Raine: The Lords of Satyr (11 page)

J
ordan came awake in an instant. Her eyes flew open, alert. The man from last night was seated across from her, staring.

She was slumped in the corner of an expensive leather rocking chair. No. From the creaky lurching of the button-tufted seat, she deduced she was in some sort of conveyance. A carriage. For the moment, she couldn’t manage to rouse any interest in inquiring as to where they were going.

Raine opened a silver flask engraved with his initials and handed it to her. “Here. Drink.”

When she reached for it, her bodice slipped and fell forward. She clutched it to her bosom with one hand, barely keeping herself decent.

“I loosened it,” Raine informed her without apology.

“Fortunately for you, I’m too tired to care.” With her free hand, Jordan took the flask from him and drank. It held liquor. Wine. She swallowed several long draughts of it, then wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. She didn’t cough or sputter as a lady unaccustomed to spirits might have done.

Her companion noticed. But he was more concerned with other matters at the moment. While the woman seated across from him had slept he’d sensed magic accumulate around her. ElseWorld magic. It had wafted into the carriage, startling him with its strength. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who’d located this second Faerie daughter. Feydon’s relatives had ferreted her out as well.

Jordan pushed damp wisps of hair from her forehead with a shaking hand. Her temples throbbed. She felt dreadful. She took another swig from the flask and felt her bodice gap away from her.

“Tighten this damn thing,” she told him, presenting him with her back. “Your free peep show is at an end. I’m chilly.”

“Then take my coat,” he said, removing it and settling it around her shoulders.

Without thanking him, she clutched it together at the front, snuggling into his residual warmth. Heaving a great sigh, she let her worries swamp her.

The dove from her dream—it had represented her mother. Celia Cietta was dead. It seemed impossible. She’d been so vivacious in life.

She drew another long draft from the flask.

Wordlessly, Raine retrieved it from her and handed her a handkerchief in its stead. She took it and touched it to her cheek, only then realizing she was crying.

The four blue stockings would come next, she knew, and then finally the snake. A shiny coal-black viper, it would hypnotize her, not with its eyes but with its voice. Even as she fell under its spell, she knew she would try to avoid it. For once it had lulled her, it would strike.

She didn’t bother trying to puzzle these dreams out now. It was impossible to do so, as she knew from past experience. Their meanings would reveal themselves as time passed, as always. There was no way to stop them from coming to fruition. She could only wait, at their mercy.

She glanced at Raine and saw he was still studying her. Her eyes ducked away to the handkerchief her fingers were busily crumpling and re-ironing. “Stop looking at me as though I were a bug on a pin.”

His eyes didn’t waver.

She rolled her shoulders, trying to shake off her mood. “I’m sorry. I’m always grumpy when I awaken to find myself in a strange carriage with a gentleman I’ve known less than a day. How long was I—?”

“Almost four hours.”

Four hours!

“You were dreaming,” he said.

She stilled. “Oh?”

“You talk in your sleep.”

“Oh.” This was unwelcome news. “What did I say precisely?”

“Don’t you remember?” He posed the question in the ElseWorld tongue—the language she had mumbled off and on during her restless slumber.

She cocked her head, trying to place a fleeting memory his words evoked. But the recollection was slippery and she couldn’t hold on to it long enough to analyze it.

“Whatever foreign gibberish you’re speaking, I don’t understand it,” she told him.

“That’s interesting since it’s the language you spoke in your dreams. Don’t you recall anything of it?”

Yes, she recalled her dreams all too well, though not the language he referred to. She’d seen the snowy white bird again. Only the bird hadn’t been a bird. It had been her mother. Her chest constricted and her breath grew labored. She pressed a hand to the arch of her rib cage just below her breasts.

“That corset comes off once and for all. Now,” he said, reaching for her.

She slapped at his hands. “No, it’s already so loose it’s falling off. I’m fine.”

He sat back, frowning. “Have it your way. But if you faint again, expect to wake up with it missing and tossed from the carriage into the muddy lane.”

“How ferocious of you,” she said snidely. She sniffled into the fine lawn handkerchief, forcing her breath to regulate itself.

“That woman back there in that house,” she said, breaking the silence after a few moments. “Was she truly d-dead?”

He nodded.

