Doctor D’Arco, Sorcerer of London

40. “Of all my crimes, my one true sin”

Chapter 40

“Of all my crimes, my one true sin”

The old vellum of Victor’s self-inscribed book crackled softly as I turned the page, but there was no more for me to read: there the English ended, and the Italianate language resumed, its vocabulary and structure obscure to me. I imagined it must have been Neapolitan—hadn’t he written that he spoke Neapolitan to his tenant and rival courtier Iacomo, while the latter preferred to speak Angevin French?—yet if this solved one small mystery, it introduced a greater one.

I knew something of the history of the Continent. The French House of Anjou had last ruled Naples centuries ago. Some four hundred years, if I was not mistaken.

Closing the tome gently, I laid it in my lap and drew a deep breath to steady myself, leaning my head back against the side of Victor’s bed, turning my face until I felt the soft fur of the long coverlet against my cheek.

And then—somewhat strained though my eyes were from reading so long in the dim light, entirely unable to tear myself away; tired though my mind was from the sheer emotion of it all, from the overwhelming flood of such strange new knowledge—with my fingers idly exploring the cracks and crevices in the leather cover of that precious old book, I closed my eyes, and I smiled.

I should sleep, I thought. Victor himself had said as much. I could leave the book lying on the rug—that would speak for all, when he saw it, absolving me of the need to explain what I had done—and climb into his bed, and rest. I removed my little shoes to ready myself. Never mind the hairpins; I would sleep on my side. Never mind the corset; I had no time for such details. I wanted only to be enveloped in the scent of him, in the lingering touch of his shadow, to help me ease and slow my rushing mind.

Because, for all the strangeness of his story, its knowledge only made me feel closer to him still, and admire him yet more.

If I were correct that he meant for me to read it, then he meant it as some manner of disclosure, I supposed: a sign that he wished to withhold from me no more secrets, delivered in such a manner as to avoid my protest until I had a chance to take in the full tale. Yet did not that in itself suggest that he thought his uncanny past might appall me? If that were so, then it might be that he did not know me as well as I now knew him. But that was little matter: there would be time for the both of us to learn.

And time for me, I hoped, to calm the tender madness that began to rise in my heart, before I should hear again the familiar falls of his black leather boots on stone. A young woman’s folly, surely, but I was nearly young enough a woman to be entitled to it: the longer my mind fixed upon the implications of the last pages of his tale, the more it racked my heart to wonder how long the heat of his desperate wrath sustained him—whether when it cooled and ebbed, in the black solitude of some moonless midnight, he ever grew lonely. Madness, I told myself; I was only overcome again by the emotion of it all—he was no object of pity nor charity; he wanted for nothing and needed, I thought, no more than himself: one may as well feel sorry for a standing rock in the sea, waves breaking and ships splintering against its unconquerable shoulder.

No , I told myself, do not think for now of the loneliness—think of all the rest . And the rest of what I had learned of him so far filled me with a warm satisfaction, something like a secondhand sense of pride.

What, after all, should I have expected his life to have been? This greatest sorcerer of London— of London , I had thought first, and yet that sprawling city that busied itself somewhere above the cavernous ceiling of his lair seemed suddenly too provincial a boundary, too shallow and narrow a sea, and I could not but wonder if he were the greatest sorcerer to walk beneath the sun and moon. This master sorcerer, this triumphant Faust: why should any of his uncanny history appall me?

We were neither of us the other one’s first time, and I could think no less of him for having had a woman in his past; it would have surprised me far more if he were inexperienced, even before I knew how handsome a face he hid behind the mask. And if his days with Lilith seemed to have been happier for longer than mine had been with Simon, and infinitely more fruitful, they ended as bitterly.

Ought I to have been disturbed to discover her name and nature? That Victor had once taken a demoness—no less than a Queen of Hell—for a lover? He seemed to imagine I might be, and to be sure, that revelation was at first a surprise. And yet, after only a moment’s reflection, what was a shock to ordinary sensibilities seemed only natural for so extraordinary a man as was he. Was it so unusual, after all, to think that a sorcerer who consorts with disprites would once have known one intimately, years ago— centuries ago , I corrected myself—in the rage and lust and defiance of that burning morning of his manhood?

