Branson bent and pressed his lips to her. His hand traced her curves to her slim hips and shapely thighs. She made soft gasping sounds under his kiss. He slipped his fingers between her legs and she stiffened but Clara did not push him away.
Soft, quivering, warm and wet—her legs parted, trembling, as if welcoming his fondling.
He hesitated. “Do you despise me for doing this to you?”
Her eyes fluttered opened and met his. “Yes. Almost as much as I despise myself for giving in to your demands. We were friends once. I could have loved you but you’ve made that impossible. I see your true nature and I hate you for what you’ve become.”
Her answer helped fix his resolve. “Good. It is well we understand each other. If you value your father’s freedom as much as you claim you do, you’ll submit. In return, I’ll make it known that you were responsible for delivering him from ruin. I’m sure Uncle Arthur will give you a pat on the head like a good little dog.”
Clara rose up on one elbow. Her curls swung over her bare shoulder. “What has my father done to offend you? Tell me. He loved your father. That must count for something.”
“Love!” Branson snorted his contempt. “Uncle Arthur did everything in his power to make my father bow down before him and give him what he wanted. If that is love, then so is this. Don’t try to defend him to me, Clara. See him for what he is and save yourself.”
“You don’t know what it is like to be a disappointment to one’s parents. I have nothing to save myself for if my father is ruined.”
“Then be still and do as I tell you.” He pushed Clara back down and pressed his long naked body over hers. “I don’t want to talk about my uncle when I have his daughter in bed.”
Branson groaned in the back of his throat. As soon as their bodies connected, he lost track of the point of his anger. Her breasts and hips were crushed beneath his strength, her femininity was profoundly moving.
Branson’s soul cracked wide.
She cannot get in, he thought feverishly. He must not allow her to get under his skin or all would be lost. Clara Hamilton was a means to an end. Do not lose sight of your goal.
The thought made him treat her roughly. Branson pushed her legs apart and ground his stiffened cock against her.
“You promised! I cannot, cousin—I cannot,” she gasped.
“But you want to.”
His voice rumbled against her ear
“Yes,” she confessed weakly.
“Then there is nothing to stop us, Clara. Nothing and no one. Consent. Say you do.”
Branson’s mouth moved seductively over her lips, gently urging them open and then he plundered her mouth with his tongue.
His cousin responded with a kiss of such exquisite fullness that his mind ceased to reason and he allowed his desire for her to take over. He stroked Clara’s flesh from her knees to her collarbone all the while kissing her deeply and she did not fight him or resist him.
Branson Reilly, the despised Hamilton foundling, the ruthless man of business and her father’s arch enemy, was making free with his cousin in such a manner that would shipwreck her hope for a good marriage, her reputation and destroy her future. And she did not have the strength to stop him.
They had crossed a line. She was in his power. Clara Hamilton wanted Branson Reilly to ruin her almost as much as he wanted to see her ruined.
“Are you sure, Clara? Once I start, I shall not be able to stop.”
“You are my last hope. I have nothing to give my father but this—my virginity. Please don’t make me question myself! I have said yes. Take what you want and be done with it!”
“Being trapped is your only reason for sleeping with me then?”
“You promised to save my father.”
Her voice contracted as his fingers found their mark between her legs. He stroked the hard, slick bud of her sex. Clara gasped and abandoned her body to his fondling.
“And is that your only reason.” He stroked the sensitive nub faster and faster. “There is no other? Are you sure, cousin?”
Clara kissed him deeply, heatedly, and Branson utterly lost control. His fingers plundered her womanhood. She dug her nails into his shoulders and cried out.
“Oh Branson, what are you doing to me?”
“We are doing it to each other.”
Pushing his knee between her legs, he pressed her thighs apart and prepared to enter the tight core of her womanhood.
She flinched suddenly, her body went rigid and she pushed him back. “Who is there?” Though he could not see her face, Clara’s voice was high with fear. “You swore no one would know about this—you have planted a spy in the room! Someone is watching us. There—in the shadows.”
Branson turned to see where she was pointing. It was a dark pool, a shadowed corner, but no one was there.
The muscles in his shoulders bunched with tension. He turned to the girl in his arms. Her flesh was cold, her limbs were stiff. “There is no one in this room but me. But I see that I am not enough for a Hamilton.”
He rolled away from her.
“No—Branson, it is not that! I swear—I saw someone—a shadow or—or—”
“Or your mind is playing tricks—how convenient. You are very clever but I am not a fool.”
Branson left the bed and snatched up his breeches. “What did you hope to accomplish with this performance?” he demanded, tugging them on. “If you think I’ll take pity on you, you miscalculate my resolve. I shall leave you alone tonight but nothing has changed. I am holding you to our bargain. Do not attempt to put me off a second time if you value your father’s freedom.”
He drew the bed sheet and blankets over her shaking body. On impulse, Branson stooped down and kissed her on the lips. Clara gazed at him, tears glimmered on her lashes.
“I wish I had never met you.”
“That will change,” he said.
And then Branson slipped quietly from the room in search of a shadow.
