Chapter Three

The Magic Interior

WHEN THEY REACHED the landing, Belinda stopped in her tracks. At the head of the stairs was a large and quite arresting oil painting; a picture of a man in period dress who had eyes that were the bluest she had ever seen. As she stared up at the image, half-entranced by both the eyes and the commanding image that the subject presented, she became aware that Oren was beside her, also – seemingly – transfixed.

‘Is he one of your master’s ancestors?’ she enquired, turning her attention to the equally eye-catching man at her side, the tall sculpture in living golden flesh.

To her surprise, the mute shook his head, his own warm brown eyes twinkling as if he were privy to some private joke.

‘Well, it’s a fabulous picture anyway,’ she said, taking a step forward for a closer look. Although she was no costume expert, Belinda guessed the man to be wearing eighteenth-century clothing. His expression was both solemn and challenging, and his hair was long, caught into a tail at the back, and had a strange whitish look to it, as if it were dusted with narrow streaks of fine powder. He had on a coat of navy blue velvet, with a high stand-up collar and sloping away tails, and he cut a dashing figure in pale breeches and high boots.

He was a handsome man, in both face and body, yet it was his eyes that drew Belinda’s attention. They seemed to bore right into her, directly from the canvas, their colour brilliant and their intensity astounding. There was sadness in those eyes but they also made her feel profoundly vulnerable, so much so that she was forced to turn away. Almost as if he had read her mind and her fears, Oren smiled back at her reassuringly, then gestured that they move on along a corridor to their left.

Still disturbed by the portrait, Belinda followed her guide.

Who is he? she wondered, still captivated by the blue-eyed man. She was aware that the house around her was unexpectedly well-maintained and exquisite, but she felt too fazed to note its decor’s more subtle features.

The man in the painting, she realised, had exactly the same blue eyes that she had seen last night in her dream or whatever it was. They were the eyes that had watched her making love with Jonathan.

Don’t be crazy, Seward, she told herself, almost running to keep up with Oren’s long stride. As they turned a corner and started down a spacious oak-panelled corridor, she saw that a whole row of portraits hung there, and all, it seemed, of either descendants or antecedents of the man at the head of the stairs.

The family likeness was uncanny. The nobleman in eighteenth-century breeches and boots was the very image of the one who now wore the garb of an Edwardian dandy. Strong genes, thought Belinda, pausing before a painting of yet another family member, dressed in a morning suit from the turn of the century. This man had much shorter hair but it still had the same almost dusted look to it, and he carried a top hat, suede gloves and a cane. There was the same arrogant melancholy in his blue eyes.

I’d love to have been able to meet you, thought Belinda as she tore herself away from the picture to follow Oren. Any one of you. Your eyes, they’re out of this world somehow. So beautiful, so brilliant, so alive, even if only in a painting.

At last, she and Oren seemed to have reached their destination, and he pushed open a door then ushered her through into a bedroom.

Belinda gasped. The room was breathtakingly sumptuous and about as far away from last night’s impressions of the house as it was possible to get. Everything around her was luxuriously ornate and made no excuses for being so. She was in a pleasure chamber, a temple of sensuality, a retreat created to please and be pleased in.

Wherever Belinda looked she saw velvet, brocade, rich carpeting and the choicest of rare antique furniture, every piece softly gleaming with polish. The colour scheme was womb-like reds, ruddy pinks and vibrant corals, with ornamentation – wherever possible – in gold leaf.

‘Wow!’ she said, at a loss at the sight of such magnificence.

Oren just smiled and made an expansive gesture which seemed to indicate ‘enjoy’. Then, while Belinda stood and stared, still unable take it all in, he retreated, leaving the red room with only a pause for a shallow bow.

What now? thought Belinda, staring around at the chamber that contained her, then walking over to the bed and sitting down.