And yet, despite it all (or because of it—I could no longer say), more than once, when he wrote of how he made love to Lilith, I thought of how I would like to have been in her place: to feel his hands and his lips on my body like that; to lie down beneath him as he?—

Footsteps. Victor’s, certainly: I knew those boots, though I had forgotten for a moment the new, slight hitch in his stride.

I paused, adjudging it better if I did not yet continue my prior thought.

This time, I did not fear his approach, though I caught myself arranging my skirts a little on the rug. I smiled at that.

The lock opened. His dark, massive form filled the doorway, silhouetted by the light from the hall until the door closed behind his broad back.

“Victor.”

I said no more. I felt a certain tension in the air of his chamber, a sense of anticipation like a held breath.

With the lone candle at my side the only light, he was too distant for me to discern his expression, the shadows of his hood too deep to see his eyes. In his silence, I could only wonder what he thought when he saw me there, seated on his bedside rug with my back leaned gently against the fur coverlet, my hand resting on the book that lay in my lap.

His footsteps slowed as he approached. I saw that he carried before him a laden tray, with pale steam rising from the plate balanced at its center. It was no herbal chemistry this time—I smelt none of that green, bitter scent, but instead something that seemed as inviting as it was unfamiliar.

I could see the flicker of his dark eyes under his hood now as he looked down at me; nearly imperceptible though it was, I could not mistake that hint of warmer amusement that colored the low, sardonic rumble of his voice: “You prefer to sit on the floor?”

“I suppose so, when I find something which so captures my attention that I cannot endure delay for the uninteresting detail of moving to a chair.”

He grunted faintly, and I knew that he watched me as I stood; that he anticipated, perhaps most of all, what I might do with the book I still held in my hands. From my new vantage point I could better see the contents of the tray—some manner of food and drink—though despite my appreciation and my growing hunger, I did not stare.

Had not I hesitated, only days ago, to partake of the food of the underworld? I hesitated no longer. Now I welcomed it.

Were it to bind me to him, release me from the world above to dwell with him forever in his underground dominion, so much the better.

“Thank you, Victor,” I said quietly, my gratitude genuine. “Where ought I rather to sit?”

“The chair will do,” his voice was still as low and as even in its tone, “if you find the time and interest.”

I wondered if I had turned first, or whether he had caught the glance of my smile before instinct restrained it again.

Rounding the foot of the bed, I realized I was still holding the book—there seemed nowhere correct to set it, but I rested it carefully atop the nightstand beside his mask before lowering myself into his great wooden chair. I watched him closely then—the mild stiffness in his movements, the efficiency with which he set up a sort of metal stand and made the tray into a makeshift table just above the level of my knees. It seemed so small, so domestic, so human a kindness (not the word I had sought, but near enough) for this man who had seen five centuries; whose long, long life of sorcery had been so full and vivid.

And yet, if I understood aright—if it were true, and remained true for so many years, that after Lilith he had never loved again?—

A life so full and vivid, surely.

And so alone.

I caught myself in the thought, holding it back before it touched too deeply my heart again.

Intimate , I thought to myself instead as I looked to the meal set before me. Intimate was the word I had sought. I looked to the twin glasses of wine, the thickly crusted slices of soft bread, and the plate of something I did not recognize—a large, rectangular cut of something hot and layered, baked in a casserole I supposed—and which smelt wonderfully savory.

I took up the knife and fork, and paused, and looked up at him.

“What a life you have lived, sir.”

Were it not for the motion of his hands as he drew back his hood, I would have better discerned whether I saw his great shoulders relax a little beneath his black cloak.

Already I could feel the shift in his shadow—the tentative easing of tension, like the slow uncoiling of a wary snake unready to trust that its peril has passed.

