Eleanor found Annette waiting in her new room—the mistress of Edenfell’s chamber. As Annette helped her out of her clothes and into her best blue nightgown and robe, Eleanor examined her new bedroom. Blue and ivory walls, ivory wainscoting, a large brick fireplace and over it, a portrait of Søren’s great-grandmother, a handsome woman who had been the first Lady Stearns when her husband was given a barony as a reward for some vital service to the Crown.
The canopy bed was dark blue with oak posts and piled high with soft down pillows and a blue silk coverlet. A camelback love seat covered in striped blue and ivory fabric sat under the curtained windows. All this was hers now. All this beauty. All this wealth. The house. The land that stretched for a thousand acres or more. The trees. The gardens. The stables and the horses.
She would have traded it all for the truth from Søren.
Exhausted from the day’s travels and last night’s trials, she dismissed Annette and sank into the armchair by the fire with a book she had no intention of reading.
Just then she heard a soft knock on her door. Not the main door but the connecting door between her room and the master’s suite. Before she could answer, Søren entered.
He’d removed his gray jacket. He looked quite dashing in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves and his usually perfect hair rakishly disheveled. He stood at the fireplace, arms crossed over his chest, not three steps away from her. She pretended she didn’t see him and stared through him into the fire.
“You wish to know the truth,” he said. “I will tell it to you though you might not like what you hear.”
“Anything is superior to not knowing.”
“Very well. But do not say you were not warned.” He paused and took a breath. “Are you familiar with a certain novel by a man named John Polidori called The Vampyre?”
“Of course,” she said. If it was lurid and strange and sensual, she’d not only read it, she’d read it twice. “Why?”
“The reason I left you last night and three years ago is because…I am a vampire, Eleanor. And when I come too close to beautiful young maidens, I’m overwhelmed with an insatiable need to drink their blood. That is why I left you and keep leaving you—to save you from my bloodlust.”
She stared at him. His face was utterly serious and solemn. His tone was truthful and his eyes earnest.
“Are you truly?” she breathed.
“No.”
Eleanor threw the Complete Works of Shakespeare at him. Luckily, as it was an expensive and rare volume, he caught it and set it neatly on the mantel.
“How could you?” she asked. “How could you leave and then mock me like that?”
“Because I am a cruel and wicked man. And also because if I prepare you for the absolute worst, then perhaps you’ll take the truth a little better.”
“I don’t wish to hear it anymore.”
“Nonetheless, you will. Come into my bedroom.”
“I don’t enter the bedrooms of vampires or men who pretend to be vampires.”
“Generally, a good rule of thumb. But tonight, you will come into my bedroom.”
“I shan’t and that’s the end of it.”
“Eleanor, I am your husband, your lord and master, pater familias of this family and you are required by the Church and the Crown to obey my every will, whim, and command, no matter how immoral or arbitrary. You are my property, and you will no more tell me no when I give you an order than a chair will refuse to let me sit in it.”
“What will you do to me if I go to your bedroom with you?” she demanded. “Throw me on the bed again, use me and abandon me?”
“I will sit you on my lap and make you look at French pornography with me.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking. “You will?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor rose to her feet and said primly, “You only had to ask.”
The master’s suite was far larger than the mistress’s and as dark and masculine as her bedroom was light, airy, and feminine. While her room held only a dainty little writing desk, his bedroom contained a large desk in an alcove surrounded on three sides by windows that looked down on the lake. The room was brightly-lit—every candle blazing, the fire hot and high, and not one but two oil lamps burning on the large desk.
He sat in the red velvet-covered desk chair and pulled her down onto his lap. She tried to ignore the bed behind them—the grand four-post bed with the silk covers the color of red wine and the fire burning in the brick fireplace.
“Kingsley was kind enough to lend me his collection,” Søren said as he opened a large leather folio. It felt delicious to sit on his lap, one arm around her waist holding her against him as he turned the pages of the folio.
“I have a question for you,” he began. “The night you invited me to your bedroom, three years ago. What did you want to happen that night?”
The question took Eleanor aback. Of all the things to ask…
“The obvious, I think. That you would take me to bed with you.”
“What precisely were you picturing would happen? Was it this?” He turned to a photograph in the folio—a naked woman with voluptuous breasts lay draped over a divan, a swarthy naked man braced over her, his large cock entering her body. Her face was a mask of pleasure—real or feigned for the photographer, Eleanor couldn’t say. But her heart raced madly at the sight of it. She’d never seen photographs like this before. Drawings of naked women, or paintings, yes, but photographs? Of people engaged in the sex act?
“I…Oh my Lord.” She laughed, shocked and delighted.
