I was foolish to mention marriage to her. I know that I am the guardian of her future, responsible for her prospects and her station. But, God forgive me, I do not think that I could bear to lose her.
Montague’s Last Ride
CECILIA SCRAPED BUTTER on to the thin triangle of toast with her silver knife, then glanced down the length of the breakfast table at her husband. Rupert was absorbed in his copy of The Times, his dark head turned away, his fork hovering forgotten over a plate of lambs’ kidneys. Cecilia smiled to herself, taking pleasure as she always did in the handsomeness of the man she had married, enjoying the contrast of his black moustache and tanned skin with the crisp white of his open shirt. He had been riding before breakfast and was still clad in tight breeches. The faintest scent of horses lingered in the air of the breakfast room.
Cecilia nibbled the corner of her toast and sighed gently. ‘What are your plans for today, my dear?’ she asked, looking out through the window beside her, across the broad balustraded veranda to the parkland beyond. The rich green of the grass and the darker foliage of the oaks shone under the morning light. It was going to be another beautiful summer’s day.
Rupert laid down the newspaper and looked across at his wife. A smile warmed the cold blue of his eyes. ‘I have to look at Home Farm,’ he said, ‘and then talk to the gamekeeper about the shooting in Hagg Wood. It will take most of the day, I’m afraid; I might have to miss tea. And this evening I promised to ride out to the Ambersons’ for cards. I’ll be back rather late, I should think. Will you be able to keep yourself occupied?’
Cecilia nodded. ‘I plan to turn out the Blue Room,’ she said. ‘I thought the Chinese furniture would look best there, so I shall spend all day seeing to that.’ She pouted, without any real unhappiness, purely for the prettiness of the effect. ‘There is still so much to unpack. I don’t know when we shall ever get to the conclusion of our own furniture, never mind sort out what was here when we arrived.’
‘Ah, the burden of inheritance,’ smiled the new Lord of Massingham Hall. ‘Just be sure not to throw out too many of the family heirlooms, my love.’
‘I shall certainly discard that hideous moth-eaten chaise longue from the Bamboo Bedroom,’ she warned.
He nodded. ‘Get Ramson to move it up to one of the servant’s rooms,’ he advised. ‘But don’t work too hard, Cecilia. I don’t want you to be exhausted when I return.’ His smile brought a glitter to his eyes. Cecilia blushed faintly and looked down at her plate. It was fortunate that there were no servants currently in the room.
‘Of course, dear,’ she murmured. ‘But I did have a very relaxing day yesterday, talking to Lady Amberson. I’m sure I won’t have to sleep too early tonight.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ her husband said softly. His gaze clung to her, to the curving slenderness of her pale figure under the cream silk of her dress. Her blushes only made her dimpled face prettier, betraying as they did to him her pleasure, her anticipation, her trepidation at what her husband might demand of her. Though wed nearly a year, there was no complacency between them yet.
‘Actually, I had a very interesting conversation,’ she said, her hands fluttering like pink birds on the snowy linen of the table’s edge. ‘Lady Amberson knows a great deal about the history of the area and your family. She told me all about the mausoleum at the bottom of the lawn.’
Both of them looked out at this point through the open window to where, just visible in a sheltering copse of cypresses, a small white building glimmered among the green.
‘Ah,’ said Rupert. ‘One of my ancestors, I assume?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Cecilia said with dreamy enthusiasm. ‘And a terribly romantic one. The Wicked Lord Montague.’
‘Wicked?’ he asked, teasingly.
‘Oh, terribly, even for his time. He was hanged as a witch in the seventeenth century.’
‘Good grief. I had no idea any of my relations were so interesting.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you would have been proud of him,’ Cecilia laughed. ‘He was dreadfully handsome and very brave, and said to be passionate about two things: horses and women. He had the finest stable in the county and rode to hounds every day he could. And in between rides he would spend his time seducing, well, just about anyone in a skirt. No woman was too inaccessible or too much of a challenge … nuns, countesses, brides, shepherd-girls. He said once that he would come back from Hell itself for the chance to bed a beautiful woman. And it was rumoured – well, more than that, in the end – it was said that he had made a pact with the Devil; sold his immortal soul for one boon …’
‘Which was?’