No, I thought to myself; I should not have thought of a snake, of all creatures.

He looked into my eyes, his own eyes unwavering, unfathomable in their dark depths, and I allowed him to hold my gaze for as long as he wished.

“How much did you read?”

I cut through the layers of the casserole, likely moving unnaturally slowly in my endeavor to avoid appearing too eager. “The long tale in English.”

“All of it?”

“I believe so, sir. You left the book where you expected me to find it,” I continued after a brief silence between us, “didn’t you? I couldn’t otherwise think that you should be so relatively unperturbed by my having read it.”

I put the first bite of casserole into my mouth, chewing thoughtfully at first, then with relish: it was rich, heavy and warm, tasting of meat and melting cheese with the thick, acidic sweetness of tomato.

He took one of the two wine glasses, drank from it, and sat down before me on the edge of the bed. “You are not, yourself, particularly perturbed by your having read it.”

“Not particularly,” I replied after swallowing, following with my own sip of red wine. “If I may ask what?—”

“Ask what you will,” he interrupted gravely, and I bit my tongue so as not to laugh.

“No, sir,” I looked down at my dish so as not to meet his eyes, “not like that. It’s nothing of any moment. I was only going to ask what I ought to call this casserole. It’s delicious, and I am certain I have not eaten anything entirely like?—”

“ Lasagna .” The silence was short. Victor broke first: his deep, sinister chuckle cracked briefly into rough laughter, somehow warm and bitter at once. “Had I known a plate of lasagna would be all it takes to cure you of your horror at my past…”

“I shan’t be able to speak to the capacity of lasagna for curing horror, sir. I am certain I felt none.”

“None,” he echoed with another draw of wine from his glass as I continued to eat, my eyes rising from my plate now and again to watch him. I felt the darkness of the bedroom change as his massive shoulders shifted forward; he leaned in closer, his black eyes glinting in the candlelight.

I could not mistake the fact that he was sitting amid the disheveled bedclothes, the unkempt folds of the soft fur coverlet pressed against the hard muscle of his black-clad thighs. Nor could I draw my attention entirely away from the sight of his rough, strong hand holding an unbroken glass of wine, the force of that crushing grip evidenced to be capable of a fine, gentle touch.

“I was surprised, of course,” I continued. “Intrigued, to be certain.”

“Merely intrigued ,” he grunted in grim amusement.

“Fascinated, sir.”

The tap of my fork coming to rest on the plate was the only sound before I lifted my glass again, our eyes meeting over its rim. I did not know whether it was an effect of his gaze or the wine, or the strange, forbidden intimacy of it all—of learning how to speak to my professor again after kissing those lips, after quivering in helpless ecstasy against that powerful body; after sleeping in his bed and awakening to his kindness, and to his erotic written account of his own uncanny past—all of it together, surely—but I thought that my tongue had loosened, my heart and my mind more likely now to spill, and I wondered what wisdom remained in endeavoring to hold myself back, and how much it mattered anymore.

“If I remember my continental history aright,” I said, “it has been several centuries, at least, since a man of the royal court of Naples would have found it useful to speak Angevin French.”

“Correct.”

“That was one surprise, sir.” I took another bite of lasagna, as if it would anchor me to the earth; if not for the scent and savor of it, the incredibility of the conversation would have caused me to question whether we spoke together in a dream. “I had thought you to be closer to forty than to four hundred.”

He smiled.

That was all, at first—he only smiled, and I could not think why it caught my eye, why it nearly convinced me somehow of my suspicion of the unreality of the moment, why it looked so out of place.

And then I remembered: I was accustomed to the metal mask, the vertical slits in the cruel, cold steel that suggested so chillingly the rigid sneer of a skull, all emotion obscured from his face but for the fire of his eyes alone.

Never until now had I seen him smile.

I wondered how long it had been since anyone else had seen the same.

“For much of my life,” he replied, “I have preferred to maintain an appearance closer to your age. These past few decades,” he raked a hand through his silver-streaked hair with a sardonic grin, “I’ve let myself go a little.”

