Count André’s good looks were also puzzling in another way. What made him beautiful to the female eye was difficult to quantify. Taken individually, his features were pleasantly formed, almost ordinary apart from his eyes, but the whole sum of him was nothing short of devastating. He wasn’t tall, but his body looked strong and sturdy, and his way of moving was as aristocratic as his title.
‘Are these all your ancestors then?’ she enquired, gesturing to one of the portraits.
André turned as he walked, and gave her an oblique glance; a strange, assessing look that she didn’t quite understand. ‘Yes, they are all von Kastels,’ he affirmed, but there was something as undecipherable in his voice as there had been in his eyes. It was almost as if he were telling a minor lie.
It was the first time Belinda had entered Sedgewick Priory’s vast library, her previous explorations having been upward through the house, not downward. The room was quintessentially Gothic, decorated in a heavy ornate style which should have seemed sepulchral, but which in fact felt unexpectedly welcoming. Also a surprise, given that it was summer, was the large fire that was burning in the hearth. The bright, orange flames gave off a cheerful dancing light that flickered across the wealth of gleaming wood panelling and the glass panes in the front of the tall bookcases. A full suit of armour stood in one corner of the room, and dotted around on various tables and sideboards were mementoes and knick-knacks that must have been gathered by all the family over the centuries. Some of them were stranger than others. On a mahogany brass-bound secretaire stood a glass jar containing a stuffed and mounted animal, but not one that Belinda could recognise. It seemed to be half-lizard and half-wolf, and completely and utterly fearsome, and she couldn’t understand why anyone would want it around them. She supposed that one of those blue-eyed von Kastels must have hunted it and shot it at one time.
Above the fireplace were two beautiful swords, suspended in a cross shape. They weren’t the rapiers or fencing foils that one might have expected from a continental heritage, but what appeared to be Japanese fighting swords, a pair of immensely long and sharp katana. Some previous von Kastel had obviously been a daring world traveller and brought back these death-dealing souvenirs of Japan.
‘Do you prefer red wine or white wine?’ enquired the present von Kastel, moving across to a beautifully-inlaid, bow-fronted sideboard and indicating an extensive selection of bottles.
‘White, please,’ answered Belinda, wishing that somewhere in the opulent beauty of the library was a concealed wine cooler. She wasn’t a connoisseur, but she hated warm wine.
‘A good choice,’ Count André responded, giving her another of his curious looks, almost as if he were listening to something that she herself couldn’t hear.
As he turned away and applied his attention and a corkscrew to the wine bottle, Belinda took advantage of the opportunity to observe him, out of range of those piercing blue eyes.
His bearing was elegant and his small movements as he eased out the cork were spare and effortlessly economical. He reminded her very much of the best type of character she had seen in costume dramas – a confident courtly man, but not a fop or a libertine. There was something very classical about him, despite the modernity of his boots and blue jeans. Jeans that fit him superbly, she noticed, admiring the firm, tight contours of his buttocks beneath them, and the way they formed faithfully to the musculature of his thighs.
It was a bit strange to be analysing his body now, in clothes, when she had already seen it stark naked, but in some ways she was seeing a different person. The André on the bed had appeared feverish, almost weak, as if suffering from some debilitating long-term disease, while this one was radiant with disgustingly good health. The tiredness she had noticed a few minutes ago had dissipated now, and she could almost feel waves of strength pouring off him. It was as if he had an aura of some kind, and it was provoking her. She squeezed her eyes almost closed and tried to see it, but there was nothing there but a fit, handsome man.
From where she had chosen to sit, on a vast brocade covered sofa, Belinda could see her host in profile, and as she watched him, he suddenly touched his fingertip to the bottle and frowned.
Yes, it’s warm, she thought, isn’t it? I would have thought someone like you would have had a cooler around somewhere.
As she thought those words, André turned towards her, regarded her thoughtfully for a second, then returned his attention to the bottle, first clasping it in both hands, then running his tapered fingers up and down it. After a moment, he smiled and poured out wine into two glasses.
