The Dark Farewell (17 page)
Flynn closed the book and shoved it back on the shelf, his mind racing to the events of the séance. To those final moments after Julian had seemed to make contact with Millie Hesse and Flynn had asked the spirit whether she could write the name of her killer on the wall in the letters of light.
He left the study and strode down the silent hall to the dining room. He found the lamp on the
sideboard and turned it on. The chairs still lay fallen on the floor, the table had moved two feet to the left.
The candelabrum was on the floor. Flynn stared at the wall behind where Julian had sat.
It was simply a blank white wall with two prints of optimistically European landscape. No place on
Earth that Flynn recognized. He walked up to the wall and peered closely. There was a small black smudge in the center. He remembered leaning out of his chair to see, but the letters were so small he was unsure how he could have made them out. He bent close and saw the letters, perfectly formed, as though branded in the plaster:
Beware
.
That was the word offered at the first part of the séance. Had Millie Hesse left a second part of the message? Flynn examined the wall with meticulous care. He found another smudge half hidden beneath the bottom frame of the unrecognizable European castle.
He squinted, leaned in closer still. He could barely make out the small scripted letters burnt into the plaster:
Pearson.
From beyond the grave:
Beware Pearson.
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The Dark Farewell
Flynn turned and ran down the hall to Joan’s room. He was distantly aware that Mr. Devereux was
coming down the stairs. The old man hissed, “I told you what would happen if you came near my grandson again, Flynn!”
Flynn ignored him. He ran to Joan’s door and yanked it open.
The gentle lamplight revealed Joan, naked and still on the sheets. On every flat table and dresser
surface of the room stood mason jars of various sizes glinting in the glow of the lamps. An array of surgeon’s instruments were arranged on a white towel at the foot of the mattress. Dr. Pearson stood beside the bed calmly, placidly unrolling bandages. Behind him, the full moon seemed to loom outside the
window like a great golden eye staring into the room.
As the door swung open, however, Pearson’s head jerked up and he gazed in instant affront at Flynn.
Though it was the same man who Flynn had spoken to a few hours earlier, it was the face of a stranger. He rattled out a string of nonsensical syllables—was it supposed to be Egyptian? Perhaps it really was.
“Stop,” Flynn ordered.
The maniacal stranger who wore Pearson’s body snatched up a scalpel and flew across the room at
Flynn.
Flynn caught the doctor by his wrists, and as fragile as they felt, the man had an unexpected and
terrifying strength.
The strength of a madman
, Flynn thought dimly, wrestling for possession of the scalpel.
He pulled the scalpel away and hurled it outside the room.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Devereux cried, reaching the doorway.
Flynn threw Dr. Pearson back. He bounced off the bed and fell to his knees, suddenly an old man
again, broken and bowed. Flynn went to Joan, turning her face to see if she was breathing. To his relief he could see the faint rise and fall of her bony chest, feel her exhalations against his hand.
“Go get Amy and Casey Lee,” he told Mr. Devereux, throwing the quilt on the chest at the foot of the bed over Joan. “At least, try to wake them. I’m guessing they’re all drugged.”
“Drugged?”
“He wouldn’t want them interrupting.”
Devereux stared at him as though it were Flynn speaking in Egyptian. His mouth moved as he stared
back at Joan, at the monstrous array of shining jars and gleaming tools in shocked disbelief.
“Interrupting?” he parroted.
“What do you think he’s doing in here? Surgery?” Flynn snapped. “This is the Little Egypt Slayer.”
“Y-you’re mad.”
“No,
he’s
mad. Stark, staring mad. It was right there in front of us all the time. Who has a better excuse for traveling the countryside with bloody clothes and bloody instruments? Look, we can talk it out later. Go get Amy or Casey Lee. Or phone the damned sheriff.” Flynn lightly slapped Joan’s face, calling her name.
93
Josh Lanyon
Still looking dazed, moving like a sleepwalker, Devereux turned to leave the room.
Dr. Pearson uttered a blood-curdling shriek, launched himself from the floor and grasped another of
his razor-sharp instruments from the white cloth on the foot of the bed. He darted across the room, plunging it into the throat of the horror-stricken Mr. Devereux.