‘That any woman who looked into his eyes would be consumed with lust for him.’
‘Good call.’
‘It was his downfall in the end. He infuriated every husband for sixty miles around, rich and poor, and made too many enemies at Court. Eventually he was reported to the magistrates, and there was a very hurried, furtive trial – it was said afterwards that the judge had been cuckolded by him, too – and they hanged him at the crossroads upon the common. But there was trouble outside the court-room, because the women present starting wailing and calling for mercy for him. So Lord Montague was tried blindfolded, unable even to see his accusers, and they put his eyes out with hot irons before hanging him, as soon as sentence was passed. They were afraid of his “magical” stare.’
‘Fascinating,’ Rupert said dryly.
‘Apparently, they were quite justified,’ she continued. ‘Even though he was a convicted witch and a servant of the Devil, when he was executed many of the local women in the crowd wept openly for him. And several tried to run forwards and hang upon his feet after he had dropped – to break his neck, you see, and give him a quick death instead of letting him strangle slowly. The constable’s men had to hold them back with pikes.’
Rupert raised one dark eyebrow. ‘I admit their devotion was touching,’ he said. ‘And the wicked Montague was brought back for burial at Massingham Hall?’
Cecilia nodded. ‘He had already had his own tomb built, and not on consecrated ground either. Besides, he was nobility and it would not have done to leave him swinging. I had a look through the iron gate yesterday,’ she added. ‘You can see inside quite clearly. The interior is completely plain, with no carvings or crucifixes at all. I think he must have been a dreadful pagan at least. There is just this big stone sarcophagus with not even his name on, just the one word “Resurgam”.’
‘“I will rise again”,’ her husband mused. ‘I wonder if that was a joke.’
Cecilia stifled a coy smile.
‘Well,’ said Rupert, shaking his head, ‘it sounds like he made a very unwise bargain to me. Really quite rash, not to mention indiscriminating.’
‘Oh, I think it rather wonderful,’ Cecilia disagreed, her pink lips forming a moist ‘O’ that quickened Rupert’s pulse. ‘Just think, he might have had anything the Devil cared to grant; riches, power, the friendship of the King. But he wanted more than anything to be adored by women, desired by them, to have as many as he could take. He wanted them all; rich and poor, plump and thin, pretty and plain – the female body meant more than the rest of the world to him. I find that so … elemental.’
‘It certainly sounds like he has charmed you, at any rate,’ Rupert observed. His voice had dropped to a low, ominous purr.
Cecilia blushed again and could not meet her husband’s eyes. ‘It’s very romantic,’ she protested weakly.
‘My dear, you don’t fool me for a moment,’ he said. ‘I can tell by your face, and your voice, and your manner that you find this ancestor of mine more than romantic. Your imagination has got the better of you again, my lovely wife. You are quite aroused by the thought of this wicked Lord Montague, are you not?’
Cecilia’s head drooped modestly on her slender neck. The loose sweeps of her honey-brown hair hid her eyes, but did not disguise from his view her flushed cheeks or parted lips. ‘If you say so, my love,’ she whispered.
>
Rupert stood. His own arousal would have been quite obvious through the tight riding breeches, if she had dared to look. ‘I do say so,’ he told her. His blue eyes were bright and hard, his smile mocking. ‘And what do you think I should do about a wife of mine who is wet and pliant at the mere thought of this long-dead rake?’ He reached to the side of the table, where his riding crop had been laid carelessly when he came in for breakfast. ‘Get up,’ he ordered her in a low voice.
Cecilia’s head lifted in alarm; ‘What about the servants?’ she gasped.
‘You had better hope they do not come in,’ Rupert said coldly. ‘Now stand. Bend over the chair seat.’
Shivering, Cecilia obeyed. Rupert stepped up behind her and lifted her long dress over her back with the crop. White silk drawers were revealed, edged with lace, but he pulled these down to her knees with one swift, ruthless motion. Cecilia gasped and buried her face in the padded back of the chair.
Rupert drew the stiff rod of the riding-crop up the inside of her right thigh from knee to cleft. Cecilia twitched involuntarily, the white globes of her buttocks shuddering. The crop was slapped warningly between her legs, from thigh to thigh.
