The Dark Library (6 page)

Looking at some of the drawings had turned
her on, especially imagining herself bound in those outrageous
ways, but just because she found the drawings erotic didn't mean
she was a pervert like his uncle was – or he was!

Of course, in her experience, all men were
perverts anyway.

She let her imagination slide over a possible
relationship with him. He was an arrogant bastard, but in the realm
of a sort of sporting sexual interlude, well, he might be a rather
novel experience. Certainly it would be different than the sorts of
tawdry affairs she'd so long resisted with the young men she'd
grown up with. But he was simply too arrogant and unpleasant to
really contemplate such a thing.

She had trouble sleeping again that night.
She had the occasional dream, and even a brief erotic dream. In it,
she was naked at a strip club, prancing and dancing about, and
sitting in the front row was Carling, staring at her.

She woke, troubled, and got dressed. She
needed exercise, so put on sweat pants and a tank top and went
downstairs. She made her way outside and then began to jog around
the estate. There were a lot of walkways, and exploring them was
interesting, if tiring. She returned to the back of the house
panting and sweating, needing a shower. She looked longingly at the
swimming pool, thinking about throwing herself into it, but she
doubted they'd appreciate it.

She headed back into the house, thinking
about how delicious it would have been to strip naked and slide
beneath the cool water, right out in the open like that! But if
Carling saw her he'd have no doubt she was some sort of
exhibitionist pervert and who knows what he'd do or say.

She showered, her hands enjoying the tactile
pleasure of sliding across her warm, soapy body, but again did not
dare linger long. She dressed, ate breakfast, and started in on the
books again.

What else could she do?

She wondered if Carling had a girlfriend.
Apparently not. He had spoken of going through them like socks. No
doubt no self-respecting woman would stay around an obnoxious lout
like that, Lord or not.

She was determined to finish off this
particular category of book and start in on something else as
quickly as possible. Let him try his sly innuendo on books about
geology!

She was in the rear of the alcove, when her
hand pressed against the side of the shelf to balance herself, and
the three lower shelves and all their contents slid forward into
the wall, almost dropping her on her bottom. Intrigued, she dropped
to all fours and peered inside at the narrow passage revealed. An
old house with a secret passage in the library, she thought in
delight. How wonderfully cliched!

She stood up and hurried over to the cabinet,
where, in her initial inspection, she'd seen a number of torches.
She grabbed one, flicked the button on and off to test the power of
the battery, then returned and crawled into the passage. She looked
around nervously, but was gratified to see a distinct lack of
spider webs and accumulated dust. She was a slim hipped woman and
even so had to move carefully so as to not brush against the stone
walls as she moved along the passage and around the corner.

There was a stone stairway there, and she
followed it down, heart thumping, wondering if she'd find treasure,
or perhaps the skeletons of old pirates.

It was an awfully long staircase, she
thought, going down past the basement, into who knew where! When
she reached the bottom she searched about, found the outline of a
doorway, and then a small lever which allowed her to pull it
inward. She slipped out and swung the flash about, lighting up a
dark stone hall of sorts. Again, like the passageway it was oddly
clean. In fact, the floor looked polished!

That was disappointing, in a way, for it
indicated this was no long-lost hideaway, but something which must
be used still. Perhaps it was a wine cellar? The walls were of
rough stone, but the floor was of very clean square stones, and as
she moved around, it reflected the light ahead. To her right and
left were broad, rounded doorways in the stone wall. The right
giving onto a large group of wine racks. But it was the left which
interested her.

Both openings were about ten feet or so
across, and covered with bars. There was a doorway, also of bars,
in the midst of each, though, and neither were locked. On the wall
next to the opening on the left was a plaque. This is the original
underground detention area of the Lords of Eastwick, and dates to
the fifteenth century, when the present location was occupied by
Eastwick Castle.

She pushed open the one on the left and found
herself in a long, low room with odd contraptions spaced about.
They were clearly torture devices, and from the evident age of the
wood they looked like the original contrivances. Hannah gazed at
them in fascination. She had always loved history, and the thought
of seeing, and even touching, torture devices which might have been
used six hundred years ago was quite exciting.

There was the rack, obviously. There were
shackles hanging from the ceiling in places, perhaps to hold people
suspended. There was the wheel, to be bent back upon, and a
whipping post. There was a much-scarred table with shackles spaced
at the corners, to be used for God knows what, and a small cage
hanging from the ceiling!

One item made her blush to see it. It was a
T-shaped frame, with shackles along the top and a very phallic
looking thing projecting up and out from the vertical portion. She
imagined some poor man – or woman – bound to it, impaled through
the bottom, and otherwise hanging there! How horrible!

Beyond these were the cells, with shackles on
the walls. Her heart was beating more quickly, and she imagined
being imprisoned in one of the barred cells, shackled to the wall,
awaiting the tender attentions of the torturer. She stepped into
one of the cells, making sure the door was not the type to swing
closed and lock her in, and examined the walls, looking to see some
sort of sign of previous tenants. But perhaps, if they were
shackled they couldn't do anything like scratch off the days on the
wall.

The shackles seemed fairly obvious in their
operation. They were hinged, and the locking tongues fit into one
of several little holes, depending, she supposed, on the thickness
of the wrist to which they were bound.

She turned and pressed her back against the
stone wall, then raised her arms dramatically, imagining she was
locked in there, helpless, perhaps even … naked... awaiting the
cruel attentions of a lecherous jailor!

Perhaps someone like Lord Carling.

She felt a throbbing between her legs which
was echoed a moment later by a tingling in her nipples. She felt a
temptation to strip herself, to press her naked body back against
the stone, and let her imagination run riot. But no, there was no
way she was going to risk being exposed to Carling yet again! The
man had already seen far more of her naked body than was anywhere
close to being decent!