This wasn’t the sort of guest accommodation she would have expected for someone who had literally wandered in unannounced. No, this was the sort of setting a wealthy man would commission for a loved one, either a wife or a treasured mistress. It was a place for trysts and the long, lazy rituals of passion; it seemed to echo with the cries of past desire.

Rolling on to her back, Belinda kicked off her trainers, stretched out on the crushed velvet bedcover and studied the elaborate mouldings of the ceiling. What would Jonathan think of all this when he arrived? she wondered. If he arrived … Oren had implied that someone would fetch him. But who? The whole priory had an odd sense of desertedness about it, even here in its magic interior which was so different from the way it looked outside.

Something unusual caught her eye as she tilted her head back, and sitting up and twisting round she looked more closely at what appeared to be a set of velvet curtains, a couple of yards deep, that hung against the wall over the carved head of the bed. It seemed strange for them to be there as the windows were all on the other side of the room, and immediately her curiosity was piqued.

Shuffling up to the pillows, she reached for the gold tasselled pull-cord that hung by the curtains and gave it a slow, steady yank. Immediately, as if on a well-oiled modern track, the curtains parted to reveal what was behind them.

It was another portrait. Another handsome man of the same blue-eyed lineage.

The pose this time was far more casual and naturalistic, fusing a modern look with an antique background and clothing. The man in the picture appeared to be half-sitting, half-lying on the same bed that Belinda was on, or one very like it. He was leaning back languorously against a mound of crimson pillows, his expression vaguely sleepy. And though his eyes had the same hint of sorrow that pervaded the portraits of his relations, he was also smiling a smile of satisfaction. His hair was long, loose and slightly tousled, and he wore just breeches, stockings and a voluminous cloud-white shirt that lay open to show his slightly hairy chest.

It was the most erotic image of a man that Belinda had ever seen.

A woman painted this, she thought suddenly. A woman he was involved with. He looks almost as if he’s just been making love.

Turning around again, Belinda slid down to the bed’s wooden footboard, and leant back against it to stare up at the unknown man.

He really was exceptionally good-looking, and would have been so as much today as in any age. His features were strong and candid, with a slightly snub nose and a generous, sensual mouth. As ever his eyes were an electric, lightning blue, only this time they were hazed, as if with passion.

‘God, you’re beautiful!’ whispered Belinda, noting the way the pale déshabillé clothing only accentuated the fine structure of the man’s body. He was well built – athletically ‘chunky’, she would have called him – although the contemporary term seemed inappropriate somehow. And there was no denying the promise of his virility; a substantial bulge deformed the smooth line of his breeches …

On this bed, she thought, feeling a faint stirring of lust in her belly. At some time in the past, her unknown blue-eyed paramour had made love to a woman on this bed. Closing her eyes, Belinda imagined him first smiling, then stretching, and then rising up from his resting place among the pillows and beginning to strip off his few items of clothing.

It was the ultimate romantic fantasy. To be taken in these magnificent surroundings by a powerful, courteous lover from a bygone age. She pictured him naked, his hair loose, looming over her, his strong body primed and ready for sex.

‘Mademoiselle, I must possess you,’ he might whisper as his elegant hands peeled the clothes from her body. When she was as bare as nature intended, he would probably kiss her all over, touching his lips and his tongue to her every sensitive zone. Modern men thought they knew it all where sex was concerned, but something told Belinda that this nobleman from the past possessed more knowledge and erotic skill than all her small band of contemporary lovers put together.

It was the eyes that made her think that way, she supposed, sliding down to lie flat on the bed, her own eyes still locked with the blue ones in the portrait. The man in the picture had a gaze that was full of experience. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had a whole gamut of poignant memories to draw on: passion, love, excess; conquest, loss, sorrow. There were lifetimes of wisdom in that look.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered again, as in her fantasy he began to caress her. Pushing up her T-shirt, she cupped her bare breasts, imagining that her hands were those of the man on the wall above her.

