It had stopped snowing and the air was crisp and bitingly cold, but Nathaniel didn’t feel the chill. His face was grim as he made his way to the Bembridge estate some miles away. The snow lit up the surrounding countryside but he would have known the way without it; it wasn’t the first time he had trod the path. Many a night he had left the house when he was sure the other occupants were dead to the world and walked to Castleside, climbing over the wall into the Bembridge estate grounds and taking his time exploring the gardens. The vegetable garden didn’t interest him and neither did the walled garden, which looked as though it had been set up for a child with the swing and tree house it contained. No, it was the rose garden situated a short distance from the house and entered by an ornate scrolled iron gate set in a high, ivy-covered wall that drew him again and again. In the summer the scent of the flowers was overwhelming and he would sit in the shadowed silence thinking of Rose and pleasuring himself until, having reached a climax, he would wander out and stand in the darkness, looking up at the house for sometimes over an hour or more. Maria and several of the other women he’d stayed with for a time had slept naked, and he liked to think that Rose did the same. He would take his time imagining her body spread out on the bed, her legs open to receive him and her hair cascading over the pillow, and when he was hard enough he would shut his eyes and pleasure himself again, groaning her name. Other times he visualized her pleading for mercy as he subjected her to various indignities before putting his hands round her throat and squeezing the life out of her. That picture in itself was arousing.