The
raw note in his voice startled me. "What I do is none of your concern, my
lord."
"Oh,
but it is." There was an excited glint in his eyes. "I have waited a
long time for this. I mean to have the use of you before the duke spoils your
beauty for other men."
I
shivered; his words recalled Maddalena's fate almost unbearably. Then he took a
pace towards me, his grip tightening, and thrust me back into the doorway he
had left. I choked as his clinging scent engulfed me, and I felt his spindly
body, which held such surprising strength, rubbing against mine. My cry of
disgust was smothered by his mouth, and through the stiffness of my gemmed
skirts I could feel him gripping and stroking my thigh.
Hot
anger surged through me for an instant, but almost at once it died. Misery and
a strange sort of compassion numbed me into acquiescence; we were both
derelicts, save that I knew it and he did not. So I let him take his kiss, and
only struggled when I felt him fumbling at my gown.
"Here."
His voice had roughened. "Quickly. No one will see...."
"No,
let me alone." Abruptly my common sense returned, and I stiffened to break
free. Piero swore and then quickly loosed me and stepped back.
"Who's
there?"
"Is
it you, Piero?" Guido Vassari's voice came back from a distance.
"There's strange work towards — we are sent to find His Grace's drab, and
she is not in her chamber."
"He
goes roundly to work!" Piero sounded faintly admiring. "Will he send
her packing before the sheets are cold she slept in last?"
"Not
unless it be packing to bid her come to him in secret." Guido's tone was
acid. "The coldness he showed was to prove his chaste love to my lords
ambassadors' eyes, it seems. He said they would think it something forward if
he hauled the wench to bed before their faces, but now his play is played, he
would be at the old act with her again."
I
sensed Piero's rigidity even as relief flooded me with its blessed warmth. He
said expressionlessly, "He dissembled well."
"It
is as easy for him as breathing. If the devil wanted a substitute, our duke
could serve as the father of lies. I must go and seek her—why in the name of
knavery could the bitch not go to her room?"
I
heard his footsteps dying away, and as they faded, Piero turned back to me.
"Come," he said harshly. "If I cannot have the fruit of his
neglect, at least I shall reap the reward of your recovery. You had best take
off that tawdry before you go to him."
I
followed without a word. I wanted to sing, to weep; the world was suddenly
glorious again because Domenico still wanted me, I did not care that I was
nothing but a sop to his appetite, a mount for him to ride in triumph; if he
took me back now, I might hold him until Savoy's daughter came. Niccolosa's
warning face kept Piero at bay when he would have entered the chamber after me,
and she swiftly set to work to unload me of my coronation robes. My body felt
light and weightless when they were off at last; it was luxury to move freely
again, and the silk of my shift was cold against my skin as I followed Piero
across the painted anteroom to the door of the duke's bedchamber.
Domenico
was standing by the hearth as I entered, cradling his cup in one white hand and
gazing down at the floor with an abstracted frown on his face. For one moment I
gazed at his moody, beautiful face and told myself deliberately that I must not
love him so much. He looked up then, his eyes narrowing, and very slowly put
down the cup.
I
stood still, trembling, with no thought beyond the drowning darkness of his
eyes; then I saw him dismiss Piero with one quick, impatient movement, and as
the door closed softly, he reached me in four strides. His hands gripped my
shoulders, pressing me inexorably to my knees at his feet; holding me helpless,
suppliant, my face upturned to his. Then, indefinably, the quality of his hold
altered, and he stooped and crushed me so hard against him that I could feel
the stir of hard muscle bunching under my cheek and could sense the beat of his
blood.
"Where
did you go, that I must send for you?" His voice was harsh. "Did you
think to run away again?"
I
shook my head helplessly. "I do not prize other men's lives so
lightly," I answered, and his fingers bit into my shoulders.
