Justine Elyot

by Secretsand Lords

  He gave her a smouldering glance to match the glowing end of his cigarette.

  ‘Something like that, perhaps,’ she admitted. ‘But I’d make a very poor angel.’

  ‘Your hair’s like a halo,’ said Giles gallantly. ‘Such a colour. It’s just like –’

  Sir Thomas patted his hand rather sharply, interrupting him.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Charles. ‘Mere mention of Lady Deverell isn’t enough to induce a choleric fit any more. I won’t say I’ve accepted her as papa’s wife quite yet, but I have other concerns with which to occupy myself now.’

  ‘Your objection to her was always more about having your nose put out of joint, anyway,’ said Thomas with an edge of malice.

  ‘Shut up, Tom.’

  ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Talk about lousy timing,’ said Charles with a sigh. ‘I get back from the Front with a broken head and an infected graze wound and instead of parental sympathy and attention I’m left to my own devices while papa wines and dines actresses about town.’

  ‘Poor ickle Charley,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Did you not hear me when I told you to shut up?’ Charles’s words, though aggressive in themselves, were spoken with a weariness that took out much of the sting.

  ‘Well, I think Ruby Redford is good for pa,’ said Thomas, smiling slightly at the shaking of Charles’s head. ‘You’ve forgotten how he was after mama died. You were busy gadding about town, I know, but for those of us who stayed here at the Hall … well. He needed female company. He pined for it.’

  ‘There’s female company and there’s female company, Tom. Why couldn’t he have kept her in a little place in St John’s Wood, like any sane man would?’

  Edie inhaled sharply.

  ‘Perhaps she had more pride than to accept such an arrangement,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I daresay that was it. Pride. She had too much and pa didn’t have any.’

  ‘Perhaps you might try living her life before you condemn her.’

  ‘Yes, Edie, yes,’ he said, his cheeks flushed as he turned to her. ‘And perhaps you might try living mine.’

  ‘I can’t think of too many people who wouldn’t kill to swap places with you, actually, Charles,’ she said.

  ‘Damn them to hell if they would,’ he said. ‘Damn them if they’d kill. I’ve had my fill of killing.’

  Dinner was a repressed affair, too much mannered passing of salt cellars and offers to pour wine, when what really needed pouring was oil on to the troubled waters. Edie felt ridiculous in the gown, hardly able to connect with her own self and thoughts. She certainly had not inherited her mother’s easy talent for slipping into alternative identities, even if she was closer, in her own life, to a lady than to a parlourmaid.

  ‘I suppose we can’t make Edie go out while the gentlemen remain for brandy,’ remarked Charles, giving her a languid flicker of a glance. He had barely spoken to her since the little spat over cocktails. ‘So you’ll have to tolerate the cigarette smoke and brandy. Perhaps we’ll have to tone down the off-colour anecdotes, eh, chaps?’

  Giles laughed but Tom looked exasperated.

  ‘I think perhaps both of you should leave the room,’ he said. ‘And talk to each other.’

  ‘Oh, do you? Well, then, I’m taking the brandy with me.’

  He picked up the decanter and stalked out towards the terrace.

  Edie, tempted for a moment not to follow him in this mood, looked at the other two men, as if begging them for their advice.

  ‘He’s a spoiled child,’ said Tom. ‘Let him sulk.’

  ‘You don’t half look like her,’ blurted Giles suddenly. ‘In that get-up. Lady Deverell, I mean.’

  ‘Giles …’ demurred Tom.

  ‘I, er …’ Not knowing how to respond, Edie got up and swept away after Charles. At least, she intended to sweep, but she tripped on the hem of the gown and ended up staggering.

  As she put her hand on the door, she heard Tom castigating his lover in a low tone, saying something about being more tactful. Of course, they would think that Charles’s relationship with her was some sort of obscure revenge against Lady Deverell. And why would they not, everything being as messy and complicated as it was?

