by Gayle Eden
Blaise was finished with breakfast and passing by the foyer when the knocker sounded. With intentions of going to his study, he continued on, assuming it was someone with calling cards, which he ignored.
Society among military families both merged and was separate from higher circles, depending on rank. He had attended a few gatherings years before when he was on home shores. However, even sighted, he found comparisons between himself and Jules tedious.
it was not as if he did not encounter the Earl of Stoneleigh on and off In the past, it was more that as the oldest and heir, exact opposites in most ways, there’d never been a reason to pretend there was anything but civil formality between them.
His hand was on the door latch when Henderson called out loudly, “His Grace, The Duke of Eastland, and His Lordship, Jules LeClair, Earl of Stoneleigh.”
Blaise let the knob turn and pushed the door open, but hearing their footfalls coming toward him, he turned.
When they stopped, he bowed. “Your Grace.” He addressed his father first, catching the faintest scent of pipe smoke and leather, which he associated with him. When he was a boy and passed by the study the Duke spent his time in, that was what he remembered.
Straightening, he scarcely had time to count and hear the step toward him before his father was taking his hand. A handshake he was prepared for, but not that the Duke would use the hold to pull him into an embrace.
Startled, off guard, Blaise felt that free hand patting his back as Artis offered gruffly, “Welcome home, my boy. I see you’ve managed to mar that pretty face, but it’s a damn sight for sore eyes, considering you could be dead.”
“Sir— " Blaise began, not knowing what he was going to say, since he was still off balance.
“Father,” the Duke corrected. He stepped back and released him.
It took a moment for Blaise to begin his bow to Jules, with a murmured, “Your Lordship…” Nevertheless, he did not get that done either before Jules was shaking his hand.
“You look better than expected, Blaise.”
Disconcerted by the whole thing, Blaise offered dryly, “I’ll take your word for it, Stoneleigh.” He gathered himself and waved to the study, “I was about to enjoy a coffee, will you join me?”
“Yes. Thank you,” Artis said.
As the men passed him, aware that Henderson would see to the coffee, Blaise said off handed, “I generally come around the left flank—and to the seating by the fire. So long as you don’t move anything, I’ll be able to join you in a somewhat dignified manner.”
He did just that, feeling both men looking at him, watching, and eyeing him. He wished he could see their expressions. He would bloody like to see his father’s since that uncharacteristic greeting still had him taken aback.
The coffee served, he heard the slightest creak of leather, and guessing that Jules had raised from the chair across from him—their father between—to hand him his cup, he said, “At ease, my Lord. Henderson knows where to set everything.”
To prove that, he turned slightly and managed to pour in the cream and stir without sloshing a drop. Lifting it and relaxed in his chair—as much as he could manage in the company of these men—Blaise sipped before deciding he had to ignore the fact they were going to stare at him the whole time.
“I realize this is an unannounced visit,” the Duke began. “And whilst I apologize for the intrusion, I hope in the future, it will not be so out of the ordinary for you and I to enjoy each other’s company? And your brother, Jules. Have you an adequate staff? Is there anything I may do for you?”
Whilst still trying to process the first part, Blaise supplied, “I have enough to suit my needs, yes. I am used to a life where I travel light, and though I’ve spent little time in this house, I would do better, I assure you, without an army of servants underfoot.”
It was Jules who offered, “You must not hesitate to let us know if you do need something, Blaise.”
His brow rose, though it pulled the scar to do so, Blaise nodded. “That’s very generous of you, m—“
“—Jules. Let us drop the formality, please. We’ve other things to discuss with you, if you’re up to it.”
“Of course.”
The Duke cut in, “Before we get to Raith, I want to offer you the same apologies I rendered to Jules.” He proceeded to explain, much as he had to Jules, and did not spare himself. Blaise missed his eyesight more in those moments than ever, so astounding was this transformation.
Artis finished by saying, “As Jules has reminded me, you are all grown men and have earned the respect you garner in your respective lives. As I am proud of him, I am no less of you. Although I know you have served your country and have gone to war because you were meant to, you seemed born for it. You have my utmost respect, my boy. I can take no credit for what you have made of yourself, you alone own that honor. But I am glad to be your father, and I hope that our future may offer all of us something we have not had in the past, a chance to be family—friends.”
Jules added, “That includes Raith. Have you heard from him?”
“No. I have not so much as laid eyes on him since he left home. I have not been here much however.”
As Blaise was told of Raith, of his wife’s murder, he felt awash with both horror and a feeling he did not expect to, considering they were as good as strangers. He felt a great grief and compassion, for Raith. True, none of them had what could be termed affection, but Raith was outright targeted for the worst. He and Jules, trying to find their own way, still had made no effort to ease that marked dislike of the Duchess’.
Through servant’s he had always known Raith was not his mother’s, and he put it all together when Raith gained an inheritance. By then, he was set on his own course and soon after discovered Raith had simply vanished.
At the end of Jules and the Duke speaking, Blaise sipped more coffee and then murmured, “You should check properties. Does he not have a house here?”