Jordan’s cheeks singed. “Well, don’t make me pull every detail from you with tweezers. What did the constable say happened to her?”

“Since you ask so nicely…He informed me that suicide hasn’t been ruled out. According to the servants, the signora was driven to melancholy at times.”

Yes, her mother had been high strung, her moods rising and dipping without rhyme or reason, Jordan knew.

“But I thought he said she’d been murdered.”

Raine inclined his head. “That’s the constable’s theory. There was a son, as he mentioned. It was in his bedchamber that Signora Cietta lay. The servants have reported that the son and mother fought the day before her death and now he can’t be located. Thus the foundation for the constable’s suspicions in his direction.”

She
was the prime suspect in her mother’s murder!? Jordan straightened and glanced out the small curtained window, feeling a sudden urge to flee the confines of the carriage. To escape his probing eyes and the suspicions of others. To hide.

“Where are we?” she suddenly thought to inquire.

“On the outskirts of Padua. I’m taking you to my home in Tuscany.”

A feeling of entrapment welled in her, turning her feisty. “You made that decision without consulting me?”

He spread his hands. “After you fainted, my options seemed limited. It was time I returned home. Yet you showed no signs of recovering. What was I to do? Leave you to the constable? Drive you back to the quay where we met last night and deposit you there instead, unconscious and at the mercy of desperate and criminal elements?”

She glared at him, annoyed that she was unable to find a hole in his argument.

“What’s the harm in coming with me for a while?” he asked. “If you find my company dismal, I assure you there are others dwelling on the Satyr Estate who are less so. My two brothers live nearby. One is married, with an infant son, a wife, and her nearly grown sister. You’ll have their companionship as well as every comfort a lady could want.”

“I haven’t lived the life of a lady, as I told you. You don’t know me. And I’m not certain I want you to. Living in close quarters will necessitate constant contact.”

“I’m a private person myself. We don’t have to share all of ourselves with one another. Only the parts we wish to.”

She rubbed her forehead. “I can’t simply disappear.”

“Why not? Who in Venice would miss you?”

Who indeed. She no longer had her mother to consider. If she went missing, only Salerno would care.

But if she never returned to Venice, her mother’s death might go unsolved. Unavenged. And she would forfeit the right to the Cietta fortune. Her cousin, another son of the Cietta family she’d never met, would inherit.

She sighed wearily. “Do you think your father could have done it? Murdered that woman. If it turns out she was murdered, I mean.”

Raine considered the suggestion. “Doubtful. He wasn’t particularly driven to the sort of passions that might lead one to commit murder.”

“Apparently he had some passionate impulses if he was driven to Signora Cietta’s bed as your mother suspects.”

“He goes from bed to bed only in an attempt to prove his virility to the world,” Raine told her without inflection. “He cannot accept that he is unable to sire children.”

Her brows rose in surprise. “But—”

“He wasn’t my father,” Raine said, anticipating her question. “Though he is my mother’s husband, Roberto Altore is no relation of mine. I’m Lord Satyr’s bastard. The very day my mother confessed that she had lain with Satyr to sire a son, Altore sent me to Tuscany and left my mother’s bed forever.”

“I see.” Jordan studied the stark line of his profile as he twitched the drape at the window aside to gaze outside.

“Did you tell your mother what happened back there?” She waved a hand indicating the entirety of Venice, which dwindled in the distance behind them, having just recalled the mission the man across from her had been on at her mother’s house.

Raine let the curtain drop. “I dispatched a message to her informing her of what transpired this morning. I assured her she has nothing to fear from the lovely Signora Cietta any longer.”

Her thoughts spun in a thousand directions, all of them upsetting. Her temples pounded more violently and she pressed at them.

“Are you all right?” Raine asked.

No she wasn’t all right. Her mother was dead. It was possible she’d been murdered. And Jordan was the prime suspect. There was no one to stand between her and Salerno now. God, had
he
killed her mother?

What would happen if she were to go back and tell the constable to direct his suspicions toward the surgeon? Would he listen? No. Better to send an anonymous letter to him containing her suspicions instead.

Her eyes flicked to Raine, noting again how handsome he was. She could go with him. Live as his consort until he tired of her. The world outside need never know that she and Jordan Cietta—son of the late Signore Cosimo Cietta and heir to a vast fortune—were one in the same. Only she, her mother, and Salerno were privy to that damning secret. And now only she and Salerno. Would he search for her? If she continued on to Tuscany, the chances of his finding her would diminish.

