Chapter Five

An Audience with the Count

A KNOCK ON the door roused Belinda from a light doze. She was not so much asleep as resting her eyes – letting herself drift and just not thinking – and in consequence she was fully awake in half an instant. Sitting up, she grabbed Jonathan’s shoulder and gave him a shake.

The knock came again, but despite her best efforts, Jonathan would not wake up. Belinda was used to his ability to sleep on a rail almost and snatch impromptu naps whenever time permitted, but this deep, near coma-like slumber was frightening. She grabbed both his shoulders and shook him as hard as she was able.

No effect.

‘Miss Seward?’

At the sound of her name, Belinda grabbed the sheet and pulled it up across her breasts. What could she do? She and Jonathan were naked, their clothes were all over the floor, and the black kimono she had worn earlier was across a chair at the far side of the room. She opened her mouth to call out, ‘Just a minute’ but instead, to her horror, she cried, ‘Come in!’

Before she had time to call out a second time, the heavy oaken door swung open, and a familiar figure stepped across the threshold into the room.

Belinda’s heart raced. She supposed, in a way, that her visitor was the one she had been expecting; but it was still a shock to see him standing there, smiling.

Her visitor had his streaked blond hair caught back in a ponytail, and he was wearing clothes now – a white shirt, blue jeans and black boots – but he was definitely her naked dreamer from the tower, the latest representative of a line of blue-eyed men. And he seemed filled with male amusement at her plight.

‘I am sorry. I appear to have disturbed you,’ the newcomer said softly, his distinctive eyes glinting. ‘But I could have sworn I heard you call out for me to enter.’ He grinned, his expression keen and knowing, as if he was perfectly aware of what had happened and had probably even caused it.

‘I-I did. Call out, that is,’ Belinda stammered, feeling both alarm and excitement in equal measures. Blue Eyes was just as impressive awake as he had been sleeping, but his mischievous smile was completely unexpected. All the ancestral portraits had looked pensive and melancholy, and even if they had been smiling, it was a smile tinged with palpable sadness.

And not one of the portraits had done justice to his family’s remarkable eyes, which in the living, present day individual were a blue so intense it was borderline unnatural. They were ultramarine, cerulean, lapis-lazuli; every vivid shade of blueness in one colour. They seemed to flash as if fired by an inner electicity, and they were certainly the ones that had haunted her dreams.

Feeling panicked, Belinda looked down at her body, and realised another disturbing fact. The sheet that covered her had slipped somehow, in spite of the fact that she had been gripping it as if her life depended on it. Her rounded left breast was now completely on show again, its nipple noticeably hardened and dark. When she looked up again, her blue-eyed host did too.

Belinda tugged up the sheet. ‘I-I –’ she began, then bit her lip. What could she say? What could she do? She was trapped.

‘Perhaps this is what you require,’ he said, lifting the black robe from the chair and bringing it across to her. His booted tread was inaudible on the thick Persian carpet as he wended his way among the tangle of discarded clothing.

Belinda began to reach out for the robe, but her host stopped a couple of yards away, a guileless expression on his manly but strangely pallid face.

The bastard! He wants me to get out of bed for it! thought Belinda furiously. Well, all right then, she proclaimed with inward defiance, thinking of the moment a while earlier when she had boldly abandoned her dress. Whoever you are, you’ve asked for it!

With as much grace as she could muster, she slid from between the sheets then turned around and held out her arms behind her, inviting her host to slip the silk robe on her. Without touching her once he complied, but he was smirking when she turned back to face him, having knotted the sash in a doubly secure bow.

‘The robe becomes you,’ he commented, taking a step back as if to appraise her appearance. Belinda got the impression he was a shrewd judge of beauty. Or at least that he considered himself as such. Arrogant beast! she thought, cursing him again.

‘Thank you,’ she said tightly. It was difficult to know where to start in a situation like this, and ludicrously, she found herself holding out her hand. ‘We haven’t been properly introduced, have we?’ she said, feeling an insane urge to laugh. ‘I’m Belinda Seward. And this –’ She nodded over her shoulder at the still comatose Jonathan ‘– is my … my boyfriend Jonathan Sumner. We’re both indebted to you for taking us in,’ she added as an afterthought, wondering if the master of the house had even realised he had guests.