Mr. Devereux began to make ghastly choking noises, clawing feebly at the silver blade wedged in his
gullet. He slumped to his knees as Flynn grabbed Dr. Pearson and slammed him against the wall. Hard.
Pearson’s head hit the wall with a crack. He went limp and collapsed on the floor.
Flynn dropped on his knees beside Mr. Devereux. Already the old man’s eyes were glazing as he
struggled for his final wet gasps. Seeing Flynn, a spark of alertness came into his face. His bloody lips moved, he tried to raise his hand.
Flynn took his hand. “Can you hear me? I promise you I’ll take care of him. I love him.”
He couldn’t tell if the old man heard him or not. Perhaps it was the last thing he wanted to hear. It was certainly the last thing he heard.
For a few stunned seconds Flynn knelt, his mind reeling. Behind him he could hear Dr. Pearson’s
stentorian breaths. He turned and was struck motionless by the unearthly aspect of the moon, so beautiful, so ancient, so indifferent to all that happened beneath her golden eye.
Unbidden the words of a poem he’d learned back in his school days returned to haunt him.
Ere for eternity thy wings were spread
Alone I listen’d to thy dark farewell.
In two steps he was back at Dr. Pearson’s side. He slammed his head into the wooden floor once more
for good measure, and ran shouting to wake the household.
94
About the Author
A distinct voice in GLBT fiction, multi-award winning author Josh Lanyon has written numerous
novels, novellas and short stories. He is the author of the critically praised Adrien English mystery series as well as the new Holmes and Moriarity series. Josh is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist. To learn more about Josh, please visit
www.joshlanyon.com
or join his mailing list at
groups.yahoo.com/group/JoshLanyon.
Look for these titles
Now Available:
Holmes & Moriarity
Somebody Killed His Editor
The Dickens with Love
The Dark Farewell
Crimes & Cocktails
Mexican Heat
(Writing with Laura Baumbach)
He followed all the rules…until one man showed him a dozen ways to break them.
An Improper Holiday
© 2009 K.A. Mitchell
As second son to an earl, Ian Stanton has always done the proper thing. Obeyed his elders, studied diligently, and dutifully accepted the commission his father purchased for him in the Fifty-Second Infantry Division. The one glaring, shameful, marvelous exception: Nicholas Chatham, heir to the Marquess of Carleigh.
Before Ian took his position in His Majesty’s army, he and Nicky consummated two years of physical
and emotional discovery. Their inexperience created painful consequences that led Ian to the conviction that their unnatural desires were never meant to be indulged.
Five years later, wounded in body and plagued by memories of what happened between them, Ian is
sent to carry out his older brother’s plans for a political alliance with Nicky’s father. Their sister Charlotte is the bargaining piece.
Nicky never believed that what he and Ian felt for each other was wrong and he has a plan to make
things right. Getting Ian to Carleigh is but the first step. Now Nicky has only twelve nights to convince Ian that happiness is not the price of honor and duty, but its reward.
Warning: Just thinking about reading this book in 1814 could get you hanged, so the men in this book
who enjoy m/m interaction of an intimately penetrative nature are in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Enjoy the following excerpt for
An Improper Holiday:
When at last the door opened, Ian spun ’round to be relieved of his coat, sufficiently irritated by Simmons’ delayed arrival to forgo his usual greeting.
Perhaps the fellow had been overindulging in whatever libations were being offered to celebrate the
day in the servants’ hall because the valet was clumsy rather than deft, struggling just to ease the coat from Ian’s shoulders.
“And I shall be retiring, Simmons.”
Instead of the expected “Very good, sir,” the man left his arms pinned behind his back and brushed
his fingers beneath Ian’s cravat. The unanticipated contact awakened Ian’s skin, his flesh alight with delightful ripples of sensation.
“What the devil?”
He would have turned to face the man, but Simmons stepped closer, hands moving to remove the
starched tie while pressing his hips intimately against Ian’s arse.
The shock and terror in his gut, even the pain of his confined shoulders, could not dampen the rush of arousal evoked by the touch, by the strength of another man’s embrace.
