Belinda’s stomach tensed, the small of her back tightening at his rough touch. She moved her hand through the guard’s clean hair, savoring the feeling. He had known. Had taken care to wash and clean himself, knowing that his lover would come back bruised from their lord’s ministrations. Had come to offer her a path out of disgrace and had got down on his knees like a love match, even if the wherefores were not love. It was a generous gesture, showing more kindness than she was accustomed to. It was his misfortune to have landed in her bed; he deserved a better ending than he was likely to find there. And now he rhythmically stroked the welts on her backside as he waited for an answer.
“Yes.”
Viktor groaned and twisted his hand to drive his fingers inside her. He dragged her forward as she gasped, burying his nose in the thatch of her dark curls, tongue seeking the spot his thumb had abandoned. Belinda clutched at his hair and for a wall, shuddering as her ill-fated suitor brought her to come. “He is ill.” The castellan waggled his jowls, turning ponderously from the fires to face the assembled maids and manservants. It was barely dawn; for the count’s illness to be worthy news already meant he was more gravely unwell than Belinda had counted on. There had been loud voices in the halls at three of the morning, and now she knew what they all did: a doctor had been called. Nothing less would precede so early an announcement. Belinda twisted her hands in her skirts, mimicking the girl next to her, and kept her eyes lowered. Her dress today was exceedingly modest, covering her from throat to toe and wrist to shoulder, the only way to hide marks on her throat. The bruise on her cheek had been covered expertly by cosmetics; today she didn’t need to catch the count’s attention. The castellan droned on, more taken with the sound of his own voice than the imparting of information: the count was sick, and it was serious, else the doctor would not have come, but his words implied renewing energy and restored health. Maid and manservant alike knew them for lies, but no one would dispute the truth with the castellan.
“Rosa.”
Belinda allowed herself a startle, knotting her fingers more tightly in her skirt. “Yes, sir?” She barely lifted her eyes; the castellan liked his women dim-witted and submissive.
“The count asks for you to attend him today.”
A whisper rustled through the other servants, knowing looks and glances of bitter jealousy. Everyone always knows, Viktor had said. Belinda knew it was true. She dropped a curtsey, fingers still clenched in her skirt. “My honour, sir.”
“That will be all.” The castellan flipped his fingers dismissively; the standing crowd stepped back, breaking apart. A girl hissed “Harlot” at Belinda’s back, and a man’s low chuckle followed it.
“And wouldn’t you be, too, if the master bade you spread your legs,” he muttered. The girl let out a gasp of outrage, then a squeak as he slapped her on the arse, hard enough for the sound to be recognizable through layers of skirts and petticoats. “Hold your tongue,” he said. Belinda waited two breaths, then looked over her shoulder to meet the speaker’s eyes. A coachman, awake enough to have been the one who fetched the doctor, unimportant enough in the household that Belinda didn’t know his name. He gave her a wink and she inclined her head, the only thanks he’d get. She gathered her skirts, curtsying again to the castellan, and went to fetch Gregori’s breakfast and tea.
Even knowing the doctor had been there, the count’s colour was worse than she’d expected, and made worse still by comparison to the rich brocade duvet he lay beneath. “My lord,” Belinda murmured as she set his tea tray by the bed. She’d wiped the cosmetics from her face, leaving the bruise an ugly greening mark on her cheek, and even in sickness she saw his eyes go to it, before amusement curved his mouth and he lifted a hand-thin-boned and pale, far more so than a day earlier-to curl his fingers into the high collar of her gown that hid the ring of bruises he had left.
“I’m disappointed, Rosa. Do you always hide the marks of love?” His grip had less strength than it had the day before, but he was still strong, stronger than she was.
“I had not thought to see you today, my lord, else I’d have taken more care in my dressing.”
“Did you not?” His voice sharpened. “Do they tell you I’m ill, Rosa? That I must be coddled and treated like a child?”
