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By the time Jack returns to the boarding house, Inverness is veiled in the pallid grey of early dawn. He drifts through the town as though through water, each ugly, lichen-crusted building sliding past him one after the other until, finally, he ceases resisting and allows himself to be swept inside McGilvrey’s dark, labyrinthine halls.
The air is close here, and familiarly stale. Jack swallows, his hand curling into a fist at his side.
When he gathers the courage to push open the heavy paneled door, his brother’s corpse greets him, ashen, from atop the neatened bedsheets. The sight is no easier to palate now than it had been before.
At Alex’s bedside, Mary sits vigil in an old wooden chair. She remains fully clothed—the same pleated blue dress in which Jack had left her—and she does not stir, not even when he closes the door behind him and draws up beside her, staring down at his brother’s motionless form.
With a jolt of grief and desire, Jack recalls the heft of him between his thighs. The give of Alex’s flesh beneath his fist. The way his body had juddered with each strike, flinching with vitality, his throat warm and sweat-slick and nestled perfectly into Jack’s seeking palm.
“Claire helped me wash him.”
With great difficulty, Jack pulls his gaze away from his brother.
Mary does not grant him the same courtesy; her red, swollen eyes remain fixed on Alex, a sheen of tears filming her pale cheeks. Her inflamed lips are parted and glossy, the whole of her wet and shimmering in the dancing light of the hearth.
Jack imagines striking her—the flat of his palm against that soft, round cheek.
He turns his attention to Alex.
Had his ministrations bruised? Had Alex’s blood rushed up to fill the places where his fist fell? He can see on Alex’s neck no imprint from his fingers, but lower, perhaps, beneath the careful loop of his cravat… The thought both sickens and arouses him.
He steps forward, closer to his brother, and Mary sucks in a sharp, hitching breath. The sound throbs through him—is she afraid?
“John…”
With a slow, steady hand, Jack strokes Alex’s cheek. His hair has been brushed and tied, his skin wiped clean of sweat and blood. He is smooth to the touch, save the smattering of stubble about his chin, and cold, his flesh firm beneath Jack’s knuckles. He trails his fingers down, beneath Alex’s chin, and traces his lips with the pad of his thumb.
There is nothing remarkable in a corpse—the stillness, the stench. The slow seeping of fluids, each body rendering itself unto the earth the same as the last. He finds no horror in it now, and little sorrow.
But this is no mere corpse. This is Alex, and Jack feels his death as though it were the first.
Behind him, Mary begins to weep.
Nausea burns in his stomach like whisky, an insistent heat that climbs up beneath his ribs as rage. He despises the God that enacted this horror, despises Alex for leaving him and Claire for failing him, despises Mary and Mary’s child and the life they will have without him, or the life they’ll be subjected to with him, and most of all, he despises himself.
His fingers dig into Alex’s throat, and his thumb crushes Alex’s lip. Beneath the thin pad of fat, he feels out the hard ridge of Alex’s teeth, rolling his thumb forward so that it presses down on the very edge of his bottom incisors. Deeper, then—he works his finger into Alex’s mouth, which is cool and only marginally damp. Jack inhales sharply, his hand spasming, and forces his thumb farther, seeking the wet heat that he has so often imagined.
It is not an easy intrusion. Alex’s muscles have tensed since his passing, and he resists Jack in death as he never did in life.
Thank God, Jack thinks. Thank God.
He presses deeper, spreading Alex’s mouth wide around the thick base of his thumb. He can feel his own lips trembling, his jaw clenched tight as he strokes his brother’s tongue, the ridge of his molars, his cheek.
No part of Alex is warm.
No part of Alex is wet.
Jack’s blood pounds in his ears; his head spins.
“Please, John…” Mary’s voice is hardly more than a whisper; Jack can barely hear the thick tremble of it, so ensconced is he by excitement and anguish.
He closes his eyes and breathes through his mouth, listening to Mary’s watery, broken whimpers.
