The trees were around them now, engulfing them and blocking out the fleeting moonlight. They followed the track unerringly. He found himself wishing he knew the name of the unconsciouswoman and hoped that she would awake at least once more before succumbing to the curse.
Did she have a family? Or a husband. Boldly, he lifted her left hand, but there was no ring there.
He let her hand rest against the back of his own. That innocent touch, so trivial to most men and women, was a sensation of deep eroticism to Julian. Her skin was soft, smooth, and perfect. He wanted desperately to lift it to his lips, to press them against the back of her hand. To inhale her fragrance, just detectable despite her soaking in the lake. Instead, he let her hand fall and stared ahead into the darkness.
Presently, the track joined a wider way which rose, crisscrossing a wooded hill. At the hill’s summit there loomed a tall, dark wall of stone. A few windows in that wall were lit with warm, flickering gold. It ended in a broken, uneven line of castellations, former battlements long neglected. Towers marked the corners and a tall, wooden door stood beneath an ancient arch.
Julian dismounted and pulled on a thick rope that hung beside the door. Inside, a bell began to ring, and presently the door was opened to reveal Crammond. The butler was tall and thin with iron-gray hair and a face from which all the flesh appeared to have been boiled away. He bowed his head to his master, momentarily hiding eyes sunken into dark caves and a straight mouth over a lantern jaw.
“I have a sick woman here, Crammond. I need gloves. Rufus needs stabled. At once!” Julian barked.
Crammond bowed his head again and produced a pair of black, leather gloves from a pocket inside his coat. Julian gladly put them on, silently thanking the ever-ready efficiency of his servant. Safely gloved, he lifted the woman down and carried her into the castle in his arms. Crammond disappeared through the front door, clucking his tongue at Rufus, and softly mumbling to the animal as he led him away to the stables.
Julian walked unerringly through dimly lit hallways, past tapestries, and statues, relics of the antique family that had lived in this house for generations. Reaching the guest wing on the second floor, he nudged a door open with his boot and gently laid his burden down on a bed. He supposed a maid would have to strip her of her sodden garments and he reached for the bellpull beside the bed.
As he waited for the maid to arrive, he stood looking down at his charge. Her breasts rose and fell in sleep. By the light of a candle he lit, he could see that she had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Where her hair had begun to dry, he could see that it was burnished bronze in color. She looked like the statue of a goddess, crafted by a Renaissance master. She entranced him and his mind wandered along roads of fancy, trying to imagine who she was and how she had come to throw herself into the lake.
A timid tap at the door announced the maid and Julian stepped well back from the bed, giving the girl space to safely enter the room. She had fair hair and a round, wide-eyed face. Molly, her name was.
“Molly, this young lady fell into the lake. Find her some bedclothes and put her into them. These wet clothes should be removed as soon as possible. Have a fire laid and ensure the room is kept warm. Sit with her until she wakes up, then notify me immediately.”
He was firm but not unkind, lacking the practice of dealing with people and conscious of how he could easily sound as if he were barking at those he spoke to. Combined with his dark hair and tendency to glower, he knew he could be an intimidating presence. It made him mindful of every interaction.
Molly curtsied and hurried from the room. Julian sighed. He could see the fear in her eyes, over and above the fear a young maid might have for a Duke who towered over her and had a tendency to shout. He wondered if even these servants, in his own home, called him the Ghoul. Or the Phantom. After all, they had all been hired to work in Theydon Mount when Julian acquired it. That had been five years before upon his ascension to the Dukedom and rejection of his family residence at Windermere. They were not connected to his family the way the staff at Windermere were, and had no prior loyalty.
Molly returned a few minutes later with an armful of cotton nightclothes.
“The young lady looks taller than me, Your Grace. But this will keep her warm at least and it is big on me.”
Julian nodded curtly, leaving the room, and closing the door behind him. He strode away along the hallway, unconsciouslypulling the gloves tighter onto his hands, meshing his fingers together. At the end of the hallway, he paused.
