by Devon Glenn
“I need to change into my costume,” she whispered.
“Do you need help?”
Dar said yes without hesitation. Rahul moved his hands up her back and grabbed a looped thread, pulling it over the button until it came undone. There were at least twenty buttons on the back of her dress, and beneath that, a laced corset would need to be untied as well. One by one he undid the back of her dress, and as he moved, Dar ached with anticipation.
Finally freed from her outer dress, she stared down at her chest, where her cleavage spilled over her corset. She watched Rahul press his face against her breast, taking a long breath through his nose and working through the laces at her back. He moved on to her petticoats, pulling them down to her ankles and taking a long look at her body as he sunk to his haunches. Her skin tingled with awareness that she had his undivided attention.
Shyly, Dar pulled off Rahul’s shirt, raising his up again as she did. Then she loosened his pants and tugged them free, feeling even more tenderness for Rahul knowing that the two of them had nothing more to hide behind than their own inhibitions. During yoga, he had seemed measured and controlled. Here, he seemed vulnerable and so wonderfully human. They stood there, nude, for a brief moment while Rahul gazed at Dar with a look of pure adoration—and the effect was intoxicating.
Suddenly the carriage stopped; the horse neighed and snorted, stomping his feet on the sand. Dar shut her eyes in frustration. She would need to put her bathing costume on, tie herself to the rope, and make the plunge, at least for a minute or two to wet her hair. But the last thing either of them wanted at the moment was cold water.
The walls shook as Mr. Fields hopped off his seat and moved to separate the bathing machine from the buggy. Rahul and Dar were still holding their breath, waiting for him to pull away, when they heard a faint scuttling, like forks and knives rattling in a drawer.
“Miss Crossing, you’ll need to stay inside your bathing machine,” the driver hollered. Pulling aside the curtain that covered the small window inside her bathing machine, Dar could see that Mr. Fields had already crossed the sand and was nearing the road. And the sand, she could also see, was covered in horseshoe crabs.
Dar laughed with relief. She remembered the soldiers’ helmets from her vision and suddenly knew what they meant. The bizarre little animals had come out to mate, likely clearing the beach of bathers and blocking access to the water. Mr. Fields had led her and Rahul to the most private place the two would ever meet. But how far should she go? She knew from living in a resort town that many women had slipped out of their rooms at Lottie’s inn to climb in bed with men they shouldn’t be sleeping with. She would certainly not be the first woman to give in to temptation. But her feelings ran deeper than mere temptation or even curiosity. Dar was fairly certain that no matter how many clean-shaven men came to visit her in Cape May, she would never meet another man who would understand her as completely as Rahul did. She also knew from living in a resort town that no one stayed in a beach hotel forever unless they owned it. If she was going to explore her feelings for Rahul, the time to act was now.
“Do you want me to come back and get you or wait it out?” Mr. Fields called.
Dar was ready with an answer to that. “Oh, please don’t crush them,” she said. “I can wait here until they pass.”
Rahul clasped her bottom with both hands, pressing forward to spread her thighs. The noise from the crabs on the beach was so pronounced, punctuated by nervous whinnying from the horses, that no one heard Dar’s involuntary cry when he finally pushed his way inside—a gesture more intimate and intense than any she had ever received.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” he said tenderly in her ear.
“No,” Dar said. As quickly as he had entered her body, Rahul had angled his hips in such a way that Dar’s lower half felt suspended on a sort of pleasure hook. Her usually active mind was completely void of all sense and she simply gave in to the feeling of it. “This feels better than I could have imagined.”
She didn’t mind when her back hit the wooden planks of the bathing machine, scratching at her skin and tangling her long hair. Rahul was so gentle, so enthusiastic, and so utterly uncensored in his worship of her body that Dar wondered how she could have survived so many years wrapped in cotton and whale bone and piles of feathers—the softest among these was still a poor substitute for human touch.
As Rahul moved his hands down the length of her back, grabbing her thighs to pull her closer, the friction between them sparked a fire inside of Dar that spread from her core through every fiber of her body, consuming her just as the light had consumed her in the lighthouse.
