Dark Garden
Page 9
Vienna sagged back against the smooth wood and pushed clumsily at her slacks and panties. Mason paused to drag them down and helped her balance as she kicked them aside. Gasping, Vienna felt the pressure of a hand between her thighs. Mason cupped her almost too gently. A low animal growl rose from her throat, and Vienna’s guttural answer came from somewhere deep down, a place she didn’t even know existed.
Spellbound, she drew Mason to her once more. Their faces were only inches apart. The air seemed dense, slowing the passage of time, and Vienna recognized something eternal and irresistible between them, a force she’d always known was there. It had been that way from their first look, from the moment Mason had hoisted her onto that horse and carried her off like the spoils of battle.
In the grip of some doomed enchantment, Vienna had belonged to her ever since. She could not imagine belonging to any other. The realization stunned her, and she fought it just as instinctively as she rejoiced in it. Fear pierced her erotic trance, turning up the volume on the frantic voice in the back of her mind that kept urging her to stop. She glanced distractedly around. She couldn’t let this happen. She struggled, but Mason pushed her hard against the railing, bearing her weight.
Her lips smothered the beginnings of a protest. The room seemed to recede. “Don’t fight it,” Mason murmured in pauses between deep kisses. “Wrap your legs around me.”
And then she was inside, and Vienna closed her eyes, blocking out everything but the frantic pounding of her heart and the gorgeous thrill of her surrender. Severed from all coherent thought, she dug her nails into Mason’s shoulders and bore down, abandoning herself to the rhythmic thrusts. A shudder locked every muscle and compressed her at the core, squeezing Mason’s fingers so tightly that they both cried out.
Mason slowed her strokes and Vienna met each upward thrust with a moan of pleasure. When the first faint tremors quivered through her groin, she bit down hard and a metallic rush broke across her tongue. Dazed, she lifted her head and tried to move her swollen lips. More. Had the word actually emerged?
Passion cramped Mason’s face. Blood stained her mouth. She licked it off, asking hoarsely, “What? Tell me what you need. Anything.”
Only seconds from letting go, Vienna couldn’t speak. Her eyes were anchored to Mason’s. You. The answer lay trapped on her swollen lips.
“Come for me,” Mason gasped out. “I want to watch you come.”
Pressure gathered until Vienna couldn’t hold back. Shaking, gasping, she spilled over the fingers buried inside. For a long time they clung together, propped against the side of the staircase, slippery with sweat. Then Mason carefully withdrew and held Vienna while she found her footing. Stroking her hair, she kissed her cheek and murmured Vienna’s name.
The naked yearning in her voice rubbed Vienna’s soul raw. Her eyes welled. Hardly knowing where to look, she focused on the items of clothing scattered across the floor.
“Are you okay?” Mason asked in a whisper.
“No, not really,” Vienna croaked out. She didn’t know what she felt. Shock. Desire. Despair. All were eclipsed by a sudden terrible panic that made her wrench away. Choking back sobs, she collected her clothing from the floor.
“Vienna…stop.” Mason touched her shoulder gingerly. “Come upstairs with me. I think we should talk.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” Vienna moved out of reach. Her whole body felt so tender she almost cried out as she dragged on her panties and slacks. Her blouse was unwearable, the buttons torn. Mason picked up her own white shirt and handed it to her.
“Vienna, I—”
“Don’t say a word.” A clock struck the hour, rattling her nerves. Vienna felt clammy as she buttoned the shirt and rolled up the sleeves.
Mason refastened her jeans with hands that shook. “I’ll walk you home.”
It took all Vienna’s self-control not to scream at her. She couldn’t believe she’d allowed this to happen. “No, I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so.”
Somehow Vienna found her boardroom dispassion. “Mason, this was a mistake.”
“No,” Mason said starkly. “This was meant to be.”
“I won’t deny we have some kind of weird chemistry,” Vienna said, refusing to get into verbal sparring. “But whatever just happened…it doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes everything,” Mason said, making no attempt to cover her naked breasts. “We just made love.”
