The Wolf's Captive (15 page)

She was right about the dress: it wasn’t really a dress, but more of a way of highlighting what was under the dress. It had somehow been tailored to cling specifically to Lucia’s curves, in a strange, greenish shade of blue. It slid against her skin in a way that made her want to use her body, and when she looked down she saw that her hardened nipples were as clear as day through the thin material.

She prayed she wouldn’t see any servants on the way down.

In fact, she didn’t see anyone. She wandered in and out of rooms on the first floor, her bare feet—shoes hadn’t been provided—padding on the cold stone floor, until she chanced upon an inner courtyard, open to the bright blue sky above. There Lord Cesare sat at a table with an opulent spread. He was drinking a glass of amberwine.

“So good of you to join me,” he said dryly.

“You might have provided directions,” Lucia countered.

This time Lord Cesare raised an eyebrow. Lucia froze. She’d seen him and immediately all of her carefully thought out and cultivated defenses—everything she’d rehearsed in those early morning hours—all of it was forgotten.

You must remember to control yourself, Lucia
, her grandmother’s voice echoed in her mind. Lucia swallowed, and did her best to sit gracefully.

Lord Cesare bit in to a piece of sliced pear, and settled into a pointed sprawl. His body seemed relaxed in that powerful, predatory sense, but his dark eyes were tense.

“I didn’t tell you to sit,” he said.

She recognized that tone. It made her breath come faster. “No, you did not, my Lord. Would you like me to stand?”

Lord Cesare said nothing. Lucia took his point, and stood. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from shaking, acutely aware of the way her breasts strained against her thin slip of a dress.

“Come stand by me,” he said.

His voice had softened. Somehow that made it more difficult. She knew how to respond to the hard, animal Lord Cesare, and keep herself hidden. But this man, who placed a gentle hand on her hip, who pulled her close and pressed his face to her belly? This man was dangerous.
Keep control
, she repeated. She stood there for several timeless seconds, her heart thudding in her chest, and eventually she couldn’t help herself: she threaded her fingers through his thick, black hair. It felt like silk, as fine as her sheets.

When he pulled away, he wouldn’t look at her. He only pointed to the chair across from him.

A meal with Lord Cesare
, Lucia thought as she sat down. The great man poured another glass of amberwine, and gestured to the spread before her. The only food item she was sure she recognized was bread. And suddenly it struck her:
I am having a meal with Lord Cesare Lupin
.

It was terrifying.

Lucia was used to taking her meals standing at the worktable in her father’s still, or in five minute breaks between chores. Occasionally she’d sit down with Remy, but she was sure she hadn’t learned proper etiquette from a street boy. She looked at the bewildering display of glittering cutlery spread out on either side of her plate like great metal wings, and realized that here was yet another opportunity to make a fool of herself, to reveal herself as an undesirable woman, the kind that someone like Lord Cesare would want nothing to do with.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

“Of course,” she smiled quickly. “I just can’t decide what to have first.”

Lord Cesare studied her. He looked at her place setting. He looked at the table. Then he reached over and plucked some sort of dumpling off a tray and popped it into his mouth.

“I hope you’ll accommodate my manners,” he said. “I could never bother with all these contraptions. It just gets in the way of the food.”

Lucia giggled. She knew she’d been found out, but her relief at his kindness was exhilarating. She manhandled a chicken leg and tore the meat from the bone. “I feel the same way about those complicated dresses you had put in my closet.”

Lord Cesare laughed into his amberwine.

“Look what you did,” he said, looking down at his stained coat.

“If you were a proper Lord, you’d be quaffing that amberwine all over.”

He looked at her with that same expression of surprise, now tinged with something else, something she couldn’t quite place. Lucia squirmed a bit in her seat. She honestly didn’t know what would come next.

“You said last night that you’d overheard unknown men speaking with your father about his business, correct?” Lord Cesare said suddenly.

The shift was as disorienting as anything else that had happened in the past few days, and Lucia didn’t realize how much she’d craved the levity of the last few minutes until it was over. It had been a welcome reprieve from the stress of her situation.