It had been his intention to go to the library. The previous owners of Theydon Mount had maintained a large library of esoteric volumes. Such knowledge had been his pursuit for most of his adult life. Ever since he realized that modern science could not explain neither his affliction, nor the malady that had rendered his father so sensitive to light. His father’s library at Windermere was a treasure trove of archaic lore but he could not bring himself to cross the threshold.
Now, it was as though a chain held him tied to the young lady that he had rescued from the dark jaws of death. He looked back over his shoulder. The door to her room was visible only by the soft candlelight that seeped under the door.
Julian carried no candle and there were none in the hallway. He had not inherited his father’s pathological fear of light but had grown used to seeing in the dark since childhood. Windermere Castle had been a dark place in which daylight was alien, for the most part. Now, his eyes found that door instantly. And the eyes of his imagination could not help but conjure the image of the beautiful young woman being undressed, stripped of her wet clothes.
Her skin would be the purest alabaster. Her breasts round and pert with proud nipples. A stomach flat and hips as soft, delicate curves. Molly was right, the lady was tall. Her legs would be shapely and lithe. Julian’s fist thudded against the wood paneling of the hallway. He gritted his teeth in frustration. Hecould not touch her. Could never touch her. If she swore undying love and begged for his touch, cast aside her clothes, and stood before him as naked as Eve in the Garden of Eden, he still could do no more than look.
Forcing himself to take a step away from that door was like tearing at his skin. The constant drip of water from his clothes and hair to the floor helped to move him. He needed to change and dry himself.
The chain stretched and he took another step. Stretched further and then snapped.
With a growl deep in his throat, he took the stairs at the end of the hallway three at a time, flinging himself around a bend and then striding along the next hallway. The lack of servants he maintained meant he was blessedly alone in a house the size of Theydon Mount. At that moment, had any encountered him, they would have received short shrift. After another staircase and a further hallway, he came to the door of his quarters. Julian flung it wide and slammed it behind him. He was breathing as though he had run a mile carrying the young woman on his back.
He stripped and dried himself hurriedly, changing into fresh clothes. But respite eluded him. After half an hour pacing his room like a caged animal, he decided to try and distract himself in the library. It was attached to the suite of rooms that were his personal quarters, reached through splintered double doors that looked as though they had stood there since the Conquest.
Inside, the library glowered with reaching shadows. Pale moonlight reached in vain through high windows but failed to touch the floor. Julian picked up a stub of candle from a niche beside the door and struck it alight with flint and tinder kept beside it. Then he walked to a favored nook in which there was an armchair, a table with his current studies scattered across, and a decanter of brandy.
Opening a drawer, he took out a pipe and filled it before lighting it from the candle. Breathing deeply of its earthy smoke, he poured a measure of brandy and picked up the nearest book. His eyes skimmed the page but his mind was filled with the image of a naked, red-haired young woman.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ester ran through dark hallways as fast as she dared. Her pursuer was never more than just out of reach. She could hear his mocking chuckle, his lusty harsh breath, and heavy footsteps. She could not run as fast as possible because the candle in her hand flickered so, threatening at any moment to plunge her into complete blackness. The hallways were unfamiliar. It was her old home, Loughton Grange, and yet it was not. She could hear the sound of music and laughter from somewhere close by. The ball at which she had danced and laughed. At which she and Helen had whispered to each other of the handsome officers they saw and who saw them. Whispered of which they should like to dance with. Which they would like to be kissed by. But those innocent, girlish giggles were gone. Now there were only unfamiliar passages, foreboding shadows, and the hunter that stalked her.
Turning a corner, she found herself at the edge of a precipice. Beyond was a pool, lit only by moonlight from above. A forest loomed yonder, alive with menace, and beyond that, the saw-toothed outline of a ruined castle. Loughton Grange had justhalted, its walls disappearing as though cut off by the blow of a giant ax.
“Now the chase is over,” came the voice of her hunter.
