Bound in Moonlight (24 page)

“Please go away,” she said, all too sure she was on the verge of tears and loath for him to see her weeping over him. “I'm so tired. I feel as if I've been crushed beneath a boulder. I just want to sleep.” She shifted on the bed to lie down, wincing at the stab of pain in her side.

Rising and reaching for her, he said,“Here, let me—”

“Don't. Just leave me alone—please. I just want to sleep.”

Caroline opened her eyes, wondering what had awakened her.

A sound, something like a gasp.

She lay still in the semidarkness, for it was dusk, and listened closely, but she didn't hear it again. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she turned over, facing the balcony. The double door was closed, but through its leaded glass panes she could see Rexton sitting on the chaise facing away from her.

At first, she thought he must be laughing, because his shoulders were shaking, but then he lowered his head and clawed his hands through his hair. His whole back shook, and it didn't stop. She heard the gasping sound again.

Incredulous, she sat up too quickly, inciting a fresh stab of pain. Pressing her hand to the wound, or what remained of it, she folded back the covers and carefully got out of bed. Her silken wrapper lay across the foot of the bed; she pulled that on over her shift.

The spasms that gripped Rexton did not appear to be letting up. Caroline watched him for a minute longer, and then she opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony.

When he heard the door open, Rexton sat up and combed his fingers through his hair, covertly wiping his cheeks as he did so. Clearing his throat, he said, still without looking around, “You shouldn't be up. Dr. Coates said you're to stay in bed.”

“I woke up and . . . saw you out here.”

The viscount seemed to ponder that for a few seconds, and then he hunched over and rested his elbows on his knees. A little sheepishly, he said,“I haven't wept since my . . . since I was six.”

“When your mother died,”Caroline said.

He gave her a quizzical look over his shoulder, as if wondering how she knew that. His eyes, red rimmed and puffy, lit with revelation. Turning back around, he said, in a jaundiced tone, “Cordelia.”

“Who?”

“Cordelia Beckinridge. Narcissa.”

“Yes, Narcissa. She waxed quite exhaustive on the life and times of Lord Rexton.”

“‘Exhaustive' sums her up fairly well, I think.” He sighed and shook his head. “Do go back to bed, Car—Miss Keating. You need your rest, and I'm not fit company. God, what you must think of me.”

Taking a seat on the chaise behind him—tentatively, because she wasn't at all sure this conversation was a good idea—she said, “There is no shame in giving vent to your feelings.”

“I didn't mean that,” he said.“I meant what must you think of me as a man, after this past week. My God, I nearly killed you.”

She reached out to touch his back, then withdrew her hand. “You didn't do this to me. Dunhurst did.”

“I all but handed you over to him. Look what I've reduced you to. You said yourself you've been crushed. That was my doing. You're right to loathe me. I just wish . . .”He rubbed his fists against his forehead. “I just wish I could love one bloody person in this world who didn't end up . . . Christ.”

Turning sideways on the chaise so that he could see her, he said in a low, raw voice, “I'll be leaving here tomorrow. I'll stop mucking up your life, but you need to know something. When I asked you to marry me, it wasn't about the ninety thousand guineas. I understand why you won't have me—why would you? But you deserve to know that you're . . . My God, you're not the kind of woman a man wants to marry because of money, or convenience, or any of that pointless . . .”His throat moved as he swallowed; he was trembling.

“You're the kind of woman a man loses his heart to even when it's the last thing in the world he wants, even when it terrifies him. You're the kind he wants to be a better man for, the kind he wants to keep close and protect and share his life with even when he thought he would never have any of that again, or even want it.”

“Or need it,” Caroline said softly. She could barely see him through the unshed tears in her eyes. “But you're human, David, just like the rest of us. We all need—”

“Say that again.”

Caroline knew what he meant. She said, “David.” Her throat tightened. Reaching up to stroke his face, she whispered,“ David . . . David . . .”

He closed his eyes and dropped his head, his forehead coming to rest against hers. A hot tear trickled down her cheek. She didn't know whether it was hers or his.

“I'm sorry, Caroline,” he said. “I'm so sorry for—”

“You don't need to—”

“I do. I need to say it. And you've bloody well earned the right to hear it.” Gripping her shoulders, he said, “There is no excuse for how I treated you, and don't say it's all right, because it isn't.”

“I forgive you.”

“I don't deserve your for—”

“Ask me again.”

He stared at her as if he couldn't believe his ears. “After I've treated you so monstrously?”

“You wore the mask of a monster, but now that you've taken it off, I find that I quite fancy the man who'd been hiding behind it.”

“Really?” he said. “You . . . you . . .”

“Ask me again, David.”

Taking her head in his big hands, he said, “Will you marry me, Caroline?”

She smiled. “Marry a man who's never even kissed me? I don't know if that's such a good—”

He closed his mouth over hers, and her heart stopped. The kiss was deep and long and achingly tender.

He held her tight, rubbing his scratchy face against hers, nuzzling her hair. “I can't wait until you're better so that I can make love to you—really make love, not . . . like before. I promise I'll never subject you to anything like that again.”

