Dark Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘Charlotte, darling, would you care to dance?’ The orchestra was just warming to a polka.

  ‘Of course, Freddy.’ She put down her glass and offered him her hand.

  He hesitated. ‘You’ll want to go and change, of course.’

  The smile faded from Charlotte’s lips as she looked down at her brand-new flying suit. She was rather proud of it. ‘Will I?’

  ‘Well, it would look rather ridiculous, wouldn’t it?’ He swept his sandy fringe off his brow.

  ‘Ridiculous?’ She took a step away from him.

  They had the attention of their little circle now.

  ‘I mean, for dancing, darling. You’d look rather foolish waltzing like that.’

  ‘Would I?’

  He was getting flustered. ‘Well, it isn’t really you.’

  ‘No.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘On the contrary, I think it is me.’

  Turning on her heel, she stalked away. He didn’t try to stop her, and she was pleased. Only when she passed a mirror in the corridor outside did she pause, and then it was momentarily, to look at herself. She touched her face. She had a scar now where a piece of flying glass had laid her left cheek open to the bone. She was rather proud of it when she wore her flying suit; it was reminiscent of the duelling scars that men of her grandfather’s generation wore. But when she changed back into a dress it became all of a sudden a horrible blemish. And there were other scars: a pink weal across her collarbone; a burn mark down her right forearm from when she’d brought her ornithopter successfully home even when in flames. They did not look good in the low-cut short-sleeved dancing dresses fashionable at the moment.

  Charlotte felt suddenly queasy. She couldn’t look at herself any longer.

  She set off through the crowds. She patrolled the veranda over the lakeside and the ballroom, the public dining area on the terrace and the champagne fountain. Everywhere people were singing and stuffing their bellies and getting as drunk as possible. An unusual mixing of the social classes was visible, and other behaviour that would have been unthinkable at any normal time was sparking off in darkened corners, as alcohol and relief went to people’s heads and they gave way to celebratory practices that ranged from the risqué to the positively debauched. Charlotte blinked in surprise and hurried on. She saw several groups of her old flying comrades, but avoided them all. Only when she checked inside the Aviators’ Chapel did she admit to herself that she was looking for Chief McGregor, but he wasn’t there.

  I need to speak to him, she told herself. This is my last chance. I need to … say goodbye.

  He’d been with the ornithopter ground crew at the awards and the parade of course. She hadn’t seen him since the ceremony finished and they all split up.

  In all these last weeks he’d said nothing to her about what had passed between them in his office. His demeanour had been exactly as before. Not a word or a glance had betrayed that any such incident might have taken place. And on her side she’d never told anyone.

  She found him when she returned to the private box that had been allocated to them among the cherubs on the third tier of the hippodrome. On the main floor below, the party was in full swing, but when she opened the door she found him sitting on the floor with his back to the balcony, invisible from below, facing the disordered ranks of chairs. His knees were bent up, his arms propped on them, and a large brown bottle swung from one hand.

  ‘Chief?’ Charlotte glanced around quickly. There was no one else in sight.

  ‘Laindon.’ He looked melancholy, she thought. He was down to shirtsleeves and his braces had been slipped from his shoulders to pool on either side of him.

  ‘You’re on your own?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had years of practice drinking on my own. Don’t you worry.’ Then he noticed the expression on her face and softened, adding, ‘It’s ginger beer. I’ve been really pushing the boat out.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Bloody ecstatic. Can’t you tell? Three-quarters of the pilots who came through my Deck are dead – but at least it’s over.’ He waved the bottle in her direction. ‘Care for some?’

  She came forwards to take the bottle from him, then sat on one of the chairs to drink. It fizzed on her tongue and burned in her throat; it was ginger beer just as he’d said.

  ‘Believe me now?’ he said with a small smile.

  ‘Thanks, Chief.’

  ‘There’s no reason to call me that now.’

  Charlotte felt a pang. ‘I’d rather.’ Then, because she felt foolish perched higher up than him, she sat down at his side, her back to the balcony wall. He took another sip from the bottle.

