Chapter Three

He wished to be denied clarity. On the bloodstained chaise, the maid, Sophie, stared at him blankly. She was dead. He wasn’t sure if the blood on the chaise was hers or another’s. They were all dead. They had been dying for hours. He had seen it, when it began, with the beautiful dark haired girl, twirling in the dinning room, then lunging, her face a monstrously distorted mask as she ripped the throat out of Wilhem, the oldest of the footman. Wilhem, who might have expected to be made the majordomo, but cheerfully accepted it when he was not.

He’d heard it. For hours he had been hanging from a hook buried in the ceiling where a chandelier once hung. His head hung tiredly, his field of vision filled with the mess beneath him on the floor. Blood, waste, and the filmy white secretions, both his and the dark haired man who had raped him, soiled a hand cut rug.

It was an indignity he had been spared most of his life. He was too big and strong to be easily overcome, but even the women, those two seemingly frail, beautiful women, had overpowered him effortlessly, and they had done things to him, that even now made him glance down at his flaccid organ as it twitched weakly. He had, when he had the coin for it, filled a common prostitute’s painted lips with his semen, but these women, in their silks and velvet, with their soft, pampered skin, had sucked him off with an expertise that would have made the fortune of any whore.

Bite marks littered his body, and he felt every one of them. In a strange sort of way, they were the least of the pains that clamored for his attention. His wrists were still bleeding. Above them, his hands were so numb that they ached, and this was nothing to the pain in his shoulders from being stretched until he was on his toes, desperate to keep from falling and dislocating his shoulders. The muscles in his calves burned with cramps and his torn rectum, tormented by the sweat that rolled down his back from the over hot fire still burning in the hearth, itched and burned. The bites were the least of it. Some bruised and aching, others simply stinging him into awareness.

The door to the hallway had been left open. The darkened corridor was empty. He wasn’t sure where his tormentors had gone, or if they had gone. Across the hall the door was shut. It was the door to his mistress’ room. The door behind which muffled sounds had been heard, unmistakable in their meaning at regular intervals through the long hours of the night. The sounds of a cat caught in a briar, mewling, keening. Words in an unknown language. At some point he had made up words of his own. Unbelievably course words. The language of the streets and the dockside, of whores and their transactions in the filthy alleys in the worst parts of town was his refuge.

He thought coming to this house had been the beginning of a new and wonderful life. He thought the mistress, foolish and naïve, had seen something in him, in all of them, that could be made . . . better. Who was the fool? She had lured them here to this, to her monstrous family and while they died around her, she was fucking one of the beasts in the bed he had imagined her sleeping in so decorously, so innocently, immune from the ugly things in the world she had rescued them from.

When they left the salon, Lucius, standing at his post in the hall, had turned to her, a question in his eyes.

William ran his finger up the back of her neck, probing at the bundle of hair carefully arranged by Matilde. “Have him send up a bottle of wine and a tray for you,” he said, plucking a hairpin loose.

There was only the slightest tremor in her voice as she carried out this instruction. William spoke German. He’d know if she was lying or adding a word of warning.

Lucius inclined his head, taking it upon himself to prepare her tray himself. She kept odd hours, and he was accustomed to foraging for her, as she called it with a rueful smile. He chose from the fruit and bread, ignoring the canapés, and adding latkes smeared with sour cream and a liberal portion of caviar. The wine was a local vintage, kept ice cold. It tasted of apples, and he knew that she preferred it to the expensive vintages laid in the wine cellar. He kept his mind on the task at hand, preferring not to think of the rather disturbing way the brown haired man had been playing with her hair.

He had them sorted, the new comers, into couples. The brown haired man and the dark girl. The blond woman, and the dark man. Their mistress was . . . what? Sister, cousin? It made him uneasy. She had never really defined the relationships. He had not asked. It was not his place to ask.

