Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

Dear Father Porter,’” Angelika read aloud as she lay on her stomach naked.

Will was kissing down her spine. “Such erotic words.”

“We have been in bed all night, and a full day.”

“We have.”

“Well, I would have thought your inspiration would run dry hours ago.” The light was turning evening blue. “I need to get Adam’s dinner ready soon.” Her own stomach growled.

“Just read the letter before we return to real life.”

She began again. “‘I am writing to introduce myself. I am Father Arlo Northcott, and I am delighted to be selected as your replacement after your distinguished forty-two-year tenure as priest of the parish of Salisbury. Whilst I do not consider myself worthy of the appointment, given your reputation and service, I hereby conduct to do my very best—’”

“Apparently, my ink was not in short supply,” Will interrupted. He was kissing the small of her back. “You can skip the dull parts.”

Over her shoulder, she said with humor, “So can you.”

“I haven’t found any yet,” he said, and continued to prove he meant it. She didn’t know that her hips held such sensitivity, or that he liked them so much.

“It’s a well-written letter,” she defended, back to the task at hand. “And if it was indeed you who wrote it, I say well done. But I will skip over these sentences where you kiss Father Porter’s derriere.” As soon as she said it out loud, she realized what she’d invited. “Oh, no,” she giggled as the first kiss was pressed slowly onto her buttock.

He invited, “Please, keep reading.”

She tried to focus. “Here’s where it gets to a proper introduction. ‘Whilst I am only thirty-three, I believe I am fulfilling a calling to God that I first felt when I was six years old. I was fortunate that my dear parents saw my propensity for religious study alongside academics.’”

She had to stop to take some breaths.

The whisker-scratch kisses on her backside were unsettling, and delightful, and he knew it. “I knew you were a fine young lady who occasionally needs a little kiss on the backside to feel properly appreciated.” He moved lower.

“No, no, I’m ticklish there,” she begged, but his hands held her tight as he slid his mouth down the back of her thigh. “Oh, oh, stop!” Struggling was futile. He was very strong, but he always held her in careful ways.

He reached up to her buttock, squeezed it, then smacked it. “Keep. Reading.”

That felt rather nice, especially coupled with an order.

“I think I’ve forgotten how to read.” There was something in this letter that he obviously wanted her to get to. She fixed her eyes on the letter and concentrated on the handwriting. “It’s technically very good penmanship, but it has a nice quick feel to it. The little flicks of the letters as the sentences run on . . .”

Now she’d done it. Will’s tongue made its own little flicks on the inside of her ankle as he held her feet in a tight grip.

“It says here that you, or Arlo, lived in a seminary from the age of eight until the date of this letter. That’s a very secluded life.” She mustered some courage. “Do you remember anything from your past yet?”

“I remember things from last night,” he said with seductive intent, moving off the bed. When she looked over her shoulder, he was kneeling at the foot of it. Her stomach flipped in anticipation.

“So I’m not really defiling a priest if you can’t remember, am I?” It was a thought she’d swatted away throughout their varied, and filthy, couplings.

“I thought you wanted to know everything about me, but you keep dallying when the letter holds so much.”

“But we still don’t have absolute proof that you are Arlo Northcott.”

“It is a high probability; Father Porter recognized me, plus the ring I wore. I think you will agree with me if you just keep reading.”

She maintained her dignity as he took her ankles in each hand and began dragging her. As she slithered facedown across the sheets, she craned her neck to keep summarizing.

“You have a special interest in providing quality confessional services, and spent months attending wards for recovering scarlet fever patients. That’s nice of you.”

“I’m a very nice person,” he said when her knees reached the end of the bed. “I really do hope you believe that I am.” He rolled her onto her back, and now she was expected to do the impossible: keep reading. The words shimmered on the page.

“You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met,” she said with honesty. To feel him smile between her legs? She would never recover from this moment. “There’s a big paragraph here about your views on the future of the Church of England, which I’m going to skip—”

She got distracted for a long moment, luxuriating and stretching, flinging her arm out straight with a paper-crumple sound. “I don’t want to read this letter anymore. I have a new resolve to live in the moment more fully.”

“Fine. But the last paragraph is really the only one you should read. Keep your temper,” he warned, and she glared up at the ceiling. How on earth could he have known that frustration dipped her in ice water? “Be good and I will reward you.”

“You’ll have to do this every time you want me to do something,” she said, relaxing her body, and he spread her thighs wide with his palms. “The final paragraph—let’s see what’s so important.”

As her exhausted body received pleasure, she read:

“‘In summary, I am delighted to make your acquaintance, and to learn how I may serve the parish of Salisbury in what I understand are socially and economically trying times. And on a personal note, I was also pleased to be informed that the rectory boasts a garden famous across the counties. My passion is—’”

(He showed her.)