Rahul sat on the bench and pulled Dar into his lap, rocking her until his energy was spent. She collapsed, drenched in sweat, with her head on his shoulder.
The scuttling stopped. Dar cautiously opened the front door. Mr. Fields was long gone, but she didn’t know who else, if anyone, would be in the water. To her relief, the sea was empty except for the kelp drifting in the waves and the smooth, milky stones—quartz—on the beach. Rahul helped her shimmy into the modest woolen garment. After tying a rope around her waist, Dar lowered herself into the water. Her pale skin broke out in goose bumps, but she didn’t care. Floating on her back, she felt like her entire life was crumpled up like a pile of clothing—she had discarded it for something better.
Rahul watched her for a minute before grabbing his end of the rope and pulling it while Dar was floating, tugging her toward him playfully. He knew the beach was empty, but he didn’t want to risk being seen, even if only by the valet.
Dar ducked expertly beneath the waves as they came, shutting her eyes each time so the salt water wouldn’t sting. But then, opening her eyes and wiping water away, she saw something move: a long shadow on the edge of her vision. Startled, Dar tried to climb back into the bathing machine to the shelter of Rahul’s arms, but her limbs felt too heavy.
With dread in the pit of her stomach, she realized that she was now caught in a twilight state, somewhere between waking and sleeping. Whoever was watching her would not leave her alone until she could will herself awake.
“Dar,” the shadow said. “Dar, Dar…”
She strained to see the figure, which appeared to be nothing more than a gray outline of a man moving steadily through the water toward her. Had Edgar come back for a visit? Within seconds, another shadowy figure appeared, and then a third, and a fourth, until Dar was surrounded by faceless shadows who slid into her peripheral vision and then vanished when she tried to get a better look.
Gasping for air, she awoke to find Rahul hovering over her, repeating her name with concern. As soon as he had seen her go under, he had waded into the water and pulled her to safety, climbing back into the bathing machine so he could lift her arms and head to rest on the wood.
“My mind drifted off to a dark place,” she explained when she had coughed the salt water out of her throat.
“Did you have a bad vision?” he asked.
“Yes, the shadow person from the séance was coming toward me,” she said, too tired and frightened to care that Rahul had been right about the anonymous player. “And there were others.”
Rahul looked at her thoughtfully. “You got too comfortable,” he said. “A mind like yours is open to so many things that others wouldn’t notice. Let’s get you back to your house before your driver loses patience.”
Dar dried them both off as best she could with a single towel, but since Rahul had put his clothing back on before he jumped in the water to rescue Dar, his clothes were now soaked through to his skin. It would have to do for now.
“I’m ready to go now, Mr. Fields!” she called as loudly as she could. Mr. Fields returned to the edge of the water, attached the bathing machine to the buggy, and shook the reins. Before long, the bathing machine made its bumpy ascent to the main road and back to the house.
“He didn’t se
e you in the water, did he?” Dar asked Rahul.
“When I checked on Mr. Fields, he had a book over his face and was dosing contentedly in the sun,” Rahul reassured her. He carefully climbed back into the storage bench, contorting his body until he fit neatly into the small space.
When the bathing machine stopped, Dar hastened out, catching up with Mr. Fields as he led the horse into the stable. On the ride over, she had thrown her skirt and boots on over her bathing costume and wrapped her towel around her shoulders for modesty, but she knew she was pushing her limits talking to Mr. Fields while she was half-dressed and dripping wet. Mr. Fields stared at his shoes.
“Will you be here tonight to take the guests home if they need assistance?” she inquired. “The other night the window opened on its own and Elva Burns fainted dead in her chair.”
Mr. Fields scratched his beard and patted the horse on the nose. “I suppose I can do that,” he said. “That’s Horace Burns’s mother, correct?”
