“That room we were in,” Kingsley said as Madame switched on the lamp. “Was it your husband’s bedroom?”
“It was,” she said. The lamplight illuminated her lovely face and her somber eyes. “I burned his bed after I sent him away. Too many memories. It’s the only room I ever use when I’m hurting someone. Why do you think that is?”
She seemed to want an answer, a serious answer. King thought about it. “To spite him?”
“That’s childish, isn’t it,” she said. “Even sadists were children once, too.”
She reached out and stroked the silken covers on the bed. “I couldn’t burn this bed, however. This was always my bedroom. Though he shared it with me some nights when he fell asleep after making love to me. I burned his bed to punish him. I kept mine and all its memories to punish myself.” She smiled to herself. “He wouldn’t be pleased to learn I let you in here.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” Kingsley said, as if telling her husband were even an option. He wondered who the man was. Did Madame keep photographs? She didn’t seem the sentimental type, but then again, neither did he. But he still owned a certain boy’s black leather belt that he’d stolen long ago…
She sat at her dressing table in the corner of the room. Without her ordering him to do it, Kingsley carefully pulled the pins from her hair and laid them on the table. When he finished he brushed her hair with a silver-plaited hairbrush. He found her pure white hair both thick and soft, and when she closed her eyes he used his fingers to comb out her curls. When she opened her eyes again, she smiled.
“Time to sleep,” she said. She rose from the stool and faced him. He reached for the sash of her peignoir and slowly untied it, feeling himself grow warm and aroused as he loosened the knot. He pulled the robe off her shoulders and hung it on a brass hook behind the door.
“You’ll sleep on the floor,” she said. “Here.” She pointed to a patch of rug by the side of her bed.
He laughed.
She raised her eyebrow. “Ah, yes, he made you sleep on the floor, too. Didn’t you tell me that?”
“He made me do it a few times. When I deserved it. Usually when I didn’t. What does that mean in your language of pain?”
Madame came to him and placed her hands on his face.
“It means we want you close but not too close,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Because it’s terrifying to be a sadist in love,” she said. “You get close enough to someone, they might accidentally see who you really are.”
She dropped her hands from his face, walked to the bed, and waited. Kingsley followed her, reached past her and pulled the quilt and sheet down for her, folding them back neatly. She slipped into bed and rolled onto her side as Kingsley pulled the covers over her to her shoulder.
“There’s a blanket in the linen chest,” she said, nodding at a large steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. “I’ll let you have one. But only one.”
“You’re too kind, Madame.”
“I know. You bring out the best in me. It’s very embarrassing.”
Kingsley took out the blanket and laid on the rug. The rough fibers bit at his brutalized back so he rolled over onto his side. Glancing up he saw Madame’s small delicate hand resting over the edge of the bed. He reached up and linked their fingers.
“Close but not too close,” she said.
“I thought you were going to break me until I wished I were dead. Instead I wish I could live here forever.”
“That’s your cock talking.”
“Probably,” he said. “But sometimes it talks sense.”
“Sleep, boy,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “I’ll break you yet. I’ve only just begun.”
She released his hand and he reluctantly settled down under his blanket. He wanted to sleep, desperately, but he wanted to stay awake even more. Luckily, the bruises on his back screamed at him every time he tried to get comfortable so sleep was unlikely. Eventually it was obvious from her deep steady breathing that Madame had fallen asleep.
Quietly as he could, Kingsley rolled up off the floor. He glanced at Madame in the bed. Her eyes were closed, her face was smooth and slack in sleep. When he touched her hand again, she didn’t stir. Though he hated to leave her and risk her disappointment, he had to. He slipped into the bathroom and pulled on his jeans and t-shirt. He snuck out into the hall.
Polly’s note said he needed to see Colette. If he didn’t do it now, he might not have the chance before Madame sent him back to Paris.
His heart pounded and his blood raced as he crept along the long corridor to the old part of the château, toward the room he’d spent his “wedding night” in. He ran up the stairs and down the hall. He had to remind himself he was a guest in a lovely lady’s home and not on a mission. And yet, the low-level fear remained for some reason. Had Madame already broken him to the point that the mere thought of disappointing her was enough to spike his anxiety?
One of these days he would have to figure out why he was always falling for sadists.
At Colette’s door he paused and rapped lightly with his knuckles. No answer. He was afraid of that. If he knocked louder, he would wake the house; if he didn’t knock louder, she wouldn’t hear him. He only hoped the door was unlocked.
It was. With excruciating care, Kingsley turned the knob, wincing as the latch clicked. He stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but there Colette was in the bed, lying on her side with the ornate gold comforter pulled up to her neck and pillows all around her like a harem maiden in a technicolor illustration from 1001 Arabian Nights. Praying she wouldn’t scream when he touched her, he reached out and lightly tapped her shoulder. At once her eyes flew open and she sat up. Kingsley stared at her and realized in an instant why Polly had told him he had to see Colette before he left.