As she squeezed gently, she caught her breath. Her palms and her fingers felt suddenly and inexplicably cool. Not cool within, but simply cool against the skin of her breasts. Her nipples puckered at the sensation, tingling deliciously. The coldness seemed to spread, even as she acknowledged it, moving down over her midriff towards her belly. Opening her eyes, she looked to see if one of the long casement windows was open and letting in a draught.

One window was open, but the day was calm and the curtains hung still and heavy. Belinda shuddered, not from the cold, but from a strange excited fear. With shaking fingers she unfastened her shorts and eased them down, with her panties, to her knees.

Was it wishful thinking or was there a presence in the room with her? Belinda thought of all the tales of the supernatural that she had read in her lifetime and wondered if her own close encounter had finally arrived. It was something she had always wanted to happen, something she had often hoped for, in spite of the continued opposition of her rational mind. She had never truly believed in the supernatural but what was happening to her now felt incredibly real. The coolness flowed down over the skin she had just bared and seemed to soak in through her pores and tickle her innards like chilly fire.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ she said accusingly to the portrait, half-expecting the man to be laughing. But still he simply smiled his teasing smile. ‘Oh my God,’ she croaked, twisting on the bed as she felt something almost liquid seem to flow into her vulva. The texture was honeyed, yet cool; insubstantial yet paradoxically tangible against her burning sexual membranes.

What’s happening? What are you doing? she thought frantically, pushing her fingers into her furrow to try and authenticate the sensation she was feeling. Her flesh was running wet but it was warm to the touch; she could not detect the chilly unction from the outside but could only feel its strange effects from within. With a groan she began rubbing her clitoris, massaging it slowly with the silky thrilling coldness.

Helplessly aroused, Belinda circled her hips, enjoying the constriction of her tangled clothing around her knees and the thrill of a peculiar dual reality. She could see that she was alone in the room but within her mind she was convinced that she had company. The blue-eyed man from the portrait was with her. As she slicked her aching clitoris she felt his hand upon her breast, long fingers cradling it, his thumb pressing against her nipple.

‘You devil … You devil …’ she whispered as the mysterious coldness aroused her teat and her vulva. The fluid, viscous chill was overflowing between her legs now, its ghostly trickles running down across her anus. ‘What are you doing to me?’ she begged as her sex-flesh rippled. It felt as if someone was pouring cooled syrup directly on to her, relentlessly filling her sensitive channel until she was awash. ‘Oh God, stop it!’ she cried, knowing in her heart that she really wanted more.

The ectoplasmic essence was oozing inside her now, creating chills of cool sensation within her body. She could feel it in her vagina, pushing and welling, and more subversively, sneaking its way inside her anus. The invisible substance was rising into her and filling her, creating pressure on hidden pleasure nodes in her sex.

Looking down between her legs, Belinda tried to see the flow of fluid, imagining it blue as its cool nature suggested. But all she could see was herself.

With her thighs as far apart as her makeshift shackles would allow, she had a perfect, uninterrupted view of her womanhood. She was wet and her love-juices were glinting on her sex and on her fingers, yet there was no sign of the ghostly inundation. She could feel it and feel the tension it created, but all that was visible were her genitals, pink and normal in their arousal.

‘Oh please …’ she groaned as the pressure still increased, and her beleaguered clitoris seemed to swell beneath her finger. It was pushed out now, like an insolently proud berry, as if there really was a volume of fluid massed behind it. Increasing her efforts, she pounded hard on the tiny organ.

‘You! You bastard!’ she cried, focusing again on her blue-eyed nemesis as she climaxed and the urgent forces instantly dissipated. Kicking her legs and cupping her vulva, she thrashed and moaned and rode the waves of sweet release until they mellowed.

‘You …’ she muttered vaguely when the tumult was over, and she sat up, still bare-bottomed, on the bed. The man in the portrait looked exactly as he had before she had begun her self-pleasuring, but somehow she sensed that a change had taken place. He still looked ever-so-vaguely unhappy, but there seemed to be a faint glow of hope about him too.