“Yes,” Dar said, nudging the stable door closed behind her with her foot while she spoke. Hopefully, she could distract him long enough for Rahul to escape. Mr. Fields did believe in the supernatural, and, though he was not unkind about it, he loved gossip even more than Lottie.
“I wish I could have seen that,” he said, glancing at the window.
Dar’s eyes met his briefly, passing a look of understanding. “I’ll leave the curtains wide open at my mother’s party,” she promised. “Maybe there will be a repeat performance.”
Mr. Fields nodded. “I’ll let Mrs. Fields know you’re here.”
When Rahul heard the stable door click, he clambered out of the storage bench, slipped out of the bathing machine, scrambled across the lawn, and ducked behind a topiary in the time it would have taken Dar to button her boots.
Unfortunately, he was not quick enough to miss Lottie as she rounded the corner and marched up to the front of Dar’s house to pay her a visit. But if she saw Rahul crouched in the bushes with his hair and clothing still damp, she pretended she hadn’t.
Grateful, Rahul slipped away without a word. He waited until Lottie had disappeared from view, then headed to the row of hedges beneath Dar’s bedroom. The home was three stories high, with an imposing turret on top and a perfectly manicured garden surrounding it. It was not nearly as big as his family’s complex in Calcutta, but it was certainly roomier than the coffin on wheels that he and Dar had shared for their first romantic tryst.
Rahul knew he should probably take a hot bath and change into dry clothes before he paid Miss Crossing a visit, but he didn’t care. There were things he had to say to her that could not wait until this evening.
CHAPTER 9
Wet hair
“The bushes in the yard are overgrown, to say the least,” Lottie said to Mrs. Fields as she entered the foyer, fixing her eyes at the top of the stairs while she waited for Dar to appear.
“Thank you for the update, Mrs. Digges,” said Mrs. Fields, sounding not in the least bit grateful for the critique of her gardening skills. “I’ll see if Miss Crossing is available.”
Dar had poked her head out the window to look for evidence of Rahul’s escape—perhaps a set of muddy footprints, maybe a rustled rosebush. Instead, she saw her lover, his shirt clinging to his gleaming chest and with a wild look in his eye.
She was halfway out the window to help him inside when she heard her housekeeper’s voice calling her from the foyer. She sighed and looked apologetically at Rahul, who was waiting beneath her window to talk to her one more time before he returned to his hotel room. “I’ll be right back,” she promised.
Dar tried her best to walk normally down the stairs, but her legs were still wobbling like jelly. “Ignore the limp. My limbs are still aching from our yoga lesson,” she lied. Dar motioned for Lottie to follow her into the parlor so that they could talk without her housekeeper hearing.
“Why is your hair wet?” Lottie asked before Dar could even offer her a cup of tea.
“I told you I was taking the bathing machine out for a swim,” Dar replied truthfully. She wanted to tell her who was with her, but Lottie was not known for her discretion.
“That was hours ago,” Lottie pressed. “You never swim in the afternoon. It’s not good for your complexion.”
“I meant to start swimming earlier, but nature had other plans,” Dar said, watching Lottie shift in her seat with anticipation. “The horseshoe crabs came out just as I arrived, so I had to wait in the machine for a while until they passed,” Dar continued, and Lottie sighed with disappointment. “You should have seen them scuttling across the beach. Beneath their tough exteriors, they were positively adorable.”
“You were in the machine all afternoon,” Lottie repeated. “In the tiny machine by yourself.”
Dar nodded nervously. “Just me and the crabs. The beach was empty.”
Lottie twirled a piece of her hair in her fingers. If someone could give me one explanation for both Rahul and Dar turning up at the Crossings’ house with wet hair other than the one I am thinking of, I will eat a horseshoe crab, shell and all.
Dar heard that one but said nothing.
“We’re friends, Dar,” Lottie said quietly. “Friends don’t talk about crabs scuttling in the sand when there are more interesting things to discuss. Do I tell you about the piles of sheets that are laundered every day at the inn?”
Dar looked at Lottie warily. “No.”
