‘But why don’t you want Captain Peterson here?’ Morwen said in exasperation, as she slid between the sheets and hunched up in the bed watching Ben strip off his clothes for the night.
Her dark hair fell over her arms and knees like a silk curtain, and she tossed its tickling tresses away impatiently. For the life of her, she couldn’t see what Ben’s objections to his friend’s presence could be.
The evening had been perfectly fascinating, and listening to the tales of an officer’s life in the midst of the Crimean war had brought it all more vividly to life than any dull old newspaper account ever could.
It amazed her that Ben didn’t see it in the same light, considering,the hours he pored over his stuffy London papers, and exclaimed harshly at the waste of so many lives, especially when one and then another that were familiar to him from his college days appeared in the deceased columns.
Captain Peterson was bright and charming, and was already insisting that she must call him Neville, since he and Ben were such old friends.
Morwen could still hear her husband’s undignified snort at the remark, and simply couldn’t understand it. She would have expected him to be intent on Captain Peterson’s every word, instead of cutting him short at every opportunity.
Morwen wondered suddenly if after all, Ben regretted the fact that he had never been at liberty to seek an army commission himself, instead of being stuck with the ownership of Killigrew Clay, and therefore couldn’t bear to hear such first-hand accounts. There were few enough clayworkers who would agree with such sentiments, but Ben’s ideas were far removed from theirs.
Wars in distant shores seemed part of another world to humble clayworkers who worked hard enough to earn a crust to fill hungry bellies, and considered their duty began at home and not fighting overseas. They would leave that to those who had fighting in their blood, or ambitions to fill officers’ uniforms.
Was Ben wishing he had been able to do just that after all? The very thought made Morwen uneasy. The Captain was gallant and charming, but she would hate to be the wife of such a man. Morwen wanted her husband at home, by her side, in her bed at night. The knowledge was too natural to make her blush.
‘I don’t wish to discuss Neville Peterson,’ Ben said as he joined her in the bed. ‘It’s enough that he’s here, and thanks to you he’s going to stay until God knows when! I’ll thank you in future to leave me to issue my own invitations.’
Morwen swallowed. The harsh words hardly echoed her own romantic sentiments of moments before. This day had begun so beautifully, and she thought she had done what Ben would want. Somehow it was all turning sour. As if to add to her dismay, she heard the soft patter of rain on the windows and shivered. She tried to summon up an angry retort and failed.
‘I’m sorry. I only meant to act graciously,’ she muttered. ‘I thought it was what you’d want of me—’
He suddenly turned to her, pulling her into his arms and holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe. His heart beat so loudly it was like a drumbeat against her own.
His mouth was very close to hers, his breath warm on her skin. He spoke oddly, with a rough arrogance that had sent many a clayworker scurrying to do his bidding.
‘What I want you to do is forget everyone else in this house but you and me. Especially do I want you to forget Neville Peterson. I don’t want even his mental presence in this room that belongs to no-one but we two. Here and now, no-one else exists in the world but you and me. Do I need to make it any plainer?’
‘No – oh, no—’
She opened her mouth to speak, and Ben’s mouth covered it, his tongue moving sensuously against her soft inner skin and rousing her to a flame of answering desire in an instant. Such was the passion that had always existed between them that it took no more than that, a whisper of sweet seduction, a tingling touch of flesh on flesh, a slow intimate caress…
Morwen soon realised that Ben had no wish for slow intimate caresses that night. She had no experience of how a whore behaved, those dubious ladies of the night who frequented every waterfront, yet somehow her responsive mind knew that what Ben wanted from her was the response of a wanton, an abandonment that was even wilder than the frenzied performance their love-making frequently took.
Tonight it seemed as if he needed to explore every part of her as if it was new to him, touching, kissing, caressing, yet with that strange urgency that was beginning to set Morwen’s senses on fire.
