The Surrender of Lady Charlotte

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  Charlotte looked at him smugly. “I thought you were sending me to Sir Guy?”

  “That I was. And I might yet. But, when I thought of what schemes I could devise to make you suffer… well, how could I not witness your anguish myself?”

  Charlotte’s heart began to cry before he even spelled out his latest punishment.

  He moved close, his face in hers, his breath mingling with her breath, his eyes forcing hers to acknowledge his. “Caius bring out the belt,” he said as he stared determinedly. He didn’t blink. Nor did she. “Give my wife back her chastity,” he ordered. “We’ll make a virgin of her again.” He sneered, delighted by his own wit, but then his face became utterly serious and his tone deadly. “You’ll be sexless, madam, for the remainder of your life. The only time you’ll be without this is to bathe once a month. And should you try any measures to alter this state, I will have your feminine body parts altered in such a way that there will be no life left in them. Sexless, madam. Sexless.”

  Charlotte shook her head, aghast.

  “I sense that your suffering will be endless,” her husband added.

  She waited silently, letting the gist of his message absorb in her brain, then finally blurted out passionately, “What have I done that deserves such misery?”

  He snarled again. “You pissed me off, lady. Simple as that. You should know by now that it doesn’t take much to turn my mind against anyone. It would be good, if your example will remind my flock that I am not the charming man I often appear to be. I am a sadist in the purest sense of the word. I cajole, I tease, I have a lovely wit. But in some things, I am unyielding. You had enough dick to keep your body satisfied, and still you fucked my aide behind my back.” While Mountbane spoke, Caius had been installing a chastity belt about Charlotte’s groin. “This, now,” Mountbane grabbed at the crotch piece of the device and shook it hard, “this bondage is my victory!”

  Charlotte could not stop her tears; though her tears would not give way to self-pity or shame. “Oh, my husband, I feel so sorry for you,” she said.

  “Sorry for me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  He’d been clearly in his prime, filled with puffed-up power and pride. But at his wife’s odd remark, his mockery and sneers fell flat. “How dare you!” he finally spit out when he could think of nothing else to say.”

  “I dare so easily,” she answered him. “You may take away my sexual response, you may strip me of my freedom, but you cannot take my feelings from me. Those are mine. You may control my body, but you cannot steal my thoughts.”

  “Good enough then. Have your feelings and enjoy your thoughts. I wonder how they’ll comfort you when your body roars, and in its tempest, you cannot reach the mark that brings you pleasure. Humph.”

  “I will abide, sir,” she replied.

  “Good.” He shook her off, shaken himself, but showing it little. No one in the room would understand his mood except Charlotte, and she was quickly returned to the tower.

  Charlotte spent the next month high inside the castle turret as though that might be her permanent home. However, the drafty and cavernous room was not suitable for the harshest months of winter. If she were to survive, she needed a room in the castle below.

  Mountbane, realizing that he could no longer keep her so imprisoned, had a room provided for her in the servant’s quarters. There, her life began to take on a routine that she hoped would grant her some peace. Other than the strict penalty she paid with her crotch so firmly harnessed, she was granted a good deal of freedom to move about the castle. As long as she stayed clear of her husband—which she took great pains to do—he seemed to forget her, and she could lead a life without his mocking presence. She dressed normally in simple clothes, spent some hours in the kitchens—not laboring as a slave, but happily preparing food along with the cooks. She embroidered linens, recalling the painstaking crafts that she’d dispensed with once coming to Ilusia. She gave herself to any activity that would keep her mind, heart and body away from the dangerous thoughts of love and lust and physical pleasure. She forbade herself to think of Tristan as he was the most dangerous of her mind’s musings. Having resolved not to let Mountbane’s punishment break her, Charlotte was determined to live her life without her passions—and perhaps, too, find some ease in it. After nearly four years of turmoil, she needed this enforced rest.

