My Wicked Fantasy

by Karen Ranney

  She placed the mirror on the bedside table next to the pink roses bunched in the earthenware vase. She didn’t think she liked roses, but that might just be another errant memory. Memories?

  Good heavens, the dreams.

  It was the injury, of course. The shock of the accident, the sleep that lasted three days. Surely that was the only reason for the odd dreams, the snatches of memory recalled. Why, then, did some of these recollections seem disjointed, not quite hers? How silly. To whom could they belong?

  And yet they did not seem like her recollections at all. A luxurious wedding. An evermore extravagant trip to Venice, Florence, Rome. Strange visions for a woman wed in a bland civil ceremony, who had suffered her wedding night with great patience and few illusions. Mary Kate’s one travel adventure had been to journey to Cornwall with her barrister husband.

  Wishful thinking? Dreams once harbored by a naive young girl, resurrected by injury? Odd that these dreams should have such detail. Even more peculiar that they should be peopled by strangers and not images of herself.

  She shrugged. It was a mystery, perhaps, that might never be solved.

  The young maid had helped her bathe earlier, albeit with Mary Kate sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs dangling down from it. Along with the mirror, she’d also brought news that Mary Kate’s benefactor intended a visit prior to his departure. An invitation Mary Kate could hardly decline, since it had been his kindness that had provided for her care. In truth, it was not his fault she had been injured, but simply fate that had caused the accident.

  She dangled her legs over the bed again, gathering up the voluminous folds of her nightgown. It was, like most of her wardrobe, of good quality but nearly threadbare. The penury of these past months had not allowed for more than the barest necessities, and clothing seemed less important than food or paying the rent on her small house.

  She had no energy; even the effort of draping her legs over the bedside seemed enormously difficult. But while it was true she hurt in places she didn’t think possible to feel pain, the bruising would eventually fade. She would not let these minor nuisances stop her from reaching her goal. There was no time for this weakness of limbs. Perhaps she could manage to stand on her own, even walk to the chair on the other side of the room. It seemed a simple thing to do, quite easy, really.

  She hadn’t planned on the pounding of her head, the sensation that she was moving slower, pushing against air that had become strangely thick. Her feet appeared to stick against the cold floorboards, each step so difficult that it seemed an eternity until she sat heavily on the ladder-backed chair, her legs collapsing beneath her.

  The pain in her head cautioned her against making the return voyage too quickly. Mary Kate laid her head back, placed her hands upon the eagles carved into the arms of the chair, closed her eyes against the onrush of the headache.

  Once, as a child, Mary Kate had been racing home through the fields, caught by a spring storm. Lightning had struck a tree not ten feet away, terrifying her, leaving behind a scorched trunk, the smell of burnt wood, and an acrid odor she could not name but would never be able to forget. It seemed replicated now, in this room far away from the place where she played as a child.

  The pain worsened, seemed to be isolated in the center of her brow. She pressed the fingers of both hands upon the spot in an effort to alleviate it. Instead, the pain seemed to gather strength as tiny lights floated from the corners of her eyes across her darkened field of vision. It was as if a line formed from above her ears across her face, down to her chin to the back of her head, capturing her in a mesh of pain. She moaned softly, all her concentration fixed upon the hopeful thought that such pain could not last long. Surely it would be gone soon….

  Soon he would come again, as much a herald to the night as the sound of the birds settling down for slumber in the woods beyond Sanderhurst.

  The solid marquetried door opened with such force that it jarred the painting on the same wall. There were no locks between them; it was only one of his rules. She was not foolish enough to tempt him to immoderate behavior. His moods were difficult enough to gauge, even after a year of marriage. It was as if he prided himself upon remaining a mystery to her, an enigma who frightened her a little.

  “M’lord.” She sat up in the bed, clutching the sheet to her. It was futile protection against her husband’s earnest desires. He was not cruel, but he was persistent. He wished a child, an heir. Something any husband would want. A woman’s duty. Her obligation. Responsibility. Such heavy words.