‘Here, try this,’ he said, as he joined her on the sofa, holding one of the glasses out towards her. ‘The grapes are grown in a region quite near to where I originally come from, I believe. It is quite sweet but I think you will enjoy it.’
Belinda nearly dropped the glass when she took it from him. It was cold, as if the wine inside had indeed been sitting in an ice bucket.
Count André grinned again and spoke a brief, unintelligible toast, presumably something from his own language. The word sounded a little like prosit, but with a curious part-gutteral part-musical inflection that Belinda didn’t think she could have mimicked if she had tried.
‘Cheers!’ she said, then put her glass to her lips.
The wine was chilled to exactly the right temperature. Belinda was so surprised that she drank half of it at one swallow, hardly noticing that it was also sublimely delicious.
‘It’s cool,’ she said, staring at the pellucid golden fluid.
‘So it is,’ replied Count André, lifting his own glass and staring at her intently over the top of it as he took the minutest of sips.
Suddenly Belinda desperately wanted to ask him how that was. She was prepared to swear that the various bottles had all been in the room for quite some time, and yet this wine was at the perfect low temperature for its character. The word ‘how’ formed on her lips, but she found herself unable to utter it. Her tongue felt unwieldy and locked in place somehow, and all she could do was see again that strange double-handed pass that André had made up and down the wine bottle.
The man’s a magician, she thought, then told herself not to be ridiculous. He was just a good host who thought ahead. He had probably had the wine brought up from the cellar a few minutes before he had come to her bedroom.
‘So, Belinda, are you and Jonathan betrothed?’
‘What a quaint expression. You mean engaged, don’t you?’ she countered. ‘No, we’re not. But we have known each other a long time.’
‘A long time,’ he murmured ruminatively. ‘Hmm. And what would you call a long time?’ His dark brows lifted, and Belinda noticed that unlike his hair, they were not beginning to grow blonder, but remained dramatically dark.
‘Three years.’
‘That’s not a long time,’ he said lightly, swirling his wine in his glass. ‘How long have you been lovers?’
It was a radical enquiry from someone she had only met a few minutes ago, and the Belinda of last week might have resented it and perceived her bumpy relationship with Jonathan threatened. But now, to her surprise, she faced the intimate question with equanimity.
‘Three years,’ she said evenly, then took a long sip of her wine as the man beside her digested her admission.
‘And does he please you?’
‘Most of the time.’
‘Only most? A woman like you should be pleased all the time …’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “a woman like me”, but I live in the real world, Count, and I don’t expect miracles.’
‘Perhaps you should,’ he said, still rocking his glass, still watching the way the wine clung to its rounded inner contours.
Belinda was watching his hands. She seemed to see that pass again. Up and down the bottle. Lingering over the glass and subtly changing its contents. Involuntarily she imagined a similar gesture performed over her body, and this time it was the induction of heat, not cold.
She looked
up into his eyes and actually saw the heat burning in their depths like a volcanic blue flame.
He’s a mind reader, she thought, then admonished herself again for abject foolishness. This was the twentieth century, the age of hard science and rationality. Zoroastrian magic powers didn’t exist, even if you desperately wanted them to.
Count André was still looking at her, his eyes alight with a peculiar, dark-toned excitement.
‘What?’ she demanded, feeling shaken.
‘I was just wondering what you would look like naked.’
‘But you’ve already seen me naked,’ she pointed out, feeling mildy insulted. He had seen her body a few minutes ago in the bedroom. Was it so unmemorable that he had already forgotten it?
He shook his head, as if he was confused and trying to clear his thoughts, then gave her a curious and endearingly crooked smile.