“Or this?” Søren turned to another photograph. In this one, the woman was on her hands and knees, the man behind her, cock entering from the back. Eleanor could only stare and squirm on Søren’s lap.
“Or perhaps this?” Søren turned another page and there was the woman seated on top of the man, his hands on her naked hips and his organ entering her from below. “Well?”
“I suppose,” she said. Her toes curled up in her slippers. “Any of them would do. I…I knew how it works, of course.”
Her face was burning hot and her stomach was terribly tight and fluttering.
“What did you dream would happen with us?” Søren asked again. “Don’t be shy. We’re married now, and these are things I need to know, just as there are things you need to know about my desires.”
“I stayed up,” she said, “reading. I wanted you to see the light on under my door so you would know I was awake. I…” This was so hard to speak about. She was so good at saying outrageous things when she wanted to shock people, but when she was alone with Søren and he was asking her to tell him her private thoughts, she found herself flustered and tongue-tied.
“Go on.” He pressed a soft kiss on her neck under her ear.
“I thought you would come into my room and…and you would kiss me again and we would undress and get into bed. And we would touch each other. After that it’s all a bit…hazy. As I said, I knew how it worked, in theory. But in practice…I hoped you would tell me what to do once we were in bed, that you would instruct me so I could please you.”
He nodded, smiling as if her answer had pleased him.
“I need to show you some etchings now,” he said. “You might not like them nearly as much. These are from an illustrated edition of one of the stories of the notorious Marquis de Sade. A violent and depraved man who engaged in sexual acts so brutal he nearly killed several of his lovers. He’s French, of course. That should explain everything.”
Eleanor tensed as Søren turned a few loose pages until he came to a drawing of a naked girl in some sort of bare stone room or dungeon. Her wrists were bound above her head to an iron ring and a man stood behind her, whipping her with something like a cat o’nine tails.
“This is a flogging,” Søren said. He turned the page to an etching of another naked girl, bent over what looked like a church’s prie-dieu though it was clear the girl was not praying. A man was using a belt of some kind to beat her buttocks. Her face was contorted in agony.
“God,” Eleanor breathed. The room had grown uncomfortably warm.
“You asked me about my secrets,” Søren said. “Here is one of them. The night you rested your head on my knee, told me you loved me and invited me to your bedroom…I did come to your room.”
“You did?”
“I came as far as the door, as far as putting my hand on the doorknob.” He pointed at the leather strap in the hand of the man in the etching, “In my other hand was that, a leather strap.”
“A strap?”
“For beating you,” Søren said. She turned her head, met his eyes. He returned her gaze.
“Beating me?”
Søren pulled out the photograph of the couple having intercourse on the divan.
“This,” he said, “does not arouse me. Not alone. Not the photograph of it. Not even the act. This, however, does.” He put the etching of the man strapping the girl’s bottom next to it. “This is what arouses me—inflicting pain. Until I do so, inflict pain, that is, I’m unable to become aroused enough to do this.” He pointed at the copulating couple. “I wanted to be with you like this…” He pointed again at the couple mid-coitus. “But to do so I would have had to hurt you in some way, which is why I brought the strap with me. And when I caught myself outside your door, strap in hand, I knew I had to leave, immediately, and put as much distance as possible between us.”
“That’s why you left? Not because you didn’t want me but because you did?”
“A month after you came to live at Edenfell,” he said, “you ran away. Do you remember?”
“Of course. I had a cough and I was frightened that I—”
“You thought you had consumption,” he said. “It killed your mother and for years after, even a little cough would make you afraid you had it and it would kill you, too,” he said. “And that’s why you ran away. You wanted to protect all of us—from you. When I caught you, you said you hated me and that’s why you were leaving. You wanted to go home to London. All lies.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me leave if you thought I was ill. I had to lie.” Eleanor shook her head. “Why are we talking about this? It was years ago.”
“I had seen my father terrorize his wives—first my mother, then Claire’s. He enjoyed making them fear him. He wouldn’t always beat them. Sometimes the threat alone and the terror in their eyes was enough to…delight him. Every little cough scared you into thinking you had what your mother had. Imagine how it is for me, seeing his cruelty and fearing, all my life, I am also infected with that same cruelty.”
“But I didn’t have consumption,” she said. “Only a cold. And you are not cruel like your father. Whatever he had, you are not…infected.”
“It’s simple enough to believe that when I’m with Kingsley. He enjoys receiving pain as much as I enjoy giving it. But no woman in her right mind would enjoy the sort of pain I give him. And if I tried and I hurt you and you hated me for it…I’m not sure I could live with myself.”