“I like you just as you are, sir,” I said before I could catch myself, lowering my voice to a murmur as I realized it was too late.

“Again.”

“I said,” I drew a breath, “that I like you just as you are. I wouldn’t want for you to look any younger. I wouldn’t want for you to change a thing.” My skin heated beneath the layers of my clothes; my heart beat so terribly quickly; I could not look to him, because I dared not yet to learn his response, and so I gave the cutting and eating of lasagna my unduly undivided attention. “I suppose that was untoward of me to say.”

“No.” He finished his wine, putting the glass down on the nightstand. “It was honest.”

“It was.” Setting down the knife and fork again, I picked up one of the small slices of bread and broke it in my hands, letting half of it remain on the dish. I was becoming foolish now, avoiding his gaze so pointedly when I had sought it only moments before, and I knew it and disliked it in myself; he was watching me as I chewed half a piece of rustic French bread, I was certain of it, watching me torture the mild moment into nonsense?—

“Like this,” his deep voice rumbled not far from my ear, low and quiet and certain—a faint thrill gripped my spine, to realize he had drawn so close—and before my eyes I saw his muscular hand reach over my plate, the low ridges of his scars and thick veins flexing easily as he took the other half of my slice of bread. I watched with a strange fascination as he trailed it languidly across my dish, rubbing it in slow, sensual circles through the rich red sauce from the lasagna; he then held the piece out to me, close enough before my face that I had little choice but to look him in the eye once more.

“All right, sir.” I smiled, allowing him the cleverness of his little trick as I reached to take the morsel from his fingers.

But his other hand caught me before I had the chance: gently, inexorably he captured my right hand in his warm, firm grip; I relented in his inescapable hold as he laid my hand down in his beside the wine glass on the makeshift table between us, his thumb massaging my palm.

Then I understood.

I leaned in a little closer, closing my eyes. I had meant to leave them open to meet his gaze, but the feeling of my lips on his fingers, his fingers on my lips as I took the bread from him with my mouth—the fleeting taste of his skin against my tongue, the texture of the deep scar near the tip of his middle finger as it caressed the soft corner of my lower lip—I heard my own quiet sigh as I pulled away, chewing the sauced bread as he slowly released my captive hand. Even from across the table I could feel him exhale in satisfaction; I tried to relax, pressing my feet flat against the floor so that he could neither see nor sense somehow, if he had not already, the way that my toes had curled in reflexive pleasure into the soft fur of his bedside rug.

After touching my napkin to my lips, I allowed myself to look at him for a while, wondering that this formidable, powerful man—whose massive body could crush me with little more effort than it took to feed me a piece of bread, if he so wished; whose centuries-long mastery of sorcery could overcome me with a mere thought—should grant me so much power as to wait on my words, on the character of my glance, on the tenor of my touch.

“And I expect equal honesty,” Victor intoned; I did not know whether he affected a professorial tone to tease me, or whether it came naturally given the subject of his words, “in the remainder of your summary and assessment of what you have read.”

He was teasing. He had to have been.

“Yes, professor.”

“I must ascertain your understanding of the material,” his voice lowered, so subtly I wondered if I had imagined it, “before we proceed.”

Against the measured gravity of his straight face, I could not help that my eyes darted briefly away as I allowed the whisper of a fond, knowing smile.

“Then, if I have properly understood my reading, sir—my assigned reading—” He did not object, and I paused, allowing him to wait as I finished the last of the lasagna. “The protagonist of the piece is one Lord Vittorio D’Arco, a young landed baron of Naples in the early Renaissance, who eschewed both the life of a courtier and that of an ecclesiastic for the pursuit of the forbidden art that freed his soul, and made him feel alive at last. He was for a while the lover and consort of Lilith, Queen of Dis, protecting both her and himself from the ecclesiastics of the academy he escaped, and fathering countless children with her—but she grew jealous of his sorcery, and when she made an attempt on his life he had no choice but to banish her: a testament to his mastery and vital power, though it broke his heart.