This man was offering to take her to his home, days away from Venice. To the country, where no one knew her or would think to look for her. Where she could live as a woman. His woman. Where she could lie with him among fresh sheets as she had last night. It would be sweet.

Of course it wouldn’t last. He would tire of her at some point and choose someone else to warm his bed, just as the parade of gentlemen over the years had always eventually tired of her mother. Celia’s suitors never supplied a reason for their defections. Men simply seemed to always to be in search of a female body that was new to them.

It was likely Raine would turn her out when he discovered the truth of her body’s construction. Even so, she would manage. She might even find another man, who would disregard her strangeness and come to care for her just as she was. Her mother had once said that the contadini—farmers and other country-dwellers—were less fastidious regarding what was under their lover’s skirts than citidini—gentlemen of pomp and status who dwelled in the cities.

Continuing on in this carriage would mean she could continue to wear dresses, petticoats, corsets, and silly hats. She could live every aspect of her life as a female as she’d once only dreamed of doing. At least until life—or death—caught up to her.

She took a calming breath. “All right,” she agreed at last. “I’ll go with you to Tuscany. But only on the understanding I’m free to leave at any time.”

“But of course,” her companion agreed easily.

Why was it she had the feeling he wasn’t being altogether genuine?

Satyr Estate, Tuscany, Italy
September 1823

R
aine’s home was like him, Jordan decided upon seeing it in the distance ahead from the carriage window. From the exterior, it appeared as a collection of severe but stately gothic towers with sharply pointed spires, all carved of brooding, gray stone. Relieved only by the occasional window or cluster of columns, it stood strong, rigid, and remote from the land surrounding it.

A great spiked fence built of tightly spaced vertical rails enclosed it within the grounds, lending it a prickly and unwelcoming air. Past a pair of iron gates that bore the insignia “SV” in ornate gold lettering, a curving path led her conveyance toward it through manicured lawns, clipped hedges, and cloistered gardens so prim and restrained they would have suited a monastery. Even the poplars and elms marched in neat columns, each one properly pruned. Here, all of nature was confined and controlled as though its master feared were one leaf to wander or one weed to rear its head, all hell might break loose. She longed to throw wildflower seeds to the wind, just to see Raine’s reaction when they bloomed willy-nilly come spring. But would she be here to see it?

The carriage drew up in a circular courtyard carpeted with smooth cobblestones that spoked outward from a central fountain. The bumpy expanse met the base of the front wall of the house at right angles, with nary a shrub to relieve their meeting. The stones were bounded on two other sides by high walls unrelieved by the crawl of ivy and by wrought iron gates on the more distant fourth side through which she’d just entered.

She opened the door of her conveyance just as Raine drew up alongside. He’d passed most of the journey on horseback, so she’d been largely left alone with her thoughts. She was eager to be free of them and the carriage, and to be engaged by new sights and sounds.

Almost immediately, Raine was at the door to assist her in alighting. He offered his hand in a courtly gesture that never failed to delight her.

Stepping down, she nearly tripped on her skirts. Unaccustomed to them, she forgot she no longer moved within the freedom of trousers as she once had. Fortunately, Raine was there to catch her.

“Good Lord!” she said, peering over his shoulder. “What is that?”

He let her go once she found her footing, but she’d felt him cringe from her question. Apparently, he’d expected it.

She headed toward the object of her dismay—a fantastic fountain at the edge of the courtyard. At its center rose a larger-than-life statue she recognized as Bacchus, the mythological god of wine.

His wild hair was wreathed with a crown of grapevines and his expression was carnal, almost demonic, as he gazed down at her. A bevy of lithe female attendants carved from fine-veined Carrera marble fawned on him, offering food, wine, and their bodies. Three of them proffered goblets from which sparkling water sprayed and splashed, cascading to bathe their feet in a shallow pool.

In one bold hand Bacchus held the weight of the nearest nymph’s naked breast, the tip of his thumb brushing her nipple. With the other hand he carelessly fondled the rump of another such attendant, who in turn coyly cupped his plump scrotum. Just above her hand, the wine god’s enormous cock rose at a lusty angle, startling in its size and splendor.