HOURS LATER, wrung out and exhausted, Clara had still not dropped off to sleep. Allowing Branson Reilly to touch her so intimately had disturbed her deeply. She told herself it was done for her father’s sake, but Clara worried that wasn’t the whole truth. In the black hours of the night, she was forced to admit she was attracted to her evil cousin.
“He must never know,” she said aloud to the shadows on the ceiling.
An echo came from inside the room.
Clara sat up, slowly. The hair rose on the back of her neck.
She heard the low sound of a woman’s chuckle.
This is not real, Clara chanted. Branson said there are no women at Windemere Hall. She must be confusing dream with reality.
A woman.
As Clara sank under the covers, she remembered a name from her long ago past. A name linked in her subconscious with Branson.
Grace.
§
MORNING BROKE over the Down in colours of frost and pearl grey. Clara stood at the window wearing a dressing gown she had found in the wardrobe and pondered various means of escape. There had to be a way of getting out of here that would not require exposing her failure to be wedded to Branson Hamilton. Without her clothing, she could not even leave the room, let alone return to London.
Clara turned and noticed a second door that led to an adjacent room. Windemere Hall had many such adjoining rooms for letter-writing and reading away from one’s bedchamber. The laugh she heard last night—could it have come from this room? Gathering her courage, Clara opened it.
She stepped inside and saw the fire had been lit. It was a lady’s sitting room of sorts furnished with four graceful blue and white chairs, and a writing table on which a book was opened next to a sheet of writing paper.
And in the middle of the room, on a beautiful Persian carpet, was a woman’s bonnet.
Black silk, trimmed in red and white.
Clara approached it slowly, her eyes fixed on it as though it too might prove to be an illusion. Branson said there were
no women at Windemere Hall. If he was telling the truth, how could he explain the presence of a lady’s bonnet?
Her heart was thudding at the base of her throat as she bent to pick it up. Her fingers were about to touch it when there was a loud rapping on the door in the other room.
Clara jumped back, her nerves jangling. She scolded herself for being superstitious. It is just a bonnet. Not a severed head. There would be a logical explanation for how it came to be there. No doubt, it was forgotten by a careless house guest at one time.
Clara hurried from the room, closing the door behind her. She opened her bedroom door, expecting to find Branson on the other side. Instead, she was greeted by a man of middle-age dressed in black, who introduced himself as Piers.
“Your trunks have arrived, miss.”
She stepped aside to allow two workers to carry in her trunks, sent over from the treacherous Mr. Schofield’s carriage. They set them down in the middle of the room, tipped their caps and left her alone with Piers.
She examined the trunks, thinking how different she imagined her life would be when she’d packed them. Branson was nowhere to be seen and she did not dare ask the severe Mr. Piers where her cousin was for fear of exposing what happened between them last night. If she said his name, Clara was certain her sin would be visible on her face.
“I found a white dress on the floor in the downstairs drawing room, miss. I assume it is yours,” said Piers. “I’ll see that it is cleaned and hung in your room. I’ll unpack your trunks after I’ve done the washing up from breakfast. Unless you’d rather I do it immediately.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Piers. I am not staying.”
“Does the master know?” Piers sounded surprised.
“That does not concern you,” she said stiffly. “I shall be leaving this afternoon. Please send for a carriage as soon as can be.”
Piers glowered at her suspiciously. “It was my understanding you would be with us until the first of October. Without the master’s say-so, I won’t be sending for a carriage, miss.”
“Do as you wish,” she cried, “but I’ll not spend another night here! The place is haunted. I heard a woman’s laugh last night but Mr. Hamilton said there were no women in the house.”
“A woman? Nay, you must be mistaken. You’re hearing things, you are. A trick of the mind. No women at Windemere Hall alive or dead, saving you, miss.”
Piers opened one of the trunks and eyed its contents sceptically.
“That is not entirely true. There was a young lady at Windemere Hall once. I met her.” Clara ventured to bring up the name she’d thought of last night. “I believe she was called Grace. Whatever became of her? It was some years ago. I was only a child at the time.”
“Grace? That would be Grace Leeds but I doubt you’d remember her. The young lady wasn’t from Somerset; the master met her when he was at Oxford. She died seven years ago.”
Piers clamped his jaw shut as though realizing he’d said too much. Clara pretended not to notice, but filed away the information in her mind. She knew she had not been mistaken about a young lady from Oxford as Mr. Schofield intimated.
Branson had a fiancée seven years ago and her name was Grace.
Chapter Six
“I KNOW so little about my cousin,” she prodded carefully. “He was kept from us when my uncle gave him the Hamilton name. We have only recently renewed our acquaintance. I heard Branson was engaged to Miss Leeds at one time.”
Perspiration shone on her brow but she managed the speech without a stutter.
“You heard right, miss. Grace Leeds was engaged to Branson Hamilton and a delicate, exceedingly pretty thing she was, but she had no money or connections to speak of and that was the objection to the match. In the end, young Branson was forced to give her up. Miss Leeds died shortly thereafter. He was quite inconsolable over her loss; Leonard Hamilton feared for the lad’s mind.”
“How did she die?”
