House of Dark Delights

by Louisa Burton

  “It’s all right,” murmured Darius as he held her closer. “It’s all right.”

  “For four years, I had Nat and nothing else—no one else.”

  “Were you lonely?” Darius asked. “For adult companionship, I mean.”

  “I had a few friends, not many—but of course, I hadn’t been touched by a man since I’d told my husband I was in the family way. My sister Livy used to write to me, urging me to take a lover, but that seemed so unsavory, and anyway, I had Nat, and he needed me. But then…”

  She lapsed into silence again.

  “Who was he?” Darius asked.

  “Hugh Stapleton, heir to the Viscount of Granthorpe, and a horse grenadier. Very dashing, very charming, but not like so many of the rest of them, those privileged youngbloods who only care about whoring and drinking. He was a real gentleman in the very best sense—warm, kind. I met him at Livy’s home in the Cotswolds. Hugh was her husband’s brother’s army chum. He was…God, he swept me off my feet. Nothing happened between us during that visit—well, one brief, stolen kiss—because I had Nat with me, and I still didn’t think it would do to let things go too far. But then, after I came home, I was lonelier than ever, having had what little I’d had with Hugh. I hadn’t realized how terribly I’d missed just being…cared about.”

  “Of course you did. It is what all humans most desire.”

  “Hugh wrote me the most moving letter, tender but so impassioned. I actually wept when I read it. Livy was due to come spend a fortnight with me, and he asked if he might come along. He said he’d pose as a coachman so as not to arouse suspicions. Livy urged me to let him come, said he’d been pining for me horribly—so I agreed. I wanted to be free to spend time with him, and I’d already resolved to share my bed with him, so of course I had to make other arrangements for Nat, who slept in the nursery right next door. I asked my husband to take him on a two-week visit to London.”

  “And he agreed to that?”

  “He was appalled by the idea. For that matter, so was Nat. He’d been to London and hated it, said it smelled like smoke and dung. But I pressed the matter like a bulldog, and off they went. Of course, Nat needed someone to look after him, so I sent along his nursemaid, Carrie, not thinking about the consequences in my zeal to be alone with Hugh. Carrie, you see, was very young, very comely, and not at all conversant in the ways of the world—just the way Somerhurst liked them.”

  “Ah,” said Darius.

  “While she was being deflowered in the garden of our London town house—she gave me quite the tearful account of it afterward—Nat left the house and went wandering out into the street.”

  “Oh, Charlotte.” Darius held her tight as her shoulders began to shake. “Charlotte, Charlotte…”

  She sobbed until she was too exhausted to continue, soaking his shirt with her tears. “The messenger came while I was in bed with Hugh,” she said through the stuttering little gasps of her breath. “Livy knocked on the door and gave me the news. I think I would have killed myself if he hadn’t been there to comfort me and talk sense to me. I know I would have.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Two months later, Somerhurst contracted smallpox during an outbreak in London and died. I didn’t mourn him for a second.”

  “One can hardly blame you,” said Darius as he dried her face with the hem of his shirt.

  “Hugh wanted to marry me,” she said, calmer now, although her breath still came in little hitches. “I told him someone like him deserved better. He persisted. I slept with his best friend, Livy’s brother-in-law. That did the trick. But then, about a year later, he wrote to me saying he knew I was in anguish, otherwise I wouldn’t be ‘scourging myself’ the way I was. He said I should never forget that I could always find comfort in his arms. Every few months I get another letter from him. I’ve never answered any of them, but that doesn’t keep him from writing.”

  All Darius could do was shake his head.

  “There were other men after that,” she said. “About two and a half years ago, I realized I was with child. The father was married. I, of course, was not. Nevertheless, I was thrilled. I thought, surely God wouldn’t let me bring another child into this world if I weren’t a good person deep inside, a good mother. For the first time since Nat’s death, I was able to feel something other than guilt and torment. I had hope. I felt so light, so happy. It was as if I suddenly had a purpose again, a reason for being.”

  “Were you not at all concerned about your reputation?” Darius asked.

