Dark Enchantment (12 page)

‘See who’s there, Thorpe.’

I put the lamp upon a table and advanced with every intention of looking outside. I didn’t reach it; a few paces off I stopped, blinking at the dark stain spreading from under the front door. ‘Good Lord.’

‘What,’ said Morgan harshly, ‘is that?’

It was a pool of liquid, seeping out upon the flagstones. In this light and on the dark slate it was impossible to tell what colour the liquid was. I squatted on my heels and dabbled a finger tentatively. It was icy cold. I couldn’t bring myself to touch it to my tongue, but I sniffed at my wet fingers, discerning nothing.

‘It’s … water, I think. Just water.’

‘Then where’s it coming from?’

I couldn’t answer that. As far as I recalled the river had been well within its banks and below the level of the house. It could hardly have risen so rapidly. And the water was spilling out across the slates still, making them as black and reflective as obsidian. I realised I’d have to retreat to keep my shoes dry. Shivering, I turned my back on the door. ‘It’s rather rum, Morgan. Do you think the river has burst its banks?’

His eyes met mine angrily. ‘Since we crossed the bridge?’ Then I saw his face change as his gaze switched back to over my shoulder, and his jaw dropped. The gun jerked in his hand.

Directly at my shoulder, barefoot in the pool, stood a young woman. She had not been there a moment before; she was there when I turned. My heart nearly flew out of my mouth. She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring up at Morgan, her
eyes
wide and unblinking. She was soaking wet. That was what you noticed about her first of all. She wore a sleeveless white linen shift of some sort and it was so sodden that it clung to her body and had turned half transparent on her pale skin. Her long dark hair was plastered to her shoulders.

‘Oh my good God,’ I whispered to myself.

She was shivering visibly. Like a dog that’s spotted a squirrel. Or a young woman soaked to the bone on an October night.

‘Can you see her?’ Morgan demanded.

‘Good grief, yes.’ She looked completely solid, completely real. I could see pearls of river water tracking slowly down her marble cheeks.

‘Where did she come from? I looked up and she was just there!’ His voice was screechy with shock and outrage, but the shotgun was aimed straight at her, unwavering. I was far from confident that at this distance the spread would not catch me too.

‘Morgan –’

‘What in damnation do you think you are, miss?’

It was hard to blame him; her sudden appearance, her utter motionlessness, her fixed glare directed on him alone, the legend of the Morgans’ nemesis … If it had been my own self in his place I’m sure I would have been just as alarmed. As it was I was stupid with shock. I just stood looking, transfixed.

She took a step towards the stairs. Instead of leaping out of the way of any blast I put my hand out to her and touched her shoulder. She was as cold as a stone from the bottom of a Welsh river, but perfectly present to my hand, her skin soft and smooth. And at my impetuous touch her legs folded beneath her and she slithered into a swoon, falling against me. Without
thinking
I caught her into my arms, my instinct to save her from the wet flagstones. And suddenly there I was, standing speechless with the slender limp form of a maiden from beyond the grave in my arms, looking up at my friend almost apologetically as he gaped back at me.

‘Thorpe!’

I shrugged helplessly, a Gallic mannerism I had acquired and often been berated for by my friends.

He ran down the stairs to me, lowering the shotgun at last. ‘What are you doing?’

‘She’s cold,’ I said. My shirt front was already soaked through from her. ‘We should … should get her to the fire, should we not?’

He laid one hand on her head, not without trepidation, to check for himself that this was a real girl and not some figment of his imagination. Her dark eyes were half open. She moaned faintly at his touch, the first sound we’d heard from her. Looking down I could see the sweep of her lashes, the pallor of her full lips, the peak of a hard nipple jutting against the wet linen. If this was not a real woman then I had never known one that was.

‘Well then.’ Morgan sounded dazed. ‘I suppose we should.’

I carried her through to the parlour. She was a slender slip of a thing, hardly any effort to hold. I knelt with her in front of the fire. ‘Get the counterpane.’

‘Oh. Right.’ He brought the quilted cotton throw from the chaise longue and we wrapped her in it. She did not struggle, even though she seemed to regain consciousness at the first lick of firelight warmth. She put her hand on Morgan’s as he arranged the folds and when he snatched it away she watched him with yearning eyes.

‘Ghost my arse,’ he huffed. ‘This one’s real enough.’

