The Angels' Share

by Maya Hess

  I could imagine. Connor, Steph, pranks – and my diary fuelling their naughty games.

  I was strangely convinced by the depth of honesty in his eyes, the way he approached me and placed a hand on my arm and then brushed his fingers against my cheek. If Connor had read my diary, he would know that I’d never forgotten about him, that I’d wondered what kind of man he’d grown into.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘But expect your life to change again if you keep your thoughts to yourself. Symbolically, you’ve already let go.’

  ‘Connor The Shrink.’ I laughed and wiped away a stray tear as it fought for release. I would never know if he was telling the truth, if he really hadn’t read my secrets. A part of me hoped that he had at least taken a peek at the bits that included him, the anticipation I had written about as I returned to the island. Perhaps that was why he leant forward and placed a kiss on my cheek.

  ‘Things are hotting up at Creg-ny-Varn.’ Connor gestured towards the house. ‘Caterers, florists and musicians have been coming and going all day.’

  ‘Any sign of Kinrade?’ I still wasn’t sure that he was even on the island let alone capable of organising such an event.

  Connor shook his head. ‘I’ve told you. The man keeps himself to himself. It’s a wonder that he’s hosting this party. I expect he’s trying to ease himself into the island’s social scene.’

  ‘What about his mother? Will she be attending?’ I had a sudden urge to talk with the woman who was most likely the last person to see my father alive. That somehow made her special to me, even though she and her son had robbed me of what was mine.

  ‘I expect so, although she doesn’t live here any more. Ethan manages the estate himself.’ Connor sounded sympathetic, which made me pull away from his touch.

  ‘Such a burden,’ I remarked sourly. ‘Several million pounds worth of property. How does he cope?’ The Kinrades would get little sympathy from me. ‘Anyway, I shall find out more tomorrow when I go to work. I expect I’ll get caught up in the bustle of preparations.’ Connor appeared bemused and I knew what he was thinking. ‘It’s not like I want to be a cleaner,’ I added. ‘Don’t you understand?’ He had completely the wrong idea.

  ‘Ailey, my love, I don’t think I’ve ever understood you.’

  And he approached me again, as if our differences had been bridged by the very fact that we were dissimilar, and delivered another kiss, although this time I closed my eyes and parted my lips because I knew it was aimed at my mouth. It never quite happened.

  ‘Ted’s got big problems!’ A draught of cold air wrapped around our ankles as Steph lunged into the office. ‘One of the machines is, well, broken.’ She shrugged but froze with her shoulders up around her ears as she realised what she had interrupted. ‘Oh God,’ she cried and ran out of the office with her hands over her face.

  ‘Great,’ Connor said and ran to the door. ‘Steph!’ But she was gone and nothing Connor could say would erase the brief swipe of his lips against mine that she had witnessed. ‘I’ll have to see what’s up with Ted. We were having problems with pressure in one of the tanks earlier. Coming?’ He replaced my diary in his desk drawer and left his office a troubled man, one incomplete kiss having produced immeasurable problems.

  I nodded and followed Connor into the depths of the Glen Broath distillery, which was pungent with the special smells and the mystery it had held for me as a child. I was filled with admiration for Connor as I realised what a vast responsibility the business was for him. We found Ted crouched beside a series of copper pipes and gauges.

  ‘I’m not sure the cut didn’t come too late, Mr McBryde, or possibly there’s something wrong with the hydrometer.’ Ted, a weathered but healthy-looking man in his sixties, straightened up and stared at me. ‘You leave it with me, sir, and I’ll get it sorted.’ He grinned, displaying a row of crooked teeth. ‘I told that young Stephanie not to bother you but she seemed determined you’d want to know.’

  ‘I trust you entirely, Ted, and you’re right. There was no need for me to come.’ Connor turned to me and spoke as if he barely knew me, let alone had just tried to kiss me. ‘I’d better find Steph. Let’s go.’

  When the girl couldn’t be located, Connor insisted on driving me back to the cliff top, but instead of offering to escort me across the dangerous beach, he supplied me with a torch and a pleasant but brief ‘goodnight’.

  ‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, at the party.’

