I felt a tight sensation in the pit of my stomach. Like something was alive and squirming in there.
Nicca continued. “I was visiting Uther at his barracks and I passed Wilson on the stairs. He was coming out of Uther’s rooms as I was going in. When I asked Uther about it, he was evasive, denying any knowledge of Wilson’s visit and saying I must have been mistaken.”
“And you could not have been mistaken, of course?” I allowed a note of sarcasm to sting my words. “I take it you have never been known to get something wrong?”
“I know what I saw.” His expression was stubborn. “Besides, I went to see Wilson. He had sold out and bought his own tobacconists shop by that time. He seemed to be doing well for himself. I asked him why he’d gone to see Uther. He was evasive at first, then he said that Uther was a ‘sleeping partner,’ having invested heavily in Wilson’s business. Which struck me as decidedly odd since Uther has never had two pennies to rub together. Even after he became Cad’s heir and was given an allowance out of the Athal estate, he simply increased his spending and gambling accordingly.”
I dredged inside myself for the feelings that bound me to Uther. It was there, waiting for me, coiled and ready. Stronger than ever and eager to spring up and dispel any doubt. I grabbed it gratefully. “And on that basis, you are ready to label your own brother a murderer?” I swung round to face him, allowing the full force of my anger to show now. “Shall I tell you what I think, Nicca?”
“I’ve no doubt you are about to.” His lips twisted into a hurt parody of a smile.
“Damn right I’m about to! I’ve listened to you, now it’s your turn.” I stormed back so that I stood within an inch of him, jabbing my finger into his chest to punctuate my words. “I don’t know when this interesting theory was born. It may, as you say, have surfaced at the end of the war. Or it may have emerged more recently, perhaps as recently as when Uther arrived here. Don’t interrupt me!” I stamped my foot as he opened his mouth to protest. He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “But if you think I’m going to end my engagement to your brother and hurl myself into your arms for consolation on the strength of that little fairy tale, you don’t know me very well. If I did or said something that made you believe there was an attraction between us before Uther came, I’m sorry for it. I made the mistake when I first met you, Nicca, of thinking you an honourable man. This nasty little stunt of yours proves how wrong I was. And this jealousy you feel toward your brother only makes me think of you as pitiful.”
His face had whitened as he listened to me. I had spent my rage and we faced each other like statues.
“Thank you for your honesty, Annie,” he said with a stiff little bow. Turning on his heel, he left the room.
What instinct was prompting me suddenly to run after him, to beg him not go? What worm of suspicion was eating its way insidiously into my mind? I meant every word. I trusted Uther implicitly. Didn’t I? Yet part of me wanted to feel Nicca’s hands on me again. I wanted him to shake me once more, to force me to listen to him, to convince me beyond doubt that he was right.
Chapter Seven
Later that evening, Uther came to my room before dinner. I was seated at my dressing table and he dismissed my maid, coming to stand behind me so that I could see our reflections as he kissed the back of my neck. I felt my insides plummet. When I was with him, there was no room for questions. When he touched me, I knew this was meant to be.
“The strangest thing, my sweet,” he murmured, sliding his hands inside the neckline of my strapless dress, his palms warm on my breasts. My nipples pebbled instantly. “Brother Nicca has decided life would be easier all round if he took up residence in the gatehouse.”
“Did he say why?” I asked, leaning back against him. He didn’t answer immediately. His lips were otherwise occupied as he kissed his way along my jaw.
“No, just that he felt he needed some privacy and so did we. He also said that he thought I should advertise for a more experienced estate manager after the wedding, as he intends to return to the city.” He came and knelt in front of my chair, smiling up at me as he slid my dress down to my waist. Although we had agreed that we would wait for our wedding night before we made love, at times like this he took every opportunity to ensure we both spent every moment thrumming on a knife-edge of suppressed lust. His lips traced a path from my shoulder down to my nipple while his hand slid beneath my skirt, finding the flesh at the top of my stocking. As his fingers moved higher, I closed my eyes and felt the world shift onto a different axis and into an earlier century. I was no longer in Athal House, no longer in my bedchamber. The man who touched my flesh so expertly was called Uther Jago, but he was not my fiancé.
