The Wolf's Captive (17 page)

“Lovely,” said Count Beltrane. “But really—”

With one swift motion, Lord Cesare pulled on the single tie on Lucia’s side, and her dress fell away. She was naked, laid bare to the gaze of any and all. Count Beltrane sucked in his breath.

“
Lovely
,” he said again.

“Oh, just wait,” Lord Cesare grinned. He made a clicking noise and led Lucia to the edge of the table, which had been positioned in the center of the barge. There was a noticeable lull in the general hum of conversation. They were being watched.

Lucia’s heart beat furiously in her chest. This was what she had wanted. He knew. He knew it would do this to her. She was both terrified and aroused.

“Up,” Lord Cesare said, and patted her ass gently. Lucia obediently clambered up on the table, and stood over the assembled guests, who were now all watching her with interest. She was mortified to see their amused expressions, and her embarrassment only made the muscles in her belly curl tighter. She felt her nipples go hard, and someone laughed.

“Turn around,” Lord Cesare said. “And get on your hands and knees.”

Lucia froze. Surely he knew what view that would give the guests?

“
Now
,” Lord Cesare said, and snapped his fingers. Lucia blinked, and before she knew it, she had turned around and dropped to all fours. She felt the heat of a furious blush spreading across her skin, but the idea of displeasing Lord Cesare—
my master
, she thought,
my Lord
—was terrible. Someone in the crowd clapped.

“Spread your legs.”

Lucia moved first one quivering leg outwards, then the other. She was now completely open, her sex bared for all to see. Totally exposed, except for the mask that covered her face. She felt the fine breeze on her wet flesh, and shivered.

Lord Cesare walked around to her front, and lifted her chin in his hand. He bent down, eyes warm, mouth firm.

“I can see that you like this, Lucia,” he whispered. “Don’t forget your task. Do well for me. Listen for him.”

She nodded, and mercifully he let her head drop down. He ran his hand along her flank as he walked back to face the crowd, letting his hand linger over the soft skin on the backs of her thighs.

“Isn’t she fine?” she heard him say, and he slapped her buttock with an open palm.

Lucia heard Beltrane laugh. How long was she to stay here like this? It was almost unbearable. She remained balanced on the fine edge of humiliation and arousal, driven mad by the knowledge that she could not move, that she could not even let her attention waver…

Conversations had begun to spring back to life all around Lucia’s display table (for that is how she’d come to think of it). This was why she was here. This is why he’d put her here, on display: so that she would become a mere background feature, a piece of decoration, the sort of thing you didn’t even notice while conversing with your peers. So that she could
listen
.

Lucia had begun to separate one conversation from the next, to listen to them separately and all together, ever sifting for voices that she recognized—and she found she did recognize a few, including Vintner Clavel and Gaston Grimaldi—when she heard another set of footsteps approach her table. She longed to turn and look, but she had not been given permission to do so.

Strange, how quickly she’d acclimated to this state of submission.

But Lucia didn’t have time to ponder such a thing. Some unknown man was admiring her.

“New?” she heard the unknown man ask.

“Extremely,” came Lord Cesare’s reply. Lucia felt his hand on her back, and exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath.

“May I?” said the unknown man, and then there was a hand, a strange hand, on the back of her leg. Lucia stiffened. The strange hand trailed up the back of her leg and teased close to her folds, down and up, down and up. “She seems quite tight.”

“Barely broken in.”

Lord Cesare rubbed her back soothingly. The strange hand traveled back up the inside her leg, and this time it didn’t stop, but cupped her sex. “Feel the heat,” the voice murmured, and dipped a finger inside her.

Lucia’s eyes flew open, but Lord Cesare’s hand was there on her back, holding her steady. He wanted this from her. He was showing her off. She felt herself gush into the stranger’s hand at the thought, and her embarrassment again intensified her arousal.

“Incredible,” the stranger said, still moving his finger inside her.

Lucia mewled softly, just enough for Lord Cesare to hear. “Easy, now,” he quietly said to her, and patted her on the back. “Don’t forget your task.”

