clothed with flesh like fire

In the library, they are alone. There is no moon in the sky. The house at Blackmoor is like a tomb; it is populated with dead things, with dead skins and tanned hides everywhere its residents might turn. She feels the stares of glassy eyes upon her wherever she turns. Ben had been an avid huntsman, but his brother is something more — beneath the surface there is a violence in him alongside an utterly disarming gentleness.

She knows what manner of man he is — an actor, a man of the world, a man of broad and varied tastes. The years abroad have Americanized him, and made him faintly coarse — she can see little of Ben in him, and looking in that face for the man who would have been her husband only makes her pulse quicken and her doubts grow.

She might have been a married woman, once. She had laid away for herself a catalogue of beautiful things for the occasion of her marriage — chemises and nightdresses, a dozen pairs of well-trimmed drawers, lace stockings, two French corsets in blush-pink and pearl-white. Money had seemed no object then, and her fate had seemed certain. Ben had given her the ring that had been his mother’s, he had promised her so many things when he brought her here to Talbot Hall — but now she is neither bride nor widow, neither knowing nor innocent. She knows what she wants.

“Are you frightened, Miss Conliffe, here in this dark old house?”

“Not at all,” Gwen says. “I’ve always liked old things. I find them comforting.”

“That’s lucky for me, then. I’ve never liked this place. I’m frightened of what’s outside.”

“It’s a lovely old place,” Gwen begins, but she knows she’s lying. “I imagine you have your own impressions of it.”

“If you knew it like I do,” he begins with American good humor, “you’d be out of here on the first train.”

He is having fun at her expense, though the nature of the joke is obscure — Gwen lifts her head, squaring her body against him. If she holds very still,

“I’m not frightened of an animal.”

“If you could only lend me some of your strength, God knows I need it. Miss Conliffe, you have lost a hairpin.”

His hands draw the hair from the nape of her neck. It is a gesture of exquisite delicacy.

“Yes, I suppose I have. You may take—“ Her own words issue forth as if she is in a trance, seized by the animal magnetism of those broad beautiful hands. “—whatever pleases you.”

Her whole body must shine with ill-concealed desire — all the things that betray a state of nerves, a halting voice and a flushed cheek. Flushed but not with fear. They are both grieving, wild with grief, almost worn-through from care and long illness; from long hours spent at Lawrence’s bedside she has fancied herself in a state of sympathy with him, peaceful when he was at peace and restless when he could not rest.

The white path of her neck is very bare.

Lawrence kisses her throat, above the white silk gash of her high collar — it sends a shiver through to the core of her, the press of lips and the promise of teeth. Her back is pressed to a tall bookcase, standing stern in dark figured mahogany — each book is an account of some antique place, or a study in natural history, some long-forgotten encyclopedia or a book of astronomy with painted pages. She had taken a book down from the shelf to amuse herself or to edify herself, whichever it had been she cannot say she knows. Inside she found inside a sheet of writing paper bearing two pressed ferns, and an inscription written there in a careful hand — a woman’s, or a boy’s. Both book and page lie forgotten now.

Lawrence lifts her against the bookcase, his hands around her waist, the length of his body aligned against hers. Beneath her clothes, she can feel her pulse at the meeting of her legs. All at once it as if she is naked, naked in her own heart — all her black-crepe mourning has fallen away. Gwen seizes him in a kiss with more force than she could ever have imagined and kisses him again — rocking her body against his, gripping him with both hands. She can feel his arousal and it frightens her as much as it excites her, this terrible thing that lies between them. Lawrence twists the rope of her hair, making her gasp — her mouth parts under his, and her head falls back helplessly. This is a liberty she has never imagined, and it sends her pulse quickening. He presses his face against her throat, drawing a shuddering breath —

The two of them split apart, and Gwen is gasping. Lawrence presses a hand to his own mouth as if she has burned him there. His dark fierce face is beautifully unreadable. The spell is broken — he cannot touch her, this woman who would have been his brother’s wife, and she cannot permit it.

To her, he makes a small bow. “Good night, Miss Conliffe.”

The book is closed; the ferns have dislodged, dropping papery fragments onto the wood. Lawrence leaves her there. She might have imagined it, if not for the electric trembling of her body, if not for the ache of her mouth — all that remains to let her know she had ever been touched.

*

She does not see him again until that night in London. She does not know how he found her there — perhaps the Talbots might have felt at home there once, in that little shop packed with antique objects and the relics of bygone generations, pedigreed strangers’ faces watching from every wall. Once this was the only place Gwen felt safe — she still feels a sort of certainty surrounded by these beautiful things, where her companions are only paper and porcelain. Since Blackmoor she has spent her days in a state of distraction — there are letters to be written and accounts to be drafted, but she cannot seem to form a sentence, her fingers cannot hold her pen. Seeing him there, rumpled and worn in shirtsleeves, is enough to pierce her heart.