“That you’re ill, yes, my lord. That the doctor has been and gone, and that you’ll be well enough soon.” Belinda straightened; Gregori’s hand in her partlet pulled the fabric tight, and buttons slipped free. It was made to do so, all the easier for assignations. His mouth thinned with pleasure and he yanked hard on the fabric. Buttons flew loose, the partlet tearing away. Belinda lifted her chin half in response to the pull and half to display her necklace of bruises. “It seems to me you’re neither ill nor weak at all, my lord.” The hollowness beneath his eyes and in his cheeks gave lie to her words, but nothing in her voice or gaze did. Later, when she lay with her teeth set together against the pain of too much use, she thought that nothing in his passion gave lie to her claim, either.
But the next day she was flush and healthy, and Gregori all the worse, and the doctor’s face had grown deadly grim. Whispers ran wild among the staff, fears for the count’s life and tales of what illness bore him down. Belinda shivered when a canker of the stomach was hinted at.
And the word spat after her then was not whore but witch. That gave her pause, her heart seizing with the fancy that the accusation held merit, and then simply seized, a place too cold for the stillness to fill opening inside her. Witchery was a forbidden craft; an impossible one, by any rational thought. But rational thought had never ruled, and very little stood between a woman and a stake to burn her at when the word flew. Belinda’s heart lurched from one beat to another, staggered with the weight of real fear. Bitter thoughts on a midsummer morning did not bring on sudden illness, no matter how useful that illness might be to her. Dismayed nausea at a task interrupted did not leap from her frustration to poison a man’s body.
It was not herself she had to convince.
Hands relaxed, disdain and insult in her eyes, Belinda turned back to face Ilyana, petite and blond and jealous, and looked down at her from the advantage of height she held. She said nothing, only looked; after a steady moment or two Ilyana blanched, then gathered her skirts and ran.
“You ought not have done that.”
Belinda smoothed her skirts without lifting her eyes to meet the coachman’s. “Perhaps not. A woman named whore will be run out of house and home, but a woman named witch will be burned.” She looked up then, without humour, without betraying the pounding of her heart or the cold spurts that made her hands thick as they stroked her skirts again. “One I can live through. The other no one can.”
“You’ve made an enemy.”
Belinda shook her head. “No, sir. An enemy can do you harm. Ilyana can’t do anything to me.” She curved her mouth into a smile, still without humour. “Certainly not so long as I have the count’s eye.”
“And if he’s as ill as they say?”
Interest lit Belinda’s eyes. She swayed her hips forward, her smile turning fuller. “You drove the doctor. Do you have more than servant’s gossip?”
The coachman shrugged, easy loose movement. Viktor, Belinda thought, would never move with that much grace. Viktor, though, would do her bidding, and the young catamount here might have ideas of his own. “Yesterday the doctor came away shaking his head and frowning, as bad a sign as I’ve ever seen. Today…”
Belinda edged forward again, inviting intimacy, her gaze wide on the coachman’s. “Today?”
“Today he’s silent.”
Belinda caught her breath, wanting it to warm the coldness inside her and instead feeling the accusation of witchcraft dancing in the chill. Arsenic and a bad summer cold and a woman willing to spend all of Gregori’s spare strength-that’s what brought the count low, not spells chanted over an animal’s spilled blood. It was not witchcraft, only coincidence and cruel, deliberate machination. She forced sluggish fear away, wrapping herself in the memory of sunlight cloaking Robert’s shoulders. Slow warmth replaced the cold, calming her breathing and her heart, and, protected by stillness, she nodded to show the coachman she understood.
His mouth twitched, not with amusement. Recognition, rather, and the acknowledgment that she understood what he learned from silence. “You’ve known a lot of doctors, then.”
“A few,” Belinda said. “Enough.” She glanced down the hall, then dipped a slight curtsey. “If you’ll excuse me now, the count wants his tea.”
“And his girl,” the coachman said without malice. “If he’s not stronger by morning, watch yourself, Rosa. Ilyana’s got a mean tongue in her.”
“Thank you.” Belinda let his warning slip away as soon as her back was turned, and Gregori was dead with the
