- RACHEL

 

I WAS WOKEN UP first thing in the morning by the jarring sound of my cell ringing right next to my ear. I groped for it without opening my eyes. Whatever time it was, it was too early for taking calls. I had only just fallen asleep.

There was a thud of something falling and I admitted defeat, lifting my eyelids slowly, wincing as the thin curtains let in too much light through them. The sun was up. So apparently was I.

I leaned down the side of the bed, the ringtone still far too loud, making me wish I’d silenced the damned thing before going to sleep after my failed attempt at gatecrashing.

I’d come back to the guesthouse feeling dizzy. There were so many emotions swirling in my head. I was shocked by what I'd seen. I couldn't believe people would do things like that in public. Half naked women being spanked in front of an audience, fighting their chains to escape as things were done to them I had never seen in my life.

Then there was the desire within me. I had stamped on it and tried to ignore it as I walked down Main Street. What if I was one of those women? Being dominated by those ridiculously hot guys in expensive suits? How would that feel? My racing heart suggested it would feel worryingly good.

I was also outraged at the way I’d been treated. That man in the mask had manhandled me as if I belonged to him. The way he had asked me if I was a virgin, I was still recovering from the shock of his question as I made my way back down to the guesthouse. That had cut deep into me as much as seeing what the party guests were doing to each other.

What a question to ask. Not, “Nice to meet you.” No, that would too polite. Just claiming me like a medieval lord, telling me to accompany him upstairs and not for a guided tour.

I lay in bed when I got back to the guesthouse, fuming silently as whips cracked through my mind. I tried to sleep but it wouldn’t come. I found myself reliving the party over and over again. I shouldn’t have sneaked in. I certainly shouldn’t have picked up a tray of drinks and carried it through to the living room. I was so excited to see the room where the Brontë sisters had written their masterpieces I would have pretended to be the ghost of Cathy to get in there.

I was so shocked by what I saw that I almost dropped the tray. I dumped the drinks on a table and turned to run. Stay any longer and I might forget who I was, think I belonged there. I had hardly taken two steps towards the door when he grabbed me.

It was made worse by the fact he was so handsome, even hidden behind a mask. His voice deep and warm, his grip strong. My legs had gone weak when he took hold of me and I had to overcome that shuddering feeling deep inside me to maintain my outrage at being asked such an outrageous question.

There was no chance of me answering his question. Was I a virgin? What could I have said? “Actually, I’m nineteen and I’ve never even kissed anyone apart from a poster of Darcy I had on my wall ten years ago.”

I scowled my way out of the parsonage and I continued to scowl all the way back to the guesthouse. How dare he talk to me like that? He had no right to act like such talk was normal, like a party with chains and whips everywhere was normal.

I didn’t want to think about him or the party. I wanted to sleep. My mind refused to obey me. Either it was jetlag or the fact that he had talked shamelessly about fucking me. I didn’t want him to, I didn’t want anyone to. My body wasn’t quite so sure, tingling in strange ways when he talked about it, reminding me later when I lay back in bed with my eyes closed.

In my head it was two hundred years ago, I was the housemaid and him the homeowner, treating me like a toy, something to play with and use for his pleasure. I was one of those women in the party, he was dominating me. It wasn’t a dream I wanted to have but I had it anyway.

It was too much to be woken up stupidly early by the cell ringing on the nightstand. It added insult to injury to hear Mom on the other end of the line.

“Hey, we timed it so it would be morning there. Have you had breakfast yet? Got time to talk?”

I blinked, my vision clearing enough to make out the hands of the clock on the opposite wall. “It’s eight in the morning, Mom.” Great, four hours sleep.

“How are you getting on?”

“Fine,” I said, my voice hiding my suspicions. She was building to something. I could tell.

“We were just wondering if you’d maybe changed your mind. Ian is still hoping for a chance to talk to you and-”

“I’m not coming back,” I said over her.

“That’s fine. Maybe we’ll come over and see you. I’ve always wanted to go to England.”

“You can do what you like, Mom, but I’m not changing my mind. I’m not getting married.”

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a bad line. What did you say?”

“Never mind. I’ve got to go, Mom.”

