“Those must be heavy barrels,” Phillipa said.
“I suppose the must be,” Clare said, idly fingering her collection of keys, an occasional nervous habit of hers and the only indication to Phillipa that she was ever anything less than coolly serene.
How Phillipa wished she could get her hands on those keys. She had naturally tried to investigate the cellar, but there was a heavy oak door at the top of the stairwell that led to it from the great hall, and it was always locked. Every morning, Clare unlocked it for Orlando and Istagio, who apparently bolted it from the inside after they closed it behind them, for it was immovable during the day. When they emerged in the evening after completing their day’s work, one of them always immediately went and fetched Clare, who locked the door for the night.
“I’ll send some of that white lead compound over to you on the morrow,” Clare said as she crossed to the door. “In the meantime, Aldous is alone in his chamber and waiting for you. Do pry open those dainty little legs of yours and treat him to a proper tupping so he’ll cease his bloody whining. I’m sick to death of it.”
After the door had slammed behind Clare, Edmee crossed herself. “Jesus have mercy. I never thought to hear a lady of rank say such things.”
“One would think you’d be used to Lady Clare’s ways by now,” Phillipa said. “You’ve been with her since Poitiers, yes?”
“Only since right before she left there. Her own lady’s maid took sick with an ague that wouldn’t go away, so I was asked if I wouldn’t like to take over. I knew it would mean comin’ to England, but it sounded like an adventure, and there weren’t nothing to keep me in Poitiers—the fellow I was sweet on had just married someone else, and...” She shook her head sadly. “Perhaps I should have stayed anyway.”
Phillipa patted her arm. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“You’re kind to say so.” Edmee smiled at her as she began turning down the fur throws on Phillipa’s bed.
Phillipa nibbled on her bottom lip. “I wouldn’t mind knowing what’s really making those sounds.”
“You don’t think it’s wine barrels falling over?”
“Does it sound like wine barrels falling over?”
Edmee shrugged. “You and Master Orlando seem friendly enough. Have you asked him?”
“Aye. He says it’s wine barrels.”
“Then perhaps it is.”
Phillipa paced the length of the chamber, and back again. “You’re friendly with Istagio.”
Edmee snorted as she plumped up the pillows. “He’s friendly with me, you mean—the lecherous cur.”
Orlando’s rotund and slightly bumbling assistant had latched onto Edmee with a zeal and tenacity that did have a somewhat canine quality to it, although the lewd glint in his eyes when he leered at her struck Phillipa as more reptilian than doglike. In truth, he looked at most women that way, even Phillipa when he didn’t think she noticed, but for some reason he concentrated his inept efforts at seduction on Edmee. At first, Phillipa couldn’t understand it; Edmee was likable enough, but with her thick bones and small, close-set eyes, she wasn’t what you’d call pretty. She did have that pale blond hair, though, and a rather prodigious bosom; perhaps those were the qualities that had so entranced Istagio.
“He’s always trying to impress you,” Phillipa observed. “Yesterday I heard him bragging about his family’s bell foundry in Italy and how many generations—”
“He shouldn’t be tellin’ me these things,” Edmee declared, seeming genuinely distressed. “He shouldn’t...” She looked away abruptly. “I...I don’t want him tryin’ to impress me. I don’t want him hoverin’ over me and...and lookin’ at me like that. ‘Tisn’t as if I give him any reason to think I want that sort of attention.”
“That doesn’t stop some men.”
“Then how can I make him leave me be?” she asked plaintively.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” Phillipa replied. “At least...not right away.”
Edmee stared at her for a moment and then blinked. “You want me to ask him what’s goin’ on in the cellar.”
“Well...perhaps you can...charm the information out of him,” Phillipa suggested with a smile. “Lead him on a bit—just a bit. Let him think that you’re perhaps just a wee bit interested, ask him a few leading questions...”
Edmee shook her head. “If I do that, milady, he’ll never leave me alone again!”
“But at least we’ll find out what’s happening in the cellar.”
“‘Tisn’t worth it,” Edmee said resolutely.