  ‘I suppose things will have to go back to the way they used to be now,’ she said.

  ‘No. Things never go back after a war. Things move on. Your people are going to find that out sooner or later.’

  ‘My people?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment.

  ‘What are you going to do now it’s over?’ she ventured.

  ‘Me? I’ll be leaving. There’s always work for an engineer anywhere he chooses to go. And I want to travel. I want to go overseas. I want to fly again.’

  ‘You do fly?’

  ‘Course I do.’ He looked exasperated. ‘I’m just too bloody big for a war ornithopter and my reactions aren’t up to dogfighting any more. That’s a job for young lads … and,’ he added with a nod in her direction, ‘young ladies.’

  She smiled. This was the Chief she knew, at his most mellow. But she couldn’t reconcile this man with the one who’d pinned her down in his office and made bestial use of her body. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks. She looked at her hands, at the fingers knotted together. ‘Before the Battle of the Peak,’ she said falteringly, before she ran out of the air that was rapidly leaving her lungs. ‘You know, that night –’

  ‘I gave you what you needed.’ He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring straight ahead, through the ranks of chairs, or perhaps at something a hundred miles away. His voice was quiet and emotionless. ‘You were overwound, like a watch spring. You were in such a state with the waiting that you were going to seize up at the controls, or not going to be able to get into the ornithopter at all. You needed something to snap you out of it. You needed something to fight against. You needed something to take your mind from the battle. I gave you what you needed.’

  Charlotte’s throat worked as all the answers and the questions and the accusations fluttered round inside her. ‘What I needed?’ she croaked at last.

  ‘You flew. And you lived.’

  ‘Nothing to do with what you needed then?’

  His eyes darkened. He spoke more softly. ‘I’ve needed you since the day you set foot on my Deck, full of fire and pride.’ But he still didn’t look at her.

  ‘You hated me that much, for being – what I am? And for you being what you are?’

  ‘No. I don’t hate you.’

  And Charlotte, wrestling with words that did not seem to connect to his demeanour and with a present that seemed not to connect to the past, could not understand what he was saying. Why didn’t he look at her? Why was he so quiet? ‘You were so … rough,’ she managed to hack out, her own voice so torn up that it hardly sounded like it belonged to her.

  ‘Oh, I can be rougher than that. Rough as you like, when you need to do battle. Or gentle as you want.’ He turned to look her in the eye at last, his own eyes full of storm and sorrow and yearning without hope. ‘Whatever you want, Charlotte.’

  And it came to Charlotte that his burden was to be on the far side of a gulf so vast that no matter how loud he shouted at her, it only reached her as a whisper.

  ‘Oh.’ She started to tremble. There was only one thing that spanned that abyss. ‘Gentle, I think,’ she breathed.

  There was a yard of carpet and an infinite void between them; they reached across together and he took her in his arms and pulled her into his lap to kiss her. His mouth was gentle t
his time, just as he’d promised, but no less hungry. His arms were no less strong. His touch burned through the leather of her suit and set her body aflame. He tasted of ginger and endurance and disbelieving joy. He pulled her astride his thighs and she kicked over the bottle so that ginger beer fizzed across the scarlet carpet.

  ‘You are … a little white hawk … I release … from my hands … in the dawn,’ he murmured, kissing her throat. ‘And you come back … back to me … You smell of the clean sky … and the clouds.’

  She was shocked that he owned such words and tears brimmed in her eyes even as she whimpered with desire and writhed upon his lap. ‘I always come home to you,’ she whispered. ‘I want to come back.’