  He had put the decanter on the balustrade beside him. He did not turn around to greet Edie but remained in morose silence, gazing out at the darkened park and woods beyond.

  ‘Look,’ said Edie. ‘I didn’t mean to make light of your experiences at war. That was the last thing I would ever intend to do. I just think – and I’m clearly not alone – you should get over this bitterness you have towards my … towards her. It’s futile.’

  He turned his face to her as she came alongside him.

  ‘They think this is about revenge,’ he said. ‘I should have realised they would.’

  ‘Isn’t it then?’

  ‘Edie,’ he said, sounding anguished. ‘If only it could be that simple. If only.’

  ‘That was what you wanted?’

  ‘At first. I admit it. I thought it would make me feel better.’

  ‘You callous bastard.’ Edie flared up with rage.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. You looked so like her, like a younger, fresher, innocent version of her, and I knew it would wound her ego to see that she’d been put aside for you.’

  ‘It wounded more than her ego. She loves you. And I was to be a pawn in a twisted game. Well, thank you very much.’

  Charles unstoppered the decanter and took a swig directly from the Waterford crystal neck.

  ‘You can hate me if you like, but it won’t come close to how much I hate myself. I hate myself and now I love you and it’s too much, too much, much too fucking much.’

  He laid his head on the flat stone of the balustrade and covered his ears with his hands.

  ‘And you’re her daughter,’ he howled, muffled but still perfectly audible. ‘Dear God, help me.’

  Edie, all her rage dissipated by his frank distress, put her hand on his back and rubbed it.

  ‘You really think you love me?’ she whispered.

  He raised his head at that, and his eyes were bleary and a little bloodshot.

  ‘I know it,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing I do know. You needn’t think you can make me give you up. I can give up anything else, but you have bagged me like a bloody grouse. The bullet’s in me, Edie, and it won’t come out.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, floundering.

  ‘Sorry, are you? Then get it out of me, Edie. Get the bullet out. Take it out. Do whatever you have to.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, alarmed now at his vehemence and in no doubt as to his sincerity.

  He laughed, a little wildly.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, taking her wrist. ‘You’d better come with me.’

  He dragged her, brandy in the other hand, back through the dining room where Giles and Tom were sitting close to one another and smoking cigars.

  They looked up and Tom said, ‘I say, Charlie,’ but they were out of the room before his remonstrance could be made more explicit.

  ***

  Edie whirled in her lover’s wake along deserted corridors and up the stairs to the East Wing bedrooms.

  ‘Charles, you’re frightening me. Slow down,’ she entreated, but he seemed not to have heard, opening the door to his bedroom and propelling her inside with a force that almost had her falling on to the floor.

  She managed instead to stumble to the bed.

  He stood over her, shadowing her, when she twisted herself around to face him.

  ‘Take off the dress,’ he whispered.

  ‘Charles, I don’t think we ought …’

  ‘Take it off,’ he said with more volume.

  Despite feeling cold with fear, Edie sat up and tried to maintain a cool, level demeanour.

  ‘Not until you calm down,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing anything for you until then.’

  He inhaled deeply and stared at the ceiling for a minu
te.

  When he looked down, the breath released, he said in a softer tone, ‘All right. All right. I’m calm. Now take off the dress.’

  She put a hand to the diamonds at her throat, still watching him as a stoat might watch a snake.

  ‘You won’t hurt me,’ she said, enquiring.

  ‘Only if you want me to.’

  She shook her head, unable to comprehend what he might mean by that.

  ‘You’re still wearing that dress.’

  She stood on shaky legs and began to lower it down her arms. Charles watched her intently, every bit the glittering-eyed predator.

  Once it lay in ripples of midnight by her feet, he took a step forward and she made an instinctive retreat, falling back on the bed in her haste.

  ‘I said I’d make you love me.’

  She looked up into his darkened face. He did not know how she felt. Well, that was one saving grace, perhaps.

  ‘You can’t make a person …’ she whispered, conscious of her exposure in this expensive but revealing underwear.