“‘My passion is—’”

“Read,” he growled, and she felt the vibration.

She whimpered out the last sentences. “‘My passion is all forms of botany, and gardening was the labor I gladly undertook at the seminary. I cannot think of an earthly pleasure more exquisite than putting my face to the petals of a rose.’”

“Indeed.”

“How sweet and innocent you were,” she said to the ceiling. “What have I done to you?”

“Concentrate on what I’m doing to you.”

She obeyed, and this time when she unfurled in rapture, she said his name with more conviction: “Arlo.”

* * *

Memories of his old life were returning to Arlo Northcott, in snips and pictures and smells, but it seemed a shame to worry Angelika about it. She was happy tonight, and for the first time since he’d known her, she had no apprehension in her expression.

She looked at him like she was rapturously in love, but then again, she always had.

Arlo’s cobbled-together body never felt hungry, but he made sure to eat enough dinner to not arouse concern. Angelika noticed his every mouthful—again, she always had. And while Victor told a lively story about a goose hiding in a hedgerow that had caused Athena to shy and himself to fall, Arlo allowed himself the luxury of staring back at Angelika, noticing how the firelight cupped her cheekbone like a warm kid glove.

(Arlo’s father—whose name eluded him still—had owned a pair of kid gloves, and the fingertips were oily-looking and worn smoother than baby’s skin. When they were left on the table by the door, they remained curled in disgusting phantom fists.)

There were surely only a few days left before Arlo’s fingertips dipped into unfeeling, oily shadow.

“Jelly,” Lizzie said around a mouthful of bread, “after you were accosted in the orchard, where did you disappear to, for an entire night and day?” The naughty girl knew exactly where, and her dark eyes were sparkling.

“I was busy,” Angelika drawled, then bit her lip to hold in whatever she was thinking now. It was for the best.

“I don’t want to know,” Victor advised from his seat at the head of the table. “Anyhow, it’s a pity Chris insisted on the night watch removing the corpses. I would have reanimated them all, just to kill them again myself.”

“Your huge representative handled it,” Angelika replied. The memory made her reach for her glass and take a gulp. They were both their usual sardonic selves, but Arlo had seen the siblings embrace in the hall.

Victor was monitoring Lizzie’s plate. He was similar to his sister; they both loved so ravenously. “Eat up, Lizzie. The chicken is succulent. Sorry, Will,” Victor amended to Arlo. “I hope your vegetables are just as good.”

“They’re fine, thank you,” Arlo replied. He could pick the exact moment Victor made a mental note to question his diet during his next examination. It would make a change from the same questions over and over: Are you still fatigued? Are you healing? Is your pain any less? Can I trouble you for a sample of your seed?

Yes, no, no—and absolutely not.

“Well, I want to know what’s been going on. Tell me later,” Lizzie told Angelika on a whisper, and the table fell silent.

Arlo scraped his knife and fork on his plate to keep up appearances. When the big green eyes opposite turned back to him, he forked up a hearty mouthful and chewed. Satisfied, Angelika wrinkled her nose at him fondly. Arlo imagined her questions later: Was your dinner nice? Are your hands all right? Are you feeling so much better?

He answered now, in his mind. I will lie to your beautiful face and tell you what you want to hear, because I would die to make you happy.

Perhaps I should rephrase that thought.

He didn’t think himself so clever that he could guess her every question, because in bed she’d asked him things that had left him floundering for a reply.

(When you do that, can you put your fingers in me . . . here? If I touch you there, would that be all right? What about if I suck you while you lick—)

“They’ve both gone glassy-eyed again,” Lizzie complained. “It’s like sitting with a pair of corpses. No offense, Will.”

Arlo laughed. “None taken. Eat a little more,” he encouraged Angelika, and felt a new glow in his chest as she took a bite. Who looked after her, really? With Mary gone, it was up to him now. “Are you cold?”

Angelika shook her head, and pointed her fork at Lizzie, then her brother. “Now you can see what you pair have been like to live with.” (They were suitably contrite.) “I am perfectly entitled to sit here in an exhausted puddle and replenish my strength. I’m surprised that Ar—my love doesn’t need a second plate.”

Nobody noticed the slipup with his name. She’d made Arlo swear to keep his news to himself, but it felt like a pressure in his chest. How could he transition from I’m your blank-page houseguest to I’m a missing, presumed-dead priest? Would he even live long enough to deal with the consequences of it? Some days he felt like he’d live to see his sixtieth birthday. Other days, next Sunday seemed optimistic.

