Mon, February 06 2012
| TITLE: | Season of Change |
|---|---|
| AUTHOR: | Polly Anne Morris |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | Romance |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | NC-17, Adult-Het |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | Rebecca\Rimini |
| DESCRIPTION: | Rebecca and Duke Angelo Rimini . . . |
| STATUS: | Complete |
Rebecca stood on the threshold of the wide stone-flagged veranda that lay outside her ground-floor bedroom, looking out down across the broad sweep of the perfectly manicured lawns to the brilliant sand of the white beach and the waters of the ancient Adriatic beyond. The waters were as gray and choppy as her mood itself beneath the louring sky; summer storms were rare along the coast at Rimini, she'd been assured, and yet it was the end of summer after all. September. The year was beginning to turn, the moon was coming full, and Rebecca had always known the phases of the moon in her own body - no excess of activity in her life had ever disturbed the all-too-predictable regularity of her own flesh, that waxed and waned with the moon no matter what inconvenience it represented.
Some year, Rebecca promised herself, she would win past the dangers of childbirth at last, and be no longer a slave to the tide. Some year. Sometimes she despaired of ever living to that time: times such as these, with the moon two scant days short of full, when every animal instinct she possessed raged at full cry for the hunt and the acquisition - not of a child - but of that act which led to children. Sir Boniface had counseled her, when she had been younger. His plans for her had required both of them to work to bring her physical capacity to heights uncommon for women, especially well-bred and gently-born women; if the careful nurture of her physical powers increased her vulnerability to her own animal nature -- by strengthening her animal nature -- it was yet one more sacrifice required of her in the service of Queen and country.
In truth many women of Rebecca's acquaintance who could not or did not ride and fight and sail and climb seemed much more at ease and in control of their sexual appetites, but whether it was because the animal was weaker and more easily ruled within their hearts - or for some other reason - Rebecca did not know.
What she did know was that she was all but out of her mind with boredom, and the period of enforced inactivity to which the doctor had condemned her had still a week to run. If only the weather would storm, the electrical discharge of lightening and thunder might help relieve her mood; but it had been only gray and dreary for two days now, with nothing more dramatic than a little breeze coming up from the sea-shore to ruffle her curtains for distraction.
If she had not been shut up here in this old villa for recuperation from concussion she would have been able to swim, or ride, or find some suitably challenging exertion to wear the restlessness out of her body; but she was forbidden. And her cousin Phileas had set their mutual friend Jules Verne as his watch-dog, so she could not ignore Phileas' customary instructions quite so readily as she might under any other circumstances. She was as fond of Jules as Phileas was, and in much the same way.
Thumbing her nose at Phileas was only what Phileas himself expected, but any defiance of doctor's orders would distress Jules Verne more deeply than Rebecca was willing to contemplate; and there was no hope of keeping things from him. He was ingenious. He was quite the quickest, most intelligent man she thought she'd ever met: too good a gaoler, when the keys were no more substantial than her knowledge that Jules cared for her perhaps a bit more than what was, strictly speaking, in his own best interest.
The sun was going down. The shadows that the villa cast out across the lawn into the sea lengthened and grew more and more indistinct moment by moment. She could see the hazy outline of the gibbous moon on the eastern horizon; and scowled at it, for the trouble it meant for her, the restlessness she suffered at the mercy of her own body.
There was something more on the horizon than the moon. There were usually ships and small boats all up and down the coast during the day, the beautiful beaches of the Romagna Riviera justly famous; but there had been little such activity all day, as the weather had been unpleasant. And the ship that lay out to sea did not look like a pleasure craft.
Intrigued, Rebecca turned back to the cool silence of her bedroom to find her field-glasses and turn them on the ship that had caught her eye. Not on the horizon, halfway between the beach and the horizon, a beautiful yacht. It was hard to tell, with the light going, but it seemed to be painted in black and white, and its sails oddly enough seemed to have been woven or stained with someone's armorial crest - though it was too far away for her to really tell. Perhaps it would dock somewhere up or down the coast, and she could ask Jules to go have a look. If it was an armorial crest it had to belong to a very old family, because it seemed to be relatively simple; but that meant nothing, not in Italy, where the old noble families in some instances traced their fortunes back to Roman times. When they didn't take them all the way back to Adam, that was, as was the case with so many of England's old houses; it was an impulse Rebecca had never really understood.
But the yacht was beautiful, sleek and lean and making sail at speed. She wanted it, it called to the predator within her. She put the glasses away from her with a snort of annoyance. This was why she hated this time of month. Her passion ran so close beneath the surface that even the sight of a rakish yacht could arouse her; at times like these it was best to avoid her elegant and rather attractive cousin Phileas altogether, and just tonight perhaps she should beg clear of Jules' company as well. Jules was a perceptive man, though young. He frequently surprised her with the unexpected acuity of his insights. If he should chance to discover the turmoil of this last few hours before the moon should start to wane, before she'd be free for another twenty-seven days or so, he could too easily misunderstand; and in her weakened state, would she resist, could she resist, knowing how easily she could make him hers, even knowing equally as well how unfortunate such an event would ultimately almost certainly be for young Jules Verne himself?
Turning away from the open French doors Rebecca crossed the room to the writing table to compose a note. Jules, please excuse me, I really have such a headache and should probably keep to my room. If you would ask the cook to send a tray up with supper, no, I don't need to see the doctor, yes I am quite certain thank you, but I can't quite face any company just now.
And would be even more bored by herself, but there was to be no help for it but to wait the moon and the tide out. Ringing the bell, Rebecca gave the house-maid the note for Jules, and resigned herself to an evening spent alone by the bedroom fire.
Since it was the end of summer, the beginning of autumn, it was dark outside already while the hour was early yet. Jules had paid her a call, brief and formal and clearly motivated by a desire to be sure she was all right in conflict with a sensible horror of intruding on whatever thoughts a woman who had been recently struck in the head might wish to be alone with; she'd thanked him and reassured him, and when he'd mentioned that there was an invitation from the very nice Italian family down the coast at the next villa but one she had thrown him out quite happily. Alone. She needed to be alone.
There was a breeze up, and the mocking moon winked a lecherous eye at her through ever-thickening layers of veiling clouds. Brooding over the seascape that lay before her Rebecca the shadow of a black ship on the water in the leering light of the almost-full moon; frowning, she fetched the field-glasses. The ship had closed more than half of the distance between its former position and the shore in less than two hours' time. It had crowded sail, yes, she could see that, but still it didn't seem quite natural that it could have gained so much sea-stead in so short a time.