I was supporting her head with my hand and most of her
slight
weight was leaning against me. ‘Real, perhaps,’ I said, and my tongue felt numb as I spoke. ‘There’s no warmth in her, Morgan. And I can’t feel …’

‘What, man?’

‘I’m not certain she has a pulse.’

‘Rubbish.’ He put his hand to her throat. She stirred, arching her neck, reaching up to take his hand and draw it down her breastbone. He let her guide him for a second, then pulled from her grasp and sat back hard, his eyes as wide as hers and his face very nearly as pale. ‘Good Lord.’

I was feeling dizzy. ‘Morgan …’

‘What’s your name, young lady?’ he asked her, his teeth showing under his lifted lip. ‘Who are you, by God?’

She lay back against me as if exhausted. There was a profound vacancy in her eyes. Morgan lurched forwards and grabbed her face. I tried to protest; he ignored me.

‘Who the devil are you, you hussy?’ he shouted. She only whimpered. His fingers were biting into her skin.

‘Morgan, I’m not sure she can talk –’

‘Really? Let’s see.’ He released her, only to slap her across the face. ‘Found your tongue yet?’

‘Morgan!’

He looked at me as if I were a stranger. She moaned, then reached out her hands to him. He recoiled, jumped to his feet and began to pace about the room. Her gaze followed him, as if he was the most fascinating man on earth. There was no blush of blood to her abused cheek. There was no fear or anger in her expression, only a formless longing.

‘Morgan, I think she’s mute and a bit … simple.’

‘You think so?’ All his confusion and frustration was coming out as temper, as usual. ‘And dead?’

I became aware that the counterpane bundle was sodden all the way through. I couldn’t answer him directly. ‘She’s still
soaking,’
I muttered. ‘We ought to find her a blanket or something dry to wear.’

Morgan laughed.

I unfurled a corner of the quilt in order to expose her arm to the fire. The skin was still wet. Droplets stood up in the delicate crease of her elbow. Water was still running out of her hair. I bit my lip. The counterpane should at the very least have blotted up this moisture. This was not natural.

‘Want my jacket?’ Morgan asked with ill humour.

‘She’s still soaked. I think the water’s coming
from
her.’

Cautiously, he circled back for a better look. ‘We could get her out of that wet dress.’

My mouth was dry, to make up for the cold water wicking into my clothes from the girl. Her linen shift was translucent where it adhered to her skin and tented over the pebble of her nipple. That detail had not escaped Morgan either; he hunkered in front of her and ran his fingertips down the inside edge of her shift’s deep neckline. ‘What do you say, Alyse? Like to get out of your nasty petticoat?’

She didn’t respond to the name. But she took his hand and laid it on her full teardrop-shaped breast, and a hungry breathy noise issued from those pale lips.

‘Well, ghost or no, there’s no doubt what sort of a girl she is,’ Morgan murmured, his voice thickening to hoarseness.

‘I don’t like this,’ I stammered.

‘Really? You should get a handful of what I’ve got.’ He squeezed, and she moaned and surged into his grip, her shoulders writhing against my chest.

‘Morgan!’

‘Stop being such a bloody prude, man.’ He sniggered, and I could see the doubt and the nervousness evaporate from him. ‘She’s frantic for this, can’t you see?’ He grinned foxily. ‘Maybe this is what she wanted all along, all those years. Think about
it
– she came to the house desperate to make the beast with two backs with Lord Price, and died unfulfilled. Maybe all she’s needed is for someone to give her what she wants. Maybe she just needs the master of Levingshall to give her a good, hard seeing-to.’

‘So now she is the ghost?’

‘I don’t give a damn what she is, old chum. Except that she’s wet and wide for it.’

‘Think about Cicely!’ I protested, as the girl rolled her head back on my shoulder, her lips parted, little breathy pants shaking her breasts as Morgan played with them. Her aroused nipples poked through the wet linen like accusing fingertips.

‘I’ve thought about Cicely until my balls are blue,’ he growled. ‘Don’t you dare reproach me Thorpe. I’ve had enough of waiting for what’s mine. Now the Lord of Levingshall is going to do his duty.’ He took hold of the wet cloth. ‘Let’s get you out of those wet things, shall we my girl?’

