QUOTE : <i>Mr. Keir MacRae Lady Merritt Sterling</i><br /><br /><br />The names had been typed... but why?... what for?...<br />Bits and pieces of memory whirled in his head... thoughts wheeling just beyond reach. As he struggled blindly to catch hold of something, make sense of the tumult, he heard Merritt's voice... <i>stay for one night just one</i>... and there was the smell of rain and the cool darkness of night, and the warmth of a bed... the tender plump curves of a woman's breasts, and the hot clasp of her body pulling at him, squeezing in voluptuous pulsation, and the sweet, wracking culmination as she cried out his name. And there was the sight of her in candlelight, flames dancing in guttering pools of wax, catching glimmers from her eyes, hair, skin... and the glorious freedom of yielding everything, telling her everything, while inexhaustible delight welled around them. And the despair of leaving, the physical pain of putting distance between them, the sensation of being pulled below the surface of the sea, looking up from airless depths to an unreachable sky. Lady Merritt's fingertips pressing a typewriter key. <i>Tap. Tap.</i> Tiny metal rods flicked at a spool of inked ribbon, and letters emerged.<br />Keir was panting now, clutching the slip of paper, while his brain sorted and spun, and pin tumblers aligned, a key turned, and something unlocked.<br />"Merry," he said aloud, his voice unsteady. "My God... <i>Merry</i>.