by Gail Dayton
He paused to stare blackly into the past again. “I would almost rather not have some of those memories returned to me. They shame me.”
Amanusa touched his hand again in silent support.
He looked up at her and smiled. “But they serve to remind me that I do not care to become that man again.”
She smiled back and took a bite of her salmon patty. It was good and she was hungry, but she was more interested in Jax’s tale. “Why were you visiting magicians in York? How many did you visit? Was Yvaine based in York then?”
“No, she’d been called in to serve in the courts after the rebellion. Her master—the sorceress who’d taught her—was still living then, but Morwen was getting old, the magic close to burning her up, and she’d sent Yvaine to handle the session.” Jax began to eat, but didn’t seem to taste it.
“And I was visiting magicians to learn magic,” he said. “I suppose I must have visited a half dozen or better. York was the second city in England then, and had more magicians than most. I’d always been fascinated with the power to be attained through magic, and I had studied it with my tutors, of course. Then, as now, actually working the magic was seen as coarse. Something peasants did, or the merchant class. Not the nobility. A nobleman hires magicians. He does not practice magic himself.
“But even though I was essentially tone deaf—magic blind—I was fascinated with magic. Probably because, try as I might, I couldn’t perform the least little spell.”
“And then you met Yvaine.” Amanusa watched him closely, trying to read his moods, but he’d closed in on himself.
He smiled at her, sad, wistful. “Then I met Yvaine. It was at a dinner, hosted I think by the local goldsmith’s guild. The dinner was over. I’d drunk far, far too much wine, and I wasn’t in the mood for dancing. I was practicing a simple alchemy spell, determined to get it right at least once, to make the candlewick smoke if not burst into flame.
“And Yvaine walked up to me. She was a beautiful woman. Tiny, with lush curves and rosy satin skin and long brown curls that tumbled down her back, the color of the caramel over the crème brûlée you like so much.”
Amanusa concentrated on eating. She looked nothing like that, with her tall, angular frame and straight, white-blond hair. But maybe that was a good thing.
Jax went on, lost in his memories. “She asked if I wanted to learn magic, and I laughed. Drunk as I was, she still frightened me a bit. Powerful magicians can do that. You carry that power around with you like a cloak, like armor and weapons bristling from you.”
“Do I frighten you?” Amanusa had to ask.
He swam back up from the past and looked at her, saw her. And he smiled. “I’m part of your armor.”
The smile faded a bit and he reached out to her this time, clasped her hand. “There’s an element of—not fear, but—respect. Maybe a bit of awe. Respect for what you can do and the power you can wield. It’s there. But because I am a part of that power and because you are who you are, no, you don’t frighten me.”
“Good.” Amanusa smiled at him, content to hold his hand until he freed her.
“Eat.” He took away her empty plate and replaced it with a plate of beef and delicate dumplings. “Your strength still isn’t where it should be.”
And how did he know that? From experience? Or something else? Amanusa cut into the tender beef, but before she ate it, she asked, “So what did you say to Yvaine?”
“I told her that I would love to learn magic, but I was head-blind. If she could teach me, despite my handicap, it would make her the greatest magician in all England. And she said she could do it. So I went with her, eager to learn everything she could teach me.”
Jax paused, his fork in midair. “I don’t remember much of that next week. I’ve never been able to, even before she filled my head up with this posthumous presence of hers.”
He took the bite, chewed pensively a moment, then swallowed. “I remember—I think—pain. Bleeding. And sex. A lot of sex. And magic. For the first time in my life, I could sense magic. I could work magic. I remember being giddy with delight. Absolutely thrilled that the magic would obey me.”
He took another bite. “Of course, it was Yvaine’s talent working the magic, not mine. And when the week was done and I came back to myself again, I was bound. Yvaine’s servant.”
“I thought you said you were willing.” Amanusa burned with righteous indignation on his behalf.