  ‘Perhaps not, but I can make you want me. The distance between wanting and love isn’t that far.’

  He bent low over her until their lips were close enough to touch. She felt his breath and expected to be kissed, shutting her eyes in readiness.

  But instead he spoke. ‘You are going to beg for me,’ he said.

  Then he stood straight again and disappeared into his dressing room.

  Edie, heart racing, legs like water, could do no more than wait for him.

  When he returned, he held two lengths of plaited, tasselled cord, such as one might use for a bell pull, golden in colour.

  ‘You don’t mean to –?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Lie down. Further up the bed. Put your head on the pillow.’

  Edie did not register the commands, staring instead at the way he ran the cord through his fingers, caressingly.

  ‘Look, I’m not going to do anything you won’t like,’ he said, with a touch of impatience. ‘Just do as I say. You will be rewarded, trust me.’

  Trust him?

  Would that be a mistake? Edie could not decide. In the meantime, she did as he asked and laid herself down on her back, looking up at the canopy of the bed, seeing Charles from the corner of her eye as he knelt at the side of the bed and began wrapping one of the cords around the left-hand post.

  When it was securely knotted, he crossed to the other side and repeated the procedure there.

  ‘Now,’ he said softly, holding the right rope in his hand. ‘Give me your wrist.’

  ‘You don’t need to tie me.’

  ‘No, I don’t need to. I want to. Give it to me.’

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Nothing you won’t enjoy. You don’t trust me, do you?’

  She caught a breath.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

  ‘You should. I want you to know, to learn, that you can. I promise you nothing but pleasure. I am, despite what anybody says, a man of my word.’

  She knew enough of him to feel that he spoke sincerely, and she offered her hand, which he took, and bound the wrist just tightly enough to make her feel tied without digging in uncomfortably. When both wrists were restrained in this manner, she tugged at the cords, assessing their strength. He had tied them well and she would not be able to release herself without his help.

  ‘How’s that, poor, helpless Edie?’ he asked, smiling down at her. The flash of his teeth made her feel momentarily afraid, but when he reached out to stroke her brow she calmed.

  ‘Why do you want to do this?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you won’t keep still. I need to keep you still, to make you stay and listen and understand me. I don’t want you running away. You’re too good at that.’

  She felt the justice of his remark. An impulse to run coursed through her at that very moment. It was a constant motif in her emotions.

  ‘Now, your ankles,’ he muttered, making his way back to the dressing room.

  Edie tried to pull herself upright but she couldn’t. All she was capable of was lying there, waiting for him to return.

  He tied her feet as he had her hands, leaving her spread-eagled as a starfish. At least the frilly lace drawers preserved some semblance of modesty between her splayed thighs, but her breasts were uncovered and she had no chance of concealing the state of her nipples. Above them, lying like dead weights on her collarbone, were the diamonds.

  ‘Now then,’ said Charles, taking off his shoes. ‘I have you where I want you at last. Don’t move, will you?’

  He laughed and knelt down on the bed, between her spread legs.

  ‘Tell me when you want me to stop,’ he whispered, then he braced himself above her and kissed her long and deeply, his tongue claiming her mouth. She wanted to clasp her arms around his neck, put her fingers in his hair, but she could do nothing but accept what he chose to give her.

  His hands pressed against the sides of her head, holding it just as captive as the rest of her body. She felt the expensive cloth of his dinner jacket brush and scrape her nipples, while his pelvis lay just above hers, their hipbones occasionally grinding together, faster and harder as the kiss deepened.

  By the time he released her mouth, her lips were stinging and her chin sore, but she could have taken more, she could have drowned inside the sensations and lost consciousness. She was no longer equipped to resist the effect he had on her. If there had been a fight or a war or anything of that sort, it was long lost.

  He moved to her neck, laying little kisses as light as breaths beneath her earlobes. He lingered especially in the places where the sensitivity of her skin made her shiver. She knew where his hands were heading and it was a kind of relief when his palms cupped her breasts and gently kneaded them.