“We fucked in your hall like a pair of hormonal high schoolers,” Vienna corrected her coldly. “Let’s not break out the promise rings, okay?”
Mason froze like she’d been slapped. Her face lost its color. In a voice rough with emotion, she said, “I’ve made a lot of assumptions about you over the years, but I never took you for a coward.”
“Well, now you know.” Vienna could smell their mixed scents on the borrowed shirt. The tangy residue stabbed at her heart and tore through her senses, undoing her from the inside out. Afraid that Mason would see her turmoil, she headed for the door. “I have to go.”
She wrenched the door back and darted down the front steps, cursing under her breath. She heard Mason call after her but didn’t slow down. A huge weight seemed to crush her and she felt like a child again, facing her father’s wrath after the horse incident. His words rang in her ears. You let your family down. You let me down. But worst of all, you let yourself down. The rebellious part of her wanted to yell Fuck you and fuck the family. She almost turned around right then and ran back to Mason, but she knew she would be running toward disaster. Everything the Cavenders touched turned to ruin. Mason would destroy her.
Tears flooded over her cheeks and she braced her shoulders against the sobs she couldn’t control. The day was overcast. A cool breeze gathered shoals of red and gold leaves and spread them in its wake. The oak trees creaked and the pines rustled. Vienna walked so blindly, she didn’t realize she’d veered across the lawn toward the temple until she found herself in its shadow. As though stepping into a dream, her feet carried her up the pale marble steps to the broad portico. She glanced back once from within the colonnade to be certain she hadn’t been followed, then slipped into the chamber.
A gleaming tomb stood beneath the high dome at the center, two separate marble coffins side by side. Vienna read the upright Roman letters chiseled into each: NATHANIEL CAVENDER and FANNY BLAKE CAVENDER. They’d married back in the days when the families were allies, so their son Hugo was half Blake. That hadn’t stopped him from murdering his own uncle, Benedict Blake. He’d then tried to take over the company their families jointly owned, waging a pitched battle for control with Benedict’s son, Truman.
Hugo and Truman had grown up together as inseparable friends, the men on whom the future of their families rested. Hugo’s brutal act had made them bitter enemies, and the Blakes and the Cavenders had been fighting ever since. No one really seemed sure why Hugo had murdered Truman’s father, but greed was the general consensus. Being two years older than Truman and half-Blake himself, Hugo evidently saw himself as the rightful president of the company. His mother Fanny was the firstborn Blake of her generation, but because of sexism her younger brother Benedict was destined to head the family. All the same, her status and her marriage to the Cavender heir meant that her son had been raised like a prince, the ultimate symbol of their united houses.
But the man who should have personified the best of both worlds, instead betrayed all they stood for. He was never charged with the killing. At the time, the Cavenders’ wealth and power made them virtually untouchable. According to Blake legend, the Cavender Curse began that year. Only days earlier Hugo’s wife Estelle had drowned in the lake at Laudes Absalom, soon after their son was born. At the time there was speculation that foul play was involved; after all, Hugo had a violent streak and some thought he regretted marrying the daughter of servants. Estelle had always been a problem.
Her mother, Sally Gibson, had been governess to the youngest two of the “Famou
s Four,” the appellation bestowed on Benedict Blake’s sisters, legendary society beauties in their time. A woman from a respectable family, Sally had married beneath her, wedding the Blake’s head gardener in haste after the couple found they were expecting a child. The Blakes had generously allowed them to remain in their employment despite this impropriety, and had even built a cottage on the property for the pair. After Estelle was born, she was treated like family and allowed to play with Truman, who was only a year older. The two children had their lessons with Hugo Cavender in the schoolroom the families shared.
They were taught by Estelle’s mother until the boys were deemed too old to take their lessons from a woman, then a tutor was hired, a scholarly man who educated them before they were sent to prep school. As the years went by, it came as a shock to everyone that by the time they entered college, both Hugo and Truman wanted Estelle’s hand in marriage. The girl who’d been like a younger sister to them all their lives suddenly became a cause of tension, with both men competing for her.
