Unless it was with Jerrod. Her handyman. Her companion. Her Paladin.
Would she ever tell him the truth, or would the truth find him?
Chapter Ten
Jerrod pulled his vehicle closer to the mansion. He set the puppy pen up and dropped the loving little pooch into it with her blankie and toys. He didn't have much to unload, and what he did have was going to get wet, anyway.
My first storm on the beach. My first moment in the lair of the Mooncussers. Damn, I love being alive! There was a certain excitement of being near daddy's land—the forbidden beachfront property. Defiance suited Jerrod well. It always had.
Using his awakening carpenter's eye, he walked along the wraparound porch facing the cove, making note of each squeaking board, sign of dry rot and rusted nail heads protruding from weathered wood like gophers popping up out of the prairie.
On either side of the ornate, “gingerbread-encrusted” doorway were two leaded-glass windows. Original glass. It wasn't smooth. It was thick and wavy. The lead panes weren't even, and though most wouldn't notice it, he could plainly see a dire lack of symmetry in their design. But the scrollwork around the doorframe made up for any shortcomings.
Now quite grayed with age, flecks of blue and yellow paint dotted the hand-hewn exterior mill-work. At one time, this old house must have been a grand dame, indeed.
It was an old, grand lady who had aged well and still had a lot of character. And bite.
He reached out for the doorknob of the main house like it was a precious jewel, but found his hand inexplicably drawn to it as if he were made of steel and the house was a great magnet. His hand secured to the knob by forces stronger than the legendary gales of the cove, Jerrod remembered.
Humid. Muggy. Uncomfortable. Sunday go-to-meeting clothes were heavy and stiff. Flies buzzed around all their heads, attracted to the sweet odors of sweat, ale and remorse. On his high pulpit the priest sermonized and eulogized. Funereal trappings of black feathers, sackcloth and ash. Mourning regalia.
He was one and twenty, and his second child had come into the world one moment and died the next, taking his beloved with it. It. The baby had been malformed. Birthing it had torn his wife apart. She'd bled out before his eyes. His Marguerite.
He heard the soft sobs of his first born. He was too young to know his mother was gone forever. He was too young to know that his sibling was being buried in the church at the point of a blade. The men of the clan had insisted that the child be buried on hallowed ground. The priest refused, for the body was unclean and deformed.
That same priest now spoke with quivering voice above a rugged congregation, each holding a pistol aimed at his head.
The kin looked after their own.
Even the dead.
Jerrod felt the heavy keys of his station at his belt. He'd become warden of the storehouse, just as he'd always hoped. Even the highest-ranking kin didn't know how wealthy the clan truly was. Only the warden knew the exact accounting. The exact location of the treasure of the Mooncussers. In him, all their trust rested. And for that trust, they'd seen to it that his child was properly shriven and buried within the walls of the churchyard.
Wild and defiant Marguerite had wished to be burned on the spit of land where the clan built their false signal fires, and her ashes cast to sea. She would not enter Heaven. Thereby, once his child was safely in God's arms at the closing of the sermon, he would never enter a house of God again.
Jerrod's hand slipped off the doorknob from the amount of sweat pouring from his palm. As if he'd been standing in the rain, he was soaked to the skin in feverish perspiration. He turned the knob and entered the house, quickly closing the door behind him. Though brain injuries could manifest in many ways, he had not experienced a fugue state or waking dream before. He collapsed onto the first chair he saw. A heavy, claw-foot, high-backed piece of antique furniture, seeming quite out of place for its position near the center of the foyer.
At six-four and two hundred-forty pounds, Jerrod was not a small man. The chair swallowed him. He felt swaddled by its massive size. The chair was far more impressive than anything he could ever capture in a book.
He breathed in deeply, the perfume of history filling his lungs. His mind flooded with images. Satin petticoats and brass buttons. A cutlass, a pistol. Cannon balls the size of a man's fist. Fire. Blood.