“Yes,” The Duke said as if he had just thought of it. “Excellent idea…”
“Have you no notion who would send the letter?” He asked the Duke. “The tone, articulation… Do you think it was someone of good education and background?”
“I don’t know. One could presume they are of strong intellect. It seemed to have been written in haste. And it implies by tone, that Raith will go after this man.”
“As I would,” Blasé muttered.
“Yes. Though we did not know her, she would be my daughter in law, your sister. It torments me as much as wondering what Raith’s life has been like, distresses me. His believing the worst of me...”
After some thinking and silent musing, Blaise offered, “Ry and myself will do what we can. Although finding him, and his wanting anything to do with us….”
“But we must try.” The Duke sighed.
They visited awhile longer, time mostly spent in uncomfortable exchanges. Because, his Grace seemed to have the need to repeatedly explain, or apologize, for how they were raised, and their lack of an intimate relationship.
Jules—Blaise could read, probably thanks to his blindness, since to look at Jules was to see perfect handsomeness and icy control—yet because he had only his ears, he heard something in the inflections, a tension he doubted had anything to do with Raith. It was interesting to say the least that the cold and aloof perfect heir could be struggling with anything.
Of course, it could all be due to this rather stunning transformation of their father. Even Blaise did not recall the man speaking as many words in all the years they were growing up. He did not doubt the sincerity, but he had his doubts that grown men could somehow find a common enough ground to have a relationship. They were all like night and day.
“Ry and I will do what we can,” he offered those words again in regards to Raith.
Later, in the foyer, the Duke was a bit ahead, having a word with the staff. He could deduce his father was going over his head, likely instructing them to notify him if Blaise needed anyt
hing, and then having what sounded like a rather jovial chit chat with the housekeeper—Jules had hung back, standing beside Blaise near the staircase, just before the foyer.
His sense of smell as keen as his hearing was becoming—and his having to read voices instead of faces, Blaise detected under the starch of Jules cravat and shirt, the coffee, a blend of male scent that was expensive in its substance, as it was unique. He supposed his brother could afford such. He himself often smelled of sea salt and black powder, more than bay rum. Not likely, to anymore however, he reminded himself, lacking his career….
“Quite a transformation in him,” he heard Jules say in that perfect drawl.
“Stunning.”
“Seems the two years of rustication was good for father.”
“That and the Duchess dying,” Blaise retorted deprecatingly.
“She was our mother,” Jules reminded.
“Was she? I often found it hard to imagine her giving birth to me. I dare say, the servants and tutors could take more credit for raising us than she.”
“I’ll not argue that.”
“Good.” Blaise turned his face toward Jules. “Because you’re not putting on some performance for the society you must please. I know the truth.”
There was a tick of silent moments, and then Jules offered, “We’re all grown past needing that.”
That, Blaise knew, was mothering or attention. He returned, “I agree.”
“Just the same, I think father’s point to both of us is that unless we see how it shaped us, we will make the same mistakes in the future—and deprive ourselves of happiness as he did.”
“Are you happy?”
“No.”
He perceived Jules answered before he had realized it. Therefore, Blaise murmured, “I’m blind, Jules—at least for now. But I’m not stupid, and far from a fool.”
“I never implied such.”
Smiling cynically at that cool drawl, Blaise retorted in like accents, “One of the duties one assumes when young men are under his command is to be able to read what they don’t say during a stressful situation. Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Why, of course not? Because you’ve perfected that air of untouchability and control?” Blaise snorted and then turned his head back and shrugged. “Of course I’m blind, so I’m the weak one of the fam—"
Jules hand landed on his shoulder. “Had you lost more than sight, Blaise, no one could ever doubt your strength. I do not. Tis simply that… Father’s coming up to town…taking on some persona—like a phoenix rising from the ashes…and this business with Raith’s wife…”
“Um, yes. Quite wrecks your orderly existence. Begins to reshape the view we’ve always had of him, certainly.”
“Just so.” Jules dropped his hand. He heard him draw in a long breath and release it before Jules murmured, “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Never thinking the situation would ever arise that he would hear himself say it, Blaise told Jules, before Stoneleigh moved to depart with the Duke, “I have fairly good instincts, blind or not, and have spent most of my adult years around men from every walk of life. If you feel the need to confide…”
“Thank you. I am sure 'tis just a momentary annoyance.”
Blaise was sure—it was not. However, he saw them off and then went back to the study—where he wasted an evening simply replaying everything. Mulling mostly, over whether it mattered or not, whether he would let it matter, what his father said, what his brother seemed to be attempting. In addition, what, if any difference it could make now.
Chapter 3
“You are my captive…my slave...”
“I am your goddess. Your queen. Now be silent, or I shall have to punish you again.”
“My whore queen…”
Gabriella listened for Stratton’s voice to come floating over the chamber amid the pungent smoke of incense again. They were in the area he called his playroom, and from the first time he’d showed it to her, she likened it to a torture chamber.
