Lost in Pleasure (4 page)

Later, back in Kilcreggan House, they sat together in the
firelight, idly picking over the highlights of the evening until Richard noticed
her distracted air. ‘A penny for them.’

‘I have to go back to New York tomorrow.’

‘And?’

‘Don’t you see? The chair, the thing that links us, it’s here
in London. I’ll be thousands of miles away.’

‘But I assumed you would be taking it with you on one of these
flying ships you’ve described to me. I just assumed—’

‘What, Richard?’ Errin interrupted, her voice harsh with the
threat of tears. ‘What did you assume?’

‘I assumed you wanted things to continue between us.’ Richard’s
voice hardened. ‘Obviously I was mistaken.’

‘We can’t go on like this.’

‘Why not? What is wrong with wanting to continue to enjoy what
we have? We’ve been granted a unique opportunity. Don’t throw it away on a
whim.’

‘A whim! You think I’ve not thought this through?’

‘Why are you getting so upset?’

Errin sniffed valiantly. ‘I’m not getting upset. I
just—Richard, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I can’t carry on like this
anymore. It’s not enough.’

‘We have something no one else has, and it’s not enough! What
more can you possibly want?’

She opened her mouth to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come.
He didn’t get it. He didn’t want real intimacy. He didn’t want her to be an
integral part of his life. He just didn’t love her enough.

‘Errin? What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?’

She dashed her hand across her eyes, relieved to find the tears
that were clogging her throat had not risen. ‘It doesn’t matter. There’s no
point trying to explain.’

Richard had a nagging sense that he was missing something vital
but he could not for the life of him work out what it was. ‘Why not?’

She stared at him for a long time, wanting to tell him, aching
to pour out her heart to him, and she almost did. But she knew, deep in that
very heart, that to do so would end what they had as effectively as her planned
abandonment of her visits to the wingback chair. He didn’t love her. She didn’t
want him pretending he did simply in order to continue as they were until he had
had enough. ‘If I have to explain, then it’s pointless,’ she said, finally
accepting defeat. Her head had told her she needed to end things for her own
sake. Her heart had held out a desperate hope that Richard would prove her
wrong. It seemed, sadly, that her head had the right of it as ever.

‘I thought I understood you, but you’re behaving totally
illogically,’ Richard said, his confusion turning to irritation tinged with a
hint of panic. ‘I thought you were different.’

‘And now you’re discovering that underneath it all, I’m just
like any other woman. So deal with it. Logical or not, this has to end.
Tonight.’

‘Devil take it, Errin, you can’t possibly mean you’re just
going to sit in that damned chair and disappear and not ever come back?’

‘I’m saying exactly that. I have no choice, Richard. You’ve
left me with no choice.’

‘No.’ He pulled her roughly into his arms. ‘No, I won’t let
you. You can’t mean it. It doesn’t make sense. You’re wrong. I’ll show you
you’re wrong.’

‘How?’

‘If I have to explain, then it’s pointless,’ he said, using her
own words against her like weapons. Then he kissed her.

She tried to resist him, but that too was pointless. He would
not be resisted, and she did not want to resist him. Instead, she returned his
kiss with a kind of brutal passion, biting his lip, devouring his mouth,
savaging his lips, punishing him for not seeing, not wanting, not being able to
give her what she so desperately needed, knowing she was being unfair yet unable
to stop. She pushed him back onto the chaise longue, kneeling over him, trapping
him, kissing him hard, passionately, rousing in him a similar storm. He pulled
her close, breathlessly close, clutching at her bottom through the silk of her
dress to press her down onto his throbbing erection.

She tore at the starched folds of his neckcloth, the silver
buttons of his black evening coat, desperate to touch bare flesh. She moaned, a
deep, earthy shudder of a moan, when Richard responded by tearing the neckline
of her dress to free her breasts, to cover the soft flesh of them in hungry
kisses, to pluck a tearing response from her as he sucked hard on her blossoming
nipples.

She had an overwhelming urge to lower herself onto him without
ceremony, lifting her petticoats without finesse to sheathe him inside her, to
possess him. She tried to, fumbling with the buttons of his breeches, longing to
feel the hard, hot length of him filling her, for it was both their punishment
and their reward.

But as she fumbled and tore at his clothing, he stilled her.
His kisses became velvet soft and cajoling. His hands coaxed not sharp pleasure
from her but liquid sensation, stroking her, breathing calm into her as he would
when breaking a wild filly, and she was instantly tamed.

