He nodded, smiling as if her answer had pleased him.

  “I need to show you some etchings now,” he said. “You might not like them nearly as much. These are from an illustrated edition of one of the stories of the notorious Marquis de Sade. A violent and depraved man who engaged in sexual acts so brutal he nearly killed several of his lovers. He’s French, of course. That should explain everything.”

  Eleanor tensed as Søren turned a few loose pages until he came to a drawing of a naked girl in some sort of bare stone room or dungeon. Her wrists were bound above her head to an iron ring and a man stood behind her, whipping her with something like a cat o’nine tails.

  “This is a flogging,” Søren said. He turned the page to an etching of another naked girl, bent over what looked like a church’s prie-dieu though it was clear the girl was not praying. A man was using a belt of some kind to beat her buttocks. Her face was contorted in agony.

  “God,” Eleanor breathed. The room had grown uncomfortably warm.

  “You asked me about my secrets,” Søren said. “Here is one of them. The night you rested your head on my knee, told me you loved me and invited me to your bedroom…I did come to your room.”

  “You did?”

  “I came as far as the door, as far as putting my hand on the doorknob.” He pointed at the leather strap in the hand of the man in the etching, “In my other hand was that, a leather strap.”

  “A strap?”

  “For beating you,” Søren said. She turned her head, met his eyes. He returned her gaze.

  “Beating me?”

  Søren pulled out the photograph of the couple having intercourse on the divan.

  “This,” he said, “does not arouse me. Not alone. Not the photograph of it. Not even the act. This, however, does.” He put the etching of the man strapping the girl’s bottom next to it. “This is what arouses me—inflicting pain. Until I do so, inflict pain, that is, I’m unable to become aroused enough to do this.” He pointed at the copulating couple. “I wanted to be with you like this…” He pointed again at the couple mid-coitus. “But to do so I would have had to hurt you in some way, which is why I brought the strap with me. And when I caught myself outside your door, strap in hand, I knew I had to leave, immediately, and put as much distance as possible between us.”

  “That’s why you left? Not because you didn’t want me but because you did?”

  “A month after you came to live at Edenfell,” he said, “you ran away. Do you remember?”

  “Of course. I had a cough and I was frightened that I—”

  “You thought you had consumption,” he said. “It killed your mother and for years after, even a little cough would make you afraid you had it and it would kill you, too,” he said. “And that’s why you ran away. You wanted to protect all of us—from you. When I caught you, you said you hated me and that’s why you were leaving. You wanted to go home to London. All lies.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t let me leave if you thought I was ill. I had to lie.” Eleanor shook her head. “Why are we talking about this? It was years ago.”

  “I had seen my father terrorize his wives—first my mother, then Claire’s. He enjoyed making them fear him. He wouldn’t always beat them. Sometimes the threat alone and the terror in their eyes was enough to…delight him. Every little cough scared you into thinking you had what your mother had. Imagine how it is for me, seeing his cruelty and fearing, all my life, I am also infected with that same cruelty.”

  “But I didn’t have consumption,” she said. “Only a cold. And you are not cruel like your father. Whatever he had, you are not…infected.”

  “It’s simple enough to believe that when I’m with Kingsley. He enjoys receiving pain as much as I enjoy giving it. But no woman in her right mind would enjoy the sort of pain I give him. And if I tried and I hurt you and you hated me for it…I’m not sure I could live with myself.”

  “I’m confused…” She shook her head. “Last night you were aroused. You did want me and you did…you were inside me.”

  “Kingsley volunteered to play whipping boy. I beat him with a tawse. When I grew aroused, I went to you. If I hadn’t beaten Kingsley, I would not have been able to…perform. Without inflicting pain first…Eleanor, I simply can’t.”

  He took a deep shuddering breath. “Last night, you were a virgin, your body unopened. When I opened you, there was pain and tearing and that aroused me even more. I came very close to losing control of myself. Which I have done in the past and Kingsley’s body paid the price for it. You invited me to do anything to you. ‘Anything’ you said over and over. I saw the candle and nearly poured scalding wax onto your breasts. That’s why I left you so abruptly and walked for an hour out in the cold until I was calm again. Because I wanted to hurt you, so much it terrified me.”

