Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

E ster ran through dark hallways as fast as she dared. Her pursuer was never more than just out of reach. She could hear his mocking chuckle, his lusty harsh breath, and heavy footsteps. She could not run as fast as possible because the candle in her hand flickered so, threatening at any moment to plunge her into complete blackness. The hallways were unfamiliar. It was her old home, Loughton Grange, and yet it was not. She could hear the sound of music and laughter from somewhere close by. The ball at which she had danced and laughed. At which she and Helen had whispered to each other of the handsome officers they saw and who saw them. Whispered of which they should like to dance with. Which they would like to be kissed by. But those innocent, girlish giggles were gone. Now there were only unfamiliar passages, foreboding shadows, and the hunter that stalked her.

Turning a corner, she found herself at the edge of a precipice. Beyond was a pool, lit only by moonlight from above. A forest loomed yonder, alive with menace, and beyond that, the saw-toothed outline of a ruined castle. Loughton Grange had just halted, its walls disappearing as though cut off by the blow of a giant ax.

"Now the chase is over," came the voice of her hunter.

Ester turned. His face was hidden by shadow and he loomed over her like an ogre. He wore what had once been the uniform of an officer, red, white, and yellow. Just like the handsome young men that Ester and Helen had danced with. That seemed eons ago now. The uniform seemed ragged on him, stained and ill-fitting. It was a corruption. Ester backed away as the brute reached for her. Moonlight spilled onto his face. The once handsome visage of the Viscount Kingsley. But, his forehead was too prominent, casting his eyes into the darkness of caverns. His mouth was too full, lips too wet. Naked lust painted his features. Ester stepped back and her right foot hung in space. He lunged and she fell, tumbling through the air to hit the water. Icy cold enveloped her. Water flooded into her lungs. She was looking up at the moonlight playing down through the water above her.

A man entered the water, diving into it like a spear, cutting through the water towards her. Her sight was dimming and there was a pain in her chest. But then his arms were around her, pulling her close to him. He wore gloves but nothing else. She too was suddenly naked. But the water was no longer cold. His body warmed it and she felt nothing but the heat that came from him. The feel of the slippery, soft leather against her bare skin made her heart race and her knees tremble. His face was next to hers. Blue eyes, bright as sea ice, stared into hers. He pressed his lips to hers and opened his mouth. Air flooded into her, a sweetness in her chest that was sublime. Her legs lifted and wrapped themselves around his hips. Strong hands, capable of cruelty but touching her with nothing but the greatest gentleness, cupped her derrière, supporting her in the water. Her breath entered him, and his entered her. The feeling was the most intoxicating intimacy.

It was no longer moonlight that filtered down into the water but blazing sun. Her hands tangled in long, black hair, pulling it away from his face, entwining her fingers in its soft locks. She pulled away from his life-giving mouth to bite at his neck, feeling his fingers tighten against her soft hips as she did. She smiled, kissing, and biting lower. They were floating unaided in the water, turning slowly in invisible currents. The world above was forgotten. This was a world all of their own into which none could intrude. She could feel his manhood against her. She had never seen nor touched a man but was educated enough about anatomy to know how a male body was built. And how it functioned. The feeling of that hard pressure was exciting and terrifying in equal measures, particularly as it pressed insistently against her vulnerable maidenhead. She wanted to open herself to him. To join with him. To become his, his plaything, the vessel for his seed.

An agonizing pressure suddenly gripped her hair. Something was hauling her upwards towards the surface, tearing her from her lover's embrace. The water darkened as she rose, kicking and screaming bubbles that rose with her. The water released her and she found herself staring into the face of the Viscount Kingsley as he bent his head to hers and kissed her.

Ester awoke with a shriek that ripped from the core of her being. She thrashed against the steel embrace of the man who had torn her from the water.

"Mistress! Please! You are safe and sound!" came a female voice.

Ester realized she was wrestling with a young woman in the uniform of a maid. She looked to be barely out of her teens, with round, rosy cheeks, and fair hair. Ester was dressed in a nightdress that barely reached her shins and was surrounded by bedclothes that she was kicking and thrashing against. The bed was large and a fire burned in a stone fireplace opposite. It cast flickering shadows about the unfamiliar room. Any one of those shadows might contain the monster that had hunted her through her nightmare. The monster who had followed her there from the real world.

Her screams became sobs and she went limp. The maid who had been trying to restrain her now held her close, rocking her as she wept. The girl stroked her hair and made soothing sounds.

"Please, where am I?" Ester mumbled brokenly, trying to shake herself free of the dream.

It had been so wonderful in parts. Hadn't it? There had been a man. A god. He had dived into the water to save her. Had made love with her. Already it was fading, his face, his touch. But the dark remnant of the dream remained. The remnant based in reality. Kingsley was real. Her savior was not. Could not be. Men did not come in such forms. Were not so noble.

"This is Theydon Mount, Miss. The house of the Duke of Windermere. Well, his London home anyway. I am Molly. Molly Peters. I'm a maid here. Well, the only maid here actually, if you can credit that."

The girl spoke in a rush, blushing furiously. Ester smiled, struggling to sit up in the bed. She patted Molly on the hand reassuringly.

"How did I come to be here, Molly?" she asked.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth though, the memory came flooding back. The blackmail . The brute who had been dispatched by Viscount Kingsley to collect her money. The dowry money she had stolen from her father's safe in order to buy Kingsley's silence. Her despair at what she had done, what she had tried to do. Ester fell silent.