Having clothes ripped off her body was nothing new, Willow reminded herself. He was almost being considerate about it. Wool didn’t give easily, and he had left her bruised before by the pressure of cloth digging into her skin before it gave. He was using his fingers to break off the buttons that held her bodice together from throat to waist. She could hear them hit the ground, one by one, the dress slowly loosing its mooring as the heavy fabric was released.

“We are definitely burning this,” he said distastefully. “Looks like widow’s weeds. What were you thinking?”

“That I was a woman, alone, in a foreign country, not particularly wishing to become someone’s idea of—“

He cocked his head to one side, his eyebrow lifting. “A whore?” he taunted.

Color washed out of her face, leaving her looking oddly stricken. He could have mocked her expression, or reminded her of how he had found her so many years ago in Bristol. Instead, it stirred something like remorse; it made him cup her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her pale cheeks. “No one could ever mistake you for anything so common,” he said softly, and he meant it. Even when she had approached him, looking like she had been driven to having sex for money like any other common whore, desperation dulled by expediency, there had been something, just the tiniest bit different about her that had claimed his attention.

He kissed the tiny frown forming between her eyes. “Need help with your laces?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip and nodded slowly. There was no point in fighting. After eight years she knew that William wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t deliberately hurt her, so long as she was cooperative. He wouldn’t tolerate open defiance, and she had learned the hard way that his toleration was higher than Angelus’. If William couldn’t keep her in line, it was an engraved invitation for Angelus to do so, and the things he had done to her were the subtext of her worst nightmares.

He unlaced her stays, dropping a kiss on the nape of her neck before stepping back to allow her to undress. He removed his frock coat and tossed it carelessly over the back of a chair before sitting down to remove his boots. They looked a bit worse for wear.

She undressed down to her chemise and stockings, and he shot her an amused look as she sat down at her dressing table to pull the pins out of her hair. At the discreet scratch at the bedroom door, he crossed the room and picked up her dressing gown, tossing it to her and waiting for her to secure it before he bade the servant to enter.

Holding the dressing gown closed at the throat, and nervously pushing her hair behind her shoulder, she watched Lucius enter with the dinner tray and wine that William had told her to order brought up to her room.

He set these items down on the small table near the window before asking her if there was anything more she required for the evening.

She gripped the dressing gown harder, painfully aware that this was probably the last time she would see him alive. “No,” she said softly. “Please let the staff know that I appreciate their efforts to make my family comfortable,” she said.

He inclined his head. Trying very hard to maintain a neutral expression. No matter what he might have tried not to wonder about, he was reeling from seeing his mistress in so intimate a setting with a man who appeared all too likely to be spending the evening in her room.

Four new suits of clothes, a salary half again as much as the servants who toiled nearby. A Mistress with a pleasant voice, an easy manner. He counted the blessings that he had been given and refused to be the cause of her embarrassment or discomfort.

“Shall I tell Matilde that you require her?”

She had forgotten about the maid. “No,” she said hurriedly. “Not tonight.”

The brown haired Englishman lounged, his stocking clad feet stretched before him. “That will be all . . . Lucius,” he said with an amused twist of his lips.

She nodded when he appeared to hesitate. “Thank you,” she said again.

He stepped back, something hard crunching under the heal of his foot. He stooped quickly to pick up the object, and left the room.

When he shut the door behind him her hand went to her mouth as the bile rose in her throat. William watched her for a moment, waiting for her to get control of herself, mentally warning her not to take too bloody long about it. He had spent three days on a train in an admittedly comfortable private car, but he was in no mood for the weeping and gnashing of teeth that she looked inclined to indulge in.

He rose, and saw her taking deep breaths as she fought to calm herself. The fact that she was putting some effort into it mollified him enough to go to the table to pour a glass of wine for her. He brought it to his lips to taste. The bouquet reached him before the taste on his tongue. Crisp, with an undertone of apple, probably a local vintage, and nothing Darla or Angelus would deign to pass over their educated palates, but he liked it, and he liked that she apparently preferred it.