"Then
remember, I know how to punish a traitor," he retorted softly, and I
realized afresh that he had meant the deaths he had meted out to others as my
punishment, not theirs. I tried to turn my head aside, but his grip was too
strong. "You are shivering."
Anger
burned in me suddenly, and I threw back my head to look him in the face.
"Is not that what you want? Another trembling vassal to crouch at Cabria's
feet and feed your pride with flattery?"
"Your
borrowed state has made you bold. I do not think Savoy's daughter herself would
dare to challenge me thus. Come." He drew me to my feet so that I stood
swaying before him, a brilliance in his eyes that made me uneasy. "It is
time you paid your homage fully."
His
hands slid from my shoulders down the length of my arms to grip my wrists.
Deliberately, he pressed my palms to his chest and drew them down his body with
slow, voluptuous relish. His head arched backwards, his body tensing into a
sinuous curve of abandonment, gradual and total; I could feel the tautened play
of muscles under his skin and knew that his still, faintly mocking expression
was no more than a mask. He was as far from being calm as I was.
I
felt as though I had forgotten how to breathe. The blood beat in my head, and
all I was aware of was the relentless clasp of Domenico's hands, the feel of
his smooth skin under my palms. I closed my eyes so that I should not see the
knowledge of it grow in his eyes.
The
next instant he had wrenched my wrists apart, casually, but so viciously that
my arms were stretched wide; I found myself spread-eagled against him, my head
on his breast, my face upturned and eyes wide in an access of shock. With
wanton deliberation, he bent his head and kissed me.
"Do
you flatter us now, Felicia?"
I
barely heard him; his hands were stripping me, swiftly, ruthlessly, and I had
to fight to remain unresponsive under the insistent caress of his fingers. Love
for him flooded me, drowning all shame, all memory; I had to cling to reason to
prevent myself from surrendering totally. "I am— your obedient
subject," I answered breathlessly.
His
mouth touched my neck, scorching and impatient. "And was it sweet to act
the bride? Come, tell me."
I
thought: he must not know how much it hurt me. Instead I said lightly,
"There are no words—I have never known such a coronation before. What
would you have me say?"
He
lifted his head, and his gaze held mine. "That now there will be nothing
to curb my greatness." He kissed me briefly. "No checks or slights or
petty rebellions; that it was the fairest ceremony you have ever seen."
Another fleeting kiss. "... and that you were pleased with the honors I
gave you."
He
sounded suddenly like a boy eager for praise; in a moment he would begin to
brag. Longing to laugh at him, to tease him in the ecstasy of my relief, I said
gravely, "Nothing can hinder you now from being the greatest duke Cabria
has ever known."
"Good,"
he said softly, his eyes watchful.
"And
there cannot have been a rarer coronation throughout Italy."
"Good."
His fingers were following the curve of my spine in an insistent caress.
"And
the honors you gave me were very sweet and would have been sweeter if they had
not been stolen from your true bride."
His
hand stilled. "Your honesty is too nice. They were my gift, you had them
at my hand. How was it robbery?"
The
mockery silenced me, and I gazed up at him almost in despair. At last I said,
"I will not quarrel with so great a lawyer."
His
arms tightened around me so hard that I gasped. "You are presumptuous,
lady," he said and kissed me hard and deliberately.
I
had half expected him to take his revenge on me by making a relishing torment
of the possession, showing me brutally who was the master. But he seemed to
have forgotten his vengeance, and his kisses were long and wooingly sweet. I
trembled in his arms. His hands moved to touch my breasts almost tentatively;
then with sudden urgency he bent his head, and I felt the hungry demand of his
mouth. Instinctively, my hands slid over the white silken skin of his
shoulders, in a fever to seize and to hold; it was not until I heard him catch
his breath against me that I realized I had dug my nails deep into his back.
Then he bore me back on to the bed and I gave myself up to the rapture of the
moment, glorying in the strength that tore me, sharing the tumult of giving and
taking as though the nightmare of the previous night had never been.