‘You!’ she said again, studying the painting in search of a more tangible change. ‘You did something to me … You’ve done something. What is it?’

The handsome blue-eyed man seemed to mock her, to challenge her.

‘I’m not crazy, I’m just tired,’ she told herself, trying to take hold of her innate lucidity. ‘It’s just the novelty of this room, or hormones or something … Imagination.’ Shaking her head to clear it, she began pulling off her clothes, then stood up, looked around the room, and wondered where the promised bathroom was.

After a moment, she realised that there was a door set into the panelling on the far side of the room, and beside it was a fine Chippendale chair with what looked like a silk robe laid across it, something she could have sworn wasn’t there when she had first entered. Frowning, she crossed the room and picked the garment up.

It was a kimono, a very beautiful one with the traditional square sleeves. And on the back of it was embroidered, in fine silver thread, the design of a rearing mythic beast. Discovering a tall mirror – something else she had not noticed before – Belinda donned the robe and looked over her shoulder to admire the skilful embroidery. It was an eagle-headed gryphon most probably, she guessed, although her knowledge of mythology was somewhat sketchy.

Jonathan will know what it is, she thought, turning from the mirror and cinching the robe’s belt.

Remembering her boyfriend, she wondered where he was now. Had he been brought to the priory, as Oren had so calmly informed her in his note? Or was he still fast asleep in the folly? Belinda glanced at her wrist, then remembered her watch was in her bag which she had left behind when she had set off exploring.

What on earth was the time? It seemed as if hours and hours had passed since she had first entered this house and then this elegant, red-hued room. And yet it was probably still early. She could not ‘sense’ the proper time as she usually could, even when she looked out of the window. The sun was shining but its radiance was diffuse, as if it were veiled. The whole sky seemed to give off a luminosity, a brilliant blue that lit the landscape and the gardens. She had the weirdest feeling that she was trapped in a bubble, and that the priory and its grounds were a place out of time. She ought to worry, but she realised that she couldn’t be bothered …

Opening the inset door, she found, as she had expected, a private bathroom; beautifully appointed and with well-kept antique fixtures.

‘What? No blue-eyed men on the wall?’ she said to herself as she began to run a bath.

Bathing took quite a while, not only because Belinda had felt sweaty and grubby after twenty-four hours without a proper wash, but also because the old-world fittings in the bathroom intrigued her.

The bath, the handbasin and the lavatory pedestal were all enormous, gleaming creations made out of white porcelain; archaic in appearance but supremely efficient in function. What’s more, the water had been piping hot and abundant, and Belinda had discovered a cache of luxurious but unbranded toiletries which catered for her every feminine need. The soap and body lotion had been scented with camellias, the face lotion had been rich and silky, and the toothpaste had had a faint but delicious taste of herbs. The towels had been the thickest she had ever handled in her life, and as soft as a baby’s breath against her skin.

Clean, refreshed and revivified, Belinda returned to the red and gold bedroom – to find yet more surprises awaiting her.

On the bed lay a beautiful if rather old-fashioned set of clothes: a dainty calf-length shift-like garment in white cotton – which Belinda suspected was Victorian underwear rather than a present-day dress – a pair of rather loose-legged knickers in oyster-coloured silk, and a pair of flat slippers embroidered with a mandala design on each toe. Not much, but when she had put them all on at least she was decent, or partially so. The loose shift was extraordinarily thin and her nipples were clearly visible through the cloth’s fine weave. When she smoothed the shift down against her body, she felt both unsettled and delighted by its daring.

Of her own things there was no sign at all now, and she could only assume that Oren, or someone, had slipped into the room while she was bathing and taken her grimy, over-worn clothing to be washed.

She had also been left a meal: a tall glass of milk and several slices of home-baked bread, thickly spread with butter. Plain fayre, and taboo in an age of diets and cholesterol, but somehow exactly, and uncannily, what she fancied. The milk was rich and frothy and the bread still warm. The butter was creamy yellow and tasted of sun.

