“Had she been a man, I would not have reacted that way,” I said.
“Is that so.” He stopped walking and turned to face me in the darkened corridor. Through the closed door to the withdrawing room, I heard Sibylla exclaim “Checkmate!” followed by laughter and applause.
He said, “A kiss between a man and a woman is not something an unblemished maiden’s instincts will have prepared her for. Such a kiss, if it be done well, should be filled with heat and mystery and the promise of erotic intimacies to come. ’Tis nothing like the dry, chaste kiss one bestows upon the cheek of a dear old uncle.”
“I think I know that, signore. And I am confident that when the time comes, my instincts will guide me well enough.”
“Let us see, shall we?”
I stopped breathing when he tilted my chin up, as Elle had done. His fingers felt rougher than hers, and stronger.
“Did you learn nothing from Elle?” he asked.
“Signore?”
“Close your eyes,” he said as he cupped my upturned head in his hands. “Part your lips.”
FTER WHAT SEEMED an interminable interval, but was probably only three or four seconds, I felt the soft hot shock of Domenico Vitturi’s mouth upon mine.
I drew in a breath.
“Easy,” he murmured against my lips. “Don’t fight me. Yield to me.”
His lips moved over mine with terrifying tenderness, making my heart hammer wildly even as I returned the kiss.
“Put your arms around me,” he whispered.
I did, tentatively at first, then more firmly as the kiss continued. My lips felt as sensitive as my sex. When he glided the tip of his tongue between them, I actually moaned.
With one arm encircling me, he stroked my face, my throat, and my breast, which he gently squeezed through my stays. I held him tighter, pressing my body to his as he kissed and caressed me. His breath came faster when I touched my tongue to his. He deepened the kiss, one hand gripping the back of my head, the other banded possessively around my waist. His whiskers tickled my lower face, only accentuating the voluptuous warmth of his mouth.
At long last, he broke the kiss, meeting my eyes with a look of dazed wonderment. I think I may have looked very much the same to him.
He dipped his head again, his gaze on my mouth. I closed my eyes.
A door creaked open, accompanied by footsteps on the corridor’s stone-paved floor.
He drew back, thrusting me from him. Reeling, I braced an arm on the wall. I turned and saw Inigo standing just outside the open door to the withdrawing room, his hand on the doorknob. He was smiling, his too-insightful gaze shifting between Vitturi and me.
“I was sent to fetch you,” Inigo told Vitturi. “We, er, could use one more player. But if you are occupied with something more important…” He glanced in my direction.
“’Tisn’t important,” Vitturi said, “merely a… an instructional demonstration. Mistress Leeds.” Bowing briefly in my direction, but without meeting my eyes, he ducked into the withdrawing room.
I let out a pent-up breath.
“Hannah?” Inigo stepped toward me with a frown of concern. “Are you all right?”
I took my hand off the wall and smoothed down my hair. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Your hands are shaking. Come, rejoin us,” he said, reaching for my hand as he gestured toward the withdrawing room. “I’ll pour you something to settle your nerves.”
“I would really rather not,” I said, backing away. The notion of being in the same room as Domenico Vitturi right then, pretending nothing had transpired between us— nothing important—was too excruciating to contemplate.
Nodding thoughtfully, Inigo said, “I understand.”
I was quite certain he did. For all his devil-may-care demeanor, he struck me as highly perceptive, even empathetic.
With a conspiratorial smile, he said, “Shall I tell them your head is still paining you, then?”
“Please do,” I said, although it was my heart, not my head, that had begun to ache.
By the time I awoke the next morning, Buckingham had already left for a dawn boar hunt with Jonas Knowles, Sir Humphrey Quade, and a few yeomen and lacqueys. The duke was, if anything, even more inaccessible than he’d been in London and during the journey to Grotte Cachée. How could I convince him of my uncle’s innocence if he spent every day far from the castle?
