Lord Verdigris blinks twice, and his own face twitches. With jealousy, perhaps? “Yea, the Lady Louisa is quite bewitching, indeed,” he agrees. “Which is why her liaison price is now over forty thousand gold pieces. I just raised it this morning. I trust that the next time you wish to enjoy her company, Sir Knight, you will pay the new price.”
“Indeed I shall, my lord, for my conquests this season are most lucrative,” Trenton says, shooting me a sly look. “Most lucrative, indeed.”
Lord Verdigris turns his attention to Pembroke and me. “Pembroke, I trust that you are keeping the Lady Louisa safe from any and all marauders upon her person,” he says, giving Pembroke’s blue satin coat—rumpled as it is from our multiple trysts this evening—a close inspection. “By the looks of your attire, perhaps you have defended upon her honor even this evening?”
Pembroke coughs. “Y-yes, my lord. Why, just a moment ago, one of the scullery boys from the downstairs kitchen attempted to place a hand upon Lady Louisa’s milky white bosom. I stopped him, of course, but only after a long and protracted struggle.”
Lord Verdigris claps Pembroke on the shoulder. “Good man, Pembroke. See to it that you never let Lady Louisa out of your sight this evening. I have it on good authority from my own personal guard detachment that there are hundreds upon hundreds of men from the surrounding shires who have heard the tales of Lady Louisa’s magnificent charms and who wish to prevail upon her without providing me the proper duty payment.”
Pembroke grins. “I swear, it will be done, my lord. Never this evening shall I let the Lady Louisa escape my gaze.”
“Nor I, my lord,” a deep, menacing female voice purrs. Four heads—mine, Pembroke’s, Trenton’s, and Lord Verdigris’—all jerk left at once, and see that that voice belongs to Madam Jasphet.
“The Lady Louisa’s safety and welfare is of utmost importance,” Madam Jasphet goes on. “For she is now the favorite Harlot in the Hall. The success of all the Harlots now depends on her safety. Isn’t that right, girls?”
Mabel and Prudence both nod like sunflowers.
“Then I give Lady Louisa to you for safekeeping, Jasphet,” Lord Verdigris says. “Providence knows that Master Pembroke here is likely tired of his duties and needs a rest.”
“Good my lord, nothing could be further from the truth—“ Pembroke stammers in protest, but Lord Verdigris cuts him off.
“Nonsense! You’ve been guarding the Lady Louisa all day with nary a break. I insist you come away with me, Pembroke, and allow me to show you some of the technological improvements I’ve been making to the castle. You too, Sir Rose Knight. For as I recall, ye have been asking my security office how one might go about improving the impervious nature of the portcullis. Thanks to my travels to the Arabian Kingdoms just this week, I have made the improvements you seek. Come and see, both of you lads!”
With that, Lord Verdigris forcibly drags Pembroke and Trenton out of the ballroom, leaving me at Madam Jasphet’s mercy.
The ice-crotched Egyptian and her two henchwomen back me into a corner. “At last, Lady Louisa, we are alone,” she hisses. I half-expect a forked tongue to start flicking in and out of her mouth.
I point over Madam Jasphet’s shoulder, which is bare save for a gold snake wrapped around her upper left forearm. “Actually, we’re not alone at all. There’s a few hundred other Harlots roaming around the ballroom, after all.”
“Who might as well not even be here,” she retorts, her voice frigid as dry ice. “They know better than to cross me. I’m sure you’re aware of my reputation yourself.”
I decide the only way I might stand a chance against this evil ice queen is to try calling her bluff. “You mean the fact that it’s rumored you poison your enemies to death if they piss you off too much?” I say. “Yeah, I’ve heard all about that. And I’m not sure I believe it.”
Madam Jasphet, Mabel, and Prudence all raise one eyebrow apiece, incredulous.
“I mean, where’s the proof?” I go on, grasping for whatever ammo I can come up with out of thin air. “Nobody’s ever found anything that links you definitively to any of all those other Harlot’s deaths. For all I know, all those other ladies just came down with a random case of smallpox or something, and you just took the credit for their deaths to make everyone afraid of you.”
I actually might be onto something here, because Madam Jasphet just turned eleven shades of purple.