Colette was pregnant.
35
“Kingsley,” Colette said, gasping his name in shock and wonder.
He couldn’t speak. He’d lost all his words. He could only stare at her. She had on the same gown she’d worn the night he’d taken her virginity, but she wore it very differently now. That night it had been loose and flowing. Now it hugged her softly-protruding stomach. Five months along? Six months? Six months… He’d come inside of her six months ago. Six months ago he’d come inside of her.
You should see Colette…
Madame might not let you…
“Kingsley?” Colette said again, covering herself with the sheets to hide the evidence. Too late for that. Her voice broke with nervousness and finally he found his voice.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
“Kingsley, I—”
“Is it mine?” he asked again, his voice growing colder, harder. Not because he was angry, but because if he didn’t get control of himself immediately he might lose all control entirely.
The door opened behind him. He turned to see Madame standing there. She hadn’t been sleeping so deeply after all.
“Kingsley, come with me,” Madame said.
“Is it mine?” he demanded.
“Leave Colette alone and come with me,” she said very slowly. “We’ll discuss this like civilized adults in another room so Colette can sleep. She needs her rest.”
“If I go with you, you’ll tell me?” he asked.
“Yes,” Madame said. “If that’s what you want.”
Of course that was what he wanted. More than anything on earth, he wanted to know if Colette was pregnant with his child. He would have cut off his arm to know, gouged out his eyes to know, killed an innocent man in cold blood to know.
“This way,” Madame said. Leaving Colette in that room was torture, but he knew he had no choice but to follow Madame. He looked back at Colette from the doorway, at her scared lovely face and her swollen stomach barely hidden under the blanket. It was his. He already knew it was his. Why else would Poll
y have told him to see Colette if it wasn’t his? Why else would Colette have asked Madame about him for months after he’d been sent away?
All the way down the hall he thought of what to do. He’d have to live here, wouldn’t he? Unless Colette wanted to live with him? He’d have to resign his commission. He couldn’t keep risking his life for his work once he had a child. No more drinking either. No more smoking. No more picking up university students at bars and bringing them back to the garret apartment. Already that life seemed a thousand miles away and a thousand years ago. Already he didn’t miss it.
He followed Madame down the stairs and into her sitting room. She turned on a lamp but didn’t sit. Neither did he.
They stood facing each other in front of the cold fireplace. “Is it mine?” he asked.
“You really wish to know?” she said. “I’m impressed. Most men your age when learning they might have fathered a child would rather be left in blissful ignorance.”
“I am not most men. And you have no right to keep the truth from me.”
“No right?” she asked. “Can you get pregnant? Can you carry a child? Can you give birth? Nadine almost died having Jacques. She’s still not back to her full strength.”
“Are you going to make me beg?” Kingsley asked. “I will. I’ll beg all night and all day and all night again. I have no shame. I will do anything to know. Please, I beg of you right now, tell me. Is it mine?”
His voice broke. He was on the verge of tears, nearly hyperventilating. Madame, however, looked calmer and crueler than he’d ever seen her. He would have taken a month of beatings over this torture. A year of beatings. A lifetime.
“Nothing,” Madame said, “comes free in this house. You want something, you have to pay for it.”
“No games,” he said. “Just tell me if it’s mine.”
“No games?” she repeated, her tone mocking, almost sneering. “Did you think I brought you here for coffee and conversation? Did you think I brought you here for charity? You are here for me to play with. You can only win if you play.”
“I can only lose if I play, too.”
“True,” she said. “But that’s the risk we take.”
“I won’t make my child into a game for your entertainment,” he said.
“Then go,” she said, tossing off a gesture with her hand that said he could go and be damned for all she cared. He was tempted to call her bluff, but he knew he would die before he crossed the threshold of the château without finding out if the baby was his.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he said, closing his eyes as if in prayer.
“You know why,” she said.
“It’s your way,” he said, meeting her eyes. She waited. He waited. One of them would have to blink first. And it would be him. It had to be him, because for her this was a game and for him…for him this was his entire life.
“I’ll play,” he said.
“Light a fire,” she said.
“What? It’s July.”
Madame said nothing, merely raised her chin. Some dark, feral animal part of him briefly entertained the thought of wrapping his hand around her neck and squeezing until she answered his question. He didn’t, but it scared him how much he was tempted to do it.
He lit the fire. It didn’t take long, but even those four minutes of putting down paper and dry kindling felt like a tortured eternity. Meanwhile Madame went to her writing desk on the other side of the room and took out pen and paper. What she was doing, he didn’t know…but he had a feeling he wouldn’t like it.
When the fire started going strong, he stood up and faced Madame again. “Your fire. There. Now… Is it mine?”
Madame stood with her back to the fire. In her hand she held two sealed envelopes. She held one envelope up in front of her.