  ‘OK,’ he replied casually, dipping his headlights as another car passed. ‘See you tomorrow about eight.’

  And that was that. The tail lights of Connor’s Land Rover disappeared into the thick sea fog that was blanketing the coast. The locals referred to such mists as Manannan’s Cloak, when the island’s ancient sea god swathed the shores in fog to protect the land from unwanted visitors. What it was doing now was preventing me from watching the last glimmers of Connor as he drove home to Steph, as well as making my passage to the beach cottage even more treacherous than usual. To make matters worse, tears cut hot grooves down my cold cheeks.

  As I stumbled down the track to the shore and made my way across the precarious rocks by torchlight, I thought about tomorrow night. In a little over twenty-four hours, I would have asserted my claim on Creg-ny-Varn and made public just what a scoundrel Ethan Kinrade was, in front of the very people he wished to impress. I would look stunning, I promised myself as I hurled my body against the jammed front door of the cottage, in my hired gown that was safely stored in Steph’s room at Connor’s house, although I wondered now if she might cut it to shreds. The arrangement had been for me to pick it up after I had finished work in the morning, but preparing myself for such a social event without running water worried me somewhat, not to mention the trek across the beach in my multilayered skirt. I daren’t think of the cost if I damaged the dress.

  I bundled myself into bed, although not without a glimpse through the binoculars at Liz and Lewis’s cottage, and retired, disappointed, with another large dose of Glen Broath to help me sleep.

  I dreamed of Connor and gowns and feathered masks and the sea mist and whips and handcuffs and woke to a screeching seagull and the brush of Connor’s faint kiss still on my lips.

  * * *

  ‘Over there!’ Dominic barked at several young men who were wheeling stacks of velvet upholstered chairs through the echoing hallway of Creg-ny-Varn. ‘Do you need instructions too?’ He turned to me, his harassed face descending into a shade of deep burgundy.

  Until he snapped at me, I was beginning to feel sorry for him. Kinrade had evidently left most of the ball preparations up to him, which was asking rather a lot of a gardener.

  ‘No, I don’t. I shall clean the Grand Hall until it’s sparkling. Is Mr Kinrade here?’ It wasn’t that I wanted to see him yet, I was just curious.

  Dominic halted midway through firing instructions at the florists, his pupils dilating and his breath quickening. ‘Yes, he is here but he’s not available until later.’ The stammer was barely noticeable.

  ‘I can wait.’ And we exchanged glances that meant something more than I could put into words. Perhaps it was because we both remembered our last meeting.

  ‘Is Mr Kinrade’s bedroom still ship-shape?’ I asked, alluding to our encounter. I felt like Steph with my cheeky grin and confrontational tone.

  ‘Of course,’ he snapped. ‘The man’s not been home so how could it need cleaning so soon?’

  ‘Speak to me like that again and I’ll see to it that you don’t sit down for a week.’ I flicked Dominic’s shoulder, buried somewhere beneath his dark green jacket, with my feather duster – the only implement I had for immediate punishment – and gave him a look that suggested if he was at a loose end…

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he said and strode off down the tiled floor to admonish someone who, judging by Dominic’s roar, was doing something very wrong.

  The Grand Hall had been used regularly when I was a child. Virtually every month,
my parents would treat the island’s social set to an evening of gourmet food and entertainment. I remember my mother assigning a theme to every event and the meticulousness with which she chose the menu was verging on obsessive. The spring dining table would be laden with young minted lamb and tender new vegetables from our own garden and the Grand Hall would be decorated with spring flowers. Everyone was told to wear a certain coloured outfit, perhaps yellow or forget-me-not blue. Autumn was my favourite and I still recall the smell of roast pheasant and chestnuts with candied orange and baked plum pie waiting in the kitchen. Many times I had sneaked downstairs and spied on the dozens of adults in their garish costumes and listened to grown-up talk that I didn’t understand. I would virtually jump out of my skin at the shockwaves of laughter that exploded from the party, usually led by my father when he’d drunk too much Glen Broath. Wild games and dancing would follow the meal and often I would wake in the early hours and the frivolities would still be in full swing.