When he turns back to her, she stares up at him with all the helpless agony of a wounded foal. Tears flow freely over her cheeks, and her visage contorts in a twist of horrified pain; her full lips tremble. Jack opens his arms, and she comes to him without question. She buries her face in his chest with a gasp, and her sobbing begins anew, her small body heaving with the raw strength of her grief.
He hushes her gently and cradles the back of her head, resisting the urge to grip her chignon and pull. Instead, he ducks his head and inhales deeply, seeking some remnant of Alex in her scent.
He finds none; there is only sweat and coltsfoot and thornapple.
“Mary,” he murmurs, his mouth against her thick, soft hair. “Mary, darling.”
Mary whimpers and presses tighter to him, her arms winding about his waist. Jack thinks of Alex—how small he used to be, how lithe. His prick twitches against his hip.
Gently, he urges Mary’s head back so that she’s looking up at him again, her eyelashes clumped with tears. He brushes his right thumb—the thumb he slipped inside of Alex—over the tender flesh beneath her eye to catch the wetness there. Her expression crumples, but Jack does not allow her to seek solace once more against his chest; he takes her face in both hands and kisses her.
She stiffens beneath his touch, mouth slack with surprise, and a wounded sound hitches past her lips. Fresh tears spill over her cheeks and gather between their lips.
“John, I—”
Jack withdraws a little and regards her, allowing his grief to show plainly on his face. “I know,” he says, speaking around the sharp ache in his throat. “Would that it were otherwise.” He works his jaw and glances away, gut twisting with pain. “It should be Alex.”
Mary makes a tiny noise and takes Jack’s hand, her small fingers clasping his to her chest. “If it h-h-had to be a-anyone,” she whispers, “I’m glad it’s you.”
Disgust roils in Jack’s stomach. When Mary tilts her head up, he kisses her, hiding his sneer against her soft, damp mouth. Will he not restrain himself, even now? His brother’s corpse lies in accusation behind him, the ghost of his final entreaty pressing its flickering heat against Jack’s back.
Neither is enough to stop him.
Gently, he tugs Mary’s kerchief free from her bodice. It flutters to the floor beside them, and Jack trails the back of his knuckles over her soft, unblemished skin. Her chest heaves; Jack drags his lips over her throat. His breath ghosts hot over the juncture of her shoulder and neck as he tugs the pins from her hair, which tumbles gratefully free, piece by glossy brown piece.
“Alex would want you to feel good,” he says. “On your wedding night.”
Mary’s face spasms, and Jack pulls her close again, sinking one hand into her hair. As she’s still wearing her skirts, she likely cannot yet feel his excitement, which has pressed half-heartedly against the placket of his breeches since the moment he first penetrated Alex’s mouth.
He undresses her slowly. Though she makes no move to stop him, the silence between them is heavy—funereal. Jack flays off each layer of clothing and imagines he is readying her for her deathbed, like a widow bound to crawl into her husband’s grave.
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, he thinks, Till of this flat a mountain you have made T’ o’ertop old Pelion.
With Mary wearing naught but her shift, and Jack his shirt, he reaches out a hand and leads her around the bed. When it becomes clear he intends for her to settle herself there, she stops, looking down at the coverlet and then to Jack.
“Go on,” he says. His heart pounds, and his prick hardens against his hip. Not since France can he recall having so easily achieved full arousal.
Mary hesitates; her breathing quickens.
“We’ll hardly be the first.” Jack guides her backward until her legs press against the edge of the mattress, where she remains, trembling, as he hitches up the hem of her shift. His fingers scrunch the soft, sweat-dampened fabric inch by inch, guiding it up to reveal her calves, her knees, her thighs. When he reaches the crease of her groin, he leans forward to kiss her cheekbone and drags his lips to the shell of her ear. “It will be as though he’s truly with us.”
She shivers against him, her hands holding tight to his upper arm.
“In body,” he says, “as well as in spirit.”