A second or two later, another thought occurred to her, one that shook her even more than her host himself did. He had called out to her from the landing by name, but how on earth could he know it? The only way Oren could have told him was by means of a written report.

Full of doubts now, she hesitated with her hand, then experienced a peculiar phenomenon. She had been going to withdraw it, but suddenly, and as if her whole arm had a life of its own, she lifted her hand again and held it out towards her host.

As he took it he made a movement that was entirely European; a tiny, barely perceptible heel click as he lifted her fingertips and conveyed them to his lips. When mouth met flesh, he looked up at her through his thick, dark lashes, his wicked eyes as bright as blue stars.

‘André von Kastel. At your service,’ he murmured, his mouth still hovering over her hand. His breath felt strangely cool against her skin. ‘Welcome to my home,’ he added as he straightened, releasing her fingers with an unfeigned reluctance. ‘Or perhaps I should say my latest home. I have travelled considerably throughout my life, and this house is just the latest of many.’

This was his longest speech so far, and for the first time she became aware of his accent. It was delicate, very slight; a mere twisting around the edges of the words that made her insides clench and quiver. Like many women, she had always had a penchant for continental men – whether actors, singers or politicians. There was something worldly about them – a quality that was both polished and vaguely savage – which this André von Kastel clearly possessed in abundance. He was one of the most impressive men she had ever encountered, even though he was casually dressed, and appeared – on closer inspection – to still be a little fatigued.

Sleeping Beauty, she thought, grinning at him and knowing she was probably making a complete fool of herself. Did I wake him? Am I the first woman he’s seen for a hundred years?

‘Have I missed a joke?’ he asked, returning the grin and looking even more devastating as a set of laughter lines bracketed his blue eyes.

‘No, it’s just me being silly,’ she replied, twisting the sash of her robe.

‘In what way?’ He was still smiling, still challenging her.

‘Well, what with your accent, and the name, and the boots and all –’ The way his jeans were tucked into his soft, calf-high, black leather boots lent his appearance a vaguely cavalier quality ‘– you’re a bit like a prince in a fairy story. Especially with the long hair too,’ she finished lamely.

And that was another thing, she thought, in the split second during which his smile broadened and he seemed to be preparing to respond. When she had seen him in the tower, his hair had been darker, she was sure of it. More brown, less blond. It was drawn back sleekly from his face now, but it was clearly a good deal streakier, almost platinum in places, as if he had spent day after day in hot sun. Maybe he’s bleached it? she mused, recognising the thought, when it came, as bizarre.

‘I am flattered,’ he replied, making that tiny, almost Prussian bow again, ‘but I am merely a rather poorly-connected count. Perhaps not even as much as that any more. My home country no longer exists.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Belinda, silently upbraiding herself for a curiosity which could well alienate him. She and Jonathan had blundered their way into this house uninvited. They were here on this man’s sufferance alone. Puerile remarks and personal questions weren’t appropriate.

Count André appeared unperturbed. ‘Merely that it is gone now,’ he said with a shrug. ‘A casualty of the redrawing of Eastern Europe, I am afraid. Which probably leaves me as simply “Mr von Kastel”.’

‘“Count” sounds much better,’ Belinda said impulsively. ‘Much more glamorous –’

‘Why thank you,’ he said. ‘I shall endeavour to live up to my title.’ He reached out for her hand again, then kissed it, the application of his lips far more determined this time, pressing the print of them like a brand into her skin.

Belinda was nonplussed. The touch and the kiss were intensely erotic, even though the contact not much more than minimal. While he was bent over her hand, she seemed to see him back in his tower again, sprawled naked on his bed and caressing himself, and when he straightened up, she found herself glancing at his crotch.

As if he had noticed her ogling him, Count André gave her another of his impish white smiles. ‘May I offer you a glass of wine?’ he asked. ‘We could retire to the library and get to know each other a little, and leave your young friend –’ He nodded to Jonathan, who, as if he had heard, turned over in his sleep and nuzzled his pillow ‘– to his rest.’

‘Yes. I’d like that,’ replied Belinda, very aware that he was still holding her hand and that his thumb was gently stroking her knuckle. It almost felt as if he were rubbing her sex.

‘Come then,’ he said, giving her hand a last squeeze before releasing it. Spinning on his heel, he led the way to the door.