“And so he became an outlaw twice over, and twice unforgiven: an exile from the society of man for loving her, hunted by Hell for banishing her: an apostate, a heretic and a highwayman, a renegade on the road. I think he was like Faust—I wondered whether he was Faust himself, taking a new name and leaving behind legends of his own demise so that none could find nor follow him—but if he was, then he was Faust in triumph. Unlike the old fables, he escaped, I think, almost every deal he ever made with a demon, living on the treacherous verge of life and death, staking his soul on long odds and then wresting every wager to his advantage—turning every contract for his own damnation into another extension of his life on the green earth.”

“Correct,” he replied, seizing upon my momentary pause. “Excellent. And none of that is to you any particular perturbation? Nothing a little casserole , as you call it, cannot fix?”

I grinned fleetingly against the rim of the wine glass as I finished another sip. “None of that is any perturbation, sir—I should have been far more surprised to learn that you had been until recently an accountant, or a chimney-sweep—but you ought to let me finish.”

“Continue, then,” he grunted.

But my own mood altered as I watched the change in his hand where it rested on his knee, the slight tension as the fingers that only moments ago had touched my lips now tightened against the black fabric of his robes.

I was sorry for that.

No one seeing him as he sat before me would sense anything other than entire self-possession, supreme command, the grim and utter confidence of some unassailable lord of darkness in the seat of his kingdom of night. Yet I—I alone, perhaps—I knew those hands.

And I, who had drawn his own dagger on him days ago, who had justly and heartlessly made designs upon his life for his withholding of the truth from me, felt sorry now—perhaps all the more—that my gentle retribution for his fond teasing of me should cause him so much as that twinge of unease.

He had been calmer at dagger point.

I wondered at that. I wondered if I dared to presume that I understood his heart.

He nearly died for me—he took what he expected to be the mortal blow for me—and sooner even would he have died by my hand than?—

Than what?

Than lose me?

Than live without me?

Could I so presume?

And was all of this now to atone for his secrecy before? And was his secrecy then because?—

“Continue,” his deep voice rumbled, “Elizabeth.”

“It was the ending that affected me, sir.”

He grunted in acknowledgement, and I saw the anticipation in those dark eyes.

“At the end of the piece, Lord D’Arco?—”

“—Doctor D’Arco.”

“Doctor D’Arco, then. But why, if I may ask? Surely the title of baron is of greater import.”

“And of lesser interest. There was no will, no ambition in my inheritance of a barony. Lord is what the world made me. Doctor is what I made myself.”

I pressed my lips into a tight smile, holding back the burgeoning heat of the swelling of my heart. I do not know why it was that , of all things, that brought on such a sensation; I was for a moment too overcome even to wonder if he could see the first small tears that I thought I felt sting the corners of my eyes, and whether he thought me mad.

“It’s very you , sir,” I managed, mastering myself. “It suits you well.” And that was why—that was what it was: because his insistence upon his self-fashioned title, seized in proud defiance of the stifling order of the mundane world, felt as familiar and inviting as his voice, his scent, the touch of his shadow. “At the end of the manuscript,” I began again, “the young Doctor D’Arco donned for the first time a metal mask, armoring himself against any further attempts by infernal art to silence his spoken spells. And yet, from his final exchange with Iacomo, I thought—I thought, in the context of their conversation, that the wearing of the mask suggested something more besides.”

I drained the rest of my wine glass and found myself regarding his empty mask where it lay beside the old book on the nightstand, and I watched candlelight flicker across the polished steel.

“Continue.” It was only a single word, yet his deep, coarse voice became so smooth as he spoke to me, so intimate as the darkness of his shadow surrounded me, I thought nearly I had slipped into a dream.

I turned my gaze to meet his eyes, not caring anymore that my own now were blurred with tears. “I thought that you meant to never love again.”

His massive shoulders shifted in the dark; his scarred hand curled slowly against his knee. I could sense the tension in the warm air of the bedchamber—the anticipation—the quiver of restraint.