With a good hard pull and a twist, he tore her shift open down the front. Unnecessary, I thought. But I said nothing. I have always been weak compared with Morgan. And despite my protests and my misgivings, it would be dishonest to pretend that the darker part of me was not moved by that girl moaning and writhing in my lap.

‘Take a look at those beauties!’

Her pale skin was marbled with blue veins and her nipples were only tinted with colour, but they stood stiff and responsive to his touch, beaded with running droplets of water. She reached out for him, her slim hands stroking his face, but he slapped them away, grimacing.

‘Your hands are like ice! What about the rest of you, girl?’

Cold hands: warm heart
, my mother used to say. It was one of her store of comforting adages such as
Unlucky at cards;
lucky
at love
. But I was by no means certain that the heart beneath those pert, ripe breasts was either warm or beating.

Morgan threw back the counterpane and completed the sundering of the dress with swift movements, laying her bare all the way to her pubic mound. She was as slender and as pallid as I’d anticipated, her private fleece curled to ringlets by water. He slipped his hand between her thighs and she writhed her hips as she parted them willingly for him. Then she uttered a moan – a real moan, a soft, thrilling sound – and arched against me. Despite my soaked and freezing clothes my cock stiffened at the unmistakable noise of a woman’s desire. Morgan had gone still. His eyes met mine.

‘What?’ I demanded, my voice unsteady.

‘Cold all the way through,’ he whispered, and his lips curved cruelly. I could see the muscles working in his wrist. ‘But wet there too. Gloriously wet. And she’s no virgin.’

Alyse’s hands reached for him again, pleadingly. He pulled back in annoyance.

‘Hold her arms out of the way, Thorpe.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘What do you think? Hold her tight.’

I am ashamed to say I obeyed him. The pressure of his will – his will, his lust, hers, mine, I could no longer distinguish them – was a force I could not resist. I took the girl’s wrists and pinned them back out of the way, while Morgan unbuttoned his trousers and released his straining length. His face was flushed but the crown of his member was plum purple, the colour of rage. I remembered that back at school I had always admired the size of his masculine equipment and the confidence with which he had handled it. But now, looking down the body of this slender girl, it suddenly seemed to me monstrously
ugly
and threatening. How could such a solid thickness fit into such a slip of a lass?

I was about to find out. Pumping his rod a couple of times as if to charge it, Morgan settled his knees apart, then pulled her up towards him, lifting her onto his thighs. With me holding her arms, she was stretched between us, her breasts and belly taut. He guided his prick as he pushed into her quim, as if it were his fist that were pressing home. I heard her gasp. Morgan’s movements were deliberate and slow.

‘Cold to the core,’ he said through clenched teeth, eyes rolling. Then: ‘God but it’s good.’

He began to pump into her, pushing deep then pulling back all the way. I could see the gleam of her juices on his shaft. I breathed deep, thinking that I should be able to smell her, but as she had no heat she had no sexual musk, as cold and scentless as a river-washed rock. Yet she was capable of sensation. She struggled a little against my grip and gasped at every thrust, eyelids fluttering closed over glazed eyes. Her lips were parted and moved silently as if pleading. And as if in a trance of my own I watched Morgan’s merciless plundering of her body with a look on my face that I knew was only partly pity.

‘You like this. You like watching me fuck, don’t you, Thorpe?’ His eyes were narrowed, his throat as red as if he had a rash.

‘You should be gentler,’ I whispered, registering the way his fingers were biting into her flesh. Would he leave bruises? Was she
able
to bruise? Did she feel pain?

‘You think so?’ He laughed in his throat, his rhythm slowing. ‘I suppose there is no hurry. We can take our time. We can do what we like with her.’ That thought seemed to evoke others of interest, judging by the glitter in his eye. ‘Ever fucked a girl in the arse, Thorpe?’

I opened my mouth. He didn’t wait for my reply.

‘Yes, of course you have: Paris, eh? French girls will let you shovel around in the coal hole, won’t they? Not like good English girls.’ He slapped Alyse’s thigh thoughtfully. ‘I could fuck this one up the arse though. She’d love it.’

‘You don’t have to behave like a barbarian, you know,’ I complained weakly.

‘What? Am I embarrassing you?’ His hand indicated his crotch.

‘Just show some … restraint.’

‘You don’t like what I’m doing then? Really? Isn’t your cock hard, watching me fuck her?’