“You’ll have to ask the master, miss; I won’t be speaking out of turn. But I will tell you this,” Piers added ominously, “even after young Branson was made master of Windemere Hall, he never recovered his spirit. He had one love in his life and when she was taken from him, it was as if his heart hardened to stone. I’m sorry to say it because I’ve always liked the lad, but a dark spirit came over Mr. Branson when he lost Miss Leeds. I doubt any woman will ever take her place. He loved her very much.”
§
CLARA VENTURED out after breakfast, wrapped in her mantle to walk the grounds and clear her head. A soft purple haze hung over the low rise of the Down. The forest fringed the park to the right, evergreen in the mist that clung to the tops of the trees.
She pondered the story of Branson and Grace. Even though the tragedy happened seven years ago, Clara was troubled by the presence of this unknown woman in her cousin’s heart.
How had she known the girl’s name?
Branson hadn’t mentioned her. If the laugh she heard was a dream, how had the name Grace come to be buried in her subconscious?
Another troubling concern—her stutter had all but disappeared since her arrival at Windemere. It was as if Branson Hamilton was the cure for her anxiety and that was impossible because surely Branson Hamilton was the cause of her anxiety!
She crossed the fields, lost in thought, until her rambles carried her to the edge of the forest. Clara stopped at the path to the chapel—a destination she had no desire to revisit.
Clara turned to go when a movement caught her eye, a flash of white in the trees.
“Hello?” she called out tentatively.
The shape began moving away from her, winding through the forest as though in a great hurry. Clara could see it was a woman—a woman in white.
A feminine laugh carried on the still September air.
Clara’s hair stood on end.
Grace?
She followed the apparition deeper into the wood that was shrouded in fog. The trees were thin black statues, the path was uneven. Clara lost sight of the vision and began to think she’d imagined it just as she had imagined the watcher in her room last night.
Was she going mad?
Clara steeled herself. She not going to be made helpless on top of every other indignity she’d endured here.
“Wait!” she called. “I am not going to hurt you. I only want to speak to you.”
The phantom appeared and disappeared between the trees, melting into the thick fog. Clara followed it to the meadow that opened out of the forest.
The chapel appeared out of the mist. The figure of the woman rounded the stone building and vanished inside like a ghostly bride.
Clara stopped abruptly and leaned against a tree to slow her breathing and control her rising panic. The fog was too thick to see more than a foot in front of her. The morning chill penetrated her mantle.
Whatever was inside the chapel, she did not want to see it.
Clara believed in the afterlife, not the one of Heaven and gates of pearls, but the one of ghosts and shadows and voices heard whispering from dark corners. There were women languishing inside insane asylums who knew as she did, that ghosts were real. Dr. Hargreaves didn’t try to talk her out of her belief, but said if they existed what did they have to do with her? Leave them alone and they will leave her alone.
“Leave them alone,” she repeated aloud. Dr. Hargreaves had delivered more than one mind from insanity with this sensible advice. Get on with the business of living.
Clara turned away and walked back to the path. By the time she returned to Windemere Hall the hem of her new walking dress was thoroughly soaked with dew.
§
HER RETURN to Windemere Hall coincided with Branson’s who raced down the sweeping drive on horseback. He saw her hatless and damp and rode quickly in her direction. The horse’s hooves kicked up gravel as he reined in beside her.
“Where have you been?” he shouted. “I have been looking everywhere for you.”
She shielded h
er eyes against the low September sun. Branson was in a black cloak and hatless as well. “I took a walk. Didn’t Piers tell you?”
“Yes, he told me. But he could not tell me where you were walking because you did not tell him! As long as you are under my roof, I expect to know your whereabouts at all times.”
“Then you and I have a problem because I refuse. I shall walk when and where I want. I am not a child. I will not be watched every moment that I am held here.”
Branson dismounted and came toward her, his eyes snapping with anger. “Well, well. The mouse has found her voice. What has got into you? How dare you challenge me?”
Clara shrank from his ire but the memory of the woman at the chapel was too fresh to be ignored. “You have not told me the whole truth. You said there were no women here. I saw a woman just now at the chapel. And last night, I heard a woman laughing in the room next to mine.”
“You’ve tried that trick once, Clara; I will not fall for it a second time.” Branson turned away from her, leading his horse to the stables.
“I found her bonnet!” She stamped after him. “I didn’t imagine that—no matter what you’ve instructed Piers to say. Who is Grace?”
His stride halted a fraction of a second and then Branson resumed walking as though she had not spoken. His boots crunched over the gravel. “Where did you hear that name?”
Clara knew she had pierced his armor. “Piers told me about her. He said you were engaged to be married.”
“It was a long time ago. Piers should learn to keep his mouth shut.”
“It wasn’t his fault. I asked him about her. I met her when I was a child and I wondered what happened to her.”
Branson glanced over his shoulder. “And did Piers tell you what happened to her?”
“Yes. He said that she had died.”
“Then there is no mystery. Obviously, it was not Grace you saw at the chapel—if indeed you saw anyone at all. And dead women don’t laugh. Why are you troubling me with this?”
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