The Last Baron

by Saber Vale

  “Look at these gloves,” Cormac asked, forgetting his question, “do you think the baron wore them?”

  “Don’t put those on,” I breathed, but Cormac seemed not to hear me, and pulled the very old pair of thick, black leather gloves onto his large hands. They were made in soft, black, buttery leather, and reached almost up to his elbows, like something a falconer would wear.

  For a moment I felt a lump in my throat as I looked him.

  Wearing his tight jeans, a thin white t-shirt, and those dark leather gloves, he looked like some kind of sexual executioner.

  It frightened me, but excited me too, a hot feeling swirling in my belly. He smiled his mischievous, cruel smile at me, and I felt warm all over. Worse, I felt like he sensed it, like he knew he suddenly had me in his thrall, like I would do anything he said, completely helpless to his whims.

  I breathed, my lips parted with expectation, waiting for him to do something, wanting him to do something.

  He lifted a riding crop from the wall and slapped the whip-end into his hand with a tight, loud pop.

  I winced, and closed my eyes as I felt a hot blush blossom in my cheeks.

  “Stop it,” I said timidly.

  Did I want him to stop it?

  “Am I making you nervous, Astrid?” he asked, his voice lowered as he stepped towards me, tapping the whip, a rhythmic drum beat, into the palm of his gloved hand.

  “No, not at all…” I was nervous, but I was something else, too.

  I felt warm, almost dizzy.

  “I think you like it,” he replied, arching an eyebrow.

  “You think I like being underground, below a castle, with a stranger who seems to be threatening me with a whip?”

  He took another step forward, and I closed my eyes. What was I expecting to happen?

  Cormac stepped closer to me.

  “You know, you don’t look like any of the portraits,” Cormac said slowly, his eyes locked with mine, “have you noticed that? Your dark eyes, your little pointed nose, your dark hair, your… tits, no offense, all the women in the paintings are tall and slender, kind of Germanic…”

  “Well, I’m two generations removed from being isolated in the Bavarian mountains,” I reminded him breathlessly, unsure of how I felt about him talking about my figure as he stepped closer to me.

  “Do you feel close to them? The people in the paintings? Your relatives?”

  “In a certain way,” I said, “my mom, my whole life I was told how important this castle was, it’s my history, it’s who I am.”

  Cormac stopped drawing near to me.

  “My father tore down my mother’s family home after she died, this huge old Victorian house on a ranch in South Africa. It was painful for me, but I got over it.”

  “But don’t you wish you could have saved it?”

  Cormac smiled gently at me.

  “I still have her company,” he said, “I’m the CEO, remember?”

  “I’m going to fight you,” I said, “I’ll do anything I have to do. I’ll… I’ll sue you…”

  “You’re a passionate girl,” he said, stepping closer to me again, still holding the whip, “but you don’t understand how boards, cooperations, companies work…”

  “You’re a stubborn guy,” I said, looking into his intelligent eyes, glittering in the lamplight, trying to stay calm, “but you don’t have imagination. I’m sure you can think of a way to get your castle hotel without destroying my family history.”

  There was a moment, tense and riveting, where I actually thought, in spite of the furious tension between us, he might either kiss me or strike me with the whip.

  I wasn’t sure which I would have preferred.

  He took another step closer and I flinched.

  “You need to relax, babe,” he said, setting the whip back down on the shelf, deflating the hot tension from the moment.

  I thought I’d be relieved but I was, in spite of myself, disappointed.

  “Yeah, women love being told to relax,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Ok, ok, sorry, that was inappropriate,” he said, “but you do seem really uptight.”

  Gee, I wonder why that would be?

  “Well, I’m not, I’m fine,” I insisted, “this just isn’t how I expecting things would go here. Nothing is going like I planned.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t make plans?”

  “What do you want right now?” I asked him, “what are we doing in here?”

  “Nothing. Can we explore the east wing next?” Cormac asked, and I felt stupid for even thinking what I’d been thinking, a dark though I could never express.