He knew one thing: he was an asset that the church would seek to recover.

“Will, you know what I told you that very first day,” Victor said in a warning tone, and Arlo’s stomach made a nervous flip. Then he grinned. “If you deflowered my sister, you would be stuck with her.”

“Oh, he’s stuck with me all right.” Angelika rolled her gaze over to Arlo, and with her second blink, her eyes were full of remembering. She’d done just as much deflowering as he had.

She occupied her exhausted puddle in the most delightful way, with her blouse slipping off her satin shoulder. He fancied he could see the lines his fingers had made when he ran them through her hair; and right there, at the nape of her neck, he’d wrapped it around his fist like a honey-red rope. It made her gasp and shiver. What audacity to put a wealthy girl on her knees.

“Corpses again,” Lizzie said in a dark tone.

Angelika looked around, preparing to make an effort, then jolted with surprise as she remembered something. “Where is Clara?”

“She is very tired, and perhaps a bit unwell,” Lizzie replied. “She is eating in her cottage. Don’t worry, the cook mashed up something for our little friend. He’s a big eater, apparently.”

“Smashing lad,” Victor chipped in quickly. Lizzie passed a hand down her stomach and smiled.

“He’ll be asleep by now,” Angelika replied on a sigh. Her appetite was abandoned and she put her napkin on her plate. She was fighting her way out of their bedroom fog. “What a fine host I’ve been. And Christopher? When did he leave?”

The man’s name had always given Arlo’s stomach a pinch, because Angelika’s voice had a throaty catch whenever she said it.

Never mind his own fate amongst the earthworms; if those two had met a month earlier at some country dance, she would now be Mrs. Angelika Keatings, and she would be dining in a post-sex stupor beside Christopher’s fireplace, with a swelling belly.

“I really should have said goodbye to him,” Angelika added, staring into the fire. “Was he very angry with me?”

“His heart and pride are very injured,” Lizzie said. “But all is not lost.”

Arlo handled his base emotions with care, like a man removing a snake from a box; otherwise, he could find himself poisoned and exhausted. But tonight he wasn’t deft enough. The fangs sank deep, and jealousy spread outward from his heart. Next came the doomed grief that he felt whenever he saw Angelika with the baby. But this time, the bad emotions were smothered by a new sensation. It took him a moment to identify it.

Smug, male, fist-tight possession. It might be time to take her back to bed.

“Don’t ask about Christopher anymore,” Arlo told Angelika with the new feeling in his tone. “It is not your concern when he comes and goes.”

“He finally said it,” Lizzie said with admiration and a laugh. “Jelly, I do believe Will has claimed you once and for all.” She turned her dancing eyes back to Arlo. “Correct?”

“He has,” Victor confirmed in the short silence that followed. “Remember? Stuck with her for good.” The man was prompting him again for a reply, and Angelika was running back through the last minute or two in her mind, searching for a confirmation he had not made.

His new memories were of himself as a young boy; would tomorrow bring him his teens and his early seminary life? By next week would he be repeating Scripture under his breath to delay himself as Angelika begged his body for faster, harder friction?

“We should talk,” Arlo said to the table at large, and received a kick on his shin under the table.

“We shan’t talk,” Angelika said, huffing herself up straighter in her seat. “Until you tell us all that you are going to love me until the day I die.”

Arlo pondered, “Why must everything be until death in this household?”

“Because that is how we Frankensteins love,” Angelika told him. “We love until death parts us, and then we die of sadness.”

“Terribly dramatic,” Lizzie said with a smile, but Arlo did not miss the chill of fear in her eyes as she looked at him. Victor, too, averted his gaze with tight lips. Only Angelika sat oblivious to the truth that was sitting across from her now: Arlo was a man running out of time. Fast.

“You’re about to find out if you can survive a second death, Will,” Victor said after an awkward cough, observing the fraught tension between the two new lovers. “Answer us now, or I will invite Christopher for dinner tomorrow. He’s starting to look at Clara’s rear end whenever she bends down for Edwin, but we can nip that in the bud.”

Angelika’s knuckles went white on the tablecloth, but she did not blink. “You are stuck with me.”

Arlo did not know the future, or most of his past, but there was only one honorable thing he should say in this exact moment. “Angelika, please marry me.”

She did not scream joyfully. With a solemn mouth she replied, “Why?”

“Why?” Arlo echoed in confusion. “Why ask you the one thing you’ve wished to hear from the moment we met?”

She said too quietly, “You’ve just been prodded by everyone to ask me.”

Infuriating. “You wish me to beg on my knees?”

