by Thea Devine
A large, hulking shadow moved down the dimly lit hallway, bearing an oblong box on one shoulder, from which something small kept dropping, and rolling.
Absolutely a dream.
She followed after the shadow, because what was the worst that could happen in a dream? She'd wake up. She'd die.
Click, roll, stop. Click, roll, stop.
She bent over and picked up the object.
A stone. Small, more rounded, glassy. Many stones, littering the hallway as the shadow came to Hugo's room, and pushed open the door.
Light blared out—candles, lamps were lit within, and she could see clearly that it was Bingham at the door.
Of course. In a dream, it would always be the person you least expected to see.
And he was carrying that oblong box that looked like . . .
Like ...
It's a dream , . .
... a coffin . . .
She edged her way down the hall, picking up stones as she
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stepped on them and putting them in her pocket, until she reached the doorway.
She was afraid to look in the room.
Of course she was. This was a dream, and something horrible was in that room.
J have to know.
Where was Lujan?
No, Lujan was sleeping—it was all up to her. That was what dreams were about—the symbols and the things you suppressed, that you feared.
Like a room with a body in it. And a disapproving old butler who was carrying a strange, oblong box. And stones on the floor, which could have been the very ones she had found under Olivia's bed.
She had to go in that room, and she was scared to death of what she would find.
She peered around the casing. Bingham had set the box down on a table he'd drawn up by the bed. And she could see clearly that the box was old, rotting, and the corners had been gnawed and scratched until there was nothing there but hanging shards of wood, sawdust, and holes.
Sawdust under Emily's claws . . .
This was the perfect dream—she'd finally discover the answers to every question . . .
"Come in, madam."
So he'd seen her, the disapproving, paper-thin Bingham. Or heard her. Well, that was fine—for a dream.
She eased into the room, the whole scene—Hugo a stone-dead presence on the bed, the rotting little coffin, the paper-thin butler with a righteous expression on his disapproving face—a grotesque nightmare . . .
She gestured to the coffin. "That's Gaunt, isn't it?"
"Gaunt's bones, madam. I've brought them to Mr. Hugo. He would want them here."
So Hugo had always known what had happened to Gaunt. Terror coursed through her.
She stood riveted, unable to move. She had to ask, but the words stuck in her throat. She didn't know if she wanted to know. She didn't know how she couldn't ask.
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It was a dream, after all. The answer might not be the truth. Or it might be the clue she had always wanted to find.
"How did he die?" Her question was barely above a whisper.
"He found the diamonds, you see. He wanted to show his mama and brothers all the funny stones..."
The funny stones—
. , . the pebbles in the picture in his hand? And Hugo had seen that and thought he had no other choice—?
"And Mr. Hugo never could convince him that the stones had to be a sectet between them. So ... we did what needed to be done."
We.
"And you kept the funny stones in the coffin under Olivia's bed..." '
"It got moved now and again when she went into a fit of cleaning the house, you see, but yes, Gaunt was always with her, and our secret was always safe. I made certain of it."
Our.
"Until you came." The tone changed, grew ominous, his paper-thin face implacable. This was a man with no scruples; he had killed her father, aided and abetted Hugo in his quest to keep his secrets, had no qualms at all about killing a child—or killing her, for that matter.
A murderer to the bone. A thief.
Murderers and thieves.
From the jungles and mine pits of Kaamberoo he had come, the one who had made it possible for Hugo to return to Waybury with a fortune in diamonds, who possibly had set the explosives intended to kill her father, who'd stayed on at Waybury all these years, a comfortable pensioner always certain of his place.
And now Hugo was gone—
He'd take the diamonds and disappear.
It was a dream. It couldn't possibly be true.
"And so, madam, when you pry where it isn't meant for you to pry, you must take the consequences."
Gaunt's bones and a coffin full of diamonds—rough and uncut, like the thirty years of secrets and betrayals it had taken to conceal them . . .
"You watched me,.." she whispered.
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"Yes, madam."
"That ghostly, rolling sound in the hallway .. . ?"
"Myself, madam, to scare you away . . ."
To terrorize her, he meant. And he had .. .
No—it was a dream—it had to be a dream. Everything she'd sensed, everything she'd felt, heard—all of it Bingham, in service of his master .. .
A dream—
Except that Bingham was pointing that gun at her, the same one with which he'd shot Edmund.
You—of course Edmund had known him—from the fields at Kaamberoo. Hugo's ally, working side by side to swindle his partner.
What a nightmare. Every piece of the puzzle shifting right into place. Now she only had to wake up, before he killed her.
"Madam . . ."
"It's a dream," she murmured.
"Oh, it is very real, madam. You will die."
Ooowww. Oh God, Emily—Emily was in her dream, sitting in the doorway, staring at Bingham. Staring like she was putting a spell on him or something, with the intensity and hatred of a predator.
"I hate cats," Bingham said, aiming the gun at Emily and firing. Emily bolted. The bullet hit the floor. And then he had no choice—he had to try for Jancie—he had to fulfill Hugo's dying wishes .. .