The only thing she wanted for now was company.

Still unsure of the time, Belinda didn’t know whether the food was breakfast or lunch, or even afternoon tea, but that didn’t stop it satisfying her hunger. When she had consumed every last delicious scrap, she began to feel restless and fidgety, and she went to the open window, hoping to see Jonathan as he crossed the park to join her.

There was no sign of him, or of anyone else. But what did catch her eye was the formal garden.

It was lush with flowers, a brilliant tapestry of colour, but as she sniffed the rising scents, she frowned in puzzlement.

How could she have missed all this last night? In the thundery downpour, all she had noticed was sparse shrubbery and rain-lashed bushes. The brilliant floral hues wouldn’t have shown up well in the dark of course, but all she could remember was a sterile, tangled wasteland.

Must have had something else on my mind, she reflected wryly, watching a flock of chattering birds sweep across the park.

‘So? What next?’ she demanded of her blue-eyed companion, as if the vivid portrait had life and could advise her.

The man’s image regarded her silently, his ambiguous expression a silent provocation. Belinda shook her head, realising that she had genuinely half-expected him to answer.

She certainly couldn’t lurk around in this room all day though, simply waiting for Jonathan to turn up.

Feeling an amorphous sense of longing, mixed with something akin to fear, she opened the heavy door and stepped out into the oak-lined corridor. To her left was the way to the great staircase and the lower floor, which was the logical direction to take if she hoped to find Jonathan or Oren or perhaps even the owner of the priory; and to the right was uncharted territory. Her conscious mind said ‘go left, get things sorted out’, but to her surprise she ignored it and turned right, her footfalls silent on the thick carpet runner.

After a moment, she found herself in a long, airy gallery filled with more portraits and a vast treasury of objets d’art and antiques. Once again, heavy velvet drapes hung from ceiling to floor and kissed the edge of a richly-patterned carpet. Brilliant sunshine from the windows cut into the design in bright slices, but in the shadows the darkness seemed over-dense. Belinda felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle for no apparent reason, and squaring her shoulders she headed resolutely for the first patch of light.

‘Blue Eyes’ – as she realised she now thought of him – was once again the principal subject of the portraiture, but there were also several likenesses of women. Or ‘woman’, to be correct, in the form of a slender, gentle-eyed beauty whose long, intricately-coiled titian hair and creamy skin looked peculiarly familiar.

‘I don’t know your boyfriend, but I do know you,’ said Belinda, standing in front of one of the pictures which showed the lovely woman in a green velvet gown. ‘Although I’m damned if I know where from.’ The sense of recognition was at the very edge of her consciousness, and when she tried to reel it in, it became less and less accessible. The more she tried to place the woman, the less she seemed able to; and after a moment or two, the conundrum made her head ache. Rubbing her eyes, she moved further along the gallery.

The owner of the priory had some beautiful but very strange things. Statues of gods and goddesses from the Ancient Egyptian pantheon; a long series of painted wooden representations of animal-headed deities. Gilded boxes, their lids open to display the mummified creatures that lay within: cats, snakes, even a wolf. Huge crystal vessels displayed in pairs, their attenuated spouts entwined. Stuffed birds in glass cases, caught in attitudes of flight and conflict. Two half life-size human figures, male and female, cast in gold and portrayed having sex on what appeared to be an altar.

This last item made Belinda shudder and blush, even though there was no one around to make her feel embarrassed. The copulating figures had been created by a master craftsman. Every detail was perfect, ecstatic, almost alive; even down to the grimaces of pleasure on the two gilded faces, and the intricately moulded genitals, which were fully visible as the pose had caught the outstroke. The man’s thick penis pierced the woman’s stretched vagina.

Looking more closely at the mating pair made Belinda’s belly quiver, and she spun around when she seemed to hear laughter.

But the gallery was empty.