It was a beautiful ship, as lean and hungry in its lines as a black Carpathian wolf; and quite suddenly it seemed to Rebecca that there was menace there, coming for her. And that was nonsense. She could see no flag, no painted name, it was too far from shore for even her excellent field-glasses to pick out so fine a detail as that; but it could not possibly be Carpathian, where had that thought come from? No such sleek black yacht could have descended the Danube and come through the Iron Gate without too serious damage to hazard the passage. It was only the name of the Italian city that reminded her, and the Italian coast was far and far away from the Black Sea and from Gradowicz Castle.
Still, Rebecca shivered, suddenly, and drew the curtains across the tall glass-paneled doors to block the evil influence of that moon and shut out the sight of clouds rushing across its face as swiftly as that black yacht coursed across the water, its kinetic momentum speaking to her blood. She hated this. If she had been in London she could have prowled Limehouse looking for a fight, if she had been home at Shillingworth Magna she could have borrowed a horse from the stables and gone for a good run no matter how strenuously Phileas disapproved of midnight gallops; she had no such outlets here. And did not care to drink, though that was her cousin's usual approach to living through a bad stretch of hours; she would lie down and think of arbalasts, or of the little crossbow-pistol that her cousin Phileas' good valet and man-of-all-trades Passepartout would make for her. She'd seen such beautiful arrow-heads at a museum in Rome not three months ago, beautiful lacy filigreed things with edges as sharp as a razor, that would break off in a wound and incapacitate an opponent -
There was a polite little knock at the door; her evening bath. Hot water was relaxing. Rebecca let the maid in with the footmen carrying the tub, the long procession of strong young men in line carrying great steaming jugs of hot water; and wondered if her absentee hosts had any chamomile or skullcap, any hops flowers or perhaps valerian and lavender, to help take the edge off her alertness. She didn't want to sleep. But the higher that moon climbed in its turbulent sky the more aware she was of how unsuited she had become for polite company, who could look even at the pretty little page-boy - possibly sixteen, but only just - as sexual prey.
She had her bath.
She had a cup of hot milk tea, her maid dressed her for bed in a night-gown smelling very agreeably of roses and geranium Robert; brushed out her long thick auburn hair and braided it up neatly for the night. It was scarcely nine o'clock, but Rebecca was not sorry to go to bed. When she woke in the morning the worst of the passion-tide of the full moon would have passed, and though her body would be inconvenienced then within the day it would be the mere physical discomfort of the frustrated womb, which was much less difficult all in all than the hunger that she struggled to control right now.
It was dark in her bedroom, with the antique lamp on its stand in the corner shedding very little light into the over-arching depths of the high-ceilinged bed-chamber. The bed itself was an old and baroque sort of a thing, huge, massive, as big as a raft but beguiling in its soft welcoming warmth. The sound of the surf on the shore of the beach so close to the flagged pavement outside her bedroom was soothing, even in turmoil; Rebecca stared up at the ceiling for long moments before she made up her mind, and closed her eyes, and slept.
There was a flickering of light in the room that disturbed Rebecca's sleep even behind closed eyelids. Frowning, she woke. What time was it? Had the weather broken? There it was again, the rapid alteration of light and shadow, some perturbation of moonlight and cloud that played itself out across the whitewashed ceiling of her bedroom just above the tall drapes across the windows. But it was not lightning; the light was not that bright, it came and went too slowly, and she heard neither rain nor thunder.
What was going on?
Raising herself in her bed, propping herself up on her elbows against the thick white lace-clad bolsters, Rebecca stared at the curtained windows opposite where she lay, trying to puzzle it out. Light chased shadow across the ceiling; the moon, she realized, and closed her eyes in disgust at her own confusion. Of course. It was only the moon, and the clouds that blew across its face made flickering shadows against the tall windows. The moon, and nothing more, and Rebecca lay back on her pillows to watch the light play till she could go back to sleep, wondering what time it was, wondering if Jules had returned from his evening, wondering what it was that stood black and immobile between the moon and the glass doors to her bed-chamber and threw such a stern unyielding shadow there.
A potted plant, perhaps.
No.
None of the potted plants on the flagged pavement outside her room were tall enough to cast a shadow in the full moon-light, or not so tall a shadow. With a thrill of apprehension - and the sort of fear that quickened her instinct - Rebecca realized that something was there, something or some one, silhouetted against the moonlight, standing outside her bedroom. Watching? Waiting? What?
Lifting the sweetly scented bed-linens away from her Rebecca swung her legs over the side of the high mattress and stood up, carefully, slowly. It was much brighter outside than it was in here, but her bed-dress was white, and the movement could alert the eye of anyone who might be studying her drapes for whatever reason. She armed herself with a derringer; the sound of a shot would rouse the household whether she hit her target or not. Stealthily she crept on bare feet across the thick Persian rug to the windows, taking the far left of it to have the best chance of escaping notice from outside. The drapes had been casually drawn. She couldn't chance the risk that there were gaps between panels, or in the center where the panels met, or at the margins where they might have been pulled away from the wall and left a little sliver of visual access into her room.
The clouds tracked across the face of the moon and away, the bright moon-light grew brilliant and murky by turns; but whatever it was outside of her room did not move. She reached the left-most side of the great glass doors; slowly, she eased the edge of the drape's panel away from the wall to give her a vantage point from which to spy outside. The clouds conspired in her favor, dimming the face of the moon just as she moved, concealing the tell-tale shifting of the drape. Holding her breath Rebecca looked outside, her derringer at the ready.
There was a man outside her bedroom, standing at the margin of the flagged pacement with his hands folded over the top of his cane. An enemy, surely, for what friend would approach so stealthily from the sea, and not announce himself?
What was it about that tall powerful figure that made her think she knew the man?
It would not be odd behavior for Phileas; Phileas behaved very oddly from time to time, but Phileas was in Leghorn with his valet Passepartout and the dirigible airship Aurora, and Phileas was as slender as he was tall. This man carried more overtly intimidating a physical presence . . .
The clouds fled away from the surface of the moon. Luna cast her light full across the tall glass doors behind which Rebecca hid and watched. The reflected light shone bright and clear on the face of the man who stood outside her bedroom; there was no mistaking the patrician features, the lion's mane of iron gray, the hawk-hooded gaze of his Grace, Angelo Rimini, the Duke of Carpathia.
It couldn't be.
Rebecca took an involuntary step back, away from the curtain. Angelo Rimini was dead, destroyed, she'd watched the missiles home in on the carriage that she herself had quit scant moments earlier, she'd seen the fireball growing huge and orange-red and frightful in that night forest. Angelo had been in that carriage. Angelo was dead.