He aimed again as Lujan shouted her name. She whirled—the bullet whizzed by her into the opposite wall, and Lujan raced into the room.
It was real—real!
Bingham froze, and then he threw down the gun and dove out the window to his most certain death.
******************
They buried Gaunt with Olivia. Those fragile bones, hiding all those secrets. That rotting coffin, lined with valuable stones. Whose fortune, whose diamonds? And the album. Hugo had put the album with the bones, fleshing out the boy who had been, and burying once again the one clue to his disappearance that no
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one ever would have deduced: the handful of pebbles in the photograph.
Not unlike the handful of pebbles Jancie had culled from under the bed. She wept for Gaunt, for his little lost life, for his curiosity, for his misfortune to have found Hugo's fortune, with which action he had sealed his fate.
What an adorable, sweet, mischievous child he must have been. How Olivia must have mourned him. She must never have gotten over that. And she had never known he was buried all those years under her bed, the scent of death bleached from his bones by then.
The tangled web.
What a monster Hugo had been. Two fathers, two monsters, each in his own way. How did the children of such monsters live with that?
They buried Hugo and Edmund side by side, partners in life, partners in death, both equally sharing the wealth of Waybury.
They buried Bingham in the village cemetery.
And they came back to Waybury and they counted the stones.
A fortune in small, filthy, irregularly shaped, uncut stones.
"We'll divide them," Lujan decreed. "There's no way to determine equality—it will have to by count. And in this way, we'll be free."
But were they? They were tethered to
the past by the stones. By the greed and lust for diamonds and wealth. What would the possession of those diamonds, uncut, worth much, do to them?
Were they their fathers' children, the strain of madness and greed running through their veins?
They agreed to go back to London that day, all of them together.
March made it possible—they went on ahead, and he packed for all of them and joined them later the next day, bringing Emily with him as well.
Kyger would stay with them for perhaps a week.
"I told you—Em leaving," he said over dinner in the town house dining room. Poole hovered. They wondered about Poole as they would wonder about every servant now who had worked for any length of time in Hugo's service.
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There was so much to do—announcements to be sent to the newspapers, a period of mourning to be observed, discreet inquiries into how one disposed of such a valuable treasure trove.
Lujan already planned to allocate his share to enhancing and refurbishing Waybury. And they wouldn't return there until every vestige of what had happened there was painted and plastered over and gone.
And Kyger was leaving. "It's all yours, brother mine. Everything that should have been yours all these years. Welcome to the world that I will be so happy to leave."
"You weren't unhappy," Lujan said.
"No. Just waiting in the wings, dear brother. Always the understudy for you, Lujan, only better. Except you've changed. And so it will be Kyger on his own now. No understudies for me."
Kyger was right. Something had changed. The burden of guilt for the sins of his father, and for his own sins, had turned Lujan around.
That, and having a wife.
Jancie, still pale, drawn, as guilt-ridden as he. Diamonds wouldn't buy Jancie any happiness. If he loved her—perhaps that would.
"Get a child," Kyger said to him later. "Name it after Gaunt. Let him live again."
"Yes." A child. With Jancie. A most hopeful prospect—sons, to carry on, to make a man walk tall, make a man proud.
Had his father ever been proud of him?
In all his years of screwing around, how could his father ever have been proud of him?
Did he care, in light of everything else Hugo had done? Nothing he had ever done could compare.
But he wanted any son of his to be proud of him. He wanted Jancie to be proud to bear his sons.
They bid Kyger good-bye a week later. He had converted a good part of his share of the diamonds to cash; the rest he left on deposit in the bank and he was going off into the sunset, with no destination in mind.
He held Jancie longer, perhaps, than he should have. "I "° love you," he whispered for her ears only. "Don't blame yourse for any of this,"
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It was a handsome admission after everything he'd thought, everything he'd surmised. Her brother-in-law, about to go. Oh God, she would miss him horribly.
"I love you, too," she whispered in return. "Good-bye, goodbye."
And then it was the two of them, and everything in between.
Lust, greed, secrets, monster fathers, hidden treasure, his dying mother, the missing Gaunt. . . God—the almost insurmountable barrier of the past, crushing Jancie like a stone.
Lujan saw it, he felt it, and he felt helpless in the face of it.
He had gone past it. He had, in the way of men, put it aside, not to be reckoned with for one moment longer than was necessary. Yes, it would always be part of his past, but it didn't have to be part of his future.
And he had to make Jancie see that.
He wanted Jancie with a gnawing ache that was killing. She had to understand: their love would banish the monsters.
Love.
He wondered about the evanescent nature of love—what it was, how it snuck up on you, enhanced you, made you tall and proud and eager to conquer the world. That was how he felt right now.
How he felt about her.
He could move the stone that crushed Jancie. He could move mountains in her name.