  Then there was the time, mid-winter, with the Grand Hall decked for Christmas and the food at its most sumptuous, when I woke to the shrieks of my mother. The house, eerily silent apart from her wails, had been cleared of guests and no one knew that I crouched in the gallery and watched as my mother, dressed only in her underwear, sobbed her life away.

  Words that meant nothing to me then – big, venomous words, full of pain – floated around my head that cold, empty night. My mother and I left the island the next day. The memory of my home slipping into dots of light on the horizon, coupled with my mother’s shame and anger, manifested in many ways but never directed at me, marked a turning point in my life. Everything familiar was gone. Everything new was an adventure ripe for exploration. And I recorded it all in my secret diary.

  The Grand Hall, many years on from those outrageous parties, had taken on a strangely familiar air. When I had searched around the house several days earlier during my first cleaning morning at Creg-ny-Varn, I had discovered nothing untoward in the vast room; no incriminating evidence to support my claim against Kinrade. It remained a cold, lifeless, shrouded space with much of the ornate antique furniture stacked and covered with dust sheets. But on the day of the ball, with caterers and florists and technicians and porters coming and going, the room was gradually beginning to wake and warm and prepare itself for another major event. Only when I saw the size of the buffet table and the vast number of wine glasses that were being polished and set out did I realise the scale of the party. Kinrade was certainly sparing no expense and by the end of the morning, with a little magic from my polish and duster as well as the dozens of professionals who scurried tirelessly to finish their work, the Grand Hall was beginning to resemble the final scene from Cinderella. I looked down at my grubby clothes and laughed.

  Then came the hand on my shoulder.

  ‘I’ve done a terrible thing.’ Dominic appeared grey, like a ghost from the past, which quite suited the old-fashioned stately look of the room. I didn’t say a word, trusting him to come out with it himself. ‘If I was a Catholic, I would seek out a priest right away.’

  ‘But?’ I urged, sensing this could take a while.

  ‘There is no one I can admit my crime to.’

  I hadn’t got a clue what he was talking about and guessed that, being rather fed up with the party preparations, Dominic was nudging me for a few naughty games. Beneath the doleful expression, I spotted a spark of mischief.

  ‘If it’s that bad, then you’ll most likely need severe punishment.’

  A little colour returned to his cheeks, accenting the several days of stubble growth that roughened his skin. For the first time I noticed how the colour of his eyes was graduated in deepening tones of brown, almost black. Surely no one could possess such intense eyes without bearing the burden of an equivalent secret? I shuddered and shook such serious thoughts from my head.

  ‘You’d better come with me.’ In case he protested and in case I changed my mind because of flashes of Connor and what might have been, I gripped Dominic by the arm – his strong, hard-working arm – and dragged him to the door of the library. The door that was always locked.

  ‘Got a key?’ I knew he would have.

  ‘I’m not sure that –’

  ‘I’ve already seen what Kinrade has done to my father’s library. Is he likely to disturb us?’ That feeling again, spreading through me as surely as the fingers of sunlight grip the horizon on a clear day.

  ‘He…he’s out. He won’t be back for a while.’ Then the stammer again, this time accompanied by an eruption of perspiration on his top lip, which would mean nothing to me until much, much later.

  ‘What are you waiting for then? Open the door.’

  Dominic grappled with a number of keys until he found the correct one. He slowly pushed open the door to reveal the room that I had seen several days before, only this time my view was from another angle and I saw even more of Ethan Kinrade’s kinky handiwork.

  ‘Who is this man?’ I muttered inaudibly. I stepped across the wooden floorboards, which creaked underfoot, and trailed a hand over the swathes of black and scarlet satin lining the walls. I presumed the bookshelves were still concealed behind the drapes and paraphernalia. ‘I don’t know what half this stuff’s for. Do you?’ I turned to Dominic, who didn’t seem able to answer my question. I took his silence to indicate compliance and he didn’t even protest when I plucked the keys from his hand and sealed us in what can only be described as a bondage parlour.

