He did not do it, but he let me do it this time, his body tense, his jaw flexed in an unyielding line. I undid the buttons at his collar and pulled the shirt off over his head. He was strong and thickly muscled, his chest defined, the muscles sliding like ropes in his arms, just as I remembered from my glimpse all those days ago. But now I could not only see him; I could feel him, the silken heat of his skin, and I could smell the lust radiating off him, the tang of our exertions earlier tonight. From the front, I could see only a lick of scar tissue on the soft section of his shoulder, another under his chest, and I glimpsed the tight skin on the backs of his arms.
But he was in no mood to be observed. His part of the bargain done, he grabbed my robe and nearly tore it off me, throwing it to the floor. I was completely exposed; I moved backward on the bed, away from him, by reflex, but he followed me. He knelt on the bed, too, now, and grabbed me to him none too gently, my bare body flush against him. I felt my breasts tickle against his chest and then all thoughts fled my mind as he kissed me more ravenously even than before.
Still, this would be different from our first encounter. I could feel the difference in him, less harsh, his hands more caressing on my back and the backs of my thighs, even as he pulled my knees apart. He devoured my mouth but his tongue was gentle, imploring me over and over. He wanted to please me this time. I rubbed my body against him, felt the electric shock of his skin against my nipples. I wanted to be pleased.
He pushed me farther back and again something pressed against me from behind. It was the bed’s headboard, and when Matthew felt it, he pressed my hips upward until I rested precariously against it, bracing my weight on it. His mouth traveled down my neck again as he slid his hand between my legs.
I made an involuntary sound, halfway between a sigh and a moan, a sound he must have found erotic, for I heard him draw his breath between clenched teeth. I closed my eyes and lost myself. His hand was slightly rough, and his caresses were not practiced perfection, but I cared nothing for that; I pressed myself shamelessly against him, and he responded, as he nipped my neck, my ear. Never had I felt anything so incredible in my life, and it seemed to get better, better, more intense. I felt my head drift back to rest against the wall. I could not catch my breath.
Dimly I was aware of how wanton I must look, pressed against the headboard, Matthew kneeling between my legs. I was too tired to think of it, too tired to do anything but feel. I gripped my hands on his shoulders and felt the hard, knotted muscles underneath.
Somewhere I found breath. “Matthew,” I gasped. “Matthew—”
Something overtook me, a great pulse of energy. I cried out as the pleasure came, my body clenching itself against him, my knees gripping him, my fingers digging into his shoulders. I pressed my face into his neck and gasped against his tangy skin.
“Jesus God,” he said hoarsely, and then he was jerking clumsily at the buttons on his pants. I helped him push at the waistband, nearly as frantic as he, our hands overlapping, and he gripped me with his big strong hands, raised his hips without preamble, and thrust into me.
Pleasure had made me boneless. I melted against him, sated but wanting more. I was pressed hard, Matthew plunging into me and the headboard behind me, and the sensation was exquisite. I raised my legs and wrapped them around his hips, feeling his muscles clenching under the backs of my knees. He nearly shouted something unintelligible and thrust harder.
I ran my hands over him as he worked, feeling the play of muscles under my palms, his back, his shoulders, the scarred skin on the back of his neck. My fingers grasped up into his dark hair. And then he stilled, deep inside me, pulled free of me, and I felt him pulsing as a painful, ragged groan tore from his chest. After that, we were still, panting against each other.
My muscles were trembling and the headboard bit into my skin, but I didn’t care. After a moment Matthew slid his hands up to my waist and lifted me gently from my awkward position. He turned me and laid me flat on the bed, bracing himself over me on his elbows. I slowly unlocked my legs from around his hips.
He looked down at me, his hair falling over his forehead. He was out of breath. His eyes devoured me, looking for I knew not what. “Are you all right?” he said.
I ran my index finger gently across his bottom lip. He was so truly beautiful. I wondered, dimly, if he would leave. “Yes.”