“Yes,” she said, and tried not to think too hard about the rest of the previous night’s events. She’d already pictured herself laid out for him on the table. She blamed the dress, and the way it felt on her bare skin.

“Would you recognize the voices?”

“I think so.”

He leaned forward in his chair, resting his giant hands flat on the table between them. Lucia watched them grip the tablecloth. His angular face loomed, and a slight scar crinkled his furrowed brow. “Would you recognize the voices?” he asked again.

“Yes, I think I could,” she said. She thought back on it now; one of the men had had a slight lisp. “I think I could if it were important.”

“It’s extremely important, Lucia. There are very few men in this city who could afford to buy your father’s debt and the distilling license that goes with it, and all of them will be in the same place tonight.”

Lucia snapped to attention. “My father’s arrest
is
because of his debt, then?”

Lord Cesare did not answer. He poured them both a glass of amberwine instead. Lucia ached to press him for whatever information he might have about her father, but she was beginning to recognize the mercurial moods of Lord Cesare Lupin, and something told her that would not be wise at this juncture. He seemed to be following through with his promise to help her. That should be enough. Lucia breathed deep, and took another tack.

She said, “Tonight is the Dance of Lights, is it not? But the entire city will be there.”

Lord Cesare smiled. “Not everyone will be on the barges, Lucia.”

Lucia winced. No one
she
knew would be on the dazzling barges that would dance in the harbor like firebugs, just as no one she knew had been in the amphitheater.

And now Lord Cesare’s smile turned wolfish. “Everyone of importance will be on the Severille barge,” he said. “As will I, as a member of the Severille, and as a nobleman. And as will you, as my slave.”

A hot flush raced up Lucia’s neck to her cheeks, and a low fire sparked in her belly. She looked down at her plate until Lord Cesare reached across and lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his stare.

“You will come, you will obey, and you will
listen
,” he said.

~  ~  ~

Lucia spent the rest of the afternoon willing the sun to set. It was judged too dangerous to let her roam around the first floor, as she had the previous night, in case the hated Captain Rickle returned, and Avignon was wary of her apparently reckless tendency to open windows. Lucia passed several idle hours reading fitfully from a romantic novel Avignon had smuggled to her from the library, and occasionally trying to teach herself to play a viola that she’d found lying around. Avignon was generally too polite to wince.

Every time she heard a creak or a servant’s step, she’d look up, perhaps push her chest out. It was never Lord Cesare.

The last time Avignon did not hide his smile. “I told you, Miss Lyselle, my Lord Cesare has business elsewhere this afternoon.”

She reddened. Lord Cesare held her body captive; there was something undignified about the idea that he held her attention, too, and that Avignon could so easily see it. Lucia thought about her long-dead grandmother and the importance of self-control, and then about her own promise to herself, but even those old, familiar thoughts were no match for her anticipation of the Dance of Lights.

She was to be his slave. In public. Just as she’d seen on that first night, ages ago now, in the city streets on the way to the Dance of the Seasons. She couldn’t quite believe it.

At last the shadows began to lengthen, and the streets below grew quiet as the city retreated to prepare for the next night of Bacchanal. Lucia looked up from her book to find that Avignon had disappeared for his own preparations. She could hardly sit still. And all she could think about was Lord Cesare.

It was like every moment away from his body stretched her faculties further, thinned her out, made her more scatterbrained. She couldn’t escape the idea that she was beginning to need him, the way some poor men needed amberwine.

Finally Avignon returned, bearing a discreetly tied parcel. He bowed. “Miss Lyselle, these are for tonight. You are to dress yourself and come down to the hall.”

Lucia waited with what she hoped was demure patience until the door clicked closed. Then she tore at the parcel in a frenzy.

