To be honest the four-hour ride was a blur. I remember what we talked about though the exact words are lost in thick feelings. Being in such close quarters with him, all other senses cut off from the world by the black of the carriage, was intoxicating. The thoughts I had were unheard of and best not spoken. Julian Lawrence was titillating and made me feel lustful, but easy and comfortable with what should have been shocking.

He sat on the same side as I and hadn’t released my hand. The feeling of extreme comfort and ease continued. Our hips pressed against each other’s. When he spoke, he did so by putting his mouth so close to my ear that his breath kissed and caressed my neck. Every time his lips grazed my lobe, I melted, relaxing a little more. He, on the other hand, seemed to become more and more excited.

We talked about my stay at the asylum in hushed tones. Julian was not shocked by any of my abilities or my application of them. Exceedingly strong and fast, he too dealt out violence when circumstances demanded it. My fiancé knew I had killed. Happy to have my parents out of the picture, Julian swore that, had he known what was happening, he would have killed them himself. The only thing that gave him pause was how I could not remember it. He brushed it off as a young mind’s attempt to protect itself from trauma. I should not have been forced to act at such an early age. The more we talked about it, while touching, the better I felt about it. About everything.

“I am excited beyond anything in recent memory. It is…frustrating.” He removed his jacket, laying it on the seat opposite us. He rolled up his sleeve and had to let my hand go to do so. I came back to my senses momentarily, although not far enough to resist when he put his arm around my bare shoulders. He put his other hand on my lap.

“I will not look, my dear. Only let me touch you.”

It seemed a reasonable request at the time. I don’t know why. Touching was much more intimate than looking. I leaned my head back to rest in the crook of his elbow in acquiescence. The hand of that same arm lightly fingered my throat, my clavicles, my chest, before slipping down inside my bodice and corset to palm my breast. My legs fell open only a fraction but he noticed.

He fisted my skirts, pulling up the bunches of fabric, until its hem lay above the knee. He pulled my leg that lay closest to him over his, opening me more. Sliding his hand further and further inside my leg, he stopped to groan when his fingers touched the bare leg above my stockings.

“So soft. So perfect.” He tarried there, whispering compliments for how long I do not know—so caught up was I in the comforting blanket of his touch. I jumped when he moved north, to the junction of my legs. His sliding fingers were agony. I knew what would happen if he touched me right.

I whimpered and squirmed until he did just that. I moaned loudly and may have heard laughter from the outside of the carriage. “I love this body. I long for the day I will be inside of it.” Such wanton words I had never heard and I thought I might combust with need. “Oh, how I wish…” he muttered almost to himself, “such thoughts are folly.”

My head rolled back and he retrieved a leather bundle from his jacket pocket. Untying the thong, he unrolled the pouch onto his lap, revealing an assortment of tools that were unfamiliar to me. Touching each one, he mentally weighed each option, before settling on a small, shiny scalpel. A series of short, quick movements were made before the implement was replaced. Julian laid his head back next to me and his expression matched my own. He was satisfied and made it known with a long drawn-out sigh.

I looked down at a sudden burst of color. “Julian, your arm is bleeding,” I mentioned in a calm, almost drowsy voice. It was an observation, not a concern as it should have been. The red welled up from the five tiny parallel cuts in his forearm and slowly dripped onto his pant leg.

He had me roll up his handkerchief and then tie it around his arm like a common bandage, even though it was made of the finest cambric and must have been expensive. The red immediately soaked through and made the most beautiful blotchy designs. I nestled myself into the hollow of Julian’s arms and he drew on my skin with his fingertips. I was awash with sensations and cried out his name.

“Yes?”

I opened my eyes to find I was alone on my side of the carriage. Sir Lawrence sat on the other side looking as if he’d been there the whole time, his clothes straight, his book open in hand. His eyebrows were up in question. “You drifted off. I saw no harm in letting you sleep since the ride was very long. I was lost in my book when you called my name. You must have been dreaming.” He smiled and it looked devious to me.

The carriage came to a stop and there was a tap on the top, signaling our arrival. He moved to exit, his handkerchief slipping from under the cuff of his shirt. He tucked it in quickly, saying, “I find it pleases me to hear it from your lips whether you are conscious of saying it or not,” as the door opened.

It had looked a bit bloody to me.

 

Julian dropped us, my trunks, and the bulk of our security escort at the postern of my family home in the West End residential area of Mayfair. His house was on Park Lane overlooking the great Hyde Park. Both were in the respectable area of London but his was on the ritziest residential street in the city. He left and promised to be back in the morning to help ready me for presentation at court. Tomorrow I was to be presented to the queen herself and I hadn’t even been to a proper dinner yet. I wasn’t ready.

The house was nothing like I remembered. It seemed smaller, but that could have been because I lived there when I was smaller and therefore it had seemed bigger. The furniture, fixtures, and fillings were new. From Julian, I had no doubt. The servants, who had lined up according to position to greet us, were unfamiliar. They were also all male. I asked the butler, who introduced himself as Darville, why this was when male servants were so much more expensive both in salary and in tax.

He apologized profusely and explained that all the women that had interviewed had been too frightened to work for this house. With the pause between the words “for” and “this house,” I felt he was implying they were afraid to work for me. He was glad I had brought my own lady’s maid as he hadn’t been able to think of a solution to the house’s lack thereof.

