Читать книгу Dominic - Elizabeth Amber - Страница 10

Though it went unspoken, everyone at the table was well aware that once night fell, a carnal ritual peculiar to the Satyr would begin. This knowledge was apparent in small ways. In the manner in which each Satyr husband watched his Fey wife. And in the wanting glances and subtle touches that passed between them.

From the corner of her eye, Emma saw that Nicholas had begun toying with her sister’s silky, blond hair. The knuckles of Raine’s left hand were surreptitiously dusting Jordan’s nape. Lyon’s hand had disappeared under the table in Juliette’s direction, and although his wife avoided his gaze, her cheeks had suffused with pink. The air around the three couples fairly hummed with their mutual desire.

Heat suffused Emma’s cheeks as well when she thought of what would happen between her husband and herself, once they were alone.

She glanced to the far end of the table. Carlo had seated himself next to Dominic and was fawning on him in a manner that was almost flirtatious—actually going so far as to run his fingers along the other man’s sleeve or to offer him delicacies from his plate now and then. Carlo had always gravitated toward weaker men he could dominate. Why had he chosen to befriend a man so imposing? On his part, Dominic largely ignored these overtures and ate with the methodical precision of one who took in his food as fuel rather than for any sort of enjoyment.

They made an odd sort of triangle, for while her attention was on Carlo, his was on Dominic, who in turn had for some reason decided to focus on her.

Was he perhaps wondering why Carlo had chosen to marry her? She, who was so different from the rest of them?

She’d wondered that very thing herself often enough. In the beginning she’d thought he loved her, but now she was sure he never had.

And why should he? She wasn’t as delicate and beautiful as her sister or her aunts, for they each bore the blood of a Fey king who’d selected their beautiful Human mothers as his mates. Although she was blessed with a keen intelligence and an insatiable greed for the written word, such things didn’t attract men.

She possessed no extraordinary abilities. In fact Emma was the only one in the family who was entirely Human.

Everyone else had the blood of either Faerie or Satyr flowing in their veins, mingling there with Human blood. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t help but feel like an outsider.

“Is there more of the Sangiovese?” Carlo’s voice was beginning to slur from the effects of drink. She frowned at him and gave an imperceptible shake of her head, but he mutinously refilled his goblet.

As usual, wine flowed freely during and after the meal, all of it the best-quality vintage produced by grapes grown in the vineyard on Satyr land. Thick green bottles and amber ones wrapped in raffia, all with the trademark SV molded into their sides, had been brought from the cellar and uncorked to celebrate the occasion of Carlo’s return.

The others were more conservative in their consumption, cognizant of the fact that it would soon be Moonful. Emma abstained from taking spirits altogether, for in her current condition they made her ill.

As time passed, she grew more worried at Carlo’s continued abandoned imbibing. It was crucial that he have his wits gathered sufficiently tonight. He must not fail to bed her. He of all people should be aware of that.

She caught the concerned question in Jane’s eyes but could only raise her brows and shrug in response to indicate that she was confused as well. Impossible to know what impulses might be driving her husband.

Toward the end of the evening, Nicholas drew Carlo aside, speaking in sotto voce. Thereafter, Carlo’s glass remained empty. It was obvious he’d been taken to task, and Emma was grateful. These Satyr males were all headstrong, but in the end they always deferred to Nicholas, the eldest of them.

When dusk was imminent, the family made to depart. Soon elixirs of a more supernatural sort would commence to flow. There would be rituals. And then lovemaking in the sacred glen, a verdant place in the center of the estate where magic clung, thick and low to the ground. Ringed with statues of ancient gods, maenads, nymphs, fawns, and other mythical creatures entangled in a lecherous ecstasy, the glen had shocked Emma when she’d first viewed it as a girl. So much so that she’d never been back.

She and Carlo had always observed these rituals here in the privacy of their own home. Primarily because he was reluctant to be observed under a full moon by his brothers, whom he considered superior to him in every way. But most particularly with regard to their sexual prowess.

“I wish you and Carlo well tonight,” Jane said, her voice lit with affection. As they said their good-byes, Nicholas awaited her on the front path, conversing with Raine and Jordan. Lyon and Juliette had already gone.

“I’m suddenly nervous,” Emma confided, clasping her sister’s hands.

Jane gave her fingers an encouraging squeeze. “I’m a mother three times over now, and one of those births triplets,” she reassured. “So you may credit what I say on this issue. No matter how vigorous your engagements with your husband tonight, none of it will damage your child. Have no fear on that score. This will be a Moonful Calling like any other between the two of you.”

“Except for the birthing at its finish,” Emma put in.

“Yes, but any unpleasantness related to that will be brief and won’t occur until dawn. Don’t waste the hours between now and then with worry. All will be as I’ve told you previously. Now I must be off.” With a final hug, she made to go. “I’ll come tomorrow to welcome your newborn child into our family as soon as I can get away.”