As she accompanied her host along the corridor to the big double staircase, Belinda was torn between studying him and taking another look at his forebears. Seeing the living man, awake now, made her realise how strong the family resemblance really was. The von Kastels of yesteryear were almost identical to her handsome companion; so much so that the portraits could well all have been of him. The likeness was so exact it was uncanny.

Count André’s good looks were also puzzling in another way. What made him beautiful to the female eye was difficult to quantify. Taken individually, his features were pleasantly formed, almost ordinary apart from his eyes, but the whole sum of him was nothing short of devastating. He wasn’t tall, but his body looked strong and sturdy, and his way of moving was as aristocratic as his title.

‘Are these all your ancestors then?’ she enquired, gesturing to one of the portraits.

André turned as he walked, and gave her an oblique glance; a strange, assessing look that she didn’t quite understand. ‘Yes, they are all von Kastels,’ he affirmed, but there was something as undecipherable in his voice as there had been in his eyes. It was almost as if he were telling a minor lie.

It was the first time Belinda had entered Sedgewick Priory’s vast library, her previous explorations having been upward through the house, not downward. The room was quintessentially Gothic, decorated in a heavy ornate style which should have seemed sepulchral, but which in fact felt unexpectedly welcoming. Also a surprise, given that it was summer, was the large fire that was burning in the hearth. The bright, orange flames gave off a cheerful dancing light that flickered across the wealth of gleaming wood panelling and the glass panes in the front of the tall bookcases. A full suit of armour stood in one corner of the room, and dotted around on various tables and sideboards were mementoes and knick-knacks that must have been gathered by all the family over the centuries. Some of them were stranger than others. On a mahogany brass-bound secretaire stood a glass jar containing a stuffed and mounted animal, but not one that Belinda could recognise. It seemed to be half-lizard and half-wolf, and completely and utterly fearsome, and she couldn’t understand why anyone would want it around them. She supposed that one of those blue-eyed von Kastels must have hunted it and shot it at one time.

Above the fireplace were two beautiful swords, suspended in a cross shape. They weren’t the rapiers or fencing foils that one might have expected from a continental heritage, but what appeared to be Japanese fighting swords, a pair of immensely long and sharp katana. Some previous von Kastel had obviously been a daring world traveller and brought back these death-dealing souvenirs of Japan.

‘Do you prefer red wine or white wine?’ enquired the present von Kastel, moving across to a beautifully-inlaid, bow-fronted sideboard and indicating an extensive selection of bottles.

‘White, please,’ answered Belinda, wishing that somewhere in the opulent beauty of the library was a concealed wine cooler. She wasn’t a connoisseur, but she hated warm wine.

‘A good choice,’ Count André responded, giving her another of his curious looks, almost as if he were listening to something that she herself couldn’t hear.

As he turned away and applied his attention and a corkscrew to the wine bottle, Belinda took advantage of the opportunity to observe him, out of range of those piercing blue eyes.

His bearing was elegant and his small movements as he eased out the cork were spare and effortlessly economical. He reminded her very much of the best type of character she had seen in costume dramas – a confident courtly man, but not a fop or a libertine. There was something very classical about him, despite the modernity of his boots and blue jeans. Jeans that fit him superbly, she noticed, admiring the firm, tight contours of his buttocks beneath them, and the way they formed faithfully to the musculature of his thighs.

It was a bit strange to be analysing his body now, in clothes, when she had already seen it stark naked, but in some ways she was seeing a different person. The André on the bed had appeared feverish, almost weak, as if suffering from some debilitating long-term disease, while this one was radiant with disgustingly good health. The tiredness she had noticed a few minutes ago had dissipated now, and she could almost feel waves of strength pouring off him. It was as if he had an aura of some kind, and it was provoking her. She squeezed her eyes almost closed and tried to see it, but there was nothing there but a fit, handsome man.

From where she had chosen to sit, on a vast brocade covered sofa, Belinda could see her host in profile, and as she watched him, he suddenly touched his fingertip to the bottle and frowned.

Yes, it’s warm, she thought, isn’t it? I would have thought someone like you would have had a cooler around somewhere.

As she thought those words, André turned towards her, regarded her thoughtfully for a second, then returned his attention to the bottle, first clasping it in both hands, then running his tapered fingers up and down it. After a moment, he smiled and poured out wine into two glasses.

