The Fall of the House of Melkham

Susan shook her head. "He was told you were called away urgently to look after a sick relative. He doesn't believe it – he knows you've got no relatives – but he doesn't know where you can be. He and Lord Roger had a huge row about it, and Master Jack stormed out. He's staying with his aunt in London now."

Emily asked, "Would you smuggle a letter out of the house for me? To Jack?"

Susan was shaking her head before Emily even finished speaking. "I daren't. I swear the Master seems to be mad for this baby. I truly believe that if I betrayed him, he'd kill me." Emily said she understood, and suppressed her bitter tears until Susan had left.

Every day of Emily's confinement Susan brought her meals. The only other person she saw was a doctor who occasionally called to check on her health, and had clearly been bought off. She and Susan made love not every day, but most, although less so as Emily's belly began to swell with the child growing inside her. Increasingly, Emily made love to Susan. She found that her hand was so slim that it would slip entirely into Susan, who writhed and moaned like a mad thing as Emily fucked her with it. In truth, Emily didn't even really like the other girl very much, but the passion between them seemed to keep her sane, and she loved the comfort she received from sucking her lover's huge breasts. Many was the night, though, that she cried for Jack, and dreamed that he would come and rescue her. She often thought of killing the baby as well. It would be easy enough, but she knew that, without that thing in her body, her life wouldn't be worth a brass farthing to the Melkhams, and she would never see freedom again. Besides, her situation was not the fault of that innocent child.

Four months into her pregnancy, Emily was awoken late at night by the sound of pounding on the door of her apartment. It opened and, in the light from the hallway, she saw the figure of Lord Roger. She shielded her eyes as he switched on the light in her room. He had been very proud when Melkham Hall had become one of the first houses in the county to have electricity installed. He swayed a little, and closed the door behind him with exaggerated care. It was clear that he was drunk. "Hello m'dear," he slurred. "Got a little treat for you. I've decided I want another go at that pretty little pussy of yours. Doc Middleton says it's safe in your condition, so get your nightdress off and your legs open for my great shaft." He sniggered as if he had made a terribly good joke.

Emily stared at Lord Roger with alarm. She still remembered with horror the night that he had raped her. That her body had derived some pleasure from the attack had been beyond her control, and she desperately did not want to repeat the experience. She sat up on her knees in her bed and lifted a teacup which was next to her, brandishing it at him. "You stay away from me you bastard" she growled in a low voice. The man just laughed, and swiped the cup out of her hand, breaking it. As he reached for her nightdress, to tear it as he had done before, Emily fought him. Small as she was, and despite her pregnancy, she fought with the strength of a tigress, and her adversary was drunk. She began to feel she was winning when, with a mighty heave, Lord Roger swung her from the bed and hurled her across the room.

She shrieked as she hit the wall, and slumped to the floor in a daze. Inside her, she was sure she felt the baby kick. Lord Roger advanced on her menacingly, snarling and undoing his trousers – and at that moment the door burst open. Emily realised with a huge shock that it was Jack standing there, in pyjamas and a dressing gown. He stared at her in disbelief, then at his brother. He cried, "Roger, what in god's name have you done, are you insane?" He crouched beside Emily, and stretched an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him, murmuring, "Brigid, my love, are you all right?"

Emily screamed again as Roger grabbed Jack by the collar and dragged him around, away from her. Jack threw a punch but missed, and Roger caught him a heavy blow in the stomach. Jack fell to the floor gasping, and his brother, a murderous gleam in his eye, advanced on him. Emily struggled to her feet, feeling she must do something to aid the man she loved. Casting wildly around, she saw a milk jug on her dinner tray. She lifted it and, as Roger raised his foot to kick the winded Jack, she crashed the jug down on the attacker's head.

Lord Roger swung in fury to face her. He reached behind his head and stared in amazement at the smear of blood which had come from a gash opened by the shattered jug. He swayed again and Emily seized her moment. Lifting the largest volume she could see from her bookshelf, she smashed it with all her strength into Lord Roger's face. He staggered back with a stunned expression, fell against the wall, then dropped to the floor. Jack scrambled across to his brother. Emily thought he was unconscious, then realised with a shock that his eyes were still open. She glanced at the wall where Lord Roger had fallen, and noticed a large slash of red across the corner of a marble mantelpiece. Jack inspected his brother then sat back on his heels and whispered, "He's dead."

Emily's hands flew to her mouth. "No, he can't be. Oh Mary, mother of God, I've killed him, they'll hang me for it."

Jack's face was white with shock, but he had a determined look about him. "Not if I have anything to do with it they won't. I'm going back to my room to dress. You get dressed too and get some clothes together, I'll bring a bag for you to put them in. Don't argue Brigid, there's no time, just do it." Before he left, Jack dragged an eiderdown from the bed and covered Roger's body with it.