But had been dead already, for whatever unknown period of time, before she had ever met and come to desire him; or could the evidence of her own senses be so mistaken as that?
She hefted her derringer in her hand, gazing up at the light coming past the top of the tall drapes. The black shape, the dark mass had not moved. Angelo had been by his own admission a vampire; a derringer would do her no good. Why was he here?
Jules and Phileas had destroyed his ambitions, used his own science against him. If it was Rimini, if he was here, had he come to take revenge?
She needed to know.
Taking a deep breath Rebecca set the derringer aside and opened the drapes slowly from the middle, parting them to either side with deliberately outstretched arms. The uncertain moonlight streamed into the room: the man on the veranda took one step forward, but stopped again and waited, the black drape of his cloak falling as still as sculptured marble around him.
Rebecca slipped the latch and opened the door. The breeze was chill in the night; it made her skin tingle, blowing through the linen of her bed-dress as though it was no more substantial than a pocket-handkerchief. Rimini raised his face to the sky as though he could sense the arousal of her body from where he stood and was savoring its perfume in the wind. She knew that contemplative expression, she knew the passion in his piercing eyes, she knew him. It was Angelo. Why did he not speak to her?
She took a step across the threshold and out onto the cold stone flags of the veranda. Perhaps he would not come to her without an invitation. That was what Jules' odd friend Ambrosius had said, a vampire could never enter without an invitation, and yet Angelo had told her such things as would convince a woman that a great deal of what was said about vampires was nonsense, and what gentleman with any trace of good breeding would come into a house uninvited in the first place?
The flagstones were uneven, and her feet were bare. She placed them carefully. Five paces, from her bedroom doors across the stone pavement to Angelo. He watched her come; when she was near enough she paused, and breathed the night air in deeply, tasting his fragrance of black pepper and musk and lime. There was no further room for doubt.
She stared up into his face hungrily, trying to read his expression through the shadows that the moonlight cast over his broad forehead, his strong cheekbones, the deeply incised lids of his speaking eyes. Angelo. Raising her hand slowly, she touched him, and when she pressed her fingertips against the cloth that covered his broad chest the spark that seemed to jump from her hand to his body inflamed him in an instant. Like a hawk stooping down upon a cony he wrapped her in his arms and seized her mouth, with an aching and importunate passion that cut the ground out from underneath Rebecca where she stood and left her helpless.
Some long forever she stood in his embrace, surrendered to him, wrapped up in his dark cloak, captive in his arms and fascinated, like a bird by a snake, by the scent of him and the taste of his mouth and the eagerly welcomed press of his tongue against her tongue. She wanted to stand there, just there, forever, her senses drunk on him; but he loosened his grip on her, he let her go with reluctant care, and she could breathe again.
"Angelo," Rebecca gasped. "How can it be you, Angelo, I saw the fire."
Oh, his voice, the grave deliberate accent, the muted echo of years. "I wanted to die when you went away from me, it is true," he said. "And yet did not. Tell me that you do not despise a defeated man, Rebecca, I have not dared to call on you, ashamed."
"If you had succeeded in your plans we could only ever have been enemies." It had been confusing at the time, a conflict which had escalated into fearful indecision at the last. Could she have left Angelo in the carriage to go with Phileas, if she had known what was about to happen?
She'd thought that he was gone from her forever. "Come into the house, my Angelo." Maybe he was gone from her in fact. Maybe she was dreaming him, under the influence of the moon, and a possible concussion. "Come and sit by the fire. Warm yourself. Tell me all about it."
One hand to her waist, he followed at her side with meditative gravity. She turned the lamp up, and started toward the bell to call the servant; "I'll ring for some tea, shall I?"
He had turned his back to her to secure the doors and draw the drapes again. Now as he looked back at her over his shoulder the naked hunger in his eyes took her breath away.
"I do not want a cup of tea, Rebecca." Polite; absolute, in his conviction. "It is you that I desire. In your presence no comfort is lacking. And away from you there is no comfort in any pleasure of the flesh. Say that I may address myself to you most ardently, Rebecca, and the burden of the ages will be as nothing, if only you can bear to hear the voice of a man no longer master of armies to be your servant and adore you."
Angelo, here, and in her bedroom. She could only shake her head at him, bemused at how misguided a man could be by his own pride. "It was not your armies that I wanted, Angelo." No. No tea. No servants. No tales to be told in the morning. "They stood between us, rather." She left the bell-pull, she closed on him once more, she stood before him. "Now if they are gone - if you no longer threaten the stability of the peace in Europe - "
He had set aside his cane. She stroked the lapels of his outer coat up the front of his chest to his shoulders, his broad strong chest that she had longed to rest against and lean upon, his shoulders that had so much power in them. The strong column of his neck, and his face turned down to hers as she eased the outer garment away from his body. " - then there should be nothing to stand between us any longer. Except that one is not quite certain even yet - that one believes - in vampires - "
Because vampires were supposed to be cold-blooded; and Angelo was not, his body was as warm as that of any man. Nor had his breath any foul taste of rotting meat, of carrion; when he put lip to her lip, tongue to her tongue, the taste of his mouth made her tremble, but not recoil. She had so often remembered and dreamed on it, their last kiss, the only kiss she had believed that she would ever have of him. She swayed on her feet, weakened with desire; he swept her up into his arms, as lightly as though she had been a child, and carried her across the room to where her bed stood waiting.
He laid her down.
And then he went away from her, for what purpose she could not imagine; he stirred the fire, put another log on to warm the room, and came back with the little lamp to set it on the bedside table and sit down beside her where she lay on the bed.
Nothing should stand between us, she'd said so herself, and now she had it in her power to implement the concept. He had a simple, if elegant, knot in his neck-cloth, it came undone and away in her fingers; she could touch her hands to the heat of his bare skin beneath his collar. Did vampires wear the same undergarments as mortal men? She would find out. She unbuttoned the fine black wool of his waist-coat with impatience, and he caught her up into his arms and pressed her to himself with sudden fierce passion.
"You make me afraid," he said. "Who have not known fear for such a very long time. I have tried so hard to forget you, Rebecca. I cannot do it."
"Had you done so." Now that he half-lay on the bed beside her she could continue in her work, and talk the while, but the weight of his body on the bed communicated itself to her own body with a shameless eagerness that he should lie atop her. That she would feel his weight. That she would have his passion, and his power, to hold him in her arms and let him find whatever answer it might be he sought within her body - "Angelo. And I had found out that you were yet alive. I would have hunted you down, and demanded an explanation."