“Well, you take care and I’ll let you know if we do come over.”

“Sure.” I hung up. I doubted she would travel all this way just to persuade me to marry Ian. She was bluffing, that was all. Trying to guilt trip me into changing my mind. It wasn’t going to happen.

I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep but I was due to meet the tour guide at nine. He had my ticket for the parsonage and then after I was done in there, he’d meet me again to take me on to the next stop, Dove Cottage a couple of hours north. The cottage was in the lake district, home of William Wordsworth, one of my favorite poets.

If I wanted to look around Haworth village first, I needed to get up. I could sleep when I got home in two weeks. I showered and had breakfast before heading out into the village. The main street looked different in daylight, less atmospheric but just as beautiful. There were a couple of dog walkers and a mailman working his way along the row of cottages but other than that I was alone.

I got to the top of the street and stopped in the churchyard, looking across the wall at the parsonage. It peeked out from between trees that overlooked the chaotic mass of gravestones. The headstones themselves all lay flat, covering every inch of spare ground.

“It was so the rain could run over the top of them from the moors without them falling over.”

I turned around to find the owner of the voice that had just spoken and found myself looking into the face of someone who looked a lot like the man who’d grabbed me last night.

It couldn’t be him though. Last night, that man had worn a suit that looked stupidly expensive. This guy on the other hand had a check shirt and a battered black coat, his boots covered in mud. On his head was a baseball cap with the letters W W embossed in red on the front. He was holding a clipboard and looking from me to the graves and back again. They could be brothers though, same height, same build.

“The headstones. You were wondering why they were all flat on the ground, right?” His voice was different to the brute, lighter, less mocking.

“Actually, I was. Are you…?”

“Greg,” he said, holding a hand out towards me. “You’re Rachel, right?”

“I thought Tony was my guide.”

“Off sick. They got me in to cover but don’t worry, I’ve been doing this ten years and I’ve only lost three clients so far.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Well, two and a half really. They did find half of the third one in the end.” He grimaced and shuddered before grinning. “Ready to get going?”

“Have you got my ticket?”

“Ticket?”

“For the parsonage.”

“Ah, I do things a little differently to Tony. Don’t worry, we’ll be coming back here later. For now your chauffeur awaits.”

I followed him out of the churchyard and around the corner to the car park next to the parsonage. Looking at the gate where the guard had stopped me, I felt a strange sense of shame. I had sneaked in and paid the price. Well, I would learn from my experience. Everything was going to be by the book from here on in. “What do you think of your chariot?” Greg asked, pointing to a sleek black Bentley.

“Is that yours?” I asked.

“I wish. It belongs to the company."

“So we travel in style then?”

“Something like that. Try not to get too much mud on the inside, I’ve got to pay for cleaning it if you do. Now you climb in and we’ll get going.”

He held the back door open and I got in. “Hang on,” I said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “I left my case at the guesthouse.”

“It’ll be collected for you, don’t worry, we know what we’re doing. For now, I’m giving you a tour of the area.”

The next few hours were a blur of stunning natural beauty. We drove down one tiny country lane after another, me staring out at the rolling hills, the brightly coloured heather, the tiny ant-size sheep in the distance. I saw Ponden Hall, Top Withens, and a lot of places I hadn’t heard about but that Greg seemed to know inside out.

We stopped for a late lunch at a cafe in a tiny hamlet about five miles from Haworth. That was where my dream day turned into a nightmare.

Greg brought over two coffees from the counter, setting mine in front of me before taking his seat. “How are you finding the tour so far?”

“Amazing,” I replied. “How do you know so much about the Brontës?”

“Research,” he said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms onto the table. “We do our best to personalise the tours and you said you were into the Brontës so here we are.”

“I don’t remember putting that on the form.”

“You must have done or else how would I know?”

“I suppose so.” I looked at him closely. “You look really familiar. Have I met you somewhere before?”

“I saw you last night.”

“What?”

“At the party. I was there. In the parsonage, I mean. I saw you talking to someone before you got thrown out.”

“You were there? What was that thing?”

“A birthday party.”

“Who for?”