  Charlotte’s days were long to prevent even longer nights when her body roar might rise up and swiftly unsettle her fragile equilibrium. She worked herself until she tired each day, hoping to fall asleep as soon as her head fell to her pillow and her eyes closed.

  The only wrinkle in Charlotte’s resolve came during her first weeks. She was in the kitchens, seemingly lost in her labor of kneading loaves of bread when one young maid whispered in her ear, “You must have heard the rumor, Lady Charlotte.”

  “And what is that?” she asked. Gossip was common in scullery.

  “That Sir Tristan escaped.”

  Her entire body quickened at the very idea. “No, I had not. How so?” she asked.

  “It was said that his escape came early, in the first hours of his capture. While you were wrestled back to this castle, he was to be taken to a northern fortress and put to death. But Sir Tristan is too much a warrior to allow that.”

  “Indeed he is,” Charlotte agreed.

  “No one has seen him since, and there has been no word. Disappeared, utterly vanished off the face of the earth.”

  “And how did you come upon this information?” Charlotte wondered.

  The maid smiled shyly. “I have a friend,” she whispered sweetly.

  “Oh? And who is this fellow?”

  “Did I say he was a fellow?”

  “Your blush does, my dear.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He sometimes attends Lord Mountbane. Two weeks ago he overheard this conversation with one of the aides who’d captured your lover.”

  “Shush. I would advise you to watch what you hear and what you turn into gossip,” Charlotte warned her. “This castle isn’t safe for a wagging tongue.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  That night, Charlotte suffered as her thoughts rained with pictures of Sir Tristan. She shook them off only to have them return, and her body raged in anxious fits. In the morning, she determined her future path—resolved that she would not suffer like this again. She refused to live with thoughts of sex and must put an end to her fantasies. Should Tristan return to the province, he would be killed and there was no thought of her own escape. It could be no other way. What luck, that fate took hold their lives to split them apart, she brooded unhappily. For surely, fate would win.

  Five months into her celibate life, Charlotte found herself working industriously in the gardens one sunny afternoon. The season being so fair, she relished the fresh air and the labor both, for they seemed to have a more settling effect on her than anything she did inside the castle. As long as the weather held, she’d do as much as she could where she could breathe the free air and have it fill her lungs with the smells of earth.

  When she heard the sounds of someone’s voice calling her, she turned, but found no one. Hearing her named called again, she turned again, and then a third time with the same empty results. Was she going daft? A fourth time, Charlotte stared in the direction of the sound, peering into a thick hedge to see a form arise inside the briar.

  “Tristan!” she almost spoke aloud, but bit her tongue.

  “Shush,” he spoke as softly, covering his lips with a finger. A second later he seemed to make himself invisible, slipping deeper inside the hedge. Charlotte followed him with a circumspect glance around her, wondering if anyone had seen her suspicious move. But she was alone. Dropping to her knees, she began working the ground near the hedge with a small shovel while waiting to hear more from the man inside the thicket. “How have you fared, my darling,” she heard his voice again.

  “Not well, sir,” she whispered. Her heart was pounding so furiously she thought it would fly rig
ht from her chest. “And especially poorly now that you’re here,” she went on anxiously, trying not to stare his way.

  “And why would that be?” he wondered.

  “You have always been a scoundrel but never a foolish one. You are foolish now.”

  “Because I’m visiting you?”

  “Because you’re risking your life.” She stared at the ground as she spoke.

  “I could not allow you to think me dead or assume my love had died.”

  “It would be better if I did,” she said.

  “No, Charlotte. There are ways to bring us together.”

  He spoke with such certainty, but she didn’t feel it in herself. “Impossible.”

  “You’re here now, unwatched.”

  She shook her head, and taking a deep breath sought to make some sense of this event. “That is not true. Everyone watches. Everyone is Mountbane’s spy. We’ll be lucky if you’re not suddenly discovered in your hideaway and I’m not sent back to the tower.”

  “Can you leave the castle in the night?” he asked.