‘This is why you’re wrong,’ he said to her, licking the soft
underside of her breast before capturing her hands, lifting them to his mouth
and kissing her fingers one by one. ‘And this is why,’ he said, stroking her
hair, kissing her ear, her neck, lifting her from him, standing her before him
so that he could admire her physical perfection. The graceful line of her spine
as he unhooked her dress. The crook of her elbows as he eased the silk down over
her arms. Her shoulder blades as he unlaced her corsets. The valley between her
breasts as he took off her chemise. The gentle swell of her belly, the crease at
the top of her thighs as he removed her pantaloons. The back of her knees as her
garters were untied. By the time she stood before him completely naked, she was
his, and at that moment, she didn’t care if he saw that.

In the candlelight, Richard had a dark and brooding presence
that would be intimidating were it not so sensual. He disposed quickly of his
own clothes, dropping them carelessly onto the floor, moulding her naked body to
his, making her purr with contentment as her curves met his planes, as his
erection pressed into her sex, as his hands stroked and his mouth licked.

By the time he pushed her back onto the chaise, spreading her
legs to settle his mouth on the soft folds of her damp, hot sex, Errin felt as
if she were floating on a pink, fluffy cloud of ecstasy. It was a place she
could float forever were he to continue with his gentle teasing, but he did not.
His tongue unerringly found the hard nub of her arousal, and he kissed her there
too. The soft cloud turned from coral to cerise to carmine, and her climax
rocked her so violently and suddenly that she cried out, clutched at his hair,
his shoulders, calling his name over and over and over.

He left her no time to recover. The long, slow onslaught had
taken its toll on his own self-control. He was hard and achingly ready. Wrapping
her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, Richard lifted her from the
chaise, perched her on the edge of a Hepplewhite half-moon table that stood
against the wall panelling and entered her with one long, slow stroke. He closed
his eyes and breathed, his erection gently pulsing in her, feeling her pulsing
around him too. This, her, this is what he wanted. He would not let her go. Not
yet. Not now. He slowly withdrew, then thrust again. This. How could she not
want this?

He kissed her, thrusting his tongue deep into the warm cavern
of her mouth, aware in the recesses of his mind that he was surrendering to base
instinct, to stake his claim, to possess, to mark. The logical part of him noted
this primal behaviour, noted with surprise that he was even capable of it. But
even as it did, Richard banished the thought. He withdrew, thrust, kissed,
relishing the slick wet, the clinging silken heat of her, resisting his retreat,
opening up to welcome him back inside her. Her mouth, too, pliant and welcoming
and clinging. Her hands on his buttocks, her legs around his waist, and still it
was not enough. His need to possess her was tangible.

Errin was beyond thinking. She could only feel. Richard inside
her, stretching her, filling her, pushing high and hard and thick into her. She
heard the little grunt of his pleasure as he thrust, heard her answering whimper
as she gripped, felt the onslaught of another climax, heard him moan as she
reached behind to caress him. His rhythm was fast and focused now, taking her
with him to a furious place where they must climb and grasp and reach for
something that they found together, suddenly, abruptly, unbelievably. They rode
the wave of ecstasy together until they tumbled, spent and sated, and clung to
each other as the receding ripples of their passion lapped around them.

* * *

He did not let her go. He would not let her go. Still
holding her, he laid them both down on the rug by the fire, nestling her close,
so close they felt they inhabited one skin. He stroked her fiery hair, smoothing
it, pressing kisses to her brow, whispering her name over and over, as if saying
it would, like some magic incantation, make her stay.

‘Richard,’ she said, for she could think of nothing and no one
else, for she too wanted to use his name as a talisman against loss. ‘Richard,
Richard, Richard.’ She pressed herself closer, feeling the rough hairs of his
thighs on her own smooth limbs, the rough hairs of his chest on her cheek, the
weight of his manhood, still damp from their lovemaking, lying against her
thigh. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. Then his throat. Then another to his
chest, the delightful hollow between his pectoral muscles, then the flat, salty
taste of his nipples. She kissed as he had, tasting and imprinting him on her
tongue, working her way down his body, over his body, back up, by which time he
was hard again, thick and pulsing again, and she took him in her mouth and
kissed there too. The length of his shaft. Kissing down, licking round, then
taking him gradually into her mouth, sucking and licking until he came, bucking
under her as she had bucked under him. An act of adoration. Of devotion. Of
worship. She knew it was. She had never done it before, nor been able to
understand the pleasure until now of purely giving.

An act of love. And her next and final act of love must be her
leaving forever. With a heavy heart, Errin began to disentangle herself. Her own
clothes, the clothes in which she had arrived, were upstairs in Richard’s
bedroom. She decided to do without them, to leave this time in her gown, to
allow herself this one indulgence as a memento.