My
lips opened to sigh his name, my hand lifted to caress his cheek, and then I
froze.
He
was watching me scientifically; there was no emotion in him at all. There was
an assessing gleam in the hooded black eyes, a satiric set to his mouth, and I
knew with fatal clarity that I had been duped. The rapturous tenderness was
only a ploy to win my response—he had known—he always knew, Domenico!—what I
wanted before I knew it myself. With sheer, heartless skill he had betrayed me,
to him and to myself, and had reestablished his dominion far more harshly than
he could have done by using simple force. I gave a small, shamed cry and turned
away from him, and he laughed.
I
did not sleep for the rest of the night. I pretended to, lying motionless after
he wearied and waiting until the soft sound of his breathing told me that he
had fallen asleep; but I was open-eyed, aching with a sort of dull misery,
staring blindly up into the darkness of the painted chamber. It had all been
for nothing— the agonizing decision to leave him, the fruitless journey, the
wanton deaths that had followed my return. I was still Domenico's mistress, as
fast in his toils as ever I was, and in spite of all that he could do to me, I
still loved him.
I
turned cautiously, looking down at him. He lay sprawled with the abandon of a
cat, yet I knew he would wake as instantly and completely as an animal at the
first hint of a disturbance. As I had done so often, I studied him, trying to
guess what secrets lay behind the mask he wore when he was awake. In the day I
never dared study him too long, in case he should read my longing in my face.
He
must have learned young to be secret. Often when he woke, I would see him
watching me with calculation, as though to gauge whether he had given away
something of himself in his sleep. Ippolito had told me a little of his
childhood, a beloved tutor murdered because Duke Carlo thought his affection
would make the boy soft, the corruption that followed on the heels of grief. I
was sure that now he purposely hid his emotions and amused himself by feigning
what he did not feel.
But
he felt some emotion, I thought as I saw the unexpectedly vulnerable, almost
childish curve of the fingers of one lightly clenched hand. Those fierce,
animal passions of his were his masters, not his slaves, and he was as much
their victim as those he punished when he was in their grip. And despite what
he had done to me tonight, I knew that his desire was real. Even if all his
need was for a living body and arms to hold him, it was still a bitter,
desperate need.
He
would never see a woman as anything but a toy to suit his tastes, or a
possession to be gained or lost, yet paradoxically there was sweetness hidden
deep in his nature. I remembered the times he had curbed his impatience for my
sake in the early days, and that grave, searching look that had been in his
eyes that evening at the Eagle; even the way he was wont to laugh at me, with
rare, unmalicious amusement, teased my heart with an irrational unspoken
hope—until tonight.
I
should have been horrified by the cruelty in him, but my heart still ached for
the arrogant child who had been spoiled to become something like a monster by
the indulgence of his every whim. I did not care that this was the loathed
tyrant of Cabria, that my life hung on his lightest word. All that mattered was
Domenico, the man I loved, who had snatched me back to his side out of the
contemplation of a whole lifetime of desolation.
From
now on, I knew, my plight was hopeless. There was nothing for me to do but
cling to him, greedy of his presence, until he finally cast me off. Love had
chained me to him more irrevocably than any threat he could use. That it was
groundless and inexplicable—I did not truly know him and could never hope to
fathom that capricious blend of intelligence, over-sensitivity and animal
violence—made no difference now.
"It
will be sweet when you sigh like that for my sake," a lazy voice said, and
the black eyes opened to drowsy slits. "Where are your thoughts,
Felicia?"
I
stiffened. "Here, Your Grace."
One
eyebrow arched slightly, and he stretched sensuously like a cat expecting to be
stroked. "Are they so? You must convince me."
I
read the hard demand behind the faintly derisive smile, and for the space of a
heartbeat I lay still. Then, with the sensation of plunging into an unknown
sea, I moved to lay my lips on his, unurged, uninvited, kissing him for the
first time entirely of my own free will.