  Then he took hold of the front of her flying suit and unhooked it all the way from neck to crotch. He kissed her through the pearly-grey silk she wore there – much daintier than her wartime flying chemise – and his hot mouth left cold patches on the thin material. He pulled her right up over him, so that her breasts were in his face and she was leaning on him, her bottom cradled in his arms. She could almost see over the balcony but she shut her eyes and lowered her face over his head, smelling the spicy pomade in his hair, stirring the untidy curls at the back of his neck with her fingers, feeling his lips and his teeth on her as he pushed her chemise up over her breasts and nuzzled upon the bare flesh. He teased her nipples with his tongue, his suckling an exquisite pleasure. She pressed her pubic mound against the hard wall of his torso and groaned unrestrainedly. She was burning. The sheath of leather about her body was an unbearable frustration.

  Just as she was beginning to think she might come if only he would bite her nipple properly, he let her slide down into his lap again. They kissed, breathless, open-eyed; not in wonder or hunger this time but knowing, and almost afraid of what was going to happen. She sought the thick bulge of his cock through the wool of his trousers and felt it heave against the pressure of her hand.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he whispered, so softly the cherubs could not have heard him.

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Their lips met in melting union. She broke away first, so that she could look down and watch her hands open the buttons of his fly. His erection beat like a heart under its caul of fine cotton. He helped her draw it out into the light and she grasped it in both hands, stroking the velvet skin that slid so enticingly over such hardness.

  He slipped one hand carefully down the front of her flying suit, cupping her pubic area, fingertips sliding into wetness. It was a tight fit.

  I will stroke him till he spends, she thought. He will come in my hands just as I come on his.

  But she had no chance. He was much, much better than her – either that or more versed in self-control. His hand squeezed and his fingers stirred and she lost concentration, forgot to stroke, swayed on his thighs and sagged against him. He had to hold her upright with his other hand as within brief minutes he rubbed her slipperiness into squirming, gasping, flushing crisis and tipped her into a defeat she regretted not one whit.

  ‘Does that make up for what I did before?’ he asked, brushing his lips across her scarred cheek as she opened her eyes and tried to focus again.

  ‘It’s a start,’ she allowed, regaining her grip on his cock.

  He looked at her intently, his smile fading, a vertical line between his brows.

  ‘Bugger this,’ he muttered. Then he pushed her gently from his lap and tucked his decidedly unco-operative prick into his clothes again, his fingers fumbling on the buttons.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Charlotte cried as he stood up.

  ‘To bed.’ He stooped and picked her up, cradling her easily in his arms. ‘And you’re coming with me. Don’t waste your breath arguing.’

  ‘Yes, Chief,’ she said.

  ‘James. Or Jim.’

  ‘Chief.’

  He laughed. He carried her right through the long corridors of the Royal Hippodrome down to where the ornithopters were parked on the plaza. They passed people Charlotte knew, and she twined her arms about his neck and looked at their shocked faces doe-eyed, pleased that Freddy would know about this long before morning, that there would be no need for awkward negotiations.

  As they approached the ornithopter bays they walked straight past a bunch of engineers and pilots who were drinking together. They gaped at the sight of their Chief with Charlotte in his arms, then began to cheer and stamp their approval. Even the Hon. Alicia Holdstock, who was draped over the laps of three engineers, flashed a grin and waved.

  Charlotte took a look at the Chief’s face then. It was set with determination but there was a glitter of a proud smile in his eyes. He caught her glance and right in the doorway to the bays he paused, ignoring the whooping of his men, and kissed her.

  Charlotte knew then that he was right. The war was over. Nothing could go back to being the same.

  Ruby Seeds

  ‘CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL?’

  He materialises at my elbow, a glass in either hand, as I’d hoped. He’s been watching me on and off for an hour, but my going out on the balcony has spurred him into action. There’s an autumnal bite to the night air so we’re almost alone. I give him a sideways smile.

  ‘You don’t look like a wine waiter.’ Then I take the glass, which has been overfilled. The cocktail is a pale red. My fingertips brush his.

  ‘No?’ His grin is insouciant. ‘What do I look like then?’