Richard watched her dressing, his eyes hooded. ‘Errin, don’t,
you’ll regret it. We’ll regret it.’

Tears, hot tears, acid tears, filled her eyes. Words clogged
her throat, but she could not speak them, for to give voice was to make it real
and to deny herself the chance of a future. ‘Maybe, but I have to do this
nonetheless.’

Always, it had been he who walked away, certain that a swift
amputation was better than a slow death. Never before had any woman rejected
him. He had never been ‘not enough.’ It hurt. It hurt a lot, but he knew it
would not last. It was not in his nature for it to last. ‘I won’t beg you,’
Richard said, though he wondered if he’d be able to stop himself.

‘I don’t want you to beg.’

‘When you change your mind, I’ll be here, waiting.’

‘I won’t change my mind, Richard. I’m sorry.’ She leaned over
to kiss him. He did not respond. ‘I’m sorry,’ Errin said again, and took her
seat on the chair, forcing herself to surrender this one last time to its
familiar magical embrace. As her lids began to close, she saw him leaping to his
feet and called to him, ‘Richard.’ It was too late. ‘Richard, I love you,’ she
shouted, but the words were lost in the mists of time, where they joined
countless other similar declarations uttered over the centuries, doomed to
remain unheard, forever unrequited.

Chapter Four

He tried to forget her. He tried to immerse himself in
his old life. When that did not work, he tried to create a new life,
determinedly cultivating new people, new interests, but that did not work
either. Nothing worked. He missed Errin every hour of every day. He missed her
voice and her scent and her body. He missed the way she talked and the way she
made him laugh, and the way she made him look at his world anew. He missed the
way she argued with him, and the way she swore so comically, and the way she
listened, as if he were the only person in the world whose opinion mattered.

She made him discontented with his perfectly acceptable lot,
and he resented her for that. He resented the way her absence hovered like a
spectre, dogging his every step. He resented the feeling of having lost
something, of being not quite complete. Of not being whole. He hadn’t ever felt
like that before—had he? Richard thought back, but it was difficult to remember
a time before Errin, just as it was increasingly impossible to contemplate a
future without her. The irony of this conundrum, since his future would take
place before her birth, would have fascinated the former man of science, but it
simply irked him now. He missed her. He missed her more every day, and he hated
her for it.

He couldn’t find it in his heart to hate her for long, though.
He clung to the belief that one day she would see sense and return, and he
resigned himself to having to wait. But as the weeks turned to months the
reality of his plight began to sink in. Anger turned to despondency.

His friends tried to rally him. He himself tried to rekindle
his interest in other women, but all of them were pale reflections of the real
thing. He had no desire for any woman but one. One stubborn woman who had left
without a proper explanation.

Why
? Why had she put an end to it
all? What was it that wasn’t enough? What more could there be? The answer that
came to him was both a relief and an enigma. Love. Could it be love that was
making him feel like this? Was love the mystery missing ingredient from his
life? Was it love that made Errin dissatisfied with her transient role in his
world? Love? Was that the source of these feelings of loss and emptiness and
longing and listlessness and—and devil take it, this damned unhappiness that
could only be relieved by her presence? Was this what they meant by love?

If so, it was nothing so simple as nature’s way of ensuring the
continuation of the species as he had believed; it was much more elemental than
that. He desired Errin, he ached to make love to her, but more than anything he
just missed her being by his side. Could that really be love?

Eventually, the conundrum proved too much for him. In an effort
to make some sense of his confusion he reluctantly broached the subject with
that latest convert to the state, Nick Lytton. After listening carefully to his
friend’s tale of woe, Nick delivered his judgement with characteristic
frankness. ‘Thus are the mighty fallen! Of course you’re in love, you ninny. And
don’t think you’ll grow out of it either. Take it from one who knows, if it’s
the real thing—and judging by your hangdog expression, I reckon it is—then you
may as well get on with enjoying it.’

He knew Nick was right. He was even relieved to have an
explanation. Except...

Except for the one huge hurdle of which Nick was oblivious.
Errin wasn’t just living on another continent; she existed in another time.
Errin, his own lovely Errin, whom he loved—he really did love her; it really was
that simple!—was lost to him forever. He, who prided himself on his intellect,
had been as complete an idiot as it was possible to be. He loved her. She loved
him. And there was nothing in this world he could do about it. Thus indeed were
the mighty fallen.