  “I planned to spend my confinement on the Continent, so that no one would be the wiser, then raise the child as my ward. But before my stomach had even started to grow, I lost the baby. The physician who treated me said I had growths in my womb that weren’t life-threatening, but that would make it difficult for me to conceive, and impossible to carry a baby to term. I’d become barren.” Bitterly she said, “God had known best after all.”

  “Well…”

  “Soon after that, I learned about the Hellfire Club. At last, I thought. Hell on Earth. ’Twas as if Sir Francis had invented it just for me.”

  “I very much doubt that,” Darius said.

  “I feel like Lady Macbeth sometimes,” she said. “’Tis as if my hands are covered with blood, and they’ll never come clean.”

  Darius raised her palm to his mouth and kissed it. “There’s no blood here, not one speck.”

  Shaking her head, she said, “You can’t see it, but—”

  “’Twas an accident, Charlotte.”

  “Nay. If only I hadn’t—”

  Bracketing her face with his hands, Darius said, “Did you mean for Nat to die? Was that why you sent him away? Was that why—?”

  “Jesus, no. Of course not.”

  “Then why are you scourging yourself?” he asked gently.

  She stared at him, groping for an answer.

  Darius rolled Charlotte on her back, slipping a hand beneath the blanket to rest it on her lower abdomen. “If you could have carried that child to term, would it have changed the past two and a half years?”

  “’Twould have changed the rest of my life.”

  Darius moved his hand over her belly, feeling, exploring…

  “Darius?”

  “Shh. Relax.”

  He felt the growths in her womb, clusters of fibrous knots massed within and without. Closing his eyes, he drew a channel of healing warmth through his hand and into the pearlike organ. The tumors withered and shrank, disappearing altogether within a minute or so.

  Smiling, he lowered his head and kissed her on the lips, the first time all evening he’d done so.

  “What were you doing?” she asked.

  “I suspect you shall find out soon enough.”

  Eleven

  OH, GOD,” Lili breathed as Turek tugged the brazier closer, its flames so near now that she could feel the little hairs on her arms crackling with heat.

  “It’s a bit late to be calling on Him now,” said the vampyre. “As one makes one’s bed, so must one lie in it.”

  From beyond the Cella came the soft scruff of bare feet on stone as someone sprinted toward them through the cave.

  Turek heard it, too. He turned toward the sound as Lili screamed, “Help me! Please!”

  “Halt’s maul!” Whirling on her, Turek whipped his fist across her face, igniting an eye-watering burst of pain in her nose.

  “Lili?” Elic appeared on the bridge in the entryway, taking in the scene with an expression of horror. “Christ, what—?”

  “He’s a vampyre,” Lili choked out through the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. “He can be k-killed—”

  “Gusch!” Turek struck her again as Elic bolted across the room, roaring in rage. Seizing a handful of Turek’s robe, he slammed his fist into the vampyre’s head, sending him stumbling back with a shout of pain.

  “Let her go,” demanded Elic as he stalked toward Turek, “or I swear to God I’ll—”

  �
��You’ll what?” Turek yanked one of the tall torches out of the floor by its iron spike and swung it while striding toward Elic, who backed up onto the bridge to avoid the flames. “What do you suppose you can do to me while you’re burning to death, eh?”

  “He can burn, too.” Lili cocked her head toward Turek. “He told me.”

  Elic grabbed one of the shorter torches that flanked the entrance, prompting a malicious little chuckle from Turek. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but ’tis more often than not the gentleman with the longer weapon who has the advantage.” Smirking at Lili over his shoulder, he asked, “Is that not right, mein liebes?”

  Taking advantage of Turek’s having turned away, Elic leapt at him, aiming his torch’s flaming cresset at the vampyre’s robe. Turek raised his own torch like a battering ram, using it to push Elic away.

  “Elic!” Lili screamed.

  Flames sputtered on the chest of his robe, the silk burning with a smell like singed hair. He slapped at them with his hands, wincing.

