The Erotic Return of Ambrose Horne

by Chrissie Bentley

  His hand was on the back of her head, stroking her hair. He murmured a name; not hers, but that of his wife, Millicent. That was good. She continued sucking, while her hand slid up the side of his leg and his hip, and across his belly, tracing light patterns in the flesh, and then suddenly halting, momentarily confused by the sudden heat that radiated from the long, hard roadblock her fingers had suddenly encountered.

  Astonished, she released her grip and raised her head. Goffman’s eyes remained closed; otherwise, he too would surely have seen what now transfixed Lady H_____. Instead, he merely spoke again.

  ‘Please Millie, don’t stop.’ ‘I won’t,’ replied Lady H_____, whispering in what she hoped would pass as the voice of a northern Squire’s daughter. Then she forestalled further conversation by wrapping her fist round the rod that now lay before her.

  Mentally, she chastised the man for telling lies – you could shave a good three inches off the description he had issued (‘well, no wonder no-one could find the thing,’ she joked later. ‘They were out looking for another one entirely’). But now was not the time to mourn that deception. Instead, she slowly engulfed his glans with her mouth and, as Goffman uttered a sigh of absolute pleasure, Lady H_____ was already composing the report she’d be writing in the morning, which would declare his case permanently closed.

  * * *

  She had just returned to her own room, bathed in the very first light of morning, when a hammering on the front door seemed to rouse the entire house. Making sure that her dressing gown was well and truly tied, she arrived at the foot of the stairway as a hastily-dressed-looking footman bid the delivery boy goodbye. ‘A telegraph, Your Ladyship. From India. It is marked urgent.’

  ‘I should hope it is at this hour,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you, Beanie, you may return to your quarters.’ She tore open the envelope. It was, of course, from Ambrose, and she was just about to read it when a movement on the stair caught her eye.

  Goffman stood there, his face flushed. ‘I heard the commotion. I thought there might be a problem.’

  Lady H_____ shook her head. ‘No, far from it.’ She read the telegraph aloud.

  ‘Found wife, still dead – stop. Memorised book, will write on boat – stop. Inform Goffman, mystery solved – stop. Returning immediately – stop. All will be revealed upon arrival stop – Horne.’

  Then she looked again at Goffman. He certainly had been startled by the unexpected noise; he had not even stopped to dress himself. ‘And talking of revelations, Mr Goffman, I fear you are undertaking one of your own right now.’

  He looked at her in confusion, then glanced down. A little exhausted from its earlier activities, a proud penis nevertheless bobbed between his legs. Turning with a sudden cry, he fled back up the stairs and disappeared from view. Lady H_____, however, had quite forgotten about sleeping. Now she needed to telegraph Horne.

  ‘Don’t return for Goffman’s sake – stop. Case resolved – stop.’ Then, just as she was about to ring for someone to take the note to the post office, she discovered that she couldn’t resist adding a final few words. ‘Proof that a man can use his brain on occasion – stop. But if this is what happens when he does, maybe it’s better that he doesn’t – stop.’

  The Strange Case of the Rearranged Marriage

  Lady H_____’s voice was almost aflame with passion. ‘Just remember, Ambrose that sometimes you don’t have to do anything. You can make things happen just by being there.’

  His head immobilized between her knees, Horne closed his eyes as he sensed, and scented, her body lowering towards his expectant mouth. The moment of contact was gentle, almost ticklish, the lightest sensation of lips against lips; if he concentrated, he could feel the slightest brush of her pubic hair on the tip of his nose, and he allowed his tongue to protrude a little, the better to taste her.

  ‘No.’ Her voice was soft but firm. ‘Remember your promise. This is my pleasure.’

  He retracted his tongue and lay still again. She was pressing down a little harder now, her moist bunny parting around his mouth as she began to slowly gyrate her hips, up and down and side to side, seeking both the rhythm and the precise pressure that her body demanded. Only then would her movements increase, quickening along with her breathing, and the pulse in the wrists that pinned his arms above his head.