  “I would be inordinately pleased if you could but learn my name, Alice. It would be a damn sight better than being referred to as milord in my own bedroom.”

  He stood in front of her, blatantly naked, uncaring that she scrunched herself up into a ball under the bedclothes as if to avoid him entirely. But then, he was too free with his body, possessing an earthiness that occasionally shocked her.

  “I cannot think what you would want of me, milord. Archer,” she amended hastily.

  “No doubt I’ve left you in ignorance of the purpose of marriage, wife,” he said, a wicked sense of self-deprecating humor shining through his eyes. Alice thought them alight with a devilish look. His humor jarred her; that he could mock himself with such ease seemed an odd trait. She had no more insight into his character than she’d had at their betrothal, nor did she, in truth, wish any additional revelations.

  She’d craved a gentle-natured husband, and fate had granted her this man instead. Archer was like a wild wind, swirling up everything in his wake. She felt no more substantial than a leaf in his presence.

  On their wedding journey, he’d insisted she welcome him each night, a thoroughly scandalous thing to ask of her. All she’d truly wanted during those interminable six months was to return to her childhood home. He had been determined, however, to prove her fertile. She’d lain beneath him each of those nights, her hands clasping the bedsheets, careful not to move lest doing so incite his passions further. He spent hours touching her, caressing her limbs, licking her skin, suckling breasts that should only know a child’s mouth. Each night he seemed satisfied when that humiliating warmth in her lower region, that wetness of which she was so ashamed, lubricated his passage. Then he pushed himself into her, his breath harsh and laboring, an expression of such ferocity on his face that she grew even more frightened. She prayed, insistently, that it would soon be over.

  Two months ago, he’d heard her barely whispered prayers.

  Since then, she’d been able to forestall his visits by pleading a weakness of the limbs or a megrim. Tonight, one more ruse.

  “I am unable to partner you this evening. I’ve my woman’s time.” Such frankness embarrassed her, shamed her. Twin spots of color appeared on her pale face. She hoped he did not need further illuminating.

  “Then I am once again to be denied the joy of your passion, it seems.” She closed her eyes against his crudeness, wishing he would simply go away, leave her alone in this magnificent suite of rooms. It was too much, this chamber, done up in her favorite colors as a wedding gift, all pink and gold and exquisitely lovely. It was too large, too drafty, too filled with shadows. She hated it as much as any room in this monstrous place. She’d married above her, she’d been told. At this moment, and a thousand other moments, she’d have gladly relinquished the title and this place.

  Her father said she would be a wife to this earl; her sisters all seemed pleased that the family’s wealth was increased by relationship to a countess. But she truly didn’t want to be a countess, felt too inadequate to assume those duties everyone said she should fulfill.

  Alice huddled beneath the covers, feeling inept, worthless. And feeling, too, the unrelenting bite of shame.

  Mary Kate knew she was going to be violently ill.

  She made it to the chamber pot barely in time. The physician’s tonic and her breakfast writhed out of her stomach. She knelt on the floor, retched over and over, helpless and weak in the grip of the over
powering sickness.

  “Here.” A wet cloth was offered; a large male hand reached out to brush tendrils of hair away from her damp face. She was too sick to be embarrassed, too ill at that moment to care who witnessed her humiliation.

  How long did she kneel huddled there? She didn’t know. Nor did she care. All she wanted was for the pain in her head to abate, for her stomach to settle. The wet cloth she held against her face served a dual purpose in that it felt cold and wonderful and it kept her flaming cheeks hidden from the good Samaritan at her side. As her physical discomfort eased, her embarrassment began to surface.

  “Are you all right? Shall I summon the physician?”

  Her head still hurt, although the pain was not as great as before. Long moments transpired in which she had not required the chamber pot. Satisfied that this, at least, was true, she shook her head, then glanced over at him.

