He slid his hand into his pocket, and felt the length of wide satin ribbon. He’d taken it from her dressing table days earlier. The black ribbon would look lovely as it tightened about her white neck. Her face would flush and her lips would part as she gasped for air, for a breath that would not come.
With his other hand, he clumsily freed the buttons of his breeches, popping one in his haste. It landed on the stone floor with a solid ping, but the sound did not carry to the couple on the bed, so engrossed were they in one another. He eyed the length of her legs as she stretched. He could see the swell of one breast. He took his engorged member into his hand, and began to stroke, pulling roughly, almost violently. In his mind she was lying in that bed, naked as she was now, but the black ribbon was tightening about her delicate throat and her eyes were going wide and sightless as the breath left her body.
Two more quick jerks of his hand, and his seed spilled into the waiting handkerchief. Soon, he thought, it would not be his hand bringing him pleasure, but her lithe, supple body in the throes of death.
Chapter 13
Several days had lapsed without incident and a hush had fallen over the household. Rhys had revisited Elise’ journal again, hoping that perhaps he had missed something. He had forbidden Emme to search the tunnels beneath the house in spite of the fact that she felt sure something would be discovered there.
Emme was in the library when Lord Ellersleigh was announced. He had returned for the holidays. He looked, Emme thought, haggard. His color was slightly off and she could only imagine that he had drunk himself to near oblivion during his weeks in town.
“Hello, Michael,” she said, kissing his cheek warmly as he entered the library. “I would ask you how you’ve been, but then you would tell me. I would be scandalized and my husband would undoubtedly be furious. Suffice to say, I’m glad you’ve come to Briarwood to recuperate from your excesses.”
He chuckled in spite of the splitting headache that plagued him. “It happens from time to time. Excess.”
Michael observed her for a moment, taking note of the healthy glow that illuminated her porcelain skin. He also noted that her bosom was significantly fuller, and that the new abundance was not the product of her artfully cut gown.
“You’re with child,” he said.
Emme’s jaw dropped. “Don’t be silly!”
Could she really not know, he wondered? “My dear, you have been married for six weeks. Not to be indelicate or to embarrass you, but have you missed your flow?”
Emme’s face flamed at the mere mention. “How do you know about these things?”
Michael cursed. “While we were in the army, Emme, Rhys might have been a soldier, but my duties were as a physician. There were numerous women in our camp.”
The prostitutes and fallen women who followed the soldiers were no secret. Emme was aware of them. She didn’t have to speak. The truth was written on her face as the startling realization assailed her.
“Then congratulations, my dear, for you are expecting the heir.”
Emme couldn’t speak. She couldn’t do anything. As the implications of what Michael suggested fully began to sink in, the room spun dizzily around her.
Michael noted the sudden pallor of her face. Concerned, he stepped forward just as her knees buckled and she collapsed. He caught her, but only barely. He couldn’t lift her, for what she had observed to be illness brought on by his excess drinking was in fact the result of having taken a ball to his shoulder.
Straining to hold her, her lush bosom pressed indecently to him, he looked down. He was a man after all, and it was a remarkably fine bosom. And that was how Rhys discovered them.
“I will shoot you, Ellersleigh. I will bloody well kill you.”
“Someone already has shot me, Rhys, which is why I was unable to lift your lovely wife after she fainted. Would you be so kind?”
Rhys moved forward and lifted Emme effortlessly. Her head lolled against his shoulder and she stirred but did not awaken.
“Emme doesn’t faint.”
Taking a little more joy in it than a good friend ought to, Michael said, “All pregnant women faint.”
Rhys was halfway to the settee, his still unconscious wife in his arms, when the words fully penetrated the concerned fog of his brain. His steps slowed but did not falter. When he reached the settee, he laid her down gently and then slid to the floor in front of it.
“She told you? She told you before even whispering a word of it to me?”