Her caresses inflamed him; she could tell. He bent his head to take her mouth once more, but she held him away with a little gesture; and he observed her wishes, he no more than brushed her lips with his before he drew away to look at her with a questioning expression on his face. In his eyes, that burned into her heart and stoked the fire there.
"How could I not have hidden myself away, Rebecca?" She had his garments open to bare skin; she touched his naked breast and rubbed her finger-tips across the hair that clothed his body. It made him pause, and close his eyes with something on his face almost like pain. She traced the muscle of his chest beneath the skin with greedy hands, and he shook his head as if to clear it, opened his eyes once more and continued. "A man may be too proud to excuse his failure. And yet it was not your cousin who destroyed me, you made your choice, or so at least at the time I believed."
It was true that she had chosen; it was true that she had left, obedient to her cousin Phileas' summons. And had regretted almost even being alive, when she'd seen the explosion and the fire. He had to know. Had she truly meant to turn her back on him, he would not be lying on her bed, in the dark warm room, talking to her about it. She'd made a mistake. She didn't mean to make another. She wanted him. She had never wanted any other man as much as she wanted Angelo Rimini.
"It was mere circumstance." The fastenings of the waistband of his trousers were arcane and complex and beyond her at this moment; but if she put her palms flat to his belly she could find the thing she sought, hard and hot even beneath layers of fabric. Tracing the outline of his cock Rebecca scratched at its head; he all but convulsed with the sensation, casting the upper garments that she had worked loose for him aside with an impatient gesture. "I would have wanted to understand how you could not have come for me. Knowing as you must how I desire you."
She couldn't see his body, half-naked in the darkened room, because he lay so close to her that she felt the heat of his flesh. She let her hands see for her, his strong shoulders, the rounded muscle of his upper arms, the graceful scallop of his collar-bones, the broad span of his back. His hands burned on her body even through her night-dress as he stroked slowly down across her stomach, to her thigh, and began to pick up the hem of her garment by slow degrees.
"I have been foolish before in my life, Rebecca." He kissed her throat just where her gown pulled open, across her breasts; she had never been able to stand a tidy knot in her neckline. "But any man who could aspire to your love, and who would not challenge all opponents, would not be merely foolish. He would not be a man at all. Still you have said it, Rebecca, I am exalted in your arms. I beg that you will suffer me to express the depth of my devotion."
His mouth on her skin made her shiver with the touch of his tongue. His hand beneath her night-dress stroked her bare skin, all up the side of her flank to ease the shoulder of her garment away over her head; the most part of her body was laid bare, and Angelo bent his head yet lower to her body to kiss her breast. He stroked the outer curve of her bosom with his fingertips, she knew her body was stiff and eager with anticipation, she could feel the hard erection of her nipples against his body. He took his time. He kissed his slow way all around her breast and only touched her nipple after what almost seemed to be hours of contemplative play, and then only to pet the crinkled tip with a soft caress. Once and twice Rebecca thought to raise her hand to take him by the back of the neck and press his mouth to her nipple; each time she let her hand fall away again, and clenched her fists in the bed-clothes. He knew what he was doing. She wanted him. She could show him her desire best by surrendering herself into his arms, and trusting in him to manage her appetite. The moon was coming full and her body raged at full tide, she dared not engage with him; she dared not - oh, she wanted him, and even if it meant to risk it all she would have him, she would.
He kissed her aching nipple, but so sweetly, so gently it could have been the salute of a friend. Almost. Her body surged against his weight of its own accord, she cried out to feel the warm rasp of his tongue against her nipple, but he would not stay; he kissed the underside of her breast, he kissed the rib beneath it and the rib beneath that, and as Rebecca gasped aloud to realize his purpose he kissed his way down slowly across her belly to her thighs, kissed the copper-red curls that cushioned her mons veneris, touched his mouth so tenderly just where the soft folds of her body parted to yield access to her secret self and settled himself there between her legs.
His hands were as strong as if they had been iron. He ran his palms beneath the backs of her thighs, and raised her from the surface of the bed, slid his thumbs around to stroke up between the very top of her thighs - and set his mouth to what he discovered there, just at the top of the place where her legs parted, just in the place before the threshold of her womb.
It was not that she had never had this manner of caress before. She had in fact been offered similar courtesies on more than one occasion, but always as a sort of bribe or sop, and Angelo caressed her throbbing clitoris with his lips and his mouth and his tongue with a slow and studied determination that made the activity an end in itself rather than a hastily covered preliminary prior to invoking her cooperation in an activity more to a gentleman's taste. He found her absolutely to his taste. She felt it with every touch of his tongue to her quivering cunny.
Rebecca had learned how to manage without benefit of a partner's participation years ago, she was familiar with the sensation of her own finger-tip across her glistening pearl; but Angelo's tongue was indefinably rougher and more gentle at the same time - harder against the round throbbing surface of her pearl than any implement, soft and caressing at one and the same time, and he read her every twitch and moan like a sorcerer and exploited every opportunity he found to bring her bliss.
She spent and spent and spent under the influence of Angelo's cunning tongue, stroking her, prodding her, sucking her gently - not too gently - oh, just so exactly, precisely hard enough -
She had to roll away from him; she couldn't take it any longer. Rebecca turned on her side, turned her back to him, lay on her side on the bed-surface curled into herself and shaking like an aspen-leaf in a high wind; he put his arms around her, crossed his arms over her breast as she fought for air, kissed the side of her throat and behind her ear and nosed through her now-disordered hair and murmured comforting things to her in a language she did not quite understand.
You are my queen among the angels, Rebecca, my beautiful love, my warrior before God. Oh, I am envied by archangels to lie in your arms, and exalted above saints.
She felt his body close against her. He had completed the undressing she had left half-finished. She knew the pent arousal of his body by the heat and hardness of his erect pride, and yet he did not seek to impose himself on her; but lay and held her and whispered to her, comforting her body as she trembled. He had destroyed her. But she still wanted him. She had known the play of his tongue between her teeth, the tender stroking of his hands upon her body, the pressure of his lips against her breast, the burning caress of his mouth between her legs; she wanted more, she wanted to give up to him the privilege she so rarely dared surrender, she wanted him right now - exactly when the risk was greatest - because the risk was at its greatest, she wanted him to lie across her body, and slake his thirst within her. She could offer him no more absolute a token of her desire for him than to welcome the embrace that could mean her ruin, just so long as it should bring him pleasure. Slowly she turned toward him, from her side onto her back and then onto her other side in turn, and pressed her still-quivering belly against his loins to feel the stiffness of him against her stomach, and roll against his body suggestively.
