Chapter 3: Lessons in Deception
The bath was a new kind of torture.
Two footmen carried in the heavy copper tub, their eyes fixed on a point somewhere near the ceiling molding. They were followed by a train of housemaids, including Bessie from the kitchens, her arms stacked with linen towels. Ella knew her. They’d shared cold tea and complaints about the head housekeeper’s moods in the servants’ hall not ten days ago.
Now, Ella stood frozen by the bed, clutching the duchess’s ruined robe around herself, as the domestic machinery of the household operated around her. She was the focal point, and yet she was invisible. They didn’t see Ella the maid. They saw the Duchess, disheveled and waiting for her bath. Their faces were masks of respectful indifference.
The Duke emerged from his dressing room, now in a deep blue banyan, his hair damp at the temples. He oversaw the proceedings with a detached air. “There. Fill it. Then leave the cans. We shall manage.”
‘We’. The word slithered through the steam-filled air.
The servants worked with efficient silence, filling the tub with steaming water from great copper cans. They scattered rose-scented salts that perfumed the air with a cloying, feminine sweetness. Finally, with bows and a murmured “Your Graces,” they retreated, closing the door with a soft, definitive click.
The silence they left behind was deafening.
“In you go,” Alistair said, nodding toward the tub. His tone was casual, as if instructing her to pass the salt.
Ella’s limbs felt leaden. To undress fully, now, in the clear, unforgiving light of the oil lamps and the fire, with him watching… it was a greater exposure than anything in the shadowed bed. Her fingers trembled on the robe’s sash.
He sighed, a short, impatient sound. He walked over and began undoing the knot himself. His hands were efficient, impersonal. The robe fell open. He pushed it from her shoulders, letting it join the other silks on the floor. She stood in just the thin, damp nightgown, her arms crossing instinctively over her chest.
“You’re wasting the heat,” he said, and hooked a finger in the lace at her neckline. With a single, sharp tug, the fine silk tore open to her navel. The sound was obscenely loud. “There.”
She scrambled into the tub, the hot water a shocking solace, clouding immediately around her. She sank down until it touched her chin, hiding. He dragged a low stool over beside the tub and sat, watching her. He picked up a sea sponge and a cake of lavender soap.
“Give me your foot.”
“Your Grace, I can—”
“Your foot.”
She extended a leg, breaching the surface. He took her ankle, his grip firm, and began to soap her calf. The act was bizarrely intimate, more so than the violence of before. This was a husband’s tenderness, a lover’s care, performed with the cool focus of a scientist. He washed her leg thoroughly, working up to her knee, his fingers kneading the muscles. She had strong legs, shaped by years of staircases and stone floors. His thumbs pressed into the sinew.
“Different,” he murmured, almost to himself. “She is all softness. You have a strength here. A history.” He moved to the other leg, repeating the process. The sponge traveled over her shoulders, down her back. He washed her back with the same detached thoroughness, his fingers tracing the line of her spine, the subtle ridges of her ribs. When he spoke again, his voice was closer, his breath disturbing the steam near her ear. “Tell me, when you served our wine at dinner, did you imagine this?”
“No, Your Grace.” The truth was a cracked whisper.
“What did you imagine?”
“Nothing. I… I dusted the portraits. I polished the silver. I imagined the duchess’s day. I never imagined… you.”
He was silent for a moment. Then his hand, slick with soap, slid around from her back, over her ribs, and cupped her breast. She jerked, water sloshing over the rim.
“Be still.” His other hand came to her shoulder, holding her in place. He weighed her in his palm, his thumb brushing over her nipple until it peaked, tight and betraying, under the water. “A reactive little thing,” he observed. His hand drifted lower, over her belly, and then lower still, into the hot water between her legs.
She choked on a gasp, her hands gripping the copper edge.
“Shhh.” He nuzzled her wet hair aside, his lips against the shell of her ear. His fingers moved, not with the driven intensity of before, but with a slow, circling certainty. “This is the part I find most fascinating. The performance is over. The door is closed. There are no eyes but mine. And yet your body still answers. It’s remarkably honest.”
He was right. Despite her shame, despite her fear, a treacherous warmth was coiling again, separate from the heat of the bath. It was a raw, physiological betrayal. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears mixing with the bathwater on her cheeks.
“Look at me, Ella.”
She forced her eyes open, turning her head. His face was so close, his green eyes luminous in the steam. He watched her as his fingers worked, studying every flutter of her lashes, every catch in her breath.