“Nor do I tell you how many keys my guests lose every day,” Lottie continued, “because you are my friend and I don’t wish to bore you. I give you the details about my guests that I know you will be interested in, and I trust you not to repeat them.”
Dar was full of questions for her experienced friend. For instance, was it normal to do it seated instead of lying down? And how long would it take for the ache between her legs to go away? But she could not trust Lottie to keep a secret. Instead, she poured her a cup of tea. “Would you like to talk about one of your hotel guests?” she asked innocently.
Lottie’s hand shook with irritation, making the dainty cup rattle against the saucer, but Dar knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist gossiping about her guests. “Horace Burns is staying in the honeymoon suite this week,” Lottie said quietly.
Dar widened her eyes in surprise. Even if the man hadn’t been completely boorish, his handlebar mustache was enough to turn Dar’s stomach. “Who is the unlucky lady in the other room?”
“It’s no one we’ve met before,” Lottie said, lowering her voice even more. “But it’s a man,” she said. “His name is Mr. Cummings.”
Dar nearly spit out her tea. “Finn didn’t tell me that part,” she said. “I am rethinking the entire séance now.”
Relaying that story apparently wasn’t enough for Lottie to forget her mission. She took her cup and set it on the coffee table a little too firmly, spilling its contents across the table and onto the hardwood floor. She grabbed Dar’s arm before her hostess could reach for a towel. “Look, I’ve gotten the table wet,” she said. “And speaking of wet, why is Rahul hiding in the bushes outside your house?”
Dar’s eyes lit up. “He’s still in the bushes?” she asked, peering through the doorway at the window near the foyer. Though she had told him she would be right back, Dar had assumed Rahul would have scampered away by now. It would be safer for both of them if he had, honestly, but it comforted Dar to think of him waiting outside for her return. Then again, Lottie was already in the house when Dar was talking to Rahul. So maybe he had left already. Dar wished her stomach would stop going all topsy-turvy every time she imagined Rahul closer or farther away.
Dar immediately recovered her composure when she saw Lottie’s stricken face. “I owe you an explanation,” she said, as gently as she could. “But would you mind terribly if I run back upstairs right now? We can talk more tonight.”
Lottie threw up her han
ds in defeat. “As you wish,” she said. “Tell the horseshoe crabs I say hello.”
Rahul paced beneath Dar’s window, debating whether to wait for her as instructed or to leave before he was seen. He was not in the mood to make idle chitchat with Lottie or any member of the Crossing family, so knocking on the front door and asking to see Dar was out of the question. But he had to admit that he loved a good tree, and right in front of him was a thick red oak that reached Dar’s window. He decided to give it a climb, and up he went, knocking against bits of gingerbread trim and patches of ivy on his way to see Dar.
Inside, Dar was waiting for him on the bed. She greeted him with a bright smile that faded when he pressed his lips into a grim line.
“I am afraid after what happened this afternoon that you’re not safe here,” he said, his voice low but earnest. “You need to stop channeling. At least until we find out who Edgar is and what he wants.”
Dar’s eyes turned dark. “We’ve had this conversation before,” she said. “I am a medium. This is my life. I refuse to be intimidated by someone who is too afraid to show me his face.”
Rahul reached for her waist and pulled her toward him. “You almost drowned,” he pleaded.
Dar pulled away from Rahul and sat on her bed, her shoulders slumped with disappointment. “You don’t believe I can control my abilities,” she said, despondent.
“That’s not true,” he said. “I love seeing the Other Side through your eyes. You’re compassionate. Insightful. You make me believe impossible things. Here.” He pulled a soggy, dog-eared book out of his pocket and handed it to her. “No matter what happens, I want you to know how I really feel about you.”
Dar accepted the gift with curiosity, taking a slow breath to enjoy the book’s musty, briny scent, but she didn’t open it yet. All her life, Dar had prided herself on her independence and on her ability to know the answers that no other living person would know. In this moment, she needed an answer from Rahul—not one that was shrouded in symbols and sent in a dream, but one imparted from his lips to her ears.