ELEVEN

P atricia had thought dinner would never end.

Outside, black storm clouds had returned, bringing with them peals of thunder and lightning. The high French windows of the dining-parlour rattled as rain pounded against the leaded crystal panes.

Inside, the Duchess held court at the head of the table. Doctor Moran sat to her left. Next to Moran was Carla. On the opposite side sat Richard, with Patricia next to him.

The silver, China, and crystal were ancient and priceless. The food was exquisite, the service impeccable, and the company distasteful.

Richard started out mentioning the ghost of Bess again. “This is first the night, you know. First of three nights she’ll appear at midnight.”

“Richard, do be quiet,” the Duchess said. “You know I can’t sleep when Bess comes.”

“But Duchess, I can’t do anything about that. Maybe the doc can give you something to help you sleep. Besides, I’ve never understood why Bess upsets you. How exactly could you be related to the ancient d’Arcys, anyway? And if you’re not related, nothing to worry about, right?”

Richard took a liberal drink of bourbon, then continued. “Now our American cousin, here. She’s related, no doubt about it. What will you do when the ghost comes tonight, Patricia?”

“Not that I believe your tall stories, but what is anyone supposed to do when Bess allegedly appears?”

“Doc Moran can answer that, can’t you, Doc? He’s the expert on the whole family.” Richard turned to Moran. “So, Doc, how does one appease Bess, anyway?”

The old man tugged at his walrus moustache. “I have no intention of fostering these ridiculous legends.”

“Aw, c’mon, Doc. Patricia is put up in old Bess’ room. Least you can do is let her in on how to deal with Bess when she, ahem, comes.”

“Enough!”

The discussion halted at the Duchess’ command. The dining-parlour was dim, lit only by a few silver candelabra, but all could see she was white and shaking.

Richard was contrite. “Sorry about that, it’s just—”

“Richard. Shut up,” Carla said. “Now.”

Meanwhile, Moran had moved his chair closer to the Duchess and taken her trembling hand. He soothed her, speaking into her ear. The old lady was still pale, but her shallow breathing began to return to normal.

Moran moved away a little, but continued to hold and stroke her hand. Eventually she calmed down and the two began to reminisce about old times.

Mr. Newell, when explaining to Patricia the household and occupants, had told her Moran had joined the household as the Duchess’ personal secretary almost fifty years ago. She had funded his medical studies, after which he’d served as her private physician, residing at Pemberley House ever since.

Seeing now the way Moran held the Duchess’ hand and spoke to her, and their behavior together earlier in the hothouse, Patricia was sure he must have been her lover as well. She must have taken him when she was a middle-aged woman and he was young. He must be almost forty years her junior, but she was wealthy and he was entranced by her, apparently, although he must have had other women. But he must be perverted to be so fascinated by her and become her lover. Or perhaps it was just a matter of money. She was willing to buy a young lover. Now, he was sixty-five and she 103, a doctor and patient with lecherous memories to share.

Then Patricia thought of the age difference between her own parents, twenty-six years. Was twenty-six years really all that different from thirty-eight? Perhaps not. If it was, she was in no position to judge, she chided herself. After all, her own sexual fantasies about her father and displacing her mother in his eyes were, if not lecherous, psychologically deviant.

She hadn’t appreciated the Duchess’ judgmental comments, and now here she was reciprocating, although she didn’t give voice to her thoughts as the Duchess had. Still, if the Duchess and Moran had been happy, it was none of her business, she supposed, continuing to watch them. Although she had a hard time imagining the Duchess as a happy woman.

Everyone had hang-ups, and she resolved be more tolerant and give the inhabitants of Pemberley House another chance. Then she realized, snapping out of her internal monologue, that the Duchess and Moran were returning her stare, and the old doctor asked if she was all right.

At the same time, she felt something on her thigh. It was Richard’s right hand, wandering up under her dress.

“Quite all right, thank you, Doctor. Still just a little tired from yesterday’s... journey, I suppose.” Patricia unobtrusively palmed her fork, slipped it under the white linen table cloth, and stabbed the tines down into the back of Richard’s hand.

Richard emitted a brief yelp and the hand withdrew.

“What the devil is going on over there?”

“Nothing, Duchess,” Richard managed to get out, “just swallowed the wrong way. Not to worry, sorry.”

Carla knew better, and smirked at her brother. She caught Patricia’s eye and half-winked. Across but under the table, Carla slipped off her spiked heel and extended her leg, running her toes along Patricia’s calf, up her inner thigh, and under her skirt. She grinned and licked her lips. Patricia allowed a small smile in return.

She didn’t use the fork.

“Well, I’ve had enough of these shenanigans,” the Duchess said. “Augustus, take me up to bed, although I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink tonight.”