‘Further apart,’ said Rupert. His voice was thick.
She spread her legs hesitantly, baring the tender puckered skin of her naked arsehole, the shadowy fuzz of her secret hair, the pink petals of her flesh. Rupert, his breath rising sharply in his throat, surveyed his wife with utter satisfaction. He tapped her puffy sex-lips with the end of the crop, heard her whimper nervously, and felt his own rod harden to iron, straining against his breeches. He laid his free hand firmly over the rigid bulge of the constrained weapon. At the end of the springy crop there was a small loop of stiff leather. He twisted this between her legs, probing her, spreading the petals of the blushing flower. It slipped in and out easily; withdrawn, it brought with it a trail of clear moisture. Cecilia groaned almost inaudibly. Rupert ran the loop from front to back of her slit, spreading the wetness of her willing compliance generously. The scent of her was like perfume.
‘Slut,’ he said.
Her arse writhed, offering itself to the whip. The leather was darkened now, soaked with her juices.
‘Whore,’ he breathed, leaning over her, gripping his own flesh as if it would tear free from him. Very gently, he began to beat a tattoo on her spread sex with the end of the crop, working across the pubis and the swollen cunt, pausing now and then to administer a stinging blow to either white buttock. Cecilia whimpered and shook; the leather slapped and splashed on her wetness; his rhythm was unrelenting and expert, driving her masterfully to her crisis. With a stifled, wailing cry she opened to the pleasure that the whip was hammering into her flesh, then collapsed into the chair. Dropping the crop, Rupert pulled his tormented cock from his breeches with both hands and sprayed great gouts of pearly jism on to her splayed and quivering arse-cheeks.
As soon as he had recovered, he pulled her silken drawers back up over her bespattered globes. She would carry the stain and the stink of him round with her all day; that thought was a warm knot of pleasure in his gut. He helped her to her feet and kissed her hot forehead. Her lips quested feverishly for his, but he restrained her and pushed her gently away.
‘We have a busy day,’ he reminded her, his smile mocking but not unkind. ‘Tonight, my dearest. Be patient. And try not to think of my wicked ancestors – I am just as wicked as you could wish and, what is more, am alive so that you might have the benefit.’
With a final sip of tea he left the breakfast room, slapping his riding crop cheerfully against his boot and whistling to himself.
Cecilia stood, dazed and frustrated, before the windows overlooking the park. Pleasured but far from satiated, her hot and swollen flesh tormented her now. It would be a whole day before Rupert came to her bed and filled her needy body with his hardness. She should, she knew, attempt to think of other things. Indeed, what else was there for it but to find some distraction? The thought of the Blue Room, with its faded screens and damp, overstuffed bed, was not attractive at the moment. She looked down at the swell and fall of the sward before the windows, wondering if one of the gardeners might have passed by unnoticed while Rupert was playing with her. The thought, in her present aroused condition, was more titillating than alarming. The Hall’s herd of white cattle was visible, grazing in the far distance across the park, but she did not really see them. Her gaze drifted back to the cypresses and the old mausoleum. A sigh escaped her lips.
Cecilia found the great iron ring of household keys where she had first seen it, in the bureau in the Smoking Room – Rupert’s study, now. The panelled room smelled of pipe tobacco and furniture wax. She stood over the desk and sifted through the keys. Only four looked large enough and old enough to be candidates for the gate to the tomb, but she took the whole ring. She made her way around the side of the Hall, through the walled vegetable garden and past the greenhouse with its neglected vines, down to the ha-ha that divided the lawn from the park. She crossed that ditch by the narrow bridge under the yew tree, shutting the gate behind her. It would not do to let the cattle on to the lawn.
Already the sun was fierce and there was a sticky, humid feeling to the air which made the heat worse. No clouds relieved the monotony of the blue sky. It was going to be a scorching day.
The mausoleum of Lord Montague was a little way from the ha-ha: a small, plain building constructed of brick covered over with white plaster that now was stained and crumbling. Only the surrounding trees and the thick ivy that grew up the rear seemed to protect it from the elements. In the front wall was a single gate of wrought and scrolled iron. By peering in through the bars, one might make out the interior; the pale table-like tomb standing in a drift of ancient leaves, the cracked greying plaster of the ceiling, and the single carved word on the tombstone.