I introduced my entourage as Mrs. Federick, my lady’s maid, and Miss Moira, my personal chambermaid. They were to be treated with respect at all times and were the only personnel permitted in my private chambers for any reason. The men accepted this and I instructed Darville that, though he could divide up the household chores as he saw fit, my maids took orders only from me. He nodded in agreement and added that dinner would be served at nine.

I went to refamiliarize myself with my home. Hester and Moira followed closely behind. They looked on in amazed silence, stunned that I had grown up in such a grand house. After seeing the parlor, dining room, and all the public rooms, we took a walk in the gallery. Here, nothing had changed.

The same dreary faces stared down at us from the walls of the corridor used for housing the ancestral portraits. My father and mother were at the far end along with my brother and I. Thankfully, no one mentioned my mother’s odd attire or appearance.

Hester admitted, “Your brother is quite handsome. You look nothing alike.” She blanched. “I didn’t mean…That is to say… You are quite fine also. It’s only that my brother and I are so similar.”

“Don’t fret. I took no offense. People often note our differences.” Where I was light, Thaddeus was dark. Dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes—he looked more like an Arab than an Englishman. Darville was standing far enough away to give us privacy but adequately close to be of use should we need. I called for him and asked how my brother was.

He looked embarrassed and I didn’t understand since my question was commonplace. “You will need to ask Sir Lawrence, my lady, as Viscount Dathmoore has not resided here since I took my post.”

My father had been Henry Winmoore III, Earl of Brooksberry, making his first son, my brother, Viscount Dathmoore. Brooksberry was a large estate held by entail, meaning that this house, the Brooksberry country estate, family fortune, and title of Earl belonged to Thaddeus now. I only wondered why Darville hadn’t referred to him as such. Thaddeus was of age, older than I, and should have taken his rightful place here.

I took them up the grand staircase to the drawing rooms, library, and study.

I was uneasy in the study. This was where my parents had died. The floorboards were bleached white when I know they had been dark before. I blanched as I realized that must have been to remove the stains their blood had left. Wordlessly, Hester pulled us from that room and up still more stairs to the family’s private rooms.

The furniture here was the same. Julian must not have seen any reason to update these furnishings. My trunks were resting in my parents’ dressing room. It was to be mine. There, the walls were covered with photographs of Thaddeus and I. When Hester inquired about them I informed her, “It was a hobby of my father’s. He was obsessed with taking our portraits.”

I studied one in particular of my brother and I, remembering the day it was taken. We were not allowed to touch—mine was not a home filled with affection—but on this day, Papa had positioned us so that Thaddeus’ hand lay on my bare arm. As I stood in front of him, my back against his front, a hardness in his pants grew and pressed against me. At that time, I had not known what it was. I did now and was grateful it was not visible in the photograph. The look on his face shouted almost as loudly, though.

Hester called from across the room, “I didn’t know you were a twin.”

I went to her. “I’m not.”

“Then, who is this?” She pointed at a picture of me.

I furrowed my brow. “That’s me.”

“And this one?”

“Me.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Of course.”

“Sorry. It’s just that in this one you look like you, but this one, you are shorter and stouter,” she said, pointing out the differences. “You are wearing the same dress so the time between them could not have been much.”

I looked closely at the two photographs in question. The girl Hester thought was someone else looked like me but there were differences. She looked angrily at the photographer as I would never have dared. Her clothes and hair were slightly disheveled, as if she’d been running. Her eyes were much darker than mine, though photography of the time did not allow me to tell the color. It was a portrait of a girl capable of the violence I had administered. Was this a picture of my demon? I stifled a shiver, took the picture down and hid it in the dressing room, a closet that held the wardrobe for my first London season. It was stocked with new and expensive ball gowns of every color in the rainbow. Once there, all thoughts turned from the odd frightening picture of me and toward gowns.

  

After dinner, which turned out to be mostly an etiquette lesson from Darville for me at Sir Lawrence’s request, I asked Hester to stay with me in my room for the night. It had been a stressful day and I needed to rest before tomorrow, which promised to be even worse. I needed something familiar and comforting and Hester was that to me. Truth be told I would have rather had Julian with me, even from that very first night, but I would never have said that aloud. Moira took her trunk into my closet and seemed quite comfortable there.

Hester agreed to stay. She wanted to talk to me about what happened between us that last night in the asylum, wanted me to know that she wasn’t one of the “third sex” women who sought out erotic relationships with women. With no desire to be the male of any family, she was, adamantly, not a lesbian.

She loved me, though. Something came over her when touching me. It inflamed her unlike the touch of any other person. The most carnal thoughts were born from even the most innocent of skin on skin. Admittedly, she had felt it the first day we’d met when brushing my cheek in what she thought was a motherly way. Confused and ashamed—no one should think of a child that way—she had initiated aggressive sex with her husband.

I assured her it was all right. I was a woman now and quite capable of handling the advances. I patted her hand in an attempt to soothe her and before I knew it we were naked. I kissed her bruises and she said they felt better. We touched each other softly, as if firm contact would shatter the delicate equilibrium we had.

After, while she slept, I explored my parents’ room. Their things were all removed; this was my room now. Only the family jewelry remained in Mama’s standing jewelry cabinet. The burglar-resistant safe was in the same place behind a wooden panel in the wall. Though I knew where the box was, I had no idea where its key was kept. I also did not know what Papa had kept inside. The money and valuables, other than the jewels my mother kept in her cabinet, were downstairs in the study safe. I decided that if I could not locate the key tomorrow, I would simply tear it open. I had always wanted to know what secrets he kept there. With Julian’s words about my father, I wondered if it held a story of my childhood different than the one I had in my head.