  “Great, I don’t want to be down here anymore,” I said, pretending I was relieved to get out of the dungeon.

  Cormac slipped off the gloves and I followed him out, letting him shut the heavy door behind us.

  We walked quietly through the dark passageways back up into the light, to the heavy interior doors of the east tower. It was later in the day and the afternoon sun gave the castle a golden glow, light seeping through the few dusty windows that weren’t covered over with plywood.

  “Here we go,” I said, indicating the heavy iron chains that sealed the doors.

  “How long had this been shut up?” he asked, walking over with his bolt cutters.

  “Since before I was born? I don’t know,” I said, “my great grandfather died in the eighties, so maybe… thirty-five years?”

  “He lived here?”

  “Yeah, I guess he didn’t like the updates,” I said, “he lived in his old chamber until he died.”

  Cormac leaned into the bolt cutters and, with a heavy groan, popped the lock off of the rusty chain. The door creaked open with a push, and we both hesitantly crept into the main hallway.

  The first the I noticed was that it was all significantly better preserved than the great hall where we’d entered the night before. Nothing was broken or ragged, the elements and moisture had been kept at bay, and there was a quiet, eerie feeling like it wasn’t actually abandoned, like there was somebody there.

  In the great room, huge crystal chandeliers hung, draped liberally in cobwebs and dust. Huge canvas covered oil paintings and the Griffin coat of arms, two red griffins painted over a yellow background, hung from the walls. There was a huge table, covered in canvas with covered seating enough for thirty people easily. On either side of the door to the hall, two impossibly heavy looking suits of armor were posed, holding silver swords, pointed straight up. The fireplace was enormous, the size of a walk-in-closet, and the ceilings were outrageously high. Our voices bounced in ghostly echoes though the room.

  “This is wild,” Cormac said under his breath. We walked together through the hall, up the stairs into the upper chambers of the tower.

  The first bedroom we went into was probably for guests. There was nothing but a canvas-covered wrought-iron bed and an empty wardrobe.

  “This place smells like… old books…” Cormac said, breaking the lock and opening the windows that looked out, glassless, over the lake.

  Afternoon sun streamed into the room and struck the crystal of the chandelier hanging over the bed, where I noticed there were unlit candles in sconces set among the teardrop crystals. I couldn’t help but imagine how romantic it would if it was thoroughly dusted and lit, the twinkling crystals reflecting the flickering firelight like a medieval disco ball.

  We went into the next bedroom, which seemed to be the Baron’s. A huge, ornate wooden bed loomed in the center of the room, and the bureau, when Cormac uncovered it, still had a man’s comb, some very old pill bottles, and a pack of cigarettes, half smoked.

  “Wow,” Cormac said quietly, “it’s like he died and they just threw canvas over everything and locked the door behind them…”

  “That’s probably exactly what happened,” I said, “I don’t think they knew what they wanted to do with the castle at the time, and all this stuff wasn’t so old and romantic back then.”

  “The e
ighties?”

  “You know what I mean,” I said, “they didn’t want to mess with it…”

  We walked into the next room, and I almost gasped. It was so beautiful, with a huge, carved, gold-leaf gilded canopy bed. Cormac pulled off the canvas, and we found that the bed was covered in a red, silky bed cover, unmade and rumpled, like someone had slipped out of it that morning.

  Cormac pulled the canvas off of the vanity, and it was obvious it had been used by a younger woman, but had been left behind a long time before my grandfather died. There were very old rouge pots, gold lipstick tubes, and jewelry scattered across it, like whoever left it there had every intention of returning.

  I picked up a necklace, a long gold chain with a huge ruby solitaire charm dangling heavily, like a pendulum, from the end.

  “Is that real?” Cormac asked in disbelief.

  “It’s really heavy,” I said, weighing it in my hand.

  “Wow,” he said, “this was… her room, wasn’t it?”