‘Here, try this,’ he said, as he joined her on the sofa, holding one of the glasses out towards her. ‘The grapes are grown in a region quite near to where I originally come from, I believe. It is quite sweet but I think you will enjoy it.’

Belinda nearly dropped the glass when she took it from him. It was cold, as if the wine inside had indeed been sitting in an ice bucket.

Count André grinned again and spoke a brief, unintelligible toast, presumably something from his own language. The word sounded a little like prosit, but with a curious part-gutteral part-musical inflection that Belinda didn’t think she could have mimicked if she had tried.

‘Cheers!’ she said, then put her glass to her lips.

The wine was chilled to exactly the right temperature. Belinda was so surprised that she drank half of it at one swallow, hardly noticing that it was also sublimely delicious.

‘It’s cool,’ she said, staring at the pellucid golden fluid.

‘So it is,’ replied Count André, lifting his own glass and staring at her intently over the top of it as he took the minutest of sips.

Suddenly Belinda desperately wanted to ask him how that was. She was prepared to swear that the various bottles had all been in the room for quite some time, and yet this wine was at the perfect low temperature for its character. The word ‘how’ formed on her lips, but she found herself unable to utter it. Her tongue felt unwieldy and locked in place somehow, and all she could do was see again that strange double-handed pass that André had made up and down the wine bottle.

The man’s a magician, she thought, then told herself not to be ridiculous. He was just a good host who thought ahead. He had probably had the wine brought up from the cellar a few minutes before he had come to her bedroom.

‘So, Belinda, are you and Jonathan betrothed?’

‘What a quaint expression. You mean engaged, don’t you?’ she countered. ‘No, we’re not. But we have known each other a long time.’

‘A long time,’ he murmured ruminatively. ‘Hmm. And what would you call a long time?’ His dark brows lifted, and Belinda noticed that unlike his hair, they were not beginning to grow blonder, but remained dramatically dark.

‘Three years.’

‘That’s not a long time,’ he said lightly, swirling his wine in his glass. ‘How long have you been lovers?’

It was a radical enquiry from someone she had only met a few minutes ago, and the Belinda of last week might have resented it and perceived her bumpy relationship with Jonathan threatened. But now, to her surprise, she faced the intimate question with equanimity.

‘Three years,’ she said evenly, then took a long sip of her wine as the man beside her digested her admission.

‘And does he please you?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘Only most? A woman like you should be pleased all the time …’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “a woman like me”, but I live in the real world, Count, and I don’t expect miracles.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ he said, still rocking his glass, still watching the way the wine clung to its rounded inner contours.

Belinda was watching his hands. She seemed to see that pass again. Up and down the bottle. Lingering over the glass and subtly changing its contents. Involuntarily she imagined a similar gesture performed over her body, and this time it was the induction of heat, not cold.

She looked up into his eyes and actually saw the heat burning in their depths like a volcanic blue flame.

He’s a mind reader, she thought, then admonished herself again for abject foolishness. This was the twentieth century, the age of hard science and rationality. Zoroastrian magic powers didn’t exist, even if you desperately wanted them to.

Count André was still looking at her, his eyes alight with a peculiar, dark-toned excitement.

‘What?’ she demanded, feeling shaken.

‘I was just wondering what you would look like naked.’

‘But you’ve already seen me naked,’ she pointed out, feeling mildy insulted. He had seen her body a few minutes ago in the bedroom. Was it so unmemorable that he had already forgotten it?

He shook his head, as if he was confused and trying to clear his thoughts, then gave her a curious and endearingly crooked smile.

‘Ah yes, of course I have,’ he conceded, ‘and you are indeed very beautiful.’ He frowned for a moment, and something sombre seemed to enter his expression, a cloud of fleeting sorrow that dulled every part of him. ‘Your Jonathan is a very lucky man. Blessed, I would say …’

His eyes went unfocused for a moment, as if he were looking straight through her body to another reality; to another Belinda. He put aside his glass, then slowly, oh so slowly, he reached out his hand towards the knot of her sash, touched it, and seemed to make it unfasten. The overlapping panels of black silk slid apart, and there was a ponderous, eternal-seeming silence.

‘So beautiful,’ whispered the count at length, his fingertips hovering an inch or so above her navel. Belinda felt the skin there begin to flutter, and the nerves in it grow excited and sensitive. Her vulva, so near, became moist. She saw his nostrils flare and knew he could scent her.