There was no verbalizing the sense of wonder and absolute awe Jerrod experienced as he gathered his wits about him and surveyed the foyer. It wasn't just an entry hall. It was the belly of a ship. He knew what he was looking at—someone else might not have given the wood trim a second glance—but he recognized strakes when he saw them. Wooden planks connected by copper rivets. He had a book on sailing ships’ legend and lore in his rucksack. He'd poured over it for hours in the rehab sitting room while relearning how to walk and talk after the accident ... and had asked for it when he checked out of the hospital.
This old house has the skin of a sailing ship lining its interior. He twisted his back to look around the room a full three hundred-sixty degrees.
Feeling less affected by the waking dream, he rose and turned to face the grand staircase. Two tall, narrow, stained-glass windows flanked a regal and ornately framed oil portrait of Vesper. Vesper looking stately and prim in Victorian clothing, her hands folded neatly on her lap.
Jerrod gasped. The painting was incredibly detailed and intricate. From the wisps of dark curls along her forehead to the small mole above her lip, it was more a photographic likeness than a work of art. “That can't be her."
He dashed up the impressive crimson and gold-carpeted staircase to inspect the painting. A small brass nameplate affixed to the ornate gold frame did indeed bear the name “Vesper Highgate-Adaire"—though the date of the portrait was eighteen eighty. “It's her grandmother. Maybe her great-grandmother. What a startling resemblance,” Jerrod marveled. “What a gorgeous woman. Then, and now."
The staircase landing branched off to either side of the painting. The carpet changed from rich, deep red to a rather garish amber and green paisley to the left and a floral motif of similar shades to the right. The carpet must have seen a million steps over the years as it was threadbare in the high traffic area down the center. A brown splatter broke the pattern near the landing. Jerrod knelt.
"Blood?” he said aloud. “Is the very place where a Mooncusser spilled the blood of an unsuspecting victim?” He rose and took out his cell phone with its built-in voice recorder. “A blood stain ... a large blood stain, for my writer's heart tells me it is blood and not coffee or other discoloring agent which has damaged this no doubt vintage and expensive but God-awful carpet, blemishes the landing about four feet to the left of Vesper's portrait. This says to me that not all Mooncusser victims met an untimely demise on the shore, but that some survivors may have been tricked into a false sense of security here in this glorious house."
He addressed the six-foot high, stained-glass windows, trying to capture the images heavily wrought in lead and colored glass. The left window flanked Vesper's portrait with fiery detail. Brilliant yellows, reds and oranges of a huge Mooncusser fire. The right window was far more subdued. Blues, brown and black. Dusty white for sails. A broken ship. A wreck.
Jerrod reached out, wanting to capture heat from the stained-glass blaze. He felt the torch in his hand. He smelled creosote and tasted smoke on his lips. A memory surfaced, pushing through him with sharp, jagged edges. A memory of his father. A father who hated the beach, refused to roast marshmallows over a campfire and who walled up the fire places. Save for an occasional candle, there was no open flame in John D's house. Not even a gas range. Jerrod had once struck a match simply to watch it burn. Matches were forbidden. There was such power in the flame. He'd watched it burn the cardboard stick until it kissed his fingers, too entranced to see his father's glaring eyes upon him from the garage door.
Father made him eat the book of matches. Forced him to chew dry paper, sulfur and even the single staple holdin
g the strike plate to the booklet.
He'd made Jerrod believe fire was wrong. Fire was bad.
But Jerrod knew now, feeling the weight of a torch in his hand, that fire was in his blood. Father had been wrong. About fire, and so many other things.
Jerrod wished he could remember them all.
Being in the manor house of the Mooncusser clan, having been with the daughter of a Mooncusser, made him want to be a Paladin. In name. By oath. By duty.
He belonged. For the first time in his life, he belonged.
A small vestibule on the right side housed a second stairway.
Knowing the basic architecture for an early nineteenth-century upper-class home, Jerrod assumed it led to the servants’ quarters. The garret. The ladder to the belfry where Mooncussers once put spyglass to eye in hopes of spotting tall sails.
The middle two floors would have housed the family. The top floor, the attic and any sub-floors would have housed servants. The cook would have lived off the kitchen. The maids upstairs. The grooms in the basement or carriage house.
