The Flesh and the Devil (66 page)

         
‗There is an alcove at the far end with a couch; if
you wish to spend a little time here-stay as long as you wish, for I promise
you you shall see things here that no other house I know can boast of.‘

         
There was a hint of amusement beneath her smooth tone, but
her eyes met Juana‘s blandly for a moment before she turned in a rustle of
rose-pink skirts.

         
‗Enjoy yourself, my dear. Come and find me when you
have done, if there is time.‘

         
Her voice echoed mockingly down the lamplit gallery as her
footsteps faded, and Juana stood still a moment, bewildered. She took a few
steps after her, then with a defeated shrug turned towards the pictures that
lined the walls. There was no sense of danger in this inviting, airy place; no
dark, frowning panelling, no doors that locked upon people who entered through
them. For weeks, since the night before Bartolomé had died, she had been
plagued by dreams of being trapped in dark places, clawing at doors that would
not open. Now, reassured by her own apparent freedom, she decided to obey her
hostess's strange instructions before she ventured back among the guests, back
into that sickening heat downstairs.

         
Moving to the first picture she recoiled with a gasp,
hesitated, and then looked closer. It was a brilliant example of perverted
skill. Pure filth had been painted so graphically, so lovingly, that she felt
dirtied by gazing at it. With a sound of pure detestation she backed away and
turned to the next. Then another. Then another.

         
Each one was worst than the last, she thought
half-hysterically. What possessed Doña Jerónima, that she should keep such
things in her house? She was backing now, afraid to turn her back on the
paintings; and as she collided with something behind her she screamed.

         
Her cry was choked off by a gloved hand that clamped across
her mouth, and an arm pinioned her against muscular human hardness so quickly
that she had no time to struggle. She twisted her head futilely, striving with
every nerve to call out, but she could not; her hands clawed vainly at the
imprisoning arm, but even as she did so its hold tightened, lifting her
humiliatingly clear of the ground so that she was powerless, her feet kicking,
all her weight borne by the crushing grip round her ribs that threatened to
suffocate her.

         
‗Be still,‘ a voice advised her. ‗You will only
waste your strength and hurt yourself.‘

         
For the space of a heartbeat Juana hung motionless, then
she began to fight like an animal, clawing and kicking in frenzy and trying to
bite the hand across her mouth. The man's arm tightened even more, until she
thought that her bones would crack; all the breath was forced from her lungs,
and with a tormented gasp she hung slackly in his grip.

         
‗You need not be so modest with your husband as with
your aspiring lovers,‘ Felipe Tristan said evenly. ‗I have warrant for
this, more than any other.‘

         
She felt his hand leave her mouth to trace the angle of her
jaw, but she was too spent to cry out. With an enormous effort, she forced out,
‗Why are you here?‘

         
‗I came at your kind hostess‘s instigation. She let
fall that you had not yet chosen a lover, so I am putting in for one. I may
please you as well as the noble ram she had penned here for you.‘

         
The last words meant nothing. Juana retorted breathlessly, ‗As
well as you please your mistress, do you mean? I do not share her taste –‘

         
‗Are you sure? She praises me highly.‘ He sounded
incredibly, outrageously calm. ‗But perhaps you are less willing to be
pleased - or do you favour the popinjay after all? You always had a
predilection for small dark men, did you not? I fear you must make shift
elsewhere for tonight,‘ he continued through her goaded exclamation. ‗He
disapproved so mightily of my forestalling him here that I was something rough
with him; I doubt he will wake within this hour.‘

         
Juana squirmed suddenly, throwing all her weight against
his imprisoning arm and kicking backwards blindly at his legs. It was
unreasoning, a last frantic rebellion against the unemotional mockery in his
voice and her own helpless longing for his touch, but Tristan held her as
easily as he might have held an angry kitten. When he spoke again his tone had
altered, grown harder.

         
‗This stubbornness of yours irks Doña Jerónima,
Juana, and she wants you rid of it along with your supposed chastity - Don
Diego was her choice, but better one who knows you are no virgin. It is poor
policy to cheat too many men.‘

         
‗I - did - not - cheat!‘ Juana started to say, ‗She
knows I am no virgin as well as you,‘ but the iron band round her ribs
tightened so that her voice failed her in a sob of pain.

         
‗You cheated me of a wife,‘ his hand gripped her jaw,
forcing her head back, against his shoulder, arching her throat so that he
could look into her eyes,

         
‗and perhaps a little fortune. You had better not try
to cheat me of this.‘

         
She tried to cry out, but the brand of his scar was against
her lips as his mouth came down on hers, pitiless and ravaging. In spite of
herself her blood quickened as his kiss probed her mouth; as she fought
desperately to quell her own revealing response she did not notice his adroit
fingers at the neck of her gown until the demure silk collar loosened and she
felt the cool slither of kid invading her gown, shocking against the softness
of her breast.

         
‗Felipe, let me go.‘ She spoke unknowingly, almost
feverishly against his lips, shocked beyond measure by the caress of his gloved
hand. It traced the shape of her with an intimate insistence the more lethally
disturbing for being so controlled, and she felt with a sort of wild shame the
instant response of her own body. She could have fought violence, she thought,
but not this subtle, tantalizing provocation that made her shiver and burn by
turns.

         
The arching of her body was not lost upon him, and there
was a strange gleam close to triumph in his eyes as he loosened his hold on her
ribs and let her straining feet find the floor, turning her to face him while
he stripped the gloves from his hands without releasing her, his white teeth
meeting on each fingertip in turn. The gloves were tossed to the floor at her
feet, unheedingly, and then she was caught in his arms.