"You have something that I want, my Angelo," she said, and put her hand to his hip to curl her fingers around his muscled flanks and pull him to her. "Come to me. Make me your own, tonight."
For one long moment of indecision or contemplation he held her close, looking down at her from so near a distance that she could taste the musk and spice of his breath, gazing impossibly deeply into her eyes.
Then he turned her to lie on her back, and put his mouth to hers, parted her thighs with a single slow controlled movement - and settled himself with careful but implacable force into her body. Even so well loved as she had already been the size of him was difficult, and whether it was because he was larger in his person than other men - or because she was un accustomed to the traffic - she didn't know; but whimpered despite herself to feel the pain attendant on his entry. And he kissed her, as though to beg her pardon, but did not turn from his purpose, pressing ever more deeply into her body as she drew her knees up around his waist to try to ease the passage.
He pressed himself to her belly to belly, she felt his heat deep within her body; he stopped and rested with her, and the pain that she had felt as he fit himself to her melted away into a kind of eagerness of the flesh to feel his weight and stiffness and find out what it was that his body had to tell her.
Biting her lip with an involuntary cry Rebecca rolled her hips beneath him to understand the feeling that she had of Angelo deep sheathed against her womb. The action seemed to stir him to movement he was not completely willing to undertake. There was a strange species of hesitation to his gestures as he set one hand to the mattress to one side of her, bracketing her body with his other hand; and strained just a fraction more deeply against her so that she felt the hard hot presence of his cock and groaned aloud with desire for him.
He drew back and away from her, but only a very little way, so small a distance as to almost be no distance at all except that she could feel it like too light a touch of fingernail against some itch that needed much more concerted scratching than just that. Drew back, and settled in, and in almost the same moment drew back away from her again, just a little further, just a fraction further away, and back to nudge the broad head of his cock up against the cervix-mouth of her womb with warm confiding confidence once more. She knew, then. She knew what he was doing. She knew what he was about and arched her body up beneath his, wanting him and willing to wait him out, so that when next he drew away from her she matched his reticent retreat and came forward strongly to welcome his return as ardently as she could manage to express with the heat of her own body.
It was torture of a sweeter sort than she had ever imagined possible. He took such care that she gradually lost fear of the pain that she had felt at his first entry, her body warmed to his, fitting itself around him as he thrust within her. His deliberation was maddening. She itched. She burned, and the wonderful weight of him against the hot slick swollen walls of her vagina was more and more and more what she wanted - what she needed - what she had to have, what she demanded, meeting him thrust for thrust, muscles she hardly realized she'd had working within her body to clutch at his cock and caress him as she went until the cumulative sensation overwhelmed him at last, and he cried out, and grappled with her fiercely, thrusting hard and fast and deep as she grew frantic for more and more and more moment by moment.
And because he had destroyed her once or twice or seven times already this evening, because he had already coaxed her into spending herself against the loving caress of his tongue, because he had weakened her and then started his campaign against a woman already deeply moved by his devotion she came to completion while he still sought for his, losing her coordination, trembling in extremity in his embrace as he pressed on to his ultimate delight and transcendent joy. Her body in convulsion, Rebecca lost herself to pleasure, holding him to her as fiercely as she could while her hips bucked and jerked of their own accord; it was too much for him, it seemed, he cried out long and low and hoarse and hungry, and as her belly surged in reflex passion in the aftermath of her sexual climax she felt the hot spill of his seed within her and smiled happily through tears of bliss to know that he had taken pleasure in her, as she had had of him.
With infinite slowness Angelo rolled over onto his back in the bed, pulling her with him to lie across his body in his arms.
She lay with him, her head against his bosom, her legs still tangled with his, breathing in the mixed perfumes of sweat and sex and Angelo's body, loving the gradual settling of his breath. There was no beating of a living heart in Angelo's strong chest, beneath her ear; after a long while she turned her head and kissed his breast, wondering what could explain his existence and what predict a future for the two of them together.
Now that she knew at last the reality of carnal union with him she was more certain in her heart than she had ever been that howsoever strange it might be Angelo Rimini was her match, her mate, her true love and true lover; and yet how was it to be between them?
"Kiss me," she said. And turned her face up to his, but not to find his mouth. To show him the long curve of her neck, so that he would know. "Angelo. I want you."
The power that he had in his body was arousing in and of itself, even after all that she had felt this evening already. Taking her in his arms he rolled with her to the far side of the bed, the covers down around his waist; and leaned over her.
"Rebecca." The sound of his voice as he said her name was resonant with deep, abiding passion. "Think of what you say. You do not know what it may mean for you. For both of us."
But she had never turned away from challenge in her life. She lay naked in his loving arms, having been destroyed on more than one field of battle in a single evening; and yet she was Rebecca Fogg. "Tell me, then," she suggested. "And then kiss me."
He did, but not as she meant for him to do; he kissed her eyes, one by one, and then her mouth, and she did not grudge him his embrace but she was not moved from her purpose either and trusted in him to know that. "It will mean suffering for you, every time the moon is in the same quarter. For me as well, if we cannot then be together, I do not want you to suffer for my sake, Rebecca. And as much as I desire you already, I admit that to contemplate more keen a need for you, it gives me pause."
No, there had to be more to it than that. Surely. If that was all the bite of a vampire meant for mortal women, surely it would not be as feared a thing as folklore claimed - or would it?
Had she not ample evidence in bed with her even at this very moment that whatever folklore had to say about vampires could not be applied to the Duke of Carpathia?
"Let me be sure of what you are telling me." Raising her hand to his face she caressed him, tracing the strong lines of his eyebrows and his jaw-line and his cheekbones with her fingers in the shadowy near-dark. "What about eternity. The damnation of the soul. The thirst for human blood. What about these things, Angelo."
He turned his head and kissed the palm of her hand with absolute conviction. "I can no longer say, Rebecca." There was a curious note of confusion in his voice, but absolute honesty as well. "For more years than I wish to admit to you I have lived off the blood of mortal men, as though of that of cattle. But ever since you came with me to Gradowicz I have desired no sustenance, Rebecca, except for that I find gazing into your eyes. Whatever it is that you have done to me, my angel, the thirst of centuries, it is discarded. And I do not know what may in turn become of us if I should taste your blood."
She drew her index finger down the side of his face to his jaw, to his chin, to the underside of his throat, tracing the line of what should have been his jugular pulse with delicate care. "Let's find out," she suggested. "Angelo. I will not live in a world apart from you. Kiss me. I desire it."