Despair took him in its hold then. It hovered over him and
threatened to envelop him. Desperation it was that had him firmly in its grip
when Richard sat in the wingback chair for the thousandth time since Errin had
gone and wished for her presence. For the thousandth time nothing happened.
Richard clenched shut his eyes. ‘Errin. Errin. Errin.’ Nothing. ‘I love you.’ He
said the words out loud for the first time. ‘I love you,’ he said again.

Something felt different. The chair seemed to caress him. He
felt drowsy. A fiercely hot pain seared through his head, crimsoning his vision.
Then a blinding light. Then nothing. Terrified of what he might see—of who he
might not see—Richard prised open his eyes.

She wasn’t there.

She wasn’t there.

She really wasn’t there.

It hadn’t worked. He dropped his head into his hands,
overwhelmed with disappointment, and as he did so, the absence of his own hearth
struck him.

He wasn’t in the library! Warily, terrified lest his desire to
find her was playing tricks upon his imagination, Richard took stock of his
surroundings. His next thought, that it was the shop that Errin had described,
Pandora’s Box, was quickly discarded. This place was too big. A vast, echoing
space full of enormous crates and stacked furniture. Some sort of store? Had the
chair been sold? Where the hell was he?

The air smelled stale. The floor underneath his polished top
boots seemed to be constructed of some sort of stone. His chair, now he looked
at it more closely, was extremely forlorn. The leather was worn, the woodwork
scratched. A piece of paper, some sort of tag, dangled from the back of it.
Errin
McGill
,
119
Washington
Street
,
NY
.

NY? New York? Could he be in New York? Or was this some sort of
warehouse in the London Docks? In his mounting excitement, Richard almost
overlooked the most salient point. The chair—
his
chair—had
her
name on it. She hadn’t abandoned it.
Or him. The knowledge gave his flagging hopes an enormous boost. Edging his way
past the plethora of crates and other obstacles, he made his way towards the
light, which turned out to be a huge loading bay. Men in boots and rough work
clothes wearing strange-coloured hats stared at him, but he ignored their
shouted calls to explain himself and headed outside, only to stop in complete
and utter astonishment.

He was not in London, that much was for certain, though the
river that flowed in front of him was the same brown colour as the Thames. The
sky was pale blue. The air was mild. Spring, he surmised, though he could see no
other evidence of greenery, and looking around, what struck him most was the
crushing presence of buildings. Buildings such as he had never seen before,
impossibly tall and thin, many-windowed, many-shaped, reaching up towards the
heavens, as if all the spires from all the churches in the land had been
stretched and bundled together, crowding in, jostling for space. The air smelled
strange, metallic and dusty and heavy. And the noise! The noise was
unbelievable.

A huge contraption, like Stephenson’s locomotive, which Richard
had gone to see at Killingworth, though without the rails, passed by him at
great speed. Smaller, less noisy contraptions, bright yellow and brown and white
and silver, took up the thoroughfare. These must be the horseless carriages of
which Errin had spoken. Under normal circumstances Richard would have been
fascinated, but for now even the utter strangeness of this world made only a
glancing impression on his conscious mind, for his entire focus was on finding
her. Errin. The woman he loved.

He stopped a man and showed him the label. ‘Can you tell me
where this is, sir?’

‘Going to a fancy-dress party, buddy?’ the man asked with a
grin, walking quickly away when his sally was greeted with a blank look.

Richard walked on to a main thoroughfare bordered on both sides
by towering edifices, where the noise of horns and the roar of horseless
carriages clamoured so loudly he wondered how anyone ever made themselves heard.
Twice more he attempted to stop a passer-by but both times they walked past
eyeing him askance, their paces quickening, as if they were afraid of him or
thought him some sort of footpad.

‘Can I help you?’

He was standing by a crossroads, calculating the odds of
reaching the other side in one piece, when the girl spoke. ‘It’s in the
meatpacking district,’ she explained when he handed her the paper, and proceeded
to give him directions. ‘You got that?’

Richard nodded. ‘You are most kind, madam,’ he said, earning
himself a dazzled smile in response to his elegant bow.

It took him the best part of an hour but finally he arrived at
his destination. His heart pounding, he entered a building where a man who must
be the butler asked him who he was looking for, then directed him to another
door, which opened into a small boxlike room. ‘Press P,’ the man shouted, which
Richard did as the doors closed seemingly without assistance, and the box began
to move. Staggering out when it finally stopped, he was confronted with another
door. He felt nauseous, he had a headache, and he was completely disoriented,
but then he saw her name.
E
McGill
. And nothing else mattered save the fact, the
hope, the ardent desire that she be there on the other side of the brightly
painted door.