  “Søren—” she began. He held up his hand to silence her.

  “There are more secrets I have to tell you. I loved it here at Edenfell mainly because my father hated country life and wanted nothing to do with the place. I spent most of my time at school or here. When things grew unbearable between my father and Claire’s mother Annabelle, she would stay here without him.” He took a breath. “I was fourteen and Claire was about two years old. I’d spent the day playing with Claire, carrying her around the house, talking to her, petting the horses with her. It charmed my stepmother apparently. That night she came to my bedroom. And…she kissed me.”

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  “I was shocked but…she was a beautiful woman, only twenty-four years old, and I let the kiss go on longer than I should have. She invited me to have her, and I did want to, if only to punish my father. Things progressed and I pushed her onto her back. Then I…I held her wrists so hard she cried out. She pushed me off her and slapped me. She said, ‘Damn you. I thought you were different, but you’re just like your father.’”

  Eleanor had no words. Only tears.

  “That was when I left home,” he said and wiped a tear from her face. “I packed up my things and what money I had, and booked passage to Rome. There I entered a Catholic seminary and began my training to join the priesthood someday. I thought I should never be close to anyone again because of what I was. And I would have been a priest if I hadn’t heard some of the other seminarians whispering about a notorious Roman brothel run by a woman named Magdalena. Not a normal brothel, but a place where men went to either beat pretty naked girls with birch rods or to be beaten by pretty naked girls with birch rods. Or boys.”

  “That’s where you met Kingsley?”

  He nodded. “After his parents died in a carriage accident, and his father’s estate was sold off to pay the debts, he had nothing. He ran away to Rome where he thought he had distant family somewhere. Instead he was picked up by a police officer on Magdalena’s payroll. She took him in, put him to work. Very quickly, he rose in the ranks. He was, as you see, quite special.”

  He turned a page to reveal a faded daguerréotype of a teenaged girl in a sumptuous gown draped over the arm of a fainting couch, her lips slightly parted, her figure a perfect hourglass, an otherworldly beauty surrounding her like an aura.

  “You could say Kingsley was the first girl I ever fell in love with,” Søren said. “Magda called him her Principessa. Princess.”

  “Oh, she’s so beautiful,” Eleanor breathed. “No wonder you wanted her.” Impossible to think of the “her” in the photograph as a he, even knowing it was Kingsley in a dress. She was simply too female, too lovely…a true Princess.

  “I desired women,” Søren said, “but I refused to beat them, which meant I could never be with a woman. With Kingsley, I had a beautiful girl who I could beat as viciously as any man. A girl trained to take beatings. A girl who loved them. And after some time, it didn’t matter to me if he were dressed as a boy or a girl. After Claire’s mother killed herself, I came home to see to it that Claire was safe with relatives—not my father. Once she was safe with her aunt, I swore I’d never set foot in England again. It was only when my father had been deemed ‘insane’ by his physicians and needed putting away that I finally returned. And it so happened, during a trip to London to meet with Father’s solicitors, a girl bumped into me on the street, and the next thing I knew, my wallet and pocket-watch were missing.”

  The pocket-watch had been a gift from Søren’s maternal grandfather, also named Søren. All the pawnshops in London were on alert for it, generous reward promised. That was how she’d gotten caught. There in the police station, while awaiting her fate—hard time in a brutal workhouse undoubtably—Søren himself came to pay her bail and see about her release.

  “Four years ago this month,” she said. “Do you remember what I said to you in the police station?”

  “You asked me,” Søren said, “‘Are you one of them wicked lords who takes poor girls off the streets and does all sorts of nasty things to them?’”

  “And you said ‘no.’ And I said—”

  “You said, ‘Pity.’” Søren smiled. “The absolute cheek. The constable nearly slapped you in the face. Meanwhile…I think that was the moment I began to love you.”

