A Lady Under Siege (23 page)

I
n her chamber Sylvanne weighed the knife in her hand. “I was hoping for a tool with greater substance,” she muttered.

“This is better,” Mabel asserted. She didn’t tell her Mistress it was a gift from Gwynn. Instead she said, “If I’d stolen a larger blade, ill intent would be suspected, should it ever be discovered. One of this size is more readily explained. We can say we need it to trim wicks and toe nails and the like.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sylvanne said. “It will draw less attention to itself, and therefore be more easily manoeuvred behind his back.” Hesitantly, and lacking confidence, she practiced a stabbing motion, bringing the blade toward herself, as if stabbing him in the back as he embraced her. She thought, Could I really do that, when the time comes? Could I harness the fury it would need?

“You’ll need to lure him close, ma’am,” Mabel counselled. “You’ll need to use all your charms to draw him to your bed. Honeyed words and gestures spin the loveliest of webs.”

“I’ll spread a deep colour over my lips. I’ll wear my golden belt low upon my hips,” Sylvanne murmured.

“Now you’re talking, ma’am,” Mabel praised her. “Make him as potter’s clay in your hands.”

A
FTER DINNER
T
HOMAS PAID
his usual evening visit to Daphne’s chamber, and found Sylvanne dressed in the exotic costume of a gypsy woman, holding his daughter’s hand and guiding her through some intricate dance steps, while the servant girl Beth clapped time on a tambourine. Daphne was likewise dressed up for make-believe, in the shimmering clothes of a Moorish harem girl.

“Daddy, Sylvanne is teaching me how to dance,” she giggled excitedly. “Shall I show you?”

“I am all eyes,” Thomas replied. “Where on earth did you get these outfits?”

“Sylvanne’s been telling me tales from the Arabian nights,” Daphne replied. “I said I wished to go there, but she said why not bring Arabia to my bedroom? She gave specifications to the sewers and embroiderers, and they made all these just to please me. Aren’t they splendid?”

“They are. Almost too splendid. Too revealing, for a girl your age.”

“Oh don’t be a prude, and watch me dance,” she admonished him. Slipping tiny silver cymbals onto her fingers, she tapped out a faint beat for herself as she slid across the stone floor in beaded silk slippers like a wisp of cloud in a blue sky. Her movements, while graceful, showed her to be in that gawky phase of life when a girl is all boney limbs and large feet. Thomas, the doting father, was nonetheless entranced at the sight. But soon enough her concentration lapsed, her feet stuttered, and she lost her place in the dance. She stamped her feet in frustration, hung her head and pouted like a child.

“I never do it right,” she cried. “You show him, Sylvanne. You do it beautifully.”

“Me? No no,” Sylvanne demurred. “This dance is meant for a young girl to attract a husband, not for an old widow to perform in public.”

“It’s not public, it’s only Daddy and me,” Daphne insisted. “Besides, you’re almost family, you spend more time attending to me than anyone else, and you’re the best company. Daddy, tell her to perform. Don’t tell her, demand it!”

“I would like to see it,” Thomas said.

“Goody-good,” Daphne shouted. “Then you must. You must!”

The girl slid the cymbals from her fingers and handed them to Sylvanne, then retreated to give her space to move. Sylvanne took a deep breath, and began to tap a beat with the cymbals, softly at first, then building in strength as she gained confidence in the purity of her rhythm. She began to dance. With her hair loose and flowing, and her wrists describing small circles in the air like songbirds chasing their tails, she had never looked lovelier, Thomas thought. He glanced at Daphne, who looked thrilled and absolutely mesmerized. His eyes were drawn back to Sylvanne as the dance progressed and matured into a creation of extreme sensual enticement. Her hips swayed to the perfect beat of her fingers, and presented her body as an offering to him. He looked searchingly into her eyes, and was certain he saw desire reflected back at him.