         
‗This is lawful, remember.‘

         
The whisper came against her throat, but she paid no heed
to the satire in the words as the gown was pulled ruthlessly from her
shoulders, baring her breasts, and he was gripping her so that she could not
hide herself or turn away. She heard herself utter a long sigh, then he stooped
and his mouth moved from her throat to her breast in deliberate possession. She
stood still and unresisting, racked by little shudders of delight at the feel
of his hands across her naked back, bending her to invite him.

         
‗Felipe –‘ she sounded like a troubled child – ‗someone
will come....‘

         
‗No. Why do you think
la viuda
left you here?
This is what she intended for you tonight –‘ the sudden demand of his mouth
made her gasp – ‗only with a different partner.‘ His hand explored the
shape of hip and thigh through her silken skirts, probing and insistent. ‗Besides,
no one will censure a husband who is lying with his own wife.‘

         
‗Are you not content yet?‘ Her eyes were anguished as
she tried to twist away from him. ‗Or do you mean to collect interest on
your debt until Doomsday?‘

         
‗And beyond. Why not?‘ The look on his face was
hidden as he bent his head again, his arms tightening about her.

         
The touch of his tongue was all her awareness and she
moaned, not knowing that her head fell back in helpless abandon, that the
responsive curve of her body was all invitation. There was a tingling in her
flesh as if her senses had been sleeping and were only now wakening into life;
she let him lower her to the floor without protesting and only stretched
beneath him, yielding to the heaviness upon her without knowing what she did.
Her breathing quickened as his hands drove beneath her skirts, sliding up her
slender thighs to thrust impatiently between them. Then the brush of velvet
came against her soft flesh, followed by the hard heat of him, and she felt it
invade her in gout after gout of liquid flame.

         
Her whole body was beating with one vast pulse as she clung
to him, pinned like a frantic bird by the shaft of her own desire, the flames
of it consuming the very core of her being. Something thick and soft, like
strands of silk, lay across her cheek, and she realized dimly that it was a
lock of Tristan‘s long red hair, like a tongue of flame on her pale-gold skin.
Her fingers clawed at his back as his body crushed hers, and then, abruptly,
she was forced beyond pain and beyond thought, into Elysium.

         
‗Felipe, no.‘

         
The protest was a mere whisper, and although Juana's lips
shaped it in genuine pleading, her hands went out to touch the warm skin of
Tristan‘s chest in sensuous delight. In answer his hands cupped her face, the
palms hard against her cheekbones, spread fingertips stroking her loosened
hair, and his lips brushed her mouth deliberately as his body claimed hers
again.

         
‗Juana, yes.‘ He watched the little spasm of shock
take her, dilating her eyes and making her colour fluctuate, and then his eyes
narrowed slightly.

         
‗'Something is wrong - what is it?‘

         
She had remembered the child, but she could not tell him.
They said that childbearing women should not let their husbands touch them if
they wanted to be delivered safely, that much she knew; she might already have
killed his son by her own wantonness. She caught her breath as he moved,
holding her more tightly, and tried to thrust him away.

         
‗I cannot remember when you –‗She strained
unavailingly away from him.

         
‗I must go before someone finds us.‘

         
‗Go? Go where? Back to that woman-pander who tried to
sell you to Ruiz?‘

         
‗You said that before.‘ She paused, staring at him,
startled by the ruthless set of his mouth and the iciness of his eyes. ‗You-you
tried to tell me-‘

         
‗That your beloved Doña Jerónima is a whore and a
bawd - no, keep still - do you know what they say of her here? That if she
cannot betray a maid by trickery she will do it by witchcraft and charge an
even greater fee.‘

         
Juana‘s brain reeled. She had spoken in confusion, hardly
knowing what she said, only that she must be free of his arms before he found
out about the baby. The accusation jarred her.

         
‗You are lying! You say that to discredit her and
make I me leave her protection, so that you - so that –‗'

         
‗Oh, she gives you rare protection. What call you
this?‘ Tristan withdrew from her, sardonically surveying her sprawled limbs. ‗You
forget the lordling with the dented skull who thought he would be lying here in
my place. Can you trust her yet?‘

        
Juana sat up, trying not to let him see her tremble; she
dared not listen, to him or to the doubting voices inside her own head. She had
to trust Doña Jerónima, for there was no alternative; now that Tristan's
revenge was slaked, there was nothing between them except her own absurd,
unwanted love.

         
‗More than you! I thank you for your care of me –‘
her voice was harsh –

         
‗but I trust you less than any creature living-I
remember too well your past kindnesses to me.‘

         
Pain welled up in her as she spoke and she would have
turned her head away, but Tristan caught her chin and forced her to face him.
He was staring down at her, poised alertly with his face as still as sculptured
stone, his green eyes winter-pale.

         
‗Would you believe a thing I told you upon oath?‘

         
She hesitated, startled by a quality in his tone that she
did not recognize, and for a moment she looked at him wonderingly. Then her
eyes hardened and she shook her head.

         
‗Not if the thing I must believe would profit you.
You told me your creed once, do you remember? ‗I am a mercenary, and I
help myself.‘ You should offer your oaths to the Condesa Elena - or does she
know you too well to believe them, either?‘

         
His hand fell slowly, and she took courage now that he was
no longer touching her.

         
‗Besides, there is little you could swear by if you
risked an oath,‘ she continued. ‗You scorn the Church: your honour was
forfeit in that compact of ours when you gave it for mine, and a poor, ragged,
bloodstained thing it is, as mine is now.‘

         
He did not answer, but his stillness frightened her.

         
With an effort that was like driving a knife into her own
flesh she said, ‗Let us part here - why not? There is no more strength in
the bond that ties us together, now that the Duque‘s death is known and not
regarded.‘