“How dare you!” Madam Jasphet sputters. “How dare you!”
“How dare I what?” I reply saucily. “Expose you as a fraud? Because it seems that’s exactly what I’ve just done.”
Hey, not too shabby for taking a stab in the dark, huh?
Madam Jasphet continues to choke on her own tongue, so I decide to press a little further. “You’re nothing but a big bully, do you know that?” I seethe at her. “A big bully with no guts, having your two little toadies here do your dirty work for you. Which is really too bad, Mabel and Prudence, because the two of you have considerable talents in the sex department that you’re just putting to waste slaving away as evil lackeys for the Egyptian Ice Crotch here.”
Mabel and Prudence both blush beet-red and stare at the floor.
“And what the hell was that crap you poured all over me when I was knocked out in your chambers, Madam Jasphet? I had a rash for days.”
“I see no reason to reveal my secrets to you, Lady Louisa,” she chirps.
“Oh yeah? How about the fact I know that you’re just a big fake?” (Even though I don’t know for sure that she’s a fake, but I don’t dare say this out loud). “Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re just some flunky from the middle of Kansas someplace who just happens to know something about Ancient Egypt. For all I know, Lord Verdigris just captured you, brought you here, and forced you to play the part of some bitchy Cleopatra clone.”
Madam Jasphet bites her lip, sighs, stares at the floorboards. Finally, she speaks, her voice tinny and small. “How did you know?” she asks.
I’m almost too shocked to speak. That was a shot in the dark too—and the right one at that. “I’m a fraud, too,” I say. “I’m not Lady Louisa of the Crossroads. I’m just Louise Jackson, a tollbooth worker from New Jersey. Lord Verdigris kidnapped me in the Medieval Worlds’ men’s room, brought me here, and gave me a new name and persona. I figured he probably did the same with you. With most of us, in fact.”
Madam Jasphet keeps looking down at the floor. “You’re right,” she says. “I’m not really Madam Jasphet. I’m not even from Ancient Egypt. I’m Jaclyn Moffet, from Topeka, Kansas. I used to be a junior-high social-studies teacher. I met Lord Verdigris in the Mummies department at the Topeka Natural History Museum where I was taking my class on a field trip. Next thing I knew, I was trapped here in the Hall of Harlots, dressed up like Cleopatra and having sex with everything that wasn’t nailed down.”
I reach out and squeeze her hand. “We’re both prisoners here, Jaclyn. We’re all in the same boat. There’s no need for us to be enemies.”
Jaclyn sighs. “I suppose not. But how did you know I was from Kansas? Are you psychic or something?”
“I dunno. Maybe.” Then I smirk, remembering how I opened Lord Verdigris’ time portal myself using nothing but my mind. “In fact, I think I am probably psychic. But I’m still figuring out how that works.”
Jaclyn frowns, not really understanding. “O-okay. So I guess we aren’t enemies anymore. But I wouldn’t say we’re exactly friends, either.”
“Why not?”
Jaclyn jerks her head towards her two costumed lackeys. “Well, Mabel and Prudence, for instance. They’re not the brightest stars in the sky, either one of them. The only thing they really know how to do besides fuck is render their fellow Harlots unconscious. I’m not sure they’d understand why I’m suddenly not trying to kill you—figuratively or not. And they both enjoy their jobs far too much to just stop doing it.”
Having been rendered unconscious at Mabel and Prudence’s capable hands
, I know their talents in this department all too well. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I offer. “We could always use that to our advantage.”
Jaclyn looks lost. “What do you mean?”
I pull Jaclyn over to the side a little, out of her minions’ earshot. “Forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds here, but I get the distinct impression that you’re pretty unhappy about being stuck here in the Hall of Harlots for all eternity. In fact, I bet you’d like nothing more than to get back to Topeka so you can go back to teaching school. Am I right?”
Jaclyn nods. “Though I admit I would miss all the sex. God knows there isn’t a lot of hot action in Topeka, as much as I love my hometown. But we’re both stuck here with no way out. Why get my hopes up about something that will never happen?”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say, and squeeze her shoulder. “I’ve already figured out how to open Lord Verdigris’ time portals. I still have a lot of kinks to work out, but I think I should be able to travel back to my own time and place soon. With your help, maybe even sooner. I can take you back to Kansas someday, too—but not if you or your two sexy love-slaves here keep trying to kill me. So how about it? Will you call off your dogs and partner up with me?”