“That’s it,” he whispered, as her hips gave a small, involuntary shift. “There’s no audience for this. Just the truth.”
He brought her to the edge with a ruthless patience, then slowed, then brought her back again, until she was quivering, her forehead resting against the cool copper rim. Only then did he allow the release, a quiet, shuddering unraveling that felt more like a defeat than a pleasure. He held her through it, his hand a steady, claiming pressure.
When she was still, he withdrew his hand, rinsing it idly in the bathwater. He stood, picking up a large linen towel. “Out.”
She climbed out, water streaming from her. He wrapped her in the towel, rubbing her arms briskly, as one would a child. The roughness was almost comforting in its normality. But it didn’t last.
He led her, towel-clad, into the adjoining dressing room. It was the Duchess’s sanctuary, a confection of gilt and ivory. He went to the velvet-lined jewel case on the dressing table and opened it.
“Her Grace is fond of adornment,” he said. He selected pieces without hesitation: a necklace of diamonds and sapphires that sparkled like captured ice, heavy drop earrings, a series of bracelets. He brought them over to her where she stood, dripping on the Savonnerie carpet.
“The towel.”
She let it fall.
He fastened the cold necklace around her throat. The weight of it was astonishing. He clipped the earrings to her lobes, the chill metal a shock against her flushed skin. He slid bracelets onto her wrists, their click-clack a delicate music. Finally, he took a tiara, a smaller, delicate diamond piece the Duchess wore for informal dinners. He settled it into her damp, mousy brown hair.
He guided her by the shoulders to stand before the full-length cheval glass.
“Look.”
She saw a stranger. A pale, wide-eyed girl with servant’s hair, adorned with a fortune in cold gems. The jewels looked absurd, beautiful, and utterly wrong on her bare skin. They were anchors, tying her to a role that was drowning her.
He stood behind her, his hands settling on her bare hips. His eyes in the mirror held hers.
“A duchess,” he began, his voice a low, instructional murmur, “receives pleasure with a certain… acoustics.” One hand drifted around to her stomach, holding her firm against him. The other slipped between her legs from behind. “It is a performance. A series of practiced sighs. A calculated arch.” He demonstrated, his touch precise, eliciting a sharp gasp from her that she tried to stifle. “You see? That was a maid’s sound. Short. Surprised. Authentic.”
He didn’t stop. He worked her with a focused intent, his eyes locked on hers in the glass. “Now, give me her moan. The long, languid one she uses when she knows the footmen might be listening outside the door.”
Ella, trembling, tried to force a low, practiced sound. It came out strained and false.
“No. Like this.” He pinched her inner thigh, not quite gently, and she cried out—a short, sharp whimper. “That’s yours,” he whispered, his lips against her damp hair. “Now again.”
He pushed her back to the edge, his fingers unrelenting. The jewels dug into her skin. Her reflection was a mess of contradictions: opulence and exposure, a tiara in disheveled hair, a body writhing in pleasure owned by another. He coaxed the sounds from her, the authentic, broken ones, and when she fell against him, shattering into a sob of climax, he held her up, his arms like iron bands.
“There,” he said softly, watching her devastated face in the mirror. “That is the difference. She gives a performance. You…” He turned her head and kissed her throat, just above the diamond necklace. “You give a surrender.”
He let her sink to the carpet, a puddle of limbs and glittering stones. He looked down at her for a long moment, then carefully began removing the jewelry, piece by piece, returning them to their case. The absence of their weight left her feeling hollow, deflated.
He tossed a nightdress from the Duchess’s wardrobe onto the floor beside her. Silk, pristine white. “Put that on. Sleep in the bed. I have correspondence to attend to.”
He left her there, on the floor of the gilded cage.
Ella dressed with numb fingers. The clean silk felt like a lie against her skin. She crept into the vast bed, curling into the smallest possible ball on the far edge. The room still smelled of roses and sex and him.
An hour later, she heard him return. The mattress dipped as he got in. He didn’t touch her. She lay rigid, listening to his breathing even out into sleep.
Only then, in the dark, did she raise her own fingers to her throat, tracing not the imagined path of the diamonds, but the faint, real scar he seemed to cherish. It was the one thing on her body tonight that had truly been hers. And now, he knew it. He had claimed that, too. The thought brought no fresh tears, only a deep, still terror. The game had no rules, and she had nothing left to wager but the raw, honest sounds he seemed to prize above all the duchess’s finery.