ONE

A nightmare, Patricia thought. The trip from New York to London had been a nightmare of lightning streaks threatening the plane and vast buffetings and bellowings of thunder and airsickness. But the trip had been heaven compared to the real nightmare she was enduring now. The trip had seemed worth the trouble, because she could still envision the great house she would inherit. And she could imagine the great halls with their paintings of her ancestors, the dukes and duchesses, the earls and the countesses. She herself was going to be a Baroness, if she decided to accept the legacy. But, before she ever got to Pemberley House, she was hurled into this nightmare. Stripped, hands and feet bound, eyes blindfolded, and the woman tonguing her.

This can’t be, she thought, straining against the ropes and arching her body so that her spine hurt and her breasts threatened to lift off her body. This just can’t be. Such things don’t happen. Not in 1973. Not in the Midlands county of Derbyshire, England, a most civilized and pleasant place, at least, in the countryside, according to what she’d read. This could have happened to some of her ancestors. Something like this had happened to her many times great-grandmother, the one that was supposed to be haunting Pemberley House. But that had been in the 1570s. And this was now. Now!

Oh, God, she thought, and she tried to twist away. But her legs and arms were held far apart by ropes tied to something, stakes, probably. And that woman, who had been called Ernie, had taken off her own clothes and had eased down on her. Patricia had felt the smooth cool skin and the heaviness of the breasts being dragged across her face. Then they were on her mouth but lifted when Patricia tried to bite them. There had been a short coarse laugh, and then the breasts had dragged on down her stomach and on down.

She could scream and she probably would soon. But the fact that Ernie had not bothered to gag her meant that she was not worried about anyone hearing her. Neither was that man, whom Ernie had called Jack. And where was he now? Watching? Waiting until Ernie had done with her whatever she had in mind?

Patricia hoped she would not scream. It would do no good, obviously. And she did not want to give that swine the satisfaction of hearing her scream or begging for a mercy that she would never give even if she had it to give.

Perhaps she would not have to scream. So far, the two had been rough with her and had promised to cut her throat if she made any trouble. But Ernie had not hurt her. She had been unexpectedly gentle. But then she might be doing that to get her to relax and so hurt her even more when she did something painful. The sudden shock and the knowing that she was absolutely helpless, so helpless.

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she heard Ernie’s rough, but undeniably female, voice say, “You’re crying, baby. Is that because you feel so good? Do you like this?”

And Ernie’s tongue moved up and down, slowly, and then her finger, coming in just below the tongue, began working back and forth. Patricia tried to move away; her flesh seemed to take on an independence and attempted to crawl away from her bones. But Ernie pressed her head down; her lips covered the hairiness and her nose pressed down the region just above the pubes. Patricia had felt somewhat sick at first, but as time passed and Ernie made no sudden moves and did nothing to give her pain, she relaxed a trifle. She did not want to relax; she wanted to die. Or so she told herself. But there was a tension coming through the numbness of shock and repulsion now, and adrenaline and fury began to course through her body.

And that, at least, was the best thing that had happened to her since she had gotten into the car at the Lambton railroad station, and that drunken Richard Deguy had started the big Rolls Royce with a scream of tires through the white-and-black and rainy night.