Masks

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Is this really necessary?” Mircea asked, as two robust farm girls approached. They were the ones who had fed him a week ago, and he’d seen them a few times since, although wearing rather more than they had on at the moment.

Not that he was about to be doing any better.

“I bathed this morning,” he pointed out, as he was efficiently stripped by a couple of fiends with nimble fingers and laughing brown eyes.

“And now you’ll bathe again,” Auria said, reclining on her bed, examining him as the girls set to work.

He closed his eyes briefly. He didn’t need this right now. He needed to talk to Auria, preferably alone.

And clear-headed.

But neither option appeared to be on offer. “I need to ask you something, about Sanuito,” he said, trying not to react as the girls went to work with warm, wet rags.

“Not now.”

“Yes, now. I need to know if he was acting strangely in the last few days.”

Auria shrugged. “Sanuito always acted—”

“Yes, so I’ve been told. I mean moreso.”

“Not that I noticed. He seemed much the same. Quiet, assiduous, smart—”

“Smart?”

“Yes, why?”

“No one else seemed to notice that about him.”

Auria shrugged. “No one else paid attention.”

“But you did.”

“It’s my job to notice men. How they think, what they’re like.”

“And what was Sanuito like?”

She started to say something, and then paused, a small frown creasing her lovely forehead. “Damaged. Skittish. Afraid. But also intelligent, hardworking, eager to prove himself. I’d had an assistant a while ago, but I stopped using him. You know Lucca?”

Mircea thought back to the gormless servant wrestling with the heron’s feet. “Vaguely.”

“Be glad. The man’s an idiot. I’d show him simple recipes time and again, and he never remembered them. I finally told Cook she could have him, because it was easier doing everything myself!”

“But Sanuito wasn’t like that.”

“No. I never had to repeat a recipe, but he never got one wrong, either. I’d show him how I wanted something ground, and it was perfect every time thereafter. I will miss him.”

Mircea blinked. It was the first time he’d heard anyone say that, too. “Did he ever come into contact with poison?”

“Poison?”

“Of any kind. You said he helped you in the—that isn’t necessary,” Mircea said, glancing over his shoulder at the girl behind him, who was becoming a little overly familiar.

She just gave him a grin and went back to work.

“It’s necessary,” Auria said, drawing his attention back to her. “And, no.”

“But he assisted you—”

“To create cosmetics.”

“The ingredients of which are sometimes dangerous, are they not?”

“Sometimes. To humans, if used indiscriminately. Not to us.”

“But some are poisonous,” Mircea insisted. “You told me once that there was arsenic in some of the depilatories—”

“Which is washed off before it does harm to anything but hair!”

“But if it wasn’t? Isn’t it supposed to be hard to detect?”

“The kind poisoners use, perhaps. But the kind in cosmetics comes from orpiment, which is bright yellow and smells terribly of sulfur. Even to humans it reeks, and to us . . . well, no one is going to ingest any by accident, I assure you.”

“Vermilion, then,” Mircea said stubbornly.

Auria tilted her head. “Where are you hearing about all this?”

“From Jerome. His master was poisoned, and he learned a great deal about them afterward. He says there’s all sorts of things used in cosmetics that can kill someone.”

“If you eat an entire jar of it, perhaps,” Auria said dryly. “As far as I know, Sanuito didn’t. And in any case, we don’t use vermilion.”

“But your lips—”

“And my cheeks. And any other part of my anatomy I choose. I’m a vampire, Mircea! Blood goes where I want it.”

And didn’t he just wish that were true of him, Mircea thought, swallowing. And trying to keep his mind on the conversation. How long did it take to clean someone who was clean already?

“In any case, vermilion isn’t harmful unless overused,” Auria said. “And even for humans, it’s more likely to cause a rash than death. It wouldn’t harm a vampire at all. Most poisons won’t.”

“Jerome’s master was poisoned with something—”

“But I doubt it was his rouge that did him in!”

Mircea sighed and gave up. “Belladonna?”

“Is used in a weak tincture, a drop or so at the time, to cause the pupils to expand. It gives women that doe-eyed expression some men like.”

“And can result in blurry vision, hallucinations, poisoning,” Mircea recited from memory.

“Again, only in excess. It isn’t dangerous unless greatly overused—except to men’s purses.”

“But someone has to make that tincture,” Mircea persisted.

“We don’t make it here; we buy it.”

“But if Sanuito spilled some on himself—”

Auria sighed. “Then he would have been chastised for clumsiness, not poisoned. And in any case, Sanuito didn’t die of poison, did he?”

“I don’t know what he died of. I only know—” Mircea cut off, because one of the girls had stopped the bath he didn’t need, and had gone to her knees in front of him. And now she was—

“What are you doing?” he demanded, in shock.

“Ignore her,” Auria said.

Mircea looked up incredulously. “Ignore—”

“We need to work on your self-control.”

“I have self-control!” he said, jerking away.

“Apparently not. Unless you planned to almost die every time we sent you out!”

“That had nothing to do with me!”

“It had everything to do with you, and the decisions you made.” She nodded at the girl, who resumed her former occupation. “You are in charge on any assignation,” Auria’s voice snapped, bringing his attention back to her despite everything. “Whatever your client may believe. To stay that way, you must remain clear-headed, regardless of the distractions. You dictate the terms, you decide the duration, and if something goes wrong, you take the blame.”