“Goodness,” Jordan said. All in all, it was a shocking departure from the austerity she’d encountered so far.

“It was here when I inherited the home,” Raine told her stiffly. Heat singed the ridges of his high cheekbones. She smiled at how defensive he sounded but sensed now wasn’t the time to tease.

“This isn’t a home. It’s a castle,” she informed him in return.

Along the six-day trip, which had included the difficult pass through Bologna, they’d been forced to quarter overnight at numerous inns. In each, Raine had purchased separate rooms for her, as well as books and needlework to keep her occupied. It was considerate of him. And she’d adored each of these tokens, simply because they reinforced the fact that he considered her female.

He had visited her room each night after the evening meal and had taken her there in her assigned bed in a quick encounter. She’d greeted him each time with her phallus already beribboned, trussed, and safely out of sight within her chemise. He’d stuck to the rules she’d set back in Venice, taking her woman’s passage from behind, and had left her after they’d both achieved satisfaction only once.

By day he’d ridden alongside the carriage through sun and rain and had kept himself from her, not even so much as kissing her. But she’d seen the bulge in his trousers from time to time and known he wanted her. Why he hadn’t acted on his desire more frequently, she wasn’t sure. She’d made it obvious she was amenable to anything—within certain constraints. However he’d found a dozen ways to evade her attentions. Now that they had arrived at his estate, she had him.

Without awaiting an invitation, she started up the wide set of stairs leading to the two-story gabled entrance to his home. A starched servant opened the high, arched door for her and she crossed the threshold.

Inside, a spectacular marble and gilt staircase greeted her, spiraling up the first two stories of the main tower. The vestibule and front salon were studies of the austere and the opulent, though she scarcely had time to register the elegant frescoes, coffered ceilings, sweeping Persian carpets, or rich tapestries, for he ushered her upstairs with a haste that widened his servants’ eyes.

At last, she thought. He would take her into his rooms and make long, leisurely love to her. He was obviously anxious. So was she.

As she’d anticipated, he quickly saw her to a bedchamber. It had been aired and made ready for her use, for he’d sent word ahead. “Will it do?” he asked once they were inside.

She spun in a circle that swirled her skirts. The room was done in muted tones of fern and peach with a simple leafy garland design painted along its borders. A swath of gauzy netting swooped from a central ring above the bed in four directions to wind around each tall mahogany bedpost until its ends dusted the floor. A writing desk, dressing table, trunk, couch, two armoires, chairs, and several flower-filled urns rounded out the room’s contents.

“Will it do?” she echoed in amazement. After having spent nineteen years living amid the throngs of sculpted nymphs and sprites her mother had so adored, she was delighted with the room’s tasteful restraint. “Have you lost your wits? Of course it will. This is easily twice the size of my—” She’d been going to say—the bedchamber she’d had in her mother’s home in Venice. But she stopped herself and stopped her swirling.

“I’m glad it meets with your approval,” said Raine. “Dinner is at seven. Please amuse yourself as you wish until then.” With that, he exited into an adjoining room, shutting the door between them with a whoosh of finality.

It was obvious he wanted to be alone. But Jordan was tired of being left to her melancholy introspection. She didn’t want to dwell on her mother’s death tonight. She needed company. Needed his body against her, making her forget.

Testing his limits, she wandered to the door and opened it just a bit. Peering inside, her eyes found him.

His gaze shot to her, and he halted in the process of removing his shirt, with his arms crossed at his waist and the tails of the fabric bunched in each hand.

“That door was closed for a reason,” he told her.

Ignoring his pointed lack of invitation, she wandered inside, sat on his bed, and made herself comfortable among his pillows. “Don’t mind me. Please continue.”

His hands dropped to his sides and he scowled. “Did you require something?”

“I require the sight of more skin. Pray, do continue disrobing.”

“I’m not a carnival act performing for your amusement,” he told her.

“No.” She eased from the bed and went to him. “No. You’re a beautiful man. And I want to see more of you.” She kissed the skin visible at the open V of his shirt’s partially unfastened neckline. “To taste more of you.”

“To touch you.” Her arms slid under the fabric of his shirt to encircle his waist.

“To engage in sexual congress with you in that big, lovely bed of yours.”