Tension had begun to build in his body. She could sense it in the hardening of the muscles of his shoulders; his breath came a little short and hard in his throat, and when he raised his head to meet her eyes there was a flash of something that was unearthly in them.
"Rebecca, I beg you to have pity on me, because I adore you as I cannot remember ever having loved before." And yet he seemed to grimace, as though there was something in his heart which did not beat that gave him pain, and his nostrils flared as though he smelled blood. Her blood. Her body chemistry changed with the moon, perhaps he did smell blood. "This thing you ask, it inspires in me great fear."
He was more honest a man than many she had known, and had he ever lied to her? Not from the beginning. I have booked a table at the Café Royale, he had said, and so far as she knew he had been telling only the absolutely truth, even if he had not told her all of it. She took his face between her hands, wondering at the weight of his head, the substance of his skull beneath her palms.
"You are I think quite possibly my imagination, after all." The bullet had missed her, it had been hitting her head against the floor that had made the doctor shake his head and speak about concussion. "Kiss me, Angelo, I want to never be apart from you. And if you are my own true love you will not deny me."
He ground his teeth together with a fierce growl, but when he kissed her mouth it was with gentle care. "Queen among the angels," Angelo said, so prayerfully that it was almost uncomfortable. "Once again you exalt me above gods - "
Laying one hand alongside her face he tilted her head back, carefully, and bent his neck to kiss her throat. To only just kiss it. She could feel the touch of his mouth, lightly, so lightly against her skin that it made her tremble. She laced her fingers through his hair, fired with a sudden desperate passion for some unknown consummation; he grazed at her throat so delicately that it maddened her, nipping at the skin, letting her feel his teeth. His sharp teeth. Surely he drew blood, he nipped at her so sharply, but he was just playing with her still, did he mean to deny her after all?
Then his hand tightened over her shoulder as he pulled her body to him with ferocious strength, and something tore deep into her throat like the deliberate progress of a knife. She choked back a helpless cry: oh, God, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt, and then a warmth seemed to well up from the burning pain and wash the fiery ache away, and she could feel him draw fluid into his mouth and knew he drank from her.
She pressed his mouth more closely to her with her hands at the back of his head, wanting to feel him as he drank. Oh, God. It hurt. It hurt so much, and yet it was somehow so wonderful to feel him draw the blood out of her body for his nourishment - his pleasure - the power of his body was incredible, and she was his, with his mouth at her throat he drank from her -
Rebecca trembled, but then began to shake, a powerful and unexpected passion suddenly ignited in her body. Oh. She had not expected this. He drank at her throat with deliberate care, not over-greedily, slowly, carefully, she could feel his tongue pressing down against her skin as if to milk her throat. And thought that she would expire of it. How could this be? It hurt. And yet Angelo lay on her bosom and suckled at her throat till she was breathless with it.
She smoothed her trembling hands down to the back of his neck, down to his shoulders, to hold him and caress him. Yes. It hurt. But there was such a peculiar sensation in exactly how it hurt, and there was a warm buzzing glow of absolute content that seemed to have taken root in her hands and her feet, traveling up her arms and legs into her body by degrees until she was cocooned in a warm roseate glorious sort of a sensation that bounced against the bright pain in her throat and echoed back throughout her entire body.
She lay adrift for centuries, floating in a faerie-boat on warm midnight waters, loving the sharp sensation of Angelo's teeth, half-drowned in bliss to give him her heart's-blood.
The sharp stabbing pain rounded itself out, dulled itself, became an ache, and finally only a dull and distant throb. But she could feel his tongue against her skin, long slow lazy strokes up and down her throat as if to savor any final drops of escaped fluid. Her heart was pounding in her ears, but distantly, and she felt so warm - so safe - limp as a kitten, she lay in his arms, and half-sensed as if from a very great distance removed that Angelo pulled the bedclothes up around her shoulders and held her quietly forever in his arms.
Then Angelo gave a sudden start, in the bed, a physical convulsion as though he had been suddenly struck in the back; and grunted aloud in surprise. Concerned, Rebecca raised her head to look into his face; he was staring up into the dim obscurity of the ceiling, with an expression of disbelief - perplexity - could it be almost fear? - on his face.
She waited, but Angelo did not speak. He only settled back into the bed and held her close. Well. She would leave it for now, whatever it was. Her mind was too confused by everything that had happened over the short course of the evening to leave her with the concentration required to ask questions and demand answers.
He cradled her head close upon his naked chest. She could feel the rough coil of hair beneath the side of her face, the warmth of his skin. She rubbed her cheek against his bosom, so entirely content that she could find no words to capture the sensation for herself. Her breathing quieted and her pulse subsided, her heart no longer struggling to maintain the pressure in her veins as Angelo fed; but she still counted two and three beats of her heart to every one that she could half-hear, half-feel, almost only sense beneath the broad span of his rib-cage, beating strong and deep and slow.
But wait, she thought, or she began to think.
She didn't finish the thought.
Exhaustion overwhelmed Rebecca at last; safe and secure in Angelo's embrace, she slept.
It was the middle of the morning before Rebecca woke to find herself alone in her bed, and the maid sitting by the fire with the mending-basket. At first she was confused; why was it so late, why was she lying on the far side of the bed, what was the maid doing?
Raising her hand to put the bedcovers aside and sit up Rebecca stopped, suddenly, startled by the fatigue in her body and the aching of muscles that had been perfectly all right yesterday. The maid rose to her feet immediately as Rebecca stirred, hurrying to the bedside to curtsy with a concerned look on her face.
"Begging your pardon, gentle Miss, how do you feel?"
The maid's English was very good, and yet Rebecca despaired of being able to explain. She had had such a wonderful dream. It had to have been a dream: didn't it? And yet her body knew that she had been slaughtered at length, and then loved with ferocious passion. And her throat hurt, as though it had been bruised.
"Well, I seem to have slept late, Tonina. What time is it, please? I've missed breakfast entirely, I don't doubt."
She kept her voice as light and casual as possible while her mind raced. She needed to take an inventory; for that she needed to be alone, so she had to get rid of Tonina. She was a little thirsty: which frequently happened when she'd fallen directly to sleep after vigorous physical activity. Perhaps - was it possible? - she'd lost blood.
"Ten o'clock, Miss. You slept very soundly when I brought you your tea this morning, and I'm very sorry, Miss, but Monsieur Verne came to hear of it and has sent a wire to Livorno. He'd like to call the doctor, Miss, he's very worried."