But.. the heat in her body was rising at the
mere thought of doing it, of being naked, pretending she was a
prisoner, and the heat was making her certainty waver. What were
the odds he'd come down just then? But no, not going to happen, she
told herself firmly. The clothes are staying on!

She examined the shackles again, and felt a
sense of breathlessness as she slipped her wrist into one. She
closed it, letting the little metal tongues slip into the opening
so it was locked firmly around her left wrist. Then she turned the
old key in the stiff lock to lock it. Her breasts were hot now, her
chest tight, as she turned and pressed herself against the wall,
laying her head back.

She had trouble balancing the flash and the
key, and so turned around again, unlocked the shackle, and then set
her flash down before returning. The key didn't really need to be
held she realized, for the lock was stiff and it stayed in on its
own. She locked the shackle around her left wrist again, then
closed the other one and pressed her wrist against the wall to snap
it together. She didn't try to lock it, however. That wasn't
necessary to her fantasy.

She turned her back to the wall and felt her
heart beating excitedly as she looked out at the bars, then the
darkened room beyond. She wished she'd thought to close the door of
the cell, but she'd not wanted to risk it somehow locking. Still,
she pulled firmly against the shackles, wanting to bask in the
sensation of ancient imprisonment.

It would have been so much more exciting had
she been naked, though. She wondered if she dared come back in the
middle of the night. There were surely no safety alarms down here
to catch anyone's attention.

She ground her bottom against the rough
stone, feeling her breathing become more ragged, and then decided
she had had enough and had better get back upstairs before her
absence was spotted. She turned around and tried to open the
unlocked shackle around her right wrist, but the release was very
stiff. Her thumb ached as she pressed against it, and she felt the
first sparkle of anxiety. She cursed softly, pressing from one
side, then the other, becoming more anxious as it failed to
give.

She shook the chains violently, smashing the
shackle against the wall, and the button gave, the shackle opening
at the lever and her arm dropping out.

At the same time, the key dropped out of the
other shackle.

She stared at it stupidly, one wrist free,
the other still held aloft. It had fallen to the floor and bounced
just off to the side. It was really quite close – just not close
enough.

She closed her eyes in horror. How long, she
wondered, until that slimy Lord Carling went to the library to
taunt her, found the passage open, and came down here to find her
locked up like this!?

Then she knew a worse fear. What if he went
to the library, didn't see her, and went away, not going to the
back to spot the open passage? Then she could be standing like this
for hours! For hours and hours and hours!

How utterly stupid she was!

She tried to reach the key with her foot, but
couldn't quite stretch that far. She glared at it furiously.
Carling would mock her endlessly if he found her like this!

If she could only reach the key, she thought,
it should be possible, given how thick it was, to grasp it in her
toes, and then pull it up so she could grasp it with her free hand.
Then she could unlock herself. But try as she would she couldn't
quite reach it.

Then the idea came to her, that if she took
off her long skirt, she could swing it out and drag the key back to
where she could reach it with her foot. But she shied away from
that in case Carling showed up.

An hour passed, then another, or at least,
she thought that was how long had passed. It was rather hard to
tell. Cursing, she undid her skirt, raising her right knee high and
tugging the skirt down. She stepped out of it with one foot, then
the other, then grasped it by the waistband, tried to sweep the key
closer. Unfortunately, the skirt was not quite long enough, so she
put it back on.

The blouse she was wearing was a light summer
frock with spaghetti straps. Getting it off would be easy, except
for the part over her left shoulder. She would have to tear the
strap to free herself of it. After waiting what felt like another
hour, she gave it a try. She tore the thin fabric and pulled off
the blouse, then, trapping the fabric of the skirt between her
bottom and the wall, she untied it. She then carefully, with just
one hand, tied the strap of her blouse to the belt loop of her
skirt.

When she was confident it would hold, she
slipped the skirt off, heart thumping at how nearly naked she was –
again! – and the danger of being found just then by Carling. She
held the skirt by its hem and swept it down and in, so that her
blouse caught at the key and pulled it closer. She tried a second
time, and the key slid closer still. A third time brought it within
reach of her foot, and she toed off her shoe, then tried to grip
the key with her toes.

She started to raise it, but it fell and
bounced away again. Cursing, she pulled the skirt off her shoulder,
where she'd rested it, and slid her hand to the bottom again, then
swung it overhand.

A sudden loud clanging sound made her cry out
in alarm. She started, eyes wide, and the hem slipped from her
sweating fingers.

Hannah closed her eyes and shuddered in
horror. She gazed miserably at the clothing piled on the floor just
beyond her reach, the key invisible underneath. She could hear some
sort of machine sound now, perhaps the boiler or furnace, and no
doubt that sound had been them starting up.

She put her head back against the stone and
moaned helplessly.

Hannah felt tears of frustration well up in
her eyes. It was so bloody unfair! Why were these things always
happening to her!? It wasn't her fault! She wasn't a pervert or a
fool! Was she!?

Now she was doomed to be caught yet again,
practically naked in a very compromising position!

She looked down at herself miserably. At
least she was wearing matching undies. She was wearing actual
panties, instead of the thongs she often wore, and a halter type
bra which completely covered her breasts. They were a matching set,
whitish and purple, and she had purple knee-high socks on beneath.
The panties were rather low on her belly, with very thin straps
sliding across her hips, but everything that needed to be covered
was. What she was wearing would be a reasonably modest bathing
suit, she tried to reassure her pounding heart.

What felt like another hour passed, and she
groaned weakly. She gave some thought to removing her bra, somehow
tying her shoe to a strap, then swinging it down to get her clothes
back, but the way her luck was going she'd lose them, too and that
would be even more humiliating when she was discovered.