  He swallowed, her flavour flooding his mouth, transmitting its magic directly from his taste buds to his loins and, for a moment, he concentrated his mind on the sudden strength and longing that he felt there. But only for a moment. Faster than he had ever imagined, and with an intensity that he had rarely witnessed, he felt her tense; heard her gasp, and then rejoiced as she ground herself into his still motionless face, wave upon wave of orgasm coursing through her body. And all he had to do was lay there.

  His mind flashed back to dinnertime. The main course had just been served when Lady H_____, apropos of absolutely nothing Horne could think of, suddenly announced, ‘The problem with cunnilingus is, knowing when and where to stop.’

  Horne glanced at her. ‘Many gentlemen of my acquaintance would inform you that the problem is precisely the opposite ... when and where to start.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Take Marjory, for instance.’ She paused. ‘And yes, I know you already have. Did you know, she has not allowed her husband to “chase the chambermaid”, as I believe it’s now called, for more than six years? And why? Because he never found her.’

  Horne speared a piece of potato with his fork, and gestured vaguely with it. ‘So why didn’t she just tell him where to look?’

  ‘Oh, Ambrose, you of all people should know what some women are like, in that respect. They’ll happily tell their man the correct way to do everything else, whether he’s hanging a painting or reshelving a book. But take them to bed, and they will silently tolerate any amount of ham-fisted blundering. Then, when they’ve lost all hope of it ever being done correctly, they’ll simply take it off the menu.’

  ‘You would say something.’

  ‘I would now. When I was younger I might not ... in fact, I certainly wouldn’t have. But the point is, even the best lover in the world can only stand so much instruction, and the chambermaid can be so sensitive sometimes, that just one caress too many can spell the difference between heaven and hell.’

  Horne looked thoughtful. ‘Whereas you can rub a man against a brick wall for ten minutes, and he’ll still say it was the finest fuck he’s ever had. So, what do you propose?’

  ‘Well ...’ Lady H_____ proposed; and Horne, as she knew he would, readily agreed. He even offered to postpone another appointment he had, for later in the evening, but she turned him down with a smile. ‘I really don’t think that will be necessary. Besides, what would Inspector Toynbee think? He’s had such a difficult time laying this trap for the American. Imagine what might happen if you weren’t there to spring it with him?’

  Horne permitted himself a loud guffaw, even as he contrasted her words with those that she’d uttered just a few minutes earlier. ‘Yes, just imagine.’

  Samuel Griffiths had appeared in London three weeks earlier. The son of a wealthy Boston industrialist, he arrived with a portfolio bustling with letters of introduction, ostensive passports to some of the richest and most powerful men in the land. Unfortunately, Griffiths had scarcely been in town for two days when he made his first mistake – he fell in love with the Duke of B_____’s daughter, to whom he’d been introduced at a ball. Worse still, the affection was apparently reciprocated, and that despite ‘Bessie’, as her friends all knew her, having already been betrothed to the young Laird of T_____.

  Of course there was a scandal – ‘after all’, Ambrose Horne mused when he first heard of the affair, ‘where would London be without another juicy scandal to chew over?’ Even worse, the newspapers, normally so circumspect over such matters, had thrown themselves into the accompanying fray. Some sided with the young lovers, the others – the older, more conservative organs – with the jilted Laird.

&nb
sp; Then the lovers disappeared, and the sides were drawn even tighter together. Only now, while some papers called it an elopement, and all but broke their readers’ hearts with the tale of star-crossed love, others declared it a kidnapping, and exhorted Scotland Yard to haul the felon in. Toynbee was the officer whom Scotland Yard charged with making sure justice was seen to be done; Ambrose Horne was the detective whom the Duke called in to ensure, simply, that it was done. For there was a difference.

  So far, Horne had accomplished just that. It had taken him two days to track down the missing lovers, huddling together in almost laughable disguises in a seaside hotel not 40 miles from London; and two minutes to see that there was not the remotest possibility that they were anything but madly in love with one another.