  And it had been when she’d fallen in love with him, when he’d first come into the police station, sat across from her, and asked her if she was cold. He’d offered her his coat, and she’d been too ashamed of his kindness to accept it, though she had been freezing. He put it round her shoulders anyway.

  “Are you angry?” Søren asked. “Hurt? Frightened? Disappointed?”

  “I am…” She took a long breath. “Intrigued.”

  “Intrigued? Better than horrified.”

  “No, no, certainly not horrified. Relieved, I think, too. That I know what it is now that was coming between us all this time. I wish you’d told me before but now, I do understand.”

  “I want us to have a happy marriage,” Søren said. “If you wish it, we can be as we were last night. I can hurt Kingsley and then come to you. I think with time and patience, we—”

  “No,” she said.

  “No?”

  She rose from his lap and went to the fireplace. She took the candle in its brass holder from the mantel, lit it in the fire and returned to Søren.

  “Hurt me,” she said. “Please?”

  “Eleanor…” He rested his forehead on his hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No.” He lifted his head. “Never. It’s only…”

  “What?”

  He closed his eyes. “I have dreamt of this. I have dreamt of you asking me to hurt you. You speak so matter-of-factly as if you don’t realize you’re bringing every dream I’ve ever had to life.”

  “What don’t you do what you dream then?” she asked.

  “There is no sin in a dream. You kill a man and it isn’t murder. You bed a woman and it isn’t adultery. But done awake, it is a sin.”

  Eleanor set the candle on his desk. She went again into his lap.

  “But we aren’t awake,” she said softly. “Didn’t you know? All this…you and me, this house, our marriage…it’s only a dream. Mine? Yours? Someone else’s a thousand miles and a hundred years away. And you know what happens in dreams? Anything. Anything at all. You can swim under the ocean like a fish or fly in the sky like a bird. You can walk on the moon and dance among the stars and touch the sun and not get burned. Or be as wicked with your wife as you would ever want to be.”

  “Are you sure it’s a dream? It feels quite real to me.”

  “I’ll prove it. You say no woman in her right mind would desire the pain you describe, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I in my right mind?”

  “I saw enough of madness at my father’s sanitarium to know you are of perfectly sound mind.”

  “And yet…” She lifted the candle from the holder and dripped the hot wax from it onto the inside of her own wrist. Søren’s chest heaved as the wax fell. It hurt but it was worth that pain times a thousand for the burning look in his eyes.

  “See?” she said. “I liked it. I want more. Must be a dream.”

  Eleanor gave him the candle and stood. She took off her robe and sat on his lap again, straddling his thighs, facing him. Then she unbuttoned her nightgown and pulled it open to bare her breasts.

  “Only a dream,” she said again. He let a drop of wax fall. It landed on the top of her right breast. It stung and burned and she flinched and hissed. Then laughed at her flinching.

  “Too much?” he asked.

  “Not enough.”

  His eyebrow arched. His mouth quirked into an almost smile. He let another drop fall. Then another and another. It hurt, yes, but it excited her as well. The anticipation, the sudden thrill of pain, the way Søren looked at her as if he was seeing her again for the first time, and the power in knowing his most intimate secret and playing with him this private game.

  She could have taken a cathedral’s share of candles on her body to please him but it seemed a dozen drops or more was enough to arouse him. He set the candle on the desk. He lifted the skirt of her gown, opened his trousers and lifted her up and guided his cock into her. When he pushed her into her this time—unlike last night—there was no resistance. She was still wet and open from his fingers not an hour ago inside of her.

  Eleanor moaned, clinging to his shoulders as he lifted and lowered her onto him again. Once fully inside her, he kissed her mouth, her neck, her breasts. She returned his kisses and caresses, finally allowed to touch him as she wanted since her first night under his roof. She unbuttoned his waistcoat, his shirt, touched his broad strong naked chest, the ivory tower of his neck, and ran her hands through his golden hair.