The Blakes tried to arrange a more appropriate match for Estelle, but she’d been brought up a lady. She wrote poetry and played the pianoforte. How could she be expected to settle down with a working man? Fortunately, being a Blake, Truman came to his senses in the end and married a suitable debutante. But Hugh Cavender always got what he wanted. Only weeks after his father died, he walked Estelle down the aisle, free of parental disapproval. A year later their son Thomas Blake Cavender was born. He never knew his mother, of course, and was raised by his grandmother Fanny, the woman whose gleaming marble coffin stood before Vienna.
Very few people knew their family histories going back almost two hundred years, she supposed, but the Blakes kept faith with the lessons of the past, handing them down as accumulated wisdom. Vienna had only been twelve years old when she was first permitted to read the diaries kept by Patience Blake, a forebear who had recorded the scandal with fourteen-year-old awe. Patience found the whole episode deeply romantic and had seen herself as a go-between, having at some point carried notes between her cousin Truman and the beautiful Estelle.
Vienna couldn’t remember all the colorfully embellished details, but it was clear that Truman’s advances were not unwelcome. Naturally Patience had read every letter entrusted to her and faithfully recorded the contents in her diary. Estelle’s short missives were models of propriety, offering only circumspect encouragement to the man bent on wooing her. Truman’s replies could best be described as the ramblings of a young man besotted. The communications had ceased abruptly in 1869 and Patience’s diary recorded the engagement of Estelle to Hugo Cavender, scandalously soon after his father’s funeral.
Eventually Patience had traipsed off to Paris where she had a long list of lovers, and gave birth to a daughter, Colette, whose fatherhood was a mystery. Patience’s European diaries had found their way back to the Blake library after World War One, carried by a friend of hers who reported that Patience had died of grief after her daughter was killed. Colette had been a battlefield nurse at a casualty clearing station near Saint Omer when German planes bombed the hospital tents.
Several of her letters were tucked inside one of Patience’s diaries along with a faded sepia photograph of a soldier who’d been courting Colette. Their contents had always intrigued Vienna because Colette carefully avoided the use of a pronoun when describing her beau and wrote strangely feminine descriptions of him. Vienna had recognized something in those letters that made her question her own sexuality for the first time. She’d always wondered what had happened to the officer in the photograph. Killed, no doubt, in a muddy, rat-infested trench on the Western Front and buried in a common grave.
She sighed and stared out the arched doorway to the lake. Two white swans glided together across the tranquil surface and Vienna recalled that the birds mated for life. Some even formed same-sex couples, like Romeo and Juliet, the famous pair whose return to Boston Public Garden was celebrated with a parade every year. When they were outed not so long ago as two Juliets, the city was in shock for months.
She stepped back outside and sat down on a carved bench overlooking the water. Her legs had stopped shaking and her mind had cleared, allowing her to reclaim the detachment she’d abandoned earlier. The sky was grim, casting the lofty pines along the lake’s eastern shore into deep shadow. Their pungent sweetness hung on the still air, and beneath the gathering rain clouds, the moribund fortress of Laudes Absalom languished in its decay. The deep silence of the surroundings was broken only by the cry of a bird somewhere above.
As Vienna looked up, a raven swooped low over the temple, inspecting her in several passes, then landed on the portico step a few yards away. Carrying something in its beak, the bird pranced fearlessly toward her, its bold eyes fixed on her face. Vienna sat very still and it hopped up onto the bench. Before she could touch its glossy black feathers, it dropped a small, tightly rolled piece of paper in her lap and instantly took flight in the direction of the house.
Disconcerted, Vienna unfurled the note and stared down at two lines of beautiful calligraphy.
When the Gods wish to punish us,
they answer our prayers.
Chapter Eight
“Mason, are you in for lunch?”
