Master of the Moors (16 page)

"That's no laughin'
matter," the charwoman said, "I've known people who've ended up
without their wits, and those asylums are rumored to be awful
places, like Hell without the heat."

"Well then..." Kate coaxed
a chunk of meat from her bowl and popped it into her mouth. "We'd
all better keep an eye on our wits!"

Grady chuckled, and
glanced at the window over the sink. Occasionally, blue-white
fractures broke the heavy dark as a furious wind buffeted the walls
of the house.

"'Tis goin' to be some
lark tryin' to get to the dance in this weather, and here we were
worried about the fog," he said.

"You'll all wear your
coats," Mrs. Fletcher cautioned. "There's enough sickness in this
house without deliberately invitin' more of it."

Neil stifled a burp, then
asked, "Is Campbell due to visit Daddy tonight?"

Mrs. Fletcher huffed. "He
was supposed to have been here a half hour ago."

"Maybe the weather held
him up," Grady offered.

"Could be, Mr. Grady, but
I think we all know it's more likely the warmth of the spirits at
The Fox & Mare that's held him up."

"We'll check in there on
the way to the dance," Grady said.

"Will you sit with Daddy
for a while tonight, while we're gone?" Kate asked the charwoman.
"Just to make sure he doesn't wake again and find himself
alone?"

Thunder crackled; the plates
shuddered.

"Of course I will. Don't
you worry about that. I'll be better than any nurse. In fact, with
all of you gone, I may take my embroiderin' and sit with your
father until you come home."

Kate smiled. "Thank you."
She wondered if Mrs. Fletcher knew about the silver
blood.

Mrs. Fletcher waved away
her gratitude. "I was lookin' after that poor man before you two
were born. It won't be anythin' strange for me to sit vigil by his
bedside."

"Well I suppose I'll have
to find myself a new dancin' partner then," said Grady with mock
disappointment. "I daresay none of 'em will be as light on their
feet as you though."

"You'll have a bowlful of
jelly on your head for your troubles if you're not
careful."

"You see," Grady said to
Neil and Kate, "that's the kind of spirited woman I
like!"

Neil laughed so hard he
almost choked on his stew and it took a startled Kate a few hearty
thumps on his back to get him over it. Even then he continued to
giggle softly, until his mirth infected Kate, then Grady and Mrs.
Fletcher, until they were all chuckling like fools.

Outside, the storm
worsened.

***

Superstitious old
man
, Grady thought, with a smirk.
Yer bein' silly
. And yet,
his own self-chastisement couldn't quell the persistent and
aggravating feeling in his bones that something wasn't right. Even
Neil's mood had seemed unusual. The boy hardly exuded good humor,
but the dark mood earlier had been new to all who'd borne witness
to it. Then, at supper, his old self had returned, ending in a fit
of laughter Grady wouldn't have believed had he not been there to
hear it himself.
The
girl
, he thought.
The Newman girl has him excited
. But
despite the light-hearted supper they'd all shared, it still felt
almost as if it would be their last, like condemned men sharing a
joke before being hanged.

Dear God
, he thought, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his
eyes.
Stop thinkin' such bloody awful
things or you'll wish 'em upon the lot of us
.

It was the storm, he
supposed, the howling winds battering at the walls of their warm
safe haven that had summoned his unease, making it a lot easier to
feel the groundless threat of imminent danger than to relax and
believe everything was fine. But the fact that he was not alone in
his worry only fuelled it, for there was not a face at the supper
table that did not exhibit the same signs of preoccupation and
disquiet behind the laughter.

Above their heads, a man
lay dying, and here they were laughing and preparing to go dancing.
Perhaps that was it: guilt. But what alternative was there? He was
not about to order them all confined---even assuming they'd obey,
which was doubtful---and make them sit around thinking of their
father while the rest of the village took advantage of the one
night in the gloom of autumn when they didn't have to sit at home
listening to the sounds of night and fretting over the
future.

No.

Tonight they would dance.
The worry would wait. It would have to, for soon enough Kate would
leave for a new life, Neil too would move on, the Master would die,
and Mansfield House would stand in silence, overlooking a decaying
village and waiting for time to bring it down.

Grady feared what the end
of his life at the house would mean, and though he tried not to
dwell on it, or ponder it enough for it to consume him, he couldn't
help but think of his son, Conor, back in Ireland---a son who had a
life of his own now and would not welcome the intrusion of a bad
memory upon it, should Grady deign to show up on his
doorstep.

The bad blood between them had come
about because of politics.

Conor loathed the British
for their attempts to Anglicize Ireland and frequently used his
position as banker to fund the militant efforts of those who sought
to oust them. Grady, who shared his son's belief, encouraged him to
lend his aid in ways that might be less catastrophic in their
implications. Incensed, Conor had accused him of sympathizing with
the British, an accusation aided by the fact that Grady had many
British friends. It was a ridiculous claim, of course, but Conor
latched onto it, until it became clear that the divisiveness that
had a stranglehold on their nation had succeeded in tearing them
apart also.

Shortly afterward, Grady
had accepted a post as groundskeeper for the mayor of Dublin, and
two years later, had moved to London, where he learned of the
available position at Mansfield House. It had seemed a place far
enough away from the insanity of the world.

But the insanity awaited
him, in the form of a mythical creature he, to this day, told
himself he'd imagined. If so, however, then his imagination had
killed half the men on the hunt that day, and he knew there was
more to it than that. Something had been stalking them that day.
Something had stalked them
with
purpose
, almost as if obeying the commands
of the man who had led them there.