  The Duke agreed with him; had, in fact, suspected that all along. The old man had never truly relished the thought of his daughter becoming wed to the Laird, penniless (or, at least, impecunious) in his tumbledown castle in the wilds of the Scottish highlands. How much better to unite his family with this scion of the New World, with all the dynamism, energy and wealth that he was heir to.

  But there were problems; difficulties that went far beyond the understandable discomfort he felt about withdrawing his daughter’s hand from a long-arranged marriage. The Government, of which the Duke was part, had been having a rough time of things lately – too many narrow squeaks in the Commons, too many misadventures on the world stage. The Prime Minister, his opponents were saying, was too weak ... too liberal ... too soft to govern any longer.

  The news that the daughter of one of England’s most aristocratic families had been snatched from her family’s bosom (‘and by an American, of all things!’ – one could hear the outrage in every gentlemen’s club in the land), arrived at just the right time. It would give the Government the opportunity to prove that it was tough on crime; to show that it did care more for the well-being of Britons, than for its relations with foreign governments; and to remind an increasingly permissive society that there were still some things that mattered, like breeding, class and the immutability of a sworn vow.

  It was Horne who suggested keeping Scotland Yard in the dark; to allow them to continue searching for the runaways; to permit the Inspector to come within a hair’s breadth of catching the kidnapper. ‘The newspapers know Toynbee, and they’d know if he was lying to them. Better to let him keep on believing what the opposition parties want to believe, while we arrange everything else.’ So that was how he played it and tomorrow, the newspapers would report that, though the kidnapper ultimately made his escape, ducking aboard a trans-Atlantic steamer when the law was just minutes from apprehending him, at least his victim is safe at home, and the American authorities would be picking up Griffiths the moment his ship docked.

  ‘And all we have to do,’ Horne explained to Griffiths that same night, back at Lady H_____’s London home, ‘is clear your name before the ship docks in New York, and convince the Laird that he no longer wishes to be wed to Miss Bessie. The first task, I have left with Lady H_____ and the Duke. They have influence enough in so many places that a few well-situated whispers should be all that it requires. My duties, on the other hand, may prove more onerous. The Scottish highlands at this time of year are remarkably foreboding.’

  But they were also beautiful, as Horne discovered as he finally disembarked from a 20-hour railway journey, and looked around. Heather lit up the hillsides, the air was purer than he’d breathed in years, even the people – three others, a family, left the train at the same halt – had a ruddy, healthy charm that you so seldom saw in the south any longer.

  A carriage waited by the tiny station office, although not for Horne. His visit here was strictly unannounced – back in his army days, he’d have called it a reconnaissance mission, and the only locals who knew he was coming was the inn-keeper with whom he’d reserved a room, and who knew him only as Mr Watson – Author and Artist.

  Shouldering his luggage, such as it was, he began the mile-long walk to the inn and, falling into bed that night, Horne felt as though he might never recover from the bumping and jostling of his journey. But the glorious autumnal sunshine to which he awoke, and the smell of fresh porridge simmering in the kitchen, saw him awaken with an enthusiasm he never expected to feel. Even the prospect of another route-march through the hills to the laird’s castle did not disturb him; rather, with memories of the far longer journeys he had undertaken during his time in India jostling for room in his mind, he welcomed it. It would give him time to think.

  He summoned up all he knew about the Laird. The man was in his 40s – more than twice the age of his bride to be; had inherited his title and what property remained from his father, seven years ago. Prior to that, the young man had been something of a cavalier, paying long and extravagant visits to London, until his father finally sold off their Mayfair home. Since that time, the trips had become somewhat less frequent, although not so rare that he was unable to meet, court and propose to Bessie.

  A whiff of scandal crossed Horne’s mind. Something involving a young singer with whom the lad had been involved around a decade ago, and who was found dead backstage at the tavern where she performed. The coroner ruled death by misadventure – the poor girl swallowed a lethal dose of prussic acid – and the Laird himself was never even called to the inquest; he had in any case been miles away, on the other side of London, on the night in question.