“That is what perturbed me,” I whispered.

“Because you cannot bear to trust a man who banished the woman he once loved, and hardened his heart? Not when he is the same villain, the same criminal of Hell and of earth who widowed you before he knew you, so blindly and wantonly seizing away the life that you had known?—”

“And then showing me a new one,” I interrupted, “better than the old: a life of horror and beauty and wonder, with all the care and the passion and the fierce heart—with all the love , sir— that in my life as Mrs. Buckingham I had never known. No, sir.” I moved the makeshift table carefully to the side. Some strange instinct for my own dignity compelled me to stand before him as I spoke, and I watched him watch me as I rose to my stockinged feet, regretting for a moment the loss of the slight elevation in height which my shoes would have afforded me, watching something change in the muscle of his jaw and his black brows lower over his uncertain eyes. If I were going to divulge now my madness, and say what I meant now to say, I would not waste it in some mumbled, crabbed confession: I would dignify it with all such little strength as I had, give it life and breath and gravity, make it mean all that it meant to my mad heart.

“No, sir,” I repeated, holding my head high and my voice as steady as I could manage, looking into his eyes. “Because I cannot bear the thought of you loveless and alone.”

I was aware of the size and mass of him as he rose swiftly from the bed, the sudden quickening of my pulse as all my vision was filled with him, his looming black form eclipsing the rest of the room from my sight—I had no time to think—no time to react—I took a single step forward and was seized in his arms, engulfed in his shadow, listening to my own shuddering sigh of satisfaction as his cloak swirled and settled around me and my hand stroked slowly up the black robes that covered his warm, broad back. I thought of our kiss on the library floor; now I had declared myself to him again, and again we were in each other’s arms, as quickly and as completely, only now there was no specter of imminent death and separation to drive us—now there was only vital desire. I was so hungry to touch him, so hungry to be touched and held and kissed by him again, to be overcome by his power, to give in at last to my yearning for him and free my anguish to unwind into joy.

“The vow of celibacy—sir—” I voiced the words that flashed unbidden through my mind, but I was scarcely able to speak; I was stroking and stroking his spine and the back of his powerful shoulders, relishing every ripple and flex of muscle beneath the frustration of the fabric and the bandages, desperate for it all to be real—for it to be no dream again—my head was against his chest and his strong hand was trailing up the side of my hip, over my waist; his lips brushed the nape of my neck, and I sighed into him for the kiss he pressed against the sensitive skin—so subtly, utterly overwhelming a sensation—and I knew that I could not escape if even I had wished it, trapped and trembling in the dark heat of his grasp as I felt the agile tip of his tongue slip up under the line of my hair.

“What about,” he dragged his lower lip across the tender flesh just behind my ear and breathed a deep whisper across the heated skin, “the vow of celibacy?”

I heard the tinge of amusement in his voice; so close against him, I felt the quaking rumble of his low, sinister laughter in my marrow. And I smiled, for such a short while as I could—“I am sure I don’t know, professor,” I mumbled until I heard my voice catch in a breathless gasp: one of his hands was on the small of my back, caressing the base of my spine so lightly and surely that even through my clothes I could not help but shiver with a slow, lingering thrill, nearly unaware of his other hand trailing up the side of my corseted ribs until the arch of my spine made me press one of my breasts into his strong, inescapable grasp.

“Then damn it all,” he whispered, his defiant voice thick and rough with desire, the rise and fall of his chest quickening against me. “Damn to the deepest pits of Hell all that holds us apart.”

I glanced down and saw his scarred, muscular hands stroking the half-bound forms of my breasts, his thumbs seeking and rubbing lightly over the hidden line where their soft swell escaped my corset’s rigid constraints; I held onto his great shoulders, as much for the pleasure of touching him as to brace myself while I felt my head fall back at the sight and the sensation of his caress, my eyes closing, my lips parting against the pressure of his own as he leaned down to kiss me, his long hair brushing my face, his warm tongue already stroking against my own.