Had he been given to prayer, Michael would have uttered his thanks to the Lord for preserving him from the foolishness of love. Lust and like were as far as he ever wanted to be entangled with a woman, and truthfully, of the two, he would choose lust.
“You really are a damned idiot. No, she did not tell me. I guessed and when I said as much to her, it was apparently not a possibility she had been considering. She was quite overcome at the thought, hence the fainting.”
Rhys stared at his friend incredulously. “You just walk around informing women that they may be increasing? With your usual lack of tact, no doubt. Is it any wonder she fainted? And how the hell did you guess?”
“Your lovely wife has quite a voluptuous figure, my friend, but have you not noted that certain areas have been more bountiful of late?”
He had noticed, but he wasn’t going to say that to Michael. “That you’ve studied her form enough to note the difference doesn’t endear you to me.”
Michael chuckled. “Don’t say anything to her yet. Let her tell you in her own time. Women like that.”
Rhys would have demanded that Michael tell him how he could possibly know that, but was prevented by Emme stirring behind him.
Her eyelids fluttered for a moment before popping open and he noted that she looked positively terrified.
“Feeling better, love?”
Emme sat up and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her head was still spinning.
“I’m fine, just overtired, I suppose.”
Rhys glared at Michael, as Michael smiled back at him, the cat who had gotten the cream. “Are you sure you’re only tired, Emme?” he asked, his voice a model of solicitude.
Emme glared back at him. “One can never be entirely certain of anything, Lord Ellersleigh,” she said warningly.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Perhaps a footman can escort you to your room for a lie down? Whether one is ill or overtired, it is always a helpful remedy.”
“Wisdom from an unlikely source,” Rhys said caustically.
“I think I will lie down for a bit. I will see you at dinner,” Emme said, and hurriedly left the room.
“Just leave it alone, Rhys. She will broach the subject with you soon enough.”
“Why are you here, Michael?”
Michael folded himself into one of the chairs, “I am recuperating. Lady Whitmore did not take well to our parting.”
Lady Whitmore was barely respectable. The woman had been involved in more notorious affairs then even Michael himself. “
When I asked you to look into Elise’ friends I simply meant attend a few parties, talk to them. I did not intend for you to sacrifice yourself to an aging succubus. Why the bloody hell would you involve yourself with her?”
Michael retrieved a small leather-bound book from his pocket. “Because she and your late wife were fast friends, and her journal is a bit more revealing than Elise’s has been.”
Rhys took the book from Michael’s outstretched hand. “She gave you her journal?”
Michael eyed him dubiously. “Perhaps gave is not entirely the proper word.”
“You stole it?”
Michael smiled. “The lady said she would give me anything. It isn’t my fault that she failed to add the caveat that ‘anything’ only included her charms and not her possessions.”
“She shot you when she discovered you’d taken it?”
“I don’t think she ever discovered that it was missing, Rhys. She shot me, as she put it, for
being an arrogant prig.”
“Well you are arrogant, but no one to my knowledge has ever considered you a prig.”
Michael shrugged, then winced slightly. “I denied her request.”
Rhys raised an eyebrow at that. “What did she request?”
“She wanted a liaison involving her, myself, and a ten–year-old child. We all have our limits, and as debauched as I may be, bedding children is not now, nor will it ever be, in my repertoire. Perhaps it wasn’t simply my refusal. Perhaps, she shot me because I had the audacity to tell her that if she ever went near a child again I would see her ruined, and if I could not ruin her, then I would see her dead.”
Rhys poured two glasses of brandy and handed one to Michael, keeping the other for himself. “Always the savior, Michael? When do you feel that you will have atoned enough for not saving Melisande?”
Michael’s expression darkened, and with a practiced motion he drained his glass. “I do not atone for failing to save Melisande, Rhys... I atone for everything I’ve done since.”