They took the Daimler and huddled together behind the steering wheel draped in car blankets, Emily refusing to be apart from Jack even to sit in the shelter of the enclosed passenger compartment. By dawn they had reached the London docks. Jack booked a room in a boarding house with some of the £500 he had stolen from Roger's safe. Then he put the exhausted mother-to-be to bed and went to look for a passage out of England.

The following evening, 'Mr Jackson' stood with his 'son' on the deck of a passenger ship and gazed at the twinkling lights on the distant shore of Ireland. It was a small ship, cramped, but the Portuguese captain had not been one to ask too many questions when he saw the colour of Jack's cash. Brigid – she had abandoned Emily for ever - shed a silent tear as she looked on her homeland for possibly the last time, and another for her beautiful long locks, which Jack had cut of when he returned to the boarding house with a parcel of boy's clothes for her to change into. She hadn't even smiled when he had joked "Perhaps we'll have more luck than Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve."

The papers had been full of the foul, unprovoked murder of a blameless member of the government by a scurrilous Irish maid, but there had been no mention of Jack's involvement. As they made their way to their tiny cabin, he vaguely wondered how long it would take them to find the Daimler in the backwater of the Thames where he had pushed it. He hoped long enough for them to finish their passage. They sat on the bed and Jack put his arm around Brigid's shoulder. She turned to him, and said, "You remember I once said that the first man that takes me will be the man I marry? Well, that wasn't true, but the man I marry will be the first man I willingly give myself to."

While Jack was still digesting her words, Brigid stood up and stripped out of her disguise. She stood before him in all her pregnant glory; being so small of frame, her bump already looked enormous. Thinking of her slumped against the wall, Jack reached out and touched her naked belly. "Do you think the baby's all right?"

Brigid smiled, and placed her hand over his. "Oh sure, he'll be fine, he's a fighter this one."

Jack smiled back and looked at her properly for the first time. "My God, you are so beautiful. I love you so very much, my sweet darling." As his now fiancée knelt before him and began to unfasten his clothes, he asked nervously, "Er, with your condition, how are we going to, um..."

Brigid smiled, and murmured, "I've been thinking about that." When Jack was also naked, she took a blanket and knelt on it, stretching her arms across the bed and smiling over her shoulder. Jack nodded his understanding and knelt behind her. She shivered as he traced a finger down her knobbly backbone, and into the opening of the crack between her bum cheeks. Then she sighed in happiness as he reached around her and cupped her breasts, tweaking her small nipples between his fingers and pressing his lips to her neck.

Jack grunted as he entered her, and she pushed back onto him, her first true lover. They quickly found a rhythm, and moved together as if with long practise, Jack probing deep into her and whispering his devotion to her in her ear as they made love. She would never think of it as fucking, not with him. As her climax approached, she removed one of Jack's hands from her breast and moved it down between her legs. He quickly found her clitty, and tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks as he stroked it, and she felt her insides catch fire once more, but with more heat and passion than she had ever known. She cried out as the full force of it hit her, making her head spin and her body throb, and she continued to push back at Jack until he joined her in ecstasy, he laughing with joy and she sobbing with the same emotion as he released his love into her.

Melkham paid a heavy toll in the Great War which burst to life two years later. Of the 200-odd young men who had cheerfully signed up for the newly-formed Melkham Fusiliers battalion, less than a dozen survived past the Battle of Passchendaele. With the population of the town reduced to the old, the sick and the very young through the hostilities, hard winters saw off many who stayed behind. Lady Marina, who had worn widow's black and shut herself away since the day her husband died, succumbed to the dreadful influenza epidemic of 1918, and was laid to rest alongside Lord Roger. With no immediate heir, it was assumed that the family of one of Lord Roger's sisters would take over Melkham Hall, but to the shock and outrage of the local population the family decided to place it on the market.

The estate was bought by a mysterious young Englishman who had lived overseas for some years. Mr John Summers was tall and good looking, with blond hair and a neat beard. His wife, Brigitte, was tiny, almost birdlike, but strikingly beautiful with flowing dark red hair. She had a rather exotic accent, half Irish, half American. They had three children, the oldest of whom was a boy of six or seven years of age, with sandy hair, very affectionate towards his mother. One of the family's first acts was to re-employ Constance Reeves, by then a widow, as their housekeeper. Strangely, on first meeting Mrs Summers the old lady had burst into tears and hugged her, as if they were the oldest of friends.

There was much speculation about the source of the Summers' considerable wealth. Some said they had made their fortune in the Brazilian rubber trade; others that it had come from the armaments industry, when America joined the war on the side of Britain. Some even speculated that John Summers had served a British spy in the Kaiser's Germany. But it wasn't the done thing to ask questions, and the community were just happy that a substantial amount of the money went towards the rebuilding of the spirit of the town. There were a few older townsfolk who looked closely at the popular, loving young couple and had their own ideas about their background; but they kept them to themselves.