Audacity: Chapter 30

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. By lamenting 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 adorning its 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 yet feel so unsafe, so prettily precarious.

It’s the frisson that only the prospect of a beautifully orchestrated scene can offer. For what is a scene but the most mystical fairy tale for adults, brought to life with sensory details that are both achingly inventive and unimaginably sweet?

‘This way,’ one of the guards barks, and together they march me to the castle entrance.

The enormous doorframe dwarfs even the guards. The stone-floored hallway is rich with tapestries and lit with hundreds of candles on iron sconces, their wax sagging and dripping so prettily. The air is heavy with beeswax and a heady, sexy scent that I’d swear, if I wasn’t bang slap in the midst of the Middle Ages, is Diptyque’s Baies candles.

On both sides are heavy carved oak doors, shut tight, and ahead of us, a wide oak staircase, more heraldic banners fluttering colourfully above it. The guards lead me to the staircase, and I gather up my cloak and skirts and ascend carefully. The steps are shallow, but it’s dim in here and my hood is constricting my vision. I have the oddest feeling of being marched to my execution, when really, only great pleasure awaits me.

As we climb, the faintest sounds of a woman’s moans carry on the air like a whisper of candle smoke, and that insistent pull deep in my belly only intensifies. That will be me in a few moments. It’s a carnal sound, a promise of unknown delicacies behind closed doors.

When we reach the top of the staircase, the guards process along the corridor before stopping at a doorway at the front of the palace. Through the narrow windows along the front wall, I can make out the fuzzy torchlight that lights the driveway. I stare at the carvings on the door, my heart thumping as though I’ve just run up fifteen storeys instead of walking painfully up one.

One of the guards uses his fist to thump three times on the door, and through the slab of wood comes the muffled response.

‘Enter.’

It’s Gabe’s voice, but it’s not. This voice is more imperious. More impatient.

Two guards move in front of me and open the door with a flourish, pushing in. The other two position themselves behind me. One prods me in the back, and I realise I’ve been standing frozen. I stumble slightly. My pulse is pounding in my ears, for some reason.

This is Gabe.

This is a role play.

And yet I can’t help but feel in this moment like a sacrificial lamb.

I advance slowly into the room as the door clanks shut behind me with an ominous thud of finality. The chamber is huge, with high ceilings. Rich tapestries hang from the walls, their jewel tones long faded. Beneath my leather slippers is a layer of rushes. My first impressions are of flickering candlelight and long shadows, of some ephemeral quality of solemnity.

Then I see him.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Just as it was with his voice, it’s Gabe and yet not Gabe, because the man standing before me in the centre of this room, as strong and grounded as a great oak, has the kind of entitlement my Gabriel has never embodied. He’s removed and kingly and imposing… and so, so gorgeous.

For a moment, it’s me and him, taking each other in in these fantastical guises, and it’s the oddest, oddest thing.

It’s as if we’ve both hurtled back in time to the Dark Ages where we’ve found each other again.

It’s as if our paths are meant to cross in every century, however impossible that might be to fathom.

Until his voice cuts through the thick silence as coldly, as harshly as a scythe might cut through a wildflower meadow.

‘Bring her closer. Let me see.’