  “I would not attempt it. Especially because it would lead to you. I will not put you in danger, Tristan. I shouldn’t even say your name.”

  “I appreciate your faithfulness, woman, but I will take care of myself. I intend to have you. If not now, then soon. The scheme is in the works.”

  “No, no schemes, love. I don’t want you dead.” She spoke as adamantly as she could and still keep her voice hushed.

  “Tonight.”

  “Not tonight, never!”

  “Take a moonlit walk and meet with me on the dark side of the castle.”

  “Anywhere is dangerous.”

  “But less so there.”

  “I cannot have you sexually,” she added with tears starting to burn in her eyes, as she finally looked his way. “He’s bound me in a chastity belt—forever.”

  “Forever has no meaning now, milady.”

  “In this world it does.”

  “You are too dour. Meet with me tonight. It will be safe or we’ll die together. And then, what does it matter?”

  d

  There were passionate embraces and a thousand kisses, but no sex. There were promises from Tristan and a strangeness about him that Charlotte had never seen before. Gaining entry into his former world was a challenge the man relished, as though nurturing his power to execute this grand deception gave the nobleman a special satisfaction.

  He came to warn his Charlotte—to love her and remind her that life was not as hopeless as she feared. He wouldn’t rescue her, not yet. It would be far too dangerous for Tristan to travel through this climate with a woman, but he would effect her rescue—soon. He had come to give her hope.

  Much to Charlotte’s dismay, however, Sir Tristan’s visit only made her more melancholy. Worse yet, his appearance ignited her sexual passions at a moment when she believed they’d finally disappeared forever.

  Once he was gone, there was no way to pacify her body. Every night was misery, every day an endless memory of his touch, and the aroma of his body, and the look of darkness in his bold, black eyes. Her body ached with such passion that reckless thoughts and senseless schemes began to ferment in her now demented mind. They seemed to drive her mad until, impulsively, several weeks after the auspicious meeting she was driven to Lord Mountbane.

  “I give up, milord,” Charlotte came to her husband in the morning, after the last of a dozen restless nights. “I plead with you, my husband. Give me back my life.”

  Mountbane found her presence in his chambers bothersome. “I made my decree six months ago. I will never change my mind. Now get out of here.”

  The night whores in his bed were waking from their long night disgruntled by this woman’s talk.

  “No, sir, please, I implore you. Anything, anything to have my body back.”

  “Ooo, Mountbane, come here,” one sensuously slumbering woman rose on the bed to draw him back.

  “Ah, be done with you, bitches,” he snarled as he waved her off.

  The second woman pulled from bed, coming to the Lord and wrapping her body about his with her hand resting on the soft package of his scrotum. “Milord, we were just about to…”

  He shook her off. “Out of here, all of you!”

  “Husband, please,” Charlotte fell to her knees at his feet and looked up at him wantingly. “Hear me out, please.”

  “Get on!” he snapped. It wasn’t clear who he was yelling at, his whores or his wife. The two nymphs in his bed scampered out the door, tittering as they went. They had little reason to fear, but they could sense a fight was brewing and were not about to take the shock of it themselves. They left Lady Charlotte to fend for herself with the grim-faced man. “And why do you remain?” he smoldered, still disgruntled.

  “Because I must have you listen.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because you once cared for me. Because we shared a great physical feast. It was only when our passions dwindled that I found comfort elsewhere, just as you did. Time was not a good companion in our union.”

  “Actually, I’ve rather enjoyed knowing that you suffered these months.”

  “But you have suffered, too. Look at you.”

  “How so?”

  “Your face, your brow. There is little mirth in you now. Even your mockery falls flat for lack of inspiration.” She eyed him somewhat cautiously thinking she might just be breaking down his grumpy exterior. “You have lost your wit, sir.”

  “Indeed not!”

  “Indeed so, sir. I only say this because of the melancholy that pours from you.”

  He scowled.