They didn't even have to go back to Waybury. He could hire people to run the estate. He could lease out the house, they could stay in London. Every action he took pushed him one step further away from the recent disasters and one step closer to all that was good.
They could have a baby. Do exactly what Kyger suggested: give it Gaunt's name and let him live again.
Hope—he felt hope and the courage to take on the future.
Jancie was feeling it herself, the pressure to bury the past and
move away from the sorrow. It was too depressing, repining over
all that had happened. It pulled her down, made her feel morose
- when she should feel a measure of contentment that it was over,
and that everything was explained.
None of it would ever alter any of the facts.
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Fate had been kind, if she would but admit it, and dealt her and Lujan an equal hand: both fathers had paid for their greed, lust, and cupidity, and his long-missing brother had finally been found.
Surely that was enough on which to build a future with Lujan.
Because something had changed. Something vital—in him. In her. She loved him still, and all the more.
Lujan meantime had been busy taking care of those social obligations that were necessary when a family member died. The notice to the newspapers, the reading of the will, the execution of Hugo's wishes, which were simple in the extreme: a portion for Kyger, deposited immediately with his diamonds, the rest to him with the proviso that he take on his responsibilities, or the estate would devolve on Kyger.
He also arranged the complete renovation of Waybury House, and for Mrs. Ancrum to come to London to do for them.
He was careful and gentle with Jancie, making no demands, even sleeping hi a separate bedroom, while she came to terms with her father's death.
Once they were apart like that for the several weeks since they'd returned to London, Jancie found she was ready, even eager, to come together with him. She missed him. She missed their sex. She missed everything about their explosive coupling. Everything.
But how did a wife tell a husband she missed everything in the aftermath of all they'd been through?
She hoped. She flirted. She touched. She waited . ..
And one night, about two weeks after Kyger left, Lujan and Mrs. Ancrum plotted and planned a special dinner for Jancie to be served in her bedroom. Lujan would deliver it on the tea cart at an appropriate hour.
It would be the first time he'd been in her bedroom since they came to London, the first time there would be any hope of sex since she had come to him here over a month ago.
The time had come. He was ready, but he didn't know if she was ready. He deliberately came early, when she would, in ai probability, still be dressing.
He hoped she'd be dressing, and not sitting around dressed, in her stavs.
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She opened the door in her dressing gown, unaware of the fact, as was he, that Emily had trailed him to the room and slipped into the bedroom unnoticed from beneath the tea cart.
"So early, Lujan?"
"Umm," he murmured, pushing the cart into the bedroom. Jancie's room, redolent of Jancie's scent, presence, sex. "I'm hungry.I" He didn't mean for food.
Jancie closed the door. "I am, too." Nor did she mean for food.
He wheeled the cart to the window, pulled up the drop leaves, and set two chairs on either side.
She sat down, she sniffed . . . the smells were delicious, appetizing. Him opposite her in her bedroom was appetizing. Emily winding herself around her ankles was utterly familiar and comforting.
"What's first?"
"That small covered dish to your right."
She lifted the cover, and found a bulbous, oval glass egg nestled in a warm water bath. "What's this?"
His voice was husky as he asked, "Will you wear that for me?"
She
knew exactly where he meant her to wear it, and what it was intended for—to keep her labia spread and her body open for him all the time. The thought of it made her body go boneless. To always have the sensation of him spreading her ... to know that he wanted her ready for him all the time, anywhere, everywhere . ..
Everything she had ever wanted of him, spread out before her now, more tempting, more appetizing, more filling than any meal could be.
Her answer would set the course of their lives.
She looked at him a long time. Everything had changed. He had changed. He had changed her. And now things were changing once again, and she needed to know the most important thing before she allowed him to insert the warm, bulbous, oval glass between her legs, because it would make all the difference in the world.
"First I have to ask you something."
Emily immediately jumped up beside her with an approving
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mrooow. Her best companion, the one who loved her most in the world. Except maybe now, Lujan could .. .
He patted Emily's head absently as she rubbed against his shoulder. "Ask me anything."
She had to know. She said it. "Could you love me?"
Could he? He already did. It had snuck up on him, inch by inch, until she was all he ever thought about, all he could ever want. And he'd never told her. He'd taken her, and used her, and he had been cavalier with her feelings and her love from the moment they'd met.
But that Lujan was gone forever.
This Lujan wanted more—he wanted what she wanted: a home, a life, children—sons—and he wanted all of that with her. He wanted desperately to claim her now—to insert the smooth silky glass egg between her legs and begin a new sexual odyssey with her.
She wanted it, too. She was shaking with it, just imagining it— imagining lying back on the bed, feeling him spread her cunt lips, and gently burrowing the bulbous glass egg just where it would keep her spread wide apart. Imagined wearing it, walking with it, dressed with it, going about her daily chores with it, her body primed, hot, explosive all the time.
She was minutes away from it now, and the only sustenance she needed was that one satisfaction, those three important words.
All he had to do was say it, and she would lie down for him and part her legs and welcome him home.