We novices began the day with a lesson on enhancing our natural beauty with antimony, lead, and a purplish dye for lips and cheeks that came from snails, of all things. We were taught, as well, how to perfume ourselves with a mixture of frankincense, musk, and oils extracted from orange flowers and lavender.
As that lesson ended, Sibylla was summoned not to the Training Room but to the “Punishment Chamber” in the cellar beneath the southwest tower, for a session with Elic.
I was filled with alarm on her behalf. “Punishment Chamber? Have… have you done something you might be disciplined for?”
“One can only hope so,” she said with an impish little smile as she sauntered away.
While the Florentine beauty was being subjected to mysterious indignities in the castle dungeon, the rest of us had strands of our hair pulled through straw hats and coated with a noxious lightening paste. Since the paste required exposure to the sun in order to work, we spent the remainder of the cloudless morning on the castle’s sprawling west lawn, learning the fundamentals of tennis, shuttlecock, archery, pall mall, and bowls.
Sibylla returned, looking none the worse for wear, as our hair was being rinsed. To hasten its drying, we were served dinner outdoors in a lovely rose garden adjacent to the castle, just the four of us around a small, linen-draped table. Sibylla described her interlude in the Punishment Chamber with Elic, who was charged with teaching her to find pleasure in submitting to benefactors with “certain medieval tastes.” He took her twice while she was bent over a whipping stool getting “a red-hot spanking,” twice more as she stood with her hands chained to the ceiling, three times as she lay tautly stretched on the rack, and for the eighth and final time while she was confined in a hanging cage, gagged and blindfolded. “That one took a bit of contorting,” she told us, “but ’twas worth it.”
She and Bianca told us about their sessions in the Training Room with our two professeurs, during which they were, indeed, penetrated by both men simultaneously. Lucy was aghast when they revealed that it was Inigo, not Elic, who had entered them from behind. “That thing’s bloody huge!” They swore it wasn’t at all painful, that in fact they’d both enjoyed it immensely, but Lucy was convinced they were lying to reassure her.
After dinner and a lesson in Venetian hairstyling, we convened in the library, where Signor Vitturi explained the more pragmatic aspects of courtisanerie: the taxes we would owe to the Venetian Senate; how to discreetly collect our monthly fees from our benefactors; our tradition of relaying political messages “from pillow to pillow;” the staffs we would require, including a ruffiano for dealing with troublesome men; how to avoid pregnancy and the French pox; and how to best equip our chamber of recreation, which might be a different room altogether from our private bedchamber. The entire time he was addressing us, Vitturi never once spoke to me, nor even looked in my direction.
Later that afternoon, we novices were escorted to the upper hall, now a temporary sewing room, to be fitted for luxurious garments especially suited to our particular figures—save for Lucy. She had just begun to disrobe for the fitting when a footman came and told her that her presence was required in the Training Room. She left with an expression of dread, knowing what was in store for her.
My seductive new apparel included gossamer shifts trimmed with lace, embroidered satin stays, gold-fringed red petticoats, and veils of shot silk adorned with tassels. I was shown drawings of my new gowns, a few of which were remarkably modest, for church and other occasions when it was best not to trumpet our profession, but most had a look of elegant dishabille. Two featured an open s
kirt over snug breeches, like those that Elle had worn during our journey. Unlike men’s breeches, ours buttoned up not just in front but along an opening that extended between our legs, “for the convenience of your benefactors,” as my dressmaker, Signora Tozzi, put it. Most of the bodices were shamelessly low-cut to display as much of my corset-plumped bosom as possible. One, a costume for the winter Carnival season, had even been constructed to display my bare breasts within triangles of lace.
The gown that was closest to completion was of apple-green damask. Its most notable feature was sheer sleeves meant to be worn partially detached from the arm-eyes, so that the tops hung nonchalantly open with ribbons dangling, upper arms and shoulders fully exposed. Eight petticoats gave shape to the skirts, which were to be hemmed about ten inches longer than the floor, because of the chopines I would presumably be wearing.
