An Oath to Obey Read online

  And she would not do that. She could not stand to.

  So Claria waited patiently, bearing it as best she could while her dull, dun hair was brushed and primped, perfumed and knotted, swept up into a net of shining gold. While her thin lips were rouged and her pale cheeks pinked.

  Until Claria was perfect too — or as perfect as Claria could be, which, she knew, was far, far from it.

  She wandered the castle, searching for the Beast. And she did not find him, nor any other soul who seemed to call the castle home, but she wandered all the same, and her breath was taken by the wonders she saw.

  She passed through a soaring hall and a gilded ballroom, marvelling at their awesome extravagance. She walked the length of a library, through avenues made of towering bookshelves, trailing her fingers over the spines of more books than any man could ever read in but one lifetime.

  With her skirts carefully hitched, she climbed the spiralling steps up the castle’s many towers. At the top of one of those towers, near enough the tallest of them all, a door opened to a grand, round room. And still catching her breath from the climb, Claria came across the strangest of all the castle’s wonders: a hall of mirrors where each grand looking-glass looked to another all around the room, creating reflections like an echo in her vision.

  Everywhere she looked, Claria saw herself looking back. Saw herself draped in velvet and sparkling with jewels. Saw how ridiculous she looked, all knotted and netted like some grand lady.

  And a grand lady she was not — nor would she ever be. So she shut the door fast closed behind herself and left that unsettling room be.

  Back down in the castle proper, and to the rooms below it still, where the ceilings were not so high and where the walls were only washed with lime and not hung with glorious tapestries. It was there that Claria found the tunnel.

  It led down — the low roof close overhead, the steps precarious — to a cavernous chamber beneath the castle, and to the great steaming pool that filled it, a pool that seemed carved out of the very bedrock.

  Torches flamed into life as Claria stepped out into the chamber. In that flickering light she saw that there was a place for oiling oneself and scraping oneself clean, as the ancients liked to do, a place to lie atop the smooth stone and seep in the wet heat, and another small pool where the water was cool and meant to refresh.

  Carefully, she crouched to dip her hand into the clear water and found it as chill and as inviting as a high mountain stream.

  It came to her then, that she might strip herself of her heavy gown and countless petticoats. That she might step down into that invigorating water, let it shiver her skin and pebble her nipples with biting pleasure.

  She imagined that she might float there, in the crystalline cool, where anyone might come upon her in her bareness, might look upon her, might — might touch her, their skin to hers.

  A thrill shot through her at the thought of it: a hot, sharp flare of sensation, just as unsettling as the shivers of the castle’s touch.

  And just as tempting…

  Claria lifted a hand to her décolletage. Even in the steaming heat of the room, her nipples ached with the chill the little pool gave off — and they ached with something else entirely. To touch them, she knew, would bring a sense of relief.

  Would touching herself so bring relief, too, to the warm, throbbing ache that had begun anew between her thighs?

  If she lifted her skirts, if she slipped a hand beneath her smallclothes to touch herself as she had imagined only last night, when she had laid beside the Beast engulfed in his warmth — would that bring her relief?

  Claria’s breath came fast. Her fingers played with the frilled edge of her chemise. Only the smallest of touches. Only the slightest of teases. Surely it could not matter so very much. Surely the friars and their gods would not mind if she only—

  No.

  Claria let her hand drop.

  No, she could not. Such a blasphemous thing was an affront to the gods and to their laws. To touch herself as the mighty on high watched her so, all caught up in sin.

  To even think such a thought…

  No.

  In a rush of such hot, dismayed feeling, Claria gathered her skirts, and Claria fled.

  It was nothing but the purest of joys and the sweetest of reliefs to find the castle’s kitchens. A fire roared and a hog turned upon the spit with no hand to attend it, and the sweet scent of honey and fresh-baked bread prevailed over all else.

  With thoughts of sin cast aside, Claria set herself to investigate with the eye of a seasoned baker. She found a grand bread oven and a well-stocked store of provisions. Outside she came upon a fine kitchen garden, walled and well-tended, where every herb and flower a cook might ever need grew.

  She stood there amidst the greenery and imagined all the dishes she might make — all the stews she might pot, all the breads she might bake. And just as quickly she set aside her imaginings, for she knew that she would not — could not — bake and cook, all done up like a fine lady, like a silly, frilly doll.

  The thought cast an ache deep within her, an ache that caused Claria to wonder, idly, if she sickened for home. But her good sense knew that not to be true.

  She did not miss the village. She missed only Armand.

  Armand — whom she would never see again.

  And that was for the best. She could bring only shame upon him now.

  Claria blinked against her shining eyes until they cleared.

  The day was drawing long, and she knew she must find the Beast before it was over. But something…

  Something seemed to call to her yet, drawing her down a walkway of cracked flagstones. And at that walkway’s end, Claria found yet another walled garden, though this garden was gated and shut up tight. The climbing, clinging briars that wound through the iron of the gate were lush and deep. They covered every inch, offering not a glimpse of what lay beyond.