  “I think so,” I whispered.

  “Try it on,” Cormac said, “it’s yours now, after all…”

  “No,” I said, “that feels… wrong somehow.”

  “What else are you going to do with it? Sell it?”

  That felt wrong too.

  I held it for another moment, then slipped it over my neck.

  Right away I felt… different.

  I turned to look in the mysteriously dust-free mirror and, for one moment, I didn’t recognize myself. The woman looking back at me from the mirror was beautiful, sexy, sultry, even, with a glamorous allure that I’d never seen in myself before.

  And then I blinked, and even though I was identical, I was me again.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, staring at the ruby, nestled between my cleavage, seductive and glittering.

  “It looks… really good on you,” Cormac said, like he saw it too, not just the jewelry, but the women, sultry, dark, mysterious, I’d become for one shimmering, unreal moment.

  “It’s so weird, for a moment after I put it on I felt like a different person,” I said, reaching up and playing with it, rolling the beautiful stone between my fingers.

  “That’s funny…” Cormac said, and then stopped himself.

  “What is?”

  “Nothing, it’s kind of stupid…”

  “Tell me, Cormac…”

  “Ok… well, I had the same feeling today, when I put on those gloves,” he said, “I felt changed, like I was suddenly someone else. I thought it was so weird, but… I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t have known how to describe it without sounding crazy.”

  I remembered the moment, the way I’d… wanted him, all of a sudden, very deeply.

  Was he feeling something like that for me?

  I slipped off the necklace and dropped it into my pocket.

  The moment passed.

  We opened the armoire and found that it was filled with dresses, black velvet, red silk, grey lace.

  “She had a real… look, didn’t she?” Cormac said, “very… lady of the night…”

  “I never knew she lived here,” I said.

  “Maybe they were in love,” Cormac said.

  “She was so much younger,” I said, “but maybe he took care of her.”

  “How old was your great grandmother when she died?”

  “Really young, like, younger than me,” I said, “she died in childbirth, I guess. Having my grandpa.”

  “What was her name?”

  I thought for a long moment.

  “I can’t remember,” I admitted, “we never talked about her. My grandpa had no memory of her. He only talked about the baron.”

  “And the baron… he never remarried?”

  “No, just… had girlfriends, I guess.”

  “I wish I knew her name,” Cormac said, picking up a silk stocking that was hanging over a hook inside the armoire door.

  “That would be easy to find out, right?” I said, “I’m sure there are public records.”

  Cormac opened the bedside drawer, and slipped out a black leather book. It was clearly the girl’s journal.

  “Or we could just look in here,” he said.

  “Oh my god, put that back!” I almost shouted, “I can’t even believe it’s here!”

  “I am most definitely taking this with me,” he said with a laugh, “are you kidding me?”

  “You’re going to read it?” I gasped.

  “Of course I’m going to read it,” he said with a snort, “what difference does it make?”

  “That seems so… wrong,” I said, even though, as a history writer, I’d read hundreds of diaries and letters in the pursuit of good stories from the past.

  Of course I was curious, but knowing it belonged to my great-grandfather’s mistress made it seem so much more intimate.

  “I say, we grab a bottle of wine and some bread and cheese for dinner, and read it out loud,” Cormac said, “come on, it’s not like we have anything else to do here…”

  “I don’t know, Cormac,” I breathed nervously, “we don’t know what’s in there…”

  “That’s the fun of it, don’t you think?” he said, raising an eyebrow, “or you afraid of finding a few skeletons in the closet? Let’s go explore the other rooms…”

  “No, it’s getting dark and there’s not going to be any more light soon,” I said, “let’s get back to the west tower.”

  Cormac shrugged and winked at me, slipping the book into his back pocket.

  Chapter 6

  I was relieved to be back in the more modern western tower, with it’s normal lighting, finished walls, and double pane windows. The eastern tower felt strange and magical, but also eerie and disturbing, like something about it was still alive, the history not dead and over, but simmering under the surface like a threat. I felt the weighty necklace in my pocket, like some kind of strange magic talisman that I couldn’t ignore.

