The house at Auchencorun was quiet. In the dining room, the clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Andrew sat in the master chair at the head of the long dining table, a teacup empty in its saucer, the teapot cooling beyond.
He waited, patiently; his expression thoughtful.
Fiona came in, wearing a white tea-gown. She locked the door behind her. Andrew started up, but she laid a finger to her lips, and signed him to sit. She laid a packet of papers, and the riding crop he'd given her, on the table. Taking a matchbox from the mantel, she struck a match, and lit all six candles in the candlesticks on the dining table, although it was barely the middle of the day. She went across to the windows, and, one by one, carefully closed and barred all of the shutters. She turned, facing the table, and looked around the room, carefully.
Apparently satisfied, she brushed the cap sleeves of the tea-gown off her shoulders, and let it fall; as Andrew had guessed, it was all she wore. She pulled out the pin securing her hair, and it fell, too. She walked naked around the table to Andrew's chair, and knelt at his feet, her hair falling to the floor around her like a cloak. She bowed her head.
There was a silence; Andrew watched her, expectantly.
She looked up, meeting his eyes. "Corsair, you asked me to marry you."
"I did, Fiona."
"I have come to answer you. It is rather a long answer, but there is something I want to say first."
She waited, apparently for permission. He nodded.
"The captive of a corsair does not expect constancy of him, or fidelity, or... a lifetime's committment. She knows that he may - almost certainly will - have other captives. She knows she holds his attention only so long as... she holds his attention - no, do not say anything, yet."
Andrew laid a hand on her shoulder, and nodded. She covered it with her own hand, and continued.
"And similarly, a corsair does not trust his captive to be faithful. If he desires her constancy, he enforces it. With chains. With lock and key. Their relationship is simple. It is direct. It is honest. When the corsair lies with another, his captive is not disappointed; when he lies with her, she is grateful; when he prevents her from straying, she is valued; when she is abandoned, well, she knew this would happen - no, wait, I have more to say."
Andrew nodded again, his face a little tighter.
"Corsair, you know I came home believing that my mother's... siezure... was my doing; my doing in choosing to take a small taste of joy with you."
At last, Andrew felt he could speak. "Yes," he said.
"It was not... at least, not chiefly, so. Corsair, everything in this room is sealed by my trust in you: you must not repeat this. Not any of it. For this is the coast of skeletons."
"You have my word, Fiona."
"My mother received this letter," said Fiona, getting to her feet and opening the packet. "I'd like you to read it."
My Dear Isobel
I trust that you and Fiona find yourselves well, and that all is comfortable at Auchencorun.
As you will know, since the deaths of poor Bertie and poor Alex, I now have no legitimate heir to carry the title and the estates on. I have decided, therefore, that it will be convenient for me to marry Miss la Compte, in order to legitimise our sons Anthony and Frederick. In order to do this, I shall, of course, require a divorce from yourself.
Since, sadly, Maurice de Valois also fell in the late war, I have decided to name him as co-respondent.
If you should choose not to defend this case, I shall grant the house and policies of Auchencorun to you; if, however, you should choose to defend, I should find myself obliged to use copies of the enclosed photographs in evidence.
Yours very sincerely
Sir Roderick Campbell, Bart
"This is from your father?" Andrew looked up at Fiona, aghast.
"Yes."
"Photographs! He's blackmailing her?"
Fiona took a large monochrome photograph from the packet, and laid it on the table in front of Andrew.
Fiona's mother -- Lady Campbell -- Isobel -- looking, but for her shorter hair, disturbingly like Fiona herself - was kneeling, naked, fellating a clothed man, who was kissing another naked woman.
"This is de Valois?"
"No," said Fiona, laying down another photograph.
Lady Campbell knelt naked on a bed, in soixante-neuf with a (different) naked woman under her, while a clothed man entered her from behind.
"This is de Valois?"
"No," said Fiona, laying down another photograph, and then another. "None of them are Maurice."
"So... I'm not sure I understand... was this de Valois your mother's lover?"
"Andrew, this is hard for me to do. Please let me guide this conversation. De Valois was my mother's lover, was, I think, more loyal to her than anyone else ever was. He visited here three times during the war years, once, in 1916, for three months while he recovered from wounds. He was killed only last year, at the front. During the visit in 1916 - I was here for much of it - my mother slept always in his room; lest, she told me, he woke in pain; but even then I knew... He did wake in pain. And he had nightmares. Many men who have seen war do."
She knelt again, and took Andrew's hand.
"Corsair," she said. "We have slept together too infrequently. Do you have nightmares?"
He nodded, shortly.
"Oh, my dear," she said.
She kissed his hand, and stood again, rising gracefully amid her curtain of hair.
"There a more photographs," she said, "but most of them are of a muchness; and while I will not withhold them if you ask, there is no need for you to see them. But one more, I need you to see."
Andrew held out his hand. Fiona put a picture into it. This one had been hand-coloured.
He looked at it, and back to her.
"That is the King," he said.
"Yes... to me that hardly matters."
"It's this room - this dining table."
"Yes. The King came only once; I was fourteen, I knew nothing of this."
"And the other men? The other woman?"
"The other men don't matter. Oh, the man under my sister is her husband... Is her husband, now, they were not even engaged then. But it is my sister, Andrew. It is my sister! My father had his wife and his daughter -- and his daughter! -- photographed, each in coition with three different men simultaneously, with no mask or veil to conceal their identity -- on this dining table... and all are facing the camera, all knew the photograph was being taken. None, it seems, objects."
Tears were trickling down Fiona's cheeks. Andrew stood, and held her. She trembled in his arms.
"But that isn't the worst thing, Andrew," she whispered into his shirt. "The worst thing is that I know -- I know -- that if I had been six years older -- twenty, as I am now -- there would be three women across that table, and nine men. Andrew, I am wanton. I am ravenous for coition. I always knew that I should be. It is why I have remained a virgin until now. But you have opened Pandora's box; I am let free. I need to be contained. Can you contain me?"
Andrew, shaken, holding her soft hair, her smooth skin, her light bones, to him, nodded, dumbly. And then, because she could not see, said, with more certainty than he felt, "I shall."
For a while the room was silent but for her muffled sobs. The candleflames burned straight in the still air, reflecting in the mirrors over the mantel.
At last she pushed herself away from him, and, clawing her hair back off her face, looked up at him.
"Andrew, your family is not like this. You are, I collect, an only child?"
