Anne pressed the thorn into her palm until a bloom of blood pooled like a fallen raindrop in the lined land of her soft, satin-skinned hand. She breathed a small clandestine sigh of exquisite pleasure. This esoteric joy was what she called ‘the bright pain’. It made her sweat in her delicate places. It was her nightly ritual, as she sat on the sofa near the crackling fireplace in her bed chambers.

As the night yawned deeper into its descent, she nursed her swollen folds before the heat of the fire, letting the scent of her body warm the walls like a caress of fragrance against the sense of scent itself in the most intimate way - the way one organ can stroke another, one item another item, one being another being.

She was only startled to a pause when she spotted a dark figure standing beyond the boundary of the light from the fire in the fireplace. She sat upright and lowered her night dress until it covered her sex and swirled around her knees.

“Are you the devil?” She whispered to the apparition

“So what if I am or not? Heaven would blush itself blind to see a maiden’s bed chamber so distraught with pent-up pleasure as you have done so, milady. Go on and take your ease, before the floorboards groan in agony at the interrupting daylight”

“How can I, with such an audience?”

“Audience? Oh how you flatter me so, milady. I am but a phantom of your mind.”

“Such Falsehoods you speak, for I know my mind, sir, and it has never conjured any such figure as you before now or on any other occasion.” She protested.

“Your memory is compassionate to you then that you have a secure account of every whimsical thought that has visited the folds and creases of your mind’s hither-thither places.”

“I bid you leave, sir, so that I may fornicate myself in peace.”

“Fornicate yourself?”

“That is what I said. Be gone!”

“What if I told you I have a gift for you.”

“I would say give it to me tomorrow, for I am busy tonight, and you are gathering more and more ire inside my heart the longer you delay your leaving .”

“Even if I know what I have will give your…fornication its final bliss, beyond warming it like a holiday ham near this open flame?”

He moved closer to whisper in her ear, “I know about your secret game, for it is also my game.”

“What game do you speak of, Phantom, pray tell?”

“The Bright Pain.”

“You are the devil.”

“I am but a man, who is shrewd and understanding. Is that not what your heart of hearts longs for, most of all? Or do you enjoy this spinster life of a lonely heiress, in a big drafty manor with only servants to keep you company?”

“Don’t be so foolish to think you know about any cavity of my heiress-heart. You will inherit from me nothing but disdain and contempt. Leave, devil, for I want no more of your company, this night!”

“Not before I impart to you my gift.”

And then he took out a long-stemmed rose, its green shaft barbed with thorns. Anne’s throat went dry with want as more sweat wept in her delicate places at the very sight of it.

“Do you accept my gift, milady?”

“Very well, set it down and take your leave.”

“I shall do so. Only if you promise to leave it for me once you are finished with it. It is my last one, you see, and I would like the bright pain from it as well.”

Anne’s breath shook. “Do not mock me, Phantom with these words too enticing to be real.”

“Promise me.”

“When do you plan to return to my bedchamber? I would like some small warning of your visits so I can prepare for such an intrusion.”

“Where is the fun in that? The best gifts in life are unexpected ones. Place the rose in one of your hidden places - I would be loathe to learn that one of your dutiful servants had run off with it, or worse yet, throw it with the rubbish. As I said, it is my last one.”

And he set the rose down at her feet, and then with one step back - vanished into the darkness from whence he came, and Anne was alone with her crackling fire and her delicate sweat. She reached down to pick up the rose, the thorns jabbed into her thumb and forefinger summoning a hiss of sensation to slither from her parted lips.

“Oh sweet saint, how you must favor me for such a bounty as this.” She exhaled the words out in a whisper of breath. She pricked her thumb again, hard enough for the bright pain to weep down her skin, along the creases of her palm. Her whole body shuddered in praise as she prayed for penance for her fornication, each word conjured an image of the martyred saints, and the Lord himself. How he displayed his pleasure so openly. He knew the bright pain, and he knew those who truly believed would understand the mysteries of the Bright Pain, just as she did.

_____

The next day was the Lord’s Day, the bells chiming as she rode in the carriage to St. Paul’s Parish. She couldn’t stop thinking of the Apparition of the night before.

As they drew nearer to the church, she caught sight of the church groundskeeper outside the steps, raking away the leaves. The air was bitter cold as Winter mounted on and on and on.

Lent was here. Anne could taste the threat of snow and ice in the air, she looked to her servant, Rufus, who was regarding her with a question swirling his brow into a frown that puckered to a point in his deep honey-brown gaze.

“Are you quite well, Lady Hartleigh?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Your face is studying a thought quite earnestly just now, perhaps speech would help decide it down to a less vexed state?”

“Did someone come into the Manor last night? Did the gatekeeper report any wrongdoing or mischief?”

“Not at all. Why do you ask, milady?”

“It must have been a dream.” Anne sighed dismissively with a kind disarming smile.

Then the carriage stopped and the second footman opened the door and Rufus got out to help the Lady out of the carriage. Duty calling before he could think to be so bold as to ask about Lady Hartleigh’s dream - she’d hoped he would put it out of his mind, she felt quite silly mentioning anything to him at all in the first place.

All through the Lent service, she was looking for any silhouette or shape of a figure that may have matched her late-night phantom. No such luck - not even the groundskeeper, who she noticed was starting to build more muscle just about his broadening shoulders and developing a hardness to his jaw. The phantom, now that she realized it, in her fading and less compassionate memory, was a lithe figure, with a subtle curve of the waist and bust.

Maybe it really was a phantom of her own mind, Lady Anne thought as she looked at her own lithe figure and the subtle curve of her waist and bust. Smiling to herself, she felt her body begin to sweat in delicate places, aching for another round of her favorite, secret game of the Bright Pain.