The moment was volatile and precarious, as if they were both in violent, agitated motion even while their two bodies remained still. Then Count André’s hand moved, infinitesimally, and he was touching the tender curve of her belly and sending an instantaneous jolt of pleasure to her sex.

Belinda gasped, and the count snatched back his fingers.

‘Forgive me,’ he muttered, reaching for her robe, as if to close it. ‘I have gone too far. I am sorry.’

Belinda was too shocked to speak, but her alarm was because the caress had ended, not begun. The sensation she had experienced from just a single fleeting touch had taken her breath away. It had moved her and beguiled her in a way that would have normally taken long minutes of industrious love-making. And its cessation was instantly unbearable.

She realised she was still holding her glass, so she put it down on the carpet at her feet. Then, without thinking, or even trying to, she simply lunged forward towards him, putting her half naked body directly into his arms so there was no way he could withdraw or reject her.

For a moment, Count André remained passive, accepting first her kiss, then her embrace, as she slid her arms around his waist. His mouth tasted very sweet to Belinda’s hungry lips, and the scent of his body was like roses. She felt his arms move up and grip her, then effortlessly and with grace, he swivelled her body, disengaging her hold on him, and turned her until she was sitting on his lap. Belinda could not work out quite how he had achieved this, all without breaking the kiss, but the position made her feel tiny and vulnerable. The whole of her naked torso, as well as her thighs and belly, were now displayed and accessible to his touch.

‘You are a very forthright woman,’ he whispered, lifting his mouth away from hers momentarily.

Belinda looked up into his face, then was forced to drop her gaze again. His eyes were too brilliant to bear so close up. She felt mesmerised, and quite weak, and her mouth opened when his touched it once again.

His tongue immediately slid inside the soft cavity, tracing her teeth then plunging deeper to duel with her tongue. He tasted of wine and almonds and something else hard to define yet tantalisingly delicious, and she moaned under her breath as he kissed her. Her body had never felt more alive.

As he continued to kiss, playing and exploring, she felt his hand settle once again on her belly, his long fingers splaying out across her skin. She felt him rubbing, gently circling and fondling the curve of her with his slightly bent fingers. He was nowhere near her sex yet it was affected, the delicate folds becoming swollen and very wet.

‘Do you wish me to touch you?’ he enquired, making the words a part of the kiss. His hand stilled, waiting in readiness for her permission.

Belinda could hardly believe what she had done. She had leapt straight from being in bed with one man to surrendering her body to another. There was no way she could resist this fascinating aristocrat, this stranger who was so honest yet so mysterious. She whispered ‘yes’ under his lips, then eased her thighs apart to give him access. As his hand slid lower, she heard him sigh so poignantly it was almost a sob.

‘It has been so long,’ he murmured, his mouth straying across her cheek and settling just below her ear. ‘So many, many years …’ His fingertip began gently inveigling its way through her pubic curls, moving cautiously as if her flesh were made of crystal and might shatter with rough treatment.

The approach was far too cautious for Belinda’s liking. She suddenly felt ravenous for his caress. She wanted this strange, strange man to lay his hands on her so she could come to know him through the contact. She wanted to absorb him, drink him in, understand how he could seem to know her so well; even though they had only met a few minutes ago. She surged on his knee, lifting her pelvis and circling it to encourage him, and pushing herself upward against his hand.

‘Hush!’ he said into her ear, his breath a cool wind against her brow. ‘Not so hasty. I will pleasure you, my sweet Belle, but we must go slowly. Bide our time. We have waited far too long to rush our joy and waste it.’

Belinda didn’t really understand what he was whispering about. Who had been waiting? And why had he suddenly called her ‘Belle’? Her mother had called her that many years ago in her childhood, but she was dead now and no one had used the name since. Not even her boyfriends. To Jonathan, she was always ‘Lindi’ at times like these.

The thought of Jonathan shocked her back into the reality of her situation. She was sprawled half-naked across the knee of a man she had met less than thirty minutes ago. She was about to let him touch her sex.

Oh no, oh dear God, he had closed the final gap and he was touching her! She wanted to struggle away, apologise and grab her belongings, then get out of this house as fast as she was able.

How could she do this? How could she betray her dear, patient, long-suffering Jonathan just when everything was starting to look up for them?