With great effort, Lucia remembered what her task was. The voice. The man with a lisp. She closed her eyes and opened her mind again to the sounds of the celebration, louder now, as the guests all drank more of the rich amberwine, and did her best to focus while the stranger tested her with another finger.

Lucia panted as she felt her muscles contract in preparation for a climax. She closed her eyes as she tried to listen. There were so many voices!

Vintner Clavel, again…

Roberto Ramora…

Count Beltrane…

Gaston Grimaldi…

“Do you think I might have a proper turn, my Lord?” the stranger asked, his fingers moving inside her. Lucia almost lost it, almost lost her discipline and moved, but right at that moment, she heard it: the lisp.

She jerked her head, eyes wide open. There, from amidst the group with Clavel and Grimaldi, hidden from view, came the lisping voice of the man who had threatened her father.

C
HAPTER 10

“Enough, Diamonte,” Cesare said, swatting the man’s hand away from Lucia and momentarily allowing his irritation to show. Cesare’s excitement at showing Lucia off had quickly begun to give way to an angry sort of jealousy, especially when he began to smell her arousal. “She belongs only to me.”

Diamonte pouted and looked about to protest when Cesare silenced him with a raised hand. Lucia was craning her neck, as if to make out one particular voice among the chorus of conversation.

The voice
, he thought.

“Be gone Diamonte,” he said. “Now.”

Cesare did not have to look to know that the man would flee. He was getting used to people fleeing when he used that tone.

Lucia had not moved from her place, and Cesare did his best to ignore how her iron obedience made him feel. There would be time enough for that later. Instead he bent down to whisper in her ear.

“You heard him—the man from your still?” he said. She nodded. “Where? Tell me where.”

She shook her head, “It’s gone, it was just a moment—”

“Get up.”

She rose unsteadily, and almost made a move to cover herself, as though movement made her newly aware of her nakedness. Cesare quickly helped her into her complicated dress, and, when it was done, he bent down and kissed her fiercely. It seemed the only way to tell her how urgent he felt.

“Go find him,” he said, wrenching himself away. Neither of them could afford to get lost in each other. “Go. I will follow. No one will notice you, but I draw attention everywhere.”

He reached up, and unhooked the leash from her collar. Her look of disappointment when he did so was something he would always remember.

“Go. That is an order,” he said.

For a terrible moment, Lucia seemed so frightened, so uncertain, and all Cesare wanted was to reassure her that she could do this, even in such unfamiliar circumstances, even with all that was at risk. But before he could speak, he watched her expression quicken to one of resolve, determination, and courage.

Cesare’s rational mind knew that he should still be suspicious of Lucia, that nothing was proven, that her innocence was still very much in doubt. But in that moment, no other part of him cared.

“Yes, my Lord,” she whispered, and with a quick touch to his hand, she slipped off into the crowd.

Cesare’s legs felt weak, for some reason. He took a seat on the low table and a proffered glass of amberwine, and grimly decided to count to sixty before he followed her.

Maybe only thirty
, he thought.

He made it to ten.

“My Lord Cesare,” came the familiar greeting. Cesare looked up in alarm—Jovan’s was always a welcome presence, although perhaps less so at this particular moment than at others, but the bureaucrat’s voice was worried. And urgent. And he went unmasked, and wore only an ordinary coat and shirt—he’d obviously just come from his offices.

“Jovan,” Cesare said, rising. “Do I take it I should do my best to appear happy and relaxed while you tell me whatever it is that you’ve come here to tell me?”

“You suppose correctly, my Lord, as usual,” Jovan said, waving a waiter away. “Though I’m afraid my casual dress might have given away the urgency of my message.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve discovered where Vintner Lyselle is being held.”

“And?” Cesare looked for Lucia’s bright red figure, but the barge was already at full capacity, and the place was quickly devolving into an orgiastic mess of drunken revelers and ambitious performers, seemingly all of them coupling, spitting fire, juggling, or otherwise getting in the way.

“Technically the jailer did not lie to you,” Jovan said carefully. “Vintner Lyselle is in the deepest set of cells, below the Duke’s Dungeon.”