He nips beneath her earlobe, and she gasps, her short nails digging into his bicep through his shirtsleeves. Unperturbed, he grips her waist and presses down until she sits, then tugs her shift over her head and tosses it carelessly aside. Like a frightened virgin, Mary’s arms cross over her chest, obscuring her breasts. She turns her face away as Jack shucks his shirt, her legs pressed tight together from thigh to ankle. Still, Jack can see the dark thatch of hair peeking out beneath the gentle swell of her stomach, which is rich with the fruits of his brother’s seed.
His prick jumps, and he bites back the groan that rumbles in his chest. With reverence, he sinks to the floor and leans forward, beyond the painful press of Mary’s knobby knees to lay his cheek upon her belly. The flesh is soft still, more a suggestion of pregnancy than the firm heft of a growing child, and he turns his face into her, his nose indenting her tender skin. He kisses her chastely and imagines the touch traveling through her body to the nascent soul within. If they’d conceived a little earlier—if Alex had lain with her sooner, or if his seed had been stronger—Jack might feel the child press back.
As it is, he feels nothing.
He opens his mouth, sliding his tongue forward to taste. Mary shudders and cups the back of his head; her stomach trembles beneath his lips.
If I should survive, Jack thinks, as he drags his open mouth across Mary’s abdomen, I will extend to you the same vow I made my brother. He sighs out a wavering breath and pushes himself harder against her, so that his teeth make contact with her skin. I shall not harm you—you have my word.
A burst of warmth hits Jack’s cheekbone. His temple. Mary’s tears, he realizes, dripping down on him from above. One of them finds its way into his open mouth—a tiny burst of salinity that lingers on his tongue.
“Oh, Johnny….”
It is Mary who speaks, but Alex’s voice rings in Jack’s ears. He groans against her stomach as heat ignites like gunpowder inside him, and he surges up to kiss her, pressing her back against the bed. She falls onto her elbows, which land atop Alex’s body, and she flinches, scrambling to the side. In her panic, she casts a terrified look at Jack and freezes, her gaze slipping down to snag on the ugly scar beside his prick and the mangled mess of his left testicle.
Jack’s lip curls. He traces the scar with his forefinger from his groin down to his stones, then cups them in his hand, shivering at the sensation. A deformity of the flesh, he thinks, to match that of the soul. Still, he cannot find it in himself to think it ugly; he and Jamie both bear each other’s scars, now.
“Striking, isn’t it?” he drawls, as he climbs onto the bed. “Mistress Fraser’s husband gave them to me in France.”
Mary’s throat bobs, and her mouth works for a moment without words. “Do they hurt?”
Jack grins mechanically, an empty expression spread wide around memory—the white-hot spear of Jamie’s sword through his stones, blood gushing between his fingers. Alex’s handkerchief, swathed in red. The heaving of his body in Jack’s arms. “They did,” he says. “Terribly.”
With a firm, unyielding hand, he lays Mary back against the pillows, so that she and his brother are side by side. She goes willingly but stares at the ceiling as she does, avoiding Jack’s gaze.
That’s well enough. After all, it isn’t Mary that Jack is thinking of.
On her back as she is, her stomach is nearly flat—no hint at all of the babe within. Jack sucks a mark just above her navel and proceeds down the length of her torso until he reaches the apex of her thighs. The bed is small enough that when he eases her legs apart, making space for himself between, her right leg presses firmly against Alex’s body. She squeezes her eyes shut, and beneath Jack’s hands, her muscles lock tight.
Jack does not permit her retreat.
“Shh,” he soothes, stroking her thigh as he might stroke a frightened horse. “It’s all right. He’s here with you, Mary. Think of him, if you must.” He slides his hand toward her hip, and his fingertips settle in the divot between her soft flesh and Alex’s clothed, rigid form.
Oh, that Claire and Mary might have left him bare! If they had, then Jack, Mary, and Alex could have come together as equals—as one.