His hand slid inside my panties and cupped the warmth between my legs. “You are so wet.”
I writhed against him. “Please, Uther.” I pressed myself against his passive hand.
“Say it.” His hand remained still. I heard an echo of feminine chatter and laughter growing ever closer. Even though the sound was almost a century old, the sense of danger, of imminent exposure was real. It added spice to the situation.
“I want you, Uther. Only you.” I was answering a question that had been asked almost a century earlier. By another Uther.
“Good girl.” He moved his fingers. Deep, fast and hard. In reality, my own Uther had never touched me intimately, yet those fingers reaching high up inside me were achingly familiar to us both.
The voices grew closer. “They are coming,” I moaned despairingly.
He leaned in close and nuzzled my neck, laughter in his voice. “But what about you? Are you coming yet?” He showed no mercy, driving me ever onward, relentlessly flicking and stroking the taut, slippery little pearl that throbbed for him. Always for him. “Hurry up.” Then, as I exploded in a sudden rush of violent, gasping pleasure, his voice inside my mind whispered, “Lucia.”
I opened my eyes. I was back inside my bedchamber. “What just happened?” I leaned my forehead against Uther’s shoulder, still shuddering.
“You came,” he murmured, kissing my neck. “You just had an orgasm, my sweet.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” I lifted my head and looked into the golden fire of arousal in his eyes. “You didn’t touch me. That wasn’t you.”
“I know,” he replied. “But it wasn’t you either, was it?”
∗ ∗ ∗
Mrs Winrow adhered to the ancient Tenebris tradition of providing enough breakfast to feed the population of a small country. Finty explained that, in Tynan and Lucy’s day, it had been customary to try to anticipate any and every possible combination of dishes that might be required and provide these for the first meal of the day. As a result, the breakfast parlour had to be overloaded with every imaginable foodstuff. On this particular morning, I sipped tea and nibbled a slice of toast, while Uther drank coffee and ate nothing. The vast array of hot and cold dishes on the sideboard seemed to reproach us. The house was oddly quiet with no one else stirring at this early hour.
“Just think, my sweet.” Uther leaned in close to press a kiss at the corner of my mouth. “Before long, this is how it will always be, just you and I.”
I looked into the endless gold of his eyes. When I was with him, I was caught up in the enchantment that bound me to him. But Rudi’s words about our relationship being a tainted one had stayed with me and left me troubled.
“Will it?” I asked. “Or will we always share our lives with these ghosts of long-dead lovers?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it, Annie,” he murmured, running a finger along my collarbone. Instantly I felt the familiar insistent thrumming between my legs. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” He leaned in closer. “Imagine how much better it will be when I am inside you.”
“But will it be you?” I asked. I could feel myself arching toward him; I had no control over my instincts when I was with Uther.
His laughter was soft and low. “Will it matter?”
His tongue followed the line of his finger, and I moaned. My longing for him was a physical pain tugging hard and insistently on an invisible cord that joined my nipples and my clitoris. Instantly I felt his touch and his tongue in both those places.
Winrow, his expression wooden but somehow conveying his disapproval of such blatantly demonstrative conduct, cleared his throat as he entered the room. “There were several letters this morning, my lord. I have had them sent to your study.”
Uther rolled his eyes at me, but drained his coffee cup. “Business calls,” he said, rising from the table and following Winrow from the room.
