Borne in Blood (3 page)
Authors: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Horror, #Occult & Supernatural, #Guardian and Ward, #Vampires, #Nobility, #blood, #Paramours, #Switzerland
Skillfully, unhurriedly, he eased her out of the jacket, setting it on the dresser between the closet and the bed; next he unfastened the lacing at the back of the high bodice of her round-dress; he worked the shoulders down her arms and was left with the camisole to unbutton. “If you will stand, I’ll remove the dress and shirt now.”
Before she did, she touched his face, still not looking directly at him. She quivered at his touch as he unfastened the buttons. Clad only in her undergarments she accepted her robe without any hesitation, snuggling into its deep folds with every sign of relief. “I don’t want you to be cold,” she said, leaning back onto the exposed sheets. “Come lie next to me. Here. You’ll be warm.”
“I will, but not for fear of cold,” he said, kneeling beside the bed in order to slide the robe open so that he could reach her garters and lower her stockings before removing her kid-skin house-shoes.
“You have the most wonderful touch,” she murmured as his hands moved deliciously over her legs. Although it was cold, she didn’t mind it; his attentions more than made up for the momentary chill.
“And you have the most wonderful skin,” he countered, as he dropped her shoes to the floor, and then finished sliding off her stockings. He bent and kissed the arches of her feet, then moved up onto the bed and resumed his task of loosening her stays, allowing himself to be enveloped in the folds of her robe as he did.
She sighed, contentment and regret in the sound. “I wish I could …” Words faded as she felt his small hands on her breasts. She reached languorously to embrace him, her eyes dreamy, her breathing slow and deep. This was what she needed, she realized, and returned his kisses with her own, feeling her ardor stir and commence to unfurl within her flesh. “Oh, yes. Do that again.”
He complied, taking longer than usual in order to intensify her sensations. When her nipples swelled against his palms, he leaned down and used his lips instead of his fingers to excite her. “Tell me what you like,” he said softly.
“You know what I like,” she said, holding him less tightly in order to give him more access to her body. “Don’t make me choose, just do what you know I like.”
He hesitated a brief moment, then whispered, “If anything displeases you, tell me.”
“You have never displeased me, not in bed.” She ran her fingers through the short, loose waves of his dark hair. “Not once.”
He fingered the top of her hip, tracing the line of her body along her abdomen toward the deep folds between her legs. He parted the delicate tissues and sought out the small, hidden bud that responded to every nuance of passion. Many of the women he had known over the centuries had taken great pleasure in having that knot worked with his tongue, but Hero did not; she preferred what his fingers could do, so he continued to nuzzle her breasts while his hand awakened her desire to a state of rapture. She hovered on the brink of release while he moved to her neck. Now her breath quickened and shivers of ecstasy ran through her; she sank her fingers into his hair. As the first paroxysm surged through her, she let out three soft cries, gathering him close to her and rocking him through the throes of her fulfillment. She continued to enfold him as her excitement waned, as if their embrace would prolong and enhance her gratification.
The bracket-clock sounded the three-quarter hour as they finally rolled apart. Hero looked over at the clock and scowled. “We probably shouldn’t linger. I can smell the venison already.”
He uttered a single chuckle. “The meal will be on the table in another fifteen minutes,” he said as he started to sit up.
She poked him in his side. “You don’t have to get dressed. I depend on you to help me.”
“Certainly,” he said promptly. “You have only to tell me what you require,” he said as he rose to his feet and held out his hand to assist her.
She slipped her hand into his. “I’ll want my Polish velvet walking-dress for this afternoon, the raspberry-colored one, with the standing collar.”
“Very good,” said Ragoczy, opening her closet door and selecting the garment in question; this he laid on the bed, close at hand. “For a chamise?”
“The Italian silk,” she said. “It’s ivory, with lace on the neck-bands.” She held her robe closed while she bent over to retrieve her stockings and shoes. “It’s warmer than what I was wearing this morning.”
“Then by all means,” he said, “choose something that will keep you warm.” He waited while she pulled on her stockings and garters, and stepped into her shoes, then found her corset where he had dropped it; he came back to her, reached under her robe and prepared to lace up the back of the corset. “Will you want to wear an under-shift as well, or is this satisfactory?”
“You do make an admirable ladies’ maid,” said Hero, enjoying the last flicker of her fading tantalization conveyed in his touch. “Not that I expect a ladies’ maid to attend to me so completely.”
He kissed her as he aligned her corset, then began to tighten the lacings, working them carefully so the corset would not bind. “Just as well, given Wendela’s temperament. It pleases me to serve you,” he said with a slow smile before he kissed her, still continuing his efforts on her corset.
When their kiss broke, she was a little breathless. “If only dinner wasn’t ready,” she said with a trace of regret. “Although you have already—”
“Been nourished?” he suggested when she stopped speaking.
“I suppose you could say that,” she told him quietly. “Yes, I want an under-shift. I should have put one on this morning; I wouldn’t have needed the wolf-skin rug if I had.”
“But the wolf-skin rug becomes you,” said Ragoczy gently.
“Do you think so?” She reached out and laid her finger against his lips. “Don’t talk about this, will you?”
“No; I never would.” He finished tying her laces and stepped back. “In which drawer to you keep your under-shifts?”
“The second from the top, on the left.” She closed her robe.
“The one with the blue embroidery, if you please.”
“It will be my pleasure.” He slid the drawer open and removed the under-shift she sought; it was soft, made of fine knitted goat-hair yarn and silken decoration. He held it out to her. “If you want to slip into it?”
She nodded again, and pulled off her robe, flinging it onto the bed before she could change her mind. She tugged the under-shift down from her shoulders and looked for her chamise. “The fire isn’t making much headway,” she said as her teeth chattered.
