Accursed (18 page)

“More than anything in the world, of course. But at the proper time, without a scandal that could sully your name, and your family’s. We’ll marry, Sophia, and then—”

She laughed. “Of course we’ll marry. But don’t you see, Will? A wedding is something we do for society, for appearances. We’ll have a feast in our honor, music and dancing, and it will be precisely the way it ought to be. And to all outward appearance, I shall be pure when I walk down the aisle. Who’s to say otherwise?”

Sophia glided across the carriage to slide onto the cushion beside him. Her hands went to his face, fingers in his hair, caressing his cheeks, tracing his lips. The passion in her eyes was like nothing he had ever seen. His chest ached with the love in his heart, and his lust pained him even more. When she whispered to him, close into his ear, her voice excited him further and he quivered with it. Her fingers slid down his chest, poking playfully between the buttons of his shirt.

“My parents are gone, William. The servants in the Winchell home answer to
me,
and they shall keep my secrets.” She leaned in further, her hot breath upon his cheek. Her fingers danced downward, and he flinched as she began to trace small circles upon his belly.

“You worry so about propriety, and decorum, about appearances, about my virtue. The weight of society’s expectation is heavy upon you,” Sophia continued. “But
here
is what I do not understand.”

She kissed him, and William could not help himself. He kissed her back with fervor, his hands reaching up to caress her face, to run down her back, to cup the shape of her breasts. Her tongue darted into his mouth and he stiffened, a spasm passing through him, but not the final one.

Sophia put her hands on either side of his face and held him there, staring into his eyes. Her hair had begun to fall loose across her face, and his heart fluttered at the sight.

“You know there is so much more to this world than appearances. Our society basks in the illusion of normalcy every day, and hides away from the truth each night. Horrors abound that most believe to be myths and legends, but you know as much as anyone this is merely a convenient self-deception. You wield magics that no ordinary man would believe, and yet you perpetuate the fiction that all is well. That there is nothing lurking in the shadows.”

William swallowed. When he finally spoke, it was with a rasp. His hands continued to move over her body, as if they operated independently of his mind.

“Without that fiction, the illusion of normalcy as you call it, society would fall into chaos. It’s necessary to—”

She hushed him with her hand. Then, deliberately, she took his own hand and moved it to her chest, tugging down the front of her bodice so that her breasts pushed up over the top. William gasped aloud at the sight of the pale aureoles and rose-petal-pink nipples. Sophia cupped a hand behind his head and drew him to her, bringing his face down to her breasts.

William kissed her there, soft, gentle brushes of his lips that he first bestowed upon pale, rounded flesh, then upon the soft skin at the undersides of her breasts, and at last upon the small, taut berries that tipped them.

“This,” she said, voice hitching, “is no different. The fiction is necessary. But it is a fiction, my love. My heart. We are . . . not alone in this. What society does when the lights are out . . . oh . . . and the doors are closed, and what face it puts on . . . in the daylight are two . . . two different things. Don’t you see?”

William was beyond seeing. Beyond thinking. Passion raged in him, though his actions belied everything he believed.

Sophia’s right hand strayed farther southward and she ran her fingers over his swollen prick, then gripped it tightly through the fabric of his trousers, and began to stroke him.

In those few moments he would have done anything in the world for her.

As though it came from a different world he heard a muffled rap, a knocking. It took a moment for William to realize that it came from the front of the carriage, and that the coach itself was slowing. The clopping of the horses’ hooves became more sparse.

“Milady?” came the voice of Elvira, Sophia’s maid.

With a grin, the girl moved back across the carriage to her original seat and quickly arranged her bodice. William felt dull and stupid, as if his brain were soaked in gin, for his arousal had put him in a kind of fugue state. It was only when Sophia replied to Elvira’s voice, and that good woman opened the small door in the carriage that allowed driver and passenger to communicate, that William straightened up in his seat.

The maid shot him a disapproving glance as he crossed his legs to hide his condition, then reached up to smooth his hair. He was certain that even in the dim interior of the coach his face must be flaming red.

“We are being hailed from the roadside, miss,” the maid said, her lips pinched in their usual sour twist. The woman was stork-thin, her face almost cadaverous, yet she had the bearing of a ruddy schoolmaster.

Sophia might rely on Elvira’s discretion, but that didn’t mean she had the maid’s approval.

“Well, tell Mr. Milford to drive on,” Sophia said sharply. “We do not stop for strangers on a street corner.”

Nevertheless, the carriage was stopping, despite the commands of its mistress. Even as William wondered what would cause Milford to halt, the driver answered the question for him.

“Ah, but it’s no stranger, miss, but Mr. Swift’s own sister,” the driver said.

Elvira, up on the seat beside Mr. Milford, replied in a low voice William was sure he had not been meant to hear.

“How in the world did she arrive here before we did?”

O
N THE ROADSIDE,
out of earshot of the carriage, William stared at his sister. “Are we even certain it was Frederick? Could it have been some sort of doppelgänger?”

Tamara shook her head. “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I’ve known the man too long to be taken in by such a masquerade. There is clearly some darkness at work here, Will. Something monstrous. Helena did not take her own life, that much is certain.”