“I’m confused…” She shook her head. “Last night you were aroused. You did want me and you did…you were inside me.”
“Kingsley volunteered to play whipping boy. I beat him with a tawse. When I grew aroused, I went to you. If I hadn’t beaten Kingsley, I would not have been able to…perform. Without inflicting pain first…Eleanor, I simply can’t.”
He took a deep shuddering breath. “Last night, you were a virgin, your body unopened. When I opened you, there was pain and tearing and that aroused me even more. I came very close to losing control of myself. Which I have done in the past and Kingsley’s body paid the price for it. You invited me to do anything to you. ‘Anything’ you said over and over. I saw the candle and nearly poured scalding wax onto your breasts. That’s why I left you so abruptly and walked for an hour out in the cold until I was calm again. Because I wanted to hurt you, so much it terrified me.”
“Søren—” she began. He held up his hand to silence her.
“There are more secrets I have to tell you. I loved it here at Edenfell mainly because my father hated country life and wanted nothing to do with the place. I spent most of my time at school or here. When things grew unbearable between my father and Claire’s mother Annabelle, she would stay here without him.” He took a breath. “I was fourteen and Claire was about two years old. I’d spent the day playing with Claire, carrying her around the house, talking to her, petting the horses with her. It charmed my stepmother apparently. That night she came to my bedroom. And…she kissed me.”
“Oh, God,” she said.
“I was shocked but…she was a beautiful woman, only twenty-four years old, and I let the kiss go on longer than I should have. She invited me to have her, and I did want to, if only to punish my father. Things progressed and I pushed her onto her back. Then I…I held her wrists so hard she cried out. She pushed me off her and slapped me. She said, ‘Damn you. I thought you were different, but you’re just like your father.’”
Eleanor had no words. Only tears.
“That was when I left home,” he said and wiped a tear from her face. “I packed up my things and what money I had, and booked passage to Rome. There I entered a Catholic seminary and began my training to join the priesthood someday. I thought I should never be close to anyone again because of what I was. And I would have been a priest if I hadn’t heard some of the other seminarians whispering about a notorious Roman brothel run by a woman named Magdalena. Not a normal brothel, but a place where men went to either beat pretty naked girls with birch rods or to be beaten by pretty naked girls with birch rods. Or boys.”
“That’s where you met Kingsley?”
He nodded. “After his parents died in a carriage accident, and his father’s estate was sold off to pay the debts, he had nothing. He ran away to Rome where he thought he had distant family somewhere. Instead he was picked up by a police officer on Magdalena’s payroll. She took him in, put him to work. Very quickly, he rose in the ranks. He was, as you see, quite special.”
He turned a page to reveal a faded daguerréotype of a teenaged girl in a sumptuous gown draped over the arm of a fainting couch, her lips slightly parted, her figure a perfect hourglass, an otherworldly beauty surrounding her like an aura.
“You could say Kingsley was the first girl I ever fell in love with,” Søren said. “Magda called him her Principessa. Princess.”
“Oh, she’s so beautiful,” Eleanor breathed. “No wonder you wanted her.” Impossible to think of the “her” in the photograph as a he, even knowing it was Kingsley in a dress. She was simply too female, too lovely…a true Princess.
“I desired women,” Søren said, “but I refused to beat them, which meant I could never be with a woman. With Kingsley, I had a beautiful girl who I could beat as viciously as any man. A girl trained to take beatings. A girl who loved them. And after some time, it didn’t matter to me if he were dressed as a boy or a girl. After Claire’s mother killed herself, I came home to see to it that Claire was safe with relatives—not my father. Once she was safe with her aunt, I swore I’d never set foot in England again. It was only when my father had been deemed ‘insane’ by his physicians and needed putting away that I finally returned. And it so happened, during a trip to London to meet with Father’s solicitors, a girl bumped into me on the street, and the next thing I knew, my wallet and pocket-watch were missing.”
The pocket-watch had been a gift from Søren’s maternal grandfather, also named Søren. All the pawnshops in London were on alert for it, generous reward promised. That was how she’d gotten caught. There in the police station, while awaiting her fate—hard time in a brutal workhouse undoubtably—Søren himself came to pay her bail and see about her release.
“Four years ago this month,” she said. “Do you remember what I said to you in the police station?”
“You asked me,” Søren said, “‘Are you one of them wicked lords who takes poor girls off the streets and does all sorts of nasty things to them?’”
“And you said ‘no.’ And I said—”
“You said, ‘Pity.’” Søren smiled. “The absolute cheek. The constable nearly slapped you in the face. Meanwhile…I think that was the moment I began to love you.”