“So you’re telling me I could have . . . could have somehow kept myself from almost being drained?” Mircea demanded.

“Yes, easily.”

“How?”

“By specifying no blood. Or by limiting the amount to be taken. Or by simply mentioning your age! As it was, you set no boundaries, so naturally they assumed you had none.”

“I wasn’t told to negotiate anything—”

“And you never asked?”

Mircea flushed. “We’re—you know what we are—”

“You can’t even say it.”

“—and I didn’t think we had any rights.”

“And as long as you act like that, you won’t. What happened to the man who leapt over the balcony and went charging after Sanuito?”

“That was different—”

“How different?”

“That was—damn it!” Mircea looked over his shoulder again, at the girl behind him. Who had just passed familiar and was heading into uncharted waters.

“Ignore her,” Auria’s voice snapped again. “And concentrate. How is it different?”

He looked up, angry and exasperated. “I don’t know—”

“Then let’s try another one. The second trip. You were being called back, which alone told you something. Didn’t it?”

“I . . .” Mircea paused. He was having a hard time concentrating even on easy questions at the moment, much less the hard ones.

“It told you she was interested,” Auria said, with a sigh. “Anyone could have been sent out the first time. Martina selected you because she knew something of the senator’s preferences. She has no use for callow schoolboys, or for men who have never been tested by anything more strenuous than a rousing debate. She likes soldiers, and you were the only one we had. But there was no way to know that she would like you.”

Mircea nodded, hoping like hell that would be good enough, because he was pretty sure he was incapable of actual speech at the moment. The warm, wet caress from the girl in front was bad enough, not being the sort of thing he had ever been expected to concentrate through. But it had just been joined by—

“God!” he cried out, shuddering all over. No wonder they’d been so assiduous with the washing!

“Pay attention,” Auria snapped. “This is exactly the sort of mistake you made before.”

“I made no mistake!”

“Then what would you call it? You received no offer, even for a future assignation. And that was despite clear indication of interest.”

“She—that’s—you don’t understand. She felt badly—”

“About what?”

“About—can we stop this?”

“No.”

Mircea glared at her. “She wasn’t interested in me! She felt badly about what her ladies

had done—” Auria rolled her eyes. “It’s true!”

“Did she have sex with you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then I think we can safely say her contrition was limited,” she said dryly.

Mircea knew there was an appropriate response to that, something suitably cutting, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of it. Or much of anything else. Except the obvious.

“Don’t you dare,” Auria told him sternly.

He stared at her desperately, wondering if she had any idea—

Her lips quirked. “Leave us,” she told the girls.

“We, er, we don’t mind finishing,” the one in front of him said breathlessly.

“I’m sure. Out.”

They went, closing the door behind them. And leaving him standing ridiculously in front of the door, naked and aching and unfulfilled. And then it got worse.

“Come here.”

Mircea hesitated, but although her face was as serenely beautiful as ever, the blue eyes were laughing at him. His back stiffened. He started walking, despite knowing how he must look.

“Stop.”

The tip of a lace-edged fan came to rest at the center of Mircea’s chest, halting him halfway across the luxurious bedroom.

He blinked; he hadn’t even seen her move.

He also hadn’t seen her undress, because she hadn’t. She was wearing a blue gown that brought out her eyes, slashed to show the fine linen chemise below, with a strand of pearls woven through her thick auburn hair. She even had on shoes instead of slippers, dainty, low-heeled mules in a matching blue, decorated with delicate silver embroidery and seed pearls.

She looked like a duchess.

It made Mircea feel even more vulnerable as she walked around him, and trailed the scratchy lace fan across muscles that jerked and bunched, following her in a ripple of movement.

“So, to summarize,” she said mildly. “You knew she was interested. You knew you had the upper hand. You knew you could have asked for anything—”

“I couldn’t—”

“You could. You can always ask. Do so prettily enough and they won’t mind, even if they turn you down.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“But Martina does.”

“And she really thinks she’s going to get a fortune for me?”

“She thinks she’s going to get something, but not necessarily a fortune.”

“Then why does she care so damned much? She likely already made back what she spent—”

“This isn’t about money. A senator has abilities others do not.”

“Such as?”

“To accuse . . . or to pardon.”

“And why . . . does Martina . . . need a pardon?” he gasped, trying not to react as the fan trailed down his stomach, and caused the muscles to clench convulsively. Whether they were trying to pull away or go toward her, Mircea wasn’t sure.

Until she ran the edge of it down his sex, causing him to shudder violently.

She raised him with the end of her open fan, watching him fill and swell against the delicate black lace.

“What Martina does is her business,” she told him softly. “Mine is to make you understand that the mind is one thing, but the body . . . is something else. It has its own wants, its own needs, and its own language to express them.”

She didn’t give an example. She didn’t have to. Mircea did that for himself, lifting off the platform and into the air, hard and aching without even a touch.

Auria went up on tiptoe, putting coral lips next to his ear. “Once you learn the body’s language, it won’t matter what a client says. Or even what they think they want. Their body will tell you the truth. Their need will tell you. And you will find that you can get them to agree to almost anything, once their body is on your side. Do you understand?”

Mircea swallowed. Nothing like an object lesson. “Yes, I—”

The fan abruptly snapped shut, hard enough to make him flinch.

“We’ll see. Get on the bed.”