He looked surprised at the gentle caress; it seemed he might pull away, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned down and kissed me, his lips warm on mine. “You look ravished,” he said when he pulled away.
I couldn’t help but smile up at him, what felt like a siren’s smile. “I am.”
He pushed off me and sat up. He handed me a towel, as he had done before. Then I watched in dismay as he picked his shirt up from the floor and untangled it, preparing to put it on.
There was my answer, then; he was leaving. I sat up, pulled up my knees. I could have screamed at him like a fishwife; I could have begged him in tears. I didn’t know what to do. I pulled the covers over myself to hide my nakedness.
Before I could speak, he turned back to me, wearing only his shirt, threw back a corner of the covers, and came into the bed next to me. When he saw what must have been shock on my face, he suddenly looked very tired. “Sarah,” he said. “Just leave it be.”
“You’re not leaving,” I said.
“What?” He frowned at me. I wondered if, no matter how many times we were intimate, we would always be talking at cross-purposes. He looked down at his shirt and comprehension slowly lit in his eyes. He took my wrists and in a single smooth motion pressed me back onto the bed. As he slid on top of me, he nibbled hungrily along the nape of my neck. The fabric of his shirt was soft against my nipples. I lost my breath.
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
I bit my lip as tears stung the backs of my eyes. He had put on his shirt—that was all. He had taken it off because I insisted, but he was deeply uncomfortable without it. He had put it back on to come back to bed with me.
He pulled the covers over us and the darkened room disappeared. There were only the two of us, alone together, all the terrible fears and insoluble problems banished. I was safe beneath him. There was only the warmth of him, the weight of him, the rasp of his chin, the press of his large strong hands on my wrists. I inhaled him. I thought I was beyond exhaustion, but he made love to me again until I climaxed helplessly beneath him, my body hardly my own, as inevitable as water tumbling down the rocks of a waterfall.
Afterward, we slept. And when I woke, he was gone, and Maddy Clare was in the room with me.
Chapter Twenty-seven
It was the metallic smell I noticed first, as I surfaced slowly from a deep slumber. A familiar rush of cool air, perhaps, over my face and neck, though I could not be sure. I opened my eyes and discovered that I lay on my back, still naked, barely covered by the bed’s blankets, staring at the ceiling, and I could not move. With a jolt of awareness I knew that Maddy had me in thrall.
I tried to force my jaw to move. “Maddy.”
There was a movement in the dark corner of the room, a scrape against the wall. I rolled my eyes in my head, trying to see her.
“Maddy.” Again, I was not sure if I was speaking aloud. It was dreamlike, but I knew it was no dream. I could hear my own voice, but I could not feel my jaw move, could not lift my tongue. My heart started to beat with terror. Her malevolence filled the room like a miasma, choking like a bad smell. Something was wrong.
It’s difficult to describe the particular fear she inspired, the knowledge of frozen helplessness. She could have done anything to me, and I would have been powerless to prevent it. Worse was the knowledge that she would do anything to me, that a misstep on my part, the wrong word, and I knew not what would happen. And still, I couldn’t see her. What did she want? Did she want anything I could give her? My mind raced in its helpless trap as I counted the seconds and wondered if they were the last seconds of my life.
The sound came again,
the scrape against the wall, and then she moved closer. I could hear her breathe. The cold came over my chest and neck again. I tried to see her but could see only the faintest of shadows from the corner of my eye.
“Maddy, please.”
Weight leaning on the foot of the bed. On one side of my ankles, then on the other. She had climbed on the bed. Still she did not speak. Tears ran helplessly down my face, into my pillow.
“Please.”
A rustle, a whisper of cloth; I could picture her, crouching down. I did not feel the depression of her knees hitting the mattress. So she squatted over me then, on the bed, staring at me as I stared at the ceiling.
She paused a long time. I nearly choked on my own terror. I prayed to a God I had long forgotten about; I begged him. Still Maddy crouched over me as the cold seeped into the bones of my feet, breathing and breathing. She was in one of her terrible moods. I thought she contemplated killing me in those long, endless moments.