“I was. I remember that much clearly. Every step of the way, every time one portion of the binding was completed and another lay ahead, she asked me ‘Do you want this?’ And every time, I answered ‘Yes.’ Because I did want it. I wanted every bit of the magic she offered.
“But I didn’t understand what it ultimately meant. I thought, when it was done, I’d be able to take what she’d done, what she’d taught me, and go back to being Earl Leaford. But when it was done, John Greyson, Earl Leaford, was dead. Jax lived on.”
“What did you do?” Amanusa reached for his hand again, but he didn’t seem to see it.
“What could I do? I was bound. I couldn’t even protest, for she’d bound my voice to silence until she needed it. I didn’t speak for most of the next five years.”
“How horrible!” Amanusa wanted to do violence to the woman. Since she couldn’t, she struggled not to release the violence storming through her by throwing cutlery around the room.
“She wasn’t actively cruel. Not deliberately. And while Morwen was alive, it wasn’t so bad. Morwen kept Yvaine from her worst impulses, and she was kind to me. She tried to convince Yvaine to release me, or to loosen the binding. But apparently, a blood servant must be completely head-blind, and folk like me were difficult to find. At least at that time, in that place. Yvaine always refused to change anything. And by the time Morwen died, about ten years later, I’d learned how to survive it.”
“How?” Amanusa tried to clear the tightness in her throat, but it wouldn’t go away.
“By accepting what I had become—a servant—and becoming the best possible example of a servant that I could manage.” His mouth twisted in a sour grin. “Sometimes I didn’t manage very well, but I tried. It was hardest when my sons died. The younger took the title after his brother died at thirteen, William, though, he lived to seventy-three. And I was still as you see me now. Yvaine did let me attend the funeral.”
“If she wasn’t deliberately cruel, what was she like?” Amanusa didn’t understand and she wanted to, if only to know how to comfort Jax and what pitfalls to avoid. She did not want to become Yvaine.
“Righteous,” Jax answered without hesitation. “She cared far more about the idea of justice and about humanity as a whole than she did for individuals. If a few persons got ground up in her wheels of justice, that was unfortunate but unavoidable.”
“Too bad, so sad,” Amanusa whispered. She recognized the attitude, knew it all too well.
“Exactly.” A gentle smile rose on his face. “I was a tool in her quest for justice. Something to hold the magic needed for greater spells, something to raise magic when she didn’t have the time or inclination. If it caused me pain—well, pain can raise magic too, when it’s willingly endured, and my will was hers. Only afterward, when she loosened her grip, did I regret.”
“Oh, Jax—”
His smile became tender, personal. All for her. “But it’s because of that, because of the people Yvaine gave me over to, the things she sent me into, that I understand your past. Mine is much like it.”
“But you served Yvaine for… for—”
“One hundred and six years.”
Horror swept through Amanusa. She sprang to her feet, stumbling over the cart in her rush to reach Jax, to hold him, comfort him. Fortunately nothing fell, not even Amanusa, for Jax caught her and swept her into his lap. She took full advantage and wrapped her arms tight around him.
“It was a very long time ago,” Jax said into the ruffles of her dressing gown. His arms were around her, but carefully, a
s if he feared she might shatter. “More than two hundred years.”
“But for most of that time, your memory of it was clouded. Now it isn’t. It’s fresh.”
“Not so fresh.” He nosed aside her ruffles so they didn’t flutter in his face, and laid his head against her shoulder. “All that time, when I was searching, I knew I was also hiding. Just as I was both searching for something outside myself—you—and something inside myself—me—I was also hiding both from the witch hunters, and from things I didn’t want to remember. The man I used to be, and the things that happened to me.
“Amanusa, I was far worse as Earl of Leaford than Yvaine ever thought about being. Her cruelties had a purpose. They aimed toward the greater good. Mine—” His sigh blew across her neck and he turned his face in toward her, his arms tightening around her. Amanusa stroked a hand through his thick hair, twined her fingers through the ruddy waves.