‘Ah yes, of course I have,’ he conceded, ‘and you are indeed very beautiful.’ He frowned for a moment, and something sombre seemed to enter his expression, a cloud of fleeting sorrow that dulled every part of him. ‘Your Jonathan is a very lucky man. Blessed, I would say …’
His eyes went unfocused for a moment, as if he were looking straight through her body to another reality; to another Belinda. He put aside his glass, then slowly, oh so slowly, he reached out his hand towards the knot of her sash, touched it, and seemed to make it unfasten. The overlapping panels of black silk slid apart, and there was a ponderous, eternal-seeming silence.
‘So beautiful,’ whispered the count at length, his fingertips hovering an inch or so above her navel. Belinda felt the skin there begin to flutter, and the nerves in it grow excited and sensitive. Her vulva, so near, became moist. She saw his nostrils flare and knew he could scent her.
The moment was volatile and precarious, as if they were both in violent, agitated motion even while their two bodies remained still. Then Count André’s hand moved, infinitesimally, and he was touching the tender curve of her belly and sending an instantaneous jolt of pleasure to her sex.
Belinda gasped, and the count snatched back his fingers.
‘Forgive me,’ he muttered, reaching for her robe, as if to close it. ‘I have gone too far. I am sorry.’
Belinda was too shocked to speak, but her alarm was because the caress had ended, not begun. The sensation she had experienced from just a single fleeting touch had taken her breath away. It had moved her and beguiled her in a way that would have normally taken long minutes of industrious love-making. And its cessation was instantly unbearable.
She realised she was still holding her glass, so she put it down on the carpet at her feet. Then, without thinking, or even trying to, she simply lunged forward towards him, putting her half naked body directly into his arms so there was no way he could withdraw or reject her.
For a moment, Count André remained passive, accepting first her kiss, then her embrace, as she slid her arms around his waist. His mouth tasted very sweet to Belinda’s hungry lips, and the scent of his body was like roses. She felt his arms move up and grip her, then effortlessly and with grace, he swivelled her body, disengaging her hold on him, and turned her until she was sitting on his lap. Belinda could not work out quite how he had achieved this, all without breaking the kiss, but the position made her feel tiny and vulnerable. The whole of her naked torso, as well as her thighs and belly, were now displayed and accessible to his touch.
‘You are a very forthright woman,’ he whispered, lifting his mouth away from hers momentarily.
Belinda looked up into his face, then was forced to drop her gaze again. His eyes were too brilliant to bear so close up. She felt mesmerised, and quite weak, and her mouth opened when his touched it once again.
His tongue immediately slid inside the soft cavity, tracing her teeth then plunging deeper to duel with her tongue. He tasted of wine and almonds and something else hard to define yet tantalisingly delicious, and she moaned under her breath as he kissed her. Her body had never felt more alive.
As he continued to kiss, playing and exploring, she felt his hand settle once again on her belly, his long fingers splaying out across her skin. She felt him rubbing, gently circling and fondling the curve of her with his slightly bent fingers. He was nowhere near her sex yet it was affected, the delicate folds becoming swollen and very wet.
‘Do you wish me to touch you?’ he enquired, making the words a part of the kiss. His hand stilled, waiting in readiness for her permission.
Belinda could hardly believe what she had done. She had leapt straight from being in bed with one man to surrendering her body to another. There was no way she could resist this fascinating aristocrat, this stranger who was so honest yet so mysterious. She whispered ‘yes’ under his lips, then eased her thighs apart to give him access. As his hand slid lower, she heard him sigh so poignantly it was almost a sob.
‘It has been so long,’ he murmured, his mouth straying across her cheek and settling just below her ear. ‘So many, many years …’ His fingertip began gently inveigling its way through her pubic curls, moving cautiously as if her flesh were made of crystal and might shatter with rough treatment.
The approach was far too cautious for Belinda’s liking. She suddenly felt ravenous for his caress. She wanted this strange, strange man to lay his hands on her so she could come to know him through the contact. She wanted to absorb him, drink him in, understand how he could seem to know her so well; even though they had only met a few minutes ago. She surged on his knee, lifting her pelvis and circling it to encourage him, and pushing herself upward against his hand.