“I know you are asking me because you are obligated to. You can’t see a way out of it.” She picked up her wine and swallowed the rest in a gulp. “No, I want something heartfelt. Not just something my brother forced you to say at the table, over our empty plates.” Her eyes glowed with temper as she gestured in front of her. “Don’t I deserve a little more than bones and scraps?”

Lizzie backed her friend. “It was rather lackluster, Will.” Her favor had always been with the commander. “Vic proposed to me on a cliff at sunset.”

“A romantic story to tell our children,” Angelika said with new resolution. “That’s what I want.”

“You want a lot of things,” Arlo countered. “And what you always forget is that I have nothing to give you. May I speak plainly? There may be no children. We all know it.”

He hurt his own feelings with this statement, because witnessing Angelika hold a baby made his bones ache with want. But still, he forced himself to add another horror: “And we wouldn’t even know who that baby looked like.”

“We’ll see, won’t we,” she replied, her complexion white. She stood abruptly, her expression tight and her eyes averted. “My courses are due in sixteen days. You may count each day as a prison sentence, if that is how you feel.”

She left the room, and Arlo remained motionless under the twin stares of Victor and Lizzie.

“My friend,” Victor said with equal parts kindness and warning. “Now is the time to choose.”

“I don’t believe I can.”

Like it explained everything, Victor told him, “You are alive.”

Arlo replied, “For how long?”

“I don’t know if tomorrow another goose will jump out from a bush and I’ll fall from my horse, and that will be the end of Victor Frankenstein. Don’t you understand this? No one knows. You have already lived through death, and you are living a bonus life. It can be anything you want. And dear God, please decide it is a life with Angelika, or she will never recover.”

Victor’s entreaty to God went unnoticed by all except Arlo.

“Would it be cruel to marry her, only for me to die, weeks or months later? It will destroy her.” Arlo asked the next question he feared. “Will she die of grief, just as your father did?”

“It would be cruel to not let her have you for the hours, days, months, and years you may have remaining,” Lizzie said. “Whatever happens, we will take care of her. But for this moment, that is up to you. She needs you. Find that romantic story inside yourself. Never have I heard of one so extraordinary.”

Arlo rose from his chair and threw his napkin aside. He didn’t utter any polite good-evenings, but instead pushed through several mahogany doors until he was at the stairs. It made him think back to that first night, when Angelika had half carried him into her bedroom. In every step he took, there was a blade-on-bone kind of pain, and a thousand little deaths. The automatic thought came to him now: I think I’m dying.

Stubbornly, he rebutted it. I think I’m living.

The portrait of Caroline Frankenstein glowered contemptuously down at him as he climbed. Her look was, You believe yourself worthy of my daughter?

“I am not, fair lady,” Arlo replied out loud, “but I am who she wants, and I allow myself to be chosen.” It was a waste to spend another moment without Angelika. “I wish to marry her. I need to marry her. And I don’t want to die.”

Admitting this, no matter how undeserved, gave him the boost he needed to take the stairs two at a time. Light-headed, breathless, cold, and in agony, he was about ready to push through her bedroom door when Sarah appeared behind him bearing two heavy buckets.

“I’ll take them,” Arlo said. “Thank you, Sarah.” The girl blushed red, of course, but she was happy enough to put the handles in his palms. His hands were fading by the moment—how many more pails of water? How many more strokes of his love’s skin? Forget all that, he told himself firmly, and pushed open her door.

“I’m here,” he said.

Angelika was sitting in the half-filled tub, her arms around her knees. “What do you want, Arlo?”

He poured the first pail of water in at her feet. “I beg you. Please marry me.”

A sigh was the only reply.

The second pail went in, and he was also pouring his heart into the crystal-clear warm water. She did not lift her head to see him unbuttoning his shirt. Perhaps she heard the fabric moving, but his bride was stubborn, and that porcelain cheek remained on her forearm.

She definitely felt the shift in water as he put one foot into the tub, then the other, then he sank in behind her. The flawless expanse of her back, and the curves of her neck and waist, had his cock as hard as iron. He put an arm around her collarbone and eased her back from her braced position.

He used his hands to stroke her, wash her, pleasure her . . . but she did not reply.

“I’m not afraid anymore,” he explained. “I will be married to you, and I will be your husband, until I die. It is the only thing I want from this new life.”

Her breath shuddered out, and her spine softened, and she grew heavier in his arms. He watched his hands touching her: wrists, the bends of her elbows, the heavy palmfuls of breast, and the flat stomach that he would try to stretch full, in time, if miracles did exist. He ignored the knowledge that his fingertips were fading like the stars at dawn; right now, in this exact moment in time, he could still feel the wrinkles at her nipples and the hollows of her collarbones.