As Signora Tozzi and her gaggle of seamstresses hovered about me, one adjusting the drape of the drooping sleeve, another tying a girdle about my waist, the others pinning and basting, a footman entered the hall. He bowed and came toward the three novices standing on platforms in the center of the room, scanning our faces.
His gaze settled on me.
“Your turn,” Sibylla whispered.
Oh, God.
The footman approached me and bowed again. “Mademoiselle. Monsieur Vitturi requests your immediate presence in la Chambre des Voiles et des Miroirs.”
“Are… are you quite sure that is where I’m wanted?” I asked, since Lucy had been summoned there not fifteen minutes ago.
“I am, mademoiselle.”
“Er, I shall need to take this off,” I said, indicating the green gown. “Please tell signore that I shall be along anon.”
“Forgive me, mademoiselle,” the footman said as he extended his hand to help me down from the platform, “but he requires that I escort you there forthwith.”
I was led to the top floor of the southeast tower, where Vitturi waited on the landing, arms folded. He dismissed the footman and bowed to me, taking in my calculatingly disheveled green gown as he rose.
He met my eyes, then quickly looked away. Quietly he said, “The color suits you.”
I opened my mouth to agree that Signora Tozzi had chosen well, but he put a finger to his lips, saying, “Speak softly, if at all, lest our presence be a distraction.”
Before I could quite grasp that, he stood aside and gestured for me to precede him into an unlit passageway that curved around the perimeter of the tower.
La Chambre des Voiles et des Miroirs did not occupy the entire top floor of the tower, as I had supposed, but just the central part. It was a room within a room, a round chamber inside the round outer walls of the tower, separated by the carpeted passage into which Vitturi had led me. The tower walls were of dark volcanic stone, of course, but the Training Room was delimited by a ring of wooden panels lined on the inside with quicksilvered glass; even the ceiling was mirrored. Between each of these wall panels was a space of about a foot, every such gap being swathed with black draperies so sheer that I could see right through them to the candlelit interior.
A peculiar piece of furniture occupied the center of the room. At first glance it appeared to be a tall bed with a carved wooden canopy, its underside mirrored. Where the mattress should have been, however, was a flat surface like a tabletop, lightly padded and covered in black leather studded all around the sides with nailheads. The headboard, also covered in nail-studded leather, was divided horizontally, with one large hole and two smaller ones, like a set of stocks. There were no bedclothes, no pillow. At its foot stood a hat stand from which a collection of leather straps and chains dangled menacingly. The other furniture consisted of a cabinet, a couple of tables, and several chairs and strangely shaped benches, the latter covered, like the bed, in black leather.
So dazzled were my eyes by the myriad reflections in this Chamber of Veils and Mirrors that it took me a moment to notice that there were people in the room.
I ducked behind a wall panel.
“They can’t see you,” Vitturi whispered. “’Tis too dark on this side of the veiling. You’ll notice the arrow slits have been covered against the sun.”
So they had, each one draped with a narrow black curtain.
“Come.” He led me halfway around the circular passage, our footsteps silent on the thick carpeting, to a couch—black leather, of course—facing a veiled gap that was somewhat wider than the others. He gestured for me to sit, then sat himself, lifting his bad leg over the good.
The view through the filmy black drapery was only slightly blurred, like looking through a glass window that needed cleaning. The mirrors produced multiple angles of the same images, giving the initial impression that the Training Room was filled with people, when there were actually only three occupants: Lucy, Elic, and Inigo. The two men lounged in chairs sipping from beakers, their gazes riveted on Lucy, who stood before them in naught but her thin silken shift.
As she started to lift the diaphanous garment, Elic said, “Lucy, Lucy, why must you rush so? There is much to be gained from teasing your benefactor, making him wait— especially if this be the first time he’s seen you undress.”