No airs and graces for his girl.

He brought the glass of wine to her, setting it on her dressing table, guiding her back to the seat that she had left. He’d have time to poke around tomorrow, ferret out all of her little secrets. The dressing table was a predictable, neat arrangement of her brush and comb, a tortoise shell box that held her hairpins, and a rosewood box that probably held her jewelry, or at least the pieces he permitted her to keep. Nothing too valuable was kept in there, just a few baubles that she largely ignored. He picked up her brush at the same time that she reached for it.

“Drink your wine,” he said, running his free hand over the soft coils of her hair.

There was no mirror on the dressing table. He imagined that her maid thought that an odd omission as he started from the ends of her hair, drawing the brush through the burnished auburn, smiling to himself as he watched the light bring out the coppery tones.

Her hand shook only slightly as she picked up the wine glass, holding it with both hands. He could smell the salt of her silent tears, mingling with the bouquet of the wine, the scent of the fire, and the lingering scent of her soap, warmed from her skin.

He’d let it go, for now. She knew very well what was to happen, and if she let herself get attached to the people she had selected for this, it was her own damn fault. From what he had seen so far, she had followed his instructions and Angelus’ perfectly. She deserved to be praised and petted, and he wasn’t going to let her tears interfere with her reward for being so very good.

When Angelus had suggested sending her ahead of them to Prague, he hadn’t been terribly keen on the idea. It had been years since she had tried to escape him, but that didn’t fool him. Behind her compliance was the same sharp, willful mind that had made taming her entertainment enough for nearly a decade. Two months on her own could undo years of work, and he was so bloody close to getting exactly what he wanted. He had waited to turn her, wanting to put a few more years on her. His one experience visiting the Master’s lair in London had been more than a little humiliating. It was clear that the Master didn’t think Darla’s little family was up to snuff, and that he and Dru were particularly lacking, she because of her madness, and he because he was sired by her.

Willow was in aid of an answer to that. Angelus had actually unwittingly underwritten the process. On his own it might not have occurred to him to see that the girl got any kind of education. He had never met a true bluestocking in his mortal days, but he’d absorbed the impression that went with the sneering about educated women. He had to admit to a certain degree of pride in her accomplishments. She was well read. She spoke English, German, French, and Italian fluently. She had been given lessons in music, drawing, and deportment that had taken, but not spoiled her natural temperament. She was going to be a credit to him.

He knew the time for it was ripening. He had even considered making it tonight, completing their reunion in her death, but as appealing as the idea was, he’d rather not make her turning a footnote to their arrival in Prague. By tomorrow night the house would be full of the newly risen, and the long effort that they had put into her merited something more than divided attention.

Aside from that, Dru would have a bloody fit if they didn’t make a production out of it, and he didn’t fancy her screaming and railing at him, or the idea that if it wasn’t just right, she’d turn on his newly made childe in a fit of rage.

He finished brushing her hair, and set the brush aside, drawing her head back against his chest, his fingers rubbing her temples in soothing circles. She’d stopped crying at some point and was just staring off at nothing, her chest rising and falling, tension in her expression. She was listening. Listening for the sound of carnage below.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, taking the empty wineglass from her, pulling her to her feet by her hands.

Her eyes flew to his, remembering her response when he asked her if she missed him, but he didn’t seem angry, and he didn’t seem to expect her to say that she missed him either. She didn’t think she could say it.

He lifted their joined hands, touching them to her lips. “Undress me?” he said it like it was an invitation that she could refuse, while his eyes told her not to test his patience.

In the old days, he wasn’t William. He was Master. It was her only word for him, and it had been beaten into her. His unadorned first name was a relatively new privilege that she had been introduced to by Angelus. It had taken another beating to convince her that she would forget it at her peril. They could not take her out in the polite, human world calling them by anything but their given names.