And now, as he sat at the
table forcing himself to laugh along with Mrs. Fletcher and the
children, he worried that whatever it was had come back, that the
uneasiness was a portent, telling him he needed to be careful. That
he needed to protect the children against something the night was
sending their way.

For the first time since
that day on the moors, he was truly afraid.

13

Memory spun a web across the room so
vivid Mansfield believed if he reached out a hand his fingers would
sink into it and the images would shimmer beneath his
touch.

I did it
, he thought with equal parts wonder and terror.
I ended it
.

The darkness was no longer
absolute. The cold empty hearth at the far end of the room now held
a fire that licked and crackled around burning logs and cast out
shadows that sprawled across the ceiling. The curtains were drawn,
the cobwebs that had hung so familiarly like cradles in the corners
of the room now gone. The room was as it had been, once, before his
presence in the room became little more than a haunting.

It took him a moment to
realize that the pain was gone, that he could move without sparking
paroxysms of mind-numbing agony through his enfeebled
body.

I'm dead
.

It took him a further moment to
realize he was not alone.

He turned his head and a
woman lay beside him, the gentle slope of her face partly occluded
by the fall of her dark hair across it. One hazel eye peered
curiously at him, lips parted slightly to emit a breath that
smelled of mint. She was trembling slightly, the sheet drawn to her
chest, obscuring his view of her nakedness. Nevertheless, his gaze
fell to the cleft of her breasts, the slender curves illustrated by
the silken sheet, and as before, he longed for her.

"Sylvia," he whispered,
with no fear at all, despite knowing that she was not really here,
that she couldn't be, no more than his wife could have been here
earlier. Both women were long in the grave.

"I should not be here,"
she said, in her strange accent. To him, her husky, but not
unfeminine voice was merely the sweet sound of passion, a lure she
used to draw him to the light in her eyes and the pleasure promised
by her body.

"I want you to be here,"
he said, mimicking words he had used on the night this memory
represented. "And you wouldn't have come if you didn't want it
too."

"But what of your
wife?"

"My wife is lost to me,"
he said, truthfully. "Every day she grows more distant. It's like
living with a ghost. She cannot give me what I need."

"And what do you
need?"

"To have someone love me
as much as I love them."

"But if you truly loved
her, would you be here?"

Annoyed, he shook his
head, and raised himself up, his elbow dug into the pillow. "Why
are you here? What of your
husband
?"

She looked away from him.
"He has no love for me. I'm a trophy to him, something to be
presented for the approval of his friends. Nothing
more."

"Well...
I
love you," Mansfield told her, unsure whether or not that was
actually the case. He did love his wife and he had exaggerated her
distance from him a little, but his allegiances had buckled under
the weight of his desire for the voluptuous woman lying beside him.
He knew, with a degree of shame, that at that moment in time, he
would have denounced God himself for the chance to touch
her.

"Why?" she asked. "You
don't even know me."

"I know you enough to know
he doesn't deserve you. That you are rotting away in that cold
house, kept like a prisoner. I want to show you what it's like to
be loved, and wanted."

"But you don't know me,"
she repeated, her lower lip quivering as if she were about to
cry.

"I think I do," he said, a
trite response he nevertheless hoped was adequate enough to
reassure her.

He reached out a hand and brushed the
hair from her face. She was the most incredible creature he had
ever seen and his need for her manifested itself as an almost
physical ache in the pit of his stomach.

She turned her head, her
lips brushing his fingers, as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
"You don't know me at all," she whispered, closing her eyes and
guiding his hand down over her chin, her neck, over her breast and
its rapidly hardening nipple, and lower, until a shuddering sigh
escaped her. He slid closer, licking the dryness from his lips; she
released his hand and turned away from him. For one desperate
moment, he feared she had changed her mind, a fear worsened when
she slowly rolled out of bed and knelt on the floor, facing away
from him. His hunger intensified at the sight of her, the soles of
her feet white beneath the curves of her buttocks, jet-black hair
almost long enough to shield her nakedness from him
entirely.

"Sylvia?"

"I want you," she
said.

He slid from the bed to
kneel behind her and touched her shoulder lightly, urging her to
turn and face him. She didn't.

"Please," he whispered. "I
want to see your face."

Again, she did not comply,
and when finally she moved, it was to slide forward, her arms
braced on the floor, palms flat against the carpet, her back an
inverted arch. He lowered his gaze to the dark mound she presented
to him, the shadows leaping over her like jealous lovers. Slowly,
she eased her knees apart.

"I want you," she said
again and now she was weeping, her body trembling.

Mansfield knew he should
stop, should console the grief that tormented her, but even as she
wept on her hands and knees, she rubbed herself against him until
he thought he would explode with desire.

"
Please...
"

The fire hissed and spat; the shadows
lurched across the room.

Hands smoothing the flesh
on her buttocks, Mansfield positioned himself and slowly, ever so
slowly, eased himself into the warm, wet depths of her.

He moaned.

Sylvia wept as the shadows crawled
along her spine.

He froze so suddenly his neck
cracked.

Her skin was going cold,
as if her blood had turned to ice in her veins. He watched, the
horror escalating, as her hair turned silver and the shadows buried
themselves beneath her flesh. She changed, nubs of bone crackling
as she shook her head and forced herself back against him with a
gasp that was not altogether natural. Her vagina felt like a
tightening fist around his manhood. He could not
withdraw.