Sick with anticipation, he knocked, realising that despite
months to prepare, aeons to think about it, he had no idea what he was going to
say. He was about to knock again when he spotted a button underneath her
nameplate and cautiously pressed it. Somewhere inside, a strange buzzing set up
in response. A few moments later, as he was making a vain attempt to straighten
his neckcloth, the door opened.

* * *

She had been sleeping, her first day off in over a
month, for she had thrown herself into her work in an effort to forget.
Ironically, a review by one influential style magazine of her latest interior
makeover had raved so much about her ‘freshly authentic’ designs that she’d been
inundated with new commissions. Errin opened the door blearily rubbing her eyes,
expecting her grocery delivery. Instead, she was confronted with a pair of long,
masculine legs clad in close-fitting pantaloons of a familiar biscuit hue.
Highly polished hessian boots. A dark blue superfine cutaway coat. A paler blue
waistcoat fastened over a broad chest with a familiar watch fob hanging from it.
A neckcloth looking slightly the worse for wear. And a face, also slightly the
worse for wear, and so familiar she felt the blood drain from her own.

‘Pray don’t faint on me.’

His voice. It was his voice. ‘Richard?’ Her own was the
faintest squeak. Her knees turned to jelly. People really did go weak at the
knees! She clung to the doorway and stared. ‘Richard? How...?’

‘It’s a long tale. May I come in?’ Now he was here, in her
presence, in her time, in her country, he felt unsure. Terrified, actually. All
his certainties were ebbing away as the utter strangeness of the situation took
hold. Errin too seemed shocked. He could not tell, he did not want to know yet,
if it was good shock or bad. Could shock be good? God, he hoped so.

He followed her into her abode. A narrow corridor with a number
of doors leading off it. The air was cool even though it was muggy outside. The
place smelled like her, citrusy and fresh. She opened a door that led into an
unexpectedly large room with polished boards and light flooding in from the
spectacular wall of glass that formed one side. Richard halted, dazzled. ‘Wow, I
think the correct expression is,’ he said with an attempt at a smile.

Errin gave a little peal of laughter so hauntingly familiar
that Richard once again forgot everything else. ‘Errin.’ He took a step towards
her. Then another. And then he swept her into his arms. ‘Errin. Darling Errin, I
can’t believe you’re real.’

‘Richard.’ She clutched at him. ‘Richard.’ It was all she could
say. She couldn’t think.

‘You kept the chair after all.’ He stroked her hair. He nuzzled
his face into the warm crook of her neck, drinking in the essence of her, which
emanated from her skin, her hair, her simple presence.

‘I was determined not to, but in the end I couldn’t bear to
leave it behind.’

‘Oh God, Errin, I’m so glad you did. If you hadn’t...’

‘Well, I did. And here you are. I can’t believe it.’ She wanted
him to kiss her. She wanted to lose herself in him. She wanted him to make love
to her. She wanted...

Sanity returned. ‘Richard, why are you here exactly?’ she
asked, disentangling herself.

‘To tell you that you were right. There is more. Much
more.’

‘What do you mean?’ She wouldn’t hope. She wouldn’t dare. But
there was something in his expression. A pleading. An unusual lack of
confidence. ‘Richard?’

‘I love you.’

Three simple words. She’d longed to hear them. Now she couldn’t
believe she had.

‘Errin, you were right. There’s more, much more than what we
had. I love you so much I’m lost without you. I want you with me. I want to wake
up with you and go to sleep with you and argue with you and make up with you. I
want us to grow old together. I want all of it. I love you, Errin. Please,
please say it’s not too late.’

‘Say it again,’ she said.

‘I love you.’

‘Again,’ she whispered, her smile beaming at him now.

‘I love you. I’ll say it as many times as it takes to persuade
you. I’ll never grow tired of saying it.’ He pulled her into his arms again. ‘I
love you, Errin. Say you love me too. Say it’s not too late.’

‘Richard.’ She wrapped her arms around him, snuggling into the
familiar strength of his body. ‘Richard, how can you doubt it? I love you too
much to settle for less.’

‘Wise Errin.’

‘Foolish Richard.’

He kissed her then. Tenderly then passionately, his mouth, his
lips, saying more eloquently than words ever could how much he loved, would
always love her. She kissed him back with equal ardour, one of the things, one
of the many things, he adored about her. They made love on the bare boards of
her loft apartment with a joyous abandon, a new kind of love that had no
restraint, which soared to new peaks and held them floating blissfully, cocooned
and sated in their new world.