Mason turned around, belatedly registering Mrs. Danville’s presence in the library doorway. She wasn’t sure how long the housekeeper had stood there unobserved. She’d been so preoccupied she hadn’t noticed the usual discreet knock or Ralph’s arrival. After she watched Ulysses deliver the Oscar Wilde quotation, Mason had thought about going down but she’d vacillated too long. Her infuriated neighbor had fled the temple and was almost at the gatehouse now, her loose red hair billowing as the wind picked up.
“I’ll have something in my room,” Mason said, checking the button at her collar. She could smell Vienna on her hands, a sensory trigger that rebounded painfully through her body, twisting her nipples and heating her groin.
An appalling thought crossed her mind. What if Mrs. Danville had returned from her weekly expedition to St. Paul’s Church in Stockbridge and walked in on them? In her time the redoubtable housekeeper had seen it all, and she knew how to be discreet, but Mason preferred to spare her embarrassment.
“Dinner this evening at the usual time?” Mrs. Danville asked showing no sign that she’d noticed Mason’s fluster.
“Yes. Just the household.”
Mason stroked Ralph’s head so she wouldn’t fidget. Mrs. Danville always fed him before she departed for church and he napped near the kitchen fire if she left something cooking. He then stuck to the housekeeper’s side for the rest of the day until she slipped him a succulent morsel or two. Mason pretended not to know about these treats. Officially Mrs. Danville frowned on indulging pets or children.
“I’ll serve in the kitchen parlor, then?” the housekeeper asked.
No answer was necessary, but Mason adhered to the draconian script that governed their interactions. She was the head of the household and Mrs. Danville expected her to behave accordingly. “Yes, that will be fine, thank you.”
“Mr. Pettibone brought in a side of venison,” Mrs. Danville said, prompting Ulysses to tilt his head as though captivated by a siren song. He harbored a passion for the housekeeper that was not returned.
Cawing softly, he jumped down from Mason’s shoulder to his perch, bobbing and puffing out his lustrous blue-black feathers. When this attracted only doggish wonder from Ralph, he lowered his head and spread his wings, making a gallant bow.
Immune to the display, Mrs. Danville continued, “I’m spit-roasting the haunch in collops.”
“Excellent.” The thought made Mason queasy. She would only eat the vegetables, but Mrs. Danville took no pleasure in cooking unless she could serve fine meat dishes and good wine, so Mason responded in the manner expected of her. “Have Mr. Pettibone open a Pommard.”
Mrs. Danville consulted the notebook that swung from a cord at her waist. “Domaine de la Vougeraie?”
Mrs. Danville’s lips thinned a little. “That bird is making a nuisance of himself again, dropping things through the kitchen window.”
Poor Ulysses had chosen the wrong woman to try to impress with shiny objects. Mrs. Danville despised sentiment.
Mason offered her usual ineffectual deterrent. “I’ll confine him for a few days.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. Danville flipped a page. As her index finger moved down the contents, Ulysses gazed longingly at the one ring she wore, a plain gold signet. “Miss Blake wishes to meet Dúlcifal.”
Mason froze. Had the two seen each other as Vienna was departing? If so, Mrs. Danville would have noticed her wearing Mason’s shirt. Very little escaped her. “She asked you herself?”
“Mr. O’Grady informed me.”
Surprised that the stable manager hadn’t mentioned this unusual request, Mason said, “She can visit the barns tomorrow morning. I won’t be taking Dúlcifal out until after nine.”
“Very well.” Mrs. Danville dropped the notebook and smoothed her hands down her dark gray gabardine skirt. A woman of austere appearance and temperament, she normally wore the skirt with a crisp white cotton blouse and a dove gray cashmere cardigan buttoned all the way up. Today being Sunday, she had exchanged the cotton blouse for one in silk crepe with a dainty crocheted border of ivory lace. Her face was framed on either side with the soft reverse roll hairstyle she adopted for outings that warranted a hat. For dinner the hair would be drawn back up into the usual tight silver-white topknot and speared with the art deco comb her mother, also a Cavender housekeeper, had handed down to her.