Jules would be worried about concussion. Rebecca grimaced at her white-draped lap, sitting up with Tonina's assistance. She'd have to speak to Jules. But more than that, she needed to keep him well clear until she had a chance to decide what might have happened.
"It's not your fault, Tonina, he's that way. It's the curse of being a writer, I suppose, he can think of so many problems that the simplest things might possibly indicate." She smiled up at Tonina, confidingly, to make it clear that sleeping rather later than usual was merely one such simple thing; and that Jules' fears were fantastic. Without basis. "Let me have a cup of tea, please, several. And I'll wish to bathe. I'll write a note for Monsieur Verne."
It would get Tonina out of the room and give Rebecca a chance to have a look at things. Her own body, for one. Tonina frowned a little, but seemed reassured by Rebecca's confident address. "I'll go directly for tea, Miss, and tell the kitchen to tap the boiler for your bath. If you're sure you're all right, meaning no offense."
"Yes, thank you, Tonina. Right as rain. But I daren't see Monsieur Verne in my night-dress."
The maid smiled shyly and dipped another curtsy, and left the room. Rebecca waited for a moment to be sure that Tonina would not be stepping back to fetch her mending-basket; carefully, she put her legs over the side of the bed, and pushed herself to her feet.
Oof.
She'd been riding, all right. There was nothing like it, and no mistaking the sensation. Riding, and being ridden; was that why she had soreness there -
Stumbling on clumsy feet across the carpet Rebecca found the mirror over the mantelpiece, and lifted her unbound hair away from the side of her neck. It was ugly. It was a massive bruise, no wonder Angelo had not wanted to do it, how could she hope to hide this from Jules? And he had cabled to Phileas at Leghorn, oh, worse and worse . . .
She touched her fingers to the wound and shivered to remember the sensation, Angelo feeding at her throat. Angelo. He had been here. She had not dreamt it. The fatigue of her body she owed to him, for he had become her lover last night, more perfect and more passionate than any she had had in her whole life. Angelo: just thinking about it made her want him again, made her so hungry to be held in his strong arms to his naked chest - to feel the heat of him, and taste his kiss - that she closed her eyes and moaned aloud, if softly, to herself. Angelo. He had come to her. Where had he gone? When would he return?
But first things first. She didn't have much time. She needed to send a reassuring note to Jules, who was for all she knew pacing outside her bedroom even now. She had to think of some plausible explanation for the very dramatic bruise at her throat. And she had to get both tasks accomplished before Tonina came back with her tea, and Rebecca did want her nice hot cup of tea, she was thirsty and now she understood why.
She left the mirror over the mantelpiece for the writing-table to compose a note for Jules; but someone had been at her writing-table before her. There was a note, her name on it, Rebecca. She'd never seen Angelo's hand-writing; it was strong and decided, and her heart seemed to turn over in her breast to see her name in Angelo's hand.
She picked it up. A single sheet, and folded in half, only a few lines, but so much said in them. Rebecca, my angel, the words cannot describe my gratitude for the honor you have done me. I must leave you. I will come to you again in three months' time, oh, it will be torture to wait the hour, I am your servant heart and mind, body and soul, and I love you more than I think I have ever loved. Angelo, your own.
She could almost hear his voice, almost feel his arms around her, almost sense the touch of his mouth against the curve of her shoulder. She trembled. Three months . . .
But she still had to write a note for Jules, and decide how to explain away the very visible evidence of Angelo's kiss. There was little danger perhaps that either Jules or Phileas would guess the truth: but speculation might distress Jules, and Phileas - who had never quite decided if he cherished her as a sister to be jealously protected from the sexual opportunism of other men, or regarded her as a cherished object for his own future desires, to be warded against any and all potential rivals - was fully capable of becoming genuinely annoying on occasion.
Rebecca, my angel.
No other man alive - or walking, regardless of the technicalities - could ever have said something so extravagent, to her, and have the words resound with profound and emphatic sincerity.
In three months' time.
She needed a story, and she needed one fast, and she needed to reassure Jules, so that he would not send for a doctor. She could not risk a doctor's examination, not right now.
Angelo, your own.
Rebecca put the note away from her with a stern act of will, and picked up the pen - that had been last used by Angelo - to write a heartening message for Jules Verne.
In the deep fastness of midwinter at Shillingworth Magna Rebecca Fogg sat quietly in the drawing-room reading in her book. Phileas was out on his rounds, doing his duty as the master of Shillingworth; Jules was expected in a few days, Phileas had sent his valet Passepartout off to fetch him from Paris in a thinly-disguised ploy to ensure that Passepartout should have a holiday before Christmas to see what family he might have tucked away in odd corners of the French coastline between London and Paris.
No one was expected; so when Rebecca heard a decisive knock at the front door she was surprised, and put aside her book to wait for McIver to come and tell her what was afoot. She hoped it wasn't Lady Bessemere. It had been the studied practice of Rebecca's entire life at Shillingworth Magna to avoid Lady Bessemere completely. Lady Bessemere had known Rebecca's parents, had known Rebecca herself when Rebecca had been a very young child, and liked to remind Rebecca of how tragic a life she'd had - of how sorrowful and pitiable she was. And Rebecca simply did not have much time for sorrowful or pitiable. Not even now: although the challenges she faced were truly daunting.
She tucked a stray tendril of hair back into its place in her coiffure, and turned to the door as McIver coughed to announce himself. "There's a gentleman to see you, Miss," McIver said. The taciturn Scot had never had much use for the polite forms; he was a most unusual butler, but he'd saved Sir Boniface's life before Phileas had been so much as engendered, and had a place in the household for as long as he cared to avail himself of one. "Foreign person. Desires to be admitted to your presence, he says."
McIver sounded suspicious, almost hostile. He'd become very protective of her, since her return from Italy. She bore it as best she could. "Does this foreign person give a name, McIver?"
A disturbance at the door to the drawing-room; McIver looked back over his shoulder, and for a moment seemed to consider maintaining his not inconsiderable body as a barrier in the open doorway. Still McIver knew her as well as her own cousin did, in some ways, and would be confident that she was more than a match for any foreign person, among whom McIver paradoxically included most Englishmen. And Jules Verne. But McIver knew Jules; so it wasn't that, what was it?
McIver moved away out of the doorway, and Rebecca could see for herself.
Angelo. Angelo Rimini.