Jaclyn thinks it over for a minute, then nods. “I’ll will. But I can’t promise that Mabel and Prudence will get on board, too. They like it here. A lot.”
I shrug. “To each her own, I guess.”
A medieval harp-and-recorder band strikes up some chamber music in the ballroom’s far corner, and a group dance I recognize from the history books as a French pavonne begins in the middle of the room. As dozens of Harlots and knights join the dance while dozens of others mill around, muzzy from the spiked punch, I see an opportunity. “Jaclyn, we’re free to roam anywhere we want in the castle during the ball, right?” She nods. “Well, then let’s go. I want to see if I can find some more of Lord Verdigris’ time-portals.”
“But what if somebody follows us? If His Lordship finds out what we’re doing—“
“Everybody else is either drunk or dancing. Nobody’ll even notice we’re gone.”
Jaclyn reluctantly agrees. “All right, if you say so. But I hope you know what you’re doing.”
I chuckle. “I hope I do, too.”
Chapter 14
I’m leading Jaclyn up a set of narrow stone stairs, following nothing but a hunch. Some unseen force is pulling me up the stairs that lead—I think—to the castle’s embattled roof.
“Where are you taking us?” Jaclyn asks, breathless as she struggles to keep up with me.
I don’t answer; I just keep taking the steep, narrow steps two at a time. When I finally reach the top, I pause on the landing and look back. “I think this door here leads out to the roof. Something tells me that there might be a portal out there.”
Jaclyn looks bewildered. “A what?”
“A portal. A time portal. One of the openings into another dimension that Lord Verdigris uses to travel through time.”
“How the hell’d you figure that out? ESP?”
I grin. “Yeah, probably. You know, it’s funny—I never used to believe in ESP, or time travel, or any of that paranormal crap until I ended up here at Bellweather Castle. Now not only do I believe in it, I have ESP. Pretty weird, huh?”
“Almost as weird as you and me being friends after I tried to have you killed.”
I cut Jaclyn a sidelong look. “You didn’t really try to kill me. You just sent two very hot chicks to introduce me to red-hot lesbian sex so I could die from too many orgasms. Which, I might add, would be a very pleasant way to die, if one could actually die from too many orgasms.”
Jaclyn’s deep green eyes twinkle. “Actually, it’s been known to happen. But it usually happens to men, not women. And by the way, the rash I gave you was from poison ivy oil. I keep a couple poison ivy plants in my bedchamber. I can give you one if you like. They can really come in handy for emergencies, like when one of the knights gets too rough in bed.”
“In my bed, the knights aren’t the ones who get rough,” I say with a wink. “Rather, it’s the other way around.”
Jaclyn’s eyebrows raise. “I’ve heard that about you. Though I wasn’t sure if it was true.”
“Oh it’s true, believe me,” I reply, fiddling with the heavy wooden roof door’s rusty iron lock. “Though I was as surprised as you when I first discovered I had a talent for dominating men.”
“And how exactly does one discover one has a talent for dominating men? I always thought we dominants were born knowing what we were. Just like we’re born knowing whether we’re male or female, gay or straight, or in-between.”
After one final heave, I finally manage to break the rusty lock off the door and force it open. “Well, then I guess I’m proof your theory is wrong. And if you are as dominant as you say you are, why do you need to keep poison ivy in your chambers to keep your submissives in line?”
Jaclyn doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. I decide to let the matter go—at least, for now. Because if the plan that was fast growing in my head comes to fruition, I have a feeling that Jaclyn and her unconventional dominance skills could definitely come in handy in my quest to find and open all of Lord Verdigris’ time portals.
Starting right now.
I lead Jaclyn through the doorway and out onto the roof. And now I know what unseen force pulled me up here—for I spot Lord Verdigris standing on the far end of the battlement, flanked by Pembroke, the Rose Knight, and a hulking guard I don’t recognize. Lord Verdigris is pointing something out on the ground to the three men and boasting in his usual booming, lilting voice.