She had a point; the only way she could shake Istagio loose was by ignoring him, not interrogating him about his work. Not that Phillipa wasn’t still tempted to try and talk her into it, her mission being more important than Edmee’s romantic complications, but all she would accomplish by pressing the point would be to make Edmee suspicious of her motives.
“You’re right, of course,” Phillipa said with forced nonchalance. “‘Twouldn’t do to make Istagio even more of a pest just to satisfy our idle curiosity.”
Of course, she’d done that and more with Aldous, she thought. She’d let him kiss her; she’d promised to sleep with him. He was waiting for her right now, wondering how long it would take her to send Edmee away and come to him.
It’s time, she thought. Time to play out the rest of it. “I don’t think I need anything else tonight, Edmee. Why don’t you go now and see if Lady Clare or Lady Marguerite can use—”
“Milady...” Edmee regarded Phillipa’s risque silken shift with a pained expression. “Are you sure you should...”
“Edmee, please.”
“Think of your husband,” she implored. “Think of Sir Hugh.”
Would that I could think of anything else. “I’ll see you in the morning, Edmee.”
With an air of grave resignation, the maid murmured, “Yes, milady,” and left.
Aldous is alone in his chamber and waiting for you...
Phillipa immediately crossed to one of the three arrow slits on the back wall that served in lieu of windows and stood with her ear to it. She closed her eyes, listening for sounds from Aldous’s chamber, but all she could hear was the indolent grunting of frogs in the moat and muffled laughter from the great hall, where Clare’s guests always caroused late into the night. Sometimes they sang or danced. Three times this past week, Clare had convened courts of love to arbitrate the disputes of paramours, with herself sitting in sole judgment of her guests’ romantic squabbles. These had been utter farces, just as Hugh had claimed, but not half as disturbing as the little game Clare had presided over two nights ago, which involved pairing up couples based on throws of the dice, confiscating every stitch of their clothing and locking them in a bedchamber together until dawn.
With a sigh of exasperation—Phillipa had to know whether Aldous was still alone or not—she went to the door and eased it open. Finding the dark stone corridor empty, she crept to his chamber door and pressed her ear to it. For a minute she heard nothing, and then came a sort of melodic mumbling. She recognized the tune as that of a drinking song Turstin de Ver had taught Clare’s guests after supper last night. Aldous was half-humming and half-singing it in that indifferent way people do when they’re alone.
So. She wasn’t there yet.
Returning to her own chamber, Phillipa blew out the candles and opened the door a crack—just enough so that she could see the area outside Aldous’s chamber without drawing attention to herself.
And then she waited.
* * *
Aldous Ewing, freshly bathed and reclining on his soft down bed in naught but his underdrawers and shirt—silky Egyptian cotton, the very best—started growing hard at the first muted creak of the door.
At last. All those months in Paris when he’d hungered for her and made do with whores instead, all those years afterward of wondering what it would have been like if she’d only said, Yes, Aldous, take me. I’m yours to use as you will...
A thousand times, awak
e and in his dreams, he’d imagined what it would be like to fuck the cool and lovely Phillipa de Paris.
Now he would find out.
The door opened with a slow squeak of old leather hinges. Reaching down, Aldous adjusted his cock through his drawers as he grew fully erect.
He smiled when he saw her, cloaked in a hooded mantle of black satin. She paused for a moment, a spectral figure in the dusky corridor, before stepping over the threshold of Aldous’s chamber. He’d lit it with a dozen candles for the occasion, strewn mint among the rushes, tied the bed curtains back and sprinkled the purple counterpane with sprigs of rosemary and lavender.
Soon...
His smile waned when she turned to close the door behind her. Phillipa wasn’t that tall—was she?
She lowered the hood as she faced him. He just about swallowed his tongue when he saw the fiery gleam of her red hair in the candlelight.
“L-lady Marguerite?”
Marguerite du Roche’s delicately plucked eyebrows arched upward. “I understood we weren’t to speak,” she said in that cat’s-purr voice of hers. “Or was that just to be me?”