Emme paced her bedchamber, calculating and recalculating. She hadn’t had her courses since leaving her stepfather’s home to come to Briarwood Park. She considered the fullness of her breasts, which she’d attributed to weight gain. She’d discovered a fondness for the tea cakes Cook made. She hadn’t been ill. Well, she corrected, she hadn’t been truly sick. There had been one or two mornings where her stomach had been slightly rebellious upon waking, but the feeling has passed quickly.
“Dear heavens,” she said, as she sat down heavily at her dressing table.
Gussy entered the room a few minutes later and found her still sitting there, staring at nothing.
“Finally occurred to you, has it?” she asked, putting away the freshly ironed chemises.
“What occurred to me, Gussy?” she asked, idly toying with the hair brush on the dressing table.
Gussy rolled her eyes heavenward and chuckled. “Your husband shares your bed every night, every morning, and sometimes again in the afternoon. I would be more surprised to learn that ye weren’t increasing than to learn that ye were. Besides, I’m your maid. I take care of your clothing. I know when your flow comes almost as well as I know my own.”
There were no secrets, Emme realized, none whatsoever. Had it been anyone other than Gussy speaking to her so, she would have died of shame. But Gussy was more friend than servant and had always been so.
“I can’t believe I never even considered it.”
“To be fair, Your Grace, ye’ve had more than a bit on your mind. Solving old murders, nightly chats with ghostly visitors, and satisfying that mon of yours... It’s little wonder ye didn’t think of it.”
“What should I say to him?”
Gussy rolled her eyes heavenward. “He’s a grown mon, your husband. He knows how bairns are made. Just tell him you’re with child.”
Emme blushed furiously. “Gussy, I hate to, but you’re the only person I can ask questions of... Is it—should I—can—“
Gussy took pity on her charge. “Ye can still lie with your husband, until close to time for the babe to come. Ye just go on about your life the same way ye were before. And soon enough, we’ll have a wee one to tend to.”
“Help me out of this gown, Gussy. I think I will lie down for a bit, after all.”
Stripped to her chemise, Emme laid down upon the bed. She pressed her palms against her still flat stomach and tried to imagine the life growing inside her. It was a strange notion, but not an unpleasant one. What would their child look like? Would it be dark like Rhys, with his dusky skin and brown eyes? Or would it be pale like her, with her odd silver eyes? Another thought, far less present, crept into her mind. Would Rhys love their child even if it were like her or would he grow to resent her if their child wasn’t normal?
In the library, Rhys handed Michael the cravat pin. He didn’t tell his friend about seeing Melisande. Though she had been his sister and he had loved her dearly, he knew that Michael’s grief was no less real. He’d often wondered what Michael might have been like had Melisande lived. Would they have married as they had talked about?
In his heart, he believed that they would have. Though they had been children, there had been nothing childlike in their devotion to one another. Michael was a dissolute rake now, though not without honor. Would he have been a good and faithful husband to his sister? Rhys wanted to believe that, that perhaps it was Michael’s grief that had driven him to the depths to which he had sunk, but it was all supposition, and he would not hurt their friendship by asking.
“I found it in the south wing. There was evidence that someone has been making frequent trips there. I believe this is what they were looking for.”
Michael turned the pin over and over in his hand. Something about it tugged at his memory, but he could not place it.
“And this fiend has been here, walking the halls of this house?”
Rhys nodded. “I need to search the passageways. This house has a rabbit warren of them. Elise knew them almost as well as we did. It would not be surprising to me that she might have shown them to her lovers as well. I’ve heard from Spencer. He’s returned from the continent and will be arriving soon.”
Michael nodded. In truth, he didn’t want to see Spencer. They’d been the best of friends as children, but Spencer was ever disapproving of him and his reckless ways. Under the circumstances however, the assistance would be appreciated. With a weary sigh, he picked up the brandy snifter that Rhys had refilled for him and took a hearty sip from it. As he did so, his eyes were drawn to movement in the garden.
“Rhys, your wife is half-naked in the garden.”