Jerrod blew the portrait a kiss. “Adieu, my lovely!"
He entered the darkened entrance to the upper regions of the manor.
The staircase was far from regulation. Jerrod's built-in T-square and carpenter's mentality cringed as the passage narrowed in a rather off-kilter fashion. The steps were high and steep. He climbed with bowed back. The height of the ceiling lessened with each step.
The narrowness of the passage encased him like a shroud. The walls seemed to hum and flicker with memories of candles and oil lamps being carried back and forth as the servants or their masters went about the business of the house. A fine residue of soot told that story. A paint can and a brush, dried with age and covered with dust, met him near the top.
The spiral staircase enclosure smelled of soot and paint thinner. There was a distinct aroma of pipe tobacco, as well. Not a good combination, that. Paint thinner and a heat. Combustible. Dangerous.
Jerrod smirked. Like Miss Vesper, herself. Dangerous and easy to ignite.
The back stairs led upward at a perilous pitch without handrail to a small landing bedecked with a settee and lamp table. Jerrod plopped down onto the sheet-covered settee. A modicum of dust rose from the impact.
Directly across from the settee stood a small switchboard. Or rather what resembled a switchboard. It looked like a turn-of-the-century intercom system.
"Too flippin’ cool,” he marveled. He'd seen one of these things on a British television show at the rehab center. If the mistress was in the parlor and needed her knitting needles from the den, she “buzzed” the switchboard attendant, who in turn buzzed the upstairs maid, who then dashed the knitting needles to the mistress. Jerrod smiled. I guess it worked better than shouting across the room. Hey, bitch! Get my sewing kit, pronto! I wonder who had the duty to sit up here all day. What a job.
Another staircase, quite a bit more steep and narrow than the first led off and up on his right. Two cramped doorways graced the left. A smallish cane rested beside the intercom.
"Ah, the disabled child of a servant ran the intercom,” Jerrod said aloud.
"No, she wasn't a child, just a very small woman. Though she was disabled. A tragic fall from the second floor balcony, I believe. It's all in the household ledger.” It was Vesper.
Jerrod rose. “How did you find me all the way up here?” he asked.
Vesper smiled. “Moonie told me you were snooping around the back stairs."
"Oh, really?"
Vesper playfully unbuttoned the top button on her blouse. “The house echoes. I heard your breathing, and your conclusions regarding the cane. It sounded like a voice from the past speaking through a tin-can telephone.” She pulled a second button open.
Jerrod turned and lifted the dusty sheet off the settee. Its heavy olive brocade still held a fine sheen. “Nice sturdy bench,” he said.
"There are nice pieces of furniture all over the house. This one is too big to get down the staircase, so it must have been brought up in pieces. Just for the servants. My kin always did treat their servants with respect. Good food. A day off now and then. Clean rooms and liberal rules regarding socializing."
"Socializing?” Jerrod asked. He licked his lips. Vesper had unfastened four buttons now. Her cleavage spilled out from her silky white bra most enticingly.
"There were many affairs. The master's young nephew and the groom's sister. And she was nearly ten years his senior. The head gardener and the son of the cook. Of course, male homosexuality was condemned if not practiced discreetly. It, at least, was accepted as being something a man might do when denied the love of a good woman. The first Vesper Highgate-Adaire and her love affair with the upstairs maid proved most scandalous, however. No one knew how to wrap that little bit of family drama up into a neat little Victorian box. It was the forbidden la fièvre de la femme. They probably stole kisses right here in this very room."
"Ah, the fire of a woman's touch. Yes. Very scandalous. Lesbian lovers in the Mooncusser mansion,” Jerrod replied.
Vesper stretched. “You speak French?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I think I do, actually. If nothing else, I understand the phrase. This place seems to be stimulating my memory. It's another memory engram waking up and smelling the coffee. Or perhaps I'm being possessed by the lost soul of a Mooncusser who once found pleasures untold right here on this settee. Or..."
Vesper smiled seductively. “You have no idea how much the phrase lost souls fits the Mooncusser clan. May their spirits inspire us to greatness. Why don't we rattle a few bones—on their behalf. You know, out of respect for..."