When her sister rejoined Nicholas, he enfolded her in his protective embrace, and his dark head bent to her blond one. Watching them depart, Emma sighed wistfully.

For though Carlo would certainly bed her tonight, it would not be the true lovemaking her sister would enjoy. And though it was necessary—compulsive, in fact—the act would not bring her the bliss her sister imagined it might. Not the sort of soul-deep rapture she knew Jane would find in the coming hours with her own husband.

Upon her return to the house, Emma entered the green salotto where Carlo had retired with his guest. It was his domain when he was in residence, and she rarely ventured inside.

Knocking lightly, she then slipped inside where she found the two men in conversation. Noting that Carlo held another glass of spirits in his hand, she looked askance at it and opened her mouth to scold him.

Preempting her, he defiantly downed the goblet’s contents in one long gulp. Then, straightening one leg, he reached deep into his trouser pocket and withdrew something small from inside.

Tossing the object in the air, he caught it and opened his palm to reveal that it was a large gold coin.

Emma stared, blanching as she recognized what he held.

“Tell me, Dominic,” he mused in a wine-slurred voice, studying her instead of his companion as he spoke. “What would you think of a wife who intentionally sought to block her husband’s seed from implanting itself within her?”

She felt Dominic’s eyes sharpen on her in speculation but didn’t look his way.

“Carlo, perhaps you shouldn’t—” she began, moving to take his goblet.

When her fingers were within inches of it, he grabbed her wrist and held her in a painful grip. With his other hand, he flipped the coin high again, and once more he caught it. Still restraining her, he began to toy with it, weaving it in and out of his fingers with the skill of a sleight-of-hand trickster.

“Would you call her a murderess?” he went on to his friend. “This woman who condemned her husband’s seed to shrivel and die on its journey toward her womb? This woman who knew her husband greatly desired heirs. Yet who intentionally deceived him. For on the rare nights that he was able to come to her bed, doing his best to breed her, she intentionally thwarted his diligent efforts—”

Dominic raised his goblet. Though it was obviously only half empty, he said, “Permesso, Carlo, my glass needs attention.”

“Oh, of course. See to it, Emma.” Her wrist was instantly relinquished, and she took Dominic’s drink, giving him a grateful, tremulous smile. However, his expression was lost to her, for her eyes were brimming with tears of pain and humiliation.

Taking his glass to the wine cart, she lifted the carafe and prepared to refill it. Behind her, the coin flipped high, winking in the candlelight, and then landed with a plunk in Carlo’s hand.

“Last Moonful I came late to her bed and managed to catch her unawares,” he went on, refusing to let the matter go. “She was engaged in an evil pastime. Inserting this into her cunt.”

The carafe Emma held hit the cart with a crack. Though she was frozen in place, she saw from the corner of her eye that he now held the offending coin on edge between his thumb and forefinger, extending it toward Dominic as if submitting it for evidence in a courtroom proceeding.

“Regardless, it appears you succeeded in your pursuit of paternity,” Dominic interjected grimly, cutting short the verbal attack. “I suggest you cease belaboring the past.”

Soft, dewy brown tangled with hard silver in a quick exchange of glances. Gratitude swelled in her yet again, but it was tempered by the knowledge that what Carlo accused her of was true. Last month, when he’d come to her bed unexpectedly and awakened her from slumber, she had begged for a moment to ready herself and had slipped behind her privacy screen to do so.

She was an informed woman, having thrice read Charles Knowlton’s volume, The Fruits of Philosophy: or The Private Companion of Young Married People, which offered advice for couples who wished to limit the number of their offspring. Recently published in New York, it had described the use of female preventives, including “womb veils,” and she’d secretly been employing them since the beginning of her marriage.

On the night of which he spoke, her husband had emptied his pockets on the bedside table before coming to her bed. Out of desperation, she’d surreptitiously and randomly selected one of the coins from the pile he’d left before retiring behind the screen. Crouching there in an undignified manner, she’d reached a hand under her nightgown, intending to insert the disk high within her feminine channel.

It had been thick and heavy, and she’d feared he might detect it when his organ deeply breeched her. The other type of “veil” she’d previously utilized had been less obvious—a pliable hoop covered with oiled silk that was more suited to such a use and which he hadn’t noticed.

As she’d struggled with the insertion of the coin, he’d come behind the screen and caught her at it, forcing from her an admission that she’d been deceiving him in a similar way throughout the past year. Furious, he had flung the coin away and had used her roughly that night. Had hurt her with his hands, his body, and his words.