  Claria put her hands there, to make to push the greenery aside, so that she might sneak a glance through the leaves. But when she did, the gate pushed open instead.

  Beyond was a garden overtaken by a tapestry of roses. So many, so high upon the walls. But the roses were not in flower. The buds were ripe, heavy with it, waiting to bloom — but not in bloom. Not yet.

  Simply teetering at the edge of their fertile unveiling.

  Waiting.

  A Rose to Bloom

  Claria visited often to gaze at the roses, eagerly anticipating their first flowering, but they stayed stubbornly in bud. The gate to the garden, too, was always closed though never locked, but little did it matter, for Claria never left the doorway.

  The garden was a hidden, hushful place that held its secrets close — and its blossoming closer still. But that was no great surprise, for what rose bloomed when the fierce bite of winter was already beginning to bear down?

  Still, she dreamed often of the rose garden. They were strange, unseemly dreams, and Claria knew that she should be unsettled by them — and she was, more than a little. But unsettled was not all she was.

  For in those dreams, she dreamt the brush of gentle fingers across her skin, of breath warm and loving at the back of her neck, and a hushed voice in her ear — close at hand and yet still distant, like someone whispering from far away.

  She would wake from those dreams with a tempting, slipping wetness between her thighs that she knew also not to be seemly. The wet heat that begged for her sinful touch.

  But touch herself she did not, for she knew to do so was wrong indeed, especially while the Beast slept soundly beside her, his own heat as warming as the heavy furs, his skin as bare as hers was clothed, his breath at her neck both hot and teasing.

  In waking, the Beast she saw always on the breaking of each morn, and again at the dusking of each day, when he joined her for evening meals.

  They ate in the Great Hall. Claria was disinclined to the room, despite its magnificence, for even when a fire roared in the hearth as it always did, the Hall still felt
vast to her, and cold, the ceiling so high above that even the watchful shadows felt distant.

  And though she ate at his side, the Beast felt distant too.

  Claria longed instead to sit at one of the worn little tables in the busy warmth of the kitchens, to talk companionably of the day they had spent as they ate bread fresh from the oven dipped in the succulent juices that dripped from the spit.

  But days often passed when she did not see the Beast the full span of morning to evening. Indeed, sometimes she knew him to be not in the castle at all — the clatter of hoofs, and a glimpse of a golden horse with a white-gold mane that shimmered into smoke as soon as the Beast dismounted.

  The waning of the day found Claria once again in the kitchen garden, idly picking some sage for the loaves she longed to make, for the work she would happily fill her empty, idle days with. She pinched the silver-green leaves between her fingers to take their heady scent, but that was all she did.

  For Claria knew well she could not bake in her fine gown, could not leave a token of the Beast’s kindness all flour-dusted and butter-stained.

  But she could imagine, for Claria was most practiced at imagining…

  She could imagine working the dough to the perfect stretch and shine, could imagine the sparkle of salt, the sheen of oil, the sweet scent of bread beginning to rise.

  She could imagine warmth and light, could imagine a soft touch against her skin, a whispered word in her ear, a fleeting press of lips against—

  Claria stopped in her imaginings and her wanderings both. The gate to the rose garden lay ajar.

  The Beast and his magic lived in the castle. Claria lived there too. No one else.

  But someone had opened the gate.

  Claria peered around the latch. The Beast was not in the garden, but someone had been, for the little marble bench there, at the garden’s heart, was strewn with cushions and a swathe of soft furs.

  It looked so inviting, welcoming in a way that the garden never had before. And so for the first time, courage welled within her, and Claria stepped across the threshold and into the rose garden proper.

  She stepped so close to the tangling briars that she could see the buds were heavy yet, but darker now — some of them hinting towards the deep pink blooms they still held within.

  Such a strange sight they made, those budded blooms. She wondered that they did not rot on the stem, for how long could a flower live without unfurling?

  Claria sat down upon the bench and ran the softness of the dark furs through her fingers. She wondered if they would feel akin to the sleek hair that mapped the muscles of the Beast’s chest. She wondered, too, how it might feel under her hands, and her cheeks flushed hot at the thought.

  So just as well that the day was pleasingly crisp, sharp with a wintering chill — even in the rose garden, where the close, sweet air always seemed to run hotter than most.

  A fine rain fell too, a silvered mist upon the air, and Claria knew she could not stay long in the garden or the rain would ruin her gown just as readily as the kitchens.

  But for a moment, at least, she let herself enjoy a welcome little shiver of gooseflesh.

  It reminded her of those autumns back in the village, when she had liked to step outside to take a breath of air after a long day spent in the floury warmth of the bakery. And of how sometimes Armand might join her, and watch the comings and goings of the village, share a tale of some pernickety customer or some spendthrift miller. Of how he might talk with her of silly nothings, as if they were a man and woman wed.

  But they were not a man and woman wed. And now they would never be, whatever foolish notions Claria had entertained.

  She was a fallen woman, cast down and cast away, and Armand still grieved for his wife, dead before Claria had even come of age. He had never wished anything from Claria that a man might wish from a woman.