"For their memory,” Jerrod continued.
"Yes. In their honor. And in memory.” Vesper slipped out of her blouse. Her crisp white brassiere with its prim little hint of lace at the edge did little to hide the desire welling within her. Desire? Try need.
"Your nipples are hard,” Jerrod teased, tracing his fingers across the soft tricot.
"Your penis is hard,” Vesper replied, cupping Jerrod's crotch quite a bit more vigorously than he her breasts.
Jerrod smiled. “So it is. What shall we do about our various erect body parts?"
Vesper smirked. “Doggy style? We haven't done that yet."
"I'm game!” Jerrod quickly turned Vesper and teasingly forced her belly-first over the settee. He ran his hands along the backs of her thighs, lifting her broomstick gauze skirt as he climbed upwards.
She has the sweetest rear end. “You have a very nice derriere, my dear,” he complimented as his fingers slid under the silky fabric to knead her cheeks. “I've got to taste you. Right now. I want to devour you. I want to ... oh, Christ...” He didn't finish his sentence. The urge to bury his face between her fleshy cheeks was too great.
Jerrod pulled Vesper's silky drawers aside, dropped to his knees and ran his tongue down the crack of her ass from cleft to vulva. Vesper shuddered under the wet kiss. She positioned herself more comfortably across the settee, her rear end up, chest down and head hanging over the far side.
She felt exposed.
She was exposed.
And she was being explored.
Jerrod took full advantage of the position. He attacked her in a magnificent oral assault. He wanted to penetrate her with his tongue. He delved into her rear while stroking her clitoris with an errant finger.
She melted into a torrid puddle of submission as Jerrod initiated a pattern of licks and nibbles, probes and pokes. Never had anything felt so good. Never had she wanted to be consumed before. This was the passion and fury that had always eluded her. “Oh, my God, Jerrod. Yes! This is incredible!"
Jerrod gave her ass a slap. “You're right. You have an incredible butt. I wish I could eat you out and fuck you at the same time.” He slipped two fingers into Vesper's ready vagina. She lunged forward, shocked by the increasing waves of pleasure.
He resumed his feast, trailing his tongue across her perineum, letting it loll against hi
s fingers as they worked their magic.
Finally, he withdrew his hand and replaced his eager fingers with his tongue. It slipped in and out of her so easily. But he was greedy. He wanted more. He sucked her clitoris into his mouth and pulled on it with his lips and tongue as he slowly inserted his thumb into her vagina and index finger into her anus.
That did it.
Vesper just about cracked her head against the wall as she achieved orgasm. The old settee creaked and threatened to topple.
"Vesper...” Jerrod moaned, unfastening his belt. He unzipped his fly.
"Yes! Do it now!” she cried, still riding the wave of climax.
Jerrod positioned himself for vaginal entry, knowing that the pulsing muscles of her orgasm were about to surround and conquer him, and with one thrust, entered her.
Vesper gasped as he stretched her tight flesh, filling her. She shifted her weight on the settee, allowing one foot to fall to the floor. His long, slow thrusts aroused her, again.
He was burning for her. Hot. Pulsating. His ebb and flow pulled and teased her clitoris. She shifted her weight again to rest against her left forearm and reached between her legs.
"Oh, yeah. Go for it, baby,” Jerrod cooed. “Make yourself come again."
That won't take long. Vesper pinched her clit and rolled it between her index and middle finger. Still swollen, still sensitive.
She manipulated her nub in time to Jerrod's thrusts and fought against the flood gates of a second orgasm.
Jerrod paused, holding position. “This is sweet. I'm in so deep. One move and I'm going to..."
"Just do it,” Vesper begged. She began to move her hips, rubbing her clitoris across her fingers with each motion.
"Oh, Christ!” Jerrod cried. He dug his fingertips into Vesper's cheeks and pummeled her until he achieved orgasm. She wasn't far behind him. As the last vestiges of his climax poured from him, Vesper came wildly.
Mooncusser Cove Page 8