But Jack will have to make do. It is enough to have Alex here, beside him.
It must be.
He noses into the crease of Mary’s groin, inhaling the musky tang of her unwashed cunt. The hair on her mound brushes gently over his cheek, and as he delves deeper, a gentle dampness warms his chin. She is aroused, then, if only a little.
Jack trails his lips across her, just enough to disturb the wiry hairs at the top of her pubis. He wonders when she and his brother last fucked. Are there traces of Alex here still, awaiting the probe of Jack’s clever tongue?
He shifts lower, easing Mary’s thighs onto his shoulders and parting her folds to get at her core. At the first touch of his tongue, she flinches, but when Jack closes his eyes and presses deeper, the tension bleeds out of her, and she sinks back into the bed with a pained moan. Jack rewards her, kissing her cunt with the tender devotion he has always reserved for Alex and Alex alone. It pours out of him like bile; once he begins, he cannot stop.
He applies himself with vigor, letting loose the insatiable desire that has built up in him these past thirty years. Mary writhes beneath him, and he holds her tight as he sucks at the seat of her pleasure, as he laves that swollen nub with the broad flat of his tongue. She cries out, and her hips thrust up hard, her cunt leaking more of that thick, hot wetness as Jack tongues at her entrance, which is slick and open and waiting.
“Alex,” Mary breathes.
Jack moans. He grinds his hips forward, rutting against the mattress. “Yes,” he pants, “that’s it.” He ceases fondling her arse and leans to the side so that he can withdraw his hand from beneath her, which presses him inadvertently against Alex’s body with Mary’s leg trapped between.
Jack hisses and drives his hips forward; Mary chokes on a cry. Delirious with pleasure, he thrusts two fingers inside her cunt and leans back hard, thinking of the tepid clutch of Alex’s mouth.
“Say my brother’s name,” he urges, panting against her as he drives his hips into the bed. In his shifting, he brushes rhythmically against Alex, his bare arse and legs rasping against the fabric of Alex’s breeches. Pleasure singes him; he speeds his thrusts. “Let him hear you, Mary. Do you think he’s watching us?”
Mary’s leg tenses—the one crushed between Jack’s body and that of his brother—and he feels her clench around him. He gasps and drives deeper, thrusting hard as he curls his fingers up against her inner walls and kneads the spongy tissue there.
Mary cries out. She curls up off the bed as he works her, and he bends down again to lick and suck at her, pushing one of his legs blindly behind him until he manages to hook Alex’s ankle with his own.
“Say it,” he begs, his face buried in her cunt, chin smeared with her arousal. He tries to drag Alex’s leg closer, but his brother’s joints have grown stiff and do not bend to his will. “Say his name!”
“A-Alex!”
Heat throbs through Jack’s body, and he groans against Mary, fucking her hard enough that the room fills with the slick noises of his fingers inside her. He ruts against the bed like an animal, driving his pleasure tighter and tighter until his rhythm begins to stutter and Mary’s thighs tremble on his shoulders.
No.
A bolt of clarity. He’ll not climax like this—he will have her properly, just as Alex did.
Jack ceases his movements and turns his head, resting his cheek on Mary’s cunt. Her pleasure torn from her, she trembles and jerks. Jack closes his eyes as he savors her diminishing movement beneath him, like a body leaching the last of its life.
Finally, she stills. A moment passes, and her fingers slide tentatively through his hair.
“John?”
He sighs and sucks on the crease of her thigh, eliciting a low moan. When he pushes himself up, sliding Mary’s legs from his shoulders, he sees that her face is flushed and wet, her hair in disarray beneath her. In the warm firelight, it is much like Alex’s was, loose and red-brown and snarled. Jack reaches his fingertips up to trace its tangled curve.
“Are you ready, Mary?”
Mary’s eyes flood with tears. She blinks them back valiantly, even as her lip trembles, and nods, knotting her hands nervously over her belly. Though her body is flushed with excitement, she closes her eyes like a martyred saint when she spreads her thighs, her expression collapsing with unutterable grief.