Finally, she spoke.
I’m hungry, she said in my head.
I gasped, but all I could do was plead with her incoherently.
Always hungry, she said, as if she heard none of my pleas. Ever since the first days. Hungry with the rest of them, never enough. Oh, yes. If you want enough, Maddy, you must learn it. You must go. You must do as they say. Eyes down always. And I did it, until they bade me go. Little girls don’t matter. Little maids don’t matter. Poor little dead girls don’t matter. And now I’m hungry again.
“What do you want from me?” I asked her.
She breathed for another long moment, a tortured whistle from her ruined throat. I saw you with the other one, she said at last. You are a good little girl, sometimes. You find things. But you haven’t found the place. Not yet.
“Please,” I begged her, and I knew now I was begging for my life. “Please. I’m trying.” What did she mean by the other one? Had she set her sights on Matthew? “Just leave him alone. Please!”
She laughed, and the sound was more terrible than her rage. I don’t want your rough one, she said at last. I like mine. I want to keep mine. But the other one will come with me. Yes, he will. Her voice turned singsong, a mad sound in my head. Yes, he will…. Yes, he will….
“What are you going to do?” I cried.
Stupid girl, she said almost pityingly, I have already done it. But the hunger eats at me. So you will help me do it again.
My God, what was she talking about? I needed to find Matthew. I needed to warn him. He had been right. We had to get Alistair out of here—could we get him away from her? She breathed heavily from her post over me on the bed, and I could only speak one question, a question that had been burning at me for days. “Why me?”
She took a long time yet again, and I thought she would not answer. She was finished with me for now; she had decided not to kill me—that much I gathered from her words—and as such I was of no interest to her anymore. I already sensed she was going to leave. When she did, I planned to jump out of bed as fast as I could and find Matthew.
But she surprised me by speaking one last time. Everything was dark until you came, she said. Memory is like a fist. But now I know. Now I remember what their blood tastes like.
She was quiet again as the moments ticked past, and I felt the rage subside by the smallest degree, replaced by a pulse of thoughtful sadness.
Find it and you’ll have him back, she said, and then she was gone.
I opened my eyes to yellow sunlight coming through my window.
Groggy, I lifted my head. I was still in my room, in bed. It came back to me in a rush—Maddy, crouched over me. What had happened?
I flung the covers back and put my feet on the floor. Sunlight in the window—what time was it? I picked up my watch from the bedside table and a sound of sickened alarm came from my throat. It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning, and I had been sleeping like the dead.
I ran a hand through my hair. It wasn’t possible that I had slept. I had been too terrified. I remembered my panicked urge to find Matthew. There was simply no way I had fallen asleep after that unspeakable episode.
I pressed my hands to my face, realizing. Oh, God. Maddy had somehow put me to sleep. Why? What had she wanted to do without me?
I washed and dressed in a fumbling rush, then hurried to Matthew’s room. When he didn’t answer my knock, I pressed lightly on the door. It was unlocked.
Matthew lay on the bed, facedown, one arm sprawled across the pillows. He was deeply asleep. It took minutes to rouse him; he seemed drugged, the way I had felt, the groggy sensation only falling away from me now through sheer panic. I shook him and shook him until he reluctantly rolled over and looked at me.
“Please, Matthew,” I said. “It’s Maddy. She put us to sleep. She came to me last night. She’s doing something.”
He blinked his dark lashes and his brow creased. “What are you talking about?”
“Get up,” I said. “Come on, Matthew, get up. Maddy put us to sleep. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning!”
I watched comprehension thread its way through his consciousness. He pushed himself upright and swore.
“Get dressed,” I said.
“The private room,” he said, awake now. “I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
I hurried back into the hall, and stopped. A woman was coming out of Alistair’s room. She was in her midthirties, with heavy arms and wide hips, her hair pulled back in a bun, her dress of serviceable serge. She closed the door quietly behind her.