“This is only what your body wants,” she countered in a whisper.

She was sad, even as she pressed her bottom against him. He knew the signs that she was becoming restless with need; her chest was blushed pink, her thighs were squeezing and relaxing, and she dropped her head back on his shoulder to give him access to her throat.

“I am my body, and my soul,” Arlo countered as he kissed. “All of me wants to be your husband. Please allow me this honor.”

“I want to be married in a cathedral,” she said, and his heart soared with hope. She hid how serious she was with a flippant “But I suppose you would not want that.”

“That is what I want.” Scandal, gossip, his background exposed, jokes at her expense . . . nothing could touch them. “I will be there with you, and that is what you shall have.”

She pulled away, and his hopes began to falter . . . until she got to her knees, turned, and straddled his lap. The bathwater was now an ocean. Between their bodies, his arousal was hard, and her tight fist squeezed out his breath.

“I want a honeymoon that lasts a year,” Angelika told him as she lifted her body, aligned him, and began to sink.

“Fine,” Arlo choked out.

“I want to see the world. I will be extravagant in every regard, and I am a ridiculous traveler.”

“I already know that.”

She leaned herself back, to find the angle she liked best. “But I do not suppose you would enjoy that type of life, being taken everywhere with me, put into my bed, and bought anything I think you will enjoy. Ships, horses, carriages. Spices, tapestries, wine.” She was losing her breath. “Then, we shall return to Larkspur Lodge, where I will have our first baby.”

“That is all I want.”

He was having trouble thinking, but she deserved so much more. He angled his pelvis, and focused. “I was too much of a coward to say everything I want, because I feel like I could lose everything again. But it is no use; I simply must have you. All I have to give you is this, my body”—his breath stuttered in his chest as the water crested—“but even as I become completely myself again, I will still love you as I do now. Fiercely, violently, in ways that scare me. I vow to you that I will not change.”

He felt his composure begin to break down. How had he been so slow to reach this surrender? “I will kill for you. I will live for you. I will allow myself to be spoiled by you. From this moment on, you are my wife.”

“Father Northcott, performing his own wedding vows?” Angelika replied with a pinch of sarcasm and sweat on her brow.

She still did not believe him.

He did not know where the strength came from, and there was no longer any pain. He stood up slowly, feeling her gasp, and her body clutched him tight everywhere. With strange ease, he stepped out of the tub, and now there was the sound of rainfall and a cold chill. They did not notice. The windowsill was a promising height, and he didn’t lose his deep seat inside her as he put her down and crowded into her open thighs. His world was narrow and tight, dripping wet, and he felt himself changing.

Beyond this leadlight window was the forest where he’d found her on her back, sleeping as if enchanted, having cheated death by inches, and he was becoming that wild creature that had fallen to his knees, terror in his heart.

“I’m going to keep doing this until you say yes,” he said, moving his hips, and she uttered a rich, desperate moan. “I will spoil you in ways you cannot imagine.”

Her eyes rolled closed, but he did not feel that vise-tight sensation that usually gave away her overloaded passion. He put his hands under her knees, and continued pushing and pulling her. “I want to have you like this every day, showing you how I love you, how I am desperate for you. Every blink of your eyes, and every tart reply, makes me store this up for later, when I take you to our bedroom. Do you want that life?”

Her hands were slipping on his wet shoulders. “Yes. I want that. Harder.”

He put his hand to where they were joined, and added a new tension to her next moan. When they made eye contact again, everything turned desperate.

Words were not possible any longer, and now he used his body and his lips to explain to her what she meant to him; that she was exceptional in every way, the most gloriously gorgeous, rightfully vain, brilliant person he would ever meet. Memories of her began to splinter in his mind as he thrust again and again, and she began to break down in ecstasy.

Trousers tight on her thighs, a sea sponge in her hand, the fall of her loose hair on her shoulder, biting into an unusual apple, the spark of light in her green eyes, and how she always looked at him: like she loved him beyond any sense, sidestepping the natural order of the universe with a grin and a quip . . .

Now she was traveling into that private landscape of ecstasy, her limbs jerking, her pulsing and pulling causing him to follow. He clutched her to his heart, and he felt like a wild animal. “I love you.” It was the truest thing he’d ever said, even if it was growled. “Marry me, for God’s sake, give yourself to me.”

He lifted his head as his body took care of his orgasm, tripping him back into jerks of sheer pleasure, over and over. He looked into her eyes, and she smiled.

“Yes. I consent to marry you, Arlo Northcott. But I have a complaint. This is not a story we can tell our children.”

She put her hand to his cheek and kissed him.

He’d never felt relief quite like this.