She gave him everything he wanted, and felt the pulsing core of her respond to it all. He thrust into her as though possessed by demons, and she gloried in the pleasurable sensations rippling through her. His mumbled words were a mixture of love and blasphemy, and neither shocked her. When the moments of his release came, he clung to her, his fingers kneading the tender skin of her breasts and hardly noticing what he did.
Gradually the exertions stopped, and he rolled over on to his side, still holding her close, still part of her, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go. And Morwen’s eyes were damp, not understanding why he had felt this fierce, almost brutal need of her, and unable to question him.
There was something deep in Ben’s soul that had tortured him tonight, and she felt instinctively that she would learn of it when the time was right. But now was not the time… he was releasing his hold on her at last, as exhausted as she.
Morwen touched her breasts tenderly. They felt bruised.
Once, she had almost cried out at his treatment. Yet some instinct told her it was almost as though Ben desperately needed her womanliness to reassure him. For an odd moment she had felt like a mother with a child, and the weird thought had stopped her crying out.
Morwen smiled crookedly into the darkness. A mother with a child… no, that was not the sum total of her feelings! Not when her man was filling her with so much love… or was it lust? It didn’t matter. In their passionate marriage the one was too bound up with the other to make the distinction. One complemented the other, the love and the lust, and the love…
Morwen drifted into sleep, but he lay wide awake long after her breathing had slowed and deepened. He listened to her breathing, his beautiful Morwen, dearer to him than life, the other half of him…
His hands tightened unconsciously at his sides as unwanted images, long forgotten, swirled into his mind.
In his restless waking dream he was no longer the powerful owner of Killigrew Clay, but a frightened boy, newly arrived at the huge London college, where everyone spoke with strange quick accents, and a good many of the older boys whispered behind their hands at this newcomer from faraway Cornwall.
‘What’s this?’ One of the thick-set youths chortled when a group of them saw Ben trying to become as inconspicuous as possible. He tweaked him out into the open by his ear, and the group closed in on him.
‘By all that’s holy, it’s a new boy,’ another exclaimed in mock astonishment. ‘A fresh-faced callow lad from the country, don’t y’ know, chaps? And what shall we do with this tasty morsel still wet behind the ears?’
‘This one’s for Neville,’ sniggered the first one. ‘He’s partial to country boys.’
Ben had looked suspiciously from one to the other, hating their leering mouths, and inferences he didn’t fully understand.
His father had made a few halting references to the dangers of a dosed society where the college boys made their own rules, but Charles had been reluctant to speak frankly on a subject that had never bothered him. Ben was handy enough with his fists, and could take care of himself.
Charles had consoled himself with the thought that it would strengthen the boy’s character to learn the seamier side of life for himself. Not that there could be much of it, in a college that catered for the sons of gentle-folk, Charles had thought with innocent complacency.
‘Very partial, old boy,’ the one called Neville had breathed. ‘My room tonight for the old initiation ceremony, country boy. You’ll be shown the way. Someone will come to fetch you after lights out.’
Ben found his voice. ‘What initiation ceremony?’ He growled hoarsely with sheer terror, which made the group scream with laughter. Their snide glances sickened him, and when one of them put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed it hard, his urge was to twist away and run, and run and run…
‘You’ll find out,’ the other said softly. ‘I promise you it’ll be a night to remember!’
The group had dispersed as quickly as it had surrounded him, and he had been suddenly alone. He’d heard a low whistle from the side of the building, and had a lucky warning from an earlier sufferer on just what form the initiation ceremony took.
Ben’s face had turned a furious scarlet.
‘I just wanted to warn you, Killigrew. If they’ve set their sights on you, you stand no chance, and I could see by their faces that you’re next on their list.’
‘Does nobody fight them?’
‘There are six of them, and they always pick on scared new boys. Who would report to a master that he’s been assaulted? The six would defend each other as always. It would be their word against one. Better to go through with it until the next pretty boy arrives.’