  He had never wished from her any of the sinful things that the other young women had whispered of, the sinful things they longed to do with their sweethearts, the sinful ways they said that a woman might touch a man, and a man a woman.

  Armand had never touched her — no matter how much, in her most hidden of hearts, Claria had longed for his touch. No matter how she longed for any touch. No matter the loneliness that seemed carved into her very soul.

  The air shifted behind her then, a frisson of golden magic. Claria stilled, though her heart beat a wild, quickening rhythm.

  The Beast.

  The Beast had come to her, as if her contrary heart had called him.

  She could feel his breath upon the back of her neck, stirring the curling hair there, an echo of her dream like an echo in her aching heart.

  The rain still misted the air above, but it dissolved into that mist before it reached them, like a flick of water upon a searing skillet. The Beast’s warmth overtook her, as it overtook all else.

  He sat so still behind her, waiting for her to speak. Waiting for her to ask.

  And so she did.

  “Might you touch me?”

  “Like this?” A fingertip, the barest brush at her nape, shifting her hair. No more.

  Claria swallowed a sticky breath. She nodded, for she did not trust her own voice.

  “And like this?” A kiss, as light as air, where the heat of his hand still lingered.

  Again, Claria nodded.

  The Beast turned her to him. His gaze was golden, as warm as he. He dipped his head, and to her lips he pressed the gentlest of kisses. “Like this?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Claria gasped. “Yes, like that. Please, Beast.”

  He kissed her again, and she kissed him back, her humours hot and high. The touch of his tongue against her bottom lip made her gasp anew. Claria pulled back, her fingers pressed to her mouth.

  Such a thing — it should not give her pleasure so. But it did. Oh, how it did.

  Smiling small and sly, the Beast dipped his head down to hers again, slow enough that she might duck away. But Claria did not.

  Her lips he kissed, gentle at first, but not gentle for long. His tongue touched her bottom lip again, teasing there, playing, until with a shuddering gasp, she opened her mouth to him. Their tongues touched and tangled, and the fierce heat between her legs ached so badly it was near enough pain.

  The Beast pulled her to him, so close that her bosom pressed tight to his broad chest, so close that her skirts hitched a little and their legs tangled, so close that it felt as if they were one being, not two. So close as to be almost overwhelming.

  Claria broke away, gasping for breath. “I— I—”

  She could give no words to the feeling that had overtaken her, nor to all the wants and the longings that thronged within her, the longings she had always hidden away, for they were of sin…

  But then, why should a fallen woman care for sin? Why should she? To touch the Beast was sin, but how she wanted to touch him. Strip him from his soft tunic and worn leathers, and touch him. Touch him bare and true, her skin to his, her warmth to his, and his strength upon her.

  And how she could not make the words come.

  But the Beast took pity. “Like this?” he asked again — pulled his tunic over his head, setting his long hair to riot as it fell, brushing at the strong, sculpted line of his jaw. “Like this, lass?”

  Claria could only nod, lost a little at the sight of him. His hair was as beautiful as his face, a shining fall that he never wore plaited or queued.

  He would make no fine soldier with habits such as those, but what did that matter, when he made such an awfully fine Beast.

  Claria reached out, watched her own hands — distantly, as if they were not quite her own — as they slipped across the smooth golden skin of his shoulders, as she felt the breadth and the strength of those shoulders, the faint, thrilling thrum of power so barely contained.

  She shivered, anticipation and a little fear.

  For perhaps it was only then that she realised how truly powerful he was, how easily the Beast could hurt her s
hould he wish to, of how certain she was that he would never do so.

  Not ever.

  And yet…

  His strength called to her. She yearned for it, hotly, wetly.

  She trailed her touch more firmly across the sleekness of his furred chest. Took the muscles there and squeezed them just as firm.

  A snort of a laugh bubbled up in her, one that Claria almost choked upon, a note of hysteria catching her breath. The gods, he had a bigger bosom than she did.

  But her bosom, such as it was, was of pert softness; his, sheer power

  Claria shifted, came up onto her knees so that she might trail her touch more readily down the Beast’s stomach, where lines of corded muscle cut ridges of strength, where his dark hair narrowed, slipping a guiding line down to the laces of his leathers.

  She had seen him bare that first night, both as beast and man — and as a man, there had been less of him in all matters, but the sliding, slipping glances Claria had cast his way told her he was still more than enough, still more than she had seen on any other man.

  And from the sinful things the young women of the village had whispered in the dark, she knew that to glimpse a man wakened and risen in his excitement was a different sight altogether to behold.

  Claria wondered — had she excited the Beast enough to make him rise? Did she wish to know? Or see?

  And it was there that her courage failed her.

  Her gaze stuttered up to meet his as her trailing touch stuttered to a stop. She found him watching her, his smile soft.

  “Beast,” she said. “I…”

  He touched his knuckles to her warm cheek, and his smile sharpened at the edges with some sly intent.

  He moved, moved her, set his leg between hers, and the hardness of his thigh pressed firm to the mound at the centre of her, where she was hot and where she was wet.

  Claria gasped at the sensation — it was sinful relief and awful temptation as one.