“Over four hundred years alone, and there is not a decade, not a day, not a second I regret,” I heard his voice in the back of my mind as he deepened the kiss, and I took him in hungrily, insatiably, desperate to touch and taste and feel, “because it led to you, Elizabeth… because it all led to you.”

“Victor…” I panted as he broke the kiss to let me gasp for breath, his hot mouth ravishing the underside of my jaw and the soft skin of my throat. I wondered what he thought of my pulse now, quickening beneath not his fingers but his tongue, and whether he could feel it shudder under my heated skin.

“Every night alone,” he breathed against my ear; I stroked his face, my fingers sifting through his coarse side-whiskers; I ran a luxuriating hand through his long, thick hair; “every dark road, Elizabeth… every scar… every broken contract… every transgression… I regret nothing …”

“Then you oughtn’t mind one more transgression, sir?—”

He held my face in both hands as he closed my mouth with another kiss: more languid, more sensual this time, at once gentler and all the more domineering for it, as if he savored the thought of how easily and completely he could overcome me again. The heady darkness of his art was already closing in, rising within me, soaking through my body in black waves; I gripped his shoulders harder, kneading into the heaving muscle as I moaned helplessly into his kiss—I had no defenses, no stamina against him—every subtle, rhythmic surge of his sorcery sent a shivering thrill through my body, melting my strength a little further; I felt my kiss ease and my hands soften—my knees were starting to go weak, my mind reeling with the fascinating terror of his power, with the forbidden anticipation of complete surrender to him—his arms were around me again, securing me in his inescapable hold, his hands supporting my back and my head as I felt myself sink slowly into his grasp and his shadow with an indulgent sigh: a long, dark, pleasurable waking swoon, rushing to my head and drowning me in his overwhelming art. It felt so natural, so effortless; I was so deep in his shadow that I scarcely knew I had already slipped into ecstasy until I felt myself throbbing in his arms: he lifted me with ease and laid me down gently on the soft bed, his lips still stroking mine all the while; my breasts were full and heavy as they trembled against my corset, my thighs still quivering weakly beneath the layers of my clothes. I was still fully dressed in my black mourning attire and already lying in wanton decadence; the incredulous memory of how swiftly, how smoothly, how completely he had spent me sent another tremor though my exhausted limbs.

“And you haven’t even… touched me yet…” I murmured in a comfortable daze: I felt so soft and relaxed, so warm and wet, dimly aware of his weight sinking deeper into the bed behind me.

“ Yet ,” his low voice rumbled, and I shivered at its promise.

His arms were around me again as I lay halfway on my side atop the rich fur coverlet, halfway leaned back against the warmth of his chest; I felt his lips against the side of my throat from behind, his strong, deft hands on my chest, unfastening one by one each button of my black silk bodice. He took his time, learning how to touch me: each caress of his scarred hands grew gentler, lighter still, until he fingered my corset-bound breasts with so ghostly a touch that my body tensed once more against him.

“Your fingers, sir—your art—the touch of your shadow,” I whispered, my chest beginning to heave in new anticipation as I watched his hands slowly, inevitably arouse and undress me. “What you—” My breath caught, my eyes losing focus and rolling closed as I arched back against him, my hand reaching instinctively behind me to curl my fingers into his hair: I felt a soft, sudden vertigo lighten my head, a fleeting thrill of his dark art rippling through my body, stroking my tingling nerves in an uncanny caress. “What you… do to me,” I continued, breathing again as the feeling assuaged. “What if I melt for you too easily now—every time I stand beside you—every time I feel your presence, your sorcery?—”

“What if you do?”

I moaned softly, both for the thought and the new sensation: my bodice was open now, and he helped me out of the sleeves before laying me down again; I heard a deep sound of satisfaction in the back of his throat as he stroked and caressed my bared décolletage from behind me, his touch at once possessive and entirely sensual as he took pleasure in the feeling of my skin.

“I don’t suppose I could do the same to you, sir… melt you with my art… show you how it feels.”

