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As she lay there, utterly spent and insensate, Arthur pushed the pearl deep into her cunt, all the way to her cervix. Then he rose over her, mounted and entered her. He fucked her slowly with long deep strokes and every time the tip of his cock touched the pearl she felt a sweet spasm of pleasure again.
She lay on her back and watched Arthur lose himself inside of her in the candlelight, watched his lips part and his face tighten, watched his muscles move and the long strong cords of his neck and shoulders tense.
She ran her hands over his chest as he moved inside of her and she memorized every second of this moment, this gorgeous young man making love to her as if he’d die if he didn’t.
A sob escaped her throat and at once Arthur’s arms were around her clinging to her. “Regan.”
“Don’t stop.” She wrapped her legs around his back. “I’ll die if you stop.”
“Then I’ll never stop,” he said and it seemed he wouldn’t. He rode her with long and tender strokes. It felt like the pearl inside her touched the tip of her spine. Her body tensed again, tingling and when he came she came with him. The one part of her brain still thinking rationally reminded her that the French called orgasm “the little death.” Every time she came she died in Arthur’s arms. That’s how she wanted to go when the time came, in his arms.
When it was over and done, he lay on top of her, cradling her against his heart.
She wanted to live.
She’d thought she’d accepted the inevitable end, but now, in his arms, she knew she’d only accepted dying in her old life, with Sir Jack, when death might have been a relief.
Not with Arthur. With Arthur, a thousand years in his arms wouldn’t be enough.
She said into his ear, quietly but sternly, “You aren’t allowed to ask me to marry you. We can keep going like this, but not forever. I don’t have forever to give you but I’ll give you what I can.”
What she could give him was until he went away to join his regiment and she went…somewhere, somewhere away from him so he could get on with his life and forget she existed.
“Do you understand?” she said.
He nodded. “Should we go and look at the book?”
She knew he was trying to distract her and she appreciated it. She also appreciated how gently he pushed his fingers into her to extract the large pearl from her vagina.
“Not yet,” she said. “Let’s have one last night of sanity before we both go mad in the morning.”
“I always wanted to go mad,” he said. “Now I have an excuse.”
He rolled onto his back and brought her with him. Regan lay her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her.
The winds died down. The storm passed. Regan slept like the dead.
* * *
Regan wokeearly and saw the bedroom for the first time in daylight. A teenage boy’s room. Massive Union Jack hanging down the wall. Concert posters. A rugby ball on a shelf. A polo mallet tucked into a corner. She knew he was only staying here while Wingthorn underwent renovations, that of course the room still held all his old things, but it served as a bitter reminder of their age difference. She was a woman of thirty, already widowed, and if he hadn’t been joining the army soon, he’d still be at university. His life was beginning. Hers felt almost over.
He was too young to commit himself to a woman who was certain to face a brutal fate sooner rather than later, just as she’d been too young to marry Sir Jack. She couldn’t do to Arthur what she’d done to herself.
But she didn’t have to tell him that.
She kissed his cheek and his eyes fluttered open. In wordless agreement, they got out of bed. Arthur put on his jeans, nothing else. She found her knickers and he gave her one of his t-shirts to wear—clean, soft, grey, comforting.
They went down, down, down to the sitting room where the book still lay open on the floor face down in front of the cold fireplace.
Arthur picked up the book and showed her the page it was open to—a painting of a pretty young girl holding a dove against her chest, a dove with a broken wing.
The Wounded Doveby the Jewish Victorian-era painter Rebecca Solomon.
Regan stared at it, then knew they couldn’t deny it any longer.
“So this is it,” Regan said. “We both believe and accept that the ghost of a dead lord is trying to tell us something, and we’re willing to listen. Yes?”
Arthur nodded. “Yes.”