“I was cruel for my own amusement,” he said. “Or in a fit of reckless temper. Or simply because I could. Yvaine rarely acted on a whim. I rarely acted on anything else.” He went still for a moment, the warmth of his breath coming through the silk of her dressing gown as he pressed his face into her shoulder.
Finally he spoke again. “I came to believe—and I still do—that what happened to me was divine justice. Payment for my sins. A lesson in humility. I begin to think now, that what I was had to be utterly destroyed so that I could be made over into what I always should have been. The task isn’t done, of course, but—”
“Is it ever done? Do we ever become what we should be on this side of heaven?” Amanusa laid her cheek atop his head as she spoke. “Yvaine caught you, and she bound you, and she left you for me. The knowledge still in your head is just knowledge, and we’ll rid you of the last of it soon enough. Yvaine is dead. We may have to lay her ghost more than once, but for tonight…”
She sat back, tugged at Jax until he lifted his head and looked at her.
“Tonight,” he said, “Yvaine is in her grave. Amanusa is my sorceress now.”
A hesitant smile crawled onto her lips. “Amanusa is your wife.”
He stared at her a moment, before an answering smile appeared. “So she is.”
His hand rose to cup the back of her head and bring her down to meet his kiss.
They had kissed before. Amanusa liked Jax’s kisses. She’d been surrounded by his strong body before, both of them clad in far less than they wore now, and it hadn’t frightened her. Of course, they’d both been deathly ill from the lack of magic, too weak to stir. She wasn’t afraid now. Or not exactly.
She wasn’t afraid of Jax, either fully clothed as he was now or nearly naked as he’d been on the train coming through Baden. It was the act itself she feared, and suddenly there it was, looming over her.
“Shhh.” Jax kissed his way across her cheek to nuzzle her ear. “Don’t think about it. Nothing will happen that you don’t want. Nothing can happen without your permission. Let’s make tonight about you, shall we?”
He drew back then and looked at her. Amanusa stifled a whimper. She just wanted to get it over with.
“Don’t you want your dessert?” He gestured at the cart. “Crème brûlée and éclairs, both.”
She attacked his necktie, tugging it loose. “If I ate anything else, I’d be sitting in my chair thinking. Worrying about what was to come, and it would build up bigger and scarier in my mind and I’d never get through it.”
She stopped, in the middle of unbuttoning his collar, and looked him in the eye. “It’s not you that scares me, Jax. You do know that, don’t you?” She laid her hand along his rugged jaw. “It’s just—How do you do it? After what she did to you? How could you even think about offering to have sex with that red-painted harpy on the boat? And then do it?”
“I didn’t do it, if you’ll recall.” He took her hand from his jaw and kissed the palm, then put it back, though it landed more on his neck than his face this time. He stretched one of his long arms to the cart and brought back the platter with the eclairs. “And I wouldn’t dream of banishing you to that distant chair for your dessert.”
He picked up one of the chocolate-covered, crème-filled pastries and took an enormous bite. He had a wide mouth to go with those full, mobile lips. Then he held the remainder to her mouth, the gleam in his eyes saying, Go on. Bite.
Amanusa tried to take a dainty bite, but Jax wouldn’t let her. Still it was smaller than his. She swallowed, and he was still chewing.
“I mean it, Jax.” She licked her lips and froze as he scooped an errant dollop of cream filling from her lip and slid it into her mouth on his finger. It tasted sweeter than licking her blood from his fingers, but made her feel just as peculiar.
She pushed his hand away. “Don’t distract me. I really want to know. Did you endure the same things I did? I know it can happen to men. Were you—?” She couldn’t say the word.
Jax could. “Raped.” He said it gently, using the napkin on his hands and her face. “Yes.”
“Then how did you—How do you—?” She gave up and looked at him helplessly.
He tucked her against him and fed her another bite of eclair. “I was older, if you’ll recall. That in itself gave me a better perspective on things. You were just a child. Rape was your introduction to sex.”
“The outlaws didn’t capture us ‘til I was fourteen.”