  But that Irish writer who was often to be found at Horne’s club – Wilde, his name was; the editor of the Woman’s World – always insisted there was a lot more to the story than ever came out in public and, if he hadn’t been such a flighty devil, Horne might even have asked him for details. He made a mental note to try and contact Wilde when he returned to London ... depending, of course, upon what happened on this trip.

  The Laird’s lair was in sight, a towering white stone pile whose better days were two centuries behind it. A crumbling outer wall had not been touched in years and, though an impressively padlocked wooden barrier still blocked the gatehouse, a path had long ago been laid through the battered masonry alongside it, and up to the main entrance.

  A well-dressed, well-built young man was standing there, watching Horne’s progress up the path. ‘Can I help you?’ A trace of accent betrayed his highland origins, but the man had clearly spent many years south of the border. Horne looked him up and down. A stable boy, maybe?

  ‘I was hoping to see the Laird,’ Horne called back. He trotted the last few yards of path. ‘My name is Matthew Watson. I’m staying at the inn in the village. I’m an artist.’

  His companion did not look impressed. ‘Well, Mr Watson, I am the Laird, but I don’t see how I can help you. Except to offer you my hospitality. You’ve obviously travelled a long way.’ He stepped back and held the door open, affecting not to notice the expression of surprise that flashed across Horne’s face. If this man was in his 40s, then highland air should be bottled and sold as an elixir of life. He barely looked 25.

  Horne entered and found himself in what had once been the great hall, but now resembled an over-large and under-staffed public library, its wainscoted wooden walls haughty behind the clearly makeshift bookshelves that creaked before them, and a vast table almost invisible beneath further volumes. The Laird tugged a bell rope that was clearly as old as the castle itself; from somewhere high above their heads, a sepulchral tolling summoned a young woman. She curtseyed silently.

  ‘Ah, Morag. Whisky, please. For two. Now, Mr Watson, tell me about your art.’

  ‘Watson’ was a disguise Horne had often employed in the past; his accomplishments spilled from the detective’s tongue as second nature – the portraits he’d painted, the nobles who sat for him, and so on and so forth until, confident that his audience’s head must now be spinning from so many rich and impressive names, Horne concluded, ‘and I am here to inquire whether your Lordship would be so good as to bestow a similar honour upon me.’ Technically, Horne knew that ‘Lordship’ was qu
ite the wrong term to employ; that there was no ‘correct’ form of address for a Scottish Laird, beyond the antiquated ‘Master’. But he understood the aristocracy well enough to know that his neighbour would consider the error an honour.

  ‘A portrait?’ The Laird raised his brows and gestured around the hall at the army of ancestors that peeped out from over the bookshelves. ‘I think you’ll see that I have enough portraits here to stock a London gallery.’

  ‘And very handsome they are, your Lordship,’ Horne nodded. ‘May I?’ He gestured towards the paintings.

  ‘By all means. Feast your eyes. It’s what they were painted for.’

  Horne toured the hall. Lairds and their ladies dating back to the 1500s, children and pets, landscapes and hunting scenes. Only one thing was missing. ‘I do not see your good self among them, my Lord.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ the Laird answered slowly. ‘I have only ever had one portrait painted and that, I’m afraid, was destroyed long ago, during one of my sojourns in London.’

  ‘Then surely you would wish to replace it?’ Horne asked. ‘How fortuitous that I came here.’

  The Laird did not look at him. ‘Replace it? No, I have no wish to do that. But fortuitous? In as much as you are about to taste the best whisky in all of Scotland ...’ Morag had returned, as silently as before, and was arranging two glasses and a bottle on a small table in the corner. ‘Yes, I would say you are indeed fortuitous.’

  They drank and talked, and Horne was delighted to discover the Laird to be excellent company. They did not discuss art again, nor was the subject of the Laird’s ill-fated betrothal ever raised. But their conversation ranged far and wide, and when the Laird suggested Horne stay for dinner, the detective would have accepted no matter what the status of his investigations might have been.