Ben’s eyes flashed furiously. ‘No chinless wonders are sticking me up against a wall without a fight!’
‘Oh, it won’t be against a wall, Killigrew,’ the boy said quite seriously. ‘They feather-bed the ones they like. You’ll be treated like a queen bee—’
‘Like hell I will!’ Ben raged. ‘Get out of my way, you slimy bastard—’
He pushed the boy, who staggered against the wall, affronted at this reaction. To Ben’s horror, he began to cry.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. They rule here. You stand no chance—’
Ben strode off. His heart thumped sickeningly. He looked at the clock-face on the college tower. It was a free afternoon, and tonight he was to undergo an ordeal more degrading than anything he had ever imagined.
He swore savagely under his breath. He shut out any kind of imagining. Nor would he spend the rest of the day cowering in terror like the thin boy who had glided away in the shadows just now. He had a tongue in his head, and there was time to prepare himself.
He left the college grounds and called a hansom cab. The driver’s eyes widened at the strange request. Cabbies were used to taking college boys to the theatres, to the Ritz and other high-class hotels, and conversely to the shady places where the buckos cavorted with prostitutes, spending their rich Daddies’ money as if it was water… but this cabby had never had such a request as this before. He peered back at the good-looking boy with the lazy accent he didn’t readily identify.
‘You sure that’s what you want, young sir?’
‘I’m quite sure. You know of such a place, don’t you? I thought London cabbies knew everything—’
‘’Course I do, mate. I was just wond’ring what a fine young gent like yerself would be wanting with an establishment that teaches the Japanese Martial Arts!’
He mimicked Ben’s determined request.
‘Just get me there, will you? And hurry up, please.’
The cabby shrugged and clicked the horse into action. Ben sat back. He had no idea what it would cost to learn the rudiments of the craft, but by God, it would be worth a king’s ransom to surprise Peterson tonight. He smiled grimly at the thought.
Three hours later he almost staggered out of the side street and into another cab. The inscrutable instructors had looked shocked when Ben had stated he needed to learn everything in one afternoon.
How could this be done, when it had taken centuries to perfect the finer points of the martial arts? The young sir was presumptuous. Perhaps this initial lesson would open the way to further study…
‘I don’t have centuries,’ Ben had snapped. ‘I have a couple of hours. Teach me all you can to deal with six opponents. Don’t be soft with me, and don’t give me basics. I want to hit where it hurts most. I can pay whatever fee you ask. If I’m wasting my time here I’ll go elsewhere.’
He had heard his door open some time after lights out. One of the six who had accosted him earlier told him to follow him quietly. Ben slid out of bed. He was fully dressed. Around his wrist he had wound a leather belt, concealing the heavy buckle in his palm. The feel of it gave him comfort.
Earlier, he had grabbed the thin boy to ask how the group operated. He learned that there were only three inside the room at any one time. The others kept watch outside the door and in corridors, should any untoward noise alert the staff. There would be plenty of noise tonight, Ben thought tensely.
‘Inside, country boy.’ The youth pushed Ben inside the room and took up his station outside it.
Ben’s heart lurched. Neville Peterson lounged on the bed, clad only in a Chinese silk kimono. Two others were similarly dressed, and the room smelled of a sickly perfume. It almost made Ben retch. Neville beckoned him forward into the pool of light thrown by a sputtering gas light.
‘Come and join us, country boy,’ he said softly. ‘This is to be your night of pleasure – and ours too, what?’
He heard the creaking of the bed-springs as they made room for him, and it was the sound that moved him into sudden action.
He gave a battle shriek loud enough to waken the dead, letting the belt snake out from his wrist like a whip. The ornate buckle struck Neville Peterson cruelly in the throat. He gave a strangled gurgling scream as blood spurted out from a vicious jagged cut.
