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“Are you here, ma’am?”
As Mrs. Danvers walked the height and depth of Manderley that night, long after the master and the new Mrs. De Winter had retired, she whispered to every portrait, ever arras, every corner, searching for some clue to the remainder of her beloved Rebecca.
Such undying bliss had she encountered in the weeks of Mr. De Winter’s absence. When given full reign of Manderley, she could once more feel her mistress’ spirit within the mansion walls. The grief that had wracked her heart, nay her very bones, since Rebecca’s death had been torture. When the supposedly grieving master had announced that he was seeking rest and recuperation abroad, Mrs. Danvers had initially been furious. Although she would never lash out at the master, every fibre of her being howled “how dare you, you monster, seek to recover from this tragedy! You never loved Rebecca as I loved Rebecca”. But she remained silent. “Of course sir, whatever you see fit”.
Her raged had stormed and overflowed that night, raged and stormed as the sea that had stolen the most exquisite woman in the world from her. She had thought that tears would no longer come, and only fury reigned in its place, but she was wrong. With Mr. DeWinter securely on the other side of the manor, the housekeeper stole into the private bedroom that had once belonged to her soul’s dearest mate. The room still smelled of Rebecca, a heady mixture of daphne flowers on a winter evening and a certain raw spice that was uniquely the scent of the now dead woman. Danvers heart almost burst to realise that Rebecca’s skin would never again emit the perfume of her emotions, that it was now and forever washed with sea foam and left to rot. Danvers plunged her face into the pillows undisturbed from the last time she herself had made this exquisite bed, and slavishly drunk in the last of the smell. Her anger simmered still as she poured out her tears into the satin that had once cushioned the head of the most glorious woman in existence. Danvers removed her clothes, and crawled into the place that had cocooned her love for so long, and would forever be bereft.
“REBECCA!” Danvers woke wiith a start, wrapped in the sheets that had once shrouded her mistress. She had dreamt that the raven haired woman, more beautiful and more terrifying than the depths of the cosmos, was lying beside her in the sheets. As the realisation hit that this could not be true, the bereft house keeper prepared to once more fall into a melancholy. She was surprised to find that instead of a wave of misery, a trill of exquisite pleasure made its way up her spine. “Rebecca” she gasped, feeling suddenly a shiver up her arms. It felt as if icicles were being dragged along her skin, the painful cold searing against her flushed skin. She arched her back and let out a gasp, that quickly mingled with a moan as the icicles wound their way through her hair and along her scalp. She sat bolt up right as the felling of cold pressure travelled down her back. Fingers, she thought, in the midst of a maelstrom of emotion and sensation that left her brain otherwise a wail of white noise. The icicles felt like fingers! Hands! There were hands on her, hands on her in her lady’s bed! Struggling to break the binds of desire that had so quickly taken hold of her, Danvers pushed her own hands to where she felt the fingers of the stranger, but under her own hands she felt only the warmth of her own breasts. Before she’d barely had time to draw breath to follow her sigh of disappointed relief, Danvers felt the fingers again, running over her nipples, causing this woman – who had not given over to pleasure in many years – to cry out in exquisite agony at the shock of sensation.
“Rebecca” Danvers cried, “Madam, how I miss you, how I long for you!”
The wind that had been building outside the manor suddenly roared to life, letting a moan through the frame of the large window in Rebecca’s room. The moan crested and ebbed, and Danvers fell back against the pillows, feeling a flood of warmth pooling between her thighs. As if to cloak this long overdue melding of spirits, the wind built again, and sighed through the wood of the old house as Danvers aching sounds of pleasure escaped her throat. A bolt of lightening illuminated the room, and before her eyes Danvers saw once more the poisonous beauty of her mistress, felt the icicles fingers press her thighs apart, and shivered and howled as thunder cracked loud enough to cover her moans as she felt pressure build inside her, her legs shaking and her arms thrashing. She was completely alone and yet she was unmistakeably possessed by the presence of the woman that she loved, who had been stolen from her by the cruel ocean. Danvers felt, as her ecstasy crested and she began to sob through the most unruly pleasure she had ever felt, that this could be the last thing she ever experienced and it would be enough, the sea could claim her too, if there was any chance she could exist only in the bountiful love she felt for that cruel beauty Rebecca DeWinter.
Every night that Maxim had been in Monte Carlo, Danvers had spent in fits of sweat with her ghostly lover. When the master had returned bearing his new bride, Danvers knew that her room would have to be given over to this interloper. As Danvers stripped the bed that she herself had lawlessly, sinfully, occupied until that very morning, she made a pact with whatever angels, demons, or ghosts were listening. She swore to make Mrs. DeWinter’s life a living hell, and to keep the remembrance of her lost Rebecca alive no matter what the torment or the cost. Leaving the masters new bride, Danvers made her way past the large portrait of Rebecca that hung in prominence in the grand hall of Manderley. She glimpsed at the painting that was such a cunning likeness of her lover. As she moved into her quarters, toward a bed she had not slept in since that first night with the ghost of her mistress, she heard the wind pick up on the eastern side of the house. She opened the window, and allowed the breeze to blow across her skin as she prepared for bed. She pulled out a single satin pillow slip that she had smuggled away from Mrs. DeWinters room. As she allowed the soft fabric to cascade down her skin she whispered “Madam – are you there?”