Resurgam.
Cecilia tried one key after another in the lock on the gate. In all honesty she expected to find that even if one did fit, the gate would be rusted solid and beyond her powers to open – it was over two centuries old, after all. However, it appeared that the previous owners of Massingham Hall had maintained their ancestral memorials with due respect, for the third key she tried did, with a little coaxing, turn in the lock. The gate moved reluctantly, grating on its hinges, but with neither the squeals of protesting metal nor the showers of rust that might have been anticipated.
Within, the mausoleum was cool, a welcome relief from the sweaty heat outside. Empty of all features except the marble-topped tomb, it filled up at once with the echoes that Cecilia brought with her. She stood on the threshold for a few moments until her eyes adjusted to the dimness, then wondered why she had come at all, for there was nothing to see in this single bare room. The drifted leaves near the doorway turned to dust underfoot. She trod carefully and approached the tomb with a sensation of mingled melancholy and disappointment. Her fingertips brushed the cold marble. She walked all around the tomb once, slowly, but found no new feature. She thought of Lord Montague lying beneath the slab, perhaps within arm’s reach; thought of his body mouldering silently in the darkness, and then idly imagined how he would feel lying motionless, staring at the unseen marble with empty sockets while soft legless things swarmed and gnawed within his entrails and black scuttling beetles burrowed in his skull. The morbid sensuality of it appealed to her; she envisaged no discomfort but only the slow tickling squirm of dissolution. Then she sighed at her own foolishness. Montague had been dead too long; there was likely nothing left of him by now but dust and a few fragments of bone.
She laid both palms on the marble slab. It was so cool on her hot skin.
‘My poor Lord Montague,’ she murmured, ‘lying here all alone in a cold bed. No warm body to hold you close. I’ll bet you never had to do that when you were alive.’
She slid her hands forwards on the cool stone and stretched her torso across the slab, feeling the chill soak into her arms and breasts and belly like water. For a moment she felt
dizzy. The rock was icy against her cheek and brow. The hot ache between her legs was unabated, however, and she would not be able to soothe that by lying there. Reluctantly, after reclining a few moments, she pushed herself back to her feet once more. Then she discovered that, standing, her crotch was directly on a level with the top of the slab. Where she stood now the corner of the stone pressed into her groin, and she could rub her swollen, needy sex against its cold thrust. Dreamily, she lifted her skirt before her and spread it upon the tomb-top so that her damp silk underwear was all that separated her from the rigid marble. She began to press herself forwards, rubbing herself off on the white rock, while the hot waves of her passion, held back so precariously, began swiftly to rise. She imagined Lord Montague stirring in his tomb, sensing her, smelling her; pictured him lifting his withered arms towards her, his black and corrupt penis swelling, stiffening – and with that thought she came, her suppressed whimper echoing in the tiny room like the shriek of some small animal.
When her senses had fully returned she found that sweat had broken out across her brow and lip and that her legs were trembling beneath her. The climax had been far fiercer than she had anticipated, with a backwash of unconsciousness that verged on the startling. Straightening her skirt, Cecilia moved uncertainly from the mausoleum, shocked by the weakness of her limbs. She pulled the gate shut behind her, looking across the lawn to the looming bulk of the Hall, wondering if anyone had seen her exit from the tomb. Nothing stirred in the bright sunlight.
Halfway back to the Hall, she realised that she had left the ring of keys dangling in the unlocked gate to the tomb. She turned with some reluctance to go back, then paused. The dark gateway to the tomb gaped at her across the grass, the bars almost invisible against the blackness, but in that darkness behind the iron something paler moved. She blinked – and it was gone. She found her heart was jumping in her breast. There was no suggestion of motion about the tomb any more; no sign of life. Yet somehow Cecilia did not care to return to that gate just now, but backed away thinking that if Rupert missed the keys she could send one of the servants. Or perhaps simply fetch them tomorrow.
Cruel Enchantment (Black Lace) Page 12
