by Teresa Denys
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 rne 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, glory
ing 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 calcu-lation, 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 iifetime 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, oversen-sitivity 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.
The court woke Wearily and late next day to the celebrations that were to last another three days. Dignitaries from the length and breadth of the state were flocking to Diurno, and the ambassadors from half Italy had come to confirm the goodwill of their masters to the new-seated Duke of Cabria. Pompous Venetians, quick-tongued Florentines, and cautious Tuscans all begged audience with the duke; the palace resounded strange accents and was crowded with strange fashions, like a port whose harbor is full of ships. Only the archbishop looked black and talked of who had come and who had not, and of the portent of waning friendships. I searched the foreign faces for a Savoyard embassy but was forced to conclude at last that the duke must have meant to send only his daughter to Cabria.
Domenico received them all in the council chamber, crowned and enthroned in the carved chair Sandro had shown me, with me seated like a mute at his side. I could not guess whether it was a punishment or only his whim that I should sit so, playing the bride for the ambassadors; but I sat beside him for hour after hour, a useless puppet, while they talked of treaties and partitions and ratifications and thought me to be the next Duchess of Cabria. Now and again I caught a gleam of derision in Domenico's eyes, as though he relished the absurdity of it all, but I could not be sure whether it was I or the ambassadors that he mocked.
Meanwhile, the court buzzed with my new advancement. Some even believed it was for my own sake, forgetting that I was nothing but a substitute, and there were sycophants who would hang on my every word and petitioners to plead causes at every turn of the stairs. Only I knew, by Domenico's quick, ungentle passion and by the perilousness of his temper, how fragile my power really was. My escape might have been pardoned; it had not been forgiven.
I saw little of Sandro during those few days, for he had told his brother that he was no better a counselor now than he had ever been and had disappeared into the hunting field. Jealousy might have pricked him, but that was to be expected in an elder brother who misses an inheritance, infuriatingly, only through his bastardy. The archbishop treated me with smiles and silvery courtesy which I did not understand at first; then I realized that his spite against me went deeper and worked in subtler ways than open enmity.
Somehow, he had discovered Piero's desire for me and worked upon that like the politician he was. He knew as well as I that at the first hint of my unfaithfulness the duke would have done with me-—so he paid Piero, and others too, to court me, in the hope that their attentions might work some mischief.
But if Domenico saw what was happening, he paid no heed—or perhaps he no longer cared how many men laid siege to me. His mind seemed full of state affairs, and it was only at night, when I was smuggled to his bed, that he heeded me beyond any of the gaggle of courtiers who crowded about him.
At last the ambassadors began to take their leave, and the court's mood altered to a cruder, more sensual gaiety. Ceremonious revels were laid aside, and little order was kept in the sports and feasting. For once Domenico seemed content that strict observance of his presence should not be kept, and once the interminable councils of state were done, he lent his countenance to any pastime, watching the revelers with a faintly cynical smile disfiguring his soft mouth.
Ippolito de'Falconieri was teaching me the rules of chess—he had appointed himself my unofficial guardian since we came to Diurno—when the duke came and stood beside me, watching the play over my shoulder. I tensed at once, forgetting all the rules of play in my awareness of the lounging, silver-clad figure so close behind me. I moved a piece at random, and Ippolito hesitated; then he shifted a piece in his turn, and Domenico laughed.
"You a
re too chivalrous, Ippolito. You should have taken the rook she has left unguarded."
"I am playing a deeper game than that, Your Grace."
Domenico's fingers closed in a cruel little caress on my shoulder. "True. If one strikes too soon, there is no pleasure in playing, but if one seems to let a fault pass unobserved, one can reap the benefit later—look." He reached past me and negligently moved a pawn. "Your knight has been in peril for some time; this other rook can take him. Beware your queen, now."
Ippolito watched the capture of the mounted knight philosophically. "Well, I have another knight, and I think my bishop"—he moved it forward—"will guard the queen well enough."
The white hand checked, then moved smoothly, and the duke said softly, "No. See what happens when the king comes into play."
Ippolito groaned, and I laughed, then stared at the board. In three moves Domenico had altered the whole complexion of the game; from a pathetically undefended position, spread anyhow across the board, the black pieces were now threatening the white, breaking up their ranks and invading their territories.
"You see," Domenico remarked lazily, "choosing the moment to strike can look like mercy."
I sat very still, my pulses thundering as his fingertips stroked my heck. Ippolito looked up sharply, his dark face suddenly drawn and anxious.
"I think," Domenico spoke absently, his fingertip tracing a line of fire across my shoulder, "that Piero della Quercia must learn to bear himself more humbly soon. It is time, when he crowns his treachery with folly and woos my mistress before my face."
"Your Grace, I thought you had forgiven that business long ago!"
There was a small silence. "Forgive? I?"
I started to put away the chess pieces. There was nothing more to say. I saw Ippolito's unhappy face and wished uselessly that I had never seen Piero's cipher. And what would my punishment be for running away? Was it poison or exile he had in mind for me?