With a mischievous smile, she said, “I suppose I would understand if you felt compelled to break that promise from time to time when I've been very, very naughty . . . my lord.”

“Why, Miss Keating,” he chuckled, “what a scandalous suggestion.” Dipping his head for another kiss, he said, “I do believe this is going to be a very interesting marriage.”

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound.

Angelus Silesius

“Magic Hour”: A brief period around sunrise and sundown when the lighting conditions for cinematography change rapidly, from a warm orange glow to a clear blue that permits the shooting of night scenes before darkness falls.

One

Late Afternoon,
August of This Year

W
ELCOME BACK TO Château des Freaks.

I pulled my little rented blue Renault up to the gatehouse and lowered the side window as the guard strode across the drawbridge.

Château des Freaks: That's what I'd dubbed Grotte Cachée during the three-week Christmas vacation I spent there when I was sixteen so that Mom could go to Hawaii with Doug. It was my first and last visit; I'd refused all of Dad's invitations for a return engagement. As far as he knew, this was because I'd been weirded out by the château and its permanent guests. I'd been too embarrassed to tell him the real reason. In any event, he finally got the hint and stopped inviting me about ten years ago.

Until yesterday.

The guard, a hulking silverback male in a black polo shirt and black trousers, said,
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Êtes-vousperdu?”
It had been their standard greeting to unknown visitors for decades, possibly centuries.

I dug the little gold-edged card of entrée out of my jeans pocket, took it out of its little envelope, and handed it to him. “You don't recognize me, do you, Luc? Does this help?” I took off my straw hat and roughly finger-combed my fashionably choppy hair, which had remained the same cornsilk blond as when I was born.

“
Mon dieu!
Mademoiselle Archer! I am so sorry. It has been such a very long time.”

“Nineteen years,” I said, taking the card back. “My father asked me to come. He's home, I hope.”

“But of course,” he said as he opened the car door for me. “Would he invite you if he weren't going to be here?”

“I, um, I'm here earlier than he expected.”

“See if you can't clear your schedule around the beginning of September,”
Dad had said during yesterday's call. Was it my imagination, or had that aristocratic British drawl of his sounded especially languid?

I said,
“That's like three or four weeks from now. Dad, I've been so worried about you. It's been almost a year since you've come to New York, and you usually visit me every couple of months, at least.”

“We've got several sets of guests coming over the next few weeks. It really would be best if you waited until September.”

“Actually, this weekend is perfect for me. I've got a meeting in London Monday morning with some clients I'm designing a swimwear catalogue for. Today's Friday. I could fly to Aulnat Airport tomorrow and spend most of Saturday and Sunday with you, then fly to London Sunday night.”

“You wouldn't want to come when we have guests. My time will be divided. Wait until next month.”

Luc told me I'd probably find my father in the library, and that he'd have the car parked in the garage and my luggage brought inside.

The gum-chewing blonde standing in the hallway outside the open library door was wearing a long dress that looked vaguely Edwardian except for the plunging neckline, which displayed fake boobs of monumental proportions. Her face was thickly made up, her hair long and wavy and teased on top: Brigitte Bardot meets Edith Wharton.

I said, “Excuse me, but have you seen Emmett Ar—”

“Shh!” She held a finger to her frosted melon lips and whispered, in a Brooklyn accent, “They're shooting.”

I looked through the door into the library; my jaw dropped. Three people were going at it on a table in the middle of the huge, lofty room surrounded by banks of searing lights and two men hovering with digital movie cameras on their shoulders. One woman, a redhead, was tied spreadeagled to the table with a buzz-cutted hunk on top of her, thrusting away while he licked the pussy of a dark-haired woman kneeling in front of him. The latter was the only one who was clothed, or semi-clothed, being done up in a satin merry widow, stockings, stiletto heels, and long-sleeved gloves, all black. She was slapping Buzz-Cut on the ass with a riding crop and yelling, “Harder! Faster! Put your back into it.”

Lili?
I hadn't recognized her at first, with all that eyeliner and the crimson lips, but that velvety, exotically inflected voice was unmistakable.

“Are you the fluffer?”

I turned to find the semi-Edwardian blonde looking me up and down as she blew a fat pink bubble.

“Fluffer?”

She popped the bubble, stuck her tongue in her cheek, and pumped her fist toward her mouth in the Universal Blow-Job Symbol.“It's the girl that gets the guys primed for their scenes. I guess you're not her.”

“I'm just a guest here.”

The blonde stuck out her hand. “I'm Juicy Fisher.”

“Isabel Archer.” I shook her hand, trying to remember if I'd packed my Purell. She didn't ask me, as people sometimes did, whether I'd been named for the Henry James character. Had she done so, I would have been astounded.

“Cut!” bellowed a man from inside the library.“Emmeline! That was your cue! What the
fuck
!”

The blonde hissed, “Shit,” and stuck her wad of bubble gum on the doorjamb. “Sorry, Larry! My bad.”

“Take it from, ‘Fuck that bitch, ram her,'” he said.

A Goth chick with half a dozen facial piercings held a clapperboard up to one of the cameras and said, “Scene two, shot two, take seven.”