“Of course, Duchess,” Moran replied and the two bade their good-nights to the others.

“I think I’ll retire too,” Patricia said.

“Come to the library for a cognac before bed?” Carla asked.

“Well, all right.”

The library was one of the house’s more masculine rooms. Carla told her it was decorated and organized much like the sixth Duke had left it. Built-in wooden bookcases stood floor to ceiling on three sides of the room, displaying even rows of ancient and modern works. Big game rifles were displayed on the fourth wall and in cabinets. A sealed display case that also ran along the fourth wall contained various arcane objects, among them a harpoon with the initials “N.L.” carved on the hilt (identified as part of the original Phileas Fogg Collection, c. 1866, on loan from the neighboring estate of Fogg Shaw in Derbyshire), and, most notably, several pieces of metal debris and fragments arranged in the shape of a partial axe-head, the label under which read, “Axe shards; provenance, Zu-Vendis, c. 1886.”

Coats of armor, the real articles, marked by the dents and scratches of battle, flanked the stone frame and mantle of the library’s huge fireplace. Club chairs in chocolate-brown leather were arranged in front of the fire. The Kodiak bear rug on the floor before the fireplace reminded Patricia of the one on which she had seen her father and mother making love.

Patricia and Carla sat on a leather sofa near the high windows which let out onto the terrace. The rain continued to pound. Richard poured the drinks while Miss Neston stoked the fire and then took her leave.

Richard distributed the glasses and sat on the arm of the sofa next to Patricia. She got up and browsed a bookshelf dedicated to volumes of rare books of special interest to the sixth Duke. Among them were Sherlock Holmes’ The Whole Art of Detection , Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, With Some Observations Upon the Segregation of the Queen , and various other monographs and pamphlets by the Great Detective; Hendrik van Helsing’s Hollow Dark Places ; the two-volume in-quarto Les Mystères des grands fonds sous-marins ( Mysteries of the Great Submarine Depths ) by Professor Pierre Aronnax; Ludvig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis ; a charred copy of How I Did It by Victor von Frankenstein (Patricia pulled out a note tucked in the front of the volume; it indicated, in a woman’s handwriting, that the book had been rescued from a burnt laboratory in the nearby village of Upper Fogg Shaw); Campion Bond’s Memoirs of an English Intelligencer ; A Ghost in the Manor: A Romance by Catherine Tilney; The Ruthvenian ; and Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuk Skulls and The Sahhindar Cult in Pre-Diluvian Khokarsa , both by Professor George Edward Challenger.

Next she moved to a shelf set aside for books written by immediate family members, such as John Cecil Clayton’s An Odyssey in the American Wilderness and Mary Bennet’s Selected Observations and Moral Extractions . Excessively Diverted, Or, Leaving Pemberley looked intriguing; it was a thin, privately printed pamphlet by Delhi Darcy, and Patricia resolved to come back to it later. The Dynamics of an Asteroid and A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem by Professor James Moriarty appeared out of place, and Patricia assumed they were misfiled. She also wondered what Moriarty could possibly have added to the subject of the Binomial Theorem that was worth an entire treatise.

Prominently and, it seemed to her, more appropriately displayed were the works of General Sir William Clayton, Bt.: Gold and a Lost Love in Africa , Blood and Love among the Redskins, Love Is a Jaguar , and his masterpiece, the three-volume autobiography Never Say Die: The Memoirs of One Who Always Heard the Distant Trumpet .

Richard approached behind her. “That last is extremely rare, coz, perhaps the only remaining copy. The sixth Duke was mortified at his uncle’s indelicacies, and put his considerable energies to suppressing it and destroying all known copies.”

“Hmmm.” Patricia walked away and stood at the window, staring at the downpour.

“You really should be nicer to me, you know,” Richard said.

“Oh? Why is that?” she asked without turning.

He came up and stood behind her again, tilting his head to speak into her ear. Carla watched. “Bess appears tonight,” Richard said. “Are you sure you want to face her alone?”

“Quite sure. Besides, when you told me about it last night in the car, you laughed it off as a silly legend.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Not being a direct descendant, like you, I’ll never know.” He bent closer to her ear and put a hand around her waist. “I think, my dear Patricia, you’d best take me up on my offer. I can protect you.”

Patricia turned and faced him. At six feet tall without heels, she didn’t need to look up at him. His hand was still on her waist. Carla still watched them, transfixed. “Mr. Deguy, all I need protection from, I think, is you.”

“And all you need, Miss Wildman, I think, is a good fucking.”

Patricia’s knee slammed into Richard’s crotch, followed by the heel of her hand smashing into his nose. He doubled over, writhing in pain and spilling his drink. Carla was breathing hard. A bead of sweat showed on her upper lip in the firelight. Her right hand moved under her skirt, while she sipped her drink with her left.