“Caress your breasts through the shift as you slowly lift it,” Inigo said. “Pinch your nipples, too. Men love that. Aye, that’s better. That’s lovely.”
“Watch yourself in the mirror,” Elic told her. “See yourself as your lover would see you.”
“Signore,” I whispered, “must we spy on them like this?”
Leaning closer, so close that I could breathe in the warmth of his skin, he said, “Lucy agreed to be observed from time to time without her knowledge, as did you and the rest of the novices, and Elic and Inigo, for that matter.”
Lucy. He called the other novices by their Christian names, I realized, whether addressing them directly or speaking to others about them. Yet with me, it was always “Mistress Leeds.”
“I still don’t feel comfortable watching this,” I said as Lucy gradually drew the shift over her head.
“Yet watch it you will, so as to learn from it. Your training will unfortunately be lacking in practical experience, if you are to retain your maidenhead, but a courtesan must know what to expect if her benefactor wishes to share her with another gentleman.”
God’s pity. “Is… this sort of thing a common practice, signore?”
“’Tis more usual for one man to bed two women, but there are men who enjoy seeing their courtesans or mistresses giving themselves to other men.”
“Why?” I asked, since this flew in the face of what I knew about men, which was admittedly very little.
He sighed. “Just watch, Mistress Leeds.”
UCY’S NAKEDNESS in the presence of two fully clothed men struck me as rawly prurient. It did make me uncomfortable; it also aroused me.
She was taking down her hair.
Inigo stood and started unbuttoning his crimson brocade doublet. “Have the other novices told you what to expect of this afternoon’s session, Lucy?”
She nodded; even through the veiling, I could see her cheeks pinken. Women with coloring like Lucy’s—and mine, for that matter—can hide nothing.
“Have you ever made love in the Greek manner?” Elic asked her as he raised his beaker to his mouth.
“Nay, not… not really,” she said in an unsteady voice. “I tried it once, but it hurt, so I made the fellow stop.”
Elic said, “Your patron has very exacting standards for his courtesans. He insists they should not just endure this form of coupling but take pleasure in it. There are measures we can take to make it both comfortable and stimulating for you.”
“Wh-what measures?” she asked.
Inigo, now in his shirtsleeves, patted the odd, leather-upholstered bed-cum-table, which stood at an angle to me. “If you will but lie upon the training bed, facedown, you shall find out soon enough. Come. I’ll help you up.”
She hesitated, regarding the bed uneasily.
“Nay! Nay, I cannot go back. I cannot live in hiding again, and if my husband finds me, he’ll beat me to death, I know it. I’ll cooperate, I will. I… I don’t mind it, not really, not the idea of it. But the pain…”
“We won’t hurt you, I promise,” Elic said as he rose and ushered her with a hand on her back to the training bed. “And you really will learn to enjoy it, you’ll see.”
She allowed him to lift her onto the bed, lying facedown when he instructed her to do so, her body starkly white against the lustrous black leather.
Inigo placed a small table next to the bed. From the cabinet, he retrieved a silver tray, which he set on the table. Opening a drawer in the cabinet, he chose four shiny black cylindrical objects of varying lengths and diameters. The smallest was as slim as my little finger, the largest about eight or ten inches long and almost as thick around as my wrist. Most had raised designs on them, and they all had fat knobs on one end and tapering, slightly rounded tips on the other. These items he laid out on the tray by ascending size as Lucy stared, wide-eyed.
“What are those things?” I whispered to Vitturi.
“Lacquered dildos from China.”
So dildos were phalluses; I was glad to have this confirmed.
“Don’t forget the oil,” Elic told Inigo as he rested a comforting hand on Lucy’s back.
His friend shot him a look as he pulled a tiny white porcelain bottle from his pocket. “Am I ever without it?”
Sitting on the edge of the training bed, he picked up the smallest of the dildoes by the bulb at its base, drizzled a bit of the bottle’s contents onto it, and rubbed it to thoroughly coat it.
In the Garden of Sin Page 8