“Why would you suppose you couldn’t when you haven’t yet tried? You have me halfway there already—halfway, maybe more?—”

“Oh, sir?—”

“You don’t know, Elizabeth,” he breathed; I could feel his rough whiskers graze the naked flesh of my shoulder as I felt him inhale deeply, his half-bare chest swelling against my back; he seemed to savor the scent of my skin as he pulled me closer against him, his hot tongue and lips stroking and pleasuring my exposed throat as I leaned into him, offering more of myself to him, reaching back to rub my hand over his powerful thigh—anything to touch him, to touch more of him—delighting in the sensation of the muscles contracting beneath my fingers as I worked to feel my way beneath the black robes.

“You don’t know,” he repeated, his voice heavy and thick, “how you affect me—how long and how deeply I have loved you—yes, loved you, Elizabeth?—”

“Victor,” I whispered, nearly a sob, overcome with sensation and emotion as he pressed kiss after kiss to the place where my shoulder met my neck, his fingers tracing lightly over my breasts and my sides on their way to loosen the lacing of my corset behind my back.

“How I thought of you, Elizabeth—dreamt of you—desired you—how you haunted me—everything about you—” His bandaged injuries from the battle with Gremio were nothing to him now, as if the fervent heat of his deepening obsession had burned away the pain; his accustomed precision was gone from his words and his voice, and in his monomania the tones of his vague accent grew nearer to his native Neapolitan; I felt his fingers brush over my spine as they worked, my body relaxing as the support of the corset began to give way. “How you never knew that my damned, abhorrent effort to conceal what I had done to Simon Buckingham was all to keep you—to keep you with me—desperate that you would not leave me—that you would not know my sin against you—the death of Simon Buckingham; the secret I concealed from you—of all my crimes, my one true sin—because it was against you .”

“Don’t speak of it now, sir,” I whispered, struck by the hoarseness of my own voice. “You said you regret nothing; so regret nothing—I love you, Victor—” I gasped, quivering: my hand that stroked his thigh wandered higher over the fabric of his black robes, and the cloth did nothing to conceal the shape of the firm, unyielding length that twitched beneath my touch, pressing against my hand as I heard and felt his deep, soft groan; he was reaching around me again, skilled fingers solving and unfastening the metal hooks of my busk. “I love you, sir—I don’t know when it began, because I can’t remember anymore how it felt not to love you—how my heart lived before this mad, melting anguish came to possess it.”

“You’re not sorry I?—”

“—Sir,” I spoke a little louder, mildly exasperated by his insistence, “I beat my fists on Simon Buckingham’s tomb, and spat on it, and I was sorry only that the lid was too heavy to move.”

“You—what?”

At first his caressing hands paused—for that first moment, this formidable man who had fathered demons, who had witnessed the arcane secrets of five centuries of the world, was rendered at last incredulous—and then they grasped me tighter, pulling me close against the heat of his broad chest as he exhaled a quaking sigh and then laughed, really laughed with relief and joy, with love and admiration and fond, wicked delight, and as I leaned my head back over that massive, muscled shoulder, I smiled so widely I thought my haughty face would crack.

We kissed again then, long and deep, my lips faltering with a sigh against the slow, rhythmic strokes of his as I felt the thrilling freedom of my corset falling open, only the thin cotton of my chemise between his skin and mine as he seized and massaged my swelling breasts with abandon—a heavy, kneading rhythm in time with his kiss—and my hands gripped lightly to the backs of his as he pleasured me. I eased one of his hands lower with gentle pressure, hearing myself murmur something against his lips as his hand slid lower, lower, my stomach shivering under his touch, my body relaxed and tingling as I felt myself begin to sink into his shadow again?—

And then I flinched in Victor’s arms with a terrible start, my hands clutching at his in an abrupt reflex of shock and horror as I was jolted awake from the abstraction of his kiss, and I felt his body tense and grip as suddenly as did mine: a harsh voice was calling at the chamber door, punctuated by an incessant rapping on the wood.