This is crazy, she thought. It’s all the eyes in the portraits that are making me feel as if I’m being watched. There’s nobody here. I’m quite alone. It’s imagination –

A door creaked, and she whirled again, her heart pounding, her throat tight, her mouth dry.

‘Who’s there?’ she called out, noticing for the first time that a previously-concealed door at the very end of the gallery was now gaping open a little. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, then a thought occurred to her. ‘I’m sorry if I shouldn’t be here … I couldn’t find anybody …’

There was no answer and the open door moved no further. Belinda crept apprehensively towards it, then stopped dead when she heard a second sound.

It was a faint cry; the sort of indecipherable moan one might make while having a nightmare. Belinda’s hand froze on the edge of the door as she wondered what lay beyond it in the dark.

Screwing up her courage, she pushed the door a little further open and discovered that the area behind it wasn’t in total blackness. From somewhere up above, a faint shaft of sunlight illuminated a vestibule and the steps of a steeply-rising staircase that doubled back on itself again and again and again. Belinda made her way to the foot of it, then paused, listening carefully for more sound. None came, so she put her foot on the first worn step.

‘Here goes,’ she whispered, beginning to ascend, and knowing that both the cry and the situation had made her nervous. More than nervous. She felt genuinely fearful, but also, inexplicably, quite aroused. Beneath the flimsy shift, her bare nipples were hard and puckered.

Still straining to hear any faint sound, Belinda climbed the stairs as slowly and carefully as she could. The switchback construction of the staircase made her feel giddy, and she clung on for dear life to its rather insubstantial handrail. Beneath her, the stone steps struck a chill through the thin soles of her slippers.

Halfway to the top, judging by the quantity of steps that remained when she looked upward, there was a small landing and an anonymous panelled door. She considered turning the handle and looking into the room beyond, but instinct told her it wasn’t her goal.

It took her a further minute of vertigo to get to the top, and when she did she had to stand for a few minutes breathing deeply and still clutching the thin iron rail. She was in the turret she had observed from outside the priory, she presumed, and which seemed to consist of two storeys and two large rooms. When she could at last catch her breath and her heart rate had settled, she realised she was standing on a second small landing and that the door before her must lead to the upper room.

It’s just like a fairy-tale, thought Belinda, placing her hand on the massive iron ring that opened the door. Still not sure she was doing the right thing, she turned it and the door swung open silently and smoothly.

The chamber beyond was also stone lined, but its walls were hung with huge tapestries. Between these, more of the omnipresent deep-pile velvet curtains were drawn across the windows, and several thick candles in elaborate stanchions lit the room. Belinda absorbed all these facts in the space of a couple of seconds, before she focused her attention on the centre of the chamber, where there stood a great bed, all swathed around in what seemed like dozens of thin gauze draperies.

A naked man lay on the bed. A perfectly naked man with long, tousled hair and a face that she already knew too well.

Blue Eyes! thought Belinda, biting her lips so she didn’t exclaim aloud. With slow, silent steps, she crossed the room then pushed her way carefully through the many layers of gauze.

In the flesh, the slumbering man – who was obviously the latest of his line – was much more striking than any of his painted forebears, even though the family likeness was still incredibly strong. His skin was very pale and his hair rather oddly coloured in that it appeared to be quite dark but thinly streaked with blond. His powerful limbs and torso were classically formed. Unable to help herself, Belinda centred her attention on his genitals, and was shocked when she saw his penis was half erect. Even as she watched, it twitched disturbingly and rose up further.

Although she couldn’t see the sun now and didn’t know the time, it suddenly seemed strange to Belinda that the man before her should be asleep during the day. Was he ill? she wondered. Was that why he had not been around to greet her? She peered more closely at his queer, unnatural pallor.

The sleeper looked almost as if he had spent many years indoors. There was no hint of tan about him anywhere, although paradoxically, he did not look unhealthy. His body was muscular and appeared to be in a hard and well-toned condition; it was only his unweathered skin that made him look like an invalid.