But the count’s clever fingertips were too artful to resist, flickering over her, both hot and cool at once, and invoking shallow ripples of ethereal stimulation. Belinda moaned hoarsely when he stroked the pulsing heart of her, then buried her face against his white shirt as she came.

It had all happened with so little warning that she was barely prepared for the intensity of her pleasure. She felt tears on her face as her body throbbed and glowed, and she clung to the count, to André, as if the safety of her very soul depended on him. The release, and the feelings it roused in her, seemed out of proportion to the relationship they shared.

What relationship? she thought as she regained her equilibrium. Snuggling against his chest, she felt almost giddy from the scent of his cologne, an intense and voluptuous essence of rose that suited him despite its feminine sweetness. I have no relationship with this man, she told herself, and I don’t know him. At all. I must be insane to have allowed him to touch me.

‘I’m sorry –’

‘Forgive me –’

The apologies, hers and his, came out simultaneously, and suddenly Belinda could see if not broad humour in the situation, then at least a lighter side to it. She sat up, drew back a little way along André’s knee, and looked him rather shamefacedly in the eye.

‘What on earth must you think of me?’ she said, plucking at the satin robe and managing to close it. ‘It must seem very “loose” of me, allowing you to touch me like that when we’ve only just met. I really can’t believe myself. I-I threw myself at you.’

He touched her face, smiling wryly, then took the ends of the robe’s sash and fastened it for her.

‘No, Belinda, the fault is mine,’ he said, his face shadowed with some indefinable, yet clearly painful emotion. ‘You reminded me of someone. Someone I miss desperately … And for a moment, I thought you were she, and I lost control of myself.’ He was looking down, staring at the loose black bow he had formed, but Belinda could almost swear she had seen tears. Then he looked up again, and his blue eyes were pacific and untroubled. ‘I must ask you again to forgive me.’ Without warning, he slid his hands around her waist, and rising himself, lifted her effortlessly on to her feet. ‘Will you do that? Shall we forget what just happened? And begin again … as good friends?’ He held out his hand again, the same hand that had touched her so beautifully. ‘I promise I will try to behave myself from now on.’

Once again, the transition from one dynamic to another was staggeringly fast. Belinda had a strong urge to shake her head in an attempt to clear it. Had she imagined what had just happened? Perhaps it was a fantasy? A dream of some kind. She was tired and confused, what with the breakdown and the storm and all. Maybe what she thought had just happened had really occurred only in her mind?

At a loss to frame a reply, Belinda allowed her hand to be taken and this time squeezed in affirmation instead of kissed.

‘And now, I believe it is time to dress for dinner,’ the count said briskly, offering his arm. ‘May I escort you to your room?’

‘Yes. Of course,’ she answered, still feeling befuddled by the change from intimacy to courtesy. She took his arm, as indicated, and allowed herself to be led back the way they had come earlier.

‘You are free, and welcome, to stay here as long as you wish, Belinda,’ he said as they began to ascend the stairs. ‘The storm last night was unusual, I believe. Apart from it, we have been enjoying a spell of quite clement weather. I am sure that you will find the priory very restful.’ He turned to her, his smile slight, but latent with unexpected significance. ‘As I do.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but –’ The words died on her lips. For a moment, she seemed to see the places she and Jonathan had planned to visit, their itinerary mapped out before them, and Paula, waiting in puzzlement for their call. Then, inexplicably, none of it interested her any more. She looked around her: at the polished panels of the landing, the rare furnishings, the lavish pictures, then finally back to her smiling enigma of a host. ‘I’d love to stay,’ she heard herself say, ‘and I’m sure Jonathan will too. He said only yesterday that he was getting fed up of driving. It’s very kind of you to ask us.’

‘It is my pleasure,’ replied André quietly, stepping back and making another of his minute bows. ‘It is a long time since I had such –’ He paused as he straightened, and his blue eyes seemed to flare even brighter ‘– such compatible company.’ He stepped back, still looking at her intently. ‘Until dinner then. The dining room is to be found directly across the hall from the library. A bientôt!’

French as well now, thought Belinda as her host turned on his heel like a cavalry officer and strode away down the landing in the direction of the stairs that led up to the long gallery and his tower. And just what other talents and accomplishments does he possess? she pondered, turning the huge cut-glass door knob and opening the door to her room.

Fool! You damned fool!