Leaving Dominic’s goblet unfilled on the cart, Emma fled to the door. Without glancing toward either man, she spoke to them in a voice rife with suppressed emotion. “I’ll have the guest chamber prepared for you in the west end of the house, Signore Janus. Carlo will show you there when you’re ready to retire. Now I’ll leave you both to your conversation.”

“Await me in my room,” Carlo muttered into his glass. “A son should be born in his father’s bed.”

With a curt nod, she stepped into the hall and shut the paneled door soundlessly, though she wished to slam it. Inside her husband continued on his tirade.

“I’m certain she learned this whore’s trick from her books,” she heard him say.

Dominic’s rumbled reply was indecipherable through the door.

“But some of her reading borders on the heretical,” Carlo blustered, “even going so far as to suggest that conception occurs when sperm and egg join! Yet it’s a well-known fact that the man’s seed is life, and a woman’s function is simply to house and birth it! Mark my words—too much reading despoils the brain, especially that of a female.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

A small silence fell, and she could almost see the coin flipping into the air again. “I carry this with me to remind myself that the cunts and minds of women are untrustworthy.”

Not wishing to hear more, she retreated upstairs where she enjoined the servants to assist her in freshening the guest room. Under her supervision, linens were hung and water poured in the basins. Seeing to the familiar tasks calmed her mind and kept it from wandering to more disturbing venues of thought.

Their visitor had brought no belongings because his sojourn here had apparently been unplanned. Therefore she supplied shaving equipment, soap, and tooth powder. She’d have the servants see to his clothing if he wished such assistance in the morning.

On the way to her own room, she shifted the damask curtain aside at the western window along the corridor and studied the deepening shadows. By her estimate, a full moon would rise in half an hour.

Carlo wouldn’t be long.

Her fingers trembled on the drape, and she caught them in her other hand to still them. There was no need to be afraid, she reminded herself as she strode on to her bedchamber. He might not care whether or not he hurt her, but he wouldn’t chance injuring the precious heir she incubated.

In her room, a maid awaited, who helped remove her gown and unbind and brush out her hair. Then she was left to her ablutions in solitude, for the “day servants” departed the estate upon sunset, as was the custom at all Satyr domiciles.

Upon their leave-taking, other far more unusual “night servants” would appear to roam the house at will. Distantly related to a clan of the ancients in Else World, these innocuous, servile beings hid away during the day and always kept to themselves at Moonful. On other nights, their time would be spent tirelessly polishing floors, mucking stables, and assuming other unpleasant chores, thus generally making life easier for everyone.

Once she was ready, Emma went through the door that adjoined her bedchamber to Carlo’s. There she scurried about, making preparations for his impending visit. Lighting candles, pouring a dish of oil that had been scented with lavender, vanilla, and sandalwood—fragrances said to contain calming properties—and filling five basins, three with cleansing herbs and two with clear rinse water.

And lastly she set a container of cream upon the bedside table. It was a new jar, for she’d dashed last month’s against the wall in a fit of temper after Carlo had left her. She glanced across the room. The stain was still there on the wallpaper, a constant reminder of that awful night.

In search of solace while she waited, she went to her room to retrieve the book of poetry she’d been reading earlier that day. Returning to Carlo’s chamber, she sat at his dressing table positioned just inside the door to the hall. Then she opened the slender volume to the pressed-violet bookmark Jane had made for her.

Concentrating her thoughts on a page, she Willed it to turn. After several reluctant seconds, it obediently lifted to stand at an angle perpendicular to the book’s spine, as if being held there by her fingers instead of her Will.

Scowling, she tried to frighten it into turning. It shuddered as though making the attempt, but then it seemed to give up and only fell back into its original position to rejoin the others like it.

It was a carnival trick. One of the very few she could perform. Compared to the extraordinary abilities of the other members of her family, it fell as flat as the page itself.

When she’d first come here, Lyon had tried to help her increase her talents, but to no avail, and they’d long since given up their extrasensory lessons. Still she occasionally practiced this single trick in secret, always hoping.

Would this minor talent pass from her to her son or daughter? As though to indicate its hopes in that direction, her child chose that moment to kick. Her hand curved atop her belly, and a maternal smile curved her lips.

“Soon,” she whispered gently.

Carlo was wrong to think she hadn’t desired children. She had. Someday. But she’d chosen her husband too rashly and had been uncertain of him almost from the beginning. When last they were together, he’d proven himself dishonorable by the way in which he’d sired his progeny.

Nevertheless she would love this child they’d created. And she would willingly sacrifice herself in his bed over the next eight hours to bring about its birth.

By morning, she would be a mother. A sweet joy filled her at the prospect, but concern over her husband’s mood tamped it down again.

After he departed for Else World tomorrow morning, she would announce her own travel plans to the rest of the family. Within the month, she would take her child and leave the estate.

Footfalls sounded on the carpet out in the corridor. Boots.

Carlo.