  “I know what passes—or doesn’t pass between us weighs heavily on you, despite what airs you adopt to cover your gloom. You may be the sadist that you claim, but you are also human. There is a spirit in you that seeks other things than the pursuit of this terror. I do believe it is so. Your face alone speaks so persuasively of your inner heart. Tell me it is not so.”

  He scowled still, but less offensively. Perhaps his mood was easing. He paced the room, obviously troubled now, then strode to her again as she sat meekly waiting for him to speak. “Perhaps you speak the truth.”

  Charlotte was surprised to hear these words, having expected that he’d deny her once again. Her heart gladdened, but she was cautious. “I believe I do,” she answered him. “Whip me if I lie, but if I am seeing what is true, there is something curious in your guise; something in your heart, perhaps?”

  “Yes. I think so,” he agreed more directly.

  “Then confess to me? Perhaps I can help you.”

  “Help me?” He nurtured the thought for some seconds while Charlotte watched the expression on his face transform from puzzlement to inspiration. “Yes, perhaps you can…” he paused, letting the thought settle, “and even earn what you so desire.”

  “How so, husband?”

  Mountbane stared at her while making his decision. She could see the conversation in his brain: how one side warred against such intimate disclosure, while the other demanded this revelation. To wait was miserable, and even if he were to divulge his secret, there was no certainty that it would mean any change in Charlotte’s life. Still, this was better news than anything she’d heard in months.

  “I aspire to win the heart of a woman,” Mountbane finally announced, almost as if he were embarrassed.

  “Ah, sir, and who is this woman?”

  “The maid Rosaura.”

  “She is the intended of Sir Leonas?”

  “Yes, she is. But I would have her.”

  “You can take her as you desire, sir. That is your right.”

  “Of course, but that is not what I want this time.”

  “Oh?”

  “I must throw him over but not so that she knows I’ve had a hand in it. And then, I want her loving me. Not forced as you were.” He scowled with a suddenly troubled look. “All that is jaded and meaningless. I want her to beg at my feet as you once did
—and do now—not because she wants her freedom, or her lust, but because she loves me. Because she desires me with her whole being.”

  “Ah! Sir.”

  “I need your help.”

  Charlotte’s heart leapt excitedly. This was the first real chance for some release from the dreaded belt. “You would, perhaps, free me?”

  “If I had this woman, Charlotte, trust me, you would be gone—without your present chastity. You leave my province, I don’t care where you go.”

  “You are certain, sir?”

  “Only if I win in love.”

  “Then what shall I do?”

  “It seems feasible to first find a means to discredit Leonas in the sweet Rosaura’s eyes. And then, your second task will be to enlist her love for me. Put her eyes on mine, her heart, her mind focused on me. She is a sweet and innocent thing and simply needs to turn her face in my direction for me to woo her. With Leonas out of the way, I believe that can happen. I want her in Caius’ dungeon willingly trained as my consort and future bride.”

  “Your bride?”

  “Our divorce can be simply made, can it not?”

  “I assume so, if you’re the one to grant it.”

  He smiled. “So, how does this collusion fit with your sensibilities?”

  “It fares well. Leonas is no great man,” Charlotte rationalized. Yes, she thought the plan sound—even if it meant that she’d be consigned to moral treachery to be freed from her bondage. “I could tell Rosaura many things to turn her heart to you.” She paused. “Though it would be wise, sir, to demonstrate to her all that I report. Sometimes, the innocent have the most crafty intuition. They can spot a trick faster than the jaded sort like you and me.”

  “I’m sure. But in this case, there is no trickery in my affection for her. If she truly loved me, I cannot imagine knowing anything but love my life long.”

  “And you did not feel that way with me?”

  “No,” he answered simply. “Any more than you loved me.”

  “I see.” She rose to her feet like an equal in his eye. “My plans work fast. I can have Leonas far from sight in a short time. The winning of Rosaura, however, might take some time—and only after her heart mends from being broken.”