“Simmons. I must ask that you remember yourself.” Ian twisted free, retreating to place a wall at his vulnerable back, but his all-too-vulnerable front was exposed to—Nicky.
The identity of his assailant did little to mitigate Ian’s dismay.
“Are you mad?” Ian struggled with his coat, anger lending him sufficient strength to tear one of the sleeves from the body.
Nicky locked the door and removed his own coat. “It is Boxing Day, after all. Simmons has the
evening off, as do almost all of the servants. Surely you would not deprive the man of his well-earned holiday.”
“It is not Boxing Day for another hour,” Ian asserted as the solemn toll of the chapel bell made him a liar. He flung his torn coat to the floor.
Nicky’s cravat parted company with his shirt, revealing a neck still defined with the strong tendons Ian had once traced with his tongue. Quelling thoughts of other flesh his mouth longed to revisit grew more impossible with each piece of clothing Nicky dropped onto the Aubusson rug.
“What are you doing?”
“I am preparing for bed. That bed.” Nicky indicated the four-poster in the center of the room.
“Is the castle so crowded the son of the house has been turned out of his rooms?”
“If it pleases you to think so.” Nicky straightened, torso bared to Ian’s gaze.
Firelight gilded Nicky’s skin, gleaming on the fine hairs of his breast, drawing Ian’s eye to the waist of Nicky’s breeches where the hair thickened and darkened. The garnet on his signet ring flashed as
Nicky’s hands moved to those buttons.
Ian shut his eyes. “No.”
“No?” The amusement in Nicky’s voice had Ian looking again, forgetting what imminent danger had
prompted his action. But Nicky only bent to remove his shoes and stockings, gifting Ian with the sight of the firm curve of his backside under the tight kerseymere breeches.
Nicky brought his hands to rest above his hips, fingers disappearing under the waistband. “Is it truly no or is that what the good soldier, the dutiful second son, feels compelled to say?”
Ian’s throat burned as it tightened, but he could not look away.
“Whom do you seek to save with your denial, me or you?” Nicky persisted. He stepped closer, but
made no move to touch Ian. “Why are we to be denied pleasure when you must know how precious and
brief life is?”
“The risk of—”
“You threw yourself against a wall of French rifles in service to your father’s idea of honor. Can you not permit yourself something your own honor knows is right? How can it be wrong when we both desire it?” Nicky shoved his breeches down and stepped free, the proof of his desire standing proud and hard.
As swiftly as snow falling off a steep roof, Ian’s body dropped into a pit of raw need. He made a last effort to find any handhold which might keep him from the abyss.
“I do want…”
you
“…this, but only what we did before. We cannot, I will not…” He tried making a gesture to communicate the specific deed.
“Bugger me?” Nicky grinned. “Fuck me?”
Despite Ian’s shock, the coarseness of Nicky’s words brought a faster beat of blood to Ian’s prick.
That unabated grin suggested Nicky knew damned well what effect he had wrought. His next step brought Nicky close enough to try the truth with his hand. Fingers traced the outline of Ian’s prick beneath a layer of wool and linen, a light pressure that offered nothing beyond exquisite torment. A quick hard rub against the crown, dragging the linen across the damp skin until heat pulsed from the tip, the touch as unerringly accurate as Ian’s own.
Pleasure stole his breath as surely as a fist to the stomach. Sucking the air through his teeth, he
reached a hand to Nicky’s shoulder, hips tipping into the caress.
Nicky leaned forward until his breath moved against Ian’s ear. “While I find your concern utterly
charming, what makes you believe you could take my arse if I didn’t allow it?”
Ignoring the wail of protest from his prick and balls, Ian transferred his grasp to Nicky’s wrist to still the motion of his palm. “I am well aware that many now consider me less a man, but with all your
protestations, I would have thought—”
Nicky laughed. “Christ, Ian, try not to be more of an ass than the good Lord intended you to be. You couldn’t best me even when you had four inches and two-stone advantage.”
“I’ve never had two stones on you, you country-fed beast.” The retort came unbidden to his lips, their long habit of verbal sparring impossible to amend.