  “Elic, watch out!” she yelled as Turek stabbed at him with his torch, aiming the ball of fire at his long, loose hair.

  Elic ducked and lunged, swinging his torch, but Turek blocked it easily.

  “We could perform this tedious dance all night,” said the vampyre as he backed up toward Lili, “but I’ve a more entertaining idea. Do you recognize the new scent our lovely Lili is wearing this evening? She’ll be a column of screaming flame in about two seconds—and then I shall let the brazier finish the job. How delightful that you could be here to watch,” he said as he dipped his torch toward the hem of Lili’s veil.

  Elic sprang forward and slammed his own torch down, pinning Turek’s at the front edge of the platform with a spray of sparks and cinders. Straining with the effort, Turek heaved his torch up, flipping Elic’s smaller, lighter one across the chamber and leaving him empty-handed. He looked toward the other tall torch, but it was across the chamber, behind Turek.

  This is it, thought Lili, shaking uncontrollably as Turek returned his attention to her. Don’t scream. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

  Turek aimed his torch at Lili. Elic reached for it, jumping back as the vampyre wheeled on him, stabbing at him with the fiery end.

  Elic made another grab; Turek jabbed again, laughing.

  “Poor, doomed Lili,” Turek taunted, keeping Elic at bay by prodding at him with the flame-filled cresset. “Your champion has failed you. Bested by a bloodsucking insect.”

  “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” Visibly steeling himself, Elic reached into the fireball, locked his fingers around the searing-hot iron cage, and yanked the torch out of Turek’s grip.

  Lili screamed Elic’s name. Turek gaped.

  Elic, grimacing in pain as his flesh sizzled, took one long stride toward the dumbstruck Turek, hauled back with the torch, and rammed its pointed end into the vampyre’s chest.

  Turek let out an ungodly howl as he fell to the ground, stabbed through the heart—not a fatal injury to his variety of bloodsucker, perhaps, but one that would certainly slow him down for a bit. He twitched and shuddered, grabbing at the iron spike as if trying to pull it out.

  Elic shoved the spike in deeper, groaning in pain and exertion, until Turek quivered and went slack; then he let go of the cresset and stumbled back. His hands were charred and blistered; flames leapt from his sleeves.

  “Elic!” Lili cried, but he was already crossing to the stream. Falling to his knees, he plunged his arms into the icy water with a hiss.

  Within seconds, he was hauling himself, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet. “The key,” he said, gesturing toward her restraints with a ravaged hand.

  “In his pocket.”

  Elic retrieved the key and stepped up onto the platform to unlock Lili’s wrist cuffs, wincing.

  As soon as her hands were freed, she lowered Elic’s head to hers and kissed him. “Thank you,” she said, shaking in relief. “Thank you. Thank you. God, I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Say you love me. You don’t even have to mean it. I just long to hear those words from your—”

  “I love you,” she said. “It’s mad—we’ve only just met.”

  “Then I’m mad, too,” Elic said, and kissed her again.

  Twelve

  A VAMPYRE, eh? Is he still here?” Shielding his eyes against the bright morning sun, Inigo scanned the procession of carriages lined up along the flagstone drive that curved around the castle to the stable at the edge of the surrounding woods. The Hellfires and their followers were chatting and fanning themselves in little clusters as they waited for the journey north to Calais and the Channel. Meanwhile, an army of servants—theirs and their hostess’s—loaded their luggage into the waiting vehicles.

  Chuckling to himself—Inigo was like a little boy, eager for a glimpse of the monster—Darius said, “No, Turek’s already on his way to Paris, bound in chains and with an escort of Madame’s Swiss Guards. She’s going to use a lettre de cachet to have him—”

  “Lettre de cachet?”

  “King Louis gives them to his favored few, left blank so they can fill in the name of any miscreant they’d like to condemn to indefinite confinement in the Bastille, for whatever reason suits them.”

  “Indefinite?” asked Inigo. “This vampyre, he needs blood to survive, yes?”