“This envelope marked with a C on the front contains the answer to your question about Colette. The other contains something else equally valuable to you. A letter.”
“A letter from who?” he asked.
“Marcus Sterns.”
Kingsley’s heart plummeted to his feet.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
Madame ignored him. “You may open only one envelope. The other I will burn in the fire.”
“You’re insane,” he said.
“This is the envelope that contains the letter. As you see, it’s marked with an S.”
“S for Stearns?” he asked, already knowing the answer but asking the question anyway.
“No,” she said. “S for Søren.”
36
For the second time in half an hour, Kingsley was rendered speechless.
By the expression on her face, Madame was in seventh heaven. Or one of the circles of hell. “He told me his real name because he knew you would need proof I was telling you the truth,” she said.
“How?” he asked.
“I called your old school,” she said simply, like it was the easiest, most obvious thing in the world to do. “I left a message for him. A priest at the school passed it onto him. He called me two months ago. We had a lovely talk.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He’s quite an arrogant bastard,” she said.
Kingsley swallowed a hard lump in his throat. “All right. Maybe I do believe you. What’s in the letter?”
“Things he wants you to know. And that’s all I’ll tell you. Now…what is your choice? If you don’t answer in…” She glanced over her shoulder at the mantel clock. “…thirty seconds, I’ll burn them both.”
“I could kill you and take them from you.”
“What if the envelopes contain nothing?” she asked. “What if the letter from your Søren is hidden in my house? You kill me, you kill the answer.”
“Colette will tell me if it’s mine.”
“If you harm me, she won’t tell you anything except to go to hell. And she certainly won’t tell you where Søren’s lovely long letter to you is hidden.”
“Don’t say his name. You don’t deserve to say his name.”
“The clock is counting. Twenty-three seconds, Kingsley. Decide.”
“What did I do to deserve this?” he asked, half-sick with rage.
“You were warned.”
“It’s a child, not a game.”
“Everything is a game,” she said crisply, briskly, coldly.
“This isn’t sadism,” he said. “This is sick.”
“Then why are you playing along?”
“What choice do I have?”
“You have two choices—his letter to you or the answer to your question about Colette’s pregnancy. It’s very interesting that you haven’t decided yet.”
“I’ve already decided. I’m just not telling you yet.”
“Or you’re stalling because you don’t know who you love more—your possible unborn child or him.”
“I would always choose a child over him. Always.”
“You were very quick to tell Colette you were already planning a future with children for you and her. Is that why you left him all those years ago?”
As soon as she said it, a locked door in his heart popped open. That was it. Of course that was it.
“Ten seconds left. By the way, your Søren gave me a message to give to you.”
“What is it?”
“He says he still plays Ravel for you,” she said, and shook the envelope marked with the S.
“You bitch,” he said shaking his head.
“Three…two…”
Kingsley reached out and snatched from Madame’s hand the envelope marked with the C.
In a flash, Madame turned and threw the other envelope into the fire. In seconds it had been consumed, consumed before Kingsley could even rip the envelope in his shaking hands open.
He did, at last, finally tear it open. He pulled the folded sheet of paper out and looked at the page. There were no words on it. Only a small white feather stuck inside the fold.
He stared at it, then at Madame.
Madame smiled slowly. “All the pillows in this house are feather pillows, Kingsley.”
He understood at once, and the shock was strong enough to send him falling to his knees. Disappointment? Relief? Grief?
“She’s not pregnant,” Madame said. “It was only a pillow under her gown.”
Kingsley fell further, collapsing onto his elbows. He was bereft, utterly bereft.
“Why?” he said, his voice barely more than a low moan. “Do you hate me?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not at all,” she said. “Quite the opposite.”
He looked up and saw the last of the envelope, the last of Søren’s letter, turn to ashes and die.
“Was the letter in there?” he asked. “Really?”
“What letter?” she asked.
“The one from Søren.”
“There was no letter, you fool. We’ve never even spoken.”
“You know his name. You know he’s arrogant…”
“I know he’s arrogant because you told me so yourself. And I know his name and that he played Ravel on the piano the day you met because you talked about him when I’d drugged you. Oh, you told me so much about him I feel like I know the boy. We’d have a lot to talk about if we ever talked. Too bad we haven’t.”
She took a step forward so that he could have kissed the top of her foot again. Or he could have reached out and grabbed her ankle, yanked her to the floor and strangled the life out of her. He did neither.
He breathed through his nausea, his head on the floor, his stomach lurching.
At first it started as a low chuckle. Then a soft laugh. Then a loud laugh. On his hands and knees, he laughed until his back hurt from laughing. He bruised his bruises. He looked up and saw Madame staring at him with wide eyes. Clearly of all the things she thought he might do, laughing like a maniac was not even in the top ten.
“Kingsley?”
“You did warn me,” he said.
Slowly, a smile spread across her face. She curtsied.
The Chateau: An Erotic Thriller Page 20