  We made sandwiches for dinner and popped open a new bottle of excellent, ridiculously valuable Bordeaux. I could feel a sort of giddy excitement about cracking open the diary of the woman my grandfather had maybe loved, and maybe murdered. When we were finished eating, we both sat on either end of the couch and poured two big glasses of wine into some newly-cleaned crystal.

  “Ok, are you ready?” Cormac said, opening the first page of the book.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s probably in German,” I said, “but go for it.”

  “The private diary of Caroline Lowell,” he read from the first page.

  “Huh,” I said, “Caroline… That’s not a very Austrian name, or German…”

  “The mystery deepens,” Cormac said in a teasing voice.

  “Just read, I’m curious now,” I said, sipping some wine.

  “Ok, first page… Spent the day with B, went on a picnic by the beach, having some of his friends over for dinner tonight. I’m looking forward to their disapproving sniffs when I wear my velvet dress to dinner. The Duchess Von Striech can’t seem to look away from my décolletage, so I might as well put on a show for her and her husband, who seems just as compelled to look as his wife, although I suspect for different reasons…”

  “Wow,” I said, laughing, “she’s… kind of sassy.”

  “Yeah, she sounds like a fun lady,” Cormac said, “ok, next day… Went horseback riding with B and hunted quail…” Cormac flipped the page, “B bought me a new gold necklace while he was in Paris… Dinner was interrupted by a fire in the kitchen…”

  “Oh, come on, you’re skipping around,” I whined.

  “It’s not all interesting…” Cormac insisted.

  “You don’t know what I’d find interesting,” I said, leaning in to try to look at the pages.

  “Here’s a photo,” he said, slipping a black and white print from between the books pages.

  If the picture was Caroline, she was beautiful. Raven black hair in heavy, undulating curls, a round, voluptuous softness to her face, cat-like eyes, teas
ing and seductive.

  “Good looking woman,” Cormac said as we both stared at the picture.

  “She really was,” I said, “but keep reading…”

  “Ok, ok, here we go,” Cormac said, “Went with B to the dungeon for a session… whoa, ok, here we go… He tied me to the table, on my back, after undressing me, and tortured my nipples… oh my god, this is crazy…”

  “Just keep reading…” I insisted breathlessly.

  “Ok, ok…tortured my nipples one at a time, stroking and slapping them with the leather riding crop until I was begging for release…”

  “Wow,” I breathed, imaging the naked woman tied to the table in the dungeon, begging for pleasure and pain.

  “…he licked them slowly when he wasn’t slapping them, and the sensation, pain, pleasure, pain, had me reeling… He then forced me to come, putting on his black leather gloves and stroking me forcefully, unrelenting, until I was trembling with pleasure.”

  I felt, strangely, that the ruby necklace in my pocket was glowing hot. I was suddenly deeply aware of it, this woman’s belonging in my pocket as I read her diary.

  “After I came, B untied me and forced me to the ground, where he used my mouth like an orifice for his pleasure, finally releasing his seed into my throat… I hungrily swallowed and begged for more…”

  “Wow,” I said again, shaking my head.

  “Holy shit,” Cormac said, “is it just me, or is that…”

  “Sexy?” I said, blushing, taking a sip of the wine.

  “Yeah, a little bit, right?” Cormac said, “I feel like I could have a cigarette…”

  “Keep… keep reading…” I said urgently.

  “Ok, ok,” Cormac said, flipping the page, “B knows exactly how to torture me… he tied me from the ceiling of the dungeon so that my toes were barely touching the floor and spanked me with a whip, watching me flail about as I tried to regain my footing. Finally, he lowered me and took me from behind…”

  “Jesus,” I said, “they weren’t fucking around, were they?”

  Cormac kept reading, and I got… hotter and hotter.