And there was certainly nothing fragile about his penis, which seemed to grow ever more rampant by the second. Belinda caught her breath when the man stirred slowly, then touched himself.

Standing at the foot of the bed, she almost swayed with excitement and arousal. The sleeper was a supremely attractive man, and the way he handled his genitals made her own sex twitch and weep. Longing to reach into her borrowed panties and caress herself, she felt weak with desire as she watched the drowsy man masturbate; fondling his hard length in extended, graceful strokes. Belinda felt a real need to hang on to the bedpost to stop herself falling, but she dare not do it for fear of disturbing her companion. As he began to writhe among the sheets, she heard him mutter; a string of foreign words and then what sounded like a name – ‘Belle’ – which he cried out with increasing force and anguish.

Belinda expected the man to wake at any moment; to open his eyes – which she had no doubt at all were brilliantly blue – and find her standing there watching him. The sensible thing was to sneak away; now, while he was still too far from consciousness to perceive her. But she was so bewitched by the sight of him that she stayed.

He was squirming now, twisting his powerful-looking body against the mattress as his clasping fingers continued their steady work. Unable to stop herself, Belinda reached down and pressed the heel of her hand against her pubis, trying to stanch the sweet ache of mounting lust.

‘Belle! Oh, Belle!’ cried the tormented figure on the bed, before launching into yet another frantic, impenetrable chant. He was lifting his bottom now, pushing his penis through his gripping fist, as his heels gouged and scrabbled against the bedlinen. When his cries and exhortations became one long strangled groan, Belinda looked away; not embarrassed, but too moved by his beauty to watch his climax.

Eyes tightly closed, and with her hand at her crotch, she waited in frozen immobility to be discovered. But when discovery didn’t come, she opened her eyes again, but still felt unable to face the figure on the bed. Ignoring the heavy frustration in the pit of her belly, she darted glances around the peculiar gloomy chamber, then stopped dead, her breath caught yet again.

On top of a massive mahogany sideboard, a little way from the bed, there was a small carved box made from a lighter, more rosy-toned wood. It was an unremarkable thing, and Belinda probably wouldn’t have noticed it save for the fact that it was glowing in the dark. It was pulsing with an unearthly blue radiance that – when she turned again to the sleeper – she realised was synchronised exactly with his breathing.

Her desire almost forgotten, she could do nothing but observe the weird phenomenon. What the hell was happening? Was it a trick of some kind or her imagination going crazy again? The box was definitely radiating in some way, the rhythm of its pulses uncannily regular. Half of her wanted to move closer and investigate but the other half knew better and held back. There was a special, personal bond between the sleeping man and the delicate blue light, and Belinda suddenly had the feeling she was intruding. Turning silently on her heel, she moved away towards the door, feeling an odd mix of enchantment and true terror. Once through the door, she closed it as quietly as she could, and – her earlier vertiginous feelings forgotten – raced down the round staircase at breakneck speed. She was gasping for breath as she almost burst into the gallery.

Collapsing on to an oak settle, she took in deep lungfuls of air and tried to think clearly and calmly.

What had she got herself into here? Who was the handsome, sleeping man, the one she had just seen masturbate to orgasm? And what the devil was in that luminescent box?

Suddenly Belinda felt very frightened and out of her depth. She really needed to see Jonathan’s dear and rather ordinary face and to hear his pleasant, sensible voice outlining a reasoned explanation for what she had just seen.

Beginning to think more clearly, she realised that if someone really had been sent to fetch Jonathan at the time she had encountered Oren – what felt like many hours ago now – then surely her boyfriend must be here in the priory? Somewhere in the labyrinth of rooms and corridors?

Squaring her shoulders, Belinda set off determinedly along the gallery, not looking up at the blue-eyed portraits that seemed to watch her.

What she needed now, she told herself, was normality and reassurance. A bit of comfort from a man whose eyes weren’t blue.