And it had been when she’d fallen in love with him, when he’d first come into the police station, sat across from her, and asked her if she was cold. He’d offered her his coat, and she’d been too ashamed of his kindness to accept it, though she had been freezing. He put it round her shoulders anyway.
“Are you angry?” Søren asked. “Hurt? Frightened? Disappointed?”
“I am…” She took a long breath. “Intrigued.”
“Intrigued? Better than horrified.”
“No, no, certainly not horrified. Relieved, I think, too. That I know what it is now that was coming between us all this time. I wish you’d told me before but now, I do understand.”
“I want us to have a happy marriage,” Søren said. “If you wish it, we can be as we were last night. I can hurt Kingsley and then come to you. I think with time and patience, we—”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
She rose from his lap and went to the fireplace. She took the candle in its brass holder from the mantel, lit it in the fire and returned to Søren.
“Hurt me,” she said. “Please?”
“Eleanor…” He rested his forehead on his hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” He lifted his head. “Never. It’s only…”
“What?”
He closed his eyes. “I have dreamt of this. I have dreamt of you asking me to hurt you. You speak so matter-of-factly as if you don’t realize you’re bringing every dream I’ve ever had to life.”
“What don’t you do what you dream then?” she asked.
“There is no sin in a dream. You kill a man and it isn’t murder. You bed a woman and it isn’t adultery. But done awake, it is a sin.”
Eleanor set the candle on his desk. She went again into his lap.
“But we aren’t awake,” she said softly. “Didn’t you know? All this…you and me, this house, our marriage…it’s only a dream. Mine? Yours? Someone else’s a thousand miles and a hundred years away. And you know what happens in dreams? Anything. Anything at all. You can swim under the ocean like a fish or fly in the sky like a bird. You can walk on the moon and dance among the stars and touch the sun and not get burned. Or be as wicked with your wife as you would ever want to be.”
“Are you sure it’s a dream? It feels quite real to me.”
“I’ll prove it. You say no woman in her right mind would desire the pain you describe, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Am I in my right mind?”
“I saw enough of madness at my father’s sanitarium to know you are of perfectly sound mind.”
“And yet…” She lifted the candle from the holder and dripped the hot wax from it onto the inside of her own wrist. Søren’s chest heaved as the wax fell. It hurt but it was worth that pain times a thousand for the burning look in his eyes.
“See?” she said. “I liked it. I want more. Must be a dream.”
Eleanor gave him the candle and stood. She took off her robe and sat on his lap again, straddling his thighs, facing him. Then she unbuttoned her nightgown and pulled it open to bare her breasts.
“Only a dream,” she said again. He let a drop of wax fall. It landed on the top of her right breast. It stung and burned and she flinched and hissed. Then laughed at her flinching.
“Too much?” he asked.
“Not enough.”
His eyebrow arched. His mouth quirked into an almost smile. He let another drop fall. Then another and another. It hurt, yes, but it excited her as well. The anticipation, the sudden thrill of pain, the way Søren looked at her as if he was seeing her again for the first time, and the power in knowing his most intimate secret and playing with him this private game.
She could have taken a cathedral’s share of candles on her body to please him but it seemed a dozen drops or more was enough to arouse him. He set the candle on the desk. He lifted the skirt of her gown, opened his trousers and lifted her up and guided his cock into her. When he pushed her into her this time—unlike last night—there was no resistance. She was still wet and open from his fingers not an hour ago inside of her.
Eleanor moaned, clinging to his shoulders as he lifted and lowered her onto him again. Once fully inside her, he kissed her mouth, her neck, her breasts. She returned his kisses and caresses, finally allowed to touch him as she wanted since her first night under his roof. She unbuttoned his waistcoat, his shirt, touched his broad strong naked chest, the ivory tower of his neck, and ran her hands through his golden hair.
She throbbed between her legs, throbbed inside the passage he filled, ached where they joined. She reached between their bodies, touching his organ as it split her, touched herself where she ached. Her wetness was all over him.
“Little One,” he breathed into her ear. In reply, she tilted her hips and sealed herself to him. And then he stood, lifting her on him and with him, pressing her down onto the desk and there he took her, making her his wife and claiming her as his own. Her body tensed and froze and when she came it was with a cry loud enough the servants would all know that the Baron and Baroness had a very happy marriage indeed.
Søren buried his head against her neck and held her close as he released into her, filling her with his seed and at last consummating their marriage.
Drowsy and happy, she wrapped her arms around him as he held her again in his lap on the red velvet chair.
“What shall we dream next?” she asked between tender kisses.
Søren replied, “Let’s dream about Kingsley.”