Jack is seized again by the urge to hurt her; then, he might at least take pleasure in her pain. As it stands, he finds no joy in tears shed over his brother’s bier.
He lines his cock up against her entrance and bends low, kissing the corner of her mouth so that he doesn’t have to look at her face. She swallows him with little resistance, her body splitting open as though for a newly sharpened blade. When Jack’s pelvis presses against hers, his cock fully sheathed inside her, he jerks his hips and moans against her chin. Between them rests the minute swell of her womb, as though they are together cradling Alex’s child.
Lightheaded, Jack lays more of his weight on her and increases the speed of his thrusts. He urges her legs around his waist and yanks her hips up toward him, one hand on her arse and the other at the small of her back, pulling her belly hard against his.
“How did Alex have you?” he asks, the words ground out from deep inside of him.
Beside them, Alex’s eyes are closed. His body is rigid—tight with horror. He does not seem at peace.
Jack’s hand clenches around Mary’s arse, and a wave of nausea rolls through him, collecting in his throat.
Do you see, Alex?
Mary cries beneath him, her arms wrapped tightly around his back.
Do you see how I am betraying you? Open your eyes and rebuke me for it, God damn you!
“He must’ve had you like this,” Jack continues, his voice thick. He stares at Alex, nearly begging. “Face-to-face. He’d not take you on your belly like a beast.”
A low keening swells in the room—his? Or Mary’s?
“He was ge-gentle,” Mary chokes. Her nails press into Jack’s flesh.
Yes, he thinks. Harder!
“We l…l…liked it that way.” Mary trembles, her thighs flexing around Jack’s hips. “Soft and—John!”
Jack groans, ragged and unrestrained. “Call me Johnny,” he pleads. “Mary—”
“Johnny,” Mary weeps.
It’s Highland custom to open windows after a death. Open doors. The soul needs an escape, they believe—a path to heaven. But there are no windows in this room, and the air is thin and stale.
Jack pushes Mary’s legs back toward her shoulders and plants his palms on the bed. He slides his fingers beneath Alex’s shoulder so he can feel the jostle of Alex’s body with each thrust.
Is it true? Is Alex’s soul with them here, trapped in this dismal little room?
“Oh, God,” Jack breathes. He rears up and fucks Mary hard, making her cry out and clench down around him.
“Johnny,” she cries again, panicked—desperate.
Jack’s stones draw tight; his pleasure mounts. “Yes,” he moans. “Yes, that’s it, come on—”
Mary sobs through her climax, and Jack grabs wildly at his brother, his fist knotting in the fabric of Alex’s shirtsleeves as he spills himself inside his wife. The release is entire; he is consumed by it, his entire being coalescing into one single thought: “Alex!”
For a moment, the world is still. Jack shivers through the aftershocks of his pleasure; his cock softens.
Alex’s shirt is clenched in Jack’s fist. Jack’s forehead is buried in Alex’s shoulder.
Mary is crying quietly beneath him.
He can feel her gaze—can sense the horror in it. He lifts himself from her body, and from Alex’s, and meets her eyes so he can endure the full weight of her disgust. Her lips are parted, and her brow is furrowed, her cheeks scrunched just enough that it is clear she has heard him, and that she has understood.
Jack wets his lips and turns to dress.
“There’s to be a battle,” he says, his back to her. “When it is over, I will find you, if I can.”
There is silence for a moment. Jack winds his cravat around his throat—tight, like a noose.
“If you can?”
Jack stills. He closes his eyes.
“See that he’s buried properly,” he says. When he swallows, the cravat pulls tight around his Adam’s apple. “Do not wait on me to hold the service.”
He doesn’t look at her until he reaches the door. When he does, he allows himself a long moment to drink in the sight—the bed, and his brother, and his widow.
“Goodbye, Mary,” he says, and hopes he has spoken true.