‘Hush!’ he said into her ear, his breath a cool wind against her brow. ‘Not so hasty. I will pleasure you, my sweet Belle, but we must go slowly. Bide our time. We have waited far too long to rush our joy and waste it.’
Belinda didn’t really understand what he was whispering about. Who had been waiting? And why had he suddenly called her ‘Belle’? Her mother had called her that many years ago in her childhood, but she was dead now and no one had used the name since. Not even her boyfriends. To Jonathan, she was always ‘Lindi’ at times like these.
The thought of Jonathan shocked her back into the reality of her situation. She was sprawled half-naked across the knee of a man she had met less than thirty minutes ago. She was about to let him touch her sex.
Oh no, oh dear God, he had closed the final gap and he was touching her! She wanted to struggle away, apologise and grab her belongings, then get out of this house as fast as she was able.
How could she do this? How could she betray her dear, patient, long-suffering Jonathan just when everything was starting to look up for them?
But the count’s clever fingertips were too artful to resist, flickering over her, both hot and cool at once, and invoking shallow ripples of ethereal stimulation. Belinda moaned hoarsely when he stroked the pulsing heart of her, then buried her face against his white shirt as she came.
It had all happened with so little warning that she was barely prepared for the intensity of her pleasure. She felt tears on her face as her body throbbed and glowed, and she clung to the count, to André, as if the safety of her very soul depended on him. The release, and the feelings it roused in her, seemed out of proportion to the relationship they shared.
What relationship? she thought as she regained her equilibrium. Snuggling against his chest, she felt almost giddy from the scent of his cologne, an intense and voluptuous essence of rose that suited him despite its feminine sweetness. I have no relationship with this man, she told herself, and I don’t know him. At all. I must be insane to have allowed him to touch me.
‘I’m sorry –’
‘Forgive me –’
The apologies, hers and his, came out simultaneously, and suddenly Belinda could see if not broad humour in the situation, then at least a lighter side to it. She sat up, drew back a little way along André’s knee, and looked him rather shamefacedly in the eye.
‘What on earth must you think of me?’ she
said, plucking at the satin robe and managing to close it. ‘It must seem very “loose” of me, allowing you to touch me like that when we’ve only just met. I really can’t believe myself. I-I threw myself at you.’
He touched her face, smiling wryly, then took the ends of the robe’s sash and fastened it for her.
‘No, Belinda, the fault is mine,’ he said, his face shadowed with some indefinable, yet clearly painful emotion. ‘You reminded me of someone. Someone I miss desperately … And for a moment, I thought you were she, and I lost control of myself.’ He was looking down, staring at the loose black bow he had formed, but Belinda could almost swear she had seen tears. Then he looked up again, and his blue eyes were pacific and untroubled. ‘I must ask you again to forgive me.’ Without warning, he slid his hands around her waist, and rising himself, lifted her effortlessly on to her feet. ‘Will you do that? Shall we forget what just happened? And begin again … as good friends?’ He held out his hand again, the same hand that had touched her so beautifully. ‘I promise I will try to behave myself from now on.’
Once again, the transition from one dynamic to another was staggeringly fast. Belinda had a strong urge to shake her head in an attempt to clear it. Had she imagined what had just happened? Perhaps it was a fantasy? A dream of some kind. She was tired and confused, what with the breakdown and the storm and all. Maybe what she thought had just happened had really occurred only in her mind?
At a loss to frame a reply, Belinda allowed her hand to be taken and this time squeezed in affirmation instead of kissed.
‘And now, I believe it is time to dress for dinner,’ the count said briskly, offering his arm. ‘May I escort you to your room?’
‘Yes. Of course,’ she answered, still feeling befuddled by the change from intimacy to courtesy. She took his arm, as indicated, and allowed herself to be led back the way they had come earlier.
Gothic Blue Page 9
