Ester turned. His face was hidden by shadow and he loomed over her like an ogre. He wore what had once been the uniform of an officer, red, white, and yellow. Just like the handsome young men that Ester and Helen had danced with. That seemed eons ago now. The uniform seemed ragged on him, stained and ill-fitting. It was a corruption. Ester backed away as the brute reached for her. Moonlight spilled onto his face. The once handsome visage of the Viscount Kingsley. But, his forehead was too prominent, casting his eyes into the darkness of caverns. His mouth was too full, lips too wet. Naked lust painted his features. Ester stepped back and her right foot hung in space. He lunged and she fell, tumbling through the air to hit the water. Icy cold enveloped her. Water flooded into her lungs. She was looking up at the moonlight playing down through the water above her.
A man entered the water, diving into it like a spear, cutting through the water towards her. Her sight was dimming and there was a pain in her chest. But then his arms were around her, pulling her close to him. He wore gloves but nothing else. She too was suddenly naked. But the water was no longer cold. His body warmed it and she felt nothing but the heat that came from him. The feel of the slippery, soft leather against her bare skin made her heart race and her knees tremble. His face was next to hers. Blue eyes, bright as sea ice, stared into hers. He pressed his lips to hers and opened his mouth. Air flooded into her, a sweetness in her chest that was sublime.Her legs lifted and wrapped themselves around his hips. Strong hands, capable of cruelty but touching her with nothing but the greatest gentleness, cupped her derrière, supporting her in the water. Her breath entered him, and his entered her. The feeling was the most intoxicating intimacy.
It was no longer moonlight that filtered down into the water but blazing sun. Her hands tangled in long, black hair, pulling it away from his face, entwining her fingers in its soft locks. She pulled away from his life-giving mouth to bite at his neck, feeling his fingers tighten against her soft hips as she did. She smiled, kissing, and biting lower. They were floating unaided in the water, turning slowly in invisible currents. The world above was forgotten. This was a world all of their own into which none could intrude. She could feel his manhood against her. She had never seen nor touched a man but was educated enough about anatomy to know how a male body was built. And how it functioned. The feeling of that hard pressure was exciting and terrifying in equal measures, particularly as it pressed insistently against her vulnerable maidenhead. She wanted to open herself to him. To join with him. To become his, his plaything, the vessel for his seed.
An agonizing pressure suddenly gripped her hair. Something was hauling her upwards towards the surface, tearing her from her lover’s embrace. The water darkened as she rose, kicking and screaming bubbles that rose with her. The water released her and she found herself staring into the face of the Viscount Kingsley as he bent his head to hers and kissed her.
Ester awoke with a shriek that ripped from the core of her being. She thrashed against the steel embrace of the man who had torn her from the water.
“Mistress! Please! You are safe and sound!” came a female voice.
Ester realized she was wrestling with a young woman in the uniform of a maid. She looked to be barely out of her teens, with round, rosy cheeks, and fair hair. Ester was dressed in a nightdress that barely reached her shins and was surrounded by bedclothes that she was kicking and thrashing against. The bed was large and a fire burned in a stone fireplace opposite. It cast flickering shadows about the unfamiliar room. Any one of those shadows might contain the monster that had hunted her through her nightmare. The monster who had followed her there from the real world.
Her screams became sobs and she went limp. The maid who had been trying to restrain her now held her close, rocking her as she wept. The girl stroked her hair and made soothing sounds.
“Please, where am I?” Ester mumbled brokenly, trying to shake herself free of the dream.
It had been so wonderful in parts. Hadn’t it? There had been a man. A god. He had dived into the water to save her. Had made love with her. Already it was fading, his face, his touch. But thedark remnant of the dream remained. The remnant based in reality.Kingsleywas real. Hersaviorwas not. Could not be. Men did not come in such forms. Were not so noble.
“This is Theydon Mount, Miss. The house of the Duke of Windermere. Well, his London home anyway. I am Molly. Molly Peters. I’m a maid here. Well, the only maid here actually, if you can credit that.”
The girl spoke in a rush, blushing furiously. Ester smiled, struggling to sit up in the bed. She patted Molly on the hand reassuringly.
“How did I come to be here, Molly?” she asked.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth though, the memory came flooding back.The blackmail. The brute who had been dispatched by Viscount Kingsley to collect her money. The dowry money she had stolen from her father’s safe in order to buy Kingsley’s silence. Her despair at what she had done, what she had tried to do. Ester fell silent.
“You were brought here by the Duke, Miss. I think maybe you’d fallen into the mere, Theydon’s Mere. And His Grace rescued you. I was summoned to bring you some dry clothes and sit with you until you woke up. His Grace wished to be told the instant you were awake.”
Ester remembered unbearable despair. Remembered running along the jetty. Running into the infinite darkness. Then being enveloped in shocking cold. That cold had seemed to pervadeher entire body, forcing her mouth open into a silent scream, scraping the breath from her lungs and flooding in to replace it. How had she been drawn back from that stygian gloom?
“One of the Duke’s men rescued me?” Ester asked.
“The Duke himself, Miss,” Molly replied, “he was fair soaked when he brought you in here. Both of you were. The carpet’s still wet. I really should tell him that you’re awake. If you don’t need anything else just now?”
Ester sank back into the pillows that had been plumped up at her back. They were soft and warm. Her hair was almost dry, as was her body. The nightclothes were not hers and were dry and clean. She supposed that was Molly’s work. She knew nothing about the Duke, but if he had saved her, then he was owed her thanks.
“No, I don’t think so, Molly. Thank you for everything. I presume I am borrowing your wardrobe, you said you were the only maid.”
“The only maid and the only other woman in the house, except of course old Mrs. Grypes, the cook and housekeeper. It’s a funny old household and no mistake.”
Molly put a hand to her mouth at that point. Ester couldn’t help but smile.
“I am sorry, Miss. For speaking out of turn, like. I do go on if allowed. I will go and tell the Duke at once.” Molly blushed and curtsied her way out of the room.
Ester lay back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then it occurred to her that a strange man was going to be walking into the room at any moment. And she lay half undressed in bed. It shocked her into action, flinging back the bedclothes and hunting around the room for her clothes.
But they were nowhere to be seen.
Everything had been taken, even her stockings and petticoats. A long dressing gown was spread over the foot of the bed which would cover her to her bare feet and disguise the shape of her body. She shrugged it about herself, realizing that it was a man’s garment as she did.
It didn’t matter.
She could not allow herself to be seen anywhere near a state of undress by a man. It was too close to what had almost happened with Kingsley.
Ester sat on the bed, then changed her mind and sat in an armchair by the fire, taking a woolen blanket from a chest at the end of the bed and draping it over her legs.
Satisfied that she was suitably covered, she waited pensively for the Duke to arrive. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece and chimed nine when there was a knock at the door.