"You were brought here by the Duke, Miss. I think maybe you'd fallen into the mere, Theydon's Mere. And His Grace rescued you. I was summoned to bring you some dry clothes and sit with you until you woke up. His Grace wished to be told the instant you were awake."

Ester remembered unbearable despair. Remembered running along the jetty. Running into the infinite darkness. Then being enveloped in shocking cold. That cold had seemed to pervade her entire body, forcing her mouth open into a silent scream, scraping the breath from her lungs and flooding in to replace it. How had she been drawn back from that stygian gloom?

"One of the Duke's men rescued me?" Ester asked.

"The Duke himself, Miss," Molly replied, "he was fair soaked when he brought you in here. Both of you were. The carpet's still wet. I really should tell him that you're awake. If you don't need anything else just now?"

Ester sank back into the pillows that had been plumped up at her back. They were soft and warm. Her hair was almost dry, as was her body. The nightclothes were not hers and were dry and clean. She supposed that was Molly's work. She knew nothing about the Duke, but if he had saved her, then he was owed her thanks.

"No, I don't think so, Molly. Thank you for everything. I presume I am borrowing your wardrobe, you said you were the only maid."

"The only maid and the only other woman in the house, except of course old Mrs. Grypes, the cook and housekeeper. It's a funny old household and no mistake."

Molly put a hand to her mouth at that point. Ester couldn't help but smile.

"I am sorry, Miss. For speaking out of turn, like. I do go on if allowed. I will go and tell the Duke at once." Molly blushed and curtsied her way out of the room.

Ester lay back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then it occurred to her that a strange man was going to be walking into the room at any moment. And she lay half undressed in bed. It shocked her into action, flinging back the bedclothes and hunting around the room for her clothes.

But they were nowhere to be seen.

Everything had been taken, even her stockings and petticoats. A long dressing gown was spread over the foot of the bed which would cover her to her bare feet and disguise the shape of her body. She shrugged it about herself, realizing that it was a man's garment as she did.

It didn't matter.

She could not allow herself to be seen anywhere near a state of undress by a man. It was too close to what had almost happened with Kingsley.

Ester sat on the bed, then changed her mind and sat in an armchair by the fire, taking a woolen blanket from a chest at the end of the bed and draping it over her legs.

Satisfied that she was suitably covered, she waited pensively for the Duke to arrive. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece and chimed nine when there was a knock at the door.

Ester jumped, and then managed a shaky, "Please come in."

The door opened and Molly came in first, looking down and stepping aside for a tall, broad-shouldered man. Ester found herself gaping, then forced her mouth shut with a snap.

It was the face from her dream.

Black hair tumbled in an unruly mane to his shoulders. Blue eyes stared piercingly at her. A cruel mouth was set and unmovable. Strong jaw and high, slanted cheeks. He was the most exotically handsome man she had ever seen. The images from her dream cascaded through her mind like a waterfall. His lips on hers, sharing the breath of life with her. His body against hers. Inside hers. She was blushing and hoped he assumed the rosy glow came from the fire.

Ester clutched her dressing gown and blanket close to her like a shield.

"I am Julian Barrington, 14th Duke of Windermere. I'm afraid Molly didn't tell me your name," the Duke said, frowning fiercely at Molly as though it was her failing.

Ester found herself rallying to the defense of the timid maid.

"That is because I did not give it. Do not blame Molly," she hastily put in, in a voice that only shook a little.

"I did not intend to," the Duke declared, formally.

"Forgive me, you seemed… angry," Ester continued.

When those icy blue eyes were fixed on hers, all reason went out of her head. She wondered where she had conjured the image of him from. What magic was at work here that she should dream of him so completely. Had she really taken in so much of his face when he had pulled her from the water?

"I was not," he said, stiffly. "May I know your name?"

Ester blushed again, realizing how rude she must seem. But as she was about to give her name, she stopped. Her reason for being abroad in the dead of night was to spare her family from scandal. What use if she then used her real name?

"Emily Granger," she lied.

"Do I detect the accent of the north?" the Duke asked with a flicker of interest on his face.

"You are familiar with the north?" Ester asked.

"I was born in the Lake District and spent much of my youth in Cumbria," the Duke replied.

Ester found herself smiling. "I, too, have visited the Lakes many times. I am from…"

She was about to name her father's estate near Chester but stopped herself again. The reason the family had moved from one end of England to the other was to escape the scandal. Telling the Duke that she was from Chester would risk exposing the secret they were trying to keep just as surely as giving her true name. Perhaps word had gotten out of a scandal in Chester involving a prominent family, even if the name was not known?

"…York," Ester finished.

She had been to York once, visiting a friend of her mothers who had married an earl with estates near that city.

"A fine place. I lived there for a time before my father died."

Ester's heart sank and she hoped he would not wish to discuss the place in any detail. It was then that she noticed an odd detail. The Duke was wearing black leather gloves. The dream came back to her again. Specifically, the feel of those gloves against her skin beneath the water.

She felt her heart hammer against her chest, and her breathing quickened. The memory conjured images of the Duke naked, his body close to hers.

His eyes followed hers to his gloved hands. Slowly, he placed them behind his back and out of her sight. That made Ester blush even more. He paced the room, keeping his hands hidden from her sight.

"I believe I have you to thank for saving me," Ester said.

"I dragged you out of the water, yes."

"I do thank you most sincerely, and I am sure my father will too. He and my mother will be worried sick, I really mustn't intrude on your hospitality any longer," she finished in a rush.

"Nonsense, Miss Granger," he said, somberly, "there is nowhere that you can go. I cannot allow you to leave."