  The sense of having no way of getting him off her was unsettling at first and she struggled in her bonds. The unfamiliarity soon wore off, though, and she found, to her surprise, that the panic was replaced by exhilaration. She arched her spine and tried to kick her legs, because the feeling of captivity was exciting and different, an emotional boundary to be tested.

  He laughed softly into her shoulder, which his itinerary of kisses had now reached.

  ‘You can’t free yourself,’ he reminded her.

  She felt her nipples bloom beneath the pads of his thumbs, which swept tingles across their rosy surface.

  ‘I know,’ she replied in a whisper.

  ‘Do you want to?’

  He paused in his ministrations, looking her seriously in the eye.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good.’

  He lowered his mouth over the obscenely swollen buds and kissed each in turn, using his tongue to bathe them in warmth. It was almost too much and her breath hitched chaotically as she wrestled with the cords.

  ‘Oh, please,’ she whispered, soaked in the sensation. The frilly drawers felt teasing and ticklish against her damp and swelling core.

  Charles, his hands on her hips, raised his head from her shining wet nipple and cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘Please?’ he enquired.

  She couldn’t voice her desires, though, and she turned her face away.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ he said. When he received no answer, he resumed his feasting on her breasts, holding her hips more firmly when she attempted to wriggle aside.

  ‘I could do this all night, you know,’ he said, surfacing again after a few more minutes.

  Edie, deep in an agony of desire, was not pleased to hear it.

  ‘I’m sure you could,’ she gasped. ‘But please don’t.’

  ‘No?’ He gave one nipple a delicate little lick.

  ‘Oh,’ she moaned.

  ‘Well, perhaps it is time to move on,’ he said consideringly. He dashed her hopes by sucking on the other nipple. ‘Or perhaps not.’

  All she could do was squirm, and she made the most of it, trying to throw him off cours
e by undulating beneath him. It did not work. He was sealed on like a limpet, or a vampire bat draining her life blood.

  ‘All right,’ he said, rising with a triumphant laugh. ‘I said I’d make you beg. This is just the start, my love.’

  He took off his jacket and threw it across the room, then loosened his bow tie and unbuttoned his collar.

  ‘It was starting to feel more than a little tight,’ he said. ‘I like to be unrestrained. How about you? Oh. I forgot.’ His grin was demonic on the way back down to her poor oversensitised nipples for one final lap.

  With his jacket gone, Edie was able to absorb and enjoy Charles’s body heat through the fine cotton of his shirt. She thought he was hotter than fever and might burn her, but perhaps it was her own delirium giving this impression.

  When would he …? Oh, yes.

  The elastic waistband of the drawers was breached, long fingers sliding inside.

  ‘I can’t pull these down,’ he said. ‘Not with your legs tied like that. But I can work around it.’

  His fingers came out again, then she felt his knuckles pressing at the gusset. He must feel the warmth and wetness seeping through. She tried to dismiss the mortifying knowledge, but she shut her eyes all the same in an effort to defend herself from the worst of the embarrassment.

  He spared her his remarks on the subject, using his mouth to better effect by planting kisses along the top of the waistband, where a tiny strip of bare flesh was exposed between her corset and drawers. She squealed when the tip of his tongue invaded her navel, causing a lightning bolt of sensation to flash directly to her core.

  At the same time, he pressed his knuckles harder, finding the outline of her lips and the hungry bud between them before commencing a slow rubbing.

  The whispery-thin fabric of the drawers slipped and slid along with his manipulations. Delicate as the lace was, there was still a tiny drag against her vulnerable flesh that made it both more pleasurable and at times a little painful.

  She couldn’t strain her legs against the cords now if she tried. They were losing their force, lapsing into trembling incapacity. Everything of her was concentrated between her legs, while her stomach was tight, fighting against the slow unravelling of her self-control.