Thanks to the hallucinates he had smoked (her own pipe filled with plain tobacco and spices Raith had provided) and the amount of opaque she had mixed in the wine—Marcus was too inebriated to move.
The chamber was at the main rear of the mansion, its structure sealed off from what looked like a normal residence by faux walls and passages.
She had certainly never known it was back here.
The walls were draped with flowing black silk, at times drawn to veil the chains and manacles attached to brick. The most eerie of them was a crucifix that would suspend a body in the air by the iron cuffs attached.
The haze was thick in the room. The odor she had smelled on the first day, of bodily fluids, could not be masked completely. The musk of decadence was years saturated into the walls and furnishings. It was apparent he had had this little hideaway for many years.
She chose not to think he’d had her mother here, but did not doubt she had experienced it. It was a wonder to her that Natasha had been sane when they escaped.
Tables were fashioned to be flipped over, the underside hid boxes and strapped sets of all manner of pain inducing contraptions. There were implements and tools, trunks of them too, both ancient and special made. Whips, dirks, pins, spikes, pliers and some hook shape she did not want to know the use for. There was a shelf holding vials and containers, chloroform, arsenic, resins, and others with faded labels.
Gabriella kept her focus on Stratton, having an hour ago realized she was late meeting Raith again. She had been (staying) with Marcus for a week, and the first two days, sleep deprivation alone tested her resolve. Once he had her, he seemed obsessed to the point he had offered no food and little to drink.
She had been tested, she knew, even as Marcus submitted to what he thought were her fetishes, she still had to give a certain amount in return. She played her games with him, staying mostly clothed at first, and pretending her excitement during those moments, he allowed her to restrain him. However, once she agreed to spend the night with him, he had gotten more demanding and aggressive. At least now, however, he commanded her to inflict more upon him.
Using her body, her looks, her voice, she was slowly turning the tables, guessing rightly that once he believed she gained pleasure from dominating, he began feeding into it, and grew excited by it. He gained that pleasure normally from delivering the pain himself. She knew that before, but had it confirmed by the constant stream of talk he offered up when he was intoxicated. Women were clearly objects to serve his needs, and he talked of the loveliest, and how he liked to mar their flesh and transform them as he put it, into his ideal. His idea of pain was real, distorted, and extreme.
However, the first time she had used implements on him and pretended to climax, his lust gave her the advantage. Keeping it would be a moment-by-moment thing with a man who had years and years, many different women, to perfect his own cruel games with.
Marcus was nude at this moment, and across the room, his body was strapped to a dunking board with leather buckles. He still did not look so much a human to her as animal. When his lust was high, he breathed in a hard wheeze and physically resembled one, veins protruding, breathing agitated, eyes feral. Though robust in height and torso, his legs were oddly thinner. His manhood, flaccid or full, made her stomach roll. Everything about him turned her stomach.
One of the first contraptions she had noticed by a wide bed, on the other side, was so cruelly fashioned she could not help but wonder if Raith’s wife had been butchered by it. It was a casket like box, upright, but with slits where blades or picks could be used. The persons head and arms were free, but to her mind, it would make the horror all the worse.
Stratton had told her he had purchased it from an illusionist. She had eyed the locks on it, the rust a reddish color she likened to blood. In fact, many of his (devises) appeared to have never been cleaned. The musk from the bedcovers, a tangle of black and red velvet, was revolting too.
Gabriella covered her revulsions and reactions, and played her role, alternating in teasing Stratton like a naughty boy, and commanding him as her subject. He took pride in his collection, his toys, as he called them. As her subject, he was eager to please her, to take her punishment now, but he was getting deeper into it, pushing it further and further.
A snore had Gabriella rising to her feet. The shreds of her chemise slipped down when she tiredly padded toward him. He had grabbed her and ripped it when she was putting the restraints on him.
Wax burns glistened on his chest, the welts raised by the soft whip laced his thighs. He had a particular taste for having his nipples pinched, and they were raw. Her own were sore too, but she got no pleasure in it, in fact she could not wait to salve them.
She undid the restraints, her nose repelled by his sweat and a sweet scent of the opaque and wine coming from his breath and pores. She too often fantasized of killing him when he was like this. Gabriella stuck to the plan, telling herself it would be over soon. He would be destroyed.
Once he was unbound, she crossed the room and pushed on the panel that let her into her chambers.
It was always a surprise to realize it was daylight, after exiting the room. Checking the clock, she muttered a curse and wasted little time washing and scrubbing—she had enough marks on her body and bruises from Stratton’s hands. Kissing him brought bile to her throat, allowing him to pinch and paw her was a small price to pay for the amount of information she was able to get for Raith, though.
Getting dressed, pulling on her stockings and shoes, she then braided her hair and coiled it crown like, and then added a black cape to her ensemble. Grabbing up the books and papers she had taken from his study, she tucked them under her arm, hidden by the cape.
The servant’s stairs were accessible from going through a closet and a narrow rear door. She used them to leave and exit into the back alleyway. Gabriella slipped to the street, and walked a block to the waiting hack. The driver knew where to take her.