His Grace, the Duke of Carpathia. Him. His beloved silhouette, standing there in the doorway with his coat still on, the snow across the dark fabric a clear visual reminder of the strong slope of his shoulders, his costume perfect in every detail. Not even Phileas could out-dress Angelo. There was so much native dignity in him, he wore a gentleman's starched collar and a black silk neck-cloth as though they were gilt armor, or the ermines of some half-savage Russian prince -
"Oh, it's you," she said. She hardly knew what else to say. It had been three months. She had his letter. But she had done her best to believe it would not come to be, because she wanted him so much; and even needed him, she who had been almost entirely self-sufficient all her life. "Thank you, McIver, his Grace and I are acquainted. It's all right."
McIver scowled at Angelo suspiciously, but took Angelo's coat and gloves and cane with adequate courtesy and went away.
Angelo.
He stepped into the room as McIver left, and turned his back, and closed the door, which McIver had very pointedly left open for reasons of his own.
"Rebecca, my angel," Angelo said, and it suddenly occurred to Rebecca that though it had been very overcast and dreary all day it was yet no more than two o'clock in the afternoon. Daylight, if only in theory; while she was trying to sort sense out of this idea he took her hand and bowed over it, kissing it on exactly the right place over the curve of the wrist-joint. His fingers were cold: but he'd just come in from outside. Of course. "I have counted the hours. Can I hope to be received with forbearance, Rebecca? Because I have something that I very much wish to show you. - And no, it is not that," he added, in a mild and admonitory tone, when she could not help but smile at him, happy despite herself at the thought. "Although if I am fortunate far above my desert I may hope to win your sufferance on some such an issue as well. Later."
She couldn't very well throw herself into his arms and caress him in the drawing-room of Shillingworth Magna. Not really. Certainly not in mid-afternoon. "What, then, my Angelo?"
He had not released her hand. Now he turned his own hand so that it was palm-up; and set the tips of her fingers across the inside of his wrist with his other hand. She frowned, confused, a little puzzled; then she felt something, and gasped aloud.
A pulse.
It did not beat very strongly, perhaps, or perhaps it was still too deep to be readily discernible. But it was there. In the veins at the inside of Angelo's wrist a heartbeat pulsed: like that of a living man.
And she remembered, suddenly, that for a moment she had almost believed that she felt his heart beat in his chest as she lay resting her head on his naked bosom. She had discounted the anomalous memory, half-convinced that she had simply dreamt it out of fantasy and wish-fulfillment. This could not be explained away.
"Angelo." What could she say that would express all that she felt? "How does this happen?"
"I have had a hard time believing it." There were so many things behind the little that he actually said. "But I have woken up hungry, Rebecca, for bread and apples. Cheese. And even beer, things I have not been able to stomach for nourishment in so very many years. It is a sign from God, that I am destined to be your servant on this Earth, and dedicate my energies entire to making you as happy as may be in my poor power to achieve."
He always had had a very pretty cant. Rebecca smiled, by no means averse to this suggestion. There was something Angelo did not know; and no matter how awkward everything would be there was no time like the present to share her news with him.
"As long as it is show-and-tell, Angelo." she said, wanting to kiss his mouth and knowing that she had to wait. For hours yet, perhaps, but she would have a kiss, he would not have come to show her what had changed in his life and not planned to stay for at least a little while. She trusted him for that. "There is something I can show to you which may be of interest. As well."
He had her hand clasped between his, showing her his pulse. He had tasted her blood; somehow - in some unknown and occult fashion - he was beginning to become mortal again. Alive. Vampires weren't immortal, but they weren't alive, they had no pulse.
Taking his right hand in hers Rebecca carried it to her waist and settled it there, palm flat to her belly, to the gentle swell that had begun to shorten her petticoats. It had only just begun to show visible, physical signs, but she had known. Because the moon had no more power over her body. She had known it was a terrible risk; she had been willing to take it, at the time, for Angelo's sake. And she had never guessed that it might actually come to this.
Phileas was unhappy enough as it was, because he knew perfectly well that something was amiss. They were too close for him not to know, and she had caught him looking after her and frowning - trying to make up his mind, she thought, what it was that seemed different to him, about her.
Angelo sank slowly to his knees on the drawing-room carpet, his hand raised to her still only very slightly pregnant belly as if in prayerful invocation of the saints. "Oh, Rebecca," he said, and his voice broke. "Can I hope it is to be mine to call this treasure my own?"
Well, rather, she wanted to say. But she had had three months to get used to the idea, and it had only just now been sprung on him.
"It will come as a surprise to many, I'm afraid, Angelo." McIver knew, though Rebecca wasn't quite sure how. Phileas suspected. Jules would be miserable, wondering if he had abandoned her one night in a villa on the coast near Rimini and left her vulnerable to outrage. She was not and had not been outraged. But Phileas was unquestionably going to need handling. "I don't suppose you care to turn Church of England, by any chance?"
He staggered to his feet, meeting her eyes with an expression of pain so deep and genuine that it made her ashamed. "How can you make sport of me at such a time as this, Rebecca. Anything. I will do anything that I must do to have the privilege of being my child's father."
No, the years he had seen in his vampiric existence - however many they were, and whatever that existence had been - had made him more deeply sensitive to the responsibility he faced, rather than as she had almost feared deadening his moral sense.
"Then put a ring on my finger, my Angelo, and say that we have been man and wife for three months now." Documentation could always be obtained. "And prepare yourself to face the wroth of the British Secret Service. And Phileas Fogg."
He looked at his own two hands with something a little like panic, clearly realizing that neither of the rings he wore would fit her hand. Then realizing further that it was a symbolic lack that could be made up later.
"Is it permitted to your husband, then, to kiss his wife, although it is in the afternoon?"
The ideas people had of English reticence were really rather odd. It gave her carte blanche, however, to decide whatever she liked, and present it as customary behavior.
"Please do," she agreed. He put his arms around her. She folded her hands one over the other at the back of his strong neck, and surrendered herself up to Angelo's embrace, and was happy.
Afterword
The character of Angelo Rimini, vampire Duke of Carpathia, was introduced in the episode "Rockets of the Dead." In the third draft of the script by Gavin Scott (December 31, 1997) Rebecca was still Phileas' sister, rather than his cousin; making possible the following bit of Memorable Dialogue from the end of the story, at a point at which Phileas and Rimini are grappling:
PHILEAS: My sister! A vampire! What were you thinking about?
RIMINI: Little vampires. Lots of them.
It is to this interchange that this story is dedicated with Affection, Love, and a moderate amount of Snickering. The entire script may be found at www.twoevilmonks.org/jvhistory/scripts, and the entire Two Evil Monks site is rich in content and visual interest.