The other two closed in on Ben from both sides, but he was ready for them. He remembered frantically the moves he had been taught that afternoon, the kicks, the punches, the painful pressure points whenever he was near enough to apply them. What he hadn’t learned that day, his own fury supplied.
Neville Peterson crouched on the bed. His throat bled over the expensive silk kimono, but he was less interested in that than in rocking over the excruciating pain in his crotch. One of the others moaned on the floor in similar position. The third screamed at the companion outside the door to come and help them with this madman.
Ben swivelled to meet him, leaping clear off the ground as the boy rushed in. His feet caught him in the belly, his fist following with an almighty crash on to the boy’s nose. Blood gushed out as he dropped to the floor with a howl of pain.
Ben heard the sound of running footsteps in the corridor, and there were bells ringing in his head. Or was the sound coming from other parts of the college? He couldn’t be sure… but the group of boys in the room were sure. They screamed in panic at him to get out, and never to come near them again.
He didn’t need telling twice. He turned and ran, sobs tearing at his chest. It would be appalling to be hauled up before the college professors in his first week. Even worse to be sent packing in disgrace. His father would be shamed, and so would Ben.
Somehow he reached his own room, uncaring what holocaust went on behind him. He lay beneath the bedcovers, awake for hours, expecting his door to be thrust open at any minute and for accusations to be poured on him. He knew bitterly that blame would be attached to him as well as the others. Dirt stuck, no matter how innocent he was. It was another lesson to be learned.
Incredibly, no-one came to his room. Nothing was said about any incident, and if four boys in the elite class went about with bruised and battered faces and careful footsteps for the next few weeks, no-one remarked on it.
It amazed and appalled him that such happenings could be covered up. But the longer he stayed at the college, the less he ceased to be amazed. His education widened his eyes to the rottenness of life as well as its advantages.
The one thing that gratified him was that from that night on, he was left strictly alone by Peterson’s gang. They had a healthy respect for his response, and he went his own way.
Ben wasn’t sorry when they left, being one class above him, and never expected to see any of them again.
And now that same Neville Peterson was installed in his own house, older, more handsome than ever, as gallant to Ben’s wife as any young officer could be.
Ben wondered suspiciously just how genuine it was. Did such people ever change? And if they did, then Ben wasn’t at all sure he wanted the man playing court to Morwen!
Whatever Neville’s present inclinations, he appeared to have forgotten that any antagonism ever existed between himself and Ben Killigrew. An incident that was imprinted so deeply on Ben’s mind was evidently just one of many in Peterson’s shady student past, and meant nothing more than a night’s excitement.
Whatever the case, Ben had felt that extraordinary urge to take Morwen in his arms that night, and express his full sexual power onto her.
And remembering just how perfect that expression of love had been earlier, with Morwen rising to meet him in every way, Ben finally slept.
‘Had you forgotten that Jane and Cathy are coming to visit one day this week?’ Morwen asked Ben, slightly annoyed that he was home so little during that first week of Captain Peterson’s arrival.
She had expected him to be taking his friend about, showing him the town, and certainly the clay works. But Ben seemed to have little interest in acting the gentleman host, and left much of the entertaining to Morwen, and to the unlikely assistance of his father from his sickbed.
‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ Ben said briefly. ‘I daresay Jane will be especially interested to meet Neville, and question him about conditions in the Crimea. You might suggest that he tempers things down a little, in order not to disturb her too much. She worries enough on Tom’s account already.’
Morwen resented the fact that he was giving her orders as hostess. He should be here, showing Neville around himself. She resented the fact that she must act as an intermediary between Jane Askhew and their guest, when it was Ben’s job to do so.
In fact, since that one glorious night after Captain Peterson’s arrival, Morwen realised that Ben had become very edgy, and she had no idea of the reason. Unless it was because he disliked the way Neville paid her little compliments, and clearly enjoyed her company. Unless Ben were jealous of his old friend!