Cesare stared at his friend.

“That’s where the condemned are held prior to execution, Jovan.”

Jovan shifted uncomfortably. “Captain Rickle has been recommending such a course of action, yes.”

A distressed popping sound came from the metal goblet that held Cesare’s amberwine. His giant hand was slowly closing into a fist, goblet or no. The rage that he feared could consume him had awakened like a swarm of disturbed bees, and Lucia, the one person who could calm him, was nowhere in sight.

“Explain,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Rickle is presuming guilt. He says the evidence—the letter, and the fact that they cannot find the amberwine in question—is overwhelming.”

“And what do you think?”

“Lyselle claims total innocence and ignorance. Claims he did not even know his debt had been sold. My Lord, the man is not cogent. He keeps asking if they will bring his still to him, since he has ideas for a new blend that he’s sure will please the Duke. He is not always…fully aware of his situation.” Jovan was always delicate.

“An unlikely candidate for the mastermind of an assassination plot, then.”

“Yes.”

“But a pawn?”

Jovan shrugged. They’d both swam in the filthy waters of politics long enough to know the answer to that.

“There is one more thing, my Lord,” Jovan said, and cleared his throat. “Rickle is recommending that
both
executions be carried out post haste.”

The entire world fell away. Cesare saw nothing, heard nothing, but what his friend had said. Slowly he said, “Both?”

“They are assuming Lucia Lyselle’s guilt because of her disappearance,” Jovan said. The old man looked miserable, the weight of responsibility hanging on his aging face. “It is a rush to judgment, my Lord, but one your father appears to be in the mood to indulge. He’s ordered it done if they cannot prove their innocence by the Finale Feast.”

“That’s in two days!” Cesare exploded. Nosy guests looked around only until they saw
who
it was in such a rage, and then they simply studied their drinks.

“That’s why I rushed here,” Jovan explained. “Avignon sent me from the townhouse. They are looking for her, my Lord. Rickle won’t let it go, and if your father knew of your personal interest—”

Cesare stopped him short. “How do
you
know of my personal interest?”

Jovan looked at him and smiled softly. Cesare felt the patience and kindness radiating from his old friend in slow, gentle waves, and it occurred to him that it felt so familiar because Jovan had always been there, and he’d always been kind, and he’d always been patient.

“I’ve known you a long time, Cesare. I know when you love something.”

Cesare wouldn’t have known how to put into words how this made him feel, but he didn’t have the time to ponder it, nor the time to properly thank the only man in the world who had ever seemed to love him like a father, because Jovan had one more thing to tell him.

“And I know what your father does to the things you love,” Jovan said softly.

Cesare turned and ran after Lucia.

~  ~  ~

Cesare’s heart thudded in his chest with painful force, and the pressure in his veins felt like it would kill him if he didn’t let it out in some cataclysmic rage of violence. He had to find Lucia. Not just for her sake, but for the sake of everyone present. The beast was nearly out.

Time spent with her had made it easier, these past few days, but the sudden revelation that she was in very real danger, guilty or no, erased all that progress. He felt as feral and as wild and as dangerous as he had upon first waking in the wilderness, his men dead all around him, his own chest slashed, and with no memory of what had happened.

No. This was actually worse.

A round-cheeked man with a painted face stepped in front of Cesare and blew a ball of fire into the air, expecting some sort of tip or praise. Cesare lifted him out of the way, tossing him toward a group of waiters. The crowd began to part ahead of him, wary, sensing danger and chaos.

There. The other side of the barge, a glimpse of scarlet.

The throng of drunken aristocrats somehow grew thicker nearer his target, but Cesare waded through like a giant forging a snow bank. Those who didn’t move aside in time simply fell in his wake.

Lucia heard him coming.

“What’s wrong?” she said, and placed a cool hand on his rough cheek as he came to an abrupt stop at her side.

Cesare wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, shutting his eyes to the world. He breathed deep, and filled himself with her scent, her warmth. It would have to be enough for now. Slowly he felt the drowning tide recede; he was coming back to himself.