First was the mask. It was finer than any mask she’d seen up close, although that wasn’t hard. It was scarlet red, adorned with what looked like real rubies and the dyed feathers of some fine bird. It was cut asymmetrically, so that it would cover her eyes, nose, and the left side of her face entirely, leaving only her mouth and one cheek exposed. It was carefully sculpted to mimic the contours of what looked like a very beautiful face. She twisted her hair into a simple knot held tight with the scarlet hairpins he’d provided, and tried the mask on.

It fit perfectly.

So did the dress, although it was another thing that could barely be called a dress. It was made of gossamer thin layers of some fine weave, layers so thin that a single one was completely transparent. It took her a moment to figure out how to put it on, and in the end she wasn’t sure she actually had it right. It wrapped around her body, over just her right shoulder, continuing the asymmetry of the mask, and where the edges met it was held together by a single, fragile-looking tie.

There were shoes. They were the same shade of scarlet, and they propped her heels up higher than Lucia thought they were meant to go. She practiced walking until she felt she’d gotten the hang of it, and then she took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror.

One could see the hints of her naked body underneath her dress. It looked like she was nude until one looked closely, and then one couldn’t be sure what they saw: a girl or a gossamer dress. It was scandalous. It might even be obscene.

He meant for her to go out in public like this.

As his slave.

Lucia shuddered. She was practically dizzy from anticipation, from want. From Lord Cesare.

The walk down the grand, sweeping stairs to the hall was torturous. By the time she grew confident enough in her steps to look up, she was already descending. Lord Cesare stood at the bottom, waiting for her. Staring at her. He wore the usual black leathers of the Severille, a red band wrapped around one thick wrist, his broad shoulders bare, his muscular arms rippling in the dim candlelight. His chest gleamed at the top of his vest, and Lucia glimpsed his scar from where she tottered on the stairs, suddenly unsteady on her heels. It called to her.

“Lucia,” Lord Cesare said. “Come here.” And he pulled taut the length of something red in his hands.

Lucia’s mind careened about wildly, even as her feet seemed to move on their own accord. It was. It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else.

A leash.

Speechless, she walked toward him, her new heels echoing off the stone floor of the hall. She was frightened, the way anyone would be frightened of something new and unknown, and excited in the same way, but mostly she marveled at the way she looked forward to the moment when Lord Cesare would place the collar and leash around her neck. She wanted to see the outward manifestation of her situation. She wanted to know that she belonged to him, that whatever happened this evening would be because he willed it—Lucia, who had always been known as a strong-willed, independent, stubborn girl, was
grateful
for this. It didn’t feel weak. It felt strong.

She craved Lord Cesare in a way that she hadn’t known was possible. And, as she stood before him, in the clothing he’d told her to wear, all she could think was:
If I please him, he will take me. Again and again, he will take me.

This is stronger than any amberwine
, she thought.
This is dangerous
.

But it was too late for second thoughts, even if she’d been allowed to have them. Lord Cesare reached down and cradled the back of her bare neck in his huge hand. He took the leather lead and began to slowly drag it along her exposed skin, down her neck, into the valley between her breasts, straining at the delicate material of her dress.

“You know what this is?” he said.

She swallowed. “Yes, my Lord.”

“Remember your place. You are my slave. No one, not even Rickle, will expect to find you as a masked slave on the Severille barge.”

His grip tightened. Lucia looked at the ground. She wished he’d take her right there on the stone floor and give her some relief.

Instead he forced her head down, baring her neck to him. She gasped and stumbled forward. In a moment he had the collar around her neck, and she heard the decisive
snap
of a metal clasp: she was collared.

“Stand up straight,” he commanded.

She did. Her breasts, thrust forward for his inspection, reminded her that she was virtually naked. A full-body quiver ran through her, and she strained to keep her attention focused forward.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, and before she could speak, he kissed her.

It was worse than the last time. Her mind ceased to function entirely when he kissed her, all of her strength gone, surrendered to him. It was the most dangerous time, when she was most vulnerable, and increasingly incapable of maintaining her ever-weakening defenses. It would be easier if he wouldn’t kiss her, if he would simply lay claim to the rest of her body instead, but she was not even strong enough to wish for that.