André cursed himself as he ascended the stairs to his eyrie, taking them two at a time in his impatience, and making the most of his current strength and vigour.

The temptation of Belinda Seward had been too great for him to resist in his newly-wakened and not yet fully-adjusted state. The girl was so much like Arabelle, her body so sweet and so gently rounded at breast and hip, that it had been almost like caressing his beloved again. As he entered his chamber he gasped aloud with yearning, praying with all his heart that he had not gone too far and too fast and ruined everything. As ever, for reassurance, he glanced towards Belle’s rosewood casket, but its blue glow was subdued and quiescent.

Could Belinda Seward really be the one? he thought, drawing aside the veils around his bed and tying them back. Had he finally found a woman who was fully compatible? He flung himself on the bed and considered the prospect.

They had been close from time to time, he and Arabelle, and enjoyed a few all-too-brief interludes of stolen communion. But these episodes were almost as painful as they were comforting. To hold Belle in his arms again and touch her and give her pleasure meant everything to him; but on each occasion they had known their happiness was transient. There was always the knowledge that in a few moments it would all be over again, and she would lose her hold on her host and have to leave. It seemed cruel to even attempt being together under such circumstances, but the state of missing her hurt him so hideously that he couldn’t forgo even the slightest chance of happiness.

Should he wake Belle? Tell her what he had found? He turned again towards the box and the crystal vial that lay within it, but his mind was still full of doubt. It would be too cruel to inspire her hopes just yet. Perhaps it would be better to wait until he was sure. Sure that Belinda Seward was the woman who could help them, and also certain that he wasn’t going to spoil everything by snatching too greedily for the sustaining pleasure he so needed. Covering his face with his hands, he tried to relax his taut body and find the stillness and composure to think clearly.

But such quietude was difficult to achieve and his mind remained active, pondering and ruminating incessantly in the blackness behind his fingers. Once again, he felt the urge to reach for Belle.

Suddenly, he sensed a change in the room’s solemn ambience. He dropped his hands from his face, sat up, and stared towards the casket, his hopes rising as the fey blue light intensified and into the silence came the answer to his invocation.

My love, you are awake. Are you troubled?

Her voice was as gentle and animated as it had been in life, and it soothed his anxious spirit with a sense of peacefulness and stoicism he could barely credit given the parameters of her existence.

‘Yes, I am troubled,’ he answered, speaking aloud as seemed natural when her voice sounded so real to him. ‘I think I may have found her, my love. The one who can help us. She seems a perfect match but I cannot help but be afraid.’

Afraid to die? Arabelle asked, her voice soft and steady in his mind.

‘No, never that,’ he answered. ‘I shall be glad of it when the time comes … No, what I am afraid of is that I may harm her. This Belinda. She is so much like you, my darling. I could be fond of her, perhaps, had you never existed, and I have to question my right to risk her life.’

Arabelle remained silent but he sensed that she was listening patiently, letting him take his time.

‘And yet if I do not try, you can never be released, my love!’ he cried out, feeling torn a thousand ways by his emotions.

Hush, my André, do not fret, Arabelle soothed. If this thing is meant to happen, it will. Perhaps, if you are open with her … if you tell her of our plight, and let her choose, she will help us of her own free will.

‘Perhaps you are right,’ murmured André, lifting his hands away from his face and staring at them. Those fingers had touched Belinda Seward a little while ago, but many decades in the past they had once caressed Arabelle. He could still remember the superlative softness of her skin, the way she would sigh when he stroked her and blush when he pushed and took liberties. Her erotic soul had just been stirring and growing when they were parted, and each time they had been together he had sensed her wanting him and becoming more daring. The fact that they had so nearly been one flesh, yet never been allowed to achieve that precious goal, was like someone plunging his black-handled dagger into his chest again and again, in blows that hurt and bled and went on hurting, yet which could never give the release he so craved.

Do not torture yourself, my love. Remember what we shared with pleasure, not sadness. Arabelle’s voice echoed in his mind like a clear, high bell, a sound so lovely that he started feeling better. Look forward with hope, my André, and take comfort where you can … I truly believe that all may yet be well.

André still had his doubts, and he knew that his wise, all-perceiving beloved was fully aware of them, but as he sent his mind across the years and imagined her sweet body in his arms, his heart grew calmer and he closed his eyes and smiled.