“And hence, ye can see the new portcullis, ‘tis made of an exotic Arabian alloy that is impenetrable from both within and without,” Lord Verdigris booms proudly. “’Tis impervious to boiling oil, battering ram, flaming cannonballs, and all other available castle-storming technologies. And ‘tis impossible to raise from within, unless ye have the secret code. The lock, ‘tis mechanically coded, just like the locks of the mighty Templars in the Holy Land!”
“Most intriguing,” Pembroke says, obviously bored to tears. He hasn’t noticed my presence yet.
But the hulking guard has. “My lord, beware!” he shouts, drawing his blade. “Intruders!”
Lord Verdigris spins around, his own blade drawn, but immediately relaxes when he meets my gaze. “Sheath your weapon, Geoffrey,” he orders the guard, who immediately obeys. “’Tis only my two favorite courtesans—Lady Louisa of the Crossroads and Madam Jasphet. Greetings, ladies. And how, pray, did ye two lovely blossoms of womanhood find yourselves upon my embattled roof?”
Jaclyn opens her mouth to speak, but I give her a subtle sign to be silent. “We were merely searching for Your Lordship,” I explain, all cool and kittenish. “And my woman’s intuition just led me up here.”
Lord Verdigris sweeps over to where Jaclyn and I are standing, gives us both a deep bow, then reaches forward to kiss my—and only my—hand. Jaclyn flinches at the snub, thinking I won’t notice, but I do. “Lady Louisa, the site of you is like sweet milk and honey,” he says, oozing his trademark charm. “I was just thinking about how much I enjoyed our most recent encounter. Verily, I troth that I have just refuted at least nine different requests from my vassaldom this afternoon for your charms so that I may keep you all for myself for all time. This night I am resigned to giving up a great deal of gold for the pleasure of having you all of my very own, for no one else to touch, at any price at all.”
I almost choke. “Verily, sir? I may give my charms to no one else? You speak true?”
“Yes, milady. I have just come to the decision a moment ago, at Master Pembroke’s insistence. For he seems to believe I shall put you at unnecessary risk if I make ye open for all my vassals’ paid affections.”
I cough, and shoot Pembroke a subtle what the hell look. He shoots me back a not-so-subtle chill out look. But I’m not about to chill out.
“But Y
our Lordship! Don’t you forfeit potentially huge sums in gold and goods by taking my charms off the market?” I cast a sidelong glance at Jaclyn, who is growing noticeably tense. “And won’t the other Harlots become jealous of my new position as your exclusive? Surely you don’t wish to sow such discord in the Hall of Harlots.”
Lord Verdigris smiles. “Ah, but ye are perceptive, Lady Louisa. True, I do lose income by keeping ye all for my own, and yea, ‘tis true jealousy will be abrew in the Hall. But jealousy in the Hall among the courtesans, ‘tis nothing new. The Hall always hath survived it afore now, and ‘twill survive it again. Pray, Louisa, by my troth, I feel a swelling in my loins for ye charms even now. Let us retire to your chambers, and go abed.”
Pembroke has gone purple. Whatever his original plan was at making the “exclusive” suggestion to Lord Verdigris, this obviously wasn’t the outcome he was hoping for. And Trenton looks about three seconds away from exacting his long-sought vengeance against Lord Verdigris on the spot. If I don’t do something drastic pretty quick, I could very well be splattered with blood when Trenton decapitates him.
I reach out and take both of Lord Verdigris’ huge hands in my own. “Stay, stay, milord,” I coo, doing my best to play to his fragile ego. “Surely you recall that ‘tis not yet midnight, and by your own merciful and generous order, all the Harlots are free to roam and make merry until midnight, when the Harlot’s Ball comes to an end. And if I know you well, my lord, I know that yours is a merciful and generous heart, one that would not go back on his word to anyone, least of all his favorite Harlot. Am I right?”
My words seem to have the desired effect, because Lord Verdigris immediately balks and frowns. “Yea, ye speak true, my lady Louisa. Forgive me my impertinence. I am just so enamored with ye, I quite lost my head.”
Great. I’ve got the lord of the manor apologizing to me—and in public. I’m beginning to sense our old dominant-submissive relationship falling right back into place.
Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set Page 35
