The Pearl Page 18

  The girl’s eyes gleamed with such desire it looked more like greed than passion. Ravenously, she wrapped her arms around Arthur’s neck to latch onto him as she opened her mouth, greedy for his kisses.

  Regan watched, sick to her stomach, bile in her mouth, as the girl drew Arthur to the ground. She positioned him onto his back on the bare ground and took his cock into her hand, stroking it until it grew stiff. She rose up over him and put it into her body, sinking down onto it as Regan watched in impotent rage.

  The girl rode him in a frenzy. Arthur didn’t touch her, which could have comforted Regan but didn’t. Vines growing from the ground had wrapped around his wrists. He was tied down. The girl’s breasts bounced as she bobbed on top of him, her face a parody of pleasure. She cried out with her climax but it was an exaggerated cry, almost a scream, like she was playing a part and playing it poorly.

  The vines broke and Arthur was able to free himself, but even as he stood up the girl turned and offered her body again to him. She bent over at the waist, her cunt wet and open, glistening in the firelight. With a thrust Arthur was inside her hole, rutting in a fresh frenzy, holding the girl by the hips with a bruising grip. Regan knew those should be her hips he held, her cunt he fucked.

  The bonfire grew higher, formed the shape of a tall oval and reflected the vision of Arthur and the girl coupling madly.

  All of this was hers, Regan knew, her nights with Arthur. Who was this young woman who dared take what didn’t belong to her?

  And now they were waltzing naked around the fire. And now he was pushing her to the ground where he mounted her and penetrated her ripe red vagina. And then he was out of her but she was on her back, her legs spread so wide it looked obscene. Arthur held a string of pearls in his hand and, one by one, pushed them into the girl’s open waiting hole.

  Even as Regan watched in horror, her body remembered that night. She remembered how shocked she’d been Arthur would do something so daring, so erotic. How smooth the little pearls were as he’d slid them through the opening of her vagina, how slick and cool. The strand was long and Arthur had been determined to fill her with every inch of them.

  At first it had felt like nothing more than a ridged dildo inside of her, so much like the ones her husband had used on her, forcing her to have one powerful orgasm after another until she would weep for him to stop.

  But it wasn’t like that for long. The more Arthur had given her, the more she’d wanted. As the pearls filled her, her cunt had begun to clench and contract, protesting the intrusion even though she’d wanted it. But then…gradually, her body had opened to take it all and as the pearls filled her beyond what she thought she could take, her vagina opened itself like an iris to receive every last one. She still felt them inside of her, touching every nerve, spreading her out, working their way into every secret cleft inside of her…

  It had been the most erotic moment of her life, and when they’d seen the book and the painting—Woman with a Pearl Necklace—after, she’d felt such a horror at the thought that the most precious, private, erotic moment of her life had been witnessed by anyone other than Arthur.

  Now she was being forced to watch as her lover did that to another woman, a younger woman, a woman he clearly wanted more than her. If he could betray Regan like this…

  It wouldn’t stop. Arthur kept pushing the pearls into the girl’s open cunt. It had to stop. But as endless as the pearls were, so was the girl’s capacity to take them. When the entire strand disappeared from view finally, she took Arthur’s whole hand inside of her, all the way to the wrist and then the forearm. The girl’s stomach swelled as if he’d impregnated her with those glistening white pearls, and Regan couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

  She tore herself away from the tree, fled the fire and the fairy circle and the sight of Arthur with that woman who was not her. As she fled, the white whisper of mist floated behind her, mocking her.

  “How long until he leaves you for a girl who will love him?” she said. “How long will he allow you to take his love without giving any in return? How long…how long…how long…and what will you do when he’s gone? Will you die?”

  “I don’t want to die,” Regan called out.

  “Then live,” the voice said.