Automatically, her hands went to his cravat, unwinding the soft linen. She started to fold it, but his hands brushed hers, and she understood that he wanted her to let it fall to the floor. She unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his pale, smooth, muscular chest. Her eyes fell on his nipples, dark, flat, male nipples. His hands stroked her arms through the robe she was wearing. His abdomen contracted, and she read the silent invitation to tug his shirt out of his breeches. His arms circled her loosely as he undid the cuffs and she licked her lips feeling the wetness pooling between her thighs.

She kissed his chest then, and he made an approving sound, his hands resting lightly on her hips for a moment. When he released her, she lifted her hands to push the shirt over his shoulders.

“Let it fall,” he murmured, his lips brushing her temple. The shirt fluttered to the ground. He caught her hands by the wrists, bringing them around to the belt of her dressing gown until she loosened the tie of her own volition and shrugged out of the garment.

The firelight behind her turned her thin chemise nearly transparent. The hard points of her nipples were visible against the cloth, edged in lace. Her gaze was fixed over his shoulder.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

Her eyelashes fluttered like moth’s wings against her skin before she redirected her gaze to meet his. He took her hands in his, one hand bringing hers to press against his erect member. His other hand directed her hand to the hem of her chemise were it lay against her upper thighs. The fabric pressed against her, between her thighs, and a tremor shook her as she felt her own wetness soak the thin cloth.

He pressed himself into her hand. “Finish,” he ordered, freeing her hands.

She unbuttoned his breeches, sliding them over his hips, her knees unlocking to allow her to kneel in front of him to unfasten the small gold buttons at the bottom of the breeches, just below the knee. He lifted his foot to allow her to free each of his legs, removing both the breeches and the stocking beneath. Before she finished with his right leg, he grasped his cock in one hand, stroking himself, his thumb moving over the foreskin to spread the pre-cum oozing from the head over the organ.

He offered her his thumb, and she took it between her lips, tasting him on his hand until he withdrew his thumb, rubbing her lower lip.

She freed his other leg as he continued to stroke his cock. His hand lifted her chin, and he smiled down at her.

Sometimes she liked to pretend that she didn’t understand him at all. Didn’t know what he wanted. It was a game she played in her head, and to some extent, with him, waiting until he told her what to do. Trembling, she laid her hands on his narrow hips, her thumbs riding his sharp hipbones, absorbing the coolness of his skin.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to feel warm, heated, human, living flesh, other than her own under her hands. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be with someone who looked less like an ideal of perfection. He was all sculpted muscle layered over bone. His hand was still moving over his cock, but her gaze rested on his abdomen, on the downy feathering of brown hair that arrowed down to his groin.

“That’s a very pretty picture you make,” a trace of affection warming his tone.

His stroking hand guided his cock to her lips, and they parted. Her tongue swirled around the head of his cock, and his hips flexed under her hands. She took him into her mouth, using her teeth to scrape the underside of his cock.

His hand fisted in her hair. “That’s it, love,” he hissed. Christ, the heat of her mouth on him! It felt so good. His hand was wrapped around the base of his cock, pumping it into her mouth. He timed his thrusts, careful not to come while he was too deep in her mouth. She’d be coughing his semen out of her lungs half the night, which didn’t suit him. He spilled himself inside her mouth with a grunt, and she swallowed it down, careful not to let any of his come spill from her lips.

Silly bint, he combed his fingers through her hair as she swallowed convulsively, her clever little tongue swirling around the head of his cock to clean him off. As if he minded seeing his seed on her lips and chin, or splashing over her pretty tits. There was no one like Angelus for seeking some stupid sodding ideal of perfection to spoil a cock sucking. He let her rest her head against his stomach while she got her breath back, his hands stroking her beautiful hair.

“Come up now. On your feet, pet,” he coaxed, using her hair to make his wishes clear without pulling on it too hard. His arm curled around her and he cupped her ass, pinching it lightly before he caught the back of her chemise and pulled it over her head. He smacked her bare ass. “Get in bed,” he said gruffly. “Bleeding gaslights are giving me a headache.”

