CHAPTER FOURTEEN WITHOUT CHARM #5
He felt her approaching release but did not hurry. His thumb moved gently over the sensitive point above their joining. Her breath caught.
“More?”
“Yes.”
He increased pressure. Eleanor’s legs tightened around him. Gabriel’s own control began to fray.
“Together,” she whispered.
He watched her face. The climax moved through Eleanor slowly at first, then deepened.
Her inner muscles pulsed around him, drawing a groan from his throat.
Gabriel followed. He reached release while looking into her eyes, every defence absent.
Afterward, he remained above her until his arms trembled.
Eleanor rolled them onto their sides. Gabriel did not attempt to rise.
He drew her against his chest, and they lay beneath one of the wrapping blankets before the fire. For a long time, neither spoke.
The office smelled of ink, wood smoke and intimacy.
Their clothes remained scattered near the table.
The torn proposal lay upon the desk. Eleanor’s name stood unfinished on the sign downstairs.
Gabriel imagined adding nothing after it.
Finch Publishing. Her name. Her work. Her choice.
He kissed her hair. Eleanor traced idle patterns across his chest.
“The seventh proposal was not terrible,” she said.
“It was never delivered.”
“The version you spoke.”
Gabriel considered.
“It lacked structure.”
“It had an effective conclusion.”
“You accepted before reviewing financial provisions.”
“I may withdraw after seeing them.”
His arm tightened around her. Eleanor laughed. Gabriel smiled into her hair. He did not hide it.
* * *
They dressed an hour later. Gabriel had just managed to tie his cravat without a mirror when Eleanor opened the final document box removed from Dr. Finch’s archive.
They had intended to send everything to Calder House immediately.
Instead, the proposal, acceptance and enthusiastic misuse of office furniture had delayed scholarship.
Eleanor sat cross-legged upon the rug, her gown fastened imperfectly at the back. Gabriel knelt beside her.
“Which box?”
“Private correspondence from the final cabinet.”
“Finch’s?”
“Some. Several letters appear addressed to Harcourt.”
She removed a bundle tied with black thread.
The first concerned printer payments. The second listed private editions distributed through the Mercury Club.
The third used the thorned-branch seal found upon the Blackthorn letter.
Gabriel took it. The wax impression contained three symbols: A thorned branch.
A closed gate. A small black star. Eleanor unfolded the page.
The handwriting differed from Peregrine’s, Dr. Finch’s and every Mercury intermediary they had identified.
The message contained no cipher. That made it more threatening.
The Blackthorn editions must be returned to their owner before the autumn gathering. No further copies are to leave Blackthorn Hall.
The Translator’s source material must be preserved until its value has been assessed. Finch may retain corrected fragments only while compliant.
The gate remains closed.
Gabriel read the first line again. Blackthorn editions. Not merely letters or manuscripts. Editions. A private body of work large enough to possess its own designation. Eleanor examined the seal.
“The black star resembles Vesper’s evening-star symbol.”
“It may be the origin.”
“And the closed gate?”
“The estate.”
“You know it?”
Gabriel sat back. The name belonged to old rumours, whispered during his first years in intelligence work and dismissed whenever Hargreaves demanded evidence.
Blackthorn Hall stood in Northumberland, isolated beyond miles of woodland and moor.
The estate had once hosted private gatherings of scholars, foreign visitors and collectors whose names later appeared in several government investigations.
Its owner rarely came to London. Some claimed illness kept him away.
Others said he had been disfigured during the war, that he maintained an archive of stolen letters or that no visitor entered the east wing and returned willing to discuss it.
Gabriel had always considered half the stories theatrical nonsense.
The Mercury Club had taught him that theatrical nonsense often concealed careful business.
“Blackthorn Hall belongs to Lord Sebastian Blackthorn,” he said.
Eleanor searched her memory.
“The Marquess of Ravenscroft?”
“Yes.”
“He has not attended society for years.”
“Not publicly.”
“Was he connected to government service?”
“Possibly. Every record contradicts another.”
“Do you know him?”
The question shifted the chapter of the investigation before them.
Peregrine had been captured. Dr. Finch exposed.
Eleanor’s work reclaimed. Yet Vesper remained beyond the black seal, and Blackthorn Hall had appeared not as a distant estate but as the guarded centre of private editions no one wanted leaving its walls.
Gabriel looked at the thorned branch, the closed gate and the black star.
“No one truly knows the master of Blackthorn Hall.”