believe, I don’t sleep around with every attractive woman I meet.”

  I looked at him doubtfully. “I really don’t know how you remained celibate this year. I’ve never known anyone with a sex drive like yours.”

  Of course, as far as these next months went, I liked his sex drive. I enjoyed waking up to his mouth between my legs and the way he was ready for rounds two and three the same night. Just thinking about it turned me on, but I ignored the growing heaviness of lust and focused on the task at hand.

  We sat in the library, each in a huge, wingback, hunter green chair, for what seemed like hours.

  Luckily, the steward of the estate had been extremely detail-oriented. For the most part, it was easy to dismiss the great proportion of business and bills as normal household expenses. Payment for a membership to another gentleman’s club buoyed my spirits that most likely Harridan House was encoded somewhere in here. Or rather, in Sebastian’s volume.

  At five, a woman dressed in a black-and-white maid’s uniform popped her head in and asked if we’d like to join Lady Stanton for tea. Sebastian gave our apologies, and instead, the woman, Sara, returned with a heavy tray of tea, scones, and cookies, or rather, biscuits. Except thinking of the cookies as biscuits made me want real biscuits, fluffy buttermilk starch swathed in butter and jam. I moved the books off my lap and settled for a scone with clotted cream and raspberry jam.