“I don’t know. I might have gatecrashed it a bit.”

“What?”

“You did the same thing didn’t you? Only you got caught.”

“You mean you weren’t invited either?”

“Nope,” he said, picking up his coffee mug. “Had a lot of free drink though so it was worth it. One thing I wondered about you after you went.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you let that guy fuck you?”

I felt the colour draining from my face. “Excuse me?”

“I heard what he said to you. He was clearly into you and I could tell you were into him so why not say yes?”

“I’m not talking about this.” I scraped my chair back and got to my feet. “I’m leaving.”

Before I knew what was happening, his hand was on my wrist, holding it in an insanely strong grip. “Sit down,” he said, his voice quiet.

I didn’t like how I reacted, how part of me shivered with desire at his touch. He shouldn’t have grabbed me. It was that simple. “Let go of me.”

“Sit down and stop whining.” He gave my wrist a tug and I stumbled forward. The other people in the cafe were looking at me and suddenly unsure of myself, I sat back down, trembling as he loosened his grip. “That’s better.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because you were being petulant and I asked a reasonable question. And because if you walk out of here there’s no phone signal, no buses and no one to give you a lift anywhere. You’d only come back in and sheepishly ask me to drive you back and I wanted to save you the embarrassment.”

“By grabbing hold of me?”

“By stopping you from making a fool of yourself.” He was back to sipping his coffee as if nothing had happened. “We’re going to sit here and eat lunch and then I’m going to drive you to the next stop. Before that, you’re going to answer my question. What? Why are you looking so shocked?”

“Because I can’t believe I’m being told what to do by a man I’m paying.”

“It’s not about money. It’s about the fact you have a lot to learn about life. You could have had a wild night last night but you chickened out. You clearly have a good body but you hide it in cardigans and baggy trousers. Are you afraid of how good you look? Of having a good time? Too chicken to try new things? Well, I’m not letting you chicken out of answering my question. So why did you turn him down last night?”

“Screw you,” I said, running for the door before he had time to react.

I didn’t care about being in the middle of nowhere. I cared about getting away from him. How dare he talk to me like that?

I had to admit I was also running away from the bit of me that had let him talk like that for far too long. I didn’t like that bit of me, meekly submitting to him.

I ran straight across the road to the track on the far side that squeezed between two thatched cottages. The track headed straight onto the moor. Leaving the hamlet behind me I hopped over a wall and moved on, no idea where I was going, only wanting to get away from him.

I was descending the side of a valley and as I ran, I found myself sinking into a thick mist. From the hilltop it had looked beautiful and mysterious but inside it was wet and cold and I was soon shivering, the sun unable to penetrate this far down.

The track vanished but I pushed on. It had to be this way back to Haworth. If I kept going I’d get there. Better yet, if I could get somewhere with signal I could call the tour company and complain, get them to replace Greg with someone who understood the concept of good customer relations. I couldn’t spend any longer with someone like him, not if I was going to concentrate on the sites, not the feel of being grabbed. It was not a healthy thought pattern to get into, feeling at his mercy like that.

I was in a thick patch of heather, the wet strands soaking my legs as I moved slower, less sure of my feet. I slipped on one hidden stone after another, wondering if the Brontës ever came out this far, if their rambles ever took a turn for the worse like mine had. I walked on, putting my foot down again and then feeling a horrible sinking feeling as I tripped over emptiness. There was nothing underneath me.

I didn’t have time to work out what was happening before I was falling. My arms flailed outwards, catching the lip of a hole that had been hidden under the overhanging heather until it was too late for me to see it and stop myself falling in.

My fingertips caught onto the edge of the stone as I fell and then I was dangling, my body in the hole in the heather, my legs kicking, my hands slipping on damp earth. I looked down but wherever the bottom of the hole was it was far out of sight. A few bits of gravel fell past me, the sound of them hitting solid ground occurring after too many seconds. Whatever it was I was falling into, it was deep and I was in trouble if I let go.

“Help!” I screamed as my fingers began to slip, losing their grip slowly. I screamed again, my toes searching for a foothold but finding only smooth stone. Another few seconds and I would fall and no one would ever find me.