“Oh, Lawrence. Come here, come to me. You aren’t going back to Blackmoor in such a state, and you certainly aren’t leaving for New York.”

Lawrence takes her in a kiss, hands roving through her hair until the silver comb falls from its place and her heavy braid snakes loose over her shoulders. He lifts her up against a vanity table, scattering the detritus of silver-backed hairbrushes and cut-crystal dishes — some other woman’s things, well-loved and well-worn by a century’s use or more. The great silver-backed mirror rattles behind her, and Gwen’s body gives an involuntary shudder.

Lawrence undoes the buttons of her bodice one by one until the throat of her mourning dress splits apart, baring a white slash of the garments beneath like the lips of a wound. Gwen guides his hand inside, until the tips of his fingers brush her naked collarbone, above the milk-colored lace of her chemise.

The soft swell of her breasts is there for him to explore. His caresses make her nipples stiffen, until his hands find her waist, spanning her — Gwen almost loses herself in kissing him until her waistband comes undone, and the cool air comes over her in a rush as her heavy skirts fall away —

“You must have a great deal of experience,” Gwen says.

He exhales a laugh. “Experience in costume changes.”

No doubt he has known other women, but the gallantry of it is not lost on her, nor the startling proficiency of it. Lawrence kneels to unhook her stockings, one after the other — the lick of cool air against her naked leg and the brush of his warm fingertips send a rush of blood to her head. His sleek dark head is nearly in her lap, laid out against the white field of her lace-trimmed undergarments like a cut-paper silhouette, and she can feel the brush of his body against hers through the silk and linen — the heat of his skin. He presses a methodical kiss to her inner leg, just above the knee.

Gwen clasps him against her, hands lacing behind the nape of his neck. This is an unthinkable liberty, but even the unthinkable is possible now — there is an unprecedented closeness now between the world she has known all her life and the world she has only glimpsed, this other world in parallel where men become beasts. In the sky the moon is waning from its fullest phase — it will soon shrink away into a sliver, into a nothing, and just as soon swell again. The natural world keeps its own time, and time is against them.

Lawrence sighs and she can feel the heat of it, the animal heat of his heavy breath. His fingers find her, beneath all the linen and layers — Gwen lets her gaze drop and lets herself look in his face, his beautiful dark head laid against her thigh.

“You’re safe here. Stay here with me and we’ll find the answer to this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, Lawrence.“

“I wish I could, but I can’t. It isn’t safe, being with me.”

Gwen strokes his hair, grimly defiant. “There are cures for this — real cures, not tortures, I’ve read them in books. Only stay with me now and I promise no harm will come to you. I won’t let anyone take you anywhere. Do you trust me, Lawrence?”

Only the one who loves him can release him from this torment, through death or any other way, and there are few in this world who count Lawrence Talbot among their friends. He strokes into her with fingers and thumb, and the animal in her answers him. Her hips cant forward against him, to meet the hardness of his fingers — beneath his clothing she can feel the lines of his body, the breadth of his chest and the hard muscle of his arms, and the pressure of their limbs makes her faint with desire.

Gwen wants more than she’s ever known, more than she could ever have hoped for. Lawrence devours her with lips and teeth and tongue; he bites her thighs, leaving the scarlet marks of kisses. Her flesh is burning, and every tight jolt of pleasure to her cunt knocks the breath out of her, makes her throbbing heart and lungs strain against the spring-steel ribs of her corset.

Gwen gasps his name, broken with desire — his tongue dips inside her and traces the stiff hungry bead of her clitoris, working at the wet gash of her. Lawrence grips her hand tightly against the varnished dresser top, lacing together their fingers.

Her climax sweeps through her like a shivering wind, hot and cold all at once — every muscle trembles, every fiber of her answers the actions of desire. This way of loving which she has never dreamed of, never even thought of, has wedded them together into one.

Lawrence rises from his knees. He presses back her arm with full deliberation, taking her by the wrist. The line of her throat is startlingly bare, and she can feel her pulse beat there

“Look at me, Gwen. Don’t be frightened.”

In this light, Lawrence is brutally handsome, heavy-lidded and tousled, dark and gentle. Her back is to the mirror; she feels the cool lick of silvered glass against her skin. Lawrence takes her wrists in his hand, both at once, and his kiss makes her shudder and arch back. Gwen cries out against his mouth, and her thighs tighten against him. She cannot be frightened of him now — she can only welcome him in.