32

D
erek opened his door in the afternoon to find Meghan there, standing uneasily on the front step. He hadn’t seen her for two days. “I just have a minute,” she said. “I want to thank you for looking over those medical texts I lent you. Thomas says you did.”

He shrugged. “You said yourself I have a lot of time on my hands. Did he get anything out of it?”

“Some. The medical terminology mostly left him muddled. He said he found it a jumble.”

“So did I.”

“But at least you read it. Thanks. It did some good. He said she doesn’t suffer night sweats, so I’ve discounted tuberculosis. And Daphne actually seems to be getting better by the day, so maybe it was just down to the infection in her arm. I’m hopeful. Cleaning that up has made a big difference already.” She paused. “Now do you mind if I say something to him?”

“Never suppress a generous impulse. The motto of someone I used to know.”

She knew he was talking about the wife he had lost. There was kindness in his eyes, and she sensed a movement within him, something stirring in his heart, as if goodness were a hibernating bear awakening there.

“That’s a good way to live,” she said. “Is it your motto too?”

“I try.”

“So I can say something?”

He nodded.

“To Thomas?”

Again he nodded.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “It’s always hard to start,” she said. “I’ll just plunge in then. Thomas—I can plainly see you’re falling for her, and I can understand why. You’re vulnerable, and lonely, and she’s offering you a shoulder to cry on. She’s become kind and sweet, all the things you sincerely wish she would be. On top of it she’s grown more and more flirtatious, she’s playing the total temptress. But don’t forget I’m in her head, and I can feel everything she’s up to. All this playacting as if she likes you, and teasing you, this dancing for you, presenting her body and subtly offering it to you, well, in a way it’s fake, and in a way she was right to worry—it’s affecting her, she’s starting to waver, she’s starting to like you and be attracted to you, which might be a good thing except at the same time it’s making her crazy with guilt because it’s a total betrayal of her duty to her poor dead husband.” Meghan was aware she was starting to sound frantic, but she couldn’t slow the torrent of words. “I’m totally blown away by the strength of her loyalty and duty and honour that’s all bound up in a promise to her husband to kill you, and now she doesn’t really want to do it anymore but she feels like she must, and it’s driving her out of her mind! The sooner she does it the better—that’s what she’s thinking now, she absolutely must do it quickly before she loses her nerve! So Thomas—she still intends to kill you, I know you don’t see it, you see only a pair of lovely eyes gazing at you so seductively these past days and nights. She’s trying to get you to lower your guard. She’s planning to plant a knife in your back. So be careful!”

Meghan caught her breath. She’d been addressing Thomas, but of course it was the friendly, slightly mocking face of Derek looking back at her. “Thank you for putting up with this,” she said.

“You should really come in and sit down,” he said. “I’ll get you a glass of water. You look dehydrated.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she protested. She bent down to rummage in a satchel at her feet. “There’s one more thing I need to show you. To show Thomas.”

“Come in, come in then. Here I thought you were done, now there’s visuals to go along with the audio.”

She followed him into his living room, and from her satchel she pulled a colour photocopy of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of Judith and Holofernes, showing the gritty, indomitable heroine hacking away at her hapless victim’s neck. Blood flowed in rivulets down the white linen sheets. She handed the image to Derek. “Look at this. This is what she wants for you. For Thomas, I mean.”

“That’s nasty,” Derek said.

“Please be careful, Thomas,” Meghan continued imploringly. “I can tell you this much—she has a small knife now, one her maid brought from the kitchen. She intends to lure you to her bed, and give herself up to you, and then when you’re defenceless, and blind to everything but desire, she’ll stab you with the knife. The provocative dancing, the demure looks, all the seductive behaviour that’s put you under her spell, it’s an act. When she moons at you lovingly, it’s a falsehood. That’s the way you need to think of it.”

“Sounds to me like the web’s been spun, and she’s already caught him.”

“He is smitten,” Meghan agreed.

“Men are helpless in the face of a good-looking woman who knows her power. She looks like you, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s a dead man.”