  Regan nearly stumbled over another ring of fairy stones. She stopped at once, unable to cross them. Panting, heart in her throat, she stared into the ring and saw a woman standing at an easel. In the moonlight, Regan saw the woman was painting. At first she didn’t recognize the woman with the chin-length brown hair and the glasses, wearing paint-spattered jeans and a man’s shirt, the too-long sleeves rolled to her elbows. Inside the ring of stones, a shadow moved and out of the darkness stepped Arthur. He was dressed this time. He came up behind the woman at her easel and rested his chin on her shoulder.

  Desperately Regan longed to be inside that circle of stones, but the magic kept her back.

  “Painting again?” Arthur said.

  “This is the secret to eternal life,” the woman replied with Regan’s voice. She smiled and leaned back against his chest.

  “I knew you’d find it.” He kissed her cheek and returned to the shadows. The woman smiled and Regan saw it was her own smile. This was her? The woman, the other Regan, put her paintbrush into a glass of muddy water and followed Arthur away and into the darkness.

  Regan tried once more and found that now she could step over the stones and into the fairy circle. She had to see what the woman had been painting. If it revealed the secret of eternal life, she’d sell her soul to see it.

  Slowly she went to the painting sitting on its easel, glowing in the moonlight. She walked around it and stood there, seeing but not understanding what she saw.

  The painting was of her. Just her. Regan Ferry. Surely there had to be more to it than simply a portrait of herself. It was supposed to tell her the secret of eternal life, not taunt her with her own bloody face.

  Regan reached out and touched the wet canvas, angrily smearing the paint.

  The portrait burst into flames and Regan screamed.

  She ran through the woods, away from the ghosts and the things they showed her. She heard a howl of endless agony. The wolf again? No. This time the howl came from Regan. The cry was hers. The agony was hers.

  “Regan,” Arthur said. “Wake up. Wake up, Regan. Look at me.”

  * * *

  Her eyes fluttered open. Regan was in her sitting room lying on the chaise. Her glass lay overturned on the rug, spilling red pomegranate wine like blood.

  A profound relief rushed through her body. It felt nothing like waking from a nightmare. It felt more like she’d been drowning and someone had pulled her from the choking waters.

  With a gasp she sat up. Arthur knelt at her side on the floor. She put her arms around him and pressed her forehead to his.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “What happened?”

  She told him about the wine, the strange happy sleepy feeling that had come over her. The hare loping through the penthouse, the cry of a wolf, and Gloom reciting Poe. Finally the forest and the ghost and the vision in the fire.

  “I would have rather seen myself burning in the fire,” she said as she drank from the cup of water Arthur had brought her. Her hands shook, spilling water on herself. “I would rather have seen myself eaten by the flames than see you with another woman.”

  “So you don’t want to love me, but you can’t stand it if I love someone else?”

  He asked the question very gently, so as not to hurt her.

  It hurt her anyway.

  Before she could make any protest, he said, “I’m sorry. Forget I said that. I’m not going to be with anyone but you.”

  “But you will someday,” she said. “You have to be. I’m not going to marry you, have your children. And you’re the hare.”

  “I’m the hare?”

  She smiled tiredly. She’d never felt so fragile before. “The heir.”

  “It’s the twenty-first cen
tury, Regan. No one’s going to force me to get married if I don’t want to.”

  “Yes, but you want to, don’t you? You want to get married?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  “I saw something else in the woods,” she said. “A woman who was me, but not me. She looked like me, except for the clothes and hair. She was painting a portrait of…me. And she said that was the secret of eternal life, whatever that means.”

  “It means this,” Arthur said. He took her hand in his, gently unbuckled her watch band and stroked the faded ink embossed onto her wrist.

  Art is Eternal.

  “Yes,” she said, “but you don’t want to marry a painting, do you?”

  She drank more water, felt like herself again, though her head ached. “You said Malcolm only interferes for good, yes?” Regan asked. She needed to believe there was a light at the end of this dark, strange tunnel.

  “For the good of our family.”

  “But I’m not part of your family.”