“Excuse me,” I said as I approached her. “Who are you?”
If she noted my rudeness, she did not show it. “I’m the nurse, miss,” she said, as she looked me discreetly up and down. “I started this morning.”
I stared at her in shock. “Nurse?”
“Yes.” She motioned to the door behind her with a nod of her head. “The fellow in there has taken ill. Mighty ill, if I can say so, but I’ll see to it.”
“I—I know,” I said. “I am his employee. I know he’s ill.” This could not be Matthew’s doing, as we had argued about sending Alistair to the hospital just last night. “I beg your pardon, but I had no idea anyone had hired a nurse. Who sent for you?”
“Why, my employer did, miss. I work for an agency. As to who wrote my employer, I don’t know, as I’m not normally told. Usually it’s the patient’s family, though this poor boy”—she nodded at the door again—“seems to have taken sick while traveling on holiday. It wasn’t you that sent for an agency, then?”
“No,” I said stupidly.
She shrugged. “It must be the family, then. Probably they’re worried about him. It’s terribly trying to be sick on holiday—I’ve done cases like it before, though never quite as bad as this one.” She put out her hand to me, like a man. “Nan Chambers, miss, though you can just call me Nan.”
I shook her hand and told her my name. As a fellow employee, she had decided we were on the same level, so I saw her relax a little and she became confidential. “I was just about to get him some tea.” She shook her head. “I’ve seen some terrible illnesses—and not all of them of the physical kind, if you know what I mean.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “You see a lot of things in my line of work. But this one is particularly bad. The poor boy thinks he’s still fighting the war. The things he says!”
I ran a hand through my hair. Nan’s tone was concerned, but she didn’t sound nearly as hopeless as I felt. “Do you think you can do anything for him?”
She shook her head, though more in pity than in negation. “He needs tea, and broth if I can get it into him, for certain, and a proper change of sheets. He doesn’t want any of it, but you’d be surprised how strong I am. I’ve dealt with some brutes in my day. He needs a good rest and a bit of care. It helps some of them, to know there’s someone there. Some of them…” A flicker of doubt crossed her expression. “I’ll do the best I can—that I can say.”
I sighed. “Nan, you sound very competent, and
I’m sure whoever sent you had the best of intentions, but I think I should warn you—you may not be here long. The landlord here at the inn wants Mr. Gellis removed.”
“Bless you, dear, no, he doesn’t. I just talked to him not a minute ago. He’s told me that as long as I keep the patient quiet, I’m welcome to whatever I like.”
“I don’t understand it,” said Matthew ten minutes later, as we sat in the common room and I explained what had happened. “Alistair simply has no family. And who talked to the landlord? I don’t even know how we’re going to pay the bill here.”
“Matthew, the bill is paid—though I don’t know how. Does Alistair have a solicitor?” I asked. “Some sort of a man of business?”
“If he does, I don’t know anything about it. Which begs the question, who does know? And who wrote him?”
He dropped his forehead into his hand and rubbed it. Though he had washed and dressed in a rush, as I had, he had still managed to put on a clean white shirt, even if the button at his throat was undone. I could still see drops of water in his hair. Despite the problems that surrounded us, I took a brief moment just to look at him, to take him in when he didn’t know it. I felt as if I could look at him for years.
“I don’t know who did this,” I said finally, “but I’m grateful for it. I feel better knowing Nan is here. We have other problems to solve.” I told him about Maddy’s visit to me, the terrible details coming back as I spoke. I finished and stared numbly at my cold cup of tea.
Matthew thought it over, though he looked nearly as ill as I felt. “Jarvis,” he said. “That’s what she was talking about. I’ve already done it. She’s done something to him. Killed him somehow.”
I closed my eyes. “That means—that means he was one of the men who attacked her.”
“Or so she believes.”
I shook my head. “Do you honestly think she could be mistaken in that?”
The Haunting of Maddy Clare Page 22