Meghan ignored the compliment. “I don’t want him to die. That’s why I’m warning him.”

“If I were him I’d go for it,” Derek said. “Getting a woman to do all the work for once is like manna from heaven—there’s not a man alive who would pass that up.”

“Don’t, Derek,” Meghan said curtly.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t mess around with this.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” he insisted. “Listen, if he really is in my head, he might like to hear some advice, man to man, bro to bro.”

Meghan looked doubtful.

“Hey Thomas, go ahead, go for it,” he continued. “Let her lead you to the boudoir, bud. Let it get naked, and hot and heavy, so hot she won’t want to stop—”

“Enough,” said Meghan sharply.

He ignored her. “All you have to do is find the knife where she’s hidden it, toss it away before she can use it. She’ll break down and cry, and
give up
, that’s the best case scenario, and you’ll be right where you want to be to comfort her. Things’ll warm right back up.”

“He’s not that callous, or shallow,” Meghan said.

“Oh please. He’s a man, I’m a man. I know how men think. A woman who tempts and teases him every chance she gets, so she can try to kill him, but now—thanks to you—he knows she doesn’t really want to kill him, and is actually attracted to him? That’s the hottest of the hot! Irresistible! He’ll be so stoked to have her, it’ll be like nuclear fucking fusion!”

“Stop it,” Meghan said. “If he takes the knife away, she won’t go through with it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You forget I’m in her head. I know exactly how she visualizes it—she’ll feel for the knife as soon as she gets into the bed, but won’t use it until the right moment. Mabel has convinced her not to bring out the knife until the moment of his climax, because a man is
lost
just then, he’s at his weakest, most helpless.”

“
Petit mort
, the little death,” Derek said. “To be followed this time by the big death.”

“No no no,” she protested. “There won’t be any death. Thomas, I’m warning you. You’ve got the facts now, the full information. Do not do it!”

“You’re too late. You said yourself he’s falling for her,” Derek replied. “Has he tried to kiss her already?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“There you go, then.”

“It was as a way of thanking me. He wanted to kiss
me
.”

“He wanted to kiss
you
?”

“Out of gratitude. For helping with his daughter. He asked Sylvanne if he could embrace her, and kiss her, so that I could feel it.”

“And did you?”

“Well, he held her head in his hands, and it was three light pecks, really. Here, here, and here.” She touched her two cheeks and forehead. “Then she took his hand, and kissed his fingers. He pulled back as if she’d held them to the flame.”

“But his kisses—did you feel them?”

“I think so.”

“So what did it feel like, to be kissed by someone, when you’re inside someone else’s head?”

“It felt real. That’s all I can say. It was as real as any kiss I’ve ever had. When he looked into her eyes I felt like he was looking straight into my eyes. Her eyes were the window to
my
soul, if that’s not too weird.”

“I think you have a crush,” Derek said.

“Don’t say it like that,” she reproached him.

“I can’t believe women sometimes,” Derek laughed. “Here you are with the hots for the guy, and if he makes love to this woman you’ll feel it, and you’re telling him don’t go for it.”

“I’m telling him to be kind to her, and not to get himself killed.”

“Sylvanne’s doing everything short of a striptease to get the guy between the sheets,” Derek asserted. “Let the dude have his fun, let him express his love to you, and who knows? Nothing’s written in stone. Sylvanne might come around. She sounds like she’s on the verge of coming around.”

“I just want him to be careful,” Meghan said softly. She had the sudden sensation of longing stirring inside her, like a tendril of new life erupting from an ancient seed. She wanted to nurture and encourage this feeling, to bring it to the light and examine it, but not here, standing before Derek in his shabby living room. “I really have to go.”

“Keep me posted,” Derek said.

“It’s not a joke,” she said. “It’s real.”

“Then I should be jealous of you, and of Thomas. You get to experience reality, I only hear about it second hand.”