Haunted Hearts

Chapter 4: Heading home

John Noah Wainwright leaned his head back in the iron chair and stared at the lightning outside the balcony. Even on the rooftop, the night was warm for London. Already, there were thunderstorms. It had been a violent, unsettled spring.

Two pale feminine hands slithered down his naked shoulders and raked at the gold hair covering his bare chest. Janette had come up behind him from the window and now stood behind his back. Her hands, as always, eager and lascivious, but he didn't notice. He was waiting for thunder. He was always waiting for thunder, but there was none.

"Must you return so soon?" she whispered, burying a kiss on his neck.

His gaze blithely held the blackness above the rooftop flat where he so often found himself. The sky boiled with thunderheads and the sludge of coal dust from hundreds of thousands of hearths. He was entranced by the beautiful void of darkness above, the one he yearned to lose himself in.

"Don't go," she whispered. Her nails raking down his belly, her fingers tugging at the waist of his trousers.

"I'll be back," he said hoarsely. "I always come back."

"Yes, you do. But never soon enough." She pouted. Her words were petulant. With a sigh, she left him and headed over the other iron chair to sit. Behind her, she trailed the ends of the sheet that coyly wrapped around her bottom.

"Why do you have to go this time?" Janette took the chair and held Noah's glance. The sheet slid, no accident, for she had once been an artist's model and was well-educated in erotic draping.

She seemed unable to hide the self-satisfied smile that appeared in the corner of her lips. "Don't go. I'd think you'd find York dull after... after this." She whispered.

"York is dull." His gaze flickered across her perky breasts, then he looked up to the London sky overhead. "Still, I must go."

"But can't you just send a servant? Why don't you send Milton instead?"

"No, Milton won't be able to handle the castle by himself, let alone my brother." The tone of his voice was the quiet thunder missing in the night. He looked away when she visibly shivered.

Lightning, a breathless white fire, shot across the sky in the pattern of a spider's web. Below them, the wharf was dark and silent, eerie in its desolation.

"Well then. Perhaps I should come with you. I've never been to York." Janette rose from her chair. An enticing tipping in the side of her mouth. The sheet remained behind.

He felt his breath catch. His loins reacted to the sight of her nakedness like an animal's, absent of emotion, devoid of thought. As always, the physical response was there, willing, always willing, except the completion of the act now struck him as futile, melancholy, ultimately defeatist.

"I think I'd like to be the mistress of your castle, after all." She whispered, straddling him between her pale soft thighs.

His hands rested on her hips and stayed there. "You've told me time and again how much you like your independence. Yet you offer to give that up and come with me to York."

"You have been gone too much these days. Ever since you inherited that castle and that title, you haven't been the same. I thought it would be good for us. Now I hate York. I hate it." She said repeatedly like a spoiled child.

"I see. You must be lonely without me."

"Yes." She hissed fractiously.

"But what about David? What about Spencer? And Keith?"

She stared down at him, surprise slackening her features. "But... But how did you know about them?"

A dark smile crossed his lips. "They'll miss you if I take you away with me. And I couldn't have that."

"I only did it because of you!"

He laughed. He couldn't know what a beautiful, cruel sound his laughter was.

"If you were not in York so much, I wouldn't have needed them." She pouted. Leaning over, she pressed her chest against his and again slid her hands into the waist of his unbottoned trousers. "Take me with you to York. I'll be your mistress. Just please take me with you."

He stared at her. Her loveliness was indisputable. She had thick black curls and bewitching green eyes. As a subject, she'd been much in demand by painters seeking to find a subject worthy of their masterpiece. She was perfection in every way, except that her soul was shallow and filled with vice, and if the truth be known, she was not much company. Wit simply eluded her. This new girl, Janette, was just like all the others. Another small depravity in a string of excesses.

"Stonegate is not the place for you. You'd be bored out of your mind. It's not a place to put up a coy mistress." He said with a slap at her behind and a sarcastic bite to his words. "There is already a physician on the way to the castle to help my brother. I'll be leaving tonight."

"I'll go with you." She said as she stared at him, defiant.

He stared back. His expression clearly frightened her.

She went to him and placed her hands tenderly in his face. "Please... Don't turn away, don't be cruel to me. Not this time." she whispered.

"You want to come with me, but how long will you be faithful?"

"Forever." She said, as if she really meant it.

"There is still one requirement to being at the castle. A requirement that you would not be able to handle."

"Whatever it is, I'll do it." She snapped her fingers. "If it's the servants you are worried about, I'll treat them like the people they are. I won't let them get the better of me."

"I've no doubt about that." A shadow crossed his eyes. "You're just the one to be amused to by a beating." His gaze dipped to the red marks still swelling on her thighs and bottom. And the remembrance of last night's session gave him a pause. "You like it too well yourself." He whispered. His insides torns him apart.

He pushed her off his lap and stood up, starting to button up his trousers. He crossed the room and snatched his shirt that was lying on the bed. Despite their experiments in dark ecstasy, the pain that swept her face seemed to give proof that she would miss him. Her expression was so genuine that it gave him a pause.

"No woman can come with me to Stonegate." He said. His words were harsh and truthful. He buttoned his shirt and stepped into his shiny black boots.

"You've inherited your father's land and his title. Why do you insist upon enjoying them alone?"

Enjoying them... He wanted to laugh out loud. As if there was really anything in his life that he enjoyed. He'd known few good women in his life, and the deepest truth was that he almost feared them.

"Please take me with you." Janette pleaded softly. Her voice taking him from his terrible thoughts.

"No." He said firmly, as he knotted his black silk cravat.

"What do you require that I am so lacking in?" She waited for his answer.

He walked to the flat's door. While twisting the knob, he felt anxious to leave. Behind him, he knew she was still waiting for his response. "Be thankful I'm not giving in to your desire to go with me, Janette. Truly, there isn't a woman alive that I would put through that ordeal."

He departed, but before he closed the door behind him and abandoned her for what he knew would be forever, he voiced the truth that had been pressed in his mind all along.

"You see, the mistress of Stonegate cannot be afraid of ghosts..."