  Mary Kate felt as if she’d been put to stone in mid-breath. Twice she opened her mouth to speak and twice restrained herself. Her right hand flew up to lie upon her breast. Protection? Or to assure herself that her heart still beat in her chest?

  “Are you going to be ill again?” He stood, extended a hand to assist her, but instead of taking it, she remained on her knees, staring up at him.

  “You.” It was said so softly it was almost an invocation.

  He was taller than she’d thought, shoulders broad and perfectly fitted into the deep blue of his waistcoat, sartorially perfect. The room was dim, haloed in gray, an afternoon’s grace of shadows. Yet he lost no substance by it. His hands were broad, his long fingers tipped by clean, squared nails. His hair, raven-hued and curling around his ears, fell forward on his brow, bestowing a boyish nonchalance to a face that was neither youthful nor carefree. It was hewn from granite, this face, with strong planes and angles. It was not softened by his full lips, or the slight cleft to his chin. Nor was his appearance muted by the lights in his ebony eyes or the memory of his voice, low and resonant. His bearing was aristocratically stiff, his demeanor that of a man not disposed to cajolery.

  He had an eagle’s stare.

  “I dreamt of you,” she said.

  He frowned down at her, drew back his hand. “I can only commiserate with you over the content of your nightmares, madam.”

  “Isn’t it strange,” she said softly, “that you could look so different attired? But then,” she said, looking up at him with a curious look of confusion on her face, “I’ve never seen a naked man before.”

  And punctuated that surprising remark by falling into a faint at his feet.

  Chapter 4

  “She arose too soon, of course. Such a thing would naturally lead to disturbance of the humors.”

  “The woman was violently ill, Dr. Endicott,” St. John said.

  “A few doses of my tonic will add vigor to her blood.”

  Oh, if they would only go away and leave her alone. But they stood above her as if she were a newly made corpse, discussing her endlessly. Such inadvertent eaves-dropping was almost as humiliating as the past hour.

  Almost.

  Who was this strange man who seemed so known to her? So familiar? She forced herself to breathe deeply, not wishing them to know she had surfaced from her faint soon enough. If Mary Kate had her way, she’d remain in this posture for the rest of her life, hands folded over her chest, eyes shut, a living corpse. Embarrassed unto death.

  She had dreamt of him. Of being in places she’d only known from books, seeing the flying buttresses of the Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris, the exquisite delight of Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence, Venice’s Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Such feasts of the eye, delivered to her mind by a fevered wish.

  And the other, Mary Kate?

  A scene between man and wife? A man’s nakedness, candlelit? What explanation could you offer up for that?

  Could she have lost her reason? She felt the surge of blood to her cheeks. Could she have once known him, then forgotten everything she’d known? Mary Kate felt a surge of panic at the thought and its accompanying one. Who was real and who the dream?

  Mary Kate Bennett, born Mary Kate O’Brien. Orphaned perhaps, or not. Surely left adrift. Married too early, widowed too young. She had milkmaid’s hands, strong and capable, favored cherries as a fruit, disliked the chore of feeding chickens as they were as apt to peck her as the ground. She could fend off a man’s roaming hands with agility, swipe a tavern full of tables in as quick a time, work from daybreak until the moon rose if the need be there. She’d never stolen and she rarely lied and she’d been taught by circumstance to keep a level head in times of outward despair. If she had a dream, it was to be able to purchase a length of velvet in a green shade that would rival the emerald valleys of Ireland. She’d place the velvet around her shoulders, so that the softest side of it would be next to her skin. Or drape it, perhaps, so that her shoulders peeped through, white and rounded and not marred by work or tanned by the sun. She might pretend, if she could spare a moment or two for the joy of such things, that she was a great lady at a ball, awaiting one of her many suitors, or a woman draped in softness, expecting a lover. Or perhaps a mother, the velvet becoming, through the magical properties of wishes, an infant with a sweet and nuzzling warmth.