  It didn’t matter to me any more that I felt this way. The sizzling and searing inside me that accompanied the strange situations I had found myself in since returning to the island were beginning to feel normal. In fact, I was thoroughly enjoying the thrill of experimenting with Dominic’s need for submission and Liz and Lewis’s desire to share. And in a small, heart-rending way, it helped to overcome the realisation that all was lost between Connor and me. Any possibility of a life together had dissolved the day I left the island fourteen years ago. It was fate. Heavy-handed fate. I had to accept that the past could not be reclaimed, if indeed we were ever on the path of true love in the first place.

  ‘Strip.’

  Dominic hesitated, as if he expected me to say something completely different. Exactly what, I don’t know. With our silent track record and our current surroundings, it was impossible to believe I would have said anything else. But that hesitation, his relieved expression…

  Naked in the garishly decorated room, Dominic looked desolate. I was reminded of a winter tree alone in the hedgerow, the stiff boughs of his limbs completely leafless and the trunk of his body fixed firmly in the ground.

  ‘On you get,’ I ordered and gleefully watched Dominic’s buttocks separating slightly as he folded his naked body around the hard surface of what looked like a higher than usual hall table. The difference was that tan leather straps hung from five different places on the wooden frame and these, I supposed, were for me to secure him with. ‘Breathe in,’ I said and tightened the first and largest band around his middle. The stiff leather nipped at the skin of his back and cut a firm line across his girth. I saw the striations of tensed muscle, developed from years of hard physical work, struggle against the restraint, and, as I shackled his wrists and thighs to the spanking frame’s sturdy legs, Dominic let out pitiful whimpers. It was a perfect display of weakening strength.

  ‘Perhaps this will teach you not to do bad things.’ The truth was, I didn’t care what he’d done. If he’d broken a glass, then I was happy to watch as his buttocks flushed from the sting of a tawse slapping across his unmarked flesh. I selected a suitable instrument from half a dozen that hung from a rack positioned conveniently near the spanking frame. Kinrade had designed the layout of the room very carefully, ensuring that everything was in easy reach. It gave me another insight into the workings of his mind: the mind that I would be challenging in only a few hours.

  ‘Maybe this will help you remember exactly what it is that you’ve done.’ I raised my arm and
delivered a small, sweet whip to his skin with a black riding crop. Quite suitable, I thought, for a man of the country.

  Dominic inhaled sharply but didn’t make a sound. His buttocks clenched in readiness for another swat. This time it was harder and the crop left a pale pink line on his skin.

  ‘Am I jogging your memory?’

  Dominic shook his head at which I stung him again and again with the tip of the leather crop until I could see the dark outline of his balls quivering between his legs. Unable to resist, I drew the crop up between his legs, brushed it across the soft skin of his sac and watched in delight as he strained against the strapping around his wrists and thighs. He moaned loudly and turned his head to the side.

  ‘Is it coming back?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m too ashamed to confess. Punish me as much as you will but you won’t get it out of me.’

  I walked around to the side of the wooden frame and knelt down. Dominic had developed a sturdy erection despite his predicament.

  ‘I get the impression you’re enjoying this and that was not the intention.’ I touched the crop to the end of his penis, picking up the bead of moisture that had erupted. ‘If you continue like this, I’ll be very, very annoyed.’

  Dominic acknowledged what I said but I don’t think he took me seriously as the more I whipped his bare buttocks, the more determined his erection became. I decided to untie him and address the problem in a different way. In the middle of the room there was a tall, metal frame, again with shackling points that would allow me access to Dominic’s most sensitive areas – the parts that seemed to be thwarting his attempt at absolution. I steered him to the contraption and cuffed his wrists and ankles, both stretched wide apart so that I could deal with the problem freely.

  ‘This’ – I pointed to his cock, which surely couldn’t get any harder without unloading the pressure – ‘is the root of your problems.’

  Dominic shook his head. The man was genuinely filled with – was it? – guilt. I paused a moment and studied his narrowed eyes. Their natural darkness had deepened, and gentle but pained lines had formed at the outer corners. His mouth was curled, as if he had tasted something sour, and his head was tipped to one side as if his neck was unable to support it. I approached him and stood close, his face a few inches higher than mine.