  She throbbed between her legs, throbbed inside the passage he filled, ached where they joined. She reached between their bodies, touching his organ as it split her, touched herself where she ached. Her wetness was all over him.

  “Little One,” he breathed into her ear. In reply, she tilted her hips and sealed herself to him. And then he stood, lifting her on him and with him, pressing her down onto the desk and there he took her, making her his wife and claiming her as his own. Her body tensed and froze and when she came it was with a cry loud enough the servants would all know that the Baron and Baroness had a very happy marriage indeed.

  Søren buried his head against her neck and held her close as he released into her, filling her with his seed and at last consummating their marriage.

  Drowsy and happy, she wrapped her arms around him as he held her again in his lap on the red velvet chair.

  “What shall we dream next?” she asked between tender kisses.

  Søren replied, “Let’s dream about Kingsley.”

  10

  Kingsley sat alone in his bedroom, a book in his lap—unread—and a wine glass in his hand—half drunk. As Søren’s valet he must always be close to his master so when the new baroness came, he heard it quite clearly from his room across the hall.

  “Well done, My Lord,” Kingsley said aloud. “And you, My Lady.”

  Silence followed and he wondered if he pressed his ear Søren’s door, could he hear what they were saying to each other. Or, even better, peek through the keyhole…

  Someone knocked and Kingsley nearly spilled his wine in surprise.

  Before he could say “Come in,” Søren opened the door.

  Kingsley’s eyes widened. Søren was dressed though his shirt was open at the neck and wrinkled and his throat sported a red mark, likely courtesy of the young baroness’s teeth.

  “You presence is required in our chamber,” Søren said.

  “Is it? I take it your little talk was a success.”

  “You know perfectly well it was. Now go into my chamber at once and stop grinning, you degenerate French whore.”

  Kingsley obeyed the first order, disobeyed the second. He followed Søren into the master suite. The baroness looked beautiful, bright-eyed and well-fucked as she sat propped on her pillows, counterpane pulled to her waist, gown barely buttoned past the top of her ample breasts.

  “My Lady,” Kingsley said.

  “Sit,” Søren said. “On the bed. We’re all friends here.”

  Kingsley sat next to the young baroness and waited for his next orders. His heart was running wild. Had he once dreamed of being allowed into the intimacy of Søren’s marriage bed? Yes. But he’d never expected it and certainly not this soon.

  “Eleanor,” Søren began, “if you’ll recall, during our wedding, as I put the ring on your finger I spoke these vows—‘With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’”

  “I remember it quite well,” she said, smiling tiredly.

  “I’ve wedded you and worshiped you with my body,” he said. “Now it’s time I endow you with all my worldly goods. And so I give you Kingsley, the most valuable of all my worldly goods.”

  And Kingsley said, “As I am his, I am yours.”

  “Is that so?” Eleanor said. “I knew when I married I’d receive gifts of fine China and linens. I didn’t know I would also receive a handsome Frenchman. Marriage is full of surprises.”

  To Kingsley, too. He’d never felt so owned by Søren as he did right now. For wasn’t this the ultimate proof of ownership? That Kingsley could be shared, lent, and used by others?

  “Eleanor is now aware of what I require in bed,” Søren said. “Although I’m certain there will be times she wishes for pleasure without taking pain first. And when those moments come, Eleanor? You may have Kingsley serve you.”

  She lifted her hand and ran her fingers through Kingsley’s hair. This time she didn’t tell him to get it cut.

  “Would you enjoy serving me?” she asked.

  “I would,” Kingsley said. “Very much.”

  “Perhaps you should serve the baroness right now,” Søren said from where he stood at the end of the bed, watching them.

  “Søren,” Eleanor said, blushing. “But what if—”

  “Don’t argue,” Kingsley said to her. “Pointless. Entirely pointless with him. Nothing makes him happier than ordering me about. And nothing makes me happier than obeying his orders.” That being said…” Kingsley leaned close and put his mouth at her ear. “I’ll only obey this order if you wish it.”