“I will make sure it is built up for tonight, from the furnace next to the kitchen, not on this hearth.” He handed her the chamise.
“Doesn’t that worry you? Mightn’t the chimney catch fire?” She shivered again, this time from fear.
“The flues are constructed along Roman lines, and they do double duty, as chimneys and as comprehensive heaters. They are better ventilated, and have six shielded channels up through the walls that meet at two chimneys on the roof, as the old Roman household holocaust did in the floors, and the hotter-burning hypocausts did in the walls and floors in the baths. These channels are more like a hypocaust than a holocaust.” Over the centuries he had tried many variations on the Roman design when he had the opportunity to adapt his dwellings to his standards. This château had been no exception, being partially ruined when he bought it, and providing him with an opportunity to include Roman engineering as part of his own uses.
“I suppose you got your idea from them?” She reached for her shirt and pulled it on, fastening its eighteen pearl buttons with unseemly haste; she felt something beyond cold now—a loneliness that touched her to the marrow.
“To a large degree, yes. Some I learned from the Russians, more than two hundred years ago.” He offered the body of the gown to her.
Hero pulled the garment over her head, wriggling to get it settled in place. “If you will tend to my laces?”
“Of course,” said Ragoczy, and moved around behind her. “Stand still and I’ll finish this in a minute.”
Hero lifted her heavy plait of hair and said, “Why is fashion so complicated? Not that the Parisians or Romans would call this fashion.”
“It is complicated so that you can show that you can afford a chambermaid or a ’tire woman to dress you. And neither Rome nor Paris has the winters Yvoire does, even in mild years.” He slipped the knots into the back of her gown, then reached for the long, broad-skirted jacket with the standing collar and eased this onto her arms and settled it on her shoulders. “There. I hope I’ve done the task correctly. So long as Wendela is recovering from her putrid lungs, I am willing to do my poor best for you.”
“Your poor best is more than satisfactory,” said Hero and turned to kiss his cheek. “It is inconvenient that she should be ill, and it is most kind of you to offer to treat her.”
“Her family did not think so,” he said with a wry smile.
“Then her family should—”
“It is their decision and we do well to honor it,” he said. “And it is not as if you haven’t managed without a maid before. I know your father did not provide you one when you went with him to Anatolia.”
“No, but there was Madama Chiaro, and we traded maid duties with one another.” She chuckled. “It meant more than tying laces—it meant looking for scorpions in our shoes and cases, and trying to keep the sand from ruining our clothes. I must have destroyed four muslin dresses before I learned how to care for them properly. You know Anatolia. You know what it’s like. And you know Egypt.”
He had a short, sharp recollection of his long centuries at the Temple of Imhotep; he said, “Not from the point of view of modern women’s clothing.”
“You must tell me about it, one day,” she said, carefully putting hooks through eyes in the front of her jacket. “I hate to think what would have become of me if Madame de Montalia had not sent her recommendation to you.”
“And entrusted her manuscript to you for delivery,” added Ragoczy. “I, too, am thankful to her.”
“Sometimes I fear I have done her an ill turn.”
“You have not,” he said.
“I hope that’s so,” she said, then made a final adjustment to her collar. “There. I believe I am ready.”
“And so, I presume, is your dinner,” he said, offering her his arm.
“Before Uchtred becomes annoyed, permit me to take you down to the smaller dining room.”
“And wish me bon appetite?” she ventured with a lift of her brows.
He opened the bedroom door and bowed her out. “Of course, dear lady: bon appetite.”
Text of a letter from Klasse van der Boom in Amsterdam, to Saint-Germain Ragoczy, Comte Franciscus at Château Ragoczy near Lake Geneva, Yvoire, Switzerland; delivery delayed five weeks on account of severe weather.
To the most Excellent Saint-Germain Ragoczy, Comte Franciscus, the greeting of Klasse van der Boom, printer and publisher, Eclipse Press, in Amsterdam, on this, the eleventh day of March, 1817.
My dear Comte,
As you no doubt realize, I am sending you copies of our latest editions, as per the terms of our agreement of nine years ago.
I think you will find that the diCaponieve has the best illustrations, and may prove the most rewarding of the six books in this package. Certainly for those traveling through the Alps, diCaponieve’s guide to roads, villages and towns, monasteries, inns, spas, hotels, and hostelries should prove invaluable. I have taken the step of ordering two thousand copies in Italian for the initial printing, and an additional eight hundred in French—an unusually high number, I realize, but one I believe will prove to be well-founded. I have approached many hoteliers along the routes diCaponieve describes, in the hope that the work will find readers with an immediate need of it.
Kreutzerlinder’s book on the history of the Crusades through the exploration of ruins in the Ottoman Empire may not find as wide an audience, but anticipating an interest from universities, I have ordered twelve hundred copies of it. The illustrations in the volume are not as well-done as those in diCaponieve’s book, lacking in the fine detail and artistic presentation of the guide-book. But the text is informative and presented with concision, and will doubtless provoke lively discussion, given Kreutzerlinder’s theories on the role of the Byzantines in the conflict. I will be certain to approach German booksellers, to take advantage of the language in which it is written.
Juencleu’s book on the French in Canada is not likely to find as broad a readership as either the Kreutzerlinder or the diCaponieve, and so I have ordered nine hundred copies of it, and will send letters to booksellers in Montreal in the hope that they will want to supply the work of one of their own to their clientele. I must confess I still have doubts about it, but I will, of course, abide by your instructions regarding its publication. It may be as you say, that the New World may eventually become as important as the Old.
Donsky’s book on game- and song-birds of Russia is handsome, but I agree it is not a subject of avid interest here in western Europe. Fortunately there are many illustrations and all but two turned out well, a feature that could interest more readers than the topic can be expected to attract. At least it is in French and not Russian, for which I am grateful.
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