Collecting my scattered emotions, I wandered over to the window, regarding the rain-swept landscape. The ties that bound me to Uther were too strong and too tight to break. And I didn’t want to break them. At least, I didn’t think I did. I wanted to test them, however. I needed to talk to him about this strange, compelling eroticism that bound us to the past. It might be the most wonderful, magical thing either of us had ever experienced…but did that make it right? I was thousands of miles from my home and, in less than a month, I was going to marry a man I knew absolutely nothing about. I didn’t know what music he liked, what books he read, if he played any sports. All I really knew was that there were times when he could become something more than his mortal self and bring me to orgasm just by looking at me. Which was undoubtedly a considerable skill. But was it really a lasting basis for marriage? It was a situation that, even for me, took impetuosity to the extreme.
I turned as a footfall sounded in the doorway and Nicca entered the room. We had been carefully formal with each other since he told me his theory about Rory’s death, and now he paused on the threshold as though unsure of his welcome.
“Good morning,” I said, moving toward the coffee pot in an attempt to emulate Finty’s best hostess skills. “You have just missed Uther. He has gone to deal with his correspondence.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, a faint smile dispelling some of the wariness in the azure depths of his eyes. “That sounds most unlike Uther.” We chatted of commonplaces while he breakfasted, and while I could not say that our differences were forgotten, a little of the awkwardness melted. “I almost forgot,” Nicca said, reaching into his pocket. “Uther left his riding crop at the gatehouse the other day. In case I don’t see him and he should be looking for it, could you give it to him?”
It gave me an excuse to disturb Uther, which I seized with both hands. We had to talk about the strange experiences we shared. I had a suggestion to make. If we went away from Tenebris for a few days, perhaps to a London hotel, we could put our attraction to the test. No ancestors, no shuddering, shivering erotic half-recollection of a love that belonged to someone else. To hell with waiting. We would make our own memories. The thought quickened my step.
I tapped lightly on the study door and entered on the knock, the riding crop extended in front of me, the words of explanation forming on my lips. But they remained unuttered. I had caught Uther unawares. He was sitting at his desk, a letter in his hand, staring blankly at the wall opposite. He rose quickly to his feet when he saw me and thrust the pile of letters that lay on top of the desk into the top drawer, turning the key swiftly in the lock. There was a new expression on his face, one I had not seen before, and I went to him, sliding my arms about his waist. I froze as I stared into his eyes. Fury was too restrained a word to describe what I saw. Within their amber depths, Hell had broken free from its chains.
“Uther?” I leaned back, lifting a hand to touch his cheek, and he flinched at my touch as though my fingertips scorched his flesh. “What is it?”
His fallen-angel smile flickered briefly like a light switched on and off. I glimpsed fear lurking behind the anger. “Nothing to trouble you, my sweet. Just some business I need to attend to. It will only bother me because it must take me away from you for a few days. I will have to go to London tomorrow.” He bent his head and kissed me. Every touch of his lips was as magical and forbidden as that first time. My whole body arched submissively toward him. The brightness of his touch and the sweetness of his taste immediately blinded me to everything but him. It was only when I left the room that I paused to speculate about what could have been in the morning post, and why it had wrought such a dramatic change in his manner.
Later that day, however, nothing could have exceeded Uther’s good humour to the point where I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. He had been on a long ride and returned in the afternoon just as Winrow was bringing the tea tray into the parlour.
“Bring coffee as well, please,” Uther said, pausing to remove his hat and coat. “No, don’t put it there.” Winrow paused in the act of placing the tea tray on a side table, where it always went. “I’d prefer it to go on the dresser over there.” A flicker of something approaching resignation crossed the butler’s face, and I wondered how many conversations had taken place in the servants’ hall about the new master’s mercurial whims.
When Finty and Rudi came in—predictably hand-in-hand—we chatted comfortably and Uther determinedly exerted himself to be pleasant. Perhaps I was oversensitive to such things, but I still noticed the occasional meaningful look between Finty and Rudi. I poured tea for Finty and myself, but, when I reached for the coffee pot, Uther forestalled me.