Between them, she found the strangled knot his cock had become under the fabric of his trousers. “To feel this part of you come inside me as you did last night. And all the nights before.” Her gentle palm shaped him and her voice lowered, turning sultry. “Remember?”

Oh, he remembered all right. Raine, who was notorious for fending off unwelcome advances and conversation, was struck dumb with the rabid desire to grab her to him and fuck her senseless. His hands went to her waist. He could flip up her skirts so easily. Lower his trousers just enough. Lift her just so. And be inside her in seconds.

Though he’d taken separate lodgings for them each night of their travels, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from going to her room after supper. Night after night, he’d taken her under him in the same way they’d mated in Venice. But he prided himself that he’d always managed to leave her afterward and had done so if only to prove to himself that he could.

Yet after he’d left her bed the last night of their journey, he’d still been so needy that he’d gone back to his own room and conjured Shimmerskins. He’d fucked them until he was exhausted to keep himself from returning to her again.

Moonful would arrive tonight, and tension was coiling tighter in his gut as dusk approached. As the orb’s light increased so would his desperation to join his body to hers.

He smoothed a hand over her hair, brooding. He didn’t know how to stop his cock from responding to her. To keep from needing her. Wanting her was one thing. Needing her was unacceptable. He’d promised himself he’d ration his time with her when they arrived here. That he’d continue to mate her only once a night.

Her thumb found the notch in the underside of his crown.

Well, maybe twice, he thought. No—once, damn it all. What was wrong with him? When had he grown so weak?

Normally he could restrain himself from fucking even Shimmerskins for days. Weeks. It was only this damned approach of Moonful. He would gladly bespell her and take her to the glen with him tonight to experience the Calling if only he could be certain he could trust himself to rein in his childseed. It galled him to admit that he couldn’t. Once he’d buried his cock in her, he feared his fertile seed would gush forth unchecked like a swollen river bursting through a dam. Yes, taking her to the glen tonight would be a mistake. But he was tempted.

Ignoring his glower, Jordan sank to the floor before him in a pool of frothy petticoats and skirts. Delving into the front of his trousers she took the hard textured column of him between her seductive hands. Her breath came as a puff of air on his shaft. Then came her tongue, an exquisite lick of torture.

His hand fisted in her hair, intending to push her away. Instead, his palm moved with a will of its own, curving to cup the back of her skull and hold her. Coal black lashes shadowed the silver of his eyes, watching those gorgeous lips of hers work their wiles on him. Oh, sweet relief!

“Ah, Jordan,” he murmured. “This has got to stop. I didn’t bring you here for this. Or at least, not yet. Not today. Not so often.”

She pulled back from his cock, her lips wet and puffy from sucking at him. Her fist still stroked him, slicking the moisture she’d left behind and mimicking the motion of a mouth. Her eyes flirted, teased. “No? You want me to stop? You’d rather join me on the bed perhaps?”

She stood, draping herself against him, but not so tightly that he might discern her body’s secrets. Putting her arms around his neck she lifted her lips to kiss him.

His broad hands rose to her waist, holding her. It occurred to him that she felt surprisingly right against him. His body felt more alive, his mind clearer, and his spirit happier when she was near. The realization struck a strange sort of fear in him.

Before he’d married so disastrously he’d fucked hundreds of Human women. Whores, courtesans, peasants. It seemed there were legions of them, all eager to bed his brothers and him so that they might boast of it to their friends. But no one had ever felt so right in his arms. Not even his former wife.

He clenched his jaw and turned away from her to fold his trousers shut. “Yes, I want you to stop. No, I don’t want to join you on the bed. Not now. I have work to do.”

She angled her head, intrigued. “What work?”

He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it into disarray, and then smoothed it into its customary design. Any other woman would have thrown a tantrum at his rebuff. But not her, apparently. No one spoke to him as she did. No one teased him or pushed him into doing things he’d rather not. Others found him unapproachable, and he appreciated them keeping their distance. Why didn’t she act like everyone else around him?

“I’ve been away for two weeks,” he told her in a flat voice. “I have duties in the family vineyard. The grapes are ripening. The vines must be inspected and decisions made regarding the order in which the various plots will be harvested. The list goes on.”

Her face lit up. “It sounds fascinating. I’ll come along.”