“Like I said, a child. And I got to go back to Yvaine, afterward. She did tend me, care for me.”
“Until the next time she needed to use you.”
“Well, yes. But it wasn’t every day. Wasn’t even all that often. She did usually let me choose my partners, which helps a great deal.” He picked up another eclair. He’d finished off the first.
This time he offered her the first bite. Amanusa shook her head. “You first. I like the cream best.”
He grinned at her and complied, feeding her the entire middle of the eclair.
“Are you trying to fatten me up?” Amanusa asked when she could speak politely again.
“Just trying to keep you from becoming skin and bones.” Jax gave her a quick squeeze. “I like a well-padded wife.”
Amanusa’s mind circled back around again. “So, since I’ve chosen you, you think it will be easier for me to have sex—”
He stopped her with a finger laid briefly across her lips. “We are husband and wife. We will not ‘have sex.’ We will make love.”
“But we don’t love each other,” she said in a small voice.
“Doesn’t matter. We are fond of each other. We trust each other. That makes it more than just intercourse. We will make love.”
“Shouldn’t I give you permission—”
Jax put his finger over her mouth again. “No. Not yet. I don’t want you worrying about what might happen. Tonight is just for you.”
She pulled his hand away. “But don’t you want… ?”
“Of course I do. But I’m used to wanting and not having. And it will happen soon enough. Until it does, until you’re ready—truly ready, not just wanting to ‘get it over with,’ I don’t want you releasing any bindings. All right?”
Amanusa nodded, eyes wide as she’ gazed into his. How did he know what she’d been thinking? How had such good luck found her after so much of the other sort, to stumble across a man like this? But then, he had stumbled across her, hadn’t he?
Jax drew her back into a kiss, gentle this time, sweet with cream and chocolate and the slide of his tongue over hers. Amanusa spread her hands flat across his shoulder blades buried beneath layers of jacket and waistcoat and shirt. Big men had always frightened her, but she liked Jax’s broad shoulders. She liked his lean height. He didn’t try to knock her down to size like other men often did. Jax’s height made her feel protected, not threatened.
Abruptly, Jax broke the kiss and stood, lifting Amanusa in his arms. Her squeak was almost lost in the clatter of the chair falling over, but Jax froze. He’d heard it.
Amanusa leaned in to mur
mur in his ear. “I was only startled. Nothing more.”
His grin was feral. “Good.” It found an answering wildness deep within Amanusa that shivered in response. “Then I don’t have to set you down.”
He kicked the fallen chair out of his way and strode into her bedroom with her in his arms. He placed her on the bed and Amanusa immediately popped up to a sitting position. She didn’t want to wait passively for this lovemaking. Inaction made it too much like before, when she’d simply endured what was done to her. This time, she wanted to participate.
Jax lifted an eyebrow as he sat beside her on the bed. “Nervous? It’s all right if you are. We don’t have to…”
She put her hand over his mouth. “Will you stop going on about it? I know I don’t have to, but I have to. I’m tired of being afraid. I wasn’t afraid this afternoon when you kissed me.”
“We were on the street. It couldn’t go any further. Of course you weren’t afraid.” His smile was kind and understanding and it made her want to smack him.
“Will you stop being so damn noble?” Amanusa lurched to her knees in the crinkly featherbed and pushed his frock coat off his shoulders. “You’re going to make me think you’re the one who’s afraid.”
“I am.” He pulled his coat the rest of the way off and tossed it at a chair. He missed, but paid no notice. “I’m bloody terrified of frightening you, or hurting you, or—or somehow botching this beyond repair. I used to think initiating a virgin was the most difficult sexual act to perform properly, but this… Making love to a woman—a woman I-I am fond of—who was so cruelly treated as a child—”
“It’s not a performance, Jax. I’m not going to be judging you or giving marks afterward like some schoolmaster.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “No, you’ll just be huddled in a corner, weeping.”
“I won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I never have before. Not even the first time. Trust me. I am stronger than that.”
