Page 63 of Audacity

She picks up a little bowl filled with a pale substance. ‘Almond paste, to cleanse and smooth the skin. Go on, take a little. Very handsome, as they say, with hair blacker than a raven’s feather and eyes as blue as the summer sky.’

I begin to smooth the paste over my arms. It’s a mild exfoliant, and it smells wonderfully of almond oil.

The maid lowers her voice and whispers right into my ear. ‘But they also say that he is a cold man, hungry for power and as greedy for women as he is for gold. Even so, he rarely exercises hisdroit de seigneur. Those at the castle say he insists on having only the most beautiful maidens, and when he gets them, his appetites are voracious.

‘God knows, you are a rare beauty, as rare as I have seen. I will send up a prayer for you tonight, dearie, because he may not have his fill of you before daybreak. Make sure to wash between your legs so that his His Lordship might find you pleasing.’

CHAPTER 30

Athena

The simple white garment of linen and crocheted lace in which the maid dresses me is more nightgown than wedding gown. I’m naked underneath, and every move has the fabric abrading my nipples. The cloak is faux-fur and hooded but insufficient against this frosty night. The gravel of the driveway is cold and sharp through the thin leather of these weird little slippers they’ve given me.

I’m freezing my tits off, but I feel alive. Vitality is coursing through my veins almost as thickly as arousal. That bath was the perfect portal, winding me backwards through the centuries from my world of Moncler and Mercedes to this incarnation of me as an ingenue (complete with miraculously intact hymen) on the threshold of learning what it means to be a woman of greedy flesh and heated blood and thumping heart.

The Athena who awaits the horse-drawn cart that’s trundling up the driveway has no agency and little power, aside from the effect her physical assets will have over the man who presumes to overpower her.

My skin is clean, softened with almond oil. The maid’s seductive words washed over me as potently as the water she sluiced over my back when she bade me lean forward. Bylamenting my likely fate tonight, she ignited that life force inside of me, the one at the very essence of who I am in every incarnation.

I may be a virgin tonight, but I’m a woman, too, and the very helplessness of this scenario I find myself in roils deep in my belly in a way that feels remarkably like desire.

I’m back outside my cave, as dusky as it is daunting.

Will its shadows consume me, or will its crystalline walls light me up?

The carriage draws up. I hug my cloak around me as I gaze at the passenger. These really are the most impractical garments if you want to have use of your arms.

A guy around my age—my brand-new husband, presumably—stands as it comes to a halt and then proceeds to drop down from the cart. He’s nice looking, with sandy hair and the wholesome face and decent build of a kindly village lad who probably hoes potatoes and lugs bails of hay around. Twenty-first-century Athena would eat him for breakfast, but I force myself to gaze at him with affection.

‘My love,’ he says, holding out his hand. I can see his reaction to me written all over his face, and I doubt it’s the result of his acting skills, decent though they seem.

I take his hand, and he helps me up into the cart. It’s modest and open, with hay strewn over the wooden seats—hay that does absolutely nothing to ease the jarring discomfort as I sit, the hard wood digging into my sitz bones. He jumps up beside me and takes the reins. The carthorse trots on, and I instinctively grip the bench, because this thing has zero suspension.

The castle lies only two or three hundred metres ahead down this wide, straight approach, the way lit on both sides by hundreds of tall torches, their flames and smoke warping in the wind and filling my lungs with their scent. Thanks to the way the castle is lit, I can see the colourful heraldic flags adorningits entrance. The whole effect is fabulously over-dramatic and steeped in gravitas.

The castle draws nearer. Up close, it’s even more imposing. More forbidding.

‘I had hoped he would spare you,’ my bridegroom says, glancing my way. His hands are light on the reins. ‘But it seems he is a lusty dog baying for blood. I am powerless to protect you, but I promise I shall still love you, even if a man far greater than me has presumed to steal your virtue.’

‘Thank you,’ I murmur, as a chainmail-clad guard with another wolfhound stops in front of the cart, holding his hands up.

‘Halt! Proceed no further!’

My husband stops the cart, and two more guards approach my side of the vehicle immediately, their faces in shadows below their chainmail. Behind them stands a cluster of drummers drumming slowly in tandem. Their instruments hang suspended from their necks. With the sounds echoing off the castle walls, the effect of their sticks against whatever animal skin their drums are made from is as ominous as it is atmospheric.

‘Declare yourself!’ one of the guards shouts.

‘Miss Athena Davenport,’ I say, my voice clear.

At that, he nods. ‘My Lord Sullivan has been waiting for you. Come, make haste.’

With a last glance at my groom’s stricken face, I descend carefully from the cart.

‘Godspeed,’ he murmurs, and I nod, though I suspect he can’t see my acknowledgment from beneath the oversized hood of my cloak.

Behind me, his cartwheels crunch over the stones as four guards flank me. They’re fucking huge in their armour, each holding a silver shield and a lance. In their midst, I am tiny and defenceless, Red Riding Hood amidst four silver wolves.

A shiver goes through me, and it’s not from the bitter cold of this night. It’s a shiver of anticipation, of the very particular frisson that comes when you know viscerally you are safe and yetfeelso unsafe, so prettily precarious.

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