  “Perhaps he’ll feed off his fellow prisoners. Perhaps they’ll put him in a cell all by himself and he’ll…well, I’m not sure he can actually die without being burned to death. In any event, I don’t think Madame is too troubled over his fate. After what he did to Lili, I can’t say I’m very concerned, either.”

  Darius heard Charlotte Somerhurst greeting someone. It was Henry Archer, crossing the drawbridge from the gatehouse. They shared a brief conversation, Charlotte smiling and laughing amid a cluster of other ladies, and then Archer noticed Darius and Inigo and excused himself to join them.

  “Morning, gentlemen.” Turning to Darius, he said, “Must say, old man, I wouldn’t have expected to see you here, milling about among the pesky humanfolk.”

  “I’m waiting to say good-bye to Charlotte Somerhurst.” He would have done so already but for the risk of getting too close to the women she was talking to.

  “I’ve just come from Madame,” said the young administrateur, looking up at the top floor of the gatehouse, which housed the study that was her private refuge. She stood at the window, a shadowy form holding Yseult, her St. Charles spaniel. “She tells me that Lady Somerhurst has a silvery radiance emanating from her.”

  “Is that so.” Darius’s gaze shifted to Charlotte’s belly, hidden behind a paper-wrapped package she held clutched in her arms.

  “He’s smiling,” Inigo muttered to Archer while staring at Darius. “He never smiles. What does it mean, a silvery radiance?”

  “It means there will be a blessed event in the lady’s future,” Archer replied. “A very blessed event. The child is gifted.”

  “Chalk up another druid for Elic,” Inigo said. “Good show!”

  “A druidess,” Archer corrected. “It’s a girl. She also tells me that her ladyship’s aura has until present been muddy-colored, with ominous streaks of black, which would indicate maladies both of the body and the spirit, but that there’s no trace remaining of any morbid energy at all.”

  “Interesting,” Darius said, wishing he could stop smiling.

  Archer glanced around and lowered his voice. “I do hope Elic knew what he was doing with this one.”

  “Meaning…?” Darius prompted.

  “Meaning is she really worthy of—”

  “She is,” Darius said in a tone that would brook no argument.

  Archer addressed him with a penetrating look as Inigo elbowed him in the ribs to communicate the fact that the lady under discussion was strolling toward them.

  Charlotte looked exceptionally fresh and young this morning in a gown of green-striped lawn, her face shadowed by a wide-brimmed straw bonnet bedecked with
silk daisies. Darius and his companions all bowed as she approached. “Gentlemen,” she said, then she looked directly at him and smiled. “Darius.”

  Archer and Inigo made their excuses and took their leave.

  Darius dug in his pocket for the handful of diamond-tipped hairpins he’d taken from her last night, and handed them to her. “These are yours, I believe.”

  “Thank you.” In a tone of quiet wonderment as she stowed the pins in her reticule, she said, “I awoke this morning with the most extraordinary feeling of…lightness. ’Twas as if I’d gone to sleep weighed down by a pile of stones I’d been carrying ’round for years, and when I woke up, they were just…gone.”

  “A good night’s sleep can be most rejuvenating,” he said.

  “It was this place,” she said, then added softly, “It was you. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but I do know I owe you a debt, one which I can never repay—though I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t offer some gesture of thanks, however inadequate.”

  “You owe me nothing,” he said, “but if you are so moved, there is something you can do that would please me greatly.”

  “Anything,” she said.

  “This Hugh Stapleton,” he said, “the one who keeps sending you letters…I’d like you to write to him.”

  She looked a bit taken aback, as if it were the last thing she’d expected him to say. “What…what shall I write?”

  “Whatever you’d like. Whatever you’re moved, in your heart, to say to him.”

  Charlotte looked down for a long moment, the brim of her hat concealing her face. When she met his gaze again, her eyes were shimmering. She cleared her throat and said, “I shall. There is, however, something else, something I’d like to give you, both as a token of thanks and as a memento of my visit.”

  She handed him the package, a rectangular parcel folded in brown paper and tied with string, a note in an elegantly feminine hand inked on the front. My Dearest Sir Francis, it began.