Rhys turned to the window and cursed. He unlocked the French doors and headed out into the garden. Curiosity had Michael following him. Emme had headed deeper into the garden, toward the maze. She was just entering the maze when Michael caught up to Rhys. Emme stopped before the entrance of the maze and turned back to look at them.
“Hello, Michael.”
A chill raced across Michael’s flesh as he stared at the woman before him. It was Emmaline’s face, but the expression, the turn of her lips, the glint in her eyes; all of it belonged to Elise. The voice was Elise as well.
Sensing his distress, Rhys said, “Be calm, Michael. We simply have to see what message she has for us this time.”
“Do I have to have a message, husband?” she asked haughtily.
Michael felt his hair standing on end. The taunting voice, the words that should have been innocent were twisted somehow, threatening—it was as if Elise herself were standing right in front of them.
She continued, furthering his unease. “Perhaps I am enjoying inhabiting a physical body again. What would it take, I wonder, to keep this body? There are ways... Eventually, I will find them. But then perhaps I won’t want her body. She will have grown fat and heavy with that brat inside her.”
Rhys didn’t respond to the goading, to do so would only have encouraged more. “Why the garden, Elise? What are you leading us out here for?”
She laughed and the sound was cold and brittle. “So clever, my husband. You are always so clever. Not so clever to avoid being saddled with me and my little, imaginary bastard, were you?”
“Who is ‘A’, Elise? Alistair or Ambrose Pommeroy? Or is it someone else altogether?”
“Identifying all my trysts? Don’t forget Allerton. Lord Allerton. He was one of them. And then there was Adam, the footman. What a randy one he was! And then there was Alice, that lovely chambermaid. She didn’t want to come to my party but I told her that if she didn’t, I would see her tossed out without a reference. We had such fun with her... So many and yet none of them were enough. I tried to seduce Ellersleigh there, but sadly he had greater moral fortitude than I anticipated. The Great Libertine,” she intoned dramatically, “And he was too scandalized to fuck his best friend’s wife.”
The obscenity coming from Elise was no surprise, but seeing Emme’s face and hearing that langua
ge left Michael reeling. He couldn’t imagine what it was doing to Rhys. He had once believed that he could not be shocked, that he was so debauched and so heavily inured in his ennui that nothing could shake his mask of cold, world weary composure. He had been wrong.
Emme/Elise continued. While she spoke, she touched everything. The fabric of her chemise, the dampened leaves of the hedge rows—her fingers were never still. It as if she craved sensation.
“I brought her to the garden because he comes here. He likes to come here and watch. Maybe he’d like to do more than watch for a change. Sometimes, he slips in through the open doors or windows and goes into those secret passages you love so much.” Her smile was cold and sharp, cunning. “He watched you yesterday, you and your little harlot of a wife. And to think, he and I used to pay for that privilege at the brothels and all this time there were peepholes throughout the whole house. Had I but known.”
It was as before. Elise was there and suddenly, she was gone. Emme sank to the ground, her eyes closed, and her face relaxed as if she were merely sleeping, rather than having been possessed by a spirit.
Rhys removed his coat and draped it over her, then lifted her carefully. Michael was behind him, his face more pale than it had been upon his arrival.
“You’ve seen her before, Elise?”
Rhys nodded. He didn’t acknowledge the slight quaking of Michael’s voice, just as he wouldn’t acknowledge it in his own. It terrified him to see Emme that way—mentally he searched for the right word—inhabited, he supposed.
“Twice before. Let me get her inside and then we’ll discuss it.”
They strode up the stairs, Michael at his heels. He opened the door to his chamber, rather than hers, and placed Emme in the center of his bed. She slept on, oblivious. He walked over to the connecting door but Michael was already there. In the duchess’ chamber they found the entrance to the secret passage, hidden behind the armoire. They moved it carefully and Michael grabbed a candle before they entered the narrow corridor.
The Dark Regency Series: Boxed Set Page 20