  I put my back to the balcony railing. The drop to the hotel terrace garden below is two storeys and the cold rail rests right across my bare shoulder blades, an inch above the back of my glittery dress. I give him an appraising once-over, rewarding him for his cheek. In truth he doesn’t look like a waiter because he’s too old, and too dishevelled compared to the slick youths who’ve been doing the serving. His tie hangs open at his throat. His face is bony with a broken nose and green eyes and incongruously dark lashes. He has intriguing hands: long and craggy, the knuckles prominent. ‘You look like you might be fun,’ I tell him.

  ‘Patrick.’ He tilts his glass towards me.

  ‘Saffy.’ The champagne flutes kiss and then we watch each other as we sip. The taste takes me by surprise: something that pink should be sweet but despite the fruity aroma the cocktail is sharp. Memory comes in a rush: Yellow rind breaking in his hands reveals a treasure of packed translucent arils like gems, not the insipid pink of fruit from modern supermarkets but a deep, luscious, almost purple red, juice running from the crushed tissues.

  With a sharp intake of breath I refocus on my surroundings: the hotel balcony, the party, Patrick. ‘How do I look to you?’ I wonder.

  There’s a hint of teeth in his smile; he recognises he’s being challenged. ‘Bored with the party.’

  I’ll grant him that, though he doesn’t score high. ‘I’ve been to a lot of parties.’

  ‘At first I thought you were one of the athletes.’ That gives his gaze an excuse to drop from my face and go exploring. ‘A swimmer maybe, with a strong beautiful shape like that. But –’ he rescues himself from simple lechery by suddenly focusing on my hair and face with uttermost seriousness: on the black dreadlocks, pale skin, gold piercing in the side of my nose ‘– that’s not a swimmer’s hair. You’re track and field perhaps. On the other hand, you’re drinking. None of the athletes drink, not the night before the first heats. So maybe you’re like me, attached to a corporate sponsor. But – forgive me – you don’t look like a corporate drone either. Too much of an independent spirit, I’d say. So you’re a mystery.’

  I giggle, pleased by his ingenuity – and by the raw, tight lines of his body under the eveningwear. ‘And a mystery is intriguing?’

  ‘I find it irresistible.’ His green eyes tread a dangerous line, leavening their appetite with a hint of twinkling self-awareness. My own body squirms with impatience but I force myself not to seize him.

  ‘I won’t ruin it for you then.’ I brush the rim o
f my glass down my neck. ‘Some things you’ll have to work at finding out.’

  ‘I’ll enjoy that.’ He’s standing very close now. The electricity between us is delicious and I can’t hide a shiver as he brushes the back of my wrist with his fingers. ‘Are you cold?’ he murmurs, tracing a line of goosebumps up my arm.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Shall we go back inside?’

  ‘No.’

  His gratification is undisguised. He knows I am his for the taking. ‘Well,’ he suggests, ‘my jacket, then.’

  Slipping it off, he furls it gently about my bare shoulders. I ease away from the rail to make it easier for him and am enveloped in his warmth and the perfume of his skin and whatever male scent it is he wears. My sex responds to the pheromone shock by blossoming into wet petals. He runs his fingers down the lapels of the jacket, those big knuckles just brushing the jut of my breasts, his grip saying I could pull you to me, his eyes promising a rough landing. I’m still holding my glass. When he looks down it’s there between us, tilted towards him, the carnelian contents threatening to spill.

  Then Patrick lifts an eyebrow, the merest brush of his fingertip outlining the ring on my third finger.

  ‘We’re separated,’ I whisper. Most men don’t care, even when they do notice.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Nearly a year now.’ I don’t know why I have to say that and I’m annoyed with myself as the words slip out.

  ‘Shall I?’ He moves to take the glass from my hand, but I’m quivering with tension and in the exchange I manage to spill a little down the side and onto his fingers. I laugh and lift the flute and his hand in both of mine, so that I can lick the dribble first from the cool hard glass and then, my eyes never leaving his, from his fingers. I lap those knuckles and suck one long finger into my mouth, teasing the sensitive skin with my tongue even as I hold it captive. ‘Oh God,’ he says softly, with reverence.