  “He’s playing too rough,” Arthur said. “I don’t think we should do this anymore.”

  “Do we have a choice? He was at your townhouse, the Half Moon… God, what does he want from us?”

  “I don’t know, but if he doesn’t stop tormenting you I’m throwing him on the fire.”

  He said that last part loudly, as if Malcolm were listening. Regan rather thought he was listening. Listening and laughing.

  “He’s in Hell, supposedly?” Regan said. “Wouldn’t think he’d be afraid of fire.”

  Arthur ran his hand through her hair. “Are you all right?”

  “I am now. Let’s go upstairs.”

  “Are you sure? You can rest here and—”

  “I want to be in bed with you. I want you to stay the night with me.”

  “Let’s go back to the townhouse.”

  “Why? He was there, too, remember?”

  They were playing Malcolm’s game, and had been from their first night together. The game wouldn’t end until someone won—Malcolm, most likely.

  “I don’t want to be afraid,” she continued.

  He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. They went up to her bedroom and Regan switched on the bedside lamp. Weary and worn-out, she sat on the end of the bed and rested her head against the post.

  Arthur stood by her side, facing the portrait of Lord Malcolm Godwick, thirteenth Earl of Godwick.

  “One more day, old man,” Arthur said to the painting. “You have until midnight tomorrow to tell us what you want, or I will throw your portrait in the Thames. Maybe you aren’t afraid of fire, but I will make you afraid of me.”

  Nothing happened. She could only hope Lord Malcolm didn’t call their bluff.

  Regan thought about what she’d seen in the haunted wood, what the ghost had said to her, what she’d felt watching Arthur with that girl…

  Something told her that Malcolm, for whatever reason, wanted her to care for Arthur. Why else would he have tortured her with visions of Arthur with another woman if he didn’t want them together in some way?

  “You have until midnight tomorrow,” Regan said, “or I will send Arthur away, and I will never see him again.”

  Arthur looked at her in shock, his eyes wounded.

  The fire in the gas fireplace kicked on, and the moment they both turned their heads to look, the portrait of Malcolm fell off the wall.

  “He didn’t like that,” Regan said.

  Arthur nodded. “Neither did I. You didn’t actually mean that, did you?”

  “No,” she said. Thanks to her marriage, she knew how to lie and lie well. “Of course not.”

  11

  Mars and Venus

  Arthur stayed the night with her in the penthouse bedroom. He held her to his chest as she fell asleep, his body wrapped around hers, covering her like a shield.

  Sleep didn’t come easily for her, but it came more easily than usual in his arms. She might have slept the whole night through but for her phone ringing.

  The first ring jarred her brutally from sleep. Regan sat up, hand to her head, looking around as if an alarm had gone off.

  “Your phone,” Arthur said, his voice drowsy.

  She’d left her phone on the charger in the bathroom and ran to get it. The call was from Zoot. And the time was nearly three in the morning.

  “Zoot? What’s wrong?” she asked. Arthur was already sitting up in bed, waking up, ready to do what needed to be done. She sat beside him and put the call on speakerphone.

  “Sorry to wake you, Boss, but the security blokes called. Alarm at Ferry Hill’s gone off. They drove by, gave the place a twice-over and didn’t see anything but some lights on that shouldn’t be on—master bedroom, they said. They got their orders not to go in without permission.”

  “Those were Sir Jack’s orders, not mine,” Regan said. She sighed. “He’d rather his wife be murdered in her sleep than allow the riff-raff to step foot in his precious house.”

  “You want me to go and see what’s what?”

  She looked at Arthur who quietly mouthed, “Malcolm?”

  Malcolm? Yes, maybe. He’d already shown he could cause trouble anywhere he wanted.

  “No,” Regan said. “We’ll go.”

  “You and me?” Zoot said.

  “Arthur and me. He’s here.”

  “Ahh…”

  “Stop ahh-ing.”

  “Ooh…”

  “Zoot.”