“I...I beg your—”
“If there are to be rules of play, they ought to be clearly stated and strictly enforced, don’t you think?” She unpinned her mantle and let it drop.
This time he did swallow his tongue.
She was naked. Well, not entirely. She had on a pair of black-and-gold beaded slippers and black silk stockings gartered above the knee. But other than that, she was thoroughly, voluptuously, astoundingly naked. Her body was as milky-pale as her face, the hair of her sex as bright as that which cascaded over her like rippling snakes. She had tits as hard and round as apples, and her nipples...
They’d been rouged, he realized, painted with something to redden them. This discovery sent a sharp surge of arousal straight to his groin.
“Shall we clarify the rules?” In her hand Marguerite held a short whip with a cluster of lashes on the end, such as those used by Camaldolian hermits to flagellate themselves. The sight of this weapon of punishment sparked another hot little spasm of lust.
“The...the rules?” he stammered. “I don’t—”
“They’re your rules.” Coming around to the side of the bed, she lifted a stockinged leg and draped it across his lap, right over his throbbing tool, which she could surely feel against her calf. There was something tucked into the garter—a folded-up slip of parchment. She plucked it out, unfolded it and read, “‘Don’t knock. Don’t speak. Just join me in my bed and let us surrender ourselves to each other.’”
She handed him the note, which he stared at incredulously. “Where did you g-get—”
“Somebody slipped it under my door this morning. I assumed it was you.”
He shook his head. “‘Twas intended for the lady...for someone else. M-my sister, she was supposed to give it directly to—”
Marguerite laughed. “And she tucked it under my door instead. That sounds like something Clare might do.”
It did, Aldous realized with a groan. Clare seemed to delight in orchestrating the erotic intrigues of those around her.
“It seems we’ve been snared in her little trap, you and I. The question,” Marguerite purred as she rubbed her leg back and forth over Aldous’s erection, drawing a carnal little whimper from him, “is what we’re going to do about it.”
Do about it...? Aldous struggled to think this out rationally despite the maddening friction of her firm calf against his cock. Clare had obviously never given the first note to Phillipa, thinking it some great jest to misdirect it to Marguerite, so it stood to reason she would have withheld the second, as well. Phillipa had no idea he’d been expecting her tonight. She wouldn’t come.
Marguerite had come instead.
“Well?” Her icy green eyes locked with his, Marguerite trailed the lashes of the whip over her breasts, causing her nipples to tighten into crimson-stained buds. Lowering the instrument, she slowly stroked its leather-wrapped handle between her legs.
Aldous’s fist snapped shut, crushing the sheet of parchment in his hand. He hurled it aside and reached for her.
“Not so fast.” She treated his hand to a stinging crack of the whip; he recoiled with a cry that sounded humiliatingly girlish. “We haven’t clarified the rules.”
“The...the...”
“‘Don’t speak,’” she mused. “I like that one. But I’d like it better if I could talk and you were the one who had to hold his tongue. What do you think?”
“Uh, well...”
“Shh!” Leaning forward, she prodded the handle of the whip between his lips and into his mouth; Aldous tasted her on the leather. “Don’t speak. You may think whatever thoughts you like, but keep them to yourself. Or else—” she drew the whip handle almost completely out of his mouth, then shoved it back in even deeper, nudging the back of his throat “—I’ll be forced to gag you. You wouldn’t want that, would you? You may nod or shake your head.”
Aldous, his eyes stinging as his throat convulsed, managed to shake his head.
She slid the handle out. The air left his lungs in a gush of relief. A tear slid from one eye. He went to wipe it away, but she said, “Nay, leave it. I love the sight of tears on a man’s cheeks.”
He dutifully lowered his hands.
“I liked the part about surrendering, too,” she said, “only, as you’ve probably already guessed, I would prefer that you submit to me than the other way round.”
Aldous nodded, stunned not just by her treatment of him, but by his own reaction to it. He was so hard it actually hurt.