  No, she knew herself too well to doubt this identity.

  And the other? She’d often dreamt of people she did not know. But in such detail?

  Stop this, Mary Kate. Too many times the goodwives called you an imaginative child, for leaving a bit of cake beneath a toadstool now and again, for washing your hair with the droplets of dew from the first May morning, for peeling an apple into a long, unbroken strand, the better to determine your true love’s initials. But that was long ago, when you were but a child and before you learned that wishes don’t work and superstition is just a way to make fools believe. Shame on you for thinking as a child might, or for dreaming as a sinner.

  The door closed softly and she let herself sigh a little. Just a gasp of relief. She opened her eyes cautiously a slow peep at a time, to find herself the object of the eagle’s stare once again.

  She clamped her eyes shut, a mouse rendered motionless with fright.

  “It’s too late, I’m afraid. I know you’re awake.” There was a touch of humor in the voice, enough to cause her flush to deepen. That would have given her away if nothing else.

  “The physician has gone to make you a dose of his tonic.” That information elicited a groan. “Is there anything else I can procure for you?”

  “No, thank you.” Her face was turned to the wall, making the words a little difficult to understand. He leaned closer.

  “Is there someone I can summon for you? Your husband, perhaps?”

  “No.” There was nothing but silence. Mary Kate felt compelled to add an explanation. “I am a widow, sir.”

  “A family member, then?”

  “There is no one.”

  “I see.”

  Mary Kate was quite certain he didn’t.

  “What did you mean? About dreaming of me?” he asked finally.

  Moments ticked by, heavy with silence.

  “I cannot explain it to you, sir. It makes no sense to me.”

  “My name is St. John. You may address me as that or simply as you wish. I do prefer, however, that you not revert to sobriquet. Sinjin reminds me too much of a particularly odious Persian poem.”

  She smiled, charmed despite herself. “My knowledge of particularly odious Persian poems is limited at the moment.”

  “As is your explanation.”

  Silence again.

  “‘I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was,’” she murmured.

  “Your knowledge of Shakespeare is to be congratulated, madam. However, I cannot appreciate the sentiment if you continue with that verse.”

  “‘Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream’?”

  “Exactly. You’ve taken A Midsummer Night�
��s Dream wholly out of context, you know.”

  She turned and glanced at him. His smile seemed bemused. “It was one of Mrs. Tonkett’s favorite plays. I think she believed herself Titania.”

  “Who is Mrs. Tonkett?”

  “My own personal faerie queen. She taught me to read.” There was a smile on those lips, an otherworldly reminiscent smile.

  “This conversation has a common center, does it not? That being, of course, confusion. The more perplexed I am, the less curiosity I evince. Is that your aim?”

  There was a hesitation before she spoke. “Truly, I have no aims. I simply don’t know how to explain.”

  “One word strung before another would be simple enough.”

  “Have you ever milked a cow?”

  He shook his head as if to dislodge a troublesome fly. “No, I have not.”

  “It is a singularly boring task. One that seems to last hours, twice per day. Oh, I’ve known people who talk to their cows while milking them. Words of praise, that sort of thing. But I daydreamed. Of places I’d rather be, things I wished I could do. Sometimes, I pictured myself dancing. I’ve always wanted to learn to dance, to slide over a brilliant-colored floor with my skirts twirling and my head reeling and my breath so tight that it felt as if I were going to swoon.”

  “And your dreams of me were like that?”

  She turned to him, her smile as bright as a child’s, just as mischievous. “Milk dreams?”

  “Just so.”

  His studied insouciance could not dampen the spark in his eyes. Just a small light, like a distant star in a moonless night.

  “It began as dreams, really. When I was asleep for so long.” She would not look in his direction again, seemingly intent upon plucking the sheet from the area of her right knee. “Then,” she said in a voice that betrayed its confusion too well, “I began to dream of you in the daytime.”