Patricia half-registered Carla’s excitement, but she remained focused on Richard squirming on the floor. Blood and mucus poured from his nose and covered his face. She spoke to him. “Let me make it abundantly clear, Richard. In the twenty-four hours since I’ve arrived here, you’ve taunted me with stories about the ghost of Bess. You got a blowjob from a drunken barmaid in the front seat of the car while chauffeuring me from the train station.”

Carla’s eyes widened at this revelation, as Patricia went on.

“You ran off God knows where when those two waylaid us on the road. I had to free myself, and you have the balls to suggest you’ll protect me. You were fucking the barmaid—who is obviously pregnant, probably by you—out in the woods today.”

Richard began to stand up as Patricia continued to speak. “Maybe I do need a good fucking. Probably I do. But I guarantee that when and if I get that good fucking, it’s not going to be from you. And if it were you, there’s no way in hell it would be good.” Patricia tossed the rest of her drink in his face and he yelled as the alcohol burned his eyes.

“Goddamn, you little bitch, I’m—”

“You’ll do nothing,” Carla said. “Get out of here, Richard.”

“But—”

“Out.”

Richard cast a look of pure hatred at Patricia and left. The door slammed in its ancient wooden frame.

Patricia continued to stand and Carla sat. They watched each other, silently, as the rain drummed a beat against the windows.

Then Carla spoke. “Blowjob in the Rolls, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“While he was driving, with you in the back?”

“Yeah.”

Carla was quiet for a bit more. Then: “Slimeball deserved it.”

“Yeah.”

The two women burst out in laughter, and Carla poured more cognac. “That was an excellent Rémy Martin you tossed all over Richard and the floor.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Carla handed Patricia her glass. “He had it coming. And you had me coming.”

Patricia was embarrassed. “It turns you on to see your brother getting the shit beat out of him?”

“You turn me on. Where did you learn to fight like that, anyway?”

“My father. It’s a long story.”

“I have time.”

“I really don’t feel like talking about it tonight. I’m sorry, Carla.”

“That’s all right.”

Patricia downed the last of her drink. “In fact, I think it’s time to call it a night.”

Carla gazed at her a long while, then shrugged. “At least let me walk you back to your room.”

Patricia nodded, and the two women walked without speaking through the dark, winding corridors and ornate passages to Patricia’s room on the second floor. All was still in the house, the silence punctuated by the cracks of thunder as the storm outside continued to rage and roil.

They arrived at Patricia’s door and stood there.

“Well, good night, then.”

“Patricia, I hope I’m not as repulsively forward as my brother... In fact, I hope you don’t find me in any way repulsive.”

“No, of course not. I don’t think you’re anything like your brother.”

“Invite me in, then?” Carla asked.

“Not tonight...”

“Have I misread you? You don’t like girls?”

“I like... I’ve been with a girl, once. Twice. Mostly men. I was married, once. I only just met you,” Patricia said. “Why am I telling you all this?”

“You like me.”

Carla put one hand on Patricia’s breast and grabbed her bottom with the other. She gently raised her left knee between Patricia’s legs and began rubbing up and down. She circled Patricia’s now hard nipple through the blouse’s diaphanous fabric with her thumb. Carla put her hand behind Patricia’s neck and pulled her mouth down to hers, darting and exploring with her tongue. Patricia reciprocated, pulling Carla hard against her, enjoying the feeling of Carla’s full breasts against her own.

Carla felt up under Patricia’s skirt and began to massage her, bringing on a wave of ecstasy. But when she slipped the wet panties aside and began to slip a finger inside, Patricia stopped her.

“What is it,” Carla said.

“Just... I can’t.” Patricia was out of breath and felt a little dizzy. “I do like you, you’re right. But not tonight.”

Carla exhaled and tried to catch her breath. “All right, then. Good night, and sleep tight.” She kissed Patricia once more, deeply. Then she collected herself and tiptoed off down the hall toward her own room.

Patricia watched her go, then fumbled with the doorknob to her own room. She felt disoriented. She must’ve had too much to drink, on top of all she’d been through in the past day. And the past few weeks.

She heard a noise.

From the end of the hall, opposite the direction Carla had just departed, Peter Parker stepped out of the shadows.

“You! How long have you been standing there, watching?” Patricia whispered. “Is everyone in this house a fucking pervert?”

“I came to warn you, Patricia. Be careful...”

“Of what?” she asked, still seething.

“I’m not sure. But things aren’t right around here.”

“I’ll say. Well, thank you Pete, and good night.” She got the door open and scampered in before he could say another word. She shut the door in his face and left him standing alone in the dark.