“Action,” Larry called.

“Fuck that bitch!” Lili said. “Ram her!”

Juicy opened a parasol and sauntered into the library.

A parasol, indoors?

“Archie!” she shrieked as a crew member held a microphone boom in her direction. “What are you doing?”

“Emmeline!” Buzz-Cut said. “I wasn't expecting you.”

“Obviously. You cad! You heartless deceiver!”

“It seems our Archie has been a very naughty boy.” Extending the riding crop toward Juicy, handle first, Lili said,“Naughty boys need to be taught a lesson.”

“Gladly.” Crossing to the table, Juicy snatched the crop from Lili's hand, hesitated, and said, “Sorry, Larry, but where do I stand again?”

“Cut!”

I stepped into the doorway to get a look at Larry, who was sitting on the edge of a writing table next to a laptop. He was thirty-something, with tortoiseshell glasses; he looked more like a schoolteacher than a porn director.

Sitting in a corner behind him on side-by-side armchairs were Elic and Inigo, chuckling as they engaged in a whispered conversation. Inigo, who wore a Betty Boop T-shirt, baggy striped shorts, orange Converse All Stars, and sunglasses, was unscrewing a bottle of tequila. Elic, in a faded black T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet, still had that golden god thing going. Like Lili, they looked like they hadn't aged a day over the past nineteen years. Must be something in the water at Grotte Cachée.

A movement from above caught my eye. I looked up to see my dad leaning over the railing of the gallery, gesturing me to join him.

I climbed the stairs in the southeast tower, pondering the strangeness of my cultivated and oh-so-proper father sitting and watching a skin flick being filmed. Stranger still, it wouldn't be happening had he not arranged it. As
administrateur
to Adrien Morel, Seigneur des Ombres, the thirty-six-year-old lord of Grotte Cachée, everything that took place at the château was ultimately Dad's doing. He had acquaintances all over the world, and during his frequent travels, he issued invitations to people who were, as he put it, “promising.”He'd never explained to me what he meant by that, but I knew it had something to do with Elic, Lili, Inigo—and, oh yes, the reclusive Darius, whom I'd met only briefly during that three-week visit.

My father referred to them as “the Follets,”which I took to be their last name. I assumed they were related somehow to Adrien, although Elic and Lili must have been distant relations—of each other, I mean, given how lovey-dovey they were. I thought of them as “Freak Family Robinson,” marooned as they were in their isolated little valley,where they invented and played by their own rules—emphasis on “play.” They'd struck me as eccentric, mysterious, and spoiled—because whatever they wanted was provided with virtually no effort on their part.

They didn't have jobs, didn't seem much interested in anything but amusing themselves. Whenever I asked Dad what their deal was, he told me he'd answer all my questions when I agreed to succeed him as
administrateur
—which would make me the ninth generation of Archers to do so, the first having been Lord Henry Archer, second son of the Marquess of Heddonshaw, who'd served in that capacity from 1742 until his death in 1801. My response was always some variation on, “Yeah, I'll move to a remote French château to babysit a bunch of rich, coddled wackos . . . when hell freezes over.”

Dad had warned me that Christmas not to spend too much time around the Freaks, and never to go to the bathhouse or cave. Two-thirds of the way through that visit, I overheard him telling Inigo, “In a week, she'll be gone, we'll have amusing new visitors, and you may ‘exercise your heroic dimensions,' as you put it, to your heart's content. In the meantime, I would very much appreciate it if you would cease this bloody whining about how bloody horny you are, especially around Isabel. Do you think you can manage that?”What had made this little speech memorable, aside from his use of the words “bloody” and “horny,” was his testiness. With the Freaks, as with Adrien, he was never less than deferential. Indeed, so surprised was Inigo by his tone, that he burst out laughing and said, “Way to go, Arch!”

I located the door on the second-floor landing that opened onto the gallery. To my left as I looked down its length were rows and rows of bookshelves perpendicular to the castle's front wall, interrupted at intervals by windows aglow with buttery afternoon sunlight. Between the stacks and the railing to the right was a long, narrow, loftlike space with armchairs scattered here and there on Persian rugs. In one of those chairs sat my father.

Dad's smile of greeting had a baleful “what-are-you-doing-here” quality, and there were faint pink streaks on his cheekbones; clearly, he was abashed at what I'd witnessed downstairs. He grabbed the railing and stood as I approached. His once-dark hair had grayed considerably since I'd seen him last, and his ubiquitous Savile Row suit didn't seem as flawlessly tailored as usual. He was only sixty-three, but he looked a good decade older than that.

“Hey,Dad, seen any good pornos lately?” I kissed my father on each cheek, which was as physical as we ever got; he wasn't much of a hugger.

“What have you done to your hair?” he asked.

“It was two hundred dollars, so don't even start.”

“It's so good to see you,” he said earnestly, “but I do wish you'd waited.”

“Hello, Isabel.” The voice was deep, soft, and Gallic-flavored.

My heart felt as if it had been squeezed and released, very quickly. I turned and saw Adrien Morel, the reason for my nineteen-year absence from Grotte Cachée.