  “Be safe. Probably just a rat running around, tripping the sensors, but you never know.”

  “Thank you. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She ended the call. Arthur was already out of bed and pulling on his clothes. “I can go alone, if you—”

  “Don’t,” he said as he tugged his t-shirt down and grabbed his wallet. “Get dressed. I’ll drive.”

  A sudden lump formed in her throat. She had trouble getting off the bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Arthur asked, brow furrowed in worry.

  “I suppose I didn’t realize you really meant it when you said you’d protect me.”

  He stood in front of her, cupped her chin in his hand. For a moment, she felt like the younger one, like a girl again, scared and shy, and he was the older one, the one in charge.

  “I meant it,” he said.

  After that, she was able to get up and get dressed. She put on jeans, boots, and her favorite grey cashmere jumper. Arthur helped her into her black trench coat and in ten minutes they were in his car on their way to Ferry Hill.

  Arthur drove a black Land Rover, which was exactly the sort of car she expected he’d drive—attractive but practical, sturdy and steady, high quality but not ostentatious. No flashy sports cars for him. And he drove it expertly and carefully like he was transporting precious cargo.

  “You’d make a very good father,” she said.

  He glanced at her before putting his eyes back on the road. “I’d make a good teacher, doctor, and lawyer, too, according to the stupid aptitude tests they made us take in school, but I’m not going to be any of those either.”

  “Do you have any idea how young you are? No one regrets not becoming a lawyer. They do—”

  “Everyone regrets becoming a lawyer. And I won’t regret anything if we’re together.” He paused. “I hated being a child. I hated childish things. A life without children sounds more than fine to me, all right? End of discussion.”

  He reached over and squeezed her knee to show he wasn’t cross with her. No need. She knew. She knew and she’d never felt so loved. If only she could let herself love him back.

  They drove on through the night on roads dark and empty but for the occasional lorry. The last time she’d been out at three in the morning was the night Sir Jack died, and she’d driven alone from the hospital to The Pearl, unable to stomach returning to Ferry Hill. It was supposed to be a temporary move. She hadn’t been back to their house—her house, now—in seven months, she told Arthur.

  �
��So this is sort of a homecoming,” he said.

  “It’s not home,” she said. “It was Sir Jack’s home, never mine. Like I told you, I wasn’t even allowed to move the saltshaker from one side of my plate to the other. The Pearl’s the only place that ever felt like home to me. And even then it wasn’t home so much as just…safe.”

  “Are you selling Ferry Hill?”

  “That’s the plan, as soon as I can make myself go in and clear out my personal things.”

  “I’ll help you. Anything you need,” Arthur said.

  “If you’re still around when all this is over, I’ll let you.”

  “If?” He glanced left at her, just a split second before putting his eyes back on the road. All she’d needed was that split second to see the hurt and fear in his black eyes.

  “Don’t you feel like we’re driving into a dragon’s lair?” she said.

  “A little,” he said with a shrug. “But there’s always treasure in dragon’s lairs, right?”

  “Always dragons, too.”

  They continued on in silence.

  * * *

  Towering English oak trees lined the winding drive of Ferry Hill. Arthur drove slowly through the tunnel of shadows and toward the house.

  “There it is,” she said, feeling stupid, as if he couldn’t see the ten-thousand square-foot Tudor-revival manor looming in front of them, its exterior facade pale ivory and glowing under the spotlights in the front garden.

  Arthur parked the car at the front steps. There were no other vehicles in sight. No sign that anybody was here but them…no sign except for the light still on in the master bedroom window. The housekeeper could have left it on, she told herself. Except that didn’t explain the alarm…

  Regan waited as Arthur got out. He came around and opened her door, helping her out though she didn’t need the help.

  “You’re all right?” he asked as she stared up at the house—its steeply-pitched roof like a witch’s hat, its white walls ghostly glowing, its timbering giving it the faintest impression of medieval prison bars…