He went around the room to turn the jets down. Willow sat on the edge of the bed, rolling her stockings down. William tended to fling his clothes around. His rooms always looked messy. She preferred to put things away, and sat on the edge of the bed debating the wisdom of getting up and picking up the clothing strewn over the floor. She felt the bed give from the other side, and his arm went around her waist, hauling her to the center of the bed.

“Did I tell you to take off your stockings?” he purred in her ear, his thumb making circles on her abdomen.

“N-no,” she stammered. He didn’t sound angry. In fact, he sounded amused, but that wasn’t always the best gauge of his mood.

He plucked the stockings from her hands. “Jesus, Willow!” he muttered. “Worsted wool? We can keep you better than this.” He chucked one and then the other stocking across the room, narrowly missing the fire, for which she was deeply grateful. She didn’t relish the idea of her room smelling of burning wool and sweaty feet.

“They’re warm,” she protested.

“So is silk,” he said, his hand sliding down between her legs, his fingers stroking her apart. “Ah, warm, wet, silk,” he nuzzled her throat. She let her head fall back against his shoulder as his lips opened over her throat, her hips lifting.

“Mmmm. I think someone did miss me,” he chuckled.

His thumb rotated over her clitoris. His hand cupped the back of her head, supporting her as he took away the support of his shoulder to lay her back on the bed, his mouth seeking hers greedily.

“Spread your legs, and I’ll make you feel so good, pet,” he said between kisses.

She opened her legs wider, and his finger slid inside of her, making her gasp.

He raised his head, a slight frown appearing. The hand beneath her head shifted and his fingers traced the outline of her ear. “Hmmm. That’s interesting,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Nobody fucking you for two months? It’s made you . . . tight,” he grinned. “I think I like it.”

She squirmed under his thumb and finger. “Tight, wet, and aching for a good, hard fuck aren’t you? “He smirked.

His task completed, Lucius lingered in the hall way outside his mistress’ rooms, half listening to the murmur of voices, rolling the small object he had picked up off the floor between his fingers. He checked on the rooms that had been prepared. The luggage in the foyer had been moved to the bedrooms. The two maids were still working on unpacking the women’s clothing. He took the opportunity to tell Matilde that the mistress had retired for the evening and did not wish to be disturbed.

The maid simply looked relieved, and continued working to hang garments. Sophia was across the hall in the master suite, similarly occupied. The two maids would remain available in case the mistress’ family required any assistance before retiring. On the other side of the master suite, Frederick was nearly finished unpacking for one of the men. Lucius assumed it was the dark haired man. There was a subtle air of command about him, and it seemed logical to assume that the mistress had reserved these rooms for his use.

Which meant that the brown haired Englishman was assigned to the room across the hall from his mistress. Paulus was already done unpacking him, and had an armload of soiled clothing to take to the laundress. Filthy English swine, Lucius found himself thinking as Paulus took the hallway to the back stairs. Left alone in the room, he found himself clenching his fists.

He opened his hand to look at the object he had retrieved from the floor of her bedroom. It was, he found, a small, black, velvet covered button. It must have come off one of her dresses. She wore so much black that the neighbors were convinced that she was in mourning. He knew he should return it to Matilde so she could find the dress missing a button and repair it. He promised himself that he would do just that, later, as he tucked the button in the pocket of his waistcoat.

There was something very odd, very wrong, going on here, though he wasn’t sure exactly what it was other than the vague sense of . . . disappointment that the mistress was entertaining a man in her room.

A brother, a cousin—he didn’t believe it for a moment.

Not that it was any of his business. In fact, he would have to pay careful attention to the other servants to ensure that no tongues wagged. Later, he would speak to Matilde, he decided. Between the two of them they would be able to ensure that no whispering and tittle tale went on below stairs.

He made himself take a few deep, calming breaths before leaving the unoccupied room. The temptation to linger in the hall was immense. He made himself walk down the hall to the back stairs.