He had absolutely no reason to be, but Morwen couldn’t help a feeling of pleasure if it were so. It didn’t hurt for Ben to think another man found her attractive and feminine. It didn’t hurt at all.
She completely misunderstood his scowling face whenever Neville smiled winningly across the dinner table at her, or took the liberty of picking her a late summer rose from the garden and telling her its perfection was only surpassed by her own. It was like balm to her senses to hear such gallantries.
Neville complimented her on her piano-playing, and told David Glass he considered Morwen to be an ideal pupil, quick and eager to learn. David was gratified that at least one person in the Killigrew household was genteel enough to appreciate his patience in teaching a stormy young lady, and managed to convey the fact discreetly.
‘Would you care to see the Killigrew clay works, Captain Peterson – Neville?’ Morwen asked one morning, when Ben had ridden from the house early for a meeting with the accountants about the bonuses paid to the clayworkers.
Neville hid a sigh. Clay works weren’t of the least interest to him, but he was tired of the dribbling old man upstairs, and Ben as a country squire was becoming a bore. At least the wife was pretty to look at, and country air would be better than idling indoors yet again.
‘It would be a pleasure,’ he said. ‘Ben kept his business a mystery in our college days, dear lady. We all wondered what on earth happened down here among the hay stacks. Does your own family live near to Killigrew House?’
Morwen smiled at his snobbery. Intentional or not, she was very aware of it, and she was surprised to know it didn’t trouble her. Nor was she ashamed of her background, and was ready to let Captain Peterson know it.
‘My family all worked for Killigrew Clay in very humble capacities,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I was a bal maiden and so was my mother. At one time my father was pit captain of Clay One, the biggest of the Killigrew Clay Works, and my brothers were all clayworkers. My father is manager now, and my eldest brother is pit captain in his place. The rest of us have different roles in life,’ she finished with a slight smile.
‘Gracious me,’ Neville stared at her. ‘I must say, you don’t have any reticence in telling the facts, dear lady.’
‘Should I?’ Her blue eyes were as candid as ever. ‘We are what we are, Captain Peterson.’
His hand closed over hers and squeezed it for a second. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a gesture of understanding, but the touch of his hand was clammy, and she had the strangest urge to fling it away from hers.
‘That’s so profound, Morwen.’
‘Is it? I thought it was perfectly obvious!’
He began to learn the logic of her thinking, as Ben and his father had done long ago. She had no patience with devious minds, and her reasoning was as clear as the cloudless blue sky. She recognised his sudden embarrassment, and sought to put him at ease, since he was a guest in the house.
‘My youngest brother Freddie is hoping to go away to college in London if he passes the entrance examination. He’s thirteen now, and doesn’t want to spend his life working with the clay. He’s a bright boy, and Ben wants him to have his chance. We can call at my parents’ house on our way to the clay works if you wish, and you can meet Freddie and my mother. I know they’ll be thrilled to meet an army officer.’
Neville smiled his most charming smile.
‘It sounds delightful, Morwen. And if your brother does get his place at college, I’ll be sure to give him my London address. I have a very nice mews house with plenty of space for overnight visitors. It would be my pleasure to entertain him occasionally as a break from his studies, and to show him something of our capital city.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Sir!’ Morwen exclaimed. ‘Freddie will be feeling lost in London, I’m sure. It will be good to know he has one friend.’
Neville smiled again, patting her hand as they walked out into the sunshine to the stables, where he handed her up into the Killigrew trap.
‘It will be my pleasure, dear lady.’
He climbed into the trap beside her and took the reins in his beautifully manicured hands, and as he turned his head Morwen suddenly noticed the scar across his throat, the jagged line of it caught by the sunlight. She wondered fleetingly if it was the result of a battle skirmish in the awful Crimea.
How little the Captain made of his war experiences, she thought suddenly. And what surprisingly little interest Ben showed in it. She was suddenly indignant on her husband’s behalf, and determined to show the Captain every consideration and feeling of welcome.