“No, thank you, Annie.” He turned to Rudi with a rueful look. “Help me out here. We coffee drinkers must stick together, and Annie has no idea what a good cup of coffee should look like. Sorry, my love, but it had to be said,” Uther told me lightly. “Let me.” He held up a hand, forestalling Rudi, who had been about to rise from his seat. “I was accounted the coffee connoisseur of the barracks, you know. Have you told Finty how the plans for the wedding are progressing, my love?”
He busied himself with the coffee pot at the dresser while Finty and I talked about invitations, dresses and flowers. Rudi accepted his cup from Uther and rolled his eyes in the age-old manner of the male caught up in the alien world of female ritual. I thought how nice it would be if every encounter between the four of us could be as easy and relaxed as this.
∗ ∗ ∗
Despite my daylight promise, my dreaming self returned each night to Lucia’s Glade. An ancient moon peeped through the canopy of cloud. The forest was crypt-silent and grave-dark.
He was waiting for me. In his wake, flowers drooped, fruit shrivelled and grass dried. Because I had no will of my own, I went to him. He took my face in his hands tenderly, and I glimpsed evil angels dancing behind the gold curtain of his eyes. The gentleness was short lived. Gripping my shoulders, he pushed me hard against a tree trunk, need intensifying to passion instantly.
“Not here,” I whispered. Not in this place I associated so strongly with evil.
He took no notice, his lips claiming mine with a fierceness that drove the breath from my body and left me quivering with something that went far beyond desire. When we kissed, we both became more than ourselves. Soulless, timeless beings, merging with the shadows of Tenebris, taking from and giving to the past. Hearts and souls that met in absolute darkness. The hellish, winged spectre of my nightmares hovered over us, merged with our entwined bodies, and I was lost.
“Uther,” I moaned, but even as I spoke his name I knew.
“No.” His voice was different, lightness and laughter banished. His mouth travelled down my throat in a familiar movement, but the lips that scorched my flesh did not belong to any incarnation of Uther Jago.
Even within the agonising sweetness of that kiss, I sensed the malevolence that could lurk in the depths of a human soul. I leaned back, as silent and helpless in Arwen Jago’s arms as a moth trapped beneath a cat’s paw. Behind the smile I loved so much, I caught a fleeting impression, a reflection of a ghoul. I couldn’t see her, but I knew Lucia was there, too, watching us.
It wasn’t outside me. The blackness I felt came from somewhere within my own body. Dispassionately, I studied its approach, explored it, tried to keep it separate from myself, but relent
lessly it came. Like a shroud, it enveloped me completely.
The fireworks in my head and the beating of my wayward heart drowned out all sound. Sensation—raw and carnal—took me. Another being breathed inside me, bending me to its will. Electricity surged through my body into his and back again. The thing that lived inside me and possessed me reared and bucked and shuddered. It wanted to explore his body, needed to be one with him. Arwen’s tongue met mine as he crushed me into a kiss that drew me deep inside him and him into me. Just as it was always meant to be.
When I opened my eyes, the dream washed away like tears on white satin, a nightmare that should never be revisited or spoken of in wakeful hours. Except I had to confront it if I was to unravel its meaning. Had Tristan’s story about another Uther—a man so deluded that he believed he was Arwen Jago reborn—triggered this unconscious fear in me? The nonsensical suspicion that my own Uther could really be part of the dark legacy that affected this family persisted long after the dream had vanished.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Are you feeling unwell, Finty?” Nicca asked.
I was so wrapped up in thoughts of Uther and our wedding that I had scarcely noticed her. I looked up and studied her face, and realised that she did look decidedly pale.
“No, but I am worried about Rudi,” she said. “He has stayed in his room today. I wanted to ask you to come and take a look at him, Annie. You are more used than I to what his health can be like. He really does appear quite poorly to me. It started a few days ago with a mild headache, dizziness and some confusion. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to worry anyone. Then he began to feel rather drowsy. But last night he started suffering vomiting and severe stomach cramps.”
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