William saw the way her face tightened with grief when she mentioned Helena, and heard the intensity in her voice. He glanced away, regretting his harsh response to her arrival. Of course there was trouble. Tamara would not have come to him this way otherwise.

“We’ll need to speak about it straightaway. And somewhere more discreet,” Tamara added, glancing around at the carriage, where the maid had climbed in with her mistress. Sophia was watching them intently, irritation plain on her face.

“Of course,” he said, nodding.

William turned toward the carriage and strode to the window. He reached up to take Sophia’s hand. Anger blazed in her eyes, and he thought perhaps there was embarrassment, as well, though she would never have admitted it.

“I’ll find my own way from here, darling. I’ll call upon you tomorrow afternoon, if you’ll receive me.”

Sophia hesitated, aware that Elvira was looking on. “I will,” she agreed. “But . . . here, William? We’re to leave you off here, so far from Swift’s?”

“Indeed,” he said. A smile spread across his face. “You might carry us both to Threadneedle Street, of course, if you’re worried about appearances. Or we might simply rely upon kind Elvira and the good Mr. Milford not to engage in idle speculation.”

Sophia seemed to consider both options, but a single unpleasant glance at Tamara made her decision obvious. As William had expected.

“You may rely upon them as you would me.”

Brother and sister stood together on the cobbled walk in front of the inn, the soles of their shoes becoming tacky with spilled ale, and watched the carriage rattle on toward London at far greater speed than that with which it had begun the journey.

“You know,” William said, arching an eyebrow, “she
really
doesn’t like you.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant, that is. What was your first indication?”

They smiled at each other, and then all the humor left them. William saw the pain in his sister’s eyes. He looped an arm through hers.

“We’ll walk, Tam, and you’ll tell me all that’s happened. Don’t leave anything out. And then I have something to tell you, as well, about a conversation I had with Father . . . with Oblis, this morning.”

“Oh . . . you, too?” Tamara said.

A chill went through William. The demon had been toying with them both. Of course he had. But to what end?

And what, if anything, did it have to do with the death of Helena Martin?

H
aving no corporeal form made life far simpler. There was no urge to fill the belly with food, no need to evacuate the bowels, or even to sleep. There was beauty in human existence, but Byron found it difficult to be poetic about the need to defecate.

Truth be told, he was glad that he no longer was constrained by form, yet there was one human feature he missed so terribly that he could feel the bitterness rise like bile in his throat whenever he thought of it: sexual congress.

Oh, how he missed the silky softness of a woman’s inner thigh, slick with sweat and fluid, a taut nipple caught between his teeth, the feel of rock-hard buttocks against his abdomen as he strained and thrust, the heady perfume of carnal human musk thick in his nostrils. It had been a very long time since Byron had last touched real human flesh, but he desired it still with an eternal hunger.

Only by composing his poetry was he able to quell his lustful thoughts. Byron channeled his insatiable desire into his posthumous work, so that now his poems were almost always obscene. He had read a few of his wanton verses to Tamara, and even her staunch liberalism had been challenged by their lewdness. He had watched with interest the way the blood rushed into her cheeks as he read. It had made him wonder if the blood flow to other areas of her anatomy had also been increased.

Just the thought of the Swift siblings had the power to make Byron giddy. Tamara especially. His lustful thoughts toward William ranged more toward fantasy than reality. William was too priggish to ever be enticed into an affair, but Tamara, to the contrary, was an adventurous sort. He knew that had he been flesh and blood, it wouldn’t have been long before he enticed her to come to his bed for her pleasure.

Tamara was a Protector of Albion. She and William were the mystical guardians of the soul of England, connected to the ancient heart of the land and infused with its magic. There were hundreds of such Protectors in the world, each burdened with the power and duty to defend their homeland from the forces of darkness.

They were touched by the supernatural. That meant, of course, that with focus Byron himself might be able to touch Tamara. But even if she would have allowed such a thing, it would have come to naught, for he would not have been able to maintain that focus for very long.

No, the pleasures of the flesh were only a memory to him now.

Lost in his musings, Byron was returned to the present by a loud belch that erupted from the corner of the room. He looked up to find the demon Oblis staring at him through Henry Swift’s eyes, a long string of drool hanging disgustingly from his open mouth. The smile that spread across his features was sickening.

“What lovely, nasty thoughts you have, my lord Byron,” Oblis spat, the words foul in the air as if they had substance, the texture of filth. His grin widened as Byron’s upper lip curled in disgust. The presence of the demon tainted any pleasure his fantasies might have conjured.

He despised the task of looking after William and Tamara’s possessed father. It was a job he took only under duress, mostly from fear of being lashed by Queen Bodicea’s barbed tongue. The queen could be very persuasive when she wanted, and she had ever been immune to his influence.

Today, however, he had required less convincing—less bullying—than usual. Once he had seen Farris’s bloodied face and the mess in the sitting room, and heard the tale of Helena Martin’s death and her brother’s hideous metamorphosis, he had simply thanked the man for passing on Tamara’s message and come upstairs to begin his watch.

Now he and Oblis glared at each other across the room. The very substance of his spectral form shuddered in the presence of such iniquity. The malevolence that lurked inside Henry Swift’s frail frame radiated throughout the room.