“Move down, off the pillows,” she commanded, “so you’re lying flat. Good. Now lift your shirt and open your drawers.”
After a moment’s nonplused hesitation, he did as she instructed, shaken by his sense of vulnerability as he lay there exposed to her critical scrutiny.
“‘Twill have to do.” She shoved the pointed toe of her slipper into his hip, making him wince. “Roll over.”
He rolled facedown on the purple counterpane, which felt slick and cool against his pulsing-hot cock, but...
“Er...the herbs I scattered about,” he said, “they’re digging into me.”
“Excellent.” Marguerite climbed over him with feline grace, a slow pounce that left her straddling his legs. Abruptly she yanked his drawers down to his thighs.
“That pretty white bum of yours would look quite fetching laced with nice red lash marks, don’t you think?” When he hesitated in responding, she grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head back. “Don’t you?”
He nodded frantically. She released his hair and reached behind her for something. Craning his neck, he saw her untying the thick satin cord that gathered the curtains to the post at the bottom right corner of the bed. She pulled it away, letting the curtains unfurl, then released the other three cords as well, enclosing the bed on all four sides, as if they were in a tent of white damask.
From the tangle of cords she’d amassed, she chose one and wrapped it several times around Aldous’s right wrist. Bending his right leg back, she said, “Grab your foot,” and lashed his ankle tight with the same length of cord.
He watched in titillated fascination as she extracted another cord from the pile and repeated the process with his left wrist and ankle, leaving him bound hand and foot like a hog at butchering time. His heart pounded at the intoxicating sense of powerlessness.
“That’s better,” she murmured, brushing the whip’s lashes in circles over his bare buttocks as his flesh erupted in goose bumps. “You like handing over the reins, don’t you?” Sliding a hand between his legs, she cradled his turgid flesh; he moaned pitifully, thrusting against her cool, soft palm. “Aye, you like it,” she said soothingly. “But you must stop moving like that, because it isn’t time for you to come yet. If I let you come at all, ‘twill be much later.”
Dazed with lust and close, so close, he shook his head and pressed harder, harder...
A sharp, slicing pain jolted him out of his sensual delirium. She’d whipped him across his buttocks, and hard. “How dare you try to exert your will over mine?”
He groaned helplessly as she struck him again, and again, and again... Pain merged with pleasure to form an excruciating ecstasy Aldous had never experienced before. If she kept this up, he would go off far too soon.
Dimly he was aware of the creak of wood, the squeak of leather. The door...?
Footsteps rustled in the rushes.
“Stop!” he gasped as Marguerite raised the whip high.
“Aldous?” It was a woman’s voice, sweet and soft.
Phillipa! She did come! She was in the room—merciful God!—though she couldn’t see him—them—through the curtains that enveloped the bed.
“Nay,” he begged as the whip descended, crying out raggedly when it connected, harder than ever.
“Aldous...” Phillipa’s voice was closer now. “Are you all—?”
“No!” he cried, writhing against his bindings. “Yes! Go! For God’s sake—”
The curtain whipped aside and she stood there, angelic and bewitching in the most extraordinary little slip of white satin, her hair a silken black cascade, those huge, dark eyes lighting first on him, hogtied with his drawers shoved down, then on a giggling Marguerite, and finally—Strike me dead now, Lord, please, NOW!—on the whip lightly tickling his exposed and smarting arse.
Eyes wide with shock, Phillipa opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.
“Care to take a crack at him yourself?” Marguerite held the whip toward Phillipa, handle first.
She flinched and backed up, letting the curtain fall closed. The rushes crackled beneath her rapidly retreating footsteps.
“Phillipa!” Aldous screamed as the door slammed. “Phillipa! Come ba—” Jesu, no! “Phillipa! Phillipa!” Thrashing against his bindings, he howled, “I’m sorry, Phillipa! Phillipa! This means nothing! You’re the one, the only one!”
“Well,” Marguerite sniffed as